The War of Wars by Robert Harvey Read Free Book Online Page B

traitor to France. The course of history would have been very different had he succeeded.

Chapter 5
THE LATIN ADVENTURER
    Francisco de Miranda, one of Dumouriez’s best generals, enjoyed a career not unlike Napoleon’s early one, emerging as a potential French leader himself. The Venezuelan-born Miranda had deserted from the Spanish army and travelled extensively in the United States, Europe and Russia, where he became Catherine the Great’s lover, seeking support for his goal of Latin American independence from Spain. He had previously spent three years in London pursuing this cause, but all his talk of leading South America to revolution had come to nothing. He switched his attention to the revolutionary ferment in France: a group of monarchists there had tried to get him to join a counter-revolutionary mercenary army of Russians, Swedes, Germans and Frenchmen partly backed by Catherine the Great, who had suggested Miranda’s name. However, Miranda’s intellectual sympathies lay with the revolutionaries.
    He made a good impression on Brissot when the Girondin leader visited London, and between them they developed the idea that the Revolution in France could be spread both to mainland Spain and to Spanish America. Brissot lobbied the commander in northern France, Dumouriez, to appoint Miranda as head of an invasion force of 12,000 French infantry and 10,000 mulattos then garrisoned in Santo Domingo who, with the assistance of the French navy, might be expected to topple Spain’s hold on her colonies, something France wanted almost as much as Britain.
    Crossing to Paris, Miranda had found little enthusiasm for the plan there, however, and was considering a return to London when theAustrian and Prussian armies invaded France from the east. In August 1792, as the country reeled at the prospect of defeat, Miranda, who had perhaps sold his military credentials a little too successfully, found himself offered the rank of marshal in the French army and the title of baron, as well as a fat stipend, very attractive to a man now hard pressed for the money to live in the grand style to which he had become accustomed. At the age of forty-two he was at last a real general – in the service of revolutionary France. His Russian supporters, who loathed the French revolutionaries, were appalled at the transformation, but did not sever their links with him altogether.
    To his own surprise, in his first engagement, along the border between Belgium and Holland, his force of 2,000 men succeeded after seven hours of fighting in putting to flight some 6,000 Prussians led by the Graf von Kelkreuth, a capable commander. It was the first French success of the war. With uncharacteristic modesty, Miranda spoke of his ‘beginner’s luck in the French army’; he was promptly appointed to command a division in the front line, under Dumouriez’s overall command. En route to Vaux the 10,000-strong division commanded by General Chazot suddenly encountered 1,500 Prussian hussars. The French panicked and fled; a rout seemed imminent, until the retreating forces reached Miranda’s position at Wargemoulin. There, sword in hand, he stopped their flight, and reorganized the two forces into three columns to march on Valmy.
    Dumouriez boldly attacked, believing that he faced a Prussian army of 50,000 men, and a major battle. Instead he was met only by covering fire; the Prussians had retreated after the French rally. Miranda’s reputation soared. However, he viewed with distaste the rise of the revolutionary party in France, in particular the Jacobin faction led by Robespierre and Marat. He wrote to the American Alexander Hamilton: ‘The only danger which I foresee is the introduction of extremist principles which would poison freedom in its cradle and destroy it for us.’
    Miranda moved up to join Dumouriez as second-in-command of the French army in Belgium. He went to the relief of Dumouriez’s army at Anderlecht, and was appointed to take over