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. 



