The French Revolution of 1789

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Title: The French Revolution of 1789
As Viewed in the Light of Republican Institutions
Author: John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
Release Date: March 30, 2019 [eBook #59162]
Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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EBOOK THE FRENCH

REVOLUTION OF 1789***

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MARIE ANTOINETTE.
THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION
OF 1789
AS VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF REPUBLICAN INSTITUTIONS.
BY
JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.
With One Hundred Engravings.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1859.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred
and fifty-nine, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
FOR some years the author of this work has been collecting materials for writing
the history of the French Revolution. With this object in view he has visited
Paris, wishing also to become familiar with the localities rendered immortal by
the varied acts of this drama—the most memorable tragedy, perhaps, which has
as yet been enacted upon the theatre of time. In addition to the aids which he has
thus derived from a brief sojourn in Paris, he has also found the library of
Bowdoin College peculiarly rich in all those works of religious and political
philosophizings which preceded and ushered in these events, and in the
narratives of those contemporary historians who recorded the scenes as they
occurred, or which they themselves witnessed. Governor Bowdoin, whose
library was the nucleus of the present college library, seems to have taken a
special interest in collecting all the writings of the French philosophers and all
the works of contemporary authors bearing upon the French Revolution,
including—the most important of all—full files of the Moniteur.
The writer would not take up his pen merely to repeat the story which has so
often and so graphically been told before. But it is expecting too much of human
nature to imagine that the struggles of an oppressed people to emancipate
themselves from feudal despotism can be impartially narrated in the castles of
nobles or in the courts of kings. It is inevitable that the judgment which is
pronounced upon the events which such a struggle involves will be biased by the
political principles of the observer. Precisely the same transaction will by one be
condemned and by another applauded. He who believes in the divine right of
kings to reign and in the divine obligation of the people unquestioning to obey,
must condemn a people who endeavor to break the shackles of despotic power,
and must applaud kings and nobles who, with all the energies of bomb-shells,
sabres, and iron hoofs, endeavor to crush the spirit of democratic freedom. On
the contrary, he who accepts the doctrine that sovereignty resides in the people
must commend the efforts of an inthralled nation to sever the chains of servitude,
and must condemn the efforts of kings and nobles to rivet those chains anew.
Thus precisely the same facts will be regarded with a very different judgment
according as the historian is influenced by political principles in favor of
equality of rights or of aristocratic privilege. The author of this work views the
scenes of the French Revolution from a republican stand-point. His sympathies
are strongly with an oppressed people struggling for political and religious
liberty. All writers, all men profess to love liberty.
"Despots," says De Tocqueville, "acknowledge that liberty is an excellent thing.
But they want it all for themselves, and maintain that the rest of the world is
unworthy of it. Thus there is no difference of opinion in reference to liberty. We
differ only in our appreciation of men."[1]
To commence the history of the French Revolution with the opening of the
States-General in 1789 is as unphilosophical as to commence the history of the
American Revolution with the battle of Lexington. No man can comprehend this
fearful drama who does not contemplate it in the light of those ages of
oppression which ushered it in. It is in the horrible despotism of the old
monarchy of France that one is to see the efficient cause of the subsequent
frantic struggles of the people.
"The Revolution," says De Tocqueville, "will ever remain in darkness to those
who do not look beyond it. Without a clear view of society in the olden time, of
its laws, its faults, its prejudices, its sufferings, its greatness, it is impossible to
understand the conduct of the French during the sixty years which have followed
its fall."[2]
There is often an impression that the Revolution was a sudden outbreak of blind
unthinking passion—a tempest bursting from a serene sky; or like a battle in the
night—masses rushing blindly in all directions, and friends and foes in confusion
and phrensy smiting each other. But, on the contrary, the Revolution was of slow
growth, a storm which had been for centuries accumulating. The gathering of the
clouds, the gleam of its embosomed fires, and the roar of its approaching
thunders arrested the attention of the observing long before the storm in all its
fury burst upon France. A careful historic narrative evolves order from the
apparent chaos, and exhibits, running through the tumultuous scene of terror and
of blood, the operation of causes almost as resistless as the operation of physical
laws.
The writer has freely expressed his judgment of the transactions which he has
narrated. "The impartiality of history," says Lamartine, "is not that of a mirror
which merely reflects objects; it should be that of a judge who sees, listens, and
decides."[3] The reader will not be surprised to find that some occurrences which
historians caressed in regal courts and baronial halls have denounced as insolent
and vulgar are here represented as heroic and noble.
Every generous heart will respond to the sentiment uttered, in this connection, by
Thiers. "I have endeavored to stifle," he says, "within my own bosom every
feeling of animosity. I alternately figured to myself that, born in a cottage,
animated with a just ambition, I was resolved to acquire what the pride of the
higher classes had unjustly refused me; or that, bred in palaces, the heir to
ancient privileges, it was painful to me to renounce a possession which I
regarded as a legitimate property. Thenceforth I could no longer harbor enmity
against either party. I pitied the combatants, and I indemnified myself by
admiring generous deeds wherever I found them."[4]
One simple moral this whole awful tragedy teaches. It is, that the laws must be
so just as to command the assent of every enlightened Christian mind, and the
masses of the people must be trained to such intelligence and virtue as to be able
to appreciate good laws and to have the disposition to maintain them. Here lies
the only hope of our republic.
The illustrations which embellish these pages are from the artistic pencil of Mr.
C.E. Doepler, who went to Paris that he might with more historical accuracy
delineate both costumes and localities. To the kindness of Messrs. Goupil & Co.
we are indebted for the privilege of copying the exquisite engraving of Marie
Antoinette at the Revolutionary tribunal, which forms the Frontispiece.
JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.
BRUNSWICK, Maine, Nov., 1858.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Old Régime and the Revolution, by Alexis de Tocqueville, Introduction, p. xi.
[2] Ib., p. 253.
[3] Lamartine, History of the Girondists, i., 10
[4] Thiers, French Revolution, Introduction.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY.
Extent of France.—Character of its early Inhabitants.
—Conquest of Gaul.—Barbarian Invasion.—The
Franks.—Pharamond.—Clovis.—Introduction of
Christianity.—Clotilda.—Merovingian Dynasty.—
Fields of March.—Anecdote of Clovis.—The Parisii.
—Strife with the Nobles.—Moorish Invasion.—
Charles Martel.—Pepin.—Fields of May.—
Charlemagne.—His Policy.—Feudal System.—The
Church.—Rolls.—Louis V.—Hugh Capet.—
Parliament established by Philip the Fair
Page
17
CHAPTER II.
THE HOUSES OF VALOIS AND BOURBON.
The House of Valois.—Luxury of the Court and the
Nobles.—Insurrection.—Jaques Bonhomme.—Henry
III.—Henry IV., of Navarre.—Cardinal Richelieu.—
French Academy.—Regency of Anne of Austria.—
Palaces of France.—The Noble and the Ennobled.—
Persecution of the Protestants.—Edict of Nantes.—Its
Revocation.—Distress of the Protestants.—Death of
Louis XIV. 25
CHAPTER III.
THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV.
State of France.—The Regency.—Financial
Embarrassment.—Crimes of the Rulers.—Recoining
the Currency.—Renewed Persecution of the
Protestants.—Bishop Dubois.—Philosophy of
Voltaire.—Anecdote of Franklin.—The King's
Favorites.—Mademoiselle Poisson.—Her
Ascendency.—Parc aux Cerfs.—Illustrative
Anecdote.—Letter to the King.—Testimony of
Chesterfield.—Anecdote of La Fayette.—Death of
Pompadour.—Mademoiselle Lange.—Power of Du
Barry.—Death of Louis XV. 34
CHAPTER IV.
DESPOTISM AND ITS FRUITS.
Assumptions of the Aristocracy.—Molière.—Decay
of the Nobility.—Decline of the Feudal System.—
Difference between France and the United States.—
Mortification of Men of Letters.—Voltaire,
Montesquieu, Rousseau.—Corruption of the Church.
—Diderot.—The Encyclopedists.—Testimony of De
Tocqueville.—Frederic II. of Prussia.—Two Classes
of Opponents of Christianity.—Enormity of Taxation.
—Misery of the People.—"Good old Times of the
Monarchy!" 45
CHAPTER V.
THE BASTILLE.
Absolute Power of the King.—Lettres de Cachet.—
The Bastille.—Cardinal Balue.—Harancourt.—
Charles of Armanac.—Constant de Renville.—Duke
of Nemours.—Dungeons of the Bastille.—Oubliettes.
—Dessault.—M. Massat.—M. Catalan.—Latude.—
The Student.—Apostrophe of Michelet 53
CHAPTER VI.
THE COURT AND THE PARLIAMENT.
Death of Louis XV.—Education of Louis XVI.—
Maurepas, Prime Minister.—Turgot; his Expulsion
from Office.—Necker.—Franklin.—Sympathy with
the Americans.—La Fayette.—Views of the Court.—
Treaty with America.—Popularity of Voltaire.—
Embarrassment of Necker.—Compte Rendu au Roi.—
Necker driven into Exile.—Enslavement of France.—
New Extravagance.—Calonne 57
CHAPTER VII.
THE ASSEMBLY OF THE NOTABLES.
Measures of Brienne.—The Bed of Justice.—
Remonstrance of Parliament.—Parliament Exiled.—
Submission of Parliament.—Duke of Orleans.—
Treasonable Plans of the Duke of Orleans.—Anxiety
of the Queen.—The Diamond Necklace.—Monsieur,
the King's Brother.—Bagatelle.—Desperation of
Brienne.—Edict for abolishing the Parliaments.—
Energy of the Court.—Arrest of D'Espréménil and
Goislard.—Tumults in Grenoble.—Terrific Hail-storm 67
CHAPTER VIII.
THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE.
Recall of Necker.—Reassembling the Notables.—
Pamphlet of the Abbé Sièyes.—Vote of the King's
Brother.—His supposed Motive.—The Basis of
Representation.—Arrangements for the Meeting of
the States.—Statement of Grievances.—Mirabeau; his
Menace.—Sympathy of the Curates with the People.
—Remonstrance of the Nobles.—First Riot.—
Meeting of the States-General.—New Effort of the
privileged Classes 77
CHAPTER IX.
ASSEMBLING OF THE STATES-GENERAL.
Opening of the States-General.—Sermon of the
Bishop of Nancy.—Insult to the Deputies of the
People.—Aspect of Mirabeau.—Boldness of the Third
Estate.—Journal of Mirabeau.—Commencement of
the Conflict.—First Appearance of Robespierre.—
Decided Stand taken by the Commons.—Views of the
Curates.—Dismay of the Nobles.—Excitement in
Paris.—The National Assembly.—The Oath 85
CHAPTER X.
THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
First Acts of the Assembly.—Confusion of the Court.
—Hall of the Assembly closed.—Adjournment to the
Tennis-court.—Cabinet Councils.—Despotic
Measures.—The Tennis-court closed.—Exultation of
the Court.—Union with the Clergy.—Peril of the
Assembly.—The Royal Sitting.—Speech of the King 92
CHAPTER XI.
REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES.
Speech of Mirabeau.—Approach of the Soldiers and
Peril of the Assembly.—Elation of the Queen.—
Triumph of Necker.—Embarrassment of the Bishops
and the Nobles.—Letter of the King.—The Bishops
and Nobles join the Assembly.—Desperate Resolve of
the Nobles.—The Troops sympathizing with the
People 99
CHAPTER XII.
THE TUMULT IN PARIS.
Marshal Broglie.—Gatherings at the Palais Royal.—
Disaffection of the Soldiers.—Imprisonment and
Rescue.—Fraternization.—Petition to the Assembly.
—Wishes of the Patriots.—Movement of the Troops.
—Speech of Mirabeau.—New Menaces.—
Declaration of Rights.—Dismissal of Necker.—
Commotion in Paris.—Camille Desmoulins.—The
French Guards join the People.—Terror in Paris.—
Character of the King 103
CHAPTER XIII.
STORMING THE BASTILLE.
The Assembly petitions the King.—Resolves of the
Assembly.—Narrative of M. Dumont.—Scenes in
Paris.—The People organize for Self-defense.—The
new Cockade.—The Abbé Lefebvre d'Ormesson.—
Treachery of the Mayor, Flesselles.—Character of De
Launey, Governor of the Bastille.—Sacking the
Invalides.—The Bastille Assailed.—Assassination of
De Launey and of Flesselles
112
CHAPTER XIV.
THE KING RECOGNIZES THE NATIONAL
ASSEMBLY.
Rout of the Cavalry of Lambesc.—Tidings of the
Capture of the Bastille reach Versailles.—
Consternation of the Court.—Midnight Interview
between the Duke of Liancourt and the King.—New
Delegation from the Assembly.—The King visits the
Assembly.—The King escorted back to his Palace.—
Fickleness of the Monarch.—Deputation sent to the
Hôtel de Ville.—Address of La Fayette.—La Fayette
appointed Commander of the National Guard 122
CHAPTER XV.
THE KING VISITS PARIS.
Views of the Patriots.—Pardon of the French Guards.
—Religious Ceremonies.—Recall of Necker.—The
King visits Paris.—Action of the Clergy.—The King
at the Hôtel de Ville.—Return of the King to
Versailles.—Count d'Artois, the Polignacs, and others
leave France.—Insolence of the Servants.—Sufferings
of the People.—Persecution of the Corn-dealers.—
Berthier of Toulon.—M. Foulon.—Their
Assassination.—Humane Attempts of Necker.—
Abolition of Feudal Rights 127
CHAPTER XVI.
FORMING THE CONSTITUTION.
Arming of the Peasants.—Destruction of Feudal
Charters.—Sermon of the Abbé Fauchet.—Three
Classes in the Assembly.—Declaration of Rights.—
The Three Assemblies.—The Power of the Press.—
Efforts of William Pitt to sustain the Nobles.—
Questions on the Constitution.—Two Chambers in
one?—The Veto.—Famine in the City.—The King's
Plate melted.—The Tax of a Quarter of each one's
Income.—Statement of Jefferson 141
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ROYAL FAMILY CARRIED TO PARIS.
Waning Popularity of La Fayette.—The King
contemplates Flight.—Letter of Admiral d'Estaing.—
The Flanders Regiment called to Versailles.—Fête in
the Ball-room at Versailles.—Insurrection of the
Women; their March to Versailles.—Horrors of the
Night of October 5th.—The Royal Family conveyed
to Paris 155
CHAPTER XVIII.
FRANCE REGENERATED.
Kind Feelings of the People.—Emigration receives a
new Impulse.—The National Assembly transferred to
Paris.—The Constituent Assembly.—Assassination of
François.—Anxiety of the Patriots.—Gloomy Winter.
—Contrast between the Bishops and the laboring
Clergy.—Church Funds seized by the Assembly.—
The Church responsible for the Degradation of the
People.—New Division of France.—The Right of
Suffrage.—The Guillotine.—Rabaud de St. Etienne 165
CHAPTER XIX.
THE KING ACCEPTS THE CONSTITUTION.
The King visits the Assembly.—His Speech.—The
Priests rouse the Populace.—The King's Salary.—
Petition of Talma.—Views of Napoleon.—
Condemnation and Execution of the Marquis of
Favrus.—Spirit of the New Constitution.—National
Jubilee.—The Queen sympathizes with the Popular
Movement.—Writings of Edmund Burke 175
CHAPTER XX.
FLIGHT OF THE KING.
Riot at Nancy.—Prosecution of Mirabeau.—Issue of
Assignats.—Mirabeau's Interview with the Queen.—
Four political Parties.—Bishops refuse to take the
Oath to the Constitution.—Character of the
Emigrants.—The King's Aunts attempt to leave
France.—Debates upon Emigration.—Embarrassment
of the Assembly.—Death of Mirabeau.—His Funeral.
—The King prevented from visiting St. Cloud.—
Duplicity of the King.—Conference of the Allies.—
Their Plan of Invasion.—Measures for the Escape of
the King.—The Flight
188
CHAPTER XXI.
ARREST OF THE ROYAL FUGITIVES.
Arrival at Varennes.—The Party arrested.—Personal
Appearance of the King.—The Guards fraternize with
the People.—Indignation of the Crowd.—The
Captives compelled to return to Paris.—Dismay of M.
de Bouillé.—Excitement in Paris.—The Mob ransack
the Tuileries.—Acts of the Assembly.—Decisive
Action of La Fayette.—Proclamation of the King.—
The Jacobin Club.—Unanimity of France 200
CHAPTER XXII.
RETURN OF THE ROYAL FAMILY FROM VARENNES.
Proclamation of Marat.—Three Commissioners sent
to meet the King.—Address to the Nation from the
Assembly.—The slow and painful Return.—
Conversation between Barnave and the Queen.—
Brutality of Pétion.—Sufferings of the Royal Family.
—Reception of the King in Paris.—Conduct of the
Queen.—Noble Avowal of La Fayette.—Statement of
the King.—Menace of Bouillé 214
CHAPTER XXIII.
COMMOTION IN PARIS.
The Remains of Voltaire removed to the Pantheon.—
Decision of the Assembly on the Flight of the King.—
Thomas Paine.—Views of the Constitutional
Monarchists.—Message from La Fayette to the King
of Austria.—The Jacobins summon the Populace to
the Field of Mars.—Mandate of the Jacobins.—The
Crowd on the Field of Mars dispersed by the Military.
—Completion of the Constitution.—Remarkable
Conversation of Napoleon.—The King formally
accepts the Constitution.—Great, but transient,
Popularity of the Royal Family 222
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE APPROACH OF WAR.
Sentiments of the King and Queen upon the
Constitution.—The Legislative Assembly.—Its
democratic Spirit.—The King's Speech.—Painful
Scene.—The Queen plans Escape.—Riot in the
Theatre.—Infatuation of the Aristocrats.—Insult to
the Duke of Orleans.—Embarrassment of the Allies.
—Replies to the King from the European Powers.—
The Emigrants at Coblentz.—The King's Veto.—
Letters of the King to his Brothers.—Their Replies.—
Cruel Edicts.—Pétion chosen Mayor.—The King
visits the Assembly.—Rise of the Republican Party 236
CHAPTER XXV.
AGITATION IN PARIS, AND COMMENCEMENT OF
HOSTILITIES.
Death of Leopold.—Assassination of Gustavus.—
Interview between Dumouriez and the Queen.—
Discussion in the Assembly.—The Duke of
Brunswick.—Interview of Barnave with the Queen.—
Interview between Dumouriez and the King.—
Dismissal of M. Roland.—The Palace invaded.—
Fortitude of the King.—Pétion, the Mayor.—
Affecting Interview of the Royal Family.—Remarks
of Napoleon 246
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE THRONE ASSAILED.
Angry Interview between the King and the Mayor.—
Decisive Action of La Fayette.—Expectations of the
Queen.—Movement of the Prussian Army.—Efforts of the
Priests.—Secret Committee of Royalists.—Terror in the
Palace.—The Queen's View of the King's Character.—
Parties in France.—Energetic Action of the Assembly.—
Speech of Vergniaud 262
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE THRONE DEMOLISHED.
The Country proclaimed in Danger.—Plan of La
Fayette for the Safety of the Royal Family.—
Measures of the Court.—Celebration of the
Demolition of the Bastille.—Movement of the Allied
Army.—Conflicting Plans of the People.—Letter of
the Girondists to the King.—Manifesto of the Duke of
Brunswick.—Unpopularity of La Fayette.—The
Attack upon the Tuileries, Aug. 10th.—The Royal
Family take Refuge in the Assembly 271
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ROYAL FAMILY IMPRISONED.
Tumult and Dismay in the Assembly.—Storming the
Tuileries.—Aspect of the Royal Family.—The Decree
of Suspension.—Night in the Cloister.—The second
Day in the Assembly.—The Royal Family Prisoners.
—Third Day in the Assembly.—The Temple.—The
Royal Family transferred to the Temple 286
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE MASSACRE OF THE ROYALISTS.
Supremacy of the Jacobins.—Their energetic
Measures.—The Assembly threatened.—
Commissioners sent to the Army.—Spirit of the Court
Party in England.—Speech of Edmund Burke. —
Triumphant March of the Allies.—The Nation
summoned en masse to resist the Foe.—Murder of the
Princess Lamballe.—Apology of the Assassins.—
Robespierre and St. Just.—Views of Napoleon 295
CHAPTER XXX.
THE KING LED TO TRIAL.
Assassination of Royalists at Versailles.—Jacobin
Ascendancy.—The National Convention.—Two
Parties, the Girondists and the Jacobins.—Abolition
of Royalty.—Madame Roland.—Battle of Jemappes.
—Mode of Life in the Temple.—Insults to the Royal
Family.—New Acts of Rigor.—Trial of the King.—
Separation of the Royal Family.—The Indictment.—
The King begs for Bread 308
CHAPTER XXXI.
EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.
Close of the Examination.—The King's Counsel.—
Heroism of Malesherbes.—Preparations for Defense.
—Gratitude of the King.—The Trial.—Protracted
Vote.—The Result.—The King solicits the Delay of
Execution for three Days.—Last Interview with his
Family.—Preparation for Death.—The Execution 318
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
Charges against the Girondists.—Danton.—The
French Embassador ordered to leave England.—War
declared against England.—Navy of England.—
Internal War.—Plot to assassinate the Girondists.—
Bold Words of Vergniaud.—Insurrection in La
Vendée.—Conflict between Dumouriez and the
Assembly.—Flight of Dumouriez.—The Mob aroused
and the Girondists arrested.—Charlotte Corday.—
France rises en masse to repel the Allies.—The
treasonable Surrender of Toulon 331
CHAPTER XXXIII.
EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE AND
MADAME ELIZABETH.
Marie Antoinette in the Temple.—Conspiracies for
the Rescue of the Royal Family.—The young Dauphin
torn from his Mother.—Phrensy of the Queen.—She
is removed to the Conciergerie.—Indignities and
Woes.—The Queen led to Trial.—Letter to her Sister.
—The Execution of the Queen.—Madame Elizabeth
led to Trial and Execution.—Fate of the Princess and
the Dauphin 345
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE JACOBINS TRIUMPHANT.
Views of the Girondists.—Anecdote of Vergniaud.—
The Girondists brought to Trial.—Suicide of Valazé.
—Anguish of Desmoulins.—Fonfrede and Ducos.—
Last Supper of the Girondists.—Their Execution.—
The Duke of Orleans; his Execution.—Activity of the
Guillotine.—Humane Legislation.—Testimony of
Desodoards.—Anacharsis Cloots.—The New Era 353
CHAPTER XXXV.
FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS AND OF THE
DANTONISTS.
Continued Persecution of the Girondists.—
Robespierre opposes the Atheists.—Danton,
Souberbielle, and Camille Desmoulins.—The Vieux
Cordelier.—The Hebertists executed.—Danton
assailed.—Interview between Danton and
Robespierre.—Danton warned of his Peril.—Camille
Desmoulins and others arrested.—Lucile, the Wife of
Desmoulins.—Letters.—Execution of the Dantonists.
