MANY years ago I knew a Frenchman whose father a captain of infantry, had been killed in La VendÉe fighting under Hoche. He had many things to tell me about Hoche which interested me in his career, and led me to treasure up in my memory whatever I came across afterwards concerning him.

There was a certain confidential air about the communications of my French friend, which leads me to say to the reader that I trust to his honor not to divulge what I say to him touching the warrior in question.

The French themselves hold that next to Napoleon Bonaparte, the most brilliant soldier thrown to the surface by the revolution, was Lazarus Hoche. This seems too to be the opinion of a writer in the Encyclopedia Brittanica who says that the death of Hoche deprived the French people of the only man capable of making head against the ambition of the Corsican. And it still adds force to that view to bear in mind how short a time was allotted him to win immortality: he never lived to be thirty. Indeed I remember but one general in history who died so young with so high a reputation; and that was that wondrous boy Gaston de Foix nephew of Louis XII., who fell at the age of twenty-three at Ravenna after having there as elsewhere totally overthrown the famous Spanish infantry.

Perhaps some honest reader still callow from the study of John Richard Green, may remind me that that unique historian not only makes the Spanish infantry triumphant at Ravenna, but cites it as their typical exploit. Well, we must be thankful that Mr. Green does not cite the Caudine Forks as the typical exploit of the Roman legions.

Lazarus Hoche was born near Versailles in June 1768. He was the son, not of a common workman as some of the encyclopedias do vainly talk, but of a common soldier, or rather of an uncommon soldier; for his father on account of his uncommonness, was taken from the line and made keeper of the royal kennels at Versailles; and the first useful occupation of the boy, if useful it were, was to help his father in the care of the king’s hounds.

Nature had endowed him with a handsome and vigorous body and a precocious intellect. He had a maternal uncle who was curÉ of Saint Germain-en-laye and a man of some learning. This good priest interested himself in the education of his clever nephew, and taught him the elements of latin and mathematics; and thus he received instruction beyond what was common in his station in life. And you academical gentlemen will insist I suppose, that his subsequent advancement was all owing to this latin and mathematics.

But his instincts were military and he resolved to be a soldier, and with a boyish longing at the same time, to see the world, he enlisted when he was sixteen in what he supposed to be a regiment bound for the Indies; but his friends had played a trick on him, and he found himself enrolled in a home regiment. He made the best of it however, and soon attracted the attention of his superiors by his prompt and intelligent observance of duty.

But there were some exceptions to his good behavior. On one occasion a soldier of his regiment had been killed in a pot-house brawl. Hoche joined with some of his comrades in razing to the ground the house of the assassin. For his share in this riot he was condemned to three months imprisonment. Another act of violence which cost the life of a fellow being, brought him no punishment whatever, as it was within the tolerance of the service. A corporal was noted for his skill in handling the sabre. He had already slain two opponents in his duels. He insulted Hoche who instantly challenged him. Hoche received a cut across the forehead, which nearly split his skull, and left a long deep scar there the rest of his days; but he put an end to the duelling of his antagonist by running him through the body.

Of his personal comeliness it is related that once, on parade, a noble lady pointed him out to her companion and exclaimed: What a splendid looking general that would make! She little knew she was playing the part of a prophetess.

And it was not long before his fine bearing stood him in still better stead. Near by was a regiment of grenadiers of the king’s guard. These superb fellows had noticed the soldier-like qualities of Hoche, and they petitioned that he might be enrolled among them. The petition was granted.

These men when in barracks, were allowed to earn money by any honest industry that did not interfere with their duty, and Hoche addicted himself to embroidery. If you think this an effeminate occupation for a soldier, I would remind those of you who have been to sea in a sailing ship, that you must have observed that sailors who are certainly as rough as soldiers, are often skillful in needle work useful and ornamental.

With the money Hoche earned in this manner, he bought books, especially books of history; and as he dwelt upon the renown of Hannibal and of Caesar, of Turenne and CondÉ, of Marlborough and of Frederic, it was his dream to write his own name some day on that immortal list, I say dream, for it could be nothing more then, under the old rÉgime when the command of armies was the prerogative of the nobility alone.

