Archbishop Franz and the many staff officers traveling with him, Müller among them, found that their ordeal was still far from over.

  Because the main body of the German coalition inside France had been annihilated, the entire left bank of the Rhine no longer had the strength to resist the powerful offensive that two hundred thousand French troops were about to launch; and Bonn and Cologne, sixty-five leagues away, roughly 250 kilometers, would likewise be unable to hold. On the captain of the guards’ advice, Archbishop Franz decided to stop the convoy from continuing toward Longwy and instead turn east, toward Metz, hoping to cross the Rhine by the shortest route and then seek the protection of Habsburg forces in Switzerland or northern Italy.

  However, after the convoy turned east and traveled for several hours, it had to reverse course again and return to the original road, because a great mass of refugees and routed troops were also fleeing from the direction of Metz toward our carriages. From their mouths we learned the grim news that Metz and Thionville, the border city, had already fallen. That meant our road of escape to the east was also completely sealed by the French.

  Across from me, a colleague said with indignation, “Could that André truly be the God-Favoured? How can he command different armies, in directions separated by twenty—indeed thirty—leagues, and still make them act as one?” On land, the ratio between a league and a kilometer is roughly 1 to 3.8 to 4.

  I patiently explained to that ignorant noble colleague that the French, in 1792, had deployed on a large scale a complex communication device called the semaphore telegraph. With it, messages could be transmitted accurately to a point thirty leagues away within three hours.

  “So this war was, from the very beginning, a vast trap laid by that Commander-in-Chief André?” someone suddenly asked. But the others in the carriage, myself included, had no answer.

  In truth, we had all read the oath-speech delivered in Paris in August by General André, newly appointed supreme commander of the Northern Command Headquarters. Many newspapers across the German lands had printed the address in full, often with a tone of mockery and derision. Yet today, more than one month later, André’s vows were being fulfilled step by step.

  In the swaying carriage, half asleep and half awake, my drowsy mind began to picture the scene of the French commander making his sacred oath in the Assembly hall:

  “I swear that driving out every invader is not the end of this war, but the beginning of a holy war!

  “I swear that the revolutionary tricolor shall fly high above Luxembourg, Brussels, Cologne, Mainz, Koblenz, Berlin, and Vienna!

  “I swear that the tree of liberty shall be planted across the European continent!”

  ...

  Thanks be to God: before dusk, the driver finally found the town of Briey, a place someone had scribbled onto the map with little care. It had to be said that it was a beautifully crafted small town. Yet in the streets and squares around us—indeed, all about us—everything was overturned and in chaos. People jostled on narrow roads in their rush to move on, accusing one another, shouting abuse, and even coming to blows. Through the entire turmoil, not one coalition officer or gendarme stepped forward to keep order. Most merely fled north in silence, their faces tight and oppressed.

  Fortunately, we were not in immediate haste. We only wished to find a place for a hot meal, because His Grace’s delicate stomach refused to take any more tasteless hard bread. Happily, a café-restaurant on the town square, called “The Franks,” had hung out a sign reading “Open as Usual.”

  The establishment occupied the first and second floors of a neat and elegant red-brick building. Though it was near the start of winter, the surroundings were still green, with flowers in bloom. I believed that in peacetime Briey would have been a pleasant place to visit at leisure; and I hoped, above all, that I might live long enough to return and see it again.

  When we escorted His Grace into the restaurant, we found many nobles and wealthy people already dining there. Without even taking time to wipe the soup from the corners of their mouths, these refugees would hurry out, leap into their carriages, and merge again into the clogged flood outside. Perhaps because we were so many, the owner had the servants lead us to the restaurant’s refined second floor.

  From the windows above, we could see clearly the dreadful tumult in Briey: pedestrians of every sort, soldiers in every kind of uniform, itinerant vendors, townsmen with faces set in grim sorrow, peasants, women, and children, all pushing and crushing against one another. The road was choked with vehicles as well: ammunition wagons, freight carts, luggage wagons, single-horse and two-horse carriages, and coaches drawn by multiple horses—some seized without mercy, others privately owned—hundreds of them fighting to force a path, colliding and blocking one another, no left or right, each clawing for the road. The livestock were panicked and restless; perhaps herds of cattle had been pressed into service without compensation as well. In truth, we saw little cavalry. What stood out instead were the elegant, glittering, brightly painted coaches of French nobles driven into exile once more.

  The chaos born of tight space was worse still in the square below, because it fed into a straight and handsome street leading out of town, yet the street was far too narrow. It was like a flooded river that had burst across grassland and fields and was now forced back into a single channel beneath a narrow arched bridge. From our window we could see the long street at a glance, and the strange tide rolling there without end. I should add that the two preceding paragraphs are excerpted from the memoir of a German man of letters who claimed to have witnessed the 1792 war against France in person.

