52 CARNOT. 
over left some guns in possession of the Austrians. Let 
us strengthen the left wing, exclaimed the old tacticians. 
No, no, replied Carnot ; what signifies by which wing we 
triumph. It was necessary, with good will or ill will, to 
yield to the authority of the people’s representative! The 
night is employed in breaking up the wing already com- 
promised ; its principal troops are marched to the right, 
and when the sun rose, it was in some measure a new 
army that Cobourg found opposed to him. The battle 
recommenced with fresh fury. Shut up in their redoubts, 
protected by woods, by palisades, by quickset hedges, the 
Austrians resist valiantly; one of our attacking columns 
is repulsed, and begins to disperse! Oh! who could de- 
scribe the cruel anguish that Carnot experienced. Doubt- 
less his imagination already represents to him the enemy 
penetrating into the capital, defiling along the boulevards, 
and abandoning themselves to those acts of Vandalism, 
with which in so many proclamations, in so many insolent 
manifestoes, we had been threatened! These distracting 
thoughts, however, do not abate his courage: Carnot 
rallies his soldiers, reforms them on a plot of ground ; 
solemnly, before the whole army, degrades the general 
who, in disobeying positive orders, had allowed himself 
to be defeated ; seizes the musket of a grenadier, and 
marches at the head of the column, in the civil costume 
of the representative of the nation. Nothing could now 
withstand the impetuosity of our troops; the charges of 
the Austrian cavalry are repelled with the bayonet; all 
who enter into the excavated roads around Wattignies are 
sure to meet with death. Carnot finally penetrated into 
the village, the very key of the position of the enemy’s 
army, over heaps of dead bodies, and from that moment 
the siege of Maubeuge was at an end. 
