"This _role_ suits him," said the old marechal.

"I do not understand this war of cities." To cause La Fayette to march on Namur, which was but ill defended, capture it, march from thence on Brussels and Liege, the two capitals of the Pays Bas, and the focus of Belgian independence--send General Biron forward at the head of ten thousand men on Mons, to oppose the Austrian General Beaulieu, whose force was only two or three thousand men--detach from the garrison at Lille another corps of three thousand men, who would occupy Tournay, and who, after having left a garrison in this town, would swell the corps of Biron--send twelve hundred men from Dunkirk to surprise Furnes, and then advance by converging into the heart of the Belgian provinces with these forty thousand men under the command of La Fayette--attack, on every side, in ten days an enemy ill prepared to resist--to rouse the populations to revolt, and then increase the attacking army to eighty thousand troops, and join to it the Belgian battalions raised in the name of freedom, to combat the emperor's army as it arrived from Germany:--such was Dumouriez's bold idea of the campaign.

Nothing was wanting to ensure its success but a man capable of executing it.

Dumouriez disposed of the troops and the generals in conformity with this plan.
XI.
The impulse of France responded to the impulse of her genius.
On the other side of the Rhine the preparations were making with promptitude and energy.

The emperor and the king of Prussia met at Frankfort, where they were joined by the Duke of Brunswick.