  When I drew my gaze back, I began to observe the scene inside the restaurant. At different tables sat different sorts of men: soldiers, municipal officials, country nobles, adventurers from the German states, and even “high-class beggars” who could produce a bag of gold coins at a breath...

  They all wore the same new title as we did: refugees. Everyone ate silently, swallowing food that was both overpriced and hard to stomach. I could read, on their brows, the marks left by cruel fate. Though the prices were five to eight times the usual, the restaurant was still full, with customers coming in an unbroken stream.

  When the meal ended, the stout owner brought us a great pot of coffee, together with fresh milk and a stack of sugar cubes. Of course it was included in the bill, but Archbishop Franz, born of the House of Habsburg, did not care in the least about paying a few more gold florins. After all, since fleeing from the fortress of étain, we had gone three days without tasting coffee so sweet and fragrant.

  Perhaps sensing that there were now fewer diners, the owner, idle for the moment, began to chat with us at length, paying no mind to the haughty grandee who would settle the large account. Even on the road of flight, our superior, Archbishop Franz, maintained his affected, lofty, and false manner.

  In the course of the conversation, the kind-hearted owner warned us, “If I were you, I would stay here three or four days, wait for things to quiet down, and only then return to the German lands. Public order outside is very bad. Every hour is worse than the one before. Besides, small French detachments have already blown up several bridges on the Moselle’s main channel and its tributaries. So the road is jammed from fifteen kilometers outside the town, roughly four leagues, all the way to the square.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “I am very sorry, but my friends and I can stay only one night,” I replied, under His Grace’s quiet instruction. Taking a small pouch of gold coins from an attendant, I slipped it straight into the owner’s coat pocket. “Also—might there be a mountain path nearby, a shortcut that leads directly to Longwy?”

  “Of course there is!” The owner patted the pocket; the coins clinked. He snapped his fingers cheerfully, and a handsome boy of fifteen or sixteen ran over at once.

  Pointing, the owner said, “This is my nephew, Charles. He will guide your convoy around the congestion ahead... Do not expect him to speak. The poor child was born mute. But he is very clever, and he knows the French troops active in the nearby hills; he will take you the right way. Yet I have two warnings. First, do not mingle with the fleeing army. Most of them have turned into robbers without restraint, and they easily draw French fire. Second, if you meet a regular French interception, obey their orders. Do not be foolish enough to resist. That would go very badly. In ordinary circumstances, French officers, as the de facto victors, will show the merciful and friendly face for which they are known.”

  After a comfortable night in Briey, we set out again early the next morning, carrying the owner’s two warnings with us, and taking the mute boy Charles as our guide. It had to be said that Charles’s guidance was extremely effective. After countless turns that were hard to describe, we shook off the long, snake-like line of traffic behind us. With four carriages and an armed escort, we plunged into a dense wilderness forest that seemed to swallow all sound.

  On the initial road toward the forest, we could still see ditches, grassland, cultivated fields, farmsteads, and even the faint outline of villages, as well as oxen and horses that had collapsed and died from exhaustion along the way. Many had been skinned; their flesh had been cut away. The sight was deeply saddening. Because heavy rains had fallen again yesterday and today, the narrow, poorly maintained road was full of deep water ruts, impassable for carriages.

  Yet the foolish driver ignored Charles’s warning gestures and lashed the draft horses, trying to force the carriage through. The result was that an axle snapped, and that carriage was ruined. Left with only three carriages, we now had to fit eighteen people, including His Grace, into them. Four younger and stronger staff officers, meanwhile, had to ride packhorses like the guards, wearing rain capes. To lighten the load, we were forced to abandon everything except food, drink, weapons, and gold.

  Thanks be to God, once we truly entered the forest, the road became passable. Perhaps because so few carriages or travelers passed this way, the path had fewer deep ruts, and we encountered almost no other parties. But without a reliable guide, the fools who blundered in would only lose themselves one after another in the woods.

  Around midday, at a fork in the path, I saw a white-tarp wagon loaded with ammunition crates placed across the road, blocking our way. At once Charles jumped down from the driver’s seat and began waving his arms frantically at us. We had already been told by the restaurant owner that this was a warning signal. In other words, our convoy had been surrounded by French mountain troops. With His Grace’s tacit approval, the captain of the guards ordered all the guards to dismount and put away their pistols and sabers.

  Before long, dozens of French soldiers emerged from the brush on both sides and aimed muskets and bayonets at us. Plainly, Charles knew them well, and they even jostled and joked with him, so the soldiers did not treat us too harshly. They merely demanded that the escort and all passengers throw every firearm and saber they carried onto the roof of the carriage, and that we were not to reclaim them until we had traveled one league farther.