—Arrest and Execution of Lucile.—Toulon recovered
by Bonaparte 361
CHAPTER XXXVI.
FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
Inexplicable Character of Robespierre.—Cécile
Regnault.—Fête in honor of the Supreme Being.—
Increase of Victims.—The Triumvirate.—Suspicions
of Robespierre.—Struggle between Robespierre and
the Committee of Public Safety.—Conspiracy against
Robespierre.—Session of the 27th of July.—
Robespierre and his Friends arrested.—Efforts to save
Robespierre.—Peril of the Convention.—Execution of
Robespierre and his Confederates 375
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE THERMIDORIANS AND THE JACOBINS.
The Reign of Committees.—The Jeunesse Dorée.—
The Reaction.—Motion against Fouquier Tinville.—
Apotheosis of Rousseau.—Battle of Fleurus.—Brutal
Order of the Committee of Public Welfare.—
Composition of the two Parties.—Speech of Billaud
Varennes.—Speech of Légendre.—The Club-house of
the Jacobins closed.—Victories of Pichegru.—
Alliance between Holland and France.—Advance of
Kleber.—Peace with Prussia.—Quiberon.—Riot in
Lyons 389
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DISSOLUTION OF THE CONVENTION.
Famine in Paris.—Strife between the Jeunesse Dorée
and the Jacobins.—Riots.—Scene in the Convention.
—War with the Allies.—A new Constitution.—
Insurrection of the Sections.—Energy of General
Bonaparte.—Discomfiture of the Sections.—Narrative
of the Duchess of Abrantes.—Clemency of the
Convention.—Its final Acts and Dissolution, and
Establishment of the Directory 398
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE DIRECTORY.
Constitution of the Directory.—Distracted State of
Public Affairs.—New Expedition to La Vendée.—
Death of the Dauphin.—Release of the Princess.—
Pacification of La Vendée.—Riots in London.—
Execution of Charette.—Napoleon takes command of
the Army of Italy.—The first Proclamation.—
Triumphs in Italy.—Letter of General Hoche.—Peace
with Spain.—Establishment of the Cispadane
Republic.—Negotiations with England.—
Contemplated Invasion of Ireland.—Memorials of
Wolfe Tone.—Deplorable State of Public Affairs.—
Description of Napoleon.—Composition of the
Directory 411
CHAPTER XL.
THE OVERTHROW OF THE DIRECTORY AND THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CONSULATE.
Proclamation of Napoleon.—March into Austria.—
Letter to the Archduke Charles.—Preliminaries of
Peace.—Union of Parties against the Directory.—
Triumph of the Directory.—Agency of Napoleon.—
Severe Measures of the Directory.—Indignation of
Napoleon.—Dictatorship of the Directory.—Dismay
of the Royalists.—Treaty of Campo Formio.—
Napoleon's Address to the Cispadane Republic.—
Remarks of Napoleon.—Plan for the Invasion of
India.—Expedition to Egypt.—New Coalition.—
Rastadt
421
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY.
Extent of France.—Character of its early Inhabitants.—Conquest of Gaul.
—Barbarian Invasion.—The Franks.—Pharamond.—Clovis.—Introduction
of Christianity.—Clotilda.—Merovingian Dynasty.—Fields of March.—
Anecdote of Clovis.—The Parisii.—Strife with the Nobles.—Moorish
Invasion.—Charles Martel.—Pepin.—Fields of May.—Charlemagne.—His
Policy.—Feudal System.—The Church.—Rolls.—Louis V.—Hugh Capet.
—Parliament established by Philip the Fair.
COULD one have occupied some stand-point in the clouds fifty years before the
birth of our Savior, and have looked down upon that portion of ancient Gaul
which has since been called France, he would have seen an immense undulating
plain about six hundred and fifty miles square, bounded on the north by the
Rhine, on the east by the craggy cliffs of the Alps, on the south by the almost
impassable barriers of the Pyrenees, and on the west by the ocean. This beautiful
realm, most admirably adapted in its physical features, its climate, and its soil to
be inhabited by man, was then mostly covered with forest. Vast rivers, with their
innumerable branches flowing in every direction, beautified the landscape and
rendered the soil exuberantly fertile. About twenty millions of people, divided
into more than a hundred independent tribes, inhabited this fair land. Life was
with them all a scene of constant battle. They ever lived with weapons of war in
their hands, seeking to encroach upon the rights of others or to repel those who
were crowding upon them.
In this state of affairs imperial Rome cast a glance over the Alps upon Gaul, and
resolved upon its conquest and annexation to the empire. Julius Cæsar, at the
head of forty thousand men, descended through the defiles of the mountains and
entered Gaul between the Lake of Geneva and Mount Jura. After a series of
campaigns extending through ten years, and after sweeping with his invincible
legions nearly two millions of men from his path, he succeeded in the entire
subjugation of the country. Roman governors were appointed over the several
provinces, and fortresses were reared and garrisoned by twelve hundred Roman
soldiers, who enforced the laws of the empire. The arts, the civilization, and the
refinements of Rome were gradually extended over the semi-barbaric Gauls, and
for nearly four hundred years the country enjoyed general peace and prosperity.
The southern portion of the province became distinguished for its schools, its
commerce, and its elegance.
Toward the close of the third century the Roman Empire, enervated by luxury
and vice, was visibly on the decline. Then commenced that mighty flood of
invasion from the north which finally overran the whole of southern Europe,
sweeping before it almost every vestige of the power and grandeur of the
Cæsars. Army after army of skin-clad warriors, in aspect savage as wolves and
equally merciless, crossed the Rhine, and in fierce and interminable battle fought
their way over the plains of Gaul. For nearly four hundred years barbarian
hordes from the shores of the North Sea, from the steppes of Tartary, even from
far-off China, were pouring down upon southern Europe. Those in the rear
crowded forward those in the advance. These clannish tribes, every where
victorious, were slow to amalgamate. Each retained its distinctive laws,
language, customs, and manners. For more than two centuries this cruel war
continued, and all Gaul presented but a scene of tumult, terror, and carnage.
Among the marshes of the Lower Rhine there dwelt a fierce tribe called Franks,
or Freemen. Early in the fifth century, Pharamond, the sovereign chief of this
tribe, a man of extraordinary energy and sagacity, formed a confederacy with
several other adjacent tribes, crossed the Rhine at various points, and after a
series of terrific conflicts, which were protracted through many years,
overpowered the Gauls under their Roman leaders, and took possession of the
country nearly as far as the River Somme. Being the leading chief of the
confederated tribes, he exerted a kind of supremacy over the rest, which may
perhaps be considered as the first dawning of the French monarchy. The
successors of Pharamond retained his conquests, and gradually extended their
dominions until they were in possession of all the country between the Rhine
and the Loire.
In the year 480 Clovis succeeded to the chieftainship of the confederation.
Ambitious, unscrupulous, and energetic, he pushed his invading armies toward
the Pyrenees, and for thirty years nearly all the south of France was a volcano of
smoke and flame. His march, though attended with many reverses, was
triumphant, and at the close of his career in the year 511 nearly all Gaul was
partially subjected to his sway.
Christianity had previously entered Gaul from Rome. Clovis married Clotilda,
the daughter of a Christian bishop. In the heat of one of his battles, as the tide of
victory was setting against him, Clovis, raising his hands and eyes to heaven,
exclaimed,
"O God of Clotilda! if thou wilt interpose and grant me this victory, I will
renounce idols forever and become a Christian."
He gained the victory, and on the next Christmas-day Clovis was baptized. But a
man more thoroughly wicked never played the hypocrite. By treachery the most
loathsome, he caused all the chiefs to be assassinated who could be regarded in
the least degree as his rivals, and, placing chiefs subject to his will at the head of
all the different tribes, he attained such a supremacy as has led historians to
speak of Clovis as the first monarch of the conquered realm. The dynasty thus
established has been called the Merovingian, from Merovius, the grandfather of
Clovis. From this successful invasion of the Franks all Gaul received the name
of France. The leaders of these victorious bands occasionally had general
assemblies, held in the open air, to deliberate respecting important movements.
These meetings were very large, as all the chiefs and sub-chiefs came in battle
array, surrounded by an ostentatious and well-armed retinue. As these assemblies
were usually held in the month of March they received the name of Fields of
March, Champs de Mars. The interests of the confederation rendered it not
unfrequently necessary that these assemblies should be convened. This was the
origin of the States General of France, which, twelve centuries later, opened the
drama of that terrible revolution, which is universally regarded as the most awful
tragedy of time.
An incident which occurred during one of these assemblies held by Clovis
interestingly illustrates the character of that barbaric chief and the state of the
times. A silver vase was included in the plunder taken from the church of
Rheims after the conquest of that city. The plunder was divided at Soissons. The
bishop of the church earnestly solicited that the vase might be restored to him.
Clovis advocated the wishes of the bishop. One of the Frank warriors, jealous of
his chief's interference, with one blow of his battle-axe crushed the vase, sternly
declaring that Clovis was entitled to his share of the plunder and to no more. The
chieftain, though glowing with rage, ventured not to utter a word.
At the next review of his troops, Clovis, approaching the soldier, took his
weapon as if to inspect it. Pronouncing it to be unfit for use, he threw it
disdainfully upon the ground. As the soldier stooped to pick it up, Clovis with
one blow of his battle-axe crushed his skull, exclaiming, "Thus didst thou strike
the vase at Soissons."[5]
The monarchy, thus established by usurpation, treachery, and blood, was very
precarious and shadowy in its power. There was no acknowledged metropolis,
no centralization of authority, no common laws. The whole country was
occupied by the various tribes of invaders, each, under its own local chiefs,
claiming independence, governed by its own customs, and holding the province
upon which it chanced to have taken possession. Thus the supremacy of Clovis
was neither precisely defined nor boldly claimed.
When Cæsar, five hundred years before the rise of Clovis, invaded Gaul, he
found a tribe, called the Parisii, dwelling upon the banks of the Seine, with their
principal village—which consisted of a few barbarian huts of mud, with straw
roofs, and without chimneys—upon a small island embraced by the river. From
the name of the tribe the village itself was subsequently called Paris. Such was
the origin of that world-renowned metropolis which for ages has been the focal
point of literature, science, art, and bloody revolutions. During the sway of the
Romans the city had increased very considerably in population and importance,
and Clovis selected it as his capital.
For about three hundred years the successors of Clovis maintained their
supremacy. During all this period there was a constant conflict between the king
and the heads of the other tribes, or the nobles as they gradually began to be
called. An energetic monarch would occasionally arise and grasp extended
power. But he would perhaps be succeeded by a feeble ruler, and the nobles
would again rally and make vigorous encroachments upon the royal
assumptions. The only contest, however, was between the king and the nobles.
The mass of the people were in abject servitude, with no recognized rights.
In the year 732 the Moors, who had crossed the sea from Africa and had overrun
Spain, began to crowd down in battle array through the defiles of the Pyrenees
upon the plains of France. A successful general, Charles Martel (the hammer), so
called from the tremendous blows he dealt the enemy, met them and drove them
back with prodigious slaughter. By his achievements he acquired immense
popularity and renown. As a very feeble prince then occupied the throne, Charles
Martel collected the reins of power into his own hands, and, though nominally
but an illustrious general, became in reality the ruler of France. Satisfied with the
possession of power he was not ambitious of the kingly title, or thought it not
prudent to grasp at too much at once.
At the death of Charles Martel, his son Pepin, a man of great energy and
ambition, drove the imbecile king, Childeric III., into a cloister, and took his seat
unresisted upon the throne. The dynasty thus established is called the
Carlovingian, from Charlemagne, the most illustrious of this line of kings. The
nation cordially approved of the act. As Pepin could not claim the throne by
right of hereditary descent, he founded his title to reign upon the regal power
which his father had in reality exercised, and upon the well-known assent of the
nation. To confirm his authority still more, he appealed to the Pope. The Church
was now in the plenitude of its power; and the Pope, grateful for the service
which Charles Martel had rendered the Church by driving back the infidels, with
alacrity consented to establish Pepin upon the throne by the august rites of
religion.
Pepin, as his leading warriors had now become horsemen, changed the time of
the general assemblies from the month of March to May, as the latter month was
more convenient for forage, and the Assembly hence received the name of Fields
of May, Champs de Mai. At these meetings the king presided, and the body was
composed of the higher clergy and the nobility. Occasionally, a small delegation
of the most distinguished of the people, who were called the Third Estate, Tiers
Etat, had been admitted. Pepin called together only the clergy and the nobility,
declining to admit the Third Estate to the Assembly. Subsequently some kings
admitted the Third Estate, and others excluded them, according to their caprice.
Questions relating to war, peace, and the enactment of general laws were
submitted to this body, and decided by the majority. The chiefs only could speak.
The assembled warriors clamorously and with clashing of arms expressed assent
or dissent.
The world-renowned Charlemagne, succeeding his father Pepin, ascended the
throne in the year 768. France at that time presented every where an aspect of
decay and wild disorder. This monarch, illustrious both as a warrior and a
statesman, fused the heterogeneous and warring tribes into a compact nation.
Still, the mass, though consolidated, was conglomerate, its component parts
distinctly defined. All France bowed submissive to his sway. Like a whirlwind
he traversed Spain with his armies. Italy speedily acknowledged his supremacy.
The vast empire of Charlemagne soon vied with that of ancient Rome,
embracing nearly the whole of Europe.
It was an important point in the policy of Charlemagne to humble the nobles. He
wished to surround his throne with an aristocracy enjoying privilege and
splendor, but deprived of all political power. He wished himself to appoint the
rulers of the provinces, and not to allow those offices to be hereditary with the
counts and the dukes. Therefore he endeavored to ally the people with himself in
resisting the powerful barons. He also, with the same object in view, sedulously
courted the affections of the Church, conferring many of the most important
offices of the state upon the high ecclesiastics.
Charlemagne ordered the Assembly to meet twice every year. Every count was
commanded to bring to this congress thirteen of the most influential of the
people within his jurisdiction. They usually met in two bodies, the ecclesiastical
leaders in one spot, the military in another. Sometimes, by order of the king, they
both met together. The king held his court at a little distance, and by messengers
received constant reports from the two bodies. Weighing the result of their
deliberations, he issued his decree, which all recognized as law. Such was the
germ of deliberative assemblies in France.
Charlemagne established several schools. In these he assembled for severe study
many of the young men of the empire, selecting the low-born as well as the sons
of the nobles. As he was very desirous that his reign should be embellished by
the attainments of men of letters, he frequently examined these schools himself.
One of the historians of those days writes:
"When, after a long absence, Charlemagne returned to Gaul, he ordered the
children to be brought to him, to show him their exercises and verses. Those
belonging to the lower classes exhibited works beyond all hope, but those of
noble descent had only trifles to show. The wise monarch, imitating the Eternal
Judge, placed those who had done well on his right hand, and thus addressed
them:
"'A thousand thanks, my sons, for your diligence in laboring according to my
orders and for your own good. Proceed. Endeavor to perfect yourselves, and I
will reward you with magnificent bishoprics and abbeys, and you shall be ever
honorable in my sight.'
"Then he bent an angry countenance upon those on his left hand, and, troubling
their consciences with a lightning look, with bitter irony, and thundering rather
than speaking, he burst upon them with this terrible apostrophe:
"'But for you, nobles, you sons of the great—delicate and pretty minions as you
are, proud of your birth and your riches—you have neglected my orders and
your own glory, and the study of letters, and have given yourselves up to ease,
sports, and idleness.'
"After this preamble, raising on high his august head and his invincible arm, he
fulminated his usual oath:
"'By the King of Heaven I care little for your nobility and beauty, however others
may admire you. You may hold it for certain that, if you do not make amends for
your past negligence by vigilant zeal, you will never obtain any thing from
Charles.'"[6]
Wherever Charlemagne led his legions, he baptized the vanquished; and the
conquered tribes and nations called themselves Christians. The ignorant
barbarians eagerly accepted the sacrament for the sake of the white baptismal
robe which was given to each proselyte.
The vast empire of Charlemagne under his effeminate successors rapidly
crumbled to pieces. In ceaseless conflicts and fluctuations the chiefs of the
tribes, or nobles, gradually regained the power which had been wrested from
them by Charlemagne. Upon the ruins of the empire arose the feudal system, and
France became a monarchy but in name. The throne, shorn of its energies,
retained but the shadow of power. Haughty dukes, surrounded by their warlike
retainers, and impregnable in massive castles which had been the work of ages,
exercised over their own vassals all the prerogatives of royalty, and often
eclipsed the monarch in wealth and splendor. The power of the duke became so
absolute over the serfs who tilled his acres, and who timidly huddled for
protection beneath the ramparts of the castle, that, in the language of the feudal
code, the duke "might take all they had, alive or dead, and imprison them when
he pleased, being accountable to none but God."
France again became but a conglomeration of independent provinces, with
scarcely any bond of union. The whole landscape was dotted with castles
strongly built upon the river's bluff, or upon the craggy hill. These baronial
fortresses, massive and sombre, were flanked by towers pierced with loop-holes
and fortified with battlements. A ditch often encircled the walls, and an immense
portcullis or suspended gate could at any moment be let down, to exclude all
entrance. The apartments were small and comfortless, with narrow and grated
windows. There was one large banqueting-hall, the seat of baronial splendor,
where the lord met his retainers and vassals in intercourse in which aristocratic
supremacy and democratic equality were most strangely blended. Every knight
swore fealty to the baron, the baron to the duke, the duke to the king. The
sovereign could claim military service from his vassals, but could exercise no
power over their serfs, either legislative or judicial. It not unfrequently happened
that some duke had a larger retinue and a richer income than the king himself.
A poor knight implored of the Count of Champagne a marriage-portion for his
daughter. A wealthy citizen who chanced to be present said, "My lord has
already given away so much that he has nothing left." "You do not speak the
truth," said the count, "since I have got yourself;" and he immediately delivered
him up to the knight, who seized him by the collar, and would not liberate him
until he had paid a ransom of twenty-five hundred dollars. A French knight
relates this story as an instance of the count's generosity.
These lords were often highway robbers. Scouts traversed the country, and
armed men who filled their castles watched for travelers. The rich merchant who
chanced to fall into their hands was not only despoiled of all his goods, but was
often thrown into a dungeon, and even tortured until he purchased his ransom at
a price commensurate with his ability.
Under this feudal sway the eldest son was the sole possessor. "As for the
younger children," exclaims Michelet, with indignant sarcasm, "theirs is a vast
inheritance! They have no less than all the highways, and over and above, all
that is under the vault of heaven. Their bed is the threshold of their father's
house, from which, shivering and ahungered, they can look upon their elder
brother sitting alone by the hearth where they too have sat in the happy days of
their childhood, and perhaps he will order a few morsels to be flung to them
notwithstanding the dogs do growl. 'Down, dogs, down, they are my brothers!
they must have something as well as you.'"
The Church was the only asylum for the younger sons of these great families. In
her bosom ambitious ecclesiastics, as bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, often
attained a degree of splendor and of authority which the baron, the count, or the
duke in vain strove to emulate. The unmarried daughters took refuge in the
monasteries, or were shut up, in seclusion which was virtual imprisonment, in
the corners of the old chateaux. Thus the convents, those castles of the Church,
were reared and supported mainly to provide for the privileged class. The
peasant in the furrow looked with equal dread upon the bishop and the baron,
and regarded them equally as his oppressors.
These proud bishops assumed the character and the haughty air of feudal lords.
They scorned to ride upon the lowly mule, but vaulted upon the back of the
charger neighing for the battle. They were ever ready for a fray, and could strike
as sturdy blows as ever came from the battle-axe of a knight. The vows of
celibacy were entirely disregarded. Some took wives; others openly kept
concubines. These younger sons of the nobles, dressed in the garb of the Church,
were found to be such dangerous characters that there was a general demand that
they should be married. "Laymen are so convinced," says one of the ancient
writers, "that none ought to be unmarried, that in most parishes they will not
abide a priest except he have a concubine." The lords spiritual endeavored to
fashion the Church upon the model of the feudal system. Abbeys and bishoprics,
with all their rich endowments, passed by descent to the children of the bishops.
[7]
An incident which occurred in the year 911 throws much light upon the rudeness
of those barbaric times. Rollo, the chieftain of a band of Norman pirates, entered
the Seine, committing fearful ravages. Charles IV., appropriately called Charles
the Simple, alarmed by his progress and unable to raise a force sufficient to
check him, sent an archbishop to offer him the possession of Normandy, with the
title of hereditary duke, if he would peaceably take possession of this territory
and swear allegiance to the king. Rollo eagerly accepted the magnificent offer. In
performing the ceremony of swearing fealty, it was necessary, according to
custom, for Rollo to prostrate himself before the king and kiss his feet. The
haughty Norman, when called upon to perform the ceremony, indignantly drew
himself up, exclaiming,
"Never, never will I kiss the foot or bow the knee to mortal man."
After some delay it was decided that the act of homage should be performed by
proxy, and Rollo ordered one of his stalwart soldiers to press his lip upon the
foot of the king. The burly barbarian strode forward, as if in obedience to the
command, and, seizing the foot of the monarch, raised it high above his head,
and threw the monarch prostrate upon the floor. The Norman soldiers filled the
hall with derisive shouts of laughter, while the king and his courtiers, intimidated
by barbarians so fierce and defiant, prudently concealed their chagrin.
The Carlovingian dynasty held the throne for two hundred and thirty-five years.
Louis V., the last of this race, died in 987. He was called, from his indolence and
imbecility, the Idler. As he sank into an inglorious grave, an energetic and
powerful noble, Hugh Capet, Duke of the Isle of France, with vigorous arm
thrust the hereditary claimant into a prison and ascended the throne. Thus was
established the third dynasty, called the Capetian.
For two hundred and fifty years under the Capets, France could hardly be called
a kingdom. Though the name of king remained, the kingly authority was extinct.
The history of France during this period is but a history of the independent
feudal lords, each of whom held his court in his own castle. None of these kings
had power to combine the heterogeneous and discordant elements. The fragile
unity of the realm was broken by differences of race, of customs, of language,
and of laws. But in this apparent chaos there was one bond of union, the Church,
which exerted an almost miraculous sway over these uncultivated and warlike
men. The ecclesiastics were strongly in favor of the Capets, and were highly
instrumental in placing them upon the throne.
With the Capets commenced a royal line which, in its different branches, running
through the houses of Valois and of Bourbon, retained the throne for eight
hundred years, until the fall of Louis XVI. in 1793.
About the year 1100 we begin to hear the first faint murmurs of the people.
