“Bury my heart in Valmy,” said Kellerman, soldier of the Seven Years’ War, victor of Valmy, Marshal of France under the first Napoleon, and court favorite of the Bourbons—as the shadows of old-age death deepened into darkness. And they buried his heart in Valmy.

A simple monument on the crest of the hill, the bloodiest spot of the one-time battle ground, tells to the thoughtful stranger the story of a restless heart o’er whom as o’er Madame de Stael and many another heir of a checkered heritage might be engraved as epitaph, “Here rests one who never rested.”

The era ushered in by the battle of Valmy was especially prolific of men whose political principles changed violently from one extreme to the other; only to rebound again and again, until, at length, weariness and cynic scorn of good in anything caused them to drift in perplexed acquiescence wherever the tide rolled longest and strongest. Talleyrand, Dumouriez, Marquis de la Rouarie, Kellerman, La Fayette, Mirabeau, Duc de Chartres, and even Napoleon Bonaparte were, in great measure, moulded into their respective historic moulds by the lurid lightning play of antithetic forces ever fatefully flashing and slashing and crashing around them.

September Twentieth.

Yet in August, 1792, when sixty thousand Prussians, and forty thousand Austrians and fifteen thousand of the old French noblesse started out upon that “military promenade to Paris”: or on the morning of September 20th, when that victoriously advancing column prepared gaily for its first skirmish with the raw revolutionary levies who filled the passes of the Argonne wooded heights and threatened to impede that “promenade”—who could see, or who could dare to dream what the issue of that encounter would be; what results would follow; what rivers of blood would flow; what lordly heads would roll from under the guillotine; what national madness would break out barking at the peace of Europe; what mighty Madman would arise urging on that national madness even to Wagram, Austerlitz, Moscow, Leipsic, Waterloo!

Retribution.

Had Kellerman failed to come up just in time to join forces with Dumouriez: had the Prussian advance been just an hour or two earlier: had the heavy mists lifted from the Valmy hill and Argonne wood revealing the relative positions of Kellerman and Dumouriez: had the forcing of the defile by Clairfayt and his Austrian corps proved fatally successful: had the Duke of Brunswick resolutely charged a second time up that hill of bristling bayonets: had the King of Prussia, urged on by a vision of the future, authoritatively commanded that the hill be taken and himself led the charge: ah! so we learnedly say from the calm eminence far away, but history is made in the low blind fury of the fray. Perhaps, too, there were potently at work upon that fated battlefield, forces that elude the gaze of the dreamer on the height far away:—a determining animus, moral and spiritual potencies formed by the slow centuries and long controlled, but now liberated and wildly free. Ghosts of ten thousand wrongs may have arisen between the gilded ranks of the French noblesse and the ragged rows of the Carmagnoles: and, as the spirits that arose over the tent of Richard the Third, the night before the battle of Bosworth Field, cursed Richard and blessed Richmond; threatened Richard with defeat and death on the morrow and cheered Richmond with hopes and promises of victory; fought intangibly, invisibly, yet potently present amid the awful carnage of Bosworth field even until death trampled down Richard: so, in like manner, may the ghosts of ten thousand wrongs have arisen between the men of the old regime and of the rebellious new—fighting for their fellow-wrongs still writhing in the flesh, fighting the old, old fight of retaliation, compensation, stern adjudication, infinite justice. As the sun’s rays that reach earth are but one-millionth of the rays emitted by the sun, so for every thing known, bright shining on the historic page, there are a million things unknown.

Battle.

About seven o’clock on that battle morn as the mists were dissipating, the successfully united French forces saw with dismay the slowly advancing army of the allies; long lines of Prussian cavalry, Austrian light troops, solid columns of infantry, batteries of artillery filled the valley and moved slowly, sinuously toward the Valmy height.

Dumouriez anxiously scanned the white strained faces of his untried troops. Would they fail him in the crucial hour? Would they break away in panic rout when the death-play began? It was their custom.

At Tournay, at Lille, and in general throughout the opening campaign this uncertain “heap of shriekers” had fled away as satyrs pursued by Pan when the death-play began. Would the Carmagnoles of today, and, at deepest heart, the Jacquerie of many a yesterday, dare to fight face to face and hand to hand against the august seigneurs of the old regime—late their dread lords and masters? Three hundred years of culture lay between them.

Of all who took part in the battle that day, either among the allies or the revolutionary forces, perhaps not one realized the full importance of what had taken place as did Johan Wolfgang von Goethe—then a young man and comparatively unknown; he had followed the allies as a spectator, a curious seeker of strange scenes, a bold hot-blood eager as his own Wilhelm Meister to taste adventure at its source and to know the ways of the world in love and in war. Goethe, with the unerring insight of genius, perceived that victory to the Carmagnoles marked a new era. In his own words to comrades in camp on the night following the battle; “From this place and from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and you can all say you were present at its birth.”

France a Republic.

Simultaneously with victory at Valmy, France broke from the cocoon of monarchical forms and proclaimed herself a Republic. Even while the battle was raging, the National Convention in Paris were engaged in this deliberation, this liberation. The Republic of France dates from September 20th, 1792. And under the regrettable excesses of the Revolution, the reactionary repression of the First Empire, of the Bourbon restoration, the revolt of 1830, of 1848, even to Sedan and the hour—the spirit of democracy, of liberty and independence born Sept. 20th, 1792, has flourished and flourishes indestructibly, imperishably.

And yet as Dumouriez said, “France (revolutionary) was within a hair’s breadth of destruction.” And had victory gone that day to the allies, the throne of Louis XVI. would have been reinstated on foundations so firm that centuries would not shake it. For in La Vendee and throughout Brittany there was at that time a strong uprising in favor of the throne: men such as the admirable old Marquis de la Rouarie were abandoning the Revolutionary cause and turning decisively back to monarchical principles; moreover the recent atrocious September massacres had alienated the more conservative and thoughtful men throughout France. Never was the time more propitious for the return of the mild and humane Louis XVI., the re-establishment of the monarchy, the substitution of Reform for Revolution, and of concessive peace for fratricidal war. But by that hair’s breadth republican France won; and that winning mustered out the gentlemanly old regime and ushered in the arrogant awful new.

The spirit of Valmy flies eagle-free over the world today. It is the spirit making possible the face to face and hand to hand fight between the laborer and the capitalist, the soldier and the king, woman and man: and that Spirit tells strange and terrible tales of victory.