The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2 - Online Library of ...

Online Library of Liberty: The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, vol. 2
those bad roads are at the best), was one continued rain for two months; so that at
length they were nearly stuck fast, and had as much as they could do to drag back
their cannon through the mud. Lastly, that France brought into the field, and has kept
up until very lately, the immense number of 600,000 troops. This has been done at an
average expense of about five millions sterling per month beyond their resources, and
yet they have ordered a like army for the next campaign, and talk boldly of meeting
Great Britain also upon her element. What say you to that, Monsieur le Financier? But
I will tell you in your ear that, in spite of that blustering, they will do much to avoid a
war with Britain, if the people will let them. But truth is, that the populace of Paris
influence, in a great degree, the public counsels. I think they will have quite as many
men as they can maintain; but what that may amount to is hard to determine. The
ministers here are a most extraordinary people; they make nothing of difficulties, as
you shall judge by a simple trait of M. Pache,? the Minister at War. He had sent
Beuernonville to occupy the Moselle River down to Coblentz, taking Trèves and other
places in his way. Now this way lies through a very difficult, mountainous country, in
which the snow is already very deep; therefore Beuernonville, having got a little neck
of land between the Saar and the Moselle, puts his troops into winter-quarters,
pleading their nakedness as an excuse. The minister has sent him a brace of
commissioners, who have power to impress in the neighborhood whatever may be
needful for the troops and then (their wants supplied) summon him to obey his orders.
If I may venture to judge from appearances, there is now in the wind a storm not
unlike that of September. Whether it will burst or blow over it is impossible to
determine. It has occurred to me that I never yet assigned a reason why the
completion of the payment of 6,000,000f., which at Mr. Short’s request I had
stipulated for with the government lately abolished, appeared to me desirable. In
effect, I left this, as I do many other things, to the sense of the gentle reader; but as
readers are sometimes ungentle, it is not amiss to communicate that reason to a friend.
I saw that the new government would be hungry, and would urge us for money, in the
double view of obtaining an acknowledgment of them as well as of supplying their
wants. It was therefore, I thought, right to take a position where we might say there is
nothing due. This would leave open a question which it would be very delicate to
answer either way as things appeared then, and as they are, now that appearances
have changed. You will have seen the manœuvres to force me in that intrenchment,
but at last, like your friend General Lee, I was quit, at the worst, for a retrograde
manœuvre. But I concluded that supplies of money to support the Colony of Santo
Domingo would, in all events, have been considered as a good and effectual payment
on our part, and, had my offer of recommending such supplies been accepted, I could,
on that ground, have proposed the measure which, anticipating the next instalment,
would have still kept open the main point as long as you should think proper. And
thus my apparent retreat was, in effect, a mode of more permanent defence; and this
is more, I believe, than poor Lee could say for himself.”
Writing to Robert Morris, on December 24th, Morris spoke more fully than usual of
the horrors he had seen enacted about him. “You will long ere this have learnt,” he
says, “that the scenes which have passed in this country, and particularly in this city,
have been horrible. They were more so than you can imagine. Some days ago a man
applied to the Convention for damages done to his quarry. The quarries are deep pits,
dug through several feet of earth into the bed of stone, and then extended along the
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