THE ARMY of Princes was made up of gentlemen classed according to province and serving together as common soldiers. The nobility was returning to its origins and to the origin of the monarchy like an old man returning to his infancy, at the very moment when this nobility and this monarchy were coming to an end. There were also brigades of émigré officers from various regiments who had gone back to being foot soldiers. Among this number were my comrades from the Navarre Regiment, now under the command of their colonel, the Marquis de Mortemart. I was sorely tempted to enlist with La Martinière, even if he should still happen to be in love; but in the end Armorican patriotism prevailed. I signed on with the Seventh Breton Company under the command of M. Goyon-Miniac. The nobles of my province had furnished enough men for seven companies, and an eighth company comprised young men of the Third Estate: the iron-gray uniform of this last differed from the royal blue and ermine facings of the others. Men dedicated to the same cause and exposed to the same dangers thus perpetuated their political inequality by hateful distinctions. The true heroes were the plebeian soldiers, who had no personal interests clouding their sacrifice.
Here is an enumeration of our little army:
An infantry of noble soldiers and officers, four companies of deserters dressed in the various uniforms of the regiments whence they came, one artillery company, and a few high-ranking engineers, bringing with them a few cannon, howitzers, and mortars. (Artillerymen and engineers, nearly all of whom embraced the Revolutionary cause, were also largely responsible for its success.) A very handsome cavalry of German carabiniers, musketeers under the command of the aged Comte de Montmorin, and naval officers from Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon lent support to our infantry. The ubiquitous emigration of naval officers plunged the French Navy back into that weakened condition from which Louis XVI had rescued it. Never, since Duquesne and Tourville, had our squadrons won greater glory. My comrades were cheerful, but I admit I had tears in my eyes when I saw these dragoons of the Ocean no longer navigating those ships with which they’d humiliated the English and emancipated America. Instead of sailing in search of new continents to bequeath France, these brethren of La Pérouse were sinking their boots in German mud. They mounted horses dedicated to Neptune; but they had changed their element, and the earth was not for them. In vain did their leader fly the tattered standard of the Belle Poule—a holy relic of the white flag, from whose tatters Honor still hung, though Victory had fallen.
We had tents, but we lacked for everything else. Our German-made rifles were rejects so dreadfully heavy they broke our shoulders, and often in no state to be fired. I went through the whole campaign with one of these muskets, whose hammer permanently refused to fall.
For two days we tarried in Trèves. It gave me great pleasure to see Roman ruins there, after having seen the nameless ruins on the Ohio, and to walk through that city so often sacked that Salvian said of it: “Fugitives of Trèves, you ask the Emperors, where is the theater? Where is the circus? But I ask of you, where is your town? Where are your people?” Theatra igitur quaritis, circum a princibus postulatis? Cui, quaeso, statui, cui populo, cui civitati?[26]
Fugitives of France, I ask you, where were the people for whom we sought to reestablish the monuments of Saint Louis?
I sat down with my rifle among the ruins and took from my ruck-sack the manuscript of my travels in America. I arranged the separate sheets on the grass around me. I reread and corrected a description of the forest, a passage of Atala, in the ruins of a Roman amphitheater. In this way, I prepared myself to conquer France. Then I packed up my treasure, the weight of which, added to my shirts, my cape, my tin canteen, my wicker bottle, and my pocket Homer, made me spit blood. I tried to stuff Atala into a pouch with all my useless cartridges, but my comrades laughed at me and tore at the pages that stuck out from the leather cover. Providence soon came to my aid: one morning, after a night spent sleeping in a hayloft, I found that I no longer had any shirts in my rucksack. Only the papers had been left untouched. And I thank God! This accident, while assuring my glory, also saved my life, for those sixty pounds set between my shoulders would surely have made me consumptive.
“How many shirts do I have?” Henri IV asked his footman.
“Sire,” he said, “there are a dozen, and all of them are torn.”
“And handkerchiefs,” said the King, “I have eight?”
“At present there are only five.”
The Old Béarnais won the Battle of Ivry without any shirts; I was unable to restore the kingdom to his descendants by losing mine.