In 1789 occurred the first overt act of the French revolution—the storming of the Bastille. It was the same year that George Washington was inaugurated first president of the United States. The end of our revolution was the beginning of that of the people of France, and ours precipitated theirs. It was high time perhaps that the old rÉgime came to an end; but we Americans ought none the less look back upon it with gratitude. Without its aid we could not have compassed our independence. It was the troops sent us by Louis XVI. that offset the German forces that came here in aid of our enemies.

Hoche was too well informed not to understand the issue between the government and the people, and he believed in his heart that the people were right; but he was the sworn soldier of the king and he was determined to defend him so long as defence was possible. He was present at Versailles when the Parisian mob worthily led by that frail beauty ThÉroigne de MÉricourt broke into the chateau and made the king come out on the balcony with the cap of liberty on his head. Hoche stood there shoulder to shoulder with his comrades ready to charge upon the rabble the moment the signal was given. But the signal was never given: Louis XVI. was the best of men and the worst of kings: He had not the heart to shed the blood of his subjects, so they shed his blood.

Legend says there was also there on that occasion another young man of still rarer qualities, who whispered to a companion that the king was an imbecile not to order those fine guards to slaughter the vagabonds and put an end to the disturbance. The anecdote may not be true, but it is none the less characteristic: it is perhaps the reflex of what that young man himself did a few years later.

The king was led to Paris and kept virtually a captive in the Tuileries, and Hoche with his regiment passed under the command of La Fayette whose purpose was not to overthrow the monarchy but to reform it on a constitutional basis. But the French revolution was different from ours: ours was aristocratic, a change at the head only, still retaining remnants of feudal tyranny—such for example as the divine right of sovereigns not to pay their debts—which we are not yet emancipated enough to throw off. Theirs on the contrary was democratic, or rather volcanic, the very dregs from the bottom thrown to the top.

La Fayette was obliged to fly for his life; and the army went over and fraternised as it was called, with the populace. The rise of Hoche was now rapid. Beside courage he was gifted with a thoughtful self-possession which never failed him. The display of this virtue on an occasion when he covered the retreat of a beaten army, attracted the notice of Carnot the minister of war—“the organiser of victory” as he was called—and he made Hoche a brigadier general.

In 1792 the supreme authority of France was usurped by a body known as the Convention. In 1793 the king was brought to the block, and all Europe rose to avenge his death. The English government had fitted out an army under the command of the duke of York, son of George III., to cooperate with the allied enemies of the new republic. York was a methodical soldier, and minding the old rule not to leave a hostile stronghold in the rear, he turned aside to besiege Dunkirk in the north-east corner of France, instead of hastening south. Carnot caught at the fault of the Englishman and put it to profit. He ordered Hoche to throw himself into Dunkirk with a few battallions and hold it to the last extremity. Hoche found the defences in bad condition and the inhabitants who were a conglomeration of various nationalities, not in the least disposed to aid him in repairing them. He seized the chief magistrate and threw him into prison, and warned the other functionaries that they would be sent to join him, if they did not come up to his help against the English. They came; and by the time the duke had established his lines of circumvallation with scientific skill, Hoche and his men were prepared to do all that was expected of them, namely, to keep the duke of York out of mischief for some time to come. One day the sound of cannon was heard off south, and soon the English were observed to be preparing to quit. Hoche though shut in from outward news, penetrated the situation. An allied army under Freytag coming up from the south-east, and a French army under Houchard coming up from the south-west, had intercepted each other and given battle. The English had received a message from Freytag, notifying them to come to the aid of their friends. Hoche resolved that they should do nothing of the sort. He sallied out upon them, threw them into some disorder and thus detained them till the battle of Hondschoote was lost and won. Houchard victorious pushed for Dunkirk. The English, hindered by this fresh sortie of Hoche, came tardily and faultily into order of battle, and after a short struggle, broke and fled leaving their artillery and their baggage.