Some bold minds ventured the suggestion that a man ought to be free to dispose
of the produce of his own labor, to marry his children without the consent of
another, to go and come, sell and buy without restriction. Indeed, in Normandy
the peasants broke out in a revolt. But steel-clad knights, in sweeping squadrons,
cut them down mercilessly and trampled them beneath iron hoofs. The most
illustrious of the complainants were seized and hung to the trees, as a warning to
all murmurers. The people were thus taught that trees made good gibbets. When
their turn came they availed themselves of this knowledge.
In the year 1294 Philip the Fair established a court in Paris called the Parliament.
This was purely an aristocratic body, and was, in general, entirely subservient to
the king's wishes. Similar parliaments were established by the great feudal
princes in their provinces. There were occasional contentions between the
parliaments and the king, but the king usually succeeded in compelling them to
obedience. The Parliament enjoyed only the privilege of registering the royal
edicts. In the reign of Louis XIV. the Parliament ventured to express a little
objection to one of the tyrannical ordinances of the monarch.
The boy-king, eighteen years of age, was astounded at such impudence. He left
the chase, and, hastening to the hall, entered it whip in hand. He could send them
one and all to the Bastille or the block, and they knew it, and he knew it. The
presence of the king brought them to terms, and they immediately became as
submissive as fawning spaniels.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Greg. Tur., book ii., c. 28.
[6] Monach. Sangall, b. i., c. ii., sqq., as quoted by Michelet.
[7] See the abundant proof of these statements in Michelet's History of France, p. 193.
CHAPTER II.
THE HOUSES OF VALOIS AND BOURBON.
The House of Valois.—Luxury of the Court and the Nobles.—Insurrection.
—Jaques Bonhomme.—Henry III.—Henry IV., of Navarre.—Cardinal
Richelieu.—French Academy.—Regency of Anne of Austria.—Palaces of
France.—The Noble and the Ennobled.—Persecution of the Protestants.—
Edict of Nantes.—Its Revocation.—Distress of the Protestants.—Death of
Louis XIV.
IN the year 1328 the direct line of the Capets became extinct by the death of
Charles IV., who left no male descendant. The nobles, assembled in parliament
at Paris, assigned the crown to Philip, Count of Valois, a nephew of the former
king. He was crowned at Rheims, in May, 1328, as Philip VI. The nobles, having
thus obtained a king according to their wishes, complained to him that they had
borrowed large sums of money from wealthy merchants and artisans, which it
was inconvenient for them to pay, and that it was not consistent with the dignity
of the French nobility that they should be harassed by debts due to the low-born.
The king promptly issued a decree that all these debts should be cut down one
fourth, that four months grace should be allowed without interest, and then, that
these plebeian creditors might be reduced to a proper state of humility, he
ordered them all to be imprisoned and their property to be confiscated. The
merciless monarch doubled the taxes upon the people, and created a court at
Paris of such magnificence that the baronial lords abandoned their castles and
crowded to the metropolis to share its voluptuous indulgences. Even neighboring
kings, attracted by the splendor of the Parisian court, took up their abode in
Paris. The nobles needed vast sums of money to sustain them in such
measureless extravagance. They accordingly left stern overseers over their
estates, to drive the peasants to their toil and to extort from them every possible
farthing.
The king, to replenish his ever-exhausted purse, assumed the sole right of
making and selling salt throughout the realm. Each family, always excepting the
nobles, who were then exempted from every species of tax, was required to take
a certain quantity at an exorbitant price.
Vincennes was then the great banqueting-hall of Europe. In its present decay it
exhibits but little of the grandeur it presented four hundred years ago, when its
battlements towered above the forest of oaks, centuries old, which surrounded
the castle—when plumed and blazoned squadrons met in jousts and
tournaments, and when, in meteoric splendor, hunting bands of lords and ladies
swept the park. Brilliant as was this spectacle, no healthy mind can contemplate
it but with indignation. To support this luxury of a few thousand nobles, thirty
millions of people were plunged into the extreme of ignorance, poverty, and
misery.
Again the king and the nobles had empty purses, and were greatly in debt. By an
arbitrary decree all the coin of the kingdom was called in. It was then passed
through the mint greatly debased. With this debased coin the debts were paid,
and then an order was issued that the coin should be regarded at its depreciated
value.
With the lapse of centuries intelligence had gradually increased, and there was
now quite a growing middling class between the peasants and the nobles—
artisans, merchants, manufacturers, and literary and professional men. These
outrages had at length become intolerable. Human nature could endure no more.
This middle class became the leaders of the blind and maddened masses, and
hurled them in fury upon their foes. The conspiracy spread over the kingdom,
and in all the towns and throughout the country the signal for revolt was
simultaneously given. It was a servile insurrection, accompanied by all the
horrors inevitable to such a warfare. The debased populace, but little elevated
above the brute, were as merciless as the hyena or the wolf. Phrensied with rage
and despair, in howling bands they burst upon the castles, and the wrongs of
centuries were terrifically avenged. We need not tell the story. Violence, torture,
flame, and blood exhausted their energies. Mothers and maidens suffered all that
mortals can endure in terror, brutal indignities, shame, and woe. In war even the
refined and courteous often become diabolical; but those who have been
degraded by ages of ignorance and oppression, when they first break their
fetters, generally become fiends incarnate.
The nobles so thoroughly despised the peasants that they had not dreamed that
the starving, cringing boors would dare even to think of emerging from their
mud hovels to approach the lordly castle of rock, with its turrets and battlements
and warlike defenders. The sheep might as well conspire against the dogs and
the wolves. The peasant had hardly individuality enough even to receive a name.
He was familiarly called Jack Goodman, Jacques Bonhomme. This insurrection
of the Jacks, or of the Jacquerie as it is usually called, was, after much
devastation and bloodshed, quelled. Barbaric phrensy can seldom long hold out
against disciplined valor. One half of the population of France fell a prey to the
sword, or to the pestilence and famine which ensued.
This was the first convulsive movement made by the people. Defeated though
they were, and with their fetters riveted anew, they obtained new ideas of power
and right which they never forgot. Already we begin to hear many of the phrases
which four hundred years later were upon all lips, when the monarchy and the
feudal aristocracy were buried in one common grave.
The house of Valois retained the throne for two hundred and sixty-one years.
During these two and a half centuries, as generations came and went, storms of
war and woe were incessantly sweeping over France. The history of the kingdom
during these dreary ages is but the record of the intrigues of ecclesiastics, the
conflicts between monarchs and nobles, and the sweep of maddened armies. The
Third Estate, the people, continued to be deprived of almost all social and
political rights. They were debased by ignorance and depressed by intolerable
burdens. The monarchy was gradually centralizing power. The chiefs and subchiefs
of the conglomerated tribes were losing their feudal authority and lapsing
into nobles of higher and lower rank, whose splendor was obtained by
exemption from all the burdens of the state, and by enormous taxation of the
people. The Roman Catholic Church, under the Popes, blazed with almost
supernatural splendor over Europe; and the high dignitaries of the Church, as
lords spiritual, were as luxurious, haughty, and domineering as were any of the
lords temporal.
Henry III., the last of the Valois race, was stabbed by a friar in 1589, and died
leaving no issue. Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, as the nearest relative,
claimed the crown. He ascended the throne as Henry IV., and after several years
of civil war put down all opposition. He was the first of the Bourbon family who
swayed the sceptre, and by far the most able and energetic. Under his vigorous
sway the kingdom became consolidated, the throne attained a great supremacy
over the nobles, and the resources of the realm were greatly developed. Henry
IV. was sincerely devoted to the interests of France. He encouraged commerce,
manufactures, and the arts; endeavored to enforce equitable laws, and under his
wise administration the people made decided advances in wealth and
intelligence. He retained the throne for twenty-one years, until 1610, when he
died beneath the dagger of an assassin. Though Henry governed for the people,
he did not admit them to any voice in public affairs. During his long reign no
assembly was convened in which the people had any representation.
Henry IV. at his death left a son, Louis, nine years of age. The mother of this
child, Mary of Medicis, was invested with the regency. When this prince was
fourteen years of age he was considered by the laws of France as having attained
his majority. He accordingly, while thus but a boy, marrying a bride of fifteen,
Anne of Austria, ascended the throne as Louis XIII. For twenty-eight years this
impotent prince sat upon the throne, all the time in character a bashful boy
devoid of any qualities which could command respect. Cardinal Richelieu was
during this reign the real monarch of France. Measurelessly ambitious, arrogant,
and cruel, he consolidated the despotism of the throne, and yet, by far-reaching
policy, greatly promoted the power and grandeur of the kingdom. This renowned
minister, stern, vindictive, cruel, shrinking from no crime in the accomplishment
of his plans, with the dungeons of the Bastilles of France and the executioner's
axe at his command, held the impotent king and the enslaved kingdom for nearly
thirty years in trembling obedience to his will.
The Chateau of Versailles was commenced by Richelieu. He also, in the year
1635, established the French Academy, which has since exerted so powerful an
influence upon literature and science throughout Europe. Richelieu died in
December, 1642, and six months after, in May, 1643, Louis XIII., who, during
his reign, had been but a puppet in the hands of the cardinal, followed him to the
tomb. As the monarch was lying upon his dying bed, he called his little son, five
years of age, to his side, and said to him, "What is your name?" "Louis
Fourteenth," answered the proud boy, already eager to grasp the sceptre. "Not
yet, not yet," sadly rejoined the dying father.
Anne of Austria held the regency for nine years, until her son, having attained
the age of fourteen, had completed his minority and assumed the crown. Under
this powerful prince the monarchy of France, as an unlimited despotism, became
firmly established. The nobles, though deprived of all political power, were
invested with such enormous privileges, enabling them to revel in wealth and
luxury, that they were ever ready to unite with the king in quelling all uprising of
the people, who were equally robbed by both monarch and noble. During the
long reign of this monarch, for Louis XIV. sat upon the throne for seventy-two
years, if we consider his reign to have commenced when he was proclaimed king
upon the death of his father, France made vast strides in power, wealth, and
splendor. Palaces arose almost outvying the dreams of an Oriental imagination.
The saloons of Marly, the Tuileries, the Louvre, and Versailles, were brilliant
with a splendor, and polluted with debaucheries, which Babylon, in its most
festering corruption, could not have rivaled. The nobles, almost entirely
surrendered to enervating indulgence, were incapacitated for any post which
required intellectual activity and energy. Hence originated a class of men who
became teachers, editors, scientific and literary writers, jurists, and professional
men. In the progress of commerce and manufactures, wealth increased with this
class, and the king, to raise money, would often sell, at an enormous price, a title
of nobility to some enriched tradesman.
A numerous and powerful middle class, rich and highly educated, was thus
gradually formed, who had emerged from the people, and whose sympathies
were entirely with them. The nobles looked upon all these, however opulent, or
cultivated in mind, or polished in manners, with contempt, as low-born. They
refused all social intercourse with them, regarding them as a degraded caste.
They looked with even peculiar contempt upon those who had purchased titles of
nobility.
They drew a broad line of distinction between the nobles and the ennobled. The
hereditary aristocracy, proud of a lineage which could be traced through a
hundred generations, and which was lost in the haze of antiquity, exclaimed with
pride, instinct to the human heart:
"You may give a lucky tradesman, in exchange for money, a title of nobility, but
you can not thus make him a nobleman; you can not thus constitute him a lineal
descendant of the old Frank barons; you can not thus constitute him a Lorraine, a
Montmorency, a Rohan. God alone can create a nobleman."
Thus they regarded a man who had been ennobled by a royal decree, or who had
descended from a father or a grandfather thus ennobled, as a new man, an
upstart, one hardly redeemed from contempt. The doors of their saloons were
closed against him, and he was every where exposed to mortifying neglect. A
noble whose lineage could be traced for two or three centuries, but whose origin
was still distinctly defined, was considered as perhaps belonging to the
aristocratic calendar, though of low estate. The fact that the time once was, when
his ancestors were known to be low-born, was a damaging fact, which no
subsequent ages of nobility could entirely efface. He only was the true noble, the
origin of whose nobility was lost in the depths of the past, the line of whose
ancestry ran so far back into the obscurity of by-gone ages that no one could tell
when it commenced.
It has generally been said that there were three estates in the realm; the clergy
composing the first, the nobles the second, and the people the third. But the
higher class of the clergy, luxuriating in the bishoprics and the abbacies, with
their rich emoluments, were the sons of the nobility, and shared in all the
privileges and popular odium pertaining to that class. The lower clergy, devoted
to apostolic labors and poverty, belonged to the people, and were with them in
all their sympathies. Thus there were in reality but two classes, the privileged
and the unprivileged, the patrician and the plebeian, the tax payer and the tax
receiver. The castle, whether baronial or monastic in its architecture, was the
emblem of the one, the thatched cottage the symbol of the other. Louis XIV., as
Madame de Maintenon testifies, was shocked to learn that Jesus Christ
associated with the poor and the humble, and conversed freely with them.
Soon after the succession of Louis XIV. to the throne he became convinced that
the maintenance of the Romish hierarchy was essential to the stability of his
power. He consequently commenced a series of persecutions of the Protestants,
with the determination of driving that faith entirely from France. In 1662 he
issued a decree that no Protestant should be buried except after sunset or before
sunrise. Protestant mechanics or shop-keepers were not allowed to have
apprentices. Protestant teachers were permitted to instruct only in the first
rudiments of letters, and not more than twelve Protestants were allowed to meet
together for the purposes of worship. No Protestant woman could be a nurse in
the chamber of infancy; no Catholic could embrace Protestantism or marry a
Protestant woman under pain of exile. Catholic magistrates were empowered to
enter the dying chambers of the Protestants to tease them, when gasping in
death, to return to the Catholic faith. In four years, between 1680 and 1684, more
than twenty royal edicts were issued against the Protestants, decreeing, among
other things, that no Protestant should be a lawyer, doctor, apothecary, printer, or
grocer. Children were often taken by violence from Protestant parents, that they
might be trained in the Catholic faith.
Madame de Maintenon, the unacknowledged wife of Louis XIV., wished to
bring back into the fold of Rome a young lady, Mademoiselle de Murgay. She
consequently wrote to her brother:
"If you could send her to me you would do me a great pleasure. There are no
other means than violence, for they will be much afflicted in the family by De
Murgay's conversion. I will send you a lettre de cachet (secret warrant) in virtue
of which you will take her into your own house until you find an opportunity of
sending her off."[8]
Such outrages as these were of constant occurrence. Zeal for the conversion of
the Protestants never rose to a higher pitch. At the same time Louis XIV. could
bid defiance to God's commands, and insult the moral sense of the nation by
traveling with his wife and his two guilty favorites, Madame de Montespan and
Madame la Vallière, all in the same carriage. The profligacy of the ecclesiastics
and the debauchery of the court and the nobles, though less disguised during the
wild saturnalia of the succeeding regency, was never more universal than during
this reign. This was the golden age of kings. Feudality had died, and democracy
was not born. The monarchy was absolute. The nobles, deprived of all political
power, existed merely as a luxurious appendage and embellishment to the
throne, while the people, unconscious of either power or rights, made no
movements to embarrass the sovereign.[9]
In the year 1681 Louis XIV. commenced his system of dragooning the
Protestants into the Catholic faith. He sent regiments of cavalry into the
provinces, quartered them in the houses of the Protestants, placing from four to
ten in each family, and enjoined it upon these soldiers to do every thing they
could to compel the Protestants to return to the Catholic faith. Scenes ensued too
awful to be narrated. He who has nerves to endure the recital can find the
atrocities minutely detailed in "L'Histoire de l'Édit de Nantes, par Elias Benoît."
The brutal soldiery, free from all restraint, committed every conceivable excess.
They scourged little children in the presence of their parents, that the shrieks of
agony of the child might induce the parents to abjure their faith. They violated
the modesty of women and girls, and mangled their bodies with the lash. They
tortured, mutilated, disfigured. And when human nature in its extreme of agony
yielded, the exhausted victim was compelled to sign a recantation of his faith,
declaring that he did it of his own free will, without compulsion or persuasion. In
their terror the Protestants fled in all directions, into the fields, the forests, to
caves, and made desperate endeavors to escape from the kingdom. Multitudes
died of exhaustion and famine by the way-side and on the sea-shore. Large tracts
of country were thus nearly depopulated. Madame de Maintenon wrote to her
brother, sending him a present of a large sum of money:
"I beseech you employ usefully the money you are to have. The lands in Poitou
are sold for nothing. The distresses of the Protestants will bring more into
market. You can easily establish yourself splendidly in Poitou."
The Protestant countries, England, Switzerland, Holland, and Denmark, issued
proclamations to these persecuted Christians offering them an asylum. The court
was alarmed, and interdicted their leaving the kingdom under penalty of
condemnation to the galleys, confiscation of their property, and the annulling of
all contracts they should have made for a year before their emigration.[10]
The condition of the Protestants was now miserable in the extreme. It was the
determination of the court utterly to exterminate the reformed faith. The
Archbishop of Paris made out a list of the works of four hundred authors who
were considered as assailing Catholicism, and all the libraries, public and
private, of the kingdom were searched that the condemned books might be
burned.
There were between two and three millions of Protestants in France.[11] The
dragoons were sent in every direction through the kingdom, enjoined by the
court, to secure, at whatever expense of torture, a return to Catholicism. One of
the tortures which these merciless fanatics were fond of applying was to deprive
their victim of sleep. They kept the sufferer standing, and relieved each other in
their cruel work of pinching, pricking, twitching, pulling with ropes, burning,
suffocating with offensive fumes, until after successive days and nights of torture
the victim was driven to madness, and to promise any thing to escape from his
tormentors. By these means, it was boasted that in the district of Bordeaux,
where there were one hundred and fifty thousand Protestants, one hundred and
forty thousand were converted in a fortnight. The Duke of Noailles wrote to the
court that in the district to which he had been sent with his dragoons there had
been two hundred and forty thousand Protestants, but he thought that by the end
of the month none could be left.
In the year 1598 Henry IV., by the Edict of Nantes, had granted freedom of
conscience and of worship to the Protestants. Louis XIV. now issued a decree
revoking this edict. The revocation, which was signed the 18th of October, 1685,
states in the preamble that "since the better and the greater part of our subjects of
the pretended reformed religion have embraced the Catholic faith, the
maintenance of the Edict of Nantes remains superfluous." It then declares that no
more exercise of the reformed worship is to be tolerated in the realm. All the
Protestant pastors were to leave the kingdom within fifteen days, and were
forbidden to exercise their office under pain of the galleys. Parents were
forbidden to instruct their children in the reformed faith, and were enjoined to
send them to the Catholic church to be baptized and to be instructed in the
Catholic schools and catechism, under penalty of a fine of five hundred livres.
The Protestant laity were prohibited from emigrating under pain of the galleys
for the men, and imprisonment for life for the women.
Notwithstanding the penalty, vast numbers escaped from the kingdom. No
vigilance could guard such extended frontiers. In one year after the revocation,
Vauban wrote that France had lost one hundred thousand inhabitants, twelve
thousand disciplined soldiers, six hundred officers, and her most flourishing
manufactures. The Duke of St. Simon records that "a fourth part of the kingdom
was perceptibly depopulated."
These crimes perpetrated against religion filled the land with infidelity. There
were even Catholics of noble name and note, as Fénélon and Massillon, who
energetically remonstrated. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mirabeau, not
distinguishing between Christianity and the Papal Church, uttered cries of
indignation which thrilled upon the ear of Europe and undermined the
foundations of Christianity itself.
The edict of revocation was executed with the utmost rigor. The pastors in Paris
were not allowed even the fifteen days which the edict granted, but were ordered
to leave in forty-eight hours. Those pastors who had children over seven years of
age had those children taken from them. Fathers and mothers, thus robbed of
their children, in poverty and heart-broken, were driven into exile. "Old men of
eighty or ninety years were seen gathering up the last remains of their life to
undertake distant journeys, and more than one died before reaching the asylum
where he was to rest his weary foot and drooping head."[12]
The court became alarmed by the magnitude of emigration. Guards were posted
at the gates of towns, at the fords of rivers, on the bridges, on the highways, and
at all points of departure upon the frontiers. Still the fugitives, hiding in caverns
by day and traveling by night through by-paths, in great numbers eluded their
foes. Every conceivable disguise was adopted, as of shepherds, pilgrims,
hunters, valets, merchants. Women of rank—for there were not a few such
among the Protestants, who had been accustomed to all the delicacies and
indulgences of life—traveled on foot, exposed to hunger and storms, two or
three hundred miles. Girls of sixteen, of all ranks in life, incurred the same
hardships and perils. They disfigured their faces, wore coarse and ragged
garments, and trundled wheel-barrows filled with manure, or carried heavy
burdens, to elude suspicion. Some assumed the disguise of men or boys and took
the office of servants; others feigned insanity or to be deaf and dumb. In these
ways large numbers escaped to Rotterdam.[13]
Those near the sea-shore concealed themselves in ships among bales of
merchandise, and in hogsheads stowed away among the freight. There were
children who passed whole weeks in such lurking places without uttering a cry.
Some desperately pushed out to sea in open boats, trusting to winds and waves
to bear them to a place of safety. Thousands perished of cold, exposure, and
starvation. Thousands were seized, loaded with chains, and dragged through the
realm in derision and contempt, and were then condemned to pass the remainder
of their days as galley-slaves. The galleys of Marseilles were crowded with these
victims, among whom were many of the noblest men who have ever dwelt on
earth. The prisons were crowded with women arrested in their flight and doomed
to life-long captivity.
It is estimated that five hundred thousand found a refuge in foreign lands.
Thirteen hundred passed through the city of Geneva in one week. England
formed eleven regiments out of the refugees. One of the faubourgs of London
was entirely peopled by these exiles. M. de Sismondi estimates that as many
perished in the attempt to escape as escaped. A hundred thousand in the Province
of Languedoc died prematurely, and of these ten thousand perished by fire, the
gallows, or the wheel.[14] We can not but sympathize with the indignation of
Michelet as he exclaims:
"Let the Revolutionary Reign of Terror beware of comparing herself with the
Inquisition. Let her never boast of having, in her two or three years, paid back to
the old system what it did for us for six hundred years! The Inquisition would
have good cause to laugh. What are the twelve thousand men guillotined of the
one, to the millions of men butchered, hung, broken on the wheel—to that
pyramid of burning stakes—to those masses of burnt flesh which the other piled
up to heaven. The single inquisition of one of the provinces of Spain states, in an
authentic monument, that in sixteen years it burned twenty thousand men!
"History will inform us that in her most ferocious and implacable moments the
Revolution trembled at the thought of aggravating death, that she shortened the
sufferings of victims, removed the hand of man, and invented a machine to
abridge the pangs of death.
