The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
'If ordnance were all,' said André-Louis, 'I should agree with you. But battles are won by wits as well as guns; and the wits of the man who uttered the Duke's manifesto do not command my respect.'
'Ah! And La Fayette, then? Is that a man of genius?' The Lord of Gavrillac sneered.
'We do not know. He has never commanded an army in the field. It may be that he will prove no better than the Duke of Brunswick.'
They came to Diekirch, and found themselves in a swarm of Hessians, the advance-guard of the Prince of Hohenlohe's division, which was to move upon Thionville and Metz, soldiers these—well-equipped, masterful, precisely disciplined, different, indeed, from those poor straggling ragamuffins who were to dispute their passage.
André-Louis had removed the tricolour sash from his olive-green riding-coat and the tricolour cockade from his conical black hat. His papers, a passport to service in France, but here a passport to the gallows, were bestowed in an inner pocket of his tightly buttoned waistcoat, and now it was Monsieur de Kercadiou who took the initiative, announcing his name and quality to the allied officers, so as to obtain permission to pass on. It was readily yielded. Challenges were little more than an empty formality. Émigrés were still arriving, although no longer in their former numbers, and, anyway, the allies had nothing to apprehend from anyone passing behind their lines.
The weather had broken, and by sodden roads which almost hourly grew heavier, the horses fetlock deep in mud, they came by Wittlieb, where they lay a night at a fair inn, and then, with clearer skies overhead and a morass underfoot, they trailed up the fertile valley of the Moselle by miles of dripping vineyards, whose yield that year gave little promise.
And so, at long length, a full week after setting out, the berline rolled past the Ehrenbreitstein with its gloomy fortress, and rumbled over the bridge of boats into the city of Coblentz.
And now it was Madame de Plougastel's name that proved their real passport; for hers was a name well known in Coblentz. Her husband, Monsieur de Plougastel, was a prominent member of the excessive household by means of which the Princes maintained in exile an ultra-royal state, rendered possible by a loan from Amsterdam bankers and the bounty of the Elector of Trèves.
The Lord of Gavrillac, pursuing habits which had become instincts, alighted his party at the town's best inn, the Three Crowns. True, the National Convention, which was to confiscate the estates of emigrated noblemen, had not yet come into being; but meanwhile those estates and their revenues were inaccessible; and the Lord of Gavrillac's possessions at the moment amounted to some twenty louis which chance had left him at the moment of departure. To this might be added the clothes in which he stood and some trinkets upon the person of Aline. The berline itself belonged to Madame de Plougastel, as did the trunks in the boot. Madame, practising foresight, had brought away a casket containing all her jewels, which at need should realize a handsome sum. André-Louis had left with thirty louis in his purse. But he had borne all the expenses of the journey, and these had already consumed a third of that modest sum.
Money, however, had never troubled the easy-going existence of the Lord of Gavrillac. It had never been necessary for him to do more than command whatever he required. So he commanded now the best that the inn could provide in accommodation, food, and wine.
Had they arrived in Coblentz a month ago, they must have conceived themselves still in France, for so crowded had the place been with émigrés that hardly any language but French was to be heard in the streets, whilst the suburb of Thal, across the river, had been an armed camp of Frenchmen. Now that the army had at last departed on its errand of extinguishing the revolution and restoring to the monarchy all its violated absolutism, the French population of Coblentz, as of other Rhineland towns, had been reduced by some thousands. Many, however, still remained with the Princes. They were temporarily back at Schönbornlust, the magnificent Electoral summer residence which Clement Wenceslaus had placed at the disposal of his royal nephews: the two brothers of the King, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, and the King's uncle, the Prince de Condé.
In return the Elector's generosity had been abused and his patience sorely tried.
Each of the three princes had come accompanied by his mistress, and one by his wife as well; and they had brought into Saxony, together with the elegancies, all the ribaldries, the gallantries, and the intriguings of Versailles.
Condé, the only one of any military worth—and his military worth and reputation were considerable—had established himself at Worms and had organized there into an army the twenty-five thousand Frenchmen who had gone to range themselves under his banner for the crusade on behalf of Throne and Altar.
Monsieur and his brother the Comte d'Artois, however, were not only the true representatives of royalty to these exiles, but the enemies of the constitution which the King had accepted, and the champions of all the ancient privileges the abolition of which had been the whole aim of the original revolutionaries. It was about these princes at Coblentz that a court had assembled itself, maintained at enormous cost at Schönbornlust for his royal nephews by their long-suffering host. Their followers with their wives and families disposed themselves in such lodgings as the town offered and their means afforded. At first money had been comparatively plentiful amongst them, and they had spent it with the prodigality of folk who had never learnt to take thought for the morrow. In that time of waiting they had beguiled their leisure in the care-free occupations that were habitual to them. They had turned the Bonn Road into an image of the Cours la Reine; they rode and walked, gossiped, danced, gambled, made love, intrigued, and even fought duels in despite of the Electoral edicts. Nor was that all the scandal they gave. The licence they permitted themselves was so considerable that the kindly old Elector had been driven to complain that the morals of his own people were being corrupted by the unseemly conduct, the insolent bearing, the debauched habits, and the religious indifference of the French nobility. He even ventured to suggest to the Princes that, example being so much more powerful than precept, they should set their own houses in order.
With eyebrows raised at an outlook so narrow and provincial, his nephews pointed out to him in turn that the life of a prince is never so orderly as when he has acquired a maîtresse-en-titre. And the gentle, indulgent old archbishop could not find it in his heart to distress his royal nephews by further insistence.
Monsieur de Kercadiou and his party reached Coblentz at noon on the 18th of August. Having dined and made such toilet as was possible to men without change of garments, they reëntered the still bespattered berline, and set out for the Château, a mile away.
The fact that they came straight from Paris, whence there had been no news for the past ten days, ensured them instant audience. By a broad staircase kept by glittering gold-laced officers and a spacious gallery above, where courtiers sauntered, elegant of manner, vivacious of speech, and ready of laughter as in the Œil de Bœuf at Versailles of old, the newcomers were brought to an antechamber by a gentleman usher, who went forward to announce them.
Even now that the majority of the men had departed with the army there still remained here a sufficient throng, made up of the outrageous retinue which these Princes insisted upon maintaining. Prudence in expenditure, the husbanding of their borrowed resources, was not for them.
After all, they still believed that the insubordination of the French masses was but a fire of straw which even now the Duke of Brunswick was marching to extinguish, a fire which could never have been kindled but for the supineness, the incompetence, the jacobinism of the King, to whom in their hearts these émigrés were no longer loyal. Their fealty was to their own order, which within a few weeks now would be restored. The Duke's manifesto told the canaille what to expect. It should be to them as the writing on the wall to the Babylonians.
Our travellers made for a while a little group apart: André-Louis, slight and straight in his olive-green riding-coat with silver buttons, the sword through the pocket, his buckskins and knee-boots, his black hair gathered into a queue that was innocent of any roll; Monsieur de Kercadiou, in black-and-silver, rather crumpled, squat of figure, and middle-aged, with the slightly furtive manner of a man who had never accustomed himself to numerous assemblies; Madame de Plougastel, tall and calm, dressed with a care that set off her fading