Hoche shared with Houchard the glory of this double victory. The conduct of the duke of York was the subject of a parliamentary inquiry in which he was duly whitewashed as became a prince of the blood. Had he been a commoner he might have shared the fate of Admiral Byng.[16]

Carnot showed anew his appreciation of Hoche by giving him the command of the army of the Moselle—a grave responsibility for a youth of twenty-five; and Carnot made the mistake of not letting the responsibility rest squarely upon his shoulders: he sent commissioners to direct him.

An allied army superior in force and in a strong position, under the duke of Brunswick, lay at Keyserslautern. The commissioners counselled an attack. Hoche though daring was not rash, and the born instinct of the soldier within him whispered that the risk was too great; so he hesitated. The commissioners insisted, and he led forward his troops. The battle lasted two days, and never perhaps was the genius of the young general more conspicuous. Repulsed, he marched his men off the field as he had marched them on—shoulder to shoulder, beaten but not demoralized, and the enemy did not follow him up.

Carnot was sufficiently just not to blame him for this failure. On the contrary he sent him reËnforcements, and he sent him also what he would willingly have dispensed with—fresh commissioners to advise him. Hoche had pondered deeply the cause of his defeat, and had resolved that that cause should not again operate. He refused to consult with the commissioners: he would neither tell them his own plans nor listen to theirs. Taking off his cap and shaking it in their faces in that dramatic style so very French, he exclaimed: If that cap knew my thoughts I would throw it in the fire! Finding him obdurate they went back to Paris and made no favorable report of him.

Hoche had under him at this time several officers of about his own age who afterwards made their mark in history: Moreau the victor of Hohenlinden, who fell at last at Dresden fighting against France; Ney the bravest of the brave. Desaix who came late but not too late on the field of Marengo, and died at the head of his column; Le FÈvre the hero of the 18. Brumaire when he scattered the council of the five hundred with his grenadiers, and saved Bonaparte; Soult who won his baton of marshal by piercing the Russian centre at Austerlitz. He distinguished himself afterwards in Spain; and what is a more interesting distinction for you esthetic gentlemen, he sold to the French government for 615,000 francs—the highest price ever paid for a picture—the sublime Murillo of the Louvre. And I am sorry I cannot tell you how he came by it: there was scandal thereunto anent.

It is probable that Hoche imparted his plans to these able lieutenants, for it is otherwise inexplicable that they should have acquiesced in the strange measures he adopted. Instead of seeking the enemy, he took every pains to avoid him. He blew up the bridges and tore up the roads; and the allies seeing him bent on defensive measures only, failed to watch him as he deserved. And there were disquieting rumors in Paris. Hoche was certainly not a coward, but was he not a traitor? Had he not sold himself for Austrian gold? Such things had been.

One day the news came that he and his army had disappeared in the night. Perhaps they had gone over to the enemy; for the atmosphere was charged with treachery, and men were daily changing their politics with the changing fortune of war. The next news of Hoche was that he had fallen as if from the clouds, upon a strong Austrian position the other side of the Vosges mountains. And the position was so strong too that for a moment he was in danger of a second repulse. A battery on a height made such havoc with his men that they quailed. Six hundred francs a piece for those cannon! cried he, pointing with his sword. It is a bargain replied one of his officers. You shall judge between us added another as they clambered up. The battery was taken; and the Austrians fell back on the Prussian position at Sultz where their joint forces awaited the coming of the French. They did not wait long and their defeat was total.

The victory was as important as decisive. The purpose of the allied army there was to prevent the junction of Hoche and Pichegru, the latter commanding the army of the Rhine. That junction now took place. According to military rule Pichegru the older man and the older officer outranked Hoche and was entitled to the chief command; but the Convention, dazzled by the brilliancy with which Hoche had redeemed his reputation decreed that he should have the precedence, and Pichegru after some protest consented to serve under his boy superior.

The allies had withdrawn behind the fortifications of Landau and Wissembourg, and so long as they were there the French frontier was infested and nothing permanent accomplished. Hoche resolved to dislodge them. He told his troops he had a bloody task for them: They must storm Landau! They responded by waving their caps and shouting Landau ou la mort, Landau or death! And it was no idle boast: Amid a scene of sickening carnage Landau was taken and the allies disheartened did not wait for that terrible forlorn hope to mount to the breach at Wissembourg.