"And it will also inform us that the Church of the Middle Ages exhausted itself
in inventions to augment suffering, to render it poignant, intense; that she found
out exquisite arts of torture, ingenious means to contrive that, without dying, one
might long taste of death; and that, being stopped in that path by inflexible
Nature, who, at a certain degree of pain, mercifully grants death, she wept at not
being able to make man suffer longer."[15]
Louis XIV. died in 1715. He did not allow any assembly of the states to be
convened during his reign. Every body began to manifest discontent. The
nobility were humbled and degraded, and hungered for more power. The people
had become very restive. The humbler class of the clergy, sincere Christians and
true friends of their parishioners, prayed earnestly for reform. The Jesuits alone
united with the monarch and his mistresses to maintain despotic sway. The court
was utterly corrupt; the king a shameless profligate. Every thing was bartered for
money. Justice was unknown. The court reveled in boundless luxury, while the
mass of the people were in a state almost of starvation. The burden had become
intolerable.
The monarchy of France attained its zenith during the reign of Louis XIV.
Immense standing armies overawed Europe and prevented revolt at home.
Literature and art flourished, for the king was ambitious to embellish his reign
with the works of men of genius. Great freedom of opinion and of utterance was
allowed, for neither king nor courtiers appear to have had any more fear of a
rising of the peasants than they had of a revolt of the sheep. Vast works were
constructed, which the poor and the starving alone paid for. Still there were not a
few who perceived that the hour of vengeance was at hand. One of the
magistrates of Louis XIV. remarked, "The conflict is soon to arrive between
those who pay and those whose only function is to receive." The Duke of
Orleans, who was regent after the death of Louis XIV., said, "If I were a subject I
would most certainly revolt. The people are good-natured fools to suffer so
long."
Louis XIV. left the throne to his great-grandchild, a boy five years of age. The
populace followed the hearse of the departed monarch with insults and derisive
shouts to the tomb. The hoary despot, upon a dying bed, manifested some
compunctions of conscience. He left to his successor the words:
"I have, against my inclination, imposed great burdens on my subjects; but have
been compelled to do it by the long wars which I have been obliged to maintain.
Love peace, and undertake no war, except when the good of the state and the
welfare of your people render it necessary."
These words were not heeded, until the people were, in their terrible might,
inspired by fury and despair.
There is nothing more mournful to contemplate than the last days of Louis XIV.
He was the victim of insupportable melancholy, dreading death almost with
terror. His children and his grandchildren were nearly all dead. The people were
crushed by burdens which they could no longer support. The treasury was in
debt over eight hundred millions of dollars. Commerce was destroyed, industry
paralyzed, and the country uncultivated and in many places almost depopulated.
The armies of France had been conquered and humiliated; a disastrous war was
threatening the realm, and the king from his dying bed could hear the execrations
of the people, rising portentously around his throne.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Histoire de Madame de Maintenon, et des principaux Evenements du Regne de Louis XIV. Par M. le
Duc de Noilles, Paris, 1848.
[9] "Madame de Maintenon," writes St. Simon, "had men, affairs, justice, religion, all, without exception, in
her hands, and the king and the state her victims."
[10] Under these circumstances the Protestants sent the following touching petition: "It being impossible
for us to live without the exercise of our religion, we are compelled, in spite of ourselves, to supplicate your
majesty, with the most profound humility and respect, that you may be pleased to allow us to leave the
kingdom, with our wives, our children, and our effects, to settle in foreign countries, where we can freely
render to God the worship which we believe indispensable, and on which depends our happiness or our
misery for eternity." This petition met only the response of aggravated severities.—Hist. of the Protestants
of France, by G. de Félice, p. 486.
[11] History of the Protestants of France, by G. de Félice, p. 405.
[12] History of the Protestants of France, by G. de Félice, p. 408.
[13] Histoire de l'Édit de Nantes, par Elias Benoît, tome v., p. 953.
[14] Boulainvilliers.
[15] "It is painful to detect continually the hand of the clergy in these scenes of violence, spoliation, and
death. The venerable Malesherbes, the Baron de Breteuil, Rulhières, Joly de Fleury, Gilbert de Voisins,
Rippert de Monclus, the highest statesmen, the most eminent magistrates, who have written upon the
religious affairs of this period, utter but one voice on it. They agree in signalizing the influence of the
priests, an influence as obstinate as incessant, sometimes haughty, sometimes supple and humble, but
always supplicating the last means of restraint and severity for the re-establishment of religious
unity."—History of the Protestants of France, by G. de Félice, p. 487.
CHAPTER III.
THE REGENCY AND LOUIS XV.
State of France.—The Regency.—Financial Embarrassment.—Crimes of
the Rulers.—Recoining the Currency.—Renewed Persecution of the
Protestants.—Bishop Dubois.—Philosophy of Voltaire.—Anecdote of
Franklin.—The King's Favorites.—Mademoiselle Poisson.—Her
Ascendency.—Parc aux Cerfs.—Illustrative Anecdote.—Letter to the King.
—Testimony of Chesterfield.—Anecdote of La Fayette.—Death of
Pompadour.—Mademoiselle Lange.—Power of Du Barry.—Death of Louis
XV.
THE reign of Louis XIV. was that of an Oriental monarch. His authority was
unlimited and unquestioned. The people had two powerful foes, the king and the
nobles. The nobles, as the most numerous, were the most dreaded. The people
consequently looked to the kings to protect them against the nobles, as sheep
will look to their natural enemy, the dogs, to defend them from their still worse
enemies, the wolves. The king had now obtained a perfect triumph over the
nobles, and had gathered all the political power into his own hands. He had
accomplished this by bribery, as well as by force. The acquiescence of the nobles
in his supremacy was purchased by his conferring upon them all the offices of
honor and emolument, by exempting them from all taxes, and by supporting
them in indolence, luxury, and vice, from the toil of the crushed and starving
masses. There were now in the nation two classes, and two only, with an
impassable gulf between them. On the one side were eighty thousand aristocratic
families living in idleness and luxury; on the other were twenty-four millions of
people, who, as a mass, were kept in the lowest poverty, maintaining by their toil
the haughty nobles, from whom they received only outrage and contempt.
Louis XIV. just before his death drew up an edict appointing a council of
regency during the minority of his great-grandson, the young king. The
Parliament of Paris, however, declared the will null, and appointed the Duke of
Orleans, who was considered favorable to the nobles, regent! For eight years,
from 1715 to 1723, the regent, by shameless profligacy and extravagance, was
but filling up the measure of wrath which had been accumulating for ages.
Nothing was done to promote the welfare of the people, and, notwithstanding the
misery which was actually depopulating the provinces, the gorgeous palaces of
France exhibited scenes of voluptuousness which the wealth of the Orient had
never paralleled.
Louis XIV. had expended upon the single palace of Versailles more than two
hundred millions of dollars. The roofs of that vast pile would cover a surface of
twenty-five French acres. Thirty thousand laborers were frequently employed
simultaneously in embellishing the magnificent park sixty miles in circuit.[16]
Marly, with its fountains, its parks, and gardens, had also been constructed with
equal extravagance. Both of these palaces exhibited scenes of measureless
profligacy gilded by the highest fascinations of external refinement and
elegance. Louis XIV. left the nation in debt eight hundred and fifty millions of
dollars. For several years the expenditure had exceeded the income by nearly
thirty millions of dollars a year. The regent during the seven years of his
profligate administration had added to this debt a hundred and fifty millions of
dollars.
There was now fearful embarrassment in the finances. All the measures for
extorting money seemed to be exhausted, and it was found impossible to raise
the sums necessary to meet the expenses of the court and to pay the interest upon
the debt. Taxation had gone to its last extremity; and no more money could be
borrowed. The Duke of St. Simon proposed that the treasury should declare itself
bankrupt.
"The loss," said he, "will fall upon the commercial and moneyed classes, whom
no one fears or pities. The measure," he continued, "will also be a salutary
rebuke to the ignoble classes, teaching them to beware how they lend money to
the king which will enable him to gain the supremacy over the nobles."
The Duke of Orleans, who was regent only, not king, could sympathize in these
views. The general discontent, however, was such, that he did not dare to resort
to so violent a measure. The end was accomplished in a more circuitous way. A
commission of courtiers was appointed to examine the accounts of the public
creditors. Three hundred and fifty millions of francs ($76,000,000) were
peremptorily struck from their claims. There was no appeal. This mode of
paying debts seemed so successful that the commission established itself as an
inquisitorial chamber, and summoned before it all those who had been guilty of
lending money to the king. Most of these were thrown into prison, and
threatened with death unless they purchased pardon for the crime with large
sums of money. The regent and the nobles made themselves merry with the woes
of these low-born men of wealth, and filled their purses by selling their
protection.
A wealthy financier was perishing in one of the dungeons of the Bastille. A
count visited him and offered to procure his release for sixty thousand dollars. "I
thank you, Monsieur le Comte," was the reply, "but Madame, your countess, has
just been here, and has promised me my liberty for half that sum."
The reign of the regent Duke of Orleans was the reign of the nobles, and they
fell eagerly upon the people, whom Louis XIV. had sheltered from their avarice
that more plunder might be left for him. The currency was called in and
recoined, one fifth being cut from the value of each piece. By this expedient the
court gained nearly fifteen millions of dollars.
Soon this money was all gone. The horizon was darkening and the approaching
storm gathering blackness. Among the nobles there were some who abhorred
these outrages. A party was organized in Paris opposed to the regent. They sent
in a petition that the States-General might be assembled to deliberate upon the
affairs of the realm. All who signed this petition were sent to the Bastille. There
had been no meeting of the States-General called for more than one hundred
years. The last had been held in 1614. It consisted of 104 deputies of the clergy,
132 of the nobles, and 192 of the people. The three estates had met separately
and chosen their representatives. But the representatives of the people in this
assembly displayed so much spirit that the convention was abruptly dismissed by
the king, and neither king nor nobles were willing to give them a hearing again.
A bank was now established with a nominal capital of six millions of francs
($1,200,000). The shares were taken up by paying half in money and half in
valueless government bills. Thus the real capital of the bank was $600,000.
Upon this capital bills were issued to the amount of three thousand millions of
francs ($600,000,000). Money was of course for a time plenty enough. The
bubble soon burst. This operation vastly increased the financial ruin in which the
nation was involved. Five hundred thousand citizens were plunged into
bankruptcy.[17] The Parliament of Paris, though composed of the privileged
class, made a little show of resistance to such outrages and was banished
summarily to Pontoise.
Dubois, one of the most infamous men who ever disgraced even a court, a tool
of the regent, and yet thoroughly despised by him, had the audacity one morning
to ask for the vacant archbishopric of Cambray. Dubois was not even a priest,
and the demand seemed so ridiculous as well as impudent that the regent burst
into a laugh, exclaiming,
"Should I bestow the archbishopric on such a knave as thou art, where should I
find a prelate scoundrel enough to consecrate thee?"
"I have one here," said Dubois, pointing to a Jesuit prelate who was ready to
perform the sacrilegious deed. Dubois had promised Rohan that if he would
consecrate him he would bring back the favor of the court to the Jesuit party.
One of the mistresses of the regent had been won over by Dubois, and the
bloated debauchee was consecrated as Archbishop of Cambray. Dubois was now
in the line of preferment. He soon laid aside his mitre for a cardinal's hat, and in
1722 was appointed prime minister. The darkness of the Middle Ages had passed
away, and these scandals were perpetrated in the full light of the 18th century.
The people looked on with murmurs of contempt and indignation. It was too
much to ask, to demand reverence for such a church.[18]
The infamous Jesuit, Lavergne de Tressan, Bishop of Nantes, who consecrated
Dubois, revived from their slumber the most severe ordinances of Louis XIV.
Louis XV. was then fourteen years of age. Royal edicts were issued, sentencing
to the galleys for life any man and to imprisonment for life any woman who
should attend other worship than the Catholic. Preachers of Protestantism were
doomed to death; and any person who harbored such a preacher, or who should
neglect to denounce him, was consigned to the galleys or the dungeon. All
children were to be baptized within twenty-four hours of their birth by the curate
of the parish, and were to be placed under Catholic instructors until the age of
fourteen. Certificates of Catholicity were essential for all offices, all academical
degrees, all admissions into corporations of trade. This horrible outrage upon
human rights was received by the clergy with transport. When we contemplate
the seed which the king and the court thus planted, we can not wonder at the
revolutionary harvest which was reaped.
The Catholic Church thus became utterly loathsome even to the most devout
Christians. They preferred the philosophy of Montesquieu, the atheism of
Diderot, the unbelief of Voltaire, the sentimentalism of Rousseau, to this
merciless and bloody demon, assuming the name of the Catholic Church, and
swaying a sceptre of despotism which was deluging France in blood and woe.
The sword of persecution which had for a time been reposing in its scabbard was
again drawn and bathed in blood. Many Protestant ministers were broken upon
the wheel and then beheaded. Persecution assumed every form of insult and
cruelty. Thousands fled from the realm. Religious assemblies were surrounded
by dragoons, and fired upon with the ferocity of savages, killing and maiming
indiscriminately men, women, and children. Enormous sums of money were, by
the lash, torture, the dungeon, and confiscation, extorted from the Protestants.
Noblemen, lawyers, physicians, and rich merchants were most eagerly sought.
The seizure of Protestant children was attended with nameless outrages.
Soldiers, sword in hand, headed by the priests, broke into the houses, overturned
every thing in their search, committed brutal violence upon the parents, and,
reckless of their lamentations and despair, seized the terrified children, especially
the young girls, and forced them into the convents.
Fanaticism so cruel was revolting to the intelligence and to the general
conscience of the age. Maddened priests could easily goad on a brutal and
exasperated populace to any deeds of inhumanity, but intelligent men of all
parties condemned such intolerance. It is, however, worthy of note that few of
the philosophers of that day ventured to plead for religious toleration. They
generally hated Christianity in all its forms, and were not at all disposed to shield
one sect from the persecutions of another. Voltaire, however, was an exception.
He had spent a year and a half in the Bastille on the charge of having written a
libel against the government, which libel he did not write. When it was proved to
the court that he did not write the libel he was liberated from prison and
banished from France. Several years after this, Voltaire, having returned to
France, offended a nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan. The chevalier
disdainfully sent his servant to chastise the poet. Voltaire, enraged by the
degradation, sent a challenge to De Rohan. For the crime of challenging a noble
he was again thrown into the Bastille. After six months he was released and
again exiled. Soon after his Lettres Philosophiques were condemned by the
Parliament to be burned, and an order was issued for his arrest. For many years
he was compelled to live in concealment. He thus learned how to sympathize
with the persecuted. In his masterly treatise upon toleration, and in his noble
appeals for the family of the murdered Protestant, Jean Calas, he spoke in clarion
tones which thrilled upon the ear of France. When Franklin in Paris called upon
Voltaire, with his grandson, he said, "My son, fall upon your knees before this
great man." The aged poet, then over eighty years of age, gave the boy his
blessing, with the characteristic words, "God and freedom." The philosophy of
Voltaire overturned the most despicable of despotisms. His want of religion
established another despotism equally intolerable.
The miserable regent died in a fit in the apartment of his mistress in 1723. The
young king was now fourteen years of age. He was a bashful boy, with no
thought but for his own indulgence. When a child he was one day looking from
the windows of the Tuileries into the garden, which was filled with a crowd.
"Look there, my king," said Villeroi, his tutor; "all these people belong to you.
All that you see is your property; you are lord and master of it."
Louis XV. carried these principles into vigorous practice during his long reign of
fifty-nine years. When fifteen years of age he married Maria, daughter of
Stanislaus, the exiled King of Poland. Maria was not beautiful, but through a life
of neglect and anguish she developed a character of remarkable loveliness and of
true piety. There is but little to record of France during these inglorious years
which is worthy of the name of history. The pen can only narrate a shameful tale
of puerility, sin, and oppression. Weary and languid with worn-out excitements,
the king at one time took a sudden freak for worsted-work, and the whole court
was thrown into commotion as imitative nobles and ecclesiastics were busy in
the saloons of Versailles with wool, needles, and canvas.
The king at one of his private suppers noticed a lady, Madame de Mailly, whose
vivacity attracted him. Simply to torture the queen he took her for his favorite,
and received her into the apartment from which he excluded his meek and
virtuous wife. Maria could only weep and look to God for solace. Madame de
Mailly had a sister, a bold, spirited girl, Mademoiselle de Nesle. She came to
visit the court, and after vigorous efforts succeeded in supplanting her sister, and
took her degrading place. She was suddenly cut off in her sins by death; but
there was another sister of the same notorious family, Madame Tournelle, who
endeavored to solace the king by throwing herself into his arms. The king
received her, and she became his acknowledged favorite, and for some time
maintained the position of sultana of the royal harem. Wherever she went a suite
of court-ladies followed in her train. All were compelled to pay homage to the
reigning favorite of the day, for all power was in her hands, and she was the
dispenser of rewards and punishments. The king conferred upon this guilty
woman, who was as cruel as she was guilty, the title of Duchess of Chateauroux.
Madame de Tencin, one of the ladies of the court, in a confidential letter to
Richelieu, written at this time, says:
"What happens in his kingdom seems to be no business of the king's. It is even
said that he avoids taking any cognizance of what occurs, averring that it is
better to know nothing than to learn unpleasant tidings. Unless God visibly
interferes, it is physically impossible that the state should not fall to pieces."
Even Madame Chateauroux, herself one of the most corrupt members of that
court of unparalleled corruption, remarked to a friend,
"I could not have believed all that I now see. If no remedy is administered to this
state of things, there will, sooner or later, be a great overthrow."[19]
Though the Duchess of Chateauroux was the reigning favorite, she had another
younger sister who was a member of the royal harem. The princess of the blood,
Mademoiselle Valois, and the Princess of Conti were also in this infamous train.
These revolting facts must be stated, for they are essential to the understanding
of the French Revolution. Up to this time the king, of whom the people knew but
little, was regarded with affection. They looked upon him as the only barrier to
protect them from the nobles. Soon after this Madame Chateauroux was taken
sick and died in remorse, crying bitterly for mercy, and promising, if her life
could be spared, amendment and penance. She was so detested by the people
that an armed escort conducted her remains to the grave to shield them from
popular violence.
The king, for a time, was quite chagrined by the death of this woman, who had
obtained a great control over him. While profligacy and boundless extravagance
were thus rioting in the palace, bankruptcy was ruining merchants and artisans,
and misery reigned in the huts of the peasants.
A citizen of Paris by the name of Poisson had a daughter of marvelous grace and
beauty. Mademoiselle Poisson married a wealthy financier, M. Etoilles. She
then, conscious of her beauty and of her unrivaled powers of fascination, formed
the bold and guilty resolve to throw herself into the arms of the king. When the
king was hunting in the forest of Senart she placed herself in his path, as if by
accident, in an open barouche, dressed in a manner to shed the utmost possible
lustre upon her charms. The voluptuous king fixed his eye upon her and soon
sent for her to come to the palace of Versailles. The royal mandate was eagerly
obeyed. She immediately engrossed the favor of the king, was established in the
palace, and henceforth became the great power before which all France was
constrained to bow. Her disconsolate husband, who had loved her passionately,
entreated her to return to him, promising to forgive every thing. Scornfully she
refused to turn her back upon the splendors of Versailles. Receiving from the
king as the badge of her degradation the title of Marchioness of Pompadour,
Jeannette Poisson was enthroned as the real monarch of France. She was a
woman of vast versatility of talent, brilliant in conversation, and possessed
unrivaled powers of fascination. For twenty years she held the king in perfect
subjection to her sway. She never for one moment lost sight of her endeavor to
please and to govern the monarch. "Sometimes she appeared before him clad as
a peasant-girl, assuming all the simplicity and rustic grace of this character. She
took with equal ease the appearance of a languishing Venus or the proud beauty
of a Diana. To these disguises often succeeded the modest garb of a nun, when,
with affected humility and downcast eyes, she came to meet the king."
Her power soon became unlimited and invincible, for her heart was of iron, and
even her feminine hand could wield all the terrors of court banishment,
confiscation, exile, and the Bastille. It is said that a witticism of Frederic II. of
Prussia, at her expense, plunged France into all the horrors of the Seven Years'
War. The most high-born ladies in the land were her waiting-women. Her
steward was a knight of the order of St. Louis. When she rode out in her sedanchair,
the Chevalier d'Hénin, a member of one of the noblest families of the
kingdom, walked respectfully by her side, with her cloak upon his arm, ready to
spread it over her shoulder whenever she should alight.
She summoned embassadors before her, and addressed them with the regal we,
assuming the style of royalty. She appointed bishops and generals, and filled all
the important offices of Church and State with those who would do her homage.
She dismissed ministers and created cardinals, declared war and made peace.
Voltaire paid court to her, and devoted his muse to the celebration of her beauty
and her talents. Montesquieu, Diderot, and Quesnay waited in her antechamber,
imploring her patronage. Those authors who pleased her she pensioned and
honored; those who did not were left in poverty and neglect. Even the imperial
Maria Theresa, seeking the alliance of France, wrote to her with her own hand,
addressing her as her "dear friend and cousin." "Not only," said Madame de
Pompadour one day to the Abbé de Bernis, "not only have I all the nobility at my
feet, but even my lap-dog is weary of their fawnings." Rousseau, strong in the
idolatry of the nation, refused to join the worshipers at the shrine of Pompadour.
She dared not send him to the Bastille, but vexatiously exclaimed "I will have
nothing more to do with that owl."
As Madame de Pompadour found her charms waning, she maintained her place
by ministering to the king's appetites in the establishment of the most infamous
institution ever tolerated in a civilized land. Lacretelle, in his History of France,
thus describes this abomination:
"Louis XV., satiated with the conquests which the court offered him, was led by
a depraved imagination to form an establishment for his pleasures of such an
infamous description that, after having depicted the debaucheries of the regency,
it is difficult to find terms appropriate to an excess of this kind. Several elegant
houses, built in an inclosure called the Parc aux Cerfs, near Versailles, were used
for the reception of beautiful female children, who there awaited the pleasure of
their master. Hither were brought young girls, sold by their parents, and
sometimes forced from them. It was skillfully and patiently fostered by those
who ministered to the profligacy of Louis; whole years were occupied in the
debauchery of girls not yet in a marriageable age, and in undermining the
principles of modesty and fidelity in young women."
When some one spoke to Madame de Pompadour of this establishment, she
replied,
"It is the king's heart that I wish to possess, and none of these little uneducated
girls will deprive me of that."
If the king in his rides chanced to see a pretty child who gave promise of unusual
beauty, he sent his servants to take her from her parents to be trained in his
harem. The parents had their choice to submit quietly at home, or to submit in
the dungeons of the Bastille. One incident, related by Soulavie, in his
"Anecdotes of the Reign of Louis XV.," illustrates the mode of operation:
"Among the young ladies of very tender age with whom the king amused
himself during the influence of Madame de Pompadour or afterward, there was
also a Mademoiselle Treicelin, whom his majesty ordered to take the name of
Bonneval the very day she was presented to him. The king was the first who
perceived this child, when not above nine years old, in the care of a nurse, in the
garden of the Tuileries, one day when he went in state to his good city of Paris;
and having in the evening spoken of her beauty to Le Bel, the servant applied to
M. de Sartine, who traced her out and bought her of the nurse for a few louis.
She was the daughter of M. de Treicelin, a man of quality, who could not
patiently endure an affront of this nature. He was, however, compelled to be
silent; he was told his child was lost, and that it would be best for him to submit
to the sacrifice unless he wished to lose his liberty also."