  Two minutes later, a French major walked over. He inspected, in a careless manner, the sixteen passengers in the carriage, but did not examine our papers at all. Instead, he let his eyes rest for a long while on Archbishop Franz, well dressed and heavy-bellied. The officer seemed as though he wished to give some order, but after muttering a sentence or two, he abandoned the thought.

  I heard him clearly all the same. The French major said, “Another damned German noble. I have neither the time nor the energy to detain and guard them. Let someone else deal with it.”

  He then waved his hand, signaling that the roadblock could be pulled aside. At that moment, four or five French soldiers came running over with two or three heavy burlap sacks, and spoke to us in broken German. As soon as they opened their mouths, I understood: they wanted to trade goods with us.

  “Hey, German gentlemen—do you want canned food? Good pork and beef. Pig’s head is three thalers a tin, and beef is one gold florin a tin.”

  “And we have cigarettes too. Two thalers a pack. Of course, the filtered kind tastes best—that is the privilege of senior officers—two gold florins a pack.”

  ...

  The major officer found this entirely ordinary. He smiled to himself and stood beneath a tree smoking. Five minutes later, we had traded for supplies worth three hundred florins. The prices were painful, but the goods were indeed good; even His Grace, habitually fastidious, was very pleased with the canned food and the cigarettes.

  Only later did I understand that the crafty French had marked up the price of their tins and cigarettes by dozens of times before selling them to us. It was scarcely different from robbery. Yet I admit that even if the French soldiers had truly meant to rob us outright, we would still have had to obey.

  Thus, after two more days of jolting travel and rough nights in the open, we finally reached Longwy, the fortress city on the Franco-German border. Unfortunately, the banner flying above the ramparts was no longer the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, but the red, white, and blue tricolor once more. The French had retaken the fortress. This time, the French border post did not allow us through. Instead, we were sent to a temporary camp nearby, where French gendarmes would verify our identities. As expected, within a few hours Archbishop Franz and the rest of us were arrested by the French gendarmerie on the charge of illegal entry...

  Müller and the others still came through without disaster. Because they were unarmed, the gendarmes allowed them to return to the German lands after they paid a small fine. Perhaps out of curiosity about revolutionary France, Müller ultimately accepted the suggestion of a gendarmerie officer and remained in France legally, under the status of a scholar.

  As for the eminent Archbishop Franz, after paying an enormous self-redemption of 120,000 florins, the French allowed him and his guard to cross the Rhine eastward from Strasbourg and return to Vienna.

  ...

  On October third, when the last organized intervention force within France surrendered its arms to the Army of the Rhine at Freyming, it marked the end of this war of national defense and the end of France’s suffering. What followed would be a sweeping counteroffensive: two hundred thousand French troops, armed to the teeth, continuing into the Low Countries and the many north German states, like an avalanche. It was the continuation of the holy war, and France’s war of revenge.

  From mid-August, the Prusso-Austrian Coalition under Duc de Brunswick had mobilized one hundred and forty thousand troops in total, including more than ten thousand from the émigré detachment. Beginning from the fortress of Virton, they advanced and seized Metz, étain, Verdun, and the town of Sainte-Menehould, along with vast areas of Lorraine and northern Alsace.

  The turning point of the war came when the French, with lightning speed, retook Verdun, Vaux Fort, and Douaumont, cutting the Prussian corps and the other intervention forces in two and denying them rear supply and reinforcements. In the end, Duc de Brunswick and his Prussian corps were surrounded near Valmy by superior French forces, and after six days of stubborn resistance, more than forty thousand coalition soldiers laid down their arms and surrendered as a body.

  By October third, counting the two Verdun battles as well as the pursuit and blocking actions before and after them, the French had killed or badly wounded thirteen thousand coalition troops, and captured eighty thousand coalition soldiers, including six thousand from the émigré detachment who were persuaded to defect. Non-combat losses from disease and the like reached one thousand. The French seized more than three hundred thousand muskets, pistols, and sabers, as well as more than one hundred and sixty cannon of various calibers, and nearly ten thousand warhorses, packhorses, and oxen. Other military stores were largely intact, held within the various fortresses.

  Of all the foreign intervention forces that invaded France, only more than ten thousand coalition soldiers near the Franco-German border managed, through quick wits, to flee back into the German lands before the French encirclement fully closed. Meanwhile, in the Ardennes forest, the thirty thousand of the Bohemian Corps, caught between the Army of the North and the Army of the Meuse, had not yet suffered the French army’s most lethal blow.