The frontier was thus cleared of enemies, and the Republic set free to follow up that spasmodic career of conquest which brought for a moment the continent to her feet.

Hoche now took it into his head to get married, though we cannot imagine how he could stop fighting long enough to attend to anything so sentimental. Perhaps he did not object to variety in his fighting. He had met at Thionville a graceful girl who had strongly attracted him. On inquiry he learned that her character was as commendable as her manners, and he offered her his hand. Her family though respectable was not wealthy, and through diffidence she hesitated. What was she that the first soldier of France should pick her out! But her friends would not let her miss such a chance, and they were married; and I leave you to the chronicles which aver that she made him a good wife.

At any other epoch of the history of France, and at any epoch whatever of the history of any other people, a young general who had encircled his name with so much glory, would have been the idol of the nation; but France had fallen upon strange lines. The Reign of Terror was at its height; the Convention had turned upon itself; the Girondists, republicans all, had gone to the scaffold; Danton the rival of Robespierre, had fallen; and that sanguinary triumvirate Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon were the arbiters of life and death to all so unfortunate as to live under the aegis of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

It is necessary to consider a moment the state of things under the Terror, in order to make the rest of this story credible. Lamartine, a republican himself, says: “More than eight thousand suspects encumbered the prisons. In one night three hundred families the most notable in France, historical, military, parliamentary, episcopal, were arrested. No crimes were invented for them: they were guilty by the quarter they lived in, by their rank, their fortune, their relations, their religion, their opinions, their presumed opinions. One died for having said what he thought; another for having held his tongue; one for having emigrated and come back; another for having staid at home; one for having increased the public distress by not spending his income; another for having insulted the public distress by spending it too lavishly. In a word there were no longer any innocent or any guilty: there were only the proscribers and the proscribed.”

Under this fearful rÉgime many of the truest and bravest soldiers of France had perished: the duke of Lauzun and Biron who had fought for us under Washington and La Fayette; the count d’Estaing who at the same time commanded the French fleet off our coast; Custine the victor of Mayence, and strangest of all, Houchard the victor of Honschoote. La Fayette had saved himself by flight; so had Dumouriez the victor of Jemappes. Some of these were proscribed because they were of noble birth; others because, though plebeian and republican, they did not fully come up to the standard of fanaticism then in vogue.

Robespierre and Saint Just are two of the monsters of history; yet we cannot doubt that they were animated by what they regarded as devoted and unselfish patriotism. They were as ready to lay down their own lives as to take the lives of others, and they did lay them down.

They were among the best illustrations of that saying of Gibbon that fanaticism can turn the noblest natures into beasts of prey.

Hoche had lost much of the friendship of Carnot by flouting his authority in the matter of the commissioners, and by setting up on his own account as an “organiser of victory.” Robespierre looked upon all great warriors as a menace to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; and since the campaign of Wissembourg, Hoche was regarded as the first of living generals. He had moreover been approached by the royalists with the same temptation that was afterwards spread before Bonaparte, namely, that he should undertake the rÔle of General Monk, and if he succeeded, the lofty function of Constable of France was to be revived for him. He had scorned these offers; yet with the perversity of human nature especially of human nature under the Terror, he was held accountable for their having been made.

The Convention resolved to arrest him before he became too strong for them. But did they dare seize him at the head of the troops he had led and who adored him? The Terrorists had not only General Monk to reflect upon but the case at their own doors of Dumouriez. When they had sent commissioners to arrest that officer in his camp, he had ordered a file of soldiers to seize them and deliver them over to the enemy.[17]

Hoche was a spirit of higher stamp than Dumouriez. Might he not improve on the methods of that captain, and march at once on Paris? So they thought best to use indirection: they lavished eulogies upon him, and invited him to lay down his present command and accept that of the army of Italy—a force just levied for the invasion of the Italian provinces of the House of Austria. He readily consented to the change, for that invasion was a favorite idea of his own. The Convention named to succeed him in the place he was vacating, Jourdan who justified their choice the next year by gaining the victory of Fleurus.

Hoche was completing the preparations for the campaign which another and a greater was to lead, when a warrant came for his arrest. He made no resistance. Perhaps resistance was useless; perhaps he considered obedience a paramount duty; perhaps he trusted in his star and believed they would not dare put him to death, and his star did not mislead him. He was taken to Paris. Robespierre and Saint Just were in favor of his immediate execution, but Couthon either from prudence or a worthy purpose to save Hoche, pleaded that it might not be well to sacrifice that young hero with such laurels on his brow—the people might not take it in good part; and that it would be safer to keep him in custody till time and the victories of others had dimmed the lustre of his reputation. So he was put into the prison of the ConciÈrgerie.

To do the Terrorists justice they were not disposed to treat their prisoners with any other cruelty than to cut their heads off; and Hoche was allowed the consolation of writing to his wife and of receiving her letters. He was soon joined by a young man named Thoiras of whose imprisonment he was the innocent cause. Thoiras was a friend of the family of Madame Hoche, and had expressed indignation at Hoche’s arrest.

To be imprisoned was to be condemned to die. No trial, no examination; but every evening the Committee of Public Safety went over the list, and marked off chiefly at random, as many as could be guillotined on the morrow; and this fatal roll was read aloud each morning, in the different prisons.

One day the name of Thoiras was called. He bade farewell to Hoche, and drew from his pocket a watch which he begged him to keep for his sake. That watch is still in the family of Hoche. That is to say, the last I know of it, it belonged to the Marchioness of Roye, Hoche’s daughter; but that lady was born about a century ago.

Among other interesting prisoners whose acquaintance Hoche made in the ConciÈrgerie, were two young and charming widows whose fate proved different from what was then threatened. One of them, instead of having her head cut off by the guillotine, was to have it encircled by a diadem. It was Josephine de Beauharnais. The other was already a passive agent in a plot for the overthrow of the Terror. We shall say more about her presently.

As fast as prisoners were led out to execution others were brought in to take their places; and who might be the new comers was a daily subject of mournful curiosity to those already incarcerated. One day there were ushered into the ConciÈrgerie three men who caused great amazement. Two were recognized as Saint Just and Couthon. The third had his face bound up with a bloody napkin, but it was soon whispered about that it was none other than the terrible Robespierre himself.

The tale has been told a thousand times: perhaps you will listen to it the thousand and first time. One of the youngest and ablest members of the Convention was Jean Lambert Tallien. He was not a good man: his hand was as blood-stained as the rest. He had clamored for the death of the king, and for the death of his co-republicans the Girondists. He had seconded Danton in the massacres of September. He had recently been sent to Bordeaux to see that the Terror was duly administered there, and that an adequate number of heads fell daily in the market-place, and he had fulfilled his mission with diabolical fidelity.

There lived in Bordeaux at that time one Madame de Fontenay whose beauty Balzac says was one of Nature’s masterpieces. This was the second of the two young widows whom Hoche had met in prison. I have called her a widow but she was not quite that: she was a divorced woman. Her husband who was a nobleman and a royalist had emigrated, that is, had fled from the guillotine and from such fellows as Tallien. The republic had decreed that a wife who was patriotic enough to stay behind under such circumstances, should be entitled to a divorce; and Madame de Fontenay who loved her country better than she loved her husband, had availed herself of this law, and was now free. But her name was aristocratic and her friends respectable, and in the daily increasing barbarity of the Terror she was in great danger. As fearless and capable as she was beautiful she resolved to meet the peril half way. She paid a visit to Tallien and pleaded her cause so eloquently that he assured her of his protection. He went back to Paris, but he could not get out of his head the vision of that appealing, resistless woman. He wrote to her and she wrote back. He urged her to come to Paris so that he might befriend her more effectually, and she came.