The expense of the Parc aux Cerfs alone, according to Lacretelle, amounted to
100,000,000 francs—$25,000,000.
These were not deeds of darkness. They were open as the day. France, though
bound hand and foot, saw them, and exasperation was advancing to fury. An
anonymous letter was sent to Louis, depicting very vividly the ruinous state of
affairs and announcing the inevitable shock. Madame de Hausset, in her
memoirs, gives the following synopsis of this letter:
"Your finances are in the greatest disorder, and the great majority of states have
perished through this cause. Your ministers are without capacity. Open war is
carried on against religion. The encyclopedists, under pretense of enlightening
mankind, are sapping the foundations of Christianity. All the different kinds of
liberty are connected. The philosophers and the Protestants tend toward
republicanism. The philosophers strike at the root, the others lop the branches,
and their efforts will one day lay the tree low. Add to these the economists,
whose object is political liberty, as that of others is liberty of worship, and the
government may find itself in twenty or thirty years undermined in every
direction, and it will then fall with a crash. Lose no time in restoring order to the
state of the finances. Embarrassments necessitate fresh taxes, which grind the
people and induce toward revolt. A time will come, sire, when the people will be
enlightened, and that time is probably near at hand."
The king read this letter to Madame de Pompadour, and then, turning upon his
heel, said,
"I wish to hear no more about it. Things will last as they are as long as I shall."
On another occasion, Mirabeau the elder remarked in the drawing-room of
Madame de Pompadour,
"This kingdom is in a deplorable state. There is neither national energy nor
money. It can only be regenerated by a conquest like that of China, or by some
great internal convulsion. But woe to those who live to see that. The French
people do not do things by halves."
Madame de Pompadour herself was fully aware of the catastrophe which was
impending, but she flattered herself that the storm would not burst during her
life. She often said, "Après nous le déluge"—"After us comes the deluge."
The indications of approaching ruin were so evident that they could not escape
the notice of any observing man. Even Louis XV. himself was not blind to the
tendency of affairs, and only hoped to ward off a revolution while his day should
last.
Lord Chesterfield visited France in 1753, twenty years before the death of Louis
XV., and wrote as follows to his son:
"Wherever you are, inform yourself minutely of, and attend particularly to the
affairs of France. They grow serious, and, in my opinion, will grow more so
every day. The French nation reasons freely, which they never did before, upon
matters of religion and government. In short, all the symptoms which I have ever
met with in history previous to great changes and revolutions now exist and
daily increase in France."
The great difficulty of raising money and the outrages resorted to for the
accomplishment of that purpose alarmed the courtiers. One night, an officer of
the government, sitting at the bedside of the king conversing upon the state of
affairs, remarked,
"You will see, sire, that all this will make it absolutely necessary to assemble the
States-General."
The king sprang up in his bed, and, seizing the courtier by his arm, exclaimed,
"Never repeat those words. I am not sanguinary; but, had I a brother, and did he
dare to give me such advice, I would sacrifice him within twenty-four hours to
the duration of the monarchy and the tranquillity of the kingdom."
It is not strange that in such a court as this Christianity should have been reviled,
and that infidelity should have become triumphant.
"When I was first presented to his majesty Louis XV.," La Fayette writes, "I well
remember finding the eldest son of the Church, the King of France and Navarre,
seated at a table between a bishop and a prostitute. At the same table was seated
an aged philosopher, whose writings had conveyed lustre upon the age in which
he flourished; one whose whole life had been spent in sapping the foundation of
Christianity and undermining monarchy. Yet was this philosopher, at that
moment, the object of honor from monarchs and homage from courtiers. A
young abbé entered with me, not to be presented to royalty, but to ask the
benediction of this enemy of the altar. The name of this aged philosopher was
Voltaire, and that of the young abbé was Charles Maurice Talleyrand."
Nearly all the infidel writers of the day—Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot,
D'Alembert—were men hopelessly corrupt in morals. Many of them were keensighted
enough distinctly to perceive the difference between Christianity and the
lives of debauched ecclesiastics. But most of them hated Christianity and its
restraints, and were glad to avail themselves of the corruptions of the Church
that they might bring the religion of Christ into contempt. But there were not
wanting, even then, men of most sincere and fearless piety, who advanced
Christianity by their lives, and who with heroism rebuked sin in high places.
The Bishop of Senez was called to preach before the king. With the spirit of
Isaiah and Daniel he rebuked the monarch for his crimes in terms so plain,
direct, and pungent as to amaze the courtiers. The king was confounded, but God
preserved his servant as Daniel was preserved in the lions' den.
At length Madame de Pompadour died, in 1764, and the execrations of France
followed her to her burial. It was a gloomy day of wind and rain when the
remains of this wretched woman were borne from Versailles to the tomb. The
king had now done with her, and did not condescend to follow her to her burial.
As the funeral procession left the court-yard of the palace he stood at a window
looking out into the stormy air, and chuckled at his heartless witticism as he said,
"The marchioness has rather a wet day to set out on her long journey." This
remark is a fair index of the almost inconceivable heartlessness of this
contemptible king.
Madame de Pompadour breathed her last at Versailles in splendid misery. She
was fully conscious of the hatred of the nation, and trembled in view of the
judgment of God. "My whole life," said she, in a despairing hour, "has been a
continual death."
"Very different indeed," beautifully writes Julia Kavanagh, "were the declining
years of Maria Lecsinska and those of the Marchioness of Pompadour. The
patient and pious queen laid her sufferings at the foot of the cross. Insulted by
her husband and his mistresses, neglected by the courtiers, deeply afflicted by
the loss of her children, whom she loved most tenderly, she still found in religion
the courage necessary to support her grief, and effectual consolation in the
practice of a boundless benevolence."[20]
The old king was now utterly whelmed in the vortex of dissipation; character,
and even self-respect, seemed entirely lost. He looked around for another female
to take the place of Jeannette Poisson. In one of the low haunts of Parisian
debauchery, the courtiers of the king found a girl of extraordinary beauty, calling
herself Mademoiselle Lange. She had been sewing in the shop of a milliner, but
was now abandoned to vice. She was introduced as a novelty to the voluptuous
monarch, and succeeded in fascinating him. She received the title of Countess du
Barry, and was immediately installed at Versailles as the acknowledged favorite
of the king. Vice never rises, but always descends in the scale of degradation.
The king had first selected his favorites from the daughters of nobles, he then
received one from the class whom he affected to despise as low-born; and now a
common prostitute, taken from the warehouses of infamy in Paris, uneducated,
and with the manners of a courtesan, is presented to the nation as the confidant
and the manager of the despicable sovereign. All the high-born ladies,
accustomed as they were to the corruptions of the court, regarded this as an
insult too grievous to be borne. The nobles, the clergy, the philosophers, and the
people, all joined in this outcry. But Madame du Barry, wielding the authority of
the king, was too strong for them all. She dismissed and banished from the court
the Duke of Choiseul, the king's minister, and to his post she raised one of her
own friends. She then, with astounding boldness, suppressed the Parliaments,
thus leaving to France not even the shadow of representative power. Thus she
proceeded, step by step, removing enemies and supplanting them by friends,
until the most noble of the land were emulous of the honor of admission to the
saloon of this worthless woman.
It is an appalling and a revolting fact that for half a century before the revolution
France was governed by prostitutes. The real sovereign was the shameless
woman who, for the time being, kept control of the degraded and sensual king.
"The individual," says De Tocqueville, "who would attempt to judge of the
government by the men at the head of affairs and not by the women who swayed
those men, would fall into the same error as he who judges of a machine by its
outward action and not by its inward springs."
The king was now so execrated that he dared not pass through Paris in going
from his palace at Versailles to Compiègne. Fearing insult and a revolt of the
people if he were seen in the metropolis, he had a road constructed which would
enable him to avoid Paris. As beautiful female children were often seized to
replenish his seraglio at the Parc aux Cerfs, the people received the impression
that he indulged in baths of children's blood, that he might rejuvenate his
exhausted frame. The king had become an object of horror.[21]
Such was the state of affairs when the guilty king was attacked by the small-pox,
and died at Versailles in 1774, in the sixty-fourth year of his age and the fiftyninth
of his reign. Such in brief was the career of Louis XV. His reign was the
consummation of all iniquity, and rendered the Revolution inevitable. The story
of his life, revolting as it is, must be told; for it is essential to the understanding
of the results which ensued. The whirlwind which was reaped was but the
legitimate harvest of the wind which was sown. Truly does De Tocqueville say,
"The Revolution will ever remain in darkness to those who do not look beyond
it. It can only be comprehended by the light of the ages which preceded it.
Without a clear view of society in the olden time, of its laws, its faults, its
prejudices, its sufferings, its greatness, it is impossible to understand the conduct
of the French during the sixty years which have followed its fall."
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Galignani's Paris Guide.
[17] History of French Revolution, by E.E. Crowe, vol. ii., p. 150.—Enc. Am.
[18] The Duke of St. Simon, who was one of the council of the regency, in his admirable memoirs, gives
the following sketch of Dubois: "Dubois was a little, thin, meagre man, with a polecat visage. All the vices,
falsehood, avarice, licentiousness, ambition, and the meanest flattery contended in him for the mastery. He
lied to such a degree as to deny his own actions when taken in the fact. In spite of his debauchery he was
very industrious. His wealth was immense, and his revenue amounted to millions."
[19] Women of France, p. 91.
[20] Women of France, p. 170.
[21] Historical View of the French Revolution, by J. Michelet, vol. i., p. 46.
CHAPTER IV.
DESPOTISM AND ITS FRUITS.
Assumptions of the Aristocracy.—Molière.—Decay of the Nobility.—
Decline of the Feudal System.—Difference between France and the United
States.—Mortification of Men of Letters.—Voltaire, Montesquieu,
Rousseau.—Corruption of the Church.—Diderot.—The Encyclopedists.—
Testimony of De Tocqueville.—Frederic II. of Prussia.—Two Classes of
Opponents of Christianity.—Enormity of Taxation.—Misery of the People.
—"Good old Times of the Monarchy!"
HAVING given a brief sketch of the character of Louis XV., let us now
contemplate the condition of France during his long reign. It has been estimated
that the privileged class in both Church and State consisted of but one hundred
and fifty thousand. It was their doctrine, enforced by the most rigorous practice,
that the remaining twenty-five millions of France were created but to administer
to their luxury; that this was the function which Providence intended them to
perform. Every office which could confer honor and emolument in the Church,
the army, the State, or the Court, was filled by the members of an aristocracy
who looked with undisguised contempt upon all those who were not high-born,
however opulent or however distinguished for talents and literary culture. Louis
XV., surrounded by courtesans and debauched courtiers, deemed it presumption
in Voltaire to think of sitting at the same table with the king. "I can give pensions
to Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fontinelle, and Maupertius," said the king, "but I can
not dine and sup with these people."[22]
The courtiers of Louis XIV. manifested in the most offensive manner the
mortification which they felt in being obliged to receive Molière, the most
distinguished comic dramatist of France, to their table. No degree of genius
could efface the ignominy of not being nobly born.[23] But, notwithstanding the
arrogance of the nobles, they, as a class, had fallen into contempt. All who could
support a metropolitan establishment had abandoned their chateaux and repaired
to Paris. The rural castle was shut up, silence reigned in its halls, and grass
waved in its court-yard. The bailiff only was left behind to wring the last farthing
from the starving tenantry. Many of the noble families were in decay. Their
poverty rendered their pride only the more contemptible. Several of the
provinces contained large numbers of these impoverished aristocratic families,
who had gradually parted with their lands, and who were living in a state of very
shabby gentility. They were too proud to work and too poor to live without
working. Turgot testifies that in the Province of Limousin there were several
thousand noble families, not fifteen of whom had an income of four thousand
dollars a year.[24] One of the crown officers wrote in 1750:
"The nobility of this section are of very high rank, but very poor, and as proud as
they are poor. The contrast between their former and their present condition is
humiliating. It is a very good plan to keep them poor, in order that they shall
need our aid and serve our purposes. They have formed a society into which no
one can obtain admission unless he can prove four quarterings. It is not
incorporated by letters patent, but it is tolerated, as it meets but once a year and
in the presence of the intendant. These noblemen hear mass, after which they
return home, some on their Rosinantes, some on foot. You will enjoy this
comical assembly."
In days of feudal grandeur the noble was indeed the lord and master of the
peasantry. He was their government and their sole protector from violence. There
was then reason for feudal service. But now the noble was a drone. He received,
and yet gave nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. The peasant despised as well
as hated him, and derisively called him the vulture.
The feudal system is adapted only to a state of semi-barbarism. It can no more
survive popular intelligence than darkness can exist after the rising of the sun.
When, in the progress of society, nobles cease to be useful and become only
drones; when rich men, vulgar in character, can purchase titles of nobility, so that
the nobles cease to be regarded as a peculiar and heaven-appointed race; when
men from the masses, unennobled, acquire opulence, education, and that polish
of manners which place them on an equality with titled men; when men of
genius and letters, introduced into the saloons of the nobles, discover their own
vast superiority to their ignorant, frivolous, and yet haughty entertainers; and
when institutions of literature, science, and art create an aristocracy of
scholarship where opulence, refinement, and the highest mental culture combine
their charms, then an hereditary aristocracy, which has no support but its
hereditary renown, must die. Its hour is tolled.
Such was the state of France at the close of the reign of Louis XV. It is estimated
that there were in France at that time five hundred thousand well-informed
citizens.[25] This fact explains both the outbreak of the Revolution and its failure.
They were too many to submit to the arrogance of the nobles; hence the
insurrection. They were too few to guide and control the infuriated masses when
the pressure was taken from them, and hence the reign of terror, the anarchy and
blood. The United States, with a population about the same as that of France in
the morning of her Revolution, has four or five millions of intelligent and welleducated
men. These men support our institutions. But for them, the republic
would be swept away like chaff before the wind.
As we have before said, men of letters were patronized by the king and the court,
but it was a patronage which seemed almost an insult to every honorable mind.
The haughty duke would look down condescendingly, and even admiringly,
upon the distinguished scholar, and would admit him into his saloon as a
curiosity. High-born ladies would smile upon him, and would condescend to take
his arm and listen to his remarks. But such mingling with society stung the soul
with a sense of degradation, and none inveighed with greater bitterness against
aristocratic assumption than those men of genius who had been most freely
admitted into the halls of the great. They were thus exasperated to inquire into
the origin of ranks, and their works were filled with eulogiums of equality and
fraternity.
It was this social degradation which was one of the strongest incentives to
revolution. This united all the industrial classes in France, all who had attained
wealth, and all men of intellectual eminence, in the cry for reform. Equality of
rights was the great demand thus forced from the heart of the nation. Fraternity
became the watch-word of the roused and rising masses.[26]
Thought was the great emancipator. Men of genius were the Titans who uphove
the mountains of prejudice and oppression. They simplified political economy,
and made it intelligible to the popular mind. Voltaire assailed with keenest
sarcasm and the most piercing invectives the corruptions of the Church, unjustly,
and most calamitously for the interests of France, representing those corruptions
as Christianity itself. Montesquieu popularized and spread before the nation
those views of national policy which might render a people prosperous and
happy; and Rousseau, with a seductive eloquence which the world has never
seen surpassed, excited every glowing imagination with dreams of fascinating
but unattainable perfection. Nearly all the revolutionary writers represented
religion not merely as a useless superstition, but as one of the worst scourges of
the state. Thus they took from the human heart the influence which alone can
restrain passion and humanize the soul.
They represented man but as a lamb, meek and innocent, dumb before his
shearers, and seeking only to live harmlessly and happily in the outflowings of
universal benevolence and love. This lamb-like man needed no more religion
than does the butterfly or the robin. He was to live his joyous day, unrestrained
by customs, or laws, or thoughts of the future, and then was to pass away like the
lily or the rose, having fulfilled his function. Death an eternal sleep, was the
corner-stone of their shallow and degrading philosophy. The advocates of this
sentimentalism were amazed when they found the masses, brutalized by
ignorance and ages of oppression, and having been taught that there was no God
before whom they were to stand in judgment, come forth into the arena of the
nations, not as lambs, but as wolves, thirsting for blood and reckless in
devastation. Libertines in France are still infidels, but they have seen the effect
of their doctrines, and no longer dare to proclaim them. "Where is the
Frenchman of the present day," says De Tocqueville, "who would write such
books as those of Diderot or Helvetius?"[27]
Unfortunately, fatally for the liberties of France, the leading writers were
infidels. Mistaking the corruptions of Christianity for Christianity itself, they
assailed religion furiously, and succeeded in eradicating from men's souls all
apprehensions of responsibility to God. Nothing could more effectually brutalize
and demonize the soul of man. And yet the Papal Church, as a towering
hierarchy, had become so corrupt, such an instrument of oppression, and such a
support of despotism, that no reform could have been accomplished but by its
overthrow.[28] It was the monarch's right arm of strength; it was the rampart
which was first to be battered down.
The Church had no word of censure for vice in high places. It spread its shield
before the most enormous abuses, and, by its inquisitorial censorship of the
press, protected the most execrable institutions. The Church, enervated by
wealth and luxurious indulgence, had also become so decrepit as to invite attack.
No man could summon sufficient effrontery to attempt her defense. The only
reply which bloated and debauched ecclesiastics could make to their assailants
was persecution and the dungeon. There were a few truly pious men in the
Church; they did, however, but exhibit in clearer contrast the general corruption
with which they were surrounded.
Diderot, though educated by the Jesuits—perhaps because he was educated by
the Jesuits—commenced his career by an attack upon Christianity in his Pensées
Philosophiques. He was sent to prison, and his book burned by the public
executioner. Still, multitudes read and so warmly applauded that he was incited
to form the plan of the celebrated Encyclopedia which was to contain a summary
of all human knowledge. In this grand enterprise he allied with him the ablest
scholars and writers of the day—Mably, Condillac, Mercier, Raynal, Buffon,
Helvetius, D'Alembert, and others. Nearly all these men, despising the Church,
were unbelievers in Christianity. They consequently availed themselves of every
opportunity to assail religion. The court, alarmed, laid a prohibition upon the
work, but did not dare to punish the writers, as they were too numerous and
powerful. Thus infidelity soon became a fashion. Notwithstanding the
prohibition, the work was soon resumed, and became one of the most powerful
agents in ushering in the Revolution.
"Christianity was hated by these philosophers," writes De Tocqueville, "less as a
religious doctrine than as a political institution; not because the ecclesiastics
assumed to regulate the concerns of the other world, but because they were
landlords, seigneurs, tithe-holders, administrators in this; not because the Church
could not find a place in the new society which was being established, but
because she then occupied a place of honor, privilege, and might in the society
which was to be overthrown."
Christianity is the corner-stone of a true democracy. It is the unrelenting foe of
despotism, and therefore despotism has invariably urged its most unrelenting
warfare against the Bible. When papacy became the great spiritual despotism
which darkened the world, the Bible was the book which it hated and feared
above all others. With caution this corrupt hierarchy selected a few passages
upon submission and obedience, which it allowed to be read to the people, while
the majestic principles of fraternity, upon which its whole moral code is reared,
were vigilantly excluded from the public mind. The peasant detected with a
Bible was deemed as guilty as if caught with the tools of a burglar or the dies of
a counterfeiter.
It was impossible, however, to conceal the fact that the Bible was the advocate of
purity of heart and life. Its teachings created a sense of guilt in the human soul
which could not be effaced. Corrupt men were consequently eager to reject the
Bible, that they might appease reproachful conscience. Frederick II., of Prussia,
an atheist and a despiser of mankind, became the friend and patron of Voltaire in
his envenomed assaults upon Christianity. Louis XV., anxious to maintain
friendly political relations with Prussia, hesitated to persecute the recognized
friend of the Prussian king. The courtiers, generally with joy, listened to those
teachings of unbelief which relieved them from the restraints of Christian
morality. Thus Christianity had two classes of vigorous assailants. The first were
those who knew not how to discriminate between Christianity and its
corruptions. They considered Christianity and the Papal Church as one, and
endeavored to batter the hateful structure down as a bastille of woe. Another
class understood Christianity as a system frowning upon all impurity, and
pressing ever upon the mind a final judgment. They were restive under its
restraints, and labored for its overthrow that guilt might find repose in unbelief.
Astonishment is often expressed at the blindness with which the upper classes of
the Old Régime allowed their institutions to be assailed. "But where," asks De
Tocqueville, "could they have learned better. Ruling classes can no more acquire
a knowledge of the dangers they have to avoid, without free institutions, than
their inferiors can discern the rights they ought to preserve in the same
circumstances."[29]
The measureless extravagance of the court had plunged the nation into a state of
inextricable pecuniary embarrassment. The whole burden of the taxes, in myriad
forms, for the support of the throne in Oriental luxury, for the support of the
nobles, who were perhaps the most profligate race of men the world has ever
known; for the support of the Church, whose towering ecclesiastics, performing
no useful functions, did not even affect the concealment of their vices, and who
often vied with the monarch himself in haughtiness and grandeur; for the support
of the army, ever engaged in extravagant wars, and employed to keep the people
in servitude—all these taxes so enormous as to sink the mass of the people in the
lowest state of poverty, debasement, and misery, fell upon the unprivileged class
alone.
Taxes ran into every thing. The minister who could invent a new tax was
applauded as a man of genius. All the offices of the magistracy were sold.
Judges would pay an enormous sum for their office, and remunerate themselves
a hundred-fold by selling their decisions. Thus justice became a farce. Titles of
nobility were sold, which, introducing the purchaser into the ranks of the
privileged class, threw the heavier burden upon the unprivileged. All the trades
and professions were put up for sale. Even the humble callings of making wigs,
of weighing coal, of selling pork, were esteemed privileges, and were sold at a
high price. There was hardly any thing which a man could do, which he was not
compelled to buy the privilege of doing. A person who undertook to count the
number of these offices or trades for which a license was sold, growing weary of
his task, estimated them at over three hundred thousand.[30]
An army of two hundred thousand tax-gatherers devoured every thing. To extort
substance from the starving people the most cruel expedients were adopted. All
the energies of galleys, gibbets, dungeons, and racks were called into requisition.
When the corn was all absorbed, the cattle were taken. The ground, exhausted
for want of manure, became sterile. Men, women, and children yoked
themselves to the plow. Deserts extended, the population died off, and beautiful
France was becoming but a place of graves.
The people thus taxed owned but one third of the soil, the clergy and the nobles
owning the other two thirds. From this one third the people paid taxes and feudal
service to the nobles, tithes to the clergy, and imposts to the king. They enjoyed
no political rights, could take no share in the administration, and were ineligible
to any post of honor or profit. No man could obtain an office in the army unless
he brought a certificate, signed by four nobles, that he was of noble blood.
