With General Kellermann he shared the first French victory at Valmy where the Prussian army was forced to draw back.

He rapidly advanced north (till Moerdijk); before entering Holland he decided to return to Brussels when the French armies lost territory in the east of Belgium and the Siege of Maastricht (1793).

He disagreed with his successor Pache, the radical Convention and Jacobin deputies, like Robespierre and Marat, on the annexation of the wealthy Netherlands and the introduction of assignats.

Fearing execution, he refused to surrender himself to the recently installed Revolutionary Tribunal and instead defected to the Austrian army.

His father, Antoine-François du Périer, served as a commissary of the royal army, and educated his son most carefully and widely.

After the peace of Hubertusburg he retired at Abbeville as a captain, with a small pension (which was never paid), a love affair with his niece and the cross of St Louis.

[4] In 1769 Choiseul gave Dumouriez a military command as deputy quartermaster general to the army under the Marquis de Chauvelin.

In 1770 he undertook a mission into Poland, where, in addition to his political business, he organized a Polish militia for the Bar Confederation.

In 1773, he was arrested in Hamburg found himself imprisoned in the Bastille for six months, apparently for diverting funds intended for the employment of secret agents into the payment of personal debts.

Dumouriez was then recalled to Paris and assigned to posts in Lille and Boulogne-sur-Mer by the comte de Saint-Germain, the new king's minister of war.

In 1790, Dumouriez was appointed French military advisor to the newly established United Belgium States and remained dedicated to the cause of an independent Belgian Republic.

However, opportunity arose again when, in his capacity as a lieutenant-general and the commandant of Nantes, he offered to march to the assistance of the National Constituent Assembly after the royal family's unsuccessful flight to Varennes.

[9] He played a major part in the declaration of war against Austria (20 April), and he ordered General Dillon, commander of Lille, to attack Tournai, and the invasion of the Austrian Netherlands.

On August 24, 1792, Dumouriez wrote to his ally General François Kellermann about the void in military power within France.

Within this letter, Dumouriez's attachment to the Jacobin club is explicitly present as he tells Kellermann that the army was finally "purged of aristocrats".

Several times he received a mission of Dutch revolutionary patriots, with whom he agreed on the principles; De Kock, Daendels and his friends settled in Antwerp.

Dumouriez wanted to establish an independent Belgian state, free of Austrian control, which would act as a buffer on France's eastern borders, but that would not worry the British.

To achieve this he began negotiations with the local authorities in Belgium, but on 15 December the Convention passed a decree ordering the military commanders in the occupied territories to implement all revolutionary laws.

To the more radical elements in Paris, it became clear that Dumouriez was not a true patriot but worked during the trial of Louis XVI to save him from execution.

On 1 February Brissot de Warville declared war against King of Great Britain and the stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, not the people.

[22] On 7 February Dumouriez appreciated the secret proposals of Van de Spiegel and Baron Auckland: in exchange for recognition of French Republic, France would have to refrain from aggression against other countries.

[26] After the French lost Venlo, Aachen, Maastricht and all the supply at Liège in early March,[27] Dumouriez was ordered to return to Brussels rather than further entering Holland.

[39]) On 24 March, Francisco de Miranda, the only general from Latin America in French service, blamed Dumouriez for the defeat in the Battle of Neerwinden (1793).

[48][49] The commissioners Camus, Bancal-des-Issarts, Quinette, and Lamarque were accompanied by the acting Minister of War, Pierre Riel de Beurnonville.

[61] On 3 April Robespierre declared before the Convention that the whole war was a prepared game between Dumouriez and Brissot to overthrow the First French Republic.

[4] Without escort he rode on horseback to Tournai,[65] along with his chief of staff Pierre Thouvenot, the Duke of Chartres, duc de Montpensier he arrived on 5 April 1793 into the Austrian camp at Maulde.

On 10 April Robespierre accused him in a speech: "Dumouriez and his supporters have brought a fatal blow to the public fortune, preventing circulation of assignats in Belgium".

[66] Following his defection on 5 April 1793, Dumouriez remained in Brussels for a short time, and then travelled to Cologne, seeking a position at the elector's court.

In response, Dumouriez wrote and published in Hamburg (1794) a first volume of memoirs in which he offered his version of the previous year's events.

[69] In 1808 Castlereagh had been warned by Dumouriez that the best policy England could adopt with respect to colonies in Spanish America was to relinquish all ideas of military conquest by Arthur Wellesley and instead support the emancipation of the territories.