The War of Wars (8 page)

It was another morale-boosting victory for the hard-pressed French under their inspired new general, who immediately set about reinforcing the city’s defences. He arrested some of its leading citizens to exact tribute to pay for provisioning his troops, and dissolved the convents and monasteries, stripping prelates, abbots and monks of their titles. The 22,000 men under his command were soon joined by thousands belonging to the Army of the Ardennes, swelling his command to 70,000 men.

In February 1793, against his own advice, Miranda was ordered to send out 12,000 of his men to besiege Maastricht. As he expected, the 30,000 or so enemy forces proved too well entrenched. They fired some 32,000 cannon-shot in six days, but failed to inflict many casualties upon the small French besieging force. Miranda decided to withdraw, lest he lose his guns to an Austrian sortie. He was bitterly criticized for what was clearly a sensible tactical move; he was also hated by many of his own men for his draconian punishments for looting and raping.

Another much more dangerous threat now loomed. Early in March, Miranda’s commander-in-chief, Dumouriez, asked his staff officers what they thought of the growing Jacobin outrages. King Louis XVI had been executed in January, the revolutionary Terror was gathering pace, and the radicals mistrusted nothing so much as the army, even though they depended upon it for the Revolution’s survival against external enemies. Miranda primly replied that he disapproved of seeking the opinions of soldiers on such issues.

Soon afterwards two generals, La Hove and Stengel, were arrested on grounds of conspiracy. Dumouriez now demanded to know what
Miranda would do if the order came to arrest him, Dumouriez. Miranda said that he would have no option but to obey, adding that General Valance, as the senior general in the French army, would however be responsible for executing it. Dumouriez angrily retorted that the army would refuse to carry out any such order. A few days later Dumouriez told Miranda that he intended to march on Paris, to restore freedom: the counter-revolution was under way. To his astonishment Miranda, despite his own disapproval of the increasingly radical turn taken by the Revolution, told Dumouriez the soldiers would not obey him and that he, Miranda, might also oppose him. It was a moment of truth: from then on Dumouriez no longer trusted his subordinate.

Miranda’s action is inexplicable, except in terms of self-preservation – he believed Dumouriez could not succeed. Miranda had little romantic commitment to the French Revolution and was privately highly critical of the direction it was taking. His enemies believed his ambition was to replace his superior: already the Girondin leaders had identified him as the best candidate for Dumouriez’s post, should anything happen to the commander-in-chief.

Dumouriez then decided on an extraordinarily high-risk tactic, one that Miranda’s partisans have always believed was an act of deliberate treachery designed to discredit their hero and lead to his downfall. Holding good defensive positions, though vastly outnumbered and out-gunned, Dumouriez determined to risk the whole French flank in an offensive against the Austrian-led forces. His motive may have been to give himself enough prestige, through victory, to march on Paris and take over the reins of power.

On 15 March Miranda had successfully repulsed an attack on Tirlemont, but with General Champmorin’s forces was then ordered to attack the right flank of the enemy at Neerwinden. It was suicidal, since Miranda’s 10,000 men were opposed by Austrian-led forces around 18,000-strong, well entrenched in a defensible position. The French were mown down without pity. Although he was in the thick of the fight, Miranda survived; after nightfall, he had no alternative but to sound the retreat, leaving 2,000 of his men dead. The retreat was orderly, and he handled it with great coolness.

It soon emerged that Dumouriez had known the enemy was
strongest on their right flank and weakest on their left, where his own forces were superior: the weakest part of the French force, under Miranda, had thus been ordered to attack where the enemy were strongest. From the start Miranda had opposed the plan, which he later described as ‘against the rules of the art of warfare. I am astonished that Dumouriez was capable of such an error.’ The suspicion must be that Dumouriez wanted Miranda to do badly by comparison with the other commanders, in a bid to discredit and remove him before the coup attempt. But he had miscalculated in believing that the centre would hold, and the whole French army was thrown back as a result of this disastrously conceived attack.

On 21 March the Austrians attacked at Pallemberg. Miranda held his positions for a day, despite severe losses, then staged another orderly night retreat. Four days later Dumouriez and Miranda met, and exchanged furious words. Dumouriez railed against the Jacobins, while Miranda criticized his commander’s military ineptitude.

The Jacobins at last came to learn of Dumouriez’s plotting, and of his criticism of his second-in-command. As we have seen, Dumouriez went over to the Austrians; Miranda was summoned to Paris. Arriving at the end of the month, he was immediately interrogated by Citizen Petiot, a Girondin sympathizer, who arranged for him to appear before the Committee of War and Security. At a hearing on 8 April seventy-three questions were put to him as to the conduct of the war. The questioning was barely polite. Miranda knew that his life was on the line, not just his command. He impressed his interrogators with his calm and eloquent replies, and it appeared that he would be exonerated.

But the Terror was gathering momentum. The radicals alleged that Danton had been conniving with Dumouriez – a charge which may have been true – and insisted that ordinary soldiers should testify against the actions of their superiors. The ultra radical Montagnards, with Robespierre as their new leader, attempted to incriminate Danton and his Girondin followers, the faction with which Miranda was identified. But Danton dodged the attack by himself joining the Montagnards and denouncing his former Girondin followers, among them Miranda, whose supporters Brissot and Petiot sprang to his defence against Danton and Robespierre.

On 19 April 1793 the much-feared Chief Prosecutor of the Revolution, Fouquier-Tinville, ordered Miranda’s arrest, on charges of conspiring with the British government as well as with the Russians and the North Americans, and of aiding Dumouriez in his counter-revolutionary attempt to reinstate the monarchy. It now seemed all too likely that Miranda, who had led his men with brilliance, even perhaps turning the tables in the war, and who had acted with impeccable correctness in spurning Dumouriez’s overtures, would be guillotined on trumped-up charges.

On 20 April he was taken before a revolutionary Tribunal presided over by Montane, with Fouquier-Tinville prosecuting. Miranda surprised those present by his calm demeanour and his eloquent and natural way of defending himself. He was also vigorously defended by Chaveau-Lagarde (who later attempted unsuccessfully to save Queen Marie Antoinette from the tumbrils): ‘An irreproachable republican,’ he argued, ‘never fears death but cannot bear the suspicion of crime, and for a month Miranda has been suspected.’

Fouquier-Tinville rose and, in the precise, reedy voice which had condemned so many to the blade, accused Miranda of negligence in the war, and of being Dumouriez’s chief co-conspirator. Meanwhile Marat’s rabid newspaper,
L’Ami du Peuple
, had charged Miranda with looting Ambères after its capture. A procession of hostile witnesses was led by General La Hove and General Eustace. It was alleged that Miranda had a son and a brother-in-law in Maastricht, hence his discontinuance of the siege. A sergeant testified that the Dutch considered him ‘better than a Dutchman’. The national gendarmerie, whose excesses he had tried to contain at Antwerp, accused him of a succession of crimes.

When it was Miranda’s turn to speak he calmly recalled that, far from being Dumouriez’s accomplice, he had been his accuser. He had withdrawn from Maastricht because he was out-numbered, and not on ground of his choosing: ‘You cannot win when you don’t have the advantage of the ground.’ Outraged, General Eustace demanded to speak again, saying that it had been his honour ‘to detest Miranda’. Remarkably, the acid, razor-sharp Fouquier-Tinville cut him down, saying he could not call an openly prejudiced witness. The defence
witnesses were called. One revealed that at the time the King’s head was struck off by the guillotine Miranda had declared to his soldiers, ‘This is a great blow for the politics of France.’ The American revolutionary Thomas Paine himself came from London to argue with passion that Miranda would never have betrayed France, ‘because the cause of the French Revolution is intimately tied to the favourite cause of his heart, the independence of Spanish America’.

Summing up, Chaveau-Lagarde claimed that no defence was necessary, because Miranda had already defended himself so eloquently; he should be ‘listened to with all the dignity that became true republicans and with the full confidence the court deserves’. As the judges withdrew and the prisoners were led away, sobbing could be heard from among the crowds of onlookers. When the judges had filed back, Miranda was declared innocent. The court erupted in applause, in which even Fouquier-Tinville joined. Miranda rose to declare passionately that ‘this brilliant act of justice must restore the respect of my fellow citizens for me, whose loss would have been more painful for me even than death’. On 16 May he was released and carried through crowds in the streets. He was one of the very few to stare the Terror in the face, to come under the shadow of the guillotine, and yet to escape.

Now calm and commonsense deserted him. Believing himself immune from further persecution, he withdrew triumphantly to a luxurious château in Menilmontant to rest, and to defend his reputation against the unceasing vituperation of Marat’s newspaper. The Montagnards were still raining attacks upon him as ‘an intriguer, a creator of faction’ who, it was alleged, had bribed the jurors to let him go. His wisest course of action would have been to leave at once for England.

In 1793, Paché, former minister of war and an implacable foe, was appointed Mayor of Paris. Three days later Miranda’s château was surrounded by guards, and Paché placed him under house arrest. This did not stop Miranda receiving friends and female company alike. When a large number of sealed boxes arrived, the police suspected them of containing arms and ammunition; they were crammed with books. A servant loyal to his enemies was planted in the household; Miranda knew this, but pretended otherwise.

On 9 July he was arrested again and conducted to the prison of La Force, from which very few ever emerged free. Robespierre himself now demanded the guillotine for Miranda’s alleged connivance in a royalist plot. On 13 July he was brought before the Convention and again made a stirring defence, accusing his gaolers of violating the constitution ‘because the body politic is oppressed when any citizen is oppressed’. He complained that he had been accused of seeking to flee the country, when he had neither horses nor a carriage and could not move two leagues out of Paris without permission from the government. He accused the dreaded Public Safety Committee of tyranny, in disregarding his previous acquittal.

Miranda had asked his doctor to prepare a dose of poison so that he could cheat the guillotine, undoubtedly a wise precaution: compared to a single major prison in Paris before the Revolution, the Bastille, there were now twenty prisons, containing about 40,000 people; 7,000 had already been guillotined; Paris was in the grip of fear.

A club-like atmosphere pervaded La Force. Miranda beautifully caught the mood when he wrote that it was as though he were ‘making a long journey by boat, during which it was necessary to fill the tiresome emptiness of time with the search for useful knowledge without knowing if the journey would end in death at sea or happy arrival in port’. The Marquis du Châtelet became an inseparable companion; the two men talked at length of art, literature and travel; they played cards with packs from which, to their amusement, the court cards had been removed, and read Tacitus and Cicero. One day du Châtelet decided to swallow poison, leaving his few goods to Miranda and the other prisoners. The weeks passed slowly by.

In August Miranda appeared before the Revolution’s Special Criminal Tribunal for investigation. In September he went before the National Convention again, when he asked to be allowed to go into exile in order to pursue his cause against the Spanish government. The French could not make up their minds what to do about him, but they wanted him out of the way. Miranda’s frustration grew more desperate and bitter. He railed against the ‘infamous’ Robespierre, the ‘imposter’ Saint-Just, and against Danton, who had betrayed him. The police investigated the source of Miranda’s funds, but found no sign that they
had been acquired illegally (his money came from his general’s pay, and rich patrons). The months continued to drift slowly by, and Miranda made new friends in gaol, including the celebrated antiquarian and savant Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy.

In December 1794 Miranda loosed a formidable broadside against the Convention, denouncing Robespierre’s ‘execrable maxim that the individual’s interest must be sacrificed to the public interest’, an ‘infernal’ idea that had given tyrants from Tiberius to Philip II the justification for their misrule. His letter ended, with courageous dignity: ‘I do not ask for mercy from the Convention. I demand the most rigorous justice for myself and for those who have dared . . . to compromise the dignity of the French people and poison the national image.’ For a man under the shadow of revolutionary Terror and in gaol for more than a year, Miranda showed an admirably robust and indomitable spirit.

On 26 January 1795 Miranda was finally released from La Force, and promptly installed himself in a splendid
appartement
at Rue St-Florentin costing £1,400 a year – a staggering sum for those days. He was determined to make up for the deprivations of the past year and a half, of which sex – although he seems to have had access to some women in prison – was probably the most terrible. Women, the theatre and elegant parties were resumed with renewed vigour.