The Prince of Hohenlohe requested an interview with Dumouriez that evening, his motive being to judge of the state of the army. Dumouriez granted this, and substituted for himself in this conference General Duval, whose advanced years, white hair, and commanding stature imposed on the Austrian general. Duval affected an appearance of security, telling the Prince that Beurnonville was expected next day with eighteen thousand men, and Kellermann at the head of thirty thousand troops. Discouraged in his offers of arrangement by Duval, the Austrian chief withdrew, firmly convinced that Dumouriez meant to await the battle in his camp. At midnight Dumouriez left the Château of Grandpré, on horseback, and went to the camp in the pitchy darkness of the night. All was hushed in repose: he forbade drums to beat or trumpets to sound, but sent round in a low voice the order to strike the tents and get under arms. The darkness and confusion were unfavorable to these orders, but before the first dawn of day the army was in full march. The troops passed in double file over the bridges of Senuc and Grand Champ, and ranged themselves in battle array on the eminences of Autry. Thus covered by the Aisne, Dumouriez gazed upon the foe to see if they followed; but the mystery of his movements had disconcerted the Duke of Brunswick and Clerfayt. The army cut down the bridges behind them, and then, advancing four leagues from Grandpré to Dumartin, encamped there; and in the morning General Duval dispersed a host of Prussian hussars. Dumouriez resumed his march next day, and on the 17th entered his camp of Sainte-Menehould. The camp of Sainte-Menehould seemed to have been designed by nature to serve as a citadel for a handful of patriot soldiers, against a vast and victorious army. Protected in the front by a deep valley, on one side by the Aisne, and on the other by marshes, the back of the camp was defended by the shallow branches of the river Auve. Beyond these muddy streamlets and quagmires arose a solid and narrow piece of ground, admirably adapted for the station of a second camp; and here the general intended that Kellermann's division should be placed, then commanding the two routes of Rheims and Châlons. Dumouriez had studied this position during his leisure hours at Grandpré, and took up his quarters with the confidence of a man who knows his ground and seizes on success with certain hand. All his arrangements being made and head-quarters established at Sainte-Menehould, in the centre of the army, Dumouriez, annoyed at the reports, spread by fugitives, of his having been routed, wrote to the assembly: "I have been obliged," he wrote to the President, "to abandon the camp of Grandpré; our retreat was complete, when a panic spread through the army--ten thousand men fled before one thousand five hundred Prussian hussars. All is repaired, and I answer for everything."