The imposition of the tax was entirely arbitrary. No man could tell one year what
his tax would be the next. There was no principle in the assessment except to
extort as much as possible. The tax-gatherers would be sent into a district to
collect one year one million of francs, perhaps the next year it would be two
millions. No language can describe the dismay in the humble homes of the
peasants when these cormorants, armed with despotic power, darkened their
doors. The seed-corn was taken, the cow was driven off, the pig was taken from
the pen. Mothers plead with tears that food might be left for their children, but
the sheriff, inured to scenes of misery, had a heart of rock. He always went
surrounded by a band of bailiffs to protect him from violence. Fearful was the
vengeance he could wreak upon any one who displeased him.
The peasant, to avoid exorbitant taxation, assumed the garb of poverty, dressed
his children in rags, and carefully promoted the ruin and dilapidation of his
dwelling. "Fear," writes de Tocqueville, "often made the collector pitiless. In
some parishes he did not show his face without a band of bailiffs and followers
at his back. 'Unless he is sustained by bailiffs,' writes an intendant in 1764, 'the
taxables will not pay. At Villefranche alone six hundred bailiffs and followers
are always kept on foot.'"[31]
Indeed, the government seemed to desire to keep the people poor. Savages will
lop off the leg or the arm of a prisoner that he may be more helplessly in their
power. Thus those despotic kings would desolate their realms with taxation, and
would excite wars which would exhaust energy and paralyze industry, that the
people thus impoverished and kept in ignorance might bow more submissively
to the yoke. The wars which in endless monotony are inscribed upon the
monuments of history were mostly waged by princes to engross the attention of
their subjects. When a despot sees that public attention is directed, or is likely to
be directed, to any of his oppressive acts, he immediately embarks in some war,
to divert the thoughts of the nation. This is the unvarying resource of despotism.
After a few hundred thousand of the people have been slaughtered, and millions
of money squandered in the senseless war, peace is then made. But peace brings
but little repose to the people. They must now toil and starve that they may raise
money to pay for the expenses of the war. Such, in general, has been the history
of Europe for a thousand years. Despots are willing that billows of blood should
surge over the land, that the cries of the oppressed may thus be drowned.
So excessive was the burden of taxation, that it has been estimated by a very
accurate computation that, if the produce of an acre of land amounted to sixteen
dollars, the king took ten, the duke, as proprietor, five, leaving one for the
cultivator.[32] Thus, if we suppose a peasant with his wife and children to have
cultivated forty acres of land, the proceeds of which, at sixteen dollars per acre,
amounted to six hundred and forty dollars, the king and the duke and the Church
took six hundred of this, leaving but forty dollars for the support of the laborers.
Let us suppose a township in the United States containing twenty square miles,
with five thousand inhabitants. Nearly all these are cultivators of the soil, and so
robbed by taxes that they can only live in mud hovels and upon the coarsest
food. Clothed in rags, they toil in the fields with their bareheaded and barefooted
wives and daughters. The huts of these farmers are huddled together in a
miserable dirty village. In the village there are a few shop-keepers, who have
acquired a little property, and have become somewhat intelligent. There is also a
physician, and a surgeon, and a poor, dispirited, half-starved parish priest. Upon
one of the eminences of the town there is a lordly castle of stone, with its turrets
and towers, its park and fish-pond. This massive structure belongs to the duke.
Weary of the solitude of the country, he has withdrawn from the castle, and is
living with his family in the metropolis, indulging in all its expensive
dissipations. His purse can only be replenished by the money which he can
extort from the cultivators of the land who surround his castle; and his expenses
are so enormous that he is ever harassed by an exhausted purse.
For a few weeks in the summer he comes down to his castle, from the
metropolis, with his city companions, to engage in rural sports. Wild boars, deer,
rabbits, and partridges abound in his park. The boars and the deer range the
fields of the farmers, trampling down and devouring their crops; but the farmer
must not harm them, lest he incur the terrible displeasure of the duke. The
rabbits and the partridges infest the fields of grain; but the duke has issued a
special injunction that the weeds even must not be disturbed, lest the brooding
partridges should be frightened away, to the injury of his summer shooting.
Perhaps one half of the land in the township belongs to the duke, and the farmers
are mere tenants at will. During past ages, about half of the land has been sold
and is owned by those who till it. But even they have to pay a heavy ground-rent
annually to the duke for the land which they have bought. If a farmer wishes to
purchase a few acres from his neighbor, he must first pay a sum to the duke for
permission to make the purchase. For three or four days in the week the farmer is
compelled, as feudal service, to work in the fields of the duke, without
remuneration. When he has gathered in the harvest on his own land, a large
portion of it he must cart to the granaries of the duke as a tax. If he has any grain
to be ground, or grapes to press, or bread to bake, he must go to the mill, the
wine-press, and the oven of the duke, and pay whatever toll he may see fit to
extort. Often even the use of hand-mills was prohibited, and the peasant had to
purchase the privilege of bruising his grain between two stones. He could not
even dip a bowl of water from the sea, and allow it to evaporate to get some salt,
lest he should interfere with the monopoly of the king. If he wishes to take any
of his produce to market, he must pay the duke for permission to travel on the
highway. Thus robbed under the name of custom and law, the farmer toils
joylessly from the cradle to the grave, with barely sufficient food and shelter to
keep him in respectable working order; and when he dies, he leaves his children
to the same miserable doom. Such was the condition of the great mass of the
French people during the long reign of Louis XV.
This intolerable bondage spread all through the minutiæ of social life. It was, of
course, impossible but that the masses of the people should be in the lowest state
of ignorance and indigence. Their huts, destitute of all the necessities of civilized
life, were dark and comfortless, and even the merriment with which they
endeavored at times to beguile their misery was heartless, spasmodic, and
melancholy.[33]
In the year 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote from Paris to Mrs. Trist, of
Philadelphia, "Of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France, I am of
opinion that there are nineteen millions more wretched, more accursed in every
circumstance of human existence, than the most conspicuously wretched
individual of the whole United States."[34]
Again he writes, in the same year, to M. Bellini, a Florentine gentleman who was
professor in William and Mary College, "I find the general state of humanity
here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually,
that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil."
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Madame Campan's Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, vol. i., p. 388.
[23] Ib.
[24] "Men of rank sold their land piecemeal to the peasantry, reserving nothing but seigneurial rents, which
furnished a nominal but not a substantial competency."—The Old Régime, De Tocqueville, p. 103.
[25] History of the French Revolution, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 188.
[26] "A lord," writes Montesquieu, bitterly, "is a man who sees the king, speaks to the minister, has
ancestors, debts, and pensions."
[27] The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 18.
"It is a singularity worth remarking that the Gospel is nothing but a declaration of rights. Its mysteries were
a long time hidden, because they attacked the priests and the great."—M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 174.
[28] "Shall we say, then, Woe to Philosophism that it destroyed Religion, what it called 'extinguishing the
abomination'—écraser l'infâme? Woe rather to those that made the Holy an abomination and
extinguishable."—Carlyle, French Revolution, i., 56.
[29] Old Régime, p. 175.
Count Segur, a peer of France, in his Memoirs, has very frankly described the feelings with which he and
the young nobles who were his companions regarded the writings of the philosophers:
"We felt disposed to adopt with enthusiasm the philosophical doctrines professed by literary men,
remarkable for their boldness and their wit. Voltaire seduced our imagination. Rousseau touched our hearts.
We felt a secret pleasure in seeing that their attacks were directed against an old fabric which presented to
us a Gothic and ridiculous appearance. We were pleased with this petty war, although it was undermining
our own ranks and privileges and the remains of our ancient power. But we felt not these attacks personally.
It was, as yet, but a war of words and paper, which did not appear to us to threaten the superiority of
existence which we enjoyed, consolidated as we thought it by a possession of many centuries."
[30] History of the Revolution of France, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne.
[31] For appalling proof of the sufferings of the tax-payers, turn to the pages of Michelet, of De
Tocqueville, of any writer upon the Old Régime.
[32] Arthur Young, vol. i., p. 574; Marshall's Travels, vol. iv., p. 322.
[33] "Care must be taken not to misunderstand the gayety which the French have often exhibited in the
greatest affliction. It is a mere attempt to divert the mind from the contemplation of misfortune which
seems inevitable."—The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 167.
[34] Life of Jefferson, by Henry T. Randall, vol. i., p. 432.
CHAPTER V.
THE BASTILLE.
Absolute Power of the King.—Lettres de Cachet.—The Bastille.—Cardinal
Balue.—Harancourt.—Charles of Armanac.—Constant de Renville.—Duke
of Nemours.—Dungeons of the Bastille.—Oubliettes.—Dessault.—M.
Massat.—M. Catalan.—Latude.—The Student.—Apostrophe of Michelet.
THE monarchy was now so absolute that the king, without any regard to law, had
the persons and the property of all his subjects entirely at his disposal. He could
confiscate any man's estate. He could assign any man to a dungeon for life
without trial and even without accusation. To his petted and profligate favorites
he was accustomed to give sealed writs, lettres de cachet, whose blanks they
could fill up with any name they pleased. With one of these writs the courtiers
could drag any man who displeased them to one of the dungeons of the Bastille,
where no light of the sun would ever gladden his eyes again. Of these sealed
writs we shall speak hereafter. They were the most appalling instruments of
torture despotism ever wielded.
The Bastille. At the eastern entrance of Paris stood this world-renowned fortress
and prison. In gloomy grandeur its eight towers darkened the air, surrounded by
a massive wall of stone nine feet thick and a hundred feet high. The whole was
encircled by a ditch twenty-five feet deep and one hundred and twenty feet wide.
The Bastille was an object exciting universal awe. No one could ever pass
beneath its shadow without thinking of the sighs which ceaselessly resounded
through all its vaults. It was an ever-present threat, the great upholder of despotic
power, with its menace appalling even the boldest heart. It is easy to brave death
from the bullet or the guillotine; but who can brave the doom of Cardinal Balue,
who, for eleven years, was confined in an iron cage, so constructed that he could
find no possible position for repose; or the fate of Harancourt, who passed
fifteen years in a cage within the Bastille, whose iron bars required in their
riveting the labors of nineteen men for twenty days? To be thus torn from wife,
children, and home, and to be consigned for life to the unearthly woe of such a
doom must terrify even the firmest soul. It is painful to dwell upon these details,
but they must be known in explanation of the scenes of violence and blood to
which they finally gave birth.
Charles of Armanac, for no crime whatever of his own, but because his brother
had offended Charles XI., was thrown into prison. For fourteen years he lingered
in the dungeon, until his reason was dethroned and his spirit was bewildered and
lost in the woes of the maniac. Constant de Renville, a Norman gentleman, was
accused, while in exile in Holland, of writing a satirical poem against France.
For eleven years he was immured in one of the most loathsome dungeons of the
Bastille. He appears to have been a man of true piety, and upon his release wrote
an account of the horrors of his prison-house, which thrilled the ear of Europe.
The Duke of Nemours was accused of an intrigue against Louis XI. He was
dragged from the presence of his wife, exciting in her such terror that she fell
into convulsions and died. After two years' imprisonment he was condemned to
be executed. A scaffold was erected with openings beneath the planks, and his
three children were placed beneath the planks, bareheaded, clothed in white
robes, and with their hands bound behind their backs, that the blood of their
beheaded father might drop upon them, and that his anguish might be increased
by witnessing the agony of his children. The fearful tragedy being over, these
tender children, the youngest of whom was but five years of age, were again
locked up in one of the gloomiest vaults of the Bastille, where they remained for
five years. Upon the death of Louis XI. they were released. The two eldest,
however, emaciate with privation and woe, soon died. The youngest alone
survived.
Imagination can not conceive of an abode more loathsome than some of these
horrible dens. The cold stone walls, covered with the mould of ages, were ever
dripping with water. The slimy floor swarmed with reptiles and all kinds of
vermin who live in darkness and mire. A narrow slit in the wall, which was nine
feet thick, admitted a few straggling rays of light, but no air to ventilate the
apartment where corruption was festering. A little straw upon the floor or upon a
plank supported by iron bars fixed in the wall afforded the only place for repose.
Ponderous double doors, seven inches thick and provided with enormous locks
and bolts, shut the captive as effectually from the world and from all knowledge
of what was passing in the world as if he were in his grave. His arrest was
frequently conducted so secretly that even his friends had no knowledge of what
had become of him; they could make no inquiries at the gloomy portals of the
Bastille, and the unhappy captive was left to die unknown and forgotten in his
dungeon. If by any happy chance he was liberated, he was first compelled to take
an oath never to repeal what he had seen, or heard, or suffered within the walls
of the Bastille.
Thus any person who became obnoxious to the king or any of his favorites was
immediately transferred to these dungeons of despair. Cardinal Richelieu filled
its cells with the victims of his tyranny. The captive immediately received the
name of his cell, and his real name was never uttered within the precincts of the
Bastille.
The Bastille was often full to overflowing, but there were other Bastilles in
France sufficiently capacious to meet all the demands of the most inexorable
tyranny.
It is the more necessary to dwell upon these details since the Bastille was the
mailed hand with which aristocratic usurpation beat down all resistance and
silenced every murmur. The Bastille, with its massive walls and gloomy towers
and cannon frowning from every embrasure, was the terrific threat which held
France in subjection. It was the demon soul of demoniac despotism. So awful
was the terror inspired, that frequently the victim was merely enjoined by one of
the warrants bearing the seal of the king to go himself to the dungeon. Appalled
and trembling in every nerve, he dared not for one moment disobey. Hastening to
the prison, he surrendered himself to its glooms, despairingly hoping, by prompt
obedience, to shorten the years of his captivity.
There were vaults in the Bastille and other prisons of France called oubliettes,
into which the poor victim was dropped and left to die forgotten. These were
usually shaped like a bottle, with a narrow neck and expanding beneath. In one
of these tombs of massive stone, twenty-two feet deep and seventeen or eighteen
feet in diameter, with a narrow neck through which the captive could be thrust
down, the inmate was left in Egyptian darkness amid the damp and mould of
ages, and, trampling upon the bones of those who had perished before him, to
linger through weary hours of starvation and woe until death came to his relief.
Sometimes he thus lingered for years, food being occasionally thrown down to
him.
There were twenty bastilles in France. In Paris, besides the Bastille, there were
thirty prisons, where people might be incarcerated without sentence, trial, or
even accusation. The convents were amply supplied with dungeons. All these
prisons were at the disposal of the Jesuits. They were instruments of torture. The
wretched victim, once consigned to those cells, was enshrouded by the oblivion
of the tomb. The rich man was robbed of his wealth and taken there to be
forgotten and to die. Beauty, whose virtue bribes could not destroy, was dragged
to those apartments to minister to the lust of merciless oppressors. The shriek of
despair, smothered by walls of stone and doors of iron, reached only the ear of
God.[35]
During the reign of Louis XV. one hundred and fifty thousand of these lettres de
cachet were issued, making an average of two thousand five hundred annually.
[36] The king could not refuse a blank warrant to his mistress or to a courtier. All
those who had influence at court could obtain them. They were distributed as
freely as in this country members of Congress have distributed their postage
franks. St. Florentin alone gave away fifty thousand. These writs were often sold
at a great price. Any man who could obtain one had his enemy at his disposal.
One can hardly conceive of a more awful despotism. Such were "the good old
times of the monarchy," as some have insanely called them. Even during the mild
reign of Louis XVI. fourteen thousand lettres de cachet were issued. Let us enter
the prison and contemplate the doom of the captive.
A gentleman by the name of Dessault offended Richelieu by refusing to execute
one of his atrocious orders. At midnight a band of soldiers entered his chamber,
tore him from his bed, and dragged him through the dark streets to the Bastille,
and there consigned him to a living burial in one of its cold damp tombs of iron
and stone. Here in silence and solitude, deprived of all knowledge of his family,
and his family having lost all trace of him, he lingered eleven years.
"Oh, who can tell what days, what nights he spent
Of tideless, waveless, sailless, shoreless woe!"
At last his jailer ventured to inform him that Richelieu was on a dying bed.
Hoping that in such an hour the heart of the haughty cardinal might be touched
with sympathy, he wrote to him as follows:
"My lord, you are aware that for eleven years you have subjected me to the
endurance of a thousand deaths in the Bastille—to sufferings which would excite
compassion if inflicted even upon the most disloyal subject of the king. How
much more then should I be pitied, who am doomed to perish here for
disobeying an order, which, obeyed, would have sent me to the final judgment
with blood-stained hands, and would have consigned my soul to eternal misery.
Ah! could you but hear the sobs, the lamentations, the groans which you extort
from me, you would quickly set me at liberty. In the name of the eternal God,
who will judge you as well as me, I implore you, my lord, to take pity on my
woe, and, if you wish that God should show mercy to you, order my chains to be
broken before your death-hour comes. When that hour arrives you will no longer
be able to do me justice, but will persecute me even in your grave."
The iron-hearted minister was unrelenting, and died leaving his victim still in the
dungeon. There Dessault remained fifty years after the death of Richelieu. He
was at length liberated, after having passed sixty-one years in a loathsome cell
but a few feet square. The mind stands aghast in the contemplation of such woes.
All this he suffered as the punishment of his virtues. The mind is appalled in
contemplating such a doom. Even the assurance that after death cometh the
judgment affords but little relief. Michelet, an unbeliever in Christian revelation,
indignantly exclaims, "though a sworn enemy to barbarous fictions about
everlasting punishment, I found myself praying to God to construct a hell for
tyrants."
When we remember that during a single reign one hundred and fifty thousand
were thus incarcerated; that all the petted and profligate favorites of the king,
male and female, had these blank warrants placed in their hands, which they
could fill up with any name at their pleasure; that money could be thus extorted,
domestic virtue violated, and that every man and every family was thus placed at
the mercy of the vilest minions of the court, we can only wonder that the volcano
of popular indignation did not burst forth more speedily and more desolatingly.
It is true that in many other countries of Europe the state of affairs was equally
bad, if not worse. But in France wealth and intelligence had made great
advances, while in central and northern Europe the enslaved people were so
debased by ignorance that they had no consciousness of the rights of which they
were defrauded.
The court demanded of a rich man, M. Massat, six hundred thousand livres
($120,000). Stunned by the ruinous demand, he ventured to remonstrate. He was
dragged to the Bastille, where the vermin of his dungeon could alone hear his
murmurs. M. Catalan, another man of wealth, after experiencing the horrors of
such an imprisonment for several months, was glad to purchase his ransom for
six millions of livres ($1,200,000).[37]
The money thus extorted was squandered in the most shameless profligacy. The
king sometimes expended two hundred thousand dollars for a single night's
entertainment at Versailles. The terrors of the Bastille frowned down all
remonstrances. A "stone doublet" was the robe which the courtiers facetiously
remarked they had prepared for murmurers.
On the 1st of May, 1749, a gentleman of the name of Latude was arrested by one
of these lettres de cachet, and thrown into the Bastille. He was then but twenty
years of age, and had given offense to Madame de Pompadour, by pretending
that a conspiracy had been formed against her life. For thirty-five years he
remained in prison enduring inconceivable horrors. In 1784, several years after
the death of both the mistress and her subject king, he was liberated and wrote an
account of his captivity. It was a tale of horror which thrilled the ear of Europe.
Eloquently, in view of the letters of Latude, Michelet represents the people as
exclaiming,
"Holy, holy Revolution, how slowly dost thou come! I, who have been waiting
for thee a thousand years in the furrows of the Middle Ages, what! must I wait
still longer? Oh, how slowly time passes! Oh, how have I counted the hours!
Wilt thou never arrive?"
A young man, in a Jesuit College, in a thoughtless hour, composed a satirical
Latin distich, making merry with the foibles of the professors and of the king. A
lettre de cachet was immediately served upon him, and for thirty-one years, until
youth and manhood were giving place to old age, he remained moaning in living
burial in one of the dungeons of the Bastille. One of the first acts of the
Revolution was to batter down these execrable walls and to plow up their very
foundations.
In view of the facts here revealed one can not but be amazed at the manner in
which many have spoken of the French Revolution, as if it were merely an
outburst of human depravity. "Burke had no idea," writes De Tocqueville, "of the
state in which the monarchy, he so deeply regretted, had left us." Michelet,
glowing with the indignation which inflamed the bosoms of his fathers,
exclaims, "Our fathers shivered that Bastille to pieces, tore away its stones with
bleeding hands, and flung them afar. Afterward they seized them again, and,
having hewn them into a different form, in order that they might be trampled
under foot by the people forever, built with them the Bridge of Revolution."[38]
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Historical View of French Revolution, by J. Michelet, i., 66.
[36] History of the Bastille, Chambers' Miscellany.
[37] Old Régime, p. 191.
CHAPTER VI.
THE COURT AND THE PARLIAMENT.
Death of Louis XV.—Education of Louis XVI.—Maurepas, Prime Minister.
—Turgot; his Expulsion from Office.—Necker.—Franklin.—Sympathy
with the Americans.—La Fayette.—Views of the Court.—Treaty with
America.—Popularity of Voltaire.—Embarrassment of Necker.—Compte
Rendu au Roi.—Necker driven into Exile.—Enslavement of France.—New
Extravagance.—Calonne.
AS the clock of Versailles tolled the hour of twelve at midnight of the 10th of
May, 1774, Louis XV., abandoned by all, alone in his chamber, died. In the most
loathsome stages of the confluent small-pox, his body had for several days
presented but a mass of corruption. Terror had driven all the courtiers from the
portion of the palace which he occupied, and even Madame du Barry dared not
approach the bed where her guilty paramour was dying. The nurse hired to
attend him could not remain in the apartment, but sat in an adjoining room. A
lamp was placed at the window, which she was to extinguish as soon as the king
was dead. Eagerly the courtiers watched the glimmering of that light that they
might be the first to bear to Louis, the grandson of the king, the tidings that he
was monarch of France.
Louis was then hardly twenty years of age.[39] His wife, Marie Antoinette,
daughter of Maria Theresa, Queen of Austria, was scarcely nineteen. They had
been married four years. Marie Antoinette was one of the most beautiful of
women, but from infancy she had been educated in the belief that kings and
nobles were created to illustrate life by gayety and splendor, and that the people
were created only to be their servants.[40]
The taper was extinguished, and the crowd of courtiers rushed to the apartment
of the Dauphin to hail him as Louis XVI. The tidings, though expected, for a
moment overwhelmed them both, and, encircled in each other's arms, they fell
upon their knees, while Louis exclaimed, "O God! guide us, protect us, we are
too young to govern."[41] They then entered the grand saloon, where they
received the congratulations of all the dignitaries of the Church and the State. All
were anxious to escape from the palace whose atmosphere was tainted, and
hardly an hour elapsed ere the new court, in carriages and on horseback, left
Versailles and were passing rapidly to the Chateau of Choisy, one of the favorite
rural palaces of Louis XV. The loathsome remains of the king were left to the
care of a few under-servants to be hurried to their burial.