This virtuous passion seemed to work a change in that bad man. He determined to shed no more blood; he began to hang back in the hellish path of the Convention. Robespierre looked askance at him and soon became an unfriend. Thinking to provoke Tallien to some rash act that would afford a pretext for sending him to the guillotine, Robespierre seized Madame de Fontenay and threw her in prison. Well, it did provoke Tallien to a rash act, but it was not he who went to the guillotine. He became the chief of a conspiracy for the destruction of the triumvirate. He was urged forward by two of the strongest of motives: to save his own life and to save the life of the woman he loved. The plot spread, for every member of the Convention who differed in opinion even unwittingly from Robespierre, was in danger of the scaffold.

On the evening of the 8th. Thermidor a month that embraced a part of July and August, the conspirators held council. It was resolved that in the session of the morrow Tallien should lead the attack on Robespierre; and the rest swore by all they held sacred which was not much, to back him to the death.

The ninth Thermidor—day big with fate—epoch in the history of the revolution—dawned. The Convention assembled. Tallien gained the tribune. He was an impressive speaker, and when he had fixed the attention of the assembly he proceeded first to comment on the acts of the triumvirate, then to criticise, then to call in question, then to condemn, then to denounce. It was now his life or theirs and he hurled defiance at them.

When he had done, Robespierre rose. He was evidently taken aback by this unexpected arraignment. He made a feeble reply in which he dilated on his own devotion to the public cause and on the heinousness of the traitors who were turning against him. He then looked around for the usual response: Vive la RÉpublique! Vive Robespierre! Not a word. There was dead silence. Presently a voice was heard: A bas les tyrans, down with the tyrants! The cry was echoed and reËchoed. Tallien saw the hour was come. He ordered the guards to arrest Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon. The soldiers seeing the triumvirs still calmly seated could not believe that three men just now all powerful could be condemned, and they hesitated. The order was repeated not only by Tallien but by an outcry of his backers who were now a multitude; and the guards led them forth. They took them first to the palace of the Luxembourg where Robespierre seeing that all was lost, drew a pistol and attempted to kill himself, but he took aim so badly that the ball merely broke his jaw and went out at the opposite cheek. Hence the bloody napkin.

They were condemned to death by the same Committee of Public Safety which a few days before was their pliant tool of assassination.

It was the end. The Reign of Terror was over, and all political prisoners were set free. It was thus that Hoche and Josephine and Madame de Fontenay recovered their liberty.

I suppose you ladies will not let me off from the rest of the love affairs of that fascinating dame and Tallien. Well, they were married, and Madame Tallien was one of the queens of beauty and fashion under the Directory the Consulate and the Empire. It was in her drawing room that Bonaparte first met Josephine. After he became emperor he quarrelled with Madame Tallien. She was too witty and had too little reverence for the demi-god; so he would no longer let Josephine associate with her old friend and fellow prisoner.

Tallien lived to be old. In his last years he was supported by a small pension granted him by Louis XVIII. whose brother Tallien had done to death. Such was the vengeance of the House of Bourbon. And it was another prince of that house who brought from Saint Helena the remains of the arch-enemy of his race, and placed them in that superb tomb under the dome of the Invalids. Contrast this with what the English restoration did with the Regicides and with the remains of Cromwell.

The greatest of French rulers sleeps in the most gorgeous mausoleum of modern times: the greatest of English rulers—Where is his grave?

Hoche was no sooner out of prison than the Committee of Public Safety who had been asking themselves day after day whether the time had come to send him to the guillotine, gave him a new command. This time it was one he would fain have shrunk from; for he was to draw his sword against Frenchmen. In the west of France was the new Department of La VendÉe. The inhabitants were rural in their occupations and primitive in their manners. They were devoted Roman Catholics and consequently devoted royalists. Many priests flying for their lives from Liberty, Equality and Fraternity had taken refuge among them, and had strengthened their fealty to the old rÉgime. The VendÉeans had risen in arms against the Republic, and the insurrection had extended to neighboring Departments. Such was the valor of the men and the skill of their leaders that they had thus far repulsed every force sent against them. Even KlÉber afterwards the victor of Heliopolis, had been defeated and driven back. France face to face with Europe in arms, could hardly survive with this ulcer in her bosom: it was therefore her best soldier that she now chose to deal with it. Hoche set about the task with characteristic energy. He made no mistakes, he suffered no defeats and at the end of a sanguinary campaign La VendÉe was pacificated, that is, was turned into a desert.

It is illustrative of the imbecility with which this European war upon France was for some years carried on, that no adequate effort was made to take advantage of this revolt of the VendÉeans. The only important attempt to second them was the expedition to Quiberon Bay. A small force of emigrants, that is of French royalists were conveyed to that bay by an English fleet. They landed and fortified their position; and as it was commanded by the English guns, they felt themselves safe till they could form junction with the insurgents. But they had counted without their host, that is without Hoche; and almost before they thought he could be aware of their coming, his troops were scaling their defenses. The affair was soon over, and but few of the invaders escaped. What added to the carnage was that the guns of the English fleet played the while upon the scene of action, mowing down with cynical impartiality friend and foe alike. The English commander no doubt felt that every man laid low was one Frenchman the less, and how could he send ashore first to ascertain his politics?

It was toward the close of Hoche’s campaign in La VendÉe that another campaign more notable was in progress on the eastern frontier. Let us take a glance at the chain of events that caused this campaign to be so remarkable.

The Convention was not an adequate government for a great people, but it was better than none. Such however was not the opinion of the socialists and communists and anarchists who swarmed in Paris, and had gained control of the Sections, that is of the ward-meetings. These philosophers held that the best government was the one that governed the least, and therefore an ideal government was one that did not govern at all. They rose to suppress the Convention, so that every man might be a law unto himself, and Liberty, Equality and Fraternity do their perfect work. The crisis was alarming: the Convention appealed for protection to General Barras the military head of Paris. Barras had under him an artillery officer full of original ideas. This was the young man already referred to as having been at Versailles when the mob broke into the palace, and as having called the king an imbecile for not ordering his guards to use their bayonets. Among his other excellences this young gentleman was handsome. We have said that Hoche was handsome, but their respective success in the path of beauty, was different. Hoche was tall and of martial aspect. This other Apollo was small of stature and had the features and the hands and the feet of a good-looking girl. Nevertheless he was not a favorite with the ladies. He had ways they did not like. When they talked he would not listen as he ought, and as we all ought, but would look off into vacancy as if rapt in thought; and they were malicious enough to say that he was rapt in thought—the thought of his own attractions; and considering the complex character of the man it is not impossible the ladies were right. With men however he stood better. Few could come in contact with him without feeling his influence, and Barras was often led by him. To him then he had recourse in the threatened peril. The young officer planted cannon in different parts of the town under lieutenants of his own mettle, and himself took charge of a few pieces in the street Saint HonorÉ at the corner where stands the church Saint Roch. The insurgents came swarming up. He gave them no warning of what was in store for them but waited till they were within range, and then let drive into them a pitiless storm of grape-shot. The pavement was strewed with the dead and dying. Revolt had met its match: the Convention was saved.

A few weeks later, in October 1795, the Convention laid down its functions and was replaced by the Directory which body in the following February, conferred upon this remorseless gunner the command of the army of Italy, the army from which Hoche had been withdrawn to be thrown into prison. Behold then this new apostle of grape-shot red-handed from the slaughter of his fellow republicans, at the head of the best and worst army of the Republic! His men as it proved, were fully gifted with that fanatical valor which made the revolutionary soldier so formidable; but their clothes were in rags and their shoes full of holes, and as for food Thiers intimates that it was a choice between stealing and starving. Their young commander told them what was perfectly true—for he had contracted the habit of telling the truth when it would serve—that he was as poor as they; silver and gold had he none; but their bayonets were in good order, and he was going to lead them to a land of promise flowing with food and raiment and money to boot. And at the head of these marauders he passed into Italy.

I need not remind you how he made short work of all opposition; how three allied armies each superior to his own, went down one after another before his ragamuffins as if three earthquakes had yawned for them. History had never before and has never since recorded so rapid a succession of decisive victories.

