But  their  future  is  our  past,  and  we  know  their  destinies.  There  is
ROCHAMBEAU  himself,  chief  figure  .among  the  French.  He  will  go  home
to  added  honors,  he  will  take  part  presently  in  the  movement  for  reform
and  will  receive  from  a  new  Government  a  marshal's  baton.  Then  a  tor
rent  of  blood  flows.  Others  in  his  rank  will  fly  across  the  frontier,  but  he
is  made  of  sterner  stuff.  He  will  retire  to  his  estates,  be  dragged  to  prison,
will  be  barely  saved  from  the  guillotine  by  the  ninth  Thermidor  and  will
live  on  to  receive  the  compliments  of  the  greatest  soldier  of  modern  times
and  will  die  full  of  years  and  honors.
There  is  Lafayette.  For  him  an  Austrian  prison  is  waiting.  There  is
Viomenil,  who  commanded  the  force  which  took  the  redoubt.  He  will  die
in  hiding,  wounded  in  defense  of  his  king's  palace  against  the  onset  of  a
maddened  people  on  the  loth  of  August.
There  is  Damas,  wounded  at  the  Yorktown  redoubt.  In  a  few  years  he
will  be  a  fugitive  and  an  exile,  fighting  against  France.  There  is  Lameth,
wounded  also  at  the  redoubt.  For  him,  too,  the  future  holds  a  prison  and
a  long  exile.  There  is  Lauzun,  type  of  the  ancient  regime,  the  victor  over
Tarleton's  Horse,  the  bearer  of  the  brave  news  to  Versailles;  he,  too,  will
stay  by  France,  and  his  end  will  be  the  guillotine.  The  prophet  who
should  have  foretold  such  fates  as  these  for  that  gallant  company  would
have  been  laughed  to  scorn.  From  no  men  did  disaster  seem  more  distant
than  from  those  brave  gentlemen  of  France  on  that  October  morning,  and
yet  the  future  held  for  them  exile,  prison,  and  the  guillotine.
