One day the news came that he and his army had disappeared in the night. Perhaps they had gone over to the enemy; for the atmosphere was charged with treachery, and men were daily changing their politics with the changing fortune of war. The next news of Hoche was that he had fallen as if from the clouds, upon a strong Austrian position the other side of the Vosges mountains. And the position was so strong too that for a moment he was in danger of a second repulse. A battery on a height made such havoc with his men that they quailed. Six hundred francs a piece for those cannon! cried he, pointing with his sword. It is a bargain replied one of his officers. You shall judge between us added another as they clambered up. The battery was taken; and the Austrians fell back on the Prussian position at Sultz where their joint forces awaited the coming of the French. They did not wait long and their defeat was total. The victory was as important as decisive. The purpose of the allied army there was to prevent the junction of Hoche and Pichegru, the latter commanding the army of the Rhine. That junction now took place. According to military rule Pichegru the older man and the older officer outranked Hoche and was entitled to the chief command; but the Convention, dazzled by the brilliancy with which Hoche had redeemed his reputation decreed that he should have the precedence, and Pichegru after some protest consented to serve under his boy superior. The allies had withdrawn behind the fortifications of Landau and Wissembourg, and so long as they were there the French frontier was infested and nothing permanent accomplished. Hoche resolved to dislodge them. He told his troops he had a bloody task for them: They must storm Landau! They responded by waving their caps and shouting Landau ou la mort, Landau or death! And it was no idle boast: Amid a scene of sickening carnage Landau was taken and the allies disheartened did not wait for that terrible forlorn hope to mount to the breach at Wissembourg. The frontier was thus cleared of enemies, and the Republic set free to follow up that spasmodic career of conquest which brought for a moment the continent to her feet. Hoche now took it into his head to get married, though we cannot imagine how he could stop fighting long enough to attend to anything so sentimental. Perhaps he did not object to variety in his fighting. He had met at Thionville a graceful girl who had strongly attracted him. On inquiry he learned that her character was as commendable as her manners, and he offered her his hand. Her family though respectable was not wealthy, and through diffidence she hesitated. What was she that the first soldier of France should pick her out! But her friends would not let her miss such a chance, and they were married; and I leave you to the chronicles which aver that she made him a good wife.