It was not yet four o'clock in the morning. The sleepless night, the chill morning
air, the awful scene of death from which they had come, oppressed all spirits.
Soon, however, the sun rose warm and brilliant; a jocular remark dispelled the
mental gloom, and in two hours they arrived at the palace a merry party exulting
in the new reign. The education of Louis XVI. had been such that he was still but
a boy, bashful, self-distrusting, and entirely incompetent to guide the kingdom
through the terrific storm which for ages had been gathering. He had not the
remotest idea of the perils with which France was surrounded. He was an
exceedingly amiable young man, of morals most singularly pure for that corrupt
age, retiring and domestic in his tastes, and sincerely desirous of promoting the
happiness of France. Geography was the only branch of learning in which he
appeared to take any special interest. He framed, with much sagacity, the
instructions for the voyage of La Pérouse around the world in 1786, and often
lamented the fate of this celebrated navigator, saying, "I see very well that I am
not fortunate."[42] How mysterious the government of God, that upon the head of
this benevolent, kind-hearted, conscientious king should have been emptied,
even to the dregs, those vials of wrath which debauched and profligate monarchs
had been treasuring up for so many reigns!
pic
LOUIS XVI. AND LA PÉROUSE.
Louis had no force of character, and, destitute of self-reliance, was entirely
guided by others. At the suggestion of his aunt, Adelaide, he called to the post of
prime minister Count Maurepas, who was eighty years of age, and who, having
been banished from Paris by Madame de Pompadour, had been living for thirty
years in retirement. Thus France was handed over in these hours of peril to a
king in his boyhood and a prime minister in his dotage. Was it chance? Was it
Providence? Clouds and darkness surround God's throne!
M. Turgot was appointed to the post of utmost difficulty and danger—the
administration of the finances. He had acquired much reputation by the skill with
which, for twelve years, he had administered the government of the Province of
Limousin. The kingdom of France was already in debt more than four thousand
millions of francs ($800,000,000).[43] As the revenue was by no means sufficient
to pay the interest upon this debt and the expenses of the government, new loans
had been incessantly resorted to, and national bankruptcy was near at hand. To
continue borrowing was ruin; to impose higher taxes upon the people
impossible. There were but two measures which could be adopted. One was to
introduce a reform of wide-sweeping and rigid economy, cutting down salaries,
abolishing pensions and sinecures, and introducing frugality into the pleasurehaunts
of the court. Turgot was too well acquainted with the habits of the
courtiers to dream that it was in the power of any minister to enforce this reform.
There remained only the plan to induce the clergy and the nobles to allow
themselves to be taxed, and thus to bear their fair proportion of the expenses of
the state. Turgot fully understood the Herculean task before him in attempting
this measure, and in a letter to the king he wrote:
"We will have no bankruptcies, no augmentation of the taxes, no loans. I shall
have to combat abuses of every kind, to combat those who are benefited by
them, and even the kindness, sire, of your own nature. I shall be feared, hated,
and calumniated; but the affecting goodness with which you pressed my hands in
yours, to witness your acceptance of my devotion to your service, is never to be
obliterated from my recollection, and must support me under every trial."[44]
Several of Turgot's measures of reform the privileged class submitted to, though
with reluctance and with many murmurs; but when he proposed that a tax should
be fairly and equally levied upon proprietors of every description, a burst of
indignant remonstrance arose from the nobles which drowned his voice. To
suggest that a high-born man was to be taxed like one low-born was an insult too
grievous to be borne. The whole privileged class at once combined, determined
to crush the audacious minister thus introducing the doctrine of equal taxation
into the court of aristocratic privilege.
Madame du Barry, in a pet, four years before, had abolished the Parliament of
Paris, which was entirely under the control of the aristocracy. Louis XVI.,
seeking popularity, restored the Parliament. Unfortunately for reform, the nobles
had now an organized body with which to make resistance. The Parliament, the
clergy, the old minister Maurepas, and even the young queen, all united in a
clamorous onset upon Turgot, and he was driven from the ministry, having been
in office but twenty months.[45] The Parliament absolutely refused to register the
obnoxious decree. The inexperienced and timid king, frightened by the clamor,
yielded, and abandoned his minister. Had the king been firm, he might, perhaps,
have carried his point; but want of capacity leads to results as disastrous as
treachery, and the king, though actuated by the best intentions, was ignorant and
inefficient. Though the king held a bed of justice,[46] and ordered the edicts
registered, they remained as dead letters and were never enforced.
There was in Paris a wealthy Protestant banker, born in Geneva, of great
financial celebrity, M. Necker. He was called to take the place of Turgot. Warned
by the fate of his predecessor and seeing precisely the same difficulties staring
him in the face, he resolved to try the expedient of economy, cutting off pensions
and abolishing sinecures. But the nobles, in Church and State, disliked this as
much as being taxed, and immediately their clamor was renewed.[47]
Just at this time the American war of independence commenced. All France was
in a state of enthusiasm in view of a heroic people struggling to be free. And
when the American delegation appeared in Paris, headed by Franklin, all hearts
were swept along by a current which neither king nor nobles could withstand.
The republican simplicity of Franklin in his attire and manners produced an
extraordinary impression upon all classes. The French ladies in particular were
lavish in their attentions. Several fêtes were given in his honor, at one of which
the most beautiful of three hundred ladies crowned him with a laurel wreath, and
then kissed him on both cheeks. Almost every saloon was ornamented with his
bust, bearing the inscription, "Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis."
All the latent spirit of freedom which had so long been slowly accumulating
burst forth with a power which alarmed the court. Not a few of the nobles,
disgusted with the aristocratic oppression which was ruining France, gave their
sympathies to the American cause. The Marquis la Fayette, then but eighteen
years of age, openly and enthusiastically applauded the struggle of the colonists.
Marie Antoinette, instinctively hating a war in which the people were contending
against royalty, expressed much indignation that La Fayette should utter such
sentiments in the Palace of Versailles. Joseph II. of Austria, brother of Marie
Antoinette, then on a visit to the French court, was asked by a lady his opinion of
the subject which was now engrossing every mind. He replied, "I must decline
answering; my business is to be a Royalist" (Mon métier à moi c'est d'être
Royaliste).[48]
It is hardly possible for one now to realize the enthusiasm with which the
American war, at that time, inspired France. Even the court hated England, and
wished to see that domineering power humbled. The mind of the nation had just
awakened and was thoroughly aroused from the lethargy of ages. Theories,
dreams, aspirations had exhausted themselves, and yet there was in France no
scope whatever for action. America opened a theatre for heroic enterprise.
France had given the theory of liberty, America was illustrating that theory by
practice. The popular cry so effectually drowned every other voice that even the
king was compelled to yield. A treaty with America was signed which drew from
the treasury of France twelve hundred millions of francs ($240,000,000), in
support of American independence.[49] But for the substantial aid thus rendered
by the fleet and the army of France it can hardly be doubted that the American
Revolution would have been crushed, Washington and Franklin would have been
hanged as traitors, and monarchical historians would elegantly have described
the horrors of the great American rebellion.[50]
The king, however, had sufficient intelligence to appreciate the suicidal act he
was thus compelled to perform. With extreme reluctance he signed the treaty
which recognized the right of nations to change their government. The doctrine
of the sovereignty of the people was thus legitimated in France. That one
sentiment unresisted would sweep Europe of its despotic thrones. As the king
signed the treaty, Feb. 8, 1778, he remarked to his minister, "You will remember,
sir, that this is contrary to my opinion."[51] The same weakness which
constrained Louis XVI. to abandon Turgot to his enemies, compelled him to
perform this act which his views of state policy condemned. "How painful," he
writes, in his private correspondence, "to be obliged, for reasons of state, to sign
orders and commence a great war contrary alike to my opinions and my wishes."
[52]
In the midst of these transactions Voltaire, after an absence of twenty-seven
years, much of which time he had passed in his retreat at Ferney, about five
miles from Geneva, revisited Paris. He was then eighty-four years of age. The
court hated the bold assailer of corruptions, and refused to receive him. But the
populace greeted him with enthusiasm unparalleled. He attended the theatre
where his last play, "Irene," was acted. Immediately upon his appearance the
whole audience, rising, greeted him with long and tumultuous applause. As,
overpowered with emotion, he rose to depart, with trembling limbs and with
flooded eyes, men of the highest rank and beautiful women crowded around him
and literally bore him in their arms to his carriage. He could only exclaim, "Do
you wish to kill me with joy?" A crowd with lighted torches filled the streets,
making his path brilliant as day, and shouts of triumph arose which appalled the
courtiers in the saloons of the palace. A few weeks after this, May 30, 1778,
Voltaire died. The Archbishop of Paris refused to allow him Christian burial, and
the court forbade his death to be mentioned in the public journals. His corpse
was taken from the city and buried secretly at an old abbey at Scellières. This
petty persecution only exasperated the friends of reform. A month after the death
of Voltaire, Rousseau also passed away to the spirit-land.
The situation of Necker was now deplorable. The kingdom was involved in an
enormously expensive war. The court would not consent to any diminution of its
indulgences, and the privileged class would not consent to be taxed. Necker was
almost in despair. He borrowed of every one who would lend, and from the
already exhausted people with sorrow, almost with anguish, gleaned every sou
which the most ingenious taxation could extort.
"Never shall I forget," he wrote, in 1791, "the long, dark staircase of M.
Maurepas, the terror and the melancholy with which I used to ascend it,
uncertain of the success of some idea that had occurred to me, likely, if carried
into effect, to produce an increase of the revenue, but likely at the same time to
fall severely though justly on some one or other; the sort of hesitation and
diffidence with which I ventured to intermingle in my representations any of
those maxims of justice and of right with which my own heart was animated."
For a time Necker succeeded by loans and annuities in raising money, but at last
it became more difficult to find lenders, and national bankruptcy seemed
inevitable. And what is national bankruptcy? It is the paralysis of industry, and
wide-spreading consternation and woe. Thousands of widows and orphans had
all their patrimony in the national funds. The failure of these funds was to them
beggary and starvation. The hospitals, the schools, the homes of refuge for the
aged and infirm—all would lose their support. The thousands in governmental
employ and those dependent upon them would be left in utter destitution. The
bankruptcy of a solitary merchant may send poverty to many families—the
bankruptcy of a nation sends paleness to the cheeks and anguish to the hearts of
millions.
In this exigence Necker adopted the bold resolve to publish an honest account of
the state of the finances, that the nation, nobles, and unennobled might see the
destruction toward which the state was drifting. Necker thought that, if the facts
were fairly presented, the privileged class, in view of the ruin otherwise
inevitable, would consent to bear their share of taxation, manifestly the only
possible measure which could arrest the disaster. He consequently, in 1781,
published his celebrated Compte Rendu au Roi. The impression which this
pamphlet produced was amazing. Two hundred thousand copies were
immediately called for, and the appalling revelation went with electric speed
through the whole length and breadth of the land. It was read in the saloon, in the
work-shop, and in the hamlet. Groups of those who could not read were gathered
at all corners to hear it read by others.
"We wetted with our tears," writes M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, who acted an
illustrious part in those days, "those pages which a citizen minister had imprinted
with luminous and comfortable reflections, and where he was turning all his
attention to the prosperity of the French with a sensibility deserving of their
gratitude. The people blessed him as its savior. But all those nourished by abuses
formed a confederacy against the man who seemed about to wrest their prey
from them."
Necker was desirous of introducing some popular element into the government.
There was now a numerous body of men belonging to the unprivileged class,
energetic and enlightened, whose voice ought to be heard in the administration
of affairs as representatives of the people. He therefore recommended that there
should be provincial parliaments in the different departments of France,
somewhat corresponding with the present legislatures in the United States. In a
few of the provinces there were already parliaments, but they were composed
exclusively of the privileged class. Turgot also had contemplated provincial
legislatures, which he desired to constitute as the organ of the people, and to be
composed only of members of the Tiers Etat.[53] Necker, however, hoped to
conciliate the nobles by giving the privileged body an equal representation with
the unprivileged in these assemblies. One half were to be representatives of the
clergy and the nobility, and the other half of the people, though the people
numbered millions, while the clergy and nobles numbered but thousands.
Necker's report showed that the interest upon the public debt absorbed one third
of the revenues; that the remaining two thirds were by no means sufficient for
carrying on the government, and that, consequently, the burden was continually
growing heavier by loans and accumulations.[54] The suggestions of Necker, to
give the people a voice in the administration of affairs and to tax high-born men
equally with low-born, created intense opposition. The storm became too fierce
to be resisted. Both the king and the prime minister yielded to its violence, and
Necker, like Turgot, was driven with contumely from the ministry and into exile.
The hearts of the people followed the defeated minister to his retreat. These
outrages were but making the line which separated the privileged from the
unprivileged more visible, and were rousing and combining the masses. The
illustrious financier, in his retirement, wrote his celebrated work upon the
administration of the finances, a work which contributed much to the
enlightenment of the public mind.[55] The intellect of the nation was roused, as
never before, to the discussion of the affairs of state. In the parlor, the countingroom,
the work-shop, the farm-house, and the field, all were employed in
deliberating upon the one great topic which engrossed universal attention. And
yet the nobles and their partisans, with infatuation inexplicable, resisted all
measures of reform; a singular illustration of the Roman adage, "Quem Deus
vult perdere priusquam dementat" (whom God would destroy he first makes
mad).
Indeed, the opposition was sufficiently formidable to appal any minister. There
were eighty thousand nobles, inheriting the pride and prestige of feudal power,
with thousands, dependent upon their smiles, rallying around them as allies.
There were the officers in the army, who were either hereditary nobles or, still
worse, men of wealth who had purchased titles of nobility. There were a hundred
thousand persons who, in various ways, had purchased immunity from the
burdens of state, and were thus within the limits of the privileged class, and
hated by the people, though despised by the nobles. There were two hundred
thousand priests bound by the strongest of possible ties to the hierarchy, the
humble class depending for position and bread upon their spiritual lords and
obliged by the most solemn oaths to obey their superiors. And these priests,
intrusted with the keys of heaven and of hell, as was supposed by the
unenlightened masses, held millions in subjection by the most resistless powers
of superstition. There were sixty thousand in the cloisters of the monasteries,
many of them dissolute in the extreme, and who were necessarily subservient to
the ecclesiastics. There were the farmers general, the collectors of the revenue,
and all the vast army of office-holders, who were merely the agents of the court.
"This formidable mass of men," says M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, "were in
possession of all France. They held her by a thousand chains. They formed, in a
body, what was termed la haute nation. All the rest was the people."[56]
Though the privileged class and their dependents, which we have above
enumerated, amounted to but a few hundred thousand, perhaps not five hundred
thousand in all, and the people amounted to some twenty-five millions, still all
the power was with the aristocracy. The mass of the people were merely slaves,
unarmed, unorganized, uneducated. They had been degraded and dispirited by
ages of oppression, and had no means of combining or of uttering a united voice
which should be heard.
Immediately succeeding M. Necker in the ministry of finance came M. Fleury
and M. d'Ormesson. They were both honest, well-meaning men, but were
promptly crushed by a burden which neither of them was at all capable of
bearing. Their names are hardly remembered. Maurepas was now dead. The
Americans, aided by France, had achieved their independence, and France and
England were again at peace. The king now selected M. de Calonne from the
Parliament, as Minister of Finance. He was a man of brilliant genius, of
remarkably courtly manners, but licentious and extravagant. The king hoped, by
his selecting Calonne, to diminish that opposition of the Parliament which was
daily growing more inveterate against the crown. For a time the new minister
was exceedingly popular. His high reputation for financial skill and his suavity
enabled him to effect important loans; and by the sale and the mortgage of the
property of the crown he succeeded for a few months in having money in
abundance. The court rioted anew in voluptuous indulgence. The beautiful
palace of St. Cloud was bought of the Duke of Orleans for the queen, and vast
sums were expended for its embellishment. The Palace of Rambouillet was
purchased as a hunting-seat for the king. Marie Antoinette gave innumerable
costly entertainments at Versailles, and rumor was rife with the scenes of
measureless extravagance which were there displayed. The well-meaning, weakminded
king, having no taste for courtly pleasure and no ability for the
management of affairs, either unconscious of the peril of the state or despairing
of any remedy, fitted up a work-shop at Versailles, where he employed most of
his time at a forge, under the guidance of a blacksmith, tinkering locks and keys.
This man, Gamin, has recorded:
"The king was good, indulgent, timid, curious, fond of sleep. He passionately
loved working as a smith, and hid himself from the queen and the court to file
and forge with me. To set up his anvil and mine, unknown to all the world, it was
necessary to use a thousand stratagems."[57]
There is a secret power called public credit which will speedily bring such a
career to its close. Public credit was now exhausted. No more money could be
borrowed. The taxes for some time in advance were already pledged in payment
of loans. The people, crushed by their burdens, could not bear any augmentation
of taxes. The crisis seemed to have come. Calonne now awoke to the
consciousness of his condition, and was overpowered by the magnitude of the
difficulties in which he was involved. There was but one mode of redress—an
immediate retrenchment of expenses and the including of the privileged class in
the assessment of taxes. Whoever had attempted this had been crushed by the
aristocratic Parliament. Could Calonne succeed? After long and anxious
deliberation he became conscious that it would be impossible to induce the
Parliament to consent to such a reform, that it would be very hazardous to call a
meeting of the States-General, where the people could make their voice to be
heard, and yet it was essential to have some public body upon which he could
lean for support. He therefore recommended that the king should convene an
assembly of the notables, to be composed of such individuals as the king should
select from the clergy, the nobles, and the magistracy, they all belonging to the
privileged class. Such an assembly had never been convened since Richelieu
called one in 1626.
pic
LOUIS XVI. AS LOCKSMITH.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Historical View of the French Revolution, by J. Michelet, vol. i., p. 64.
[39] Louis XVI. was born Aug. 22, 1754. In May, 1770, when not quite sixteen, he married Marie
Antoinette. In May, 1774, he wanted three months of being twenty years of age. Marie Antoinette was born
Nov. 2, 1755. She was but fourteen years and six months old when married. She was but eighteen years and
six months old when she became Queen of France.—Encyclopædia Americana.
[40] "It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France at Versailles; and surely never
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision! I saw her just above the
horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning
star, full of life and splendor and joy."—Burke's Reflections.
[41] Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, i., 75.
[42] Encyclopædia Americana, article Louis XVI.
[43] Encyclopædia Americana, article Louis XV.
[44] Précis de la Revolution, par M. Lacretelle.
[45] "On the very threshold of the business he must propose to make the clergy, the noblesse, the very
Parliament subject to taxes! One shriek of indignation and astonishment reverberates through all the
chateau galleries. M. de Maurepas has to gyrate. The poor king, who had written (to Turgot) a few weeks
ago, 'Il n'y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple' (There is none but you and I who love the people), must
now write a dismissal, and let the French Revolution accomplish itself pacifically or not, as it
can."—Carlyle, French Revolution, i., 41.
"The nobles and the prelates, it seems, considered themselves degraded if they were to contribute to the
repair of the roads; and they would no doubt have declared that their dignity and their existence, the very
rights of property itself, were endangered, if they were now, for the first time, they would have said, in the
history of the monarchy, to be subjected to the visits of the tax-gatherer."—Lectures on the French
Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 102.
[46] Lit de justice was a proceeding in which the king, with his court, proceeded to the Parliament, and
there, sitting upon the throne, caused those edicts which the Parliament did not approve to be registered in
his presence.—Encyclopædia Americana.
[47] It is not necessary to allude to De Clugny, who immediately succeeded Turgot, but who held his office
six months only and attempted nothing.
[48] Woman in France, by Julia Kavanagh, p. 211. Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, vol.
i., p. 375.
[49] Hist. Phil. de la France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. i., p. 28. Audouin states that the war cost
France, from 1778 to 1782, fourteen hundred millions of livres ($280,000,000).
[50] "The queen never disguised her dislike to the American war. She could not conceive how any one
could advise a sovereign to aim at the humiliation of England through an attack on the sovereign authority,
and by assisting a people to organize a republican constitution. She often laughed at the enthusiasm with
which Franklin inspired the French."—Madame Campan's Mem. of Marie Antoinette, ii., 29.
[51] Lectures on Fr. Rev., by Wm. Smyth, i., 109.
[52] Cor. Conf. de Louis XVI., ii., 178.
[53] Lectures on the French Revolution, by William Smyth, i., 115.
[54] "The notion that our maladies were incapable of remedy, and that no human mind could cure them,
added keenly to the general grief. We saw ourselves plunged into a gulf of debts and public engagements,
the interest alone of which absorbed the third part of the revenue, and which, far from being put into a
course of liquidation, were continually accumulating by loans and anticipations."—History of the French
Revolution, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 19.
[55] "And so Necker, Atlas-like, sustains the burden of the finances for five years long. Without wages—
for he refused such—cheered only by public opinion and the ministering of his noble wife. He, too, has to
produce his scheme of taxing; clergy, noblesse to be taxed—like a mere Turgot. Let Necker also depart; not
unlamented."—Carlyle, French Revolution, vol. i., p. 46.
[56] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 22.
[57] Memoirs of the Reign of Louis XVI., by the Abbé Soulavie, vol. ii., p. 191.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ASSEMBLY OF THE NOTABLES.
Measures of Brienne.—The Bed of Justice.—Remonstrance of Parliament.
—Parliament Exiled.—Submission of Parliament.—Duke of Orleans.—
Treasonable Plans of the Duke of Orleans.—Anxiety of the Queen.—The
Diamond Necklace.—Monsieur, the King's Brother.—Bagatelle.—
Desperation of Brienne.—Edict for abolishing the Parliaments.—Energy of
the Court.—Arrest of D'Espréménil and Goislard.—Tumults in Grenoble.—
Terrific Hail-storm.
THE Notables, one hundred and forty-four in number, nearly all ecclesiastics,
nobles, or ennobled, met at Versailles, Jan. 29, 1787. Calonne expected that this
body, carefully selected by the king, would advise that all orders should make
common cause and bear impartially the burden of taxation. Sustained by the
moral power of this advice he hoped that the measure could be carried into
execution. He presented his statement of affairs. Though he endeavored to
conceal the worst, the Notables were appalled. Three hundred and fifty millions
of dollars had been borrowed within a few years, and the annual deficit was
thirty-five millions of dollars.[58] Cautiously he proposed his plan of impartial
taxation. It was the signal for a general assault upon the doomed minister. He
was literally hooted down. Not only the Assembly of Notables, but the clergy,
the Parliament, the nobles all over the realm pounced upon him, led even by the
queen and the Archbishop of Paris; and Calonne, without a friend, was
compelled to resign his office and to fly from France.[59]
The clergy were exceedingly exasperated against Calonne, for they deemed the
proposition to tax the possessions of the Church as sacrilegious. The most active
of the opponents of Calonne was Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse. He was a
bold, resolute, ambitious man, and by the influence of the queen was appointed
to succeed Calonne. "As public credit was dead," said a wag, "an archbishop was
summoned to bury the remains."[60] The spirit of discontent and of menace was
now becoming every day more extended and alarming, and the Revolution was
gaining strength.
Among the Notables thus assembled there were some warm advocates of
popular liberty. La Fayette was perhaps the most conspicuous of these. He spoke
boldly against lettres de cachet and other abuses. The Count d'Artois, afterward
Charles X., reproved him for this freedom. La Fayette firmly, yet with caution,
responded, "When a Notable is summoned to speak his opinion he must speak
it."[61]
One of the first acts of Brienne was to abolish the Assembly of Notables.
Their session continued but nine weeks, being dissolved May 25, 1787. He then
struggled for a time in the midst of embarrassments inextricable until he was
compelled to propose the same measure which had already been three times
rejected with scorn, and which had driven three ministers in disgrace from Paris
—the taxing of the nobles. He did every thing in his power to prepare the way
for the suggestion, and connected the obnoxious bill with another less
objectionable, hoping that the two might pass together. But the clergy and the
nobles were on the alert.
Two thirds of the territory of the kingdom had been grasped by the Church and
the nobles. One third only belonged to the people. Brienne proposed a territorial
tax which should fall upon all landed proprietors alike. There was an
instantaneous shout of indignation from the whole privileged class, and the cry
"Away with him," "Hustle him out," spread from castle to castle, and from
convent to convent.
It was a custom, rather than a law, that no royal decree could pass into effect
until it had been registered by Parliament; and it was a custom, rather than a law,
that, if the Parliament refused to register a decree, the king could hold what is
called a bed of justice; that is, could summon the Parliament into his presence
and command the decree to be registered. As the king could banish, or imprison,
or behead any one at his pleasure, no Parliament had as yet ventured to disobey
the royal command.
The Parliament declined registering the decree taxing the property of the clergy
and the nobles. The king peremptorily summoned the whole refractory body to
appear before him. It was the 6th of August, 1787. In a vast train of carriages, all
the members, some one hundred and twenty in number, wheeled out from Paris
to the Palace of Versailles. There the king with his own lips ordered them to
register the decree. Obedient to the royal order it was registered, and the
Parliament, sullen and exasperated, was rolled back again to the metropolis. The
people contemplated the scene in silent expectation, and by thousands
surrounded the Parliament on its return, and greeted them with acclamations.
Emboldened by the sympathy of the people in this conflict with the court, the
Parliament ventured to enter upon its records a remonstrance against the violent
procedure; and, to gain still more strength from popular approval, they made the
strange assertion that Parliament was not competent to register tax edicts at all;
that for this act the authority of the three estates of the realm was essential,
convened in the States-General. This was, indeed, unheard of doctrine, for the
Parliament had for centuries registered such decrees. It, however, answered its
purpose; it brought the masses of the people at once and enthusiastically upon
their side.
This call for the States-General was the first decisive step toward bringing the
people into the field. Tumultuous crowds surrounded the palace where the
Parliament held its session, and with clapping of hands and shouts received the
tidings of the resolutions adopted. The king, indignant, issued letters de cachet
on the night of the 14th, and the next morning the whole body was arrested and
taken in carriages into banishment to Troyes, a dull city about one hundred miles
from Paris. The blessings of the people followed the Parliament;[62] "for there
are quarrels," says Carlyle, "in which even Satan, bringing help, were not
unwelcome."
Paris was now in a state of commotion. Defiant placards were posted upon the
walls, and there were angry gatherings in the streets. The two brothers of the
king, subsequently Louis XVIII. and Charles X., entered Paris in state carriages
to expunge from the records of the Parliament the obnoxious protests and
resolutions. They came with a well-armed retinue. The stormy multitudes
frowned and hissed, and were only dispersed by the gleam of the sword.
For a month Parliament remained at Troyes, excessively weary of exile. In the
mean time Brienne had no money, and could raise none. Both parties were ready
for accommodation. The crown consented to relinquish the tax upon the nobles,
and to summon the States-General in five years. Parliament consented to register
an edict for a loan of one hundred millions of dollars, the burden of which was
to fall upon the people alone. With this arrangement the exiled Parliament was
brought back on the 20th of September. "It went out," said D'Espréménil,
"covered with glory. It came back covered with mud."
On the 20th of September the king appeared before the Parliament in person, to
present the edict for the loan and the promise to convoke the States-General at
the close of five years.
There was at that time in Parliament a cousin of the king, the Duke of Orleans,
one of the highest nobles of the realm.[63] Inheriting from his father the
enormous Orleans property, and heir, through his wife, to the vast estates of the
Duke of Penthièvre, he was considered the richest man in France, enjoying an
income of seven million five hundred thousand francs a year ($1,500,000). For
years he had been rioting in measureless debauchery. His hair was falling off, his
blood was corrupted, and his bronzed face was covered with carbuncles.[64]
Sated with sensual indulgence, the passion for political distinction seized his
soul. As heir to the dukedom of Penthièvre, he looked forward to the office of
high admiral. In preparation he ventured upon a naval campaign, and
commanded the rear guard of M. d'Orvilliers' fleet in the battle off Ushant.
Rumor affirmed that during the battle he hid in the hold of the ship. The court,
exasperated by his haughtiness, and jealous of his power, gladly believed the
story, and overwhelmed him with caricatures and epigrams. Some time after this
he ascended in a balloon, and as he had previously descended a mine, where he
had shown but little self-possession, it was stated that he had shown all the
elements his cowardice.[65] The king withheld from him, thus overwhelmed with
ridicule, the office of admiral, and conferred it upon his nephew, the son of the
Count d'Artois.
The Duke of Orleans was envenomed by the affront, and breathed vengeance.
While in this state of mind, and refusing to present himself at court, he received
another indignity still more exasperating. A matrimonial alliance had been
arranged between the eldest daughter of the Duke of Orleans and the son of
Count d'Artois, the Duke d'Angoulême. An income of four hundred thousand
francs ($80,000) per annum had been settled upon the prospective bride. She had
received the congratulations of the court, and the foreign ministers had been
authorized to communicate to their respective courts the approaching nuptials,
when Marie Antoinette, alarmed by the feeble health of her two sons, and
thinking that the son of the Count d'Artois might yet become heir to the throne of
France, broke off the match, and decided that her daughter, instead of the
daughter of the Duke of Orleans, should marry the young Duke d'Angoulême.[66]
The Duke of Orleans was now ready to adopt any measures of desperation for
the sake of revenge. Though one of the highest and most opulent of the
aristocrats of Europe, he was eager to throw himself into the arms of the popular
party, and to lead them in any measures of violence in their assaults upon the
crown.[67]
When Louis XVI. met the Parliament to secure the registry of the edict for a new
loan, a strong opposition was found organized against him, and he encountered
silence and gloomy looks. The king had not intended to hold a bed of justice
with his commands, but merely a royal sitting for friendly conference. But the
antagonism was so manifest that he was compelled to appeal to his kingly
authority, and to order the registry of the edict. The Duke of Orleans rose, and
with flushed cheek and defiant tone, entered a protest. Two members, his
confederates, ventured to sustain him. This insult royalty could not brook. The
duke was immediately sent into exile to one of his rural estates, and the two
other nobles were sent to prison.
A fierce conflict was now commenced between the king and the Parliament. The
Parliament passed a decree condemning arbitrary arrests. The king, by an order
in council, canceled the decree. The Parliament reaffirmed it. The king was
exasperated to the highest degree, but, with the united Parliament and the
popular voice against him, he did not dare to proceed to extreme measures.
Louis XIV. would have sent every man of them to the Bastille or the scaffold.
But the days of Louis XIV. were no more.
It may at first thought seem strange that in this conflict the people should have
sided with the Parliament. But the power of the crown was the great power they
had to dread, and which they wished to see humbled. It was to them a matter of
much more moment that the despotism of the court should be curtailed than that
the one act of taxation should be passed in their favor. Men of far-reaching
sagacity must have guided the populace to so wise a decision. Inequality of
taxation was but one of the innumerable wrongs to which the people were
exposed. What they needed was a thorough reform in the government which
should correct all abuses. To attain this it was first indispensable that despotism
should be struck down. Therefore their sympathies were with the Parliament in
its struggle against the crown, though it so happened that the conflict arose upon
a point adverse to the popular interest.
The Duke of Orleans began seriously to contemplate the dethronement of his
cousin and the usurpation of the crown. With almost boundless wealth at his
command, and placing himself at the head of the popular party, now rising with
such resistless power, he thought the plan not difficult of accomplishment. He
had traveled in England, had invested large sums there, had formed friendship
with the sons of the king, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York. The court of
St. James was bitterly exasperated against the court of Louis XVI. for aiding in
the emancipation of America. The Duke of Orleans consequently doubted not
that he could rely upon the friendship of England in the introduction of a new
dynasty to France.[68]
And now the parliaments which had been organized in many of the provinces
made common cause with the Parliament of Paris, and sent in their
remonstrances against the despotism of the crown. Gloom now pervaded the
saloons of Versailles. Marie Antoinette, with pale cheek and anxious brow,
wandered through the apartments dejected and almost despairing. Groves and
gardens surrounded her embellished with flowers and statues and fountains. The
palace which was her home surpassed in architectural grandeur and in all the
appliances of voluptuous indulgence any abode which had ever before been
reared upon earth. Obsequious servants and fawning courtiers anticipated her
wishes, and her chariot with its glittering outriders swept like a meteor through
the enchanting drives which art, aided by the wealth of a realm, had constructed,
and yet probably there was not a woman in the whole realm, in garret or hut or
furrowed field, who bore a heavier heart than that which throbbed within the
bosom of the queen. The king was a harmless, inoffensive, weak-minded man,
spending most of his time at the forge. It was well understood that the queen,
energetic and authoritative, was the real head of the government, and that every
act of vigor originated with her. She consequently became peculiarly obnoxious
to the Parliament, and through them to the people; and Paris was flooded with
the vilest calumnies against her.
There was at that time fluttering about Versailles a dissolute woman of
remarkable beauty, the Countess Lamotte. She forged notes against the queen,
and purchased a very magnificent pearl necklace at the price of three hundred
thousand dollars. Cardinal Rohan was involved in the intrigue. The transaction
was noised through all Europe. The queen was accused of being engaged in a
swindling transaction with a profligate woman to cheat a jeweler, and was also
accused of enormous extravagance in wishing to add to the already priceless
jewels of the crown others to the amount of three hundred thousand dollars. The
queen was innocent; but the public mind exasperated wished to believe all evil
of her. Men, haggard and hungry, and without employment; women ragged and
starving, and with their starving children in their arms, were ever repeating the
foul charge against the queen as a thief, an accomplice with a prostitute, one who
was willing to see the people starve if she might but hang pearls about her neck.
The story was so universally credited, and created such wide-spread
exasperation, that Talleyrand remarked, "Mind that miserable affair of the
necklace. I should be nowise surprised if it should overturn the French
monarchy."
In addition to all this the report was spread abroad that the children of Marie
Antoinette were illegitimate; that the king had not sufficient capacity to reign;
that his next brother, called Monsieur, subsequently Louis XVIII., was engaged
in a conspiracy with the Parliament to eject Louis XVI. from the throne, and to
establish a government of the nobles, of which Monsieur should be the nominal
head. It is by no means improbable that this plan was formed. It will account for
many of the actions of the nobles during the first stages of the Revolution.[69]
The second brother of the king, Count d'Artois, a very elegant and accomplished
man of fashion, fond of pleasure, and with congenial tastes with the young and
beautiful queen, was accused, though probably without foundation, of being her
paramour and the father of her children. He had erected, just outside the walls of
Paris, in the woods of Boulogne, a beautiful little palace which he called
Bagatelle. This was the seat of the most refined voluptuousness and of the most
costly indulgence.
The queen now knew not which way to turn from the invectives which were so
mercilessly showered upon her. It was in vain to attempt an answer. Her lofty
spirit so far sustained her as to enable her in public to appear with dignity. But in
her boudoir she wept in all the anguish of a crushed and despairing heart. "One
morning at Trianon," writes Madame Campan, "I went into the queen's chamber
when she was in bed. There were letters lying upon her bed and she was weeping
bitterly. Her tears were mingled with sobs, which she occasionally interrupted by
exclamations of 'Ah! that I were dead. Wretches! monsters! what have I done to
them?' I offered her orange-flower-water and ether. 'Leave me, if you love me; it
would be better to kill me at once.' At this moment she threw her arm over my
shoulder and began weeping afresh."[70]
Parliament had registered the edict for a loan of one hundred millions of dollars.
It would be no burden to them. The people alone were to be taxed for the debt.
But public credit was dead. No one would lend. Brienne was also assailed with
lampoons and caricatures and envenomed invectives, until, baited and bayed
from every direction, he became almost distracted.[71] Burning with fever and
with tremulous nerves, he paced his chamber-floor, ready for any deed of
desperation which could extricate him from his woe. All this the Parliament in
Paris and the twelve parliaments in the departments enjoyed, for it was the object
of the nobles, who mainly formed these bodies, to wrest back from the monarchy
that feudal power which energetic kings had wrested from them. The people
were ready to sustain the nobles, though their enemies, in their attack upon the
crown, and the nobles were also eager to call in the people to aid them in their
perilous conflict. Some of the nobles, however, more far-sighted, strongly
opposed the calling of the States-General. The majority, however, prevailed, and
decreed to call a meeting of the states, but with the proviso that five years were
to elapse before they should be convened.
Brienne was now goaded to desperation. He determined to break down the
parliaments. Secretly he matured a plan for the formation of a series of minor
courts, where all small causes could be tried, and a superior court for registering
edicts. Thus there would be absolutely nothing left for the parliaments to do, and
they could be abolished as useless. These courts, the superior to be called the
Plenary Court and the others Grand Bailliages, were to be composed of
courtiers carefully selected, who would be subservient to the wishes of the king.
[72]
It was a shrewd measure, but one which required the strictest secrecy in its
execution. Such a coup d'état must come as a sudden stroke, or so powerful a
body as the Parliament would be able to ward off the blow. The whole kingdom
was then divided into a number of provinces, over each of which a governor,
called an intendant, presided, appointed by the king. The royal edict was to be
placed secretly in the hands of each of these intendants, with minute directions
how to act, and they were promptly and secretly to organize the courts, so that
upon an appointed day all should be accomplished, the new machinery in
motion, and the power of the parliaments annihilated. So important was it that
profound secrecy should be observed that printers were conveyed in disguise by
night to one of the saloons of Versailles, where they brought their type and put
up their press to print the royal edict. Sentries stood at the doors and the
windows of their work-room and their food was handed in to them. M.
d'Espréménil, one of the most active and influential members of Parliament,
suspecting some stratagem, succeeded, through a bribe of twenty-five hundred
dollars, in obtaining a copy of the edict. In the greatest excitement he hastened
back to Paris and presented himself in Parliament with the edict in his hand. It
was the 3d of May, 1788. The members listened with breathless eagerness to the
reading of the paper, which was to their body a death-warrant. The edict required
all the military to be assembled on the appointed day, ready for action. The
intendants were to march an armed force to those cities of the provinces where
parliaments had been in session, and, when the new courts were to be organized,
to enforce the decree. None of the intendants or commanders of the troops knew
what was to be done, but confidential agents of the king were to be sent to all
these places, that at the same day and on the same hour the order might be
received and executed all over France.
There succeeded this reading at first a universal outbreak of indignation. They
then took an oath to resist, at the peril of their lives, all measures tending to the
overthrow of the old French parliaments. The tidings that the plot had been
detected were borne speedily to the court at Versailles. Fierce passion now added
fury to the battle. Two lettres de cachet were issued to seize D'Espréménil and
another active member of the opposition, Goislard, and silence them in the
Bastille. Warned of their danger they escaped through scuttles and over the roofs
of houses to the Palace of Justice, dispatched runners in every direction to
summon the members, and then, laying aside their disguise, assumed their robes
of office. An hour had not elapsed ere Parliament was in session and all Paris in
commotion. Parliament immediately voted that the two members should not be
given up, and that their session was permanent and subject to no adjournment
until the pursuit of the two victims was relinquished. All the avenues of the
Palace of Justice were inundated with a throng of excited citizens, bewildered by
this open and deadly antagonism between the Parliament and the court. All the
day and all the night and all the next day, for thirty-six hours, the session of
stormy debate and fierce invective continued. Again gloomy night settled down
over sleepless Paris. But suddenly there was heard the roll of drums and the
bugle-blast and the tramp of armed men. Captain d'Agoust, at the head of the
royal troops, marched from Versailles with infantry, cavalry, and artillery.
Sternly and rapidly by torch-light the soldiers advanced, clearing their way
through the multitudes crowding the court-yards and avenues of the Palace of
Justice.[73]
At the head of a file of soldiers with gleaming bayonets and loaded muskets,
D'Agoust, a soldier of cast-iron face and heart, mounted the stairs, strode with
the loud clatter of arms into the hall, and demanded, in the name of the king, M.
Duval d'Espréménil and M. Goislard de Monsabert. As he did not know these
persons he called upon them to come forward and surrender themselves. For a
moment there was profound silence, and then a voice was heard, "We are all
D'Espréménils and Monsaberts." For a time there was great tumult, as many
voices repeated the cry.
Order being restored, the president inquired whether D'Agoust will employ
violence. "I am honored," the captain replies, "with his majesty's commission to
execute his majesty's order. I would gladly execute the order without violence,
but at all events I shall execute it. I leave the senate for a few minutes to
deliberate which method they prefer." With his guard he left the hall.
After a brief interval the sturdy captain returned with his well-armed retinue.
"We yield to force," said the two counselors, as they surrendered themselves.
Their brethren gathered around their arrested companions for a parting embrace,
but the soldiers cut short the scene by seizing them and leading them down,
through winding passages, to a rear gate, where two carriages were in waiting.
Each was placed in a carriage with menacing bayonets at his side. The populace
looked on in silence. They dared not yet speak. But they were learning a lesson.
D'Espréménil was taken to an ancient fortress on one of the Isles of Hieres, in
the Mediterranean, about fourteen miles from Toulon. Goislard was conveyed to
a prison in Lyons.
D'Agoust, having dispatched his prisoners, returned to the Hall of Assembly, and
ordered the members of Parliament to disperse. They were compelled to file out,
one hundred and sixty-five in number, beneath the bayonets of the grenadiers.
D'Agoust locked the doors, put the keys into his pocket, and, with his battalions,
marched back to Versailles.
The Parliament of Paris was now turned into the street. But still there was no
money in the treasury. The provincial parliaments were roused, and had matured
their plans to resist the new courts. The 8th of May arrived, when the decree,
now every where promulgated, was to be put into execution. The intendants and
the king's commissioners found, at all points, organized opposition. The
provincial noblesse united with the parliaments, for it was now but a struggle of
the nobility against the unlimited power of the crown. A deputation of twelve
was sent from the Parliament of Breton, with a remonstrance, to Versailles. They
were all consigned to the Bastille. A second deputation, much larger, was sent.
Agents of the king met them, and, by menaces, drove them back. A third, still
more numerous, was appointed, to approach Versailles by different roads. The
king refused to receive them. They held a meeting in Paris, and invited La
Fayette and all patriotic Bretons in Paris to advise with them.[74] This was the
origin of the Jacobin Club.
Eight parliaments were exiled. But at Grenoble they refused to surrender
themselves to the lettres de cachet. The tocsin pealed forth the alarm, and
booming cannon roused the masses in the city and upon the mountains to rush,
with such weapons as they could seize, to protect the Parliament. The royal
general was compelled to capitulate and to retire, leaving his commission
unexecuted. The nobles had appealed to the masses, and armed them to aid in
resisting the king, and thus had taught them their power. It seems as though
supernatural intelligence was guiding events toward the crisis of a terrible
revolution. Four of the parliaments were thus enabled to bid defiance to the
kingly power.
The attempt to establish the new courts was a total failure. The clergy, the
nobility, and the people were all against it. A universal storm of hatred and
contempt fell upon all who accepted offices in those courts. The Plenary Court
held but one session, and then expired amid the hisses of all classes. The king
seemed suddenly bereft of authority.
"Let a commissioner of the king," says Weber, "enter one of these parliaments to
have an edict registered, the whole tribunal will disappear, leaving the
commissioner alone with the clerk and president. The edict registered and the
commissioner gone, the whole tribunal hastens back to declare such registration
null. The highways are covered with deputations of the parliaments, proceeding
to Versailles to have their registers expunged by the king's hand, or returning
home to cover a new page with new resolutions still more audacious."[75]
Still there was no money, and Brienne was in despair. Wistfully he looked to his
embowered chateau at Brienne, with its silent groves and verdant lawn. There,
while these scenes were transpiring, had sat, almost beneath the shadow of his
castle, "a dusky-complexioned, taciturn boy, under the name of Napoleon
Bonaparte." This boy, forgetful of the sports of childhood, was gazing with
intensest interest upon the conflict, and by untiring study, night and day, was
girding himself with strength to come forth into the arena. He had already taken
his side as the inexorable foe of feudal privilege and the friend of popular rights.
He had already incurred the frown of his teachers for the energy with which he
advocated in his themes the doctrine of equality. "The themes of Napoleon," said
one of his teachers, "are like flaming missiles ejected from a volcano."
In these fearful scenes, ominous of approaching floods and earthquakes, God, in
the awful mystery of his providence, took an energetic part. On the 13th of July
of this year, 1788, the whole country, for one hundred and twenty miles around
Paris, was laid waste by one of the most frightful hail-storms which ever beat
down a harvest. Not a green blade was left. Gaunt famine was inevitably to
stride over distracted, impoverished France. Consternation oppressed all hearts.
It was now hastily decided that the States-General should be assembled in the
following month of May. The queen was that day standing at one of the windows
of Versailles, pallid, trembling, and lost in gloomy thought. She held in her hand
a cup of coffee, which, mechanically, she seemed to sip. Beckoning to Madame
Campan, she said to her,
"Great God! what a piece of news will be made public to-day. The king grants
States-General. 'Tis a first beat of the drum of ill omen for France. This noblesse
will ruin us."[76]
Brienne, who now occupied the post of prime minister, wrote to M. Necker
entreating him to return to the post of Controller of the Finance. Necker refused.
He was not willing to take charge of the finances with Brienne prime minister.
Bankruptcy, with its national disgrace and wide-spreading misery, was at hand.
On the 16th of August an edict was issued that all payments at the royal treasury
should be made three fifths in cash, and the remaining two fifths in promissory
notes bearing interest. As the treasury was without credit the notes were
comparatively valueless. This was virtual bankruptcy, in which the state offered
to pay sixty cents on the dollar. