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The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 3 by Fanny Burney
page 15 of 791 (01%)
We must turn once again to France. At Sedan, in a white heat of
indignation on the news of that 10th of August, constitutional
(sic) Lafayette emits a proclamation : the Constitution is
destroyed, the king a prisoner: let us march for Paris and
restore them! There is hope at first, that the army will follow
Lafayette, but hope tells a flattering tale : the soldiers, it
seems, care more for their country than for the Constitution.
Lafayette sees that all is lost ; rides (August 18) for Holland
with a few friends, of whom General d'Arblay is one; intends to
take passage thence for America, but falls, instead, into the
hands of the Austrians, and spends the next few years imprisoned
in an Austrian fortress. General d'Arblay, after a few days, is
allowed to proceed to England.

Lafayette gone, the command of the army falls to General
Dumouriez. Brunswick with his Prussians and emigrants, Clairfait
with his Austrians, are now in France; advancing upon Paris. They
take Longwy and Verdun; try to take Thonville and Lille, but
cannot; and find Dumouriez and his sansculottes, there in the
passes of Argonne, the "Thermopylae of France," an unexpectedly
hard nut to crack. In fact, the nut is not to be cracked at all:
Dumouriez, " more successful than Leonidas," flings back the
invasion; compels the invaders to evacuate France; and in
November, assuming the offensive, conquers the whole Austrian
Netherlands. Meantime, in the south-east, the war in

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which the Republic is engaged with the King of Sardinia
progresses also favourably, and Savoy and Nice are added to the
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