Hoche read with mingled admiration and envy the bulletins that came from this astonishing campaign. He was loud in his applause of the new hero, but he was at no pains to conceal his chagrin that he himself had not been permitted to lead those troops to that field of glory. Had he been so permitted would the result have been the same? We may easily believe that his energy and soldiership would have borne him through triumphant; but that the Italian campaign would then have stood out the great masterpiece of modern warfare may be doubted. We may claim that Hoche was a great general without claiming for him the genius of Bonaparte.

La VendÉe pacificated, Hoche fell into the delusion still common on the continent of Europe and in this country, that the Irish need only a little outside aid and coÖperation to revolt against the domination of the English. He headed an expedition to Ireland. His fleet was scattered by a storm, and driven back; and as his services were needed elsewhere, he did not renew the attempt.

He took command of the army of the Sambre and Meuse and advanced to the left bank of the Rhine with eighty thousand men. On the right bank was the enemy in still greater force but much scattered to prevent him from crossing. The bridges and fords for miles bristled with cannon. But he outmanoevred his opponent and repeated the noted feat of CondÉ by crossing the Rhine in face of the enemy. A series of battles followed in which Hoche was victorious. He was pursuing the beaten allies, and had written to the Directory that he expected to bring them to bay on the banks of the Danube, when he received news of the armistice of LÉoben signed by Bonaparte and the archduke Charles; and he had nothing to do but to lead back his troops foiled of their prey.

All misgiving as to the fidelity of Hoche to the Republic had vanished, while Bonaparte had already betrayed qualities which excited the distrust of the Directory just as Cromwell had excited the distrust and more of the Rump and of the Barebones parliament. The army of the Rhine was added to the army of the Sambre and Meuse; and the joint command given to Hoche, placed him in effect at the head of the military force of the nation. He was soon called to Paris to overawe the same uneasy spirits who had tried to overturn the Convention, and it is noteworthy that it was Hoche and not Bonaparte who was thus summoned, although it was the latter who had demonstrated as we have seen, the true method of arguing with those philanthropists.

The approach of Hoche to the Capital exposed him to a curious accusation which illustrates the taste of the revolutionists for mimicking the ancient Romans. The Directory had decreed a line of circumference around Paris within which no armed force must pass without special permission. Hoche had mistaken the boundary of this new Rubicon and had crossed it at the head of his men. He was arraigned before the Directory, but his explanation was accepted and he was more popular than ever.

This preference for Hoche over Bonaparte gave rise to jealousy which had no time to develop into action. Hoche returned to his camp at Wetzlar only to die. He who had faced death in so many pitched battles, was reserved to yield up his soul in peace, his wife and child kneeling at his bed-side. He was twenty-nine years old.

His death was so sudden that there was talk of poison, to which the autopsy it seems lent some color. Alexander Dumas makes no doubt that he was poisoned, and that it was done at the instigation of Bonaparte. But Dumas is not to be trusted. He had inherited the prejudices of his father a general of division who had served under Bonaparte and had had a bitter quarrel with him. Hoche had gone back to Wetzlar with a cough, and he probably died of pneumonia.

Had he lived would he too have bent the knee around the imperial throne? Probably not. Would he like Moreau have lent his sword to the enemies of France? That is still less probable. The French are apt to say that if Hoche had survived there would have been no empire, no emperor; but might there not have been something worse: France divided into two hostile camps under two great captains?

The renown of Hoche pales necessarily in the presence of that of his great rival, just as the renown of Hampden pales in presence of that of Cromwell; but as men and as patriots Hampden and Hoche were purer and nobler than their rivals. The former were ambitious for their country, the latter for themselves.

It is a satisfaction to add in conclusion, that in those impious years of the revolution, when Christian worship was neglected and at times proscribed, and a mummery in honor or dishonor of Reason and Human Nature substituted, Hoche did not share in the prevailing misbelief. He writes to a friend that he had been piously taught in his childhood, and that he still believes and reveres the religion of Jesus Christ.

One of the large war-steamers recently built by the French, is named the Hoche.