The commander-in-chief was true to his word. He lost no time. Before night our batteries were in full play upon the bastions of Longwy, and as our tents had not yet overtaken us, I lay down under a vineyard shed in a circle of the staff, with our cloaks for our pillows, listening to the roar of our artillery; until it mingled with my dreams. We were on horse an hour before daybreak, and the cannonade still continued heavy. It was actively returned, and the ramparts were a circuit of fire. As a spectacle, nothing could be more vivid, striking, and full of interest. To wait for the slow approaches of a formal siege was out of the question. Intelligence had reached us that the scattered French armies, having now ascertained the point at which the burst over the frontier was to be made, had been suddenly combined, and had taken a strong position directly in our way to the capital. A protracted siege would raise the country in our rear, and, thus placed between two fires, the grand army might find itself paralysed at the first step of the campaign. The place must be battered until a breach was made, and stormed _à la Turque_. Our anxiety during the day was indescribable. With our telescopes constantly in our hands, we watched the effect of every new discharge; we galloped from hill to hill with the impatience of men in actual combat, and every eye and tongue was busy in calculating the distances, the power of guns, and the time which the crumbling works would take to fill up the ditch. The reports of the engineers, towards evening, announced that a practicable breach was made, and three battalions of Austrian grenadiers, and as many of Prussians, were ordered under arms for the assault. To make this gallant enterprize more conspicuous, the whole army was formed in columns, and marched to the heights, which commanded a view of the fortress. The fire from the batteries now became a continued roar, and the guns of Longwy, whose fire had slackened during the day, answered them with an equal thunder; the space between was soon covered with smoke, and when the battalions of grenadiers moved down the hillside, and plunged into the valley, they looked like masses of men disappearing into the depths of ocean. The anxiety now grew intense. I hardly breathed; and yet I had a mingled sensation of delight, eagerness, and yet of uncertainty, to which nothing that I had ever felt before was comparable. I longed to follow those brave men to the assault, and probably would have made some such extravagant blunder, but for seeing Varnhorst's broad visage turned on me with a look of that quiet humour which, of all things on earth, soonest brings a man to his senses. "My good friend," said he, "however fine this affair may be, live in hope of seeing something finer. Never be shot at Longwy, when you may have a chance of scaling the walls of Paris. I have made a vow never to be hanged in the beginning of a revolution, nor to be shot in the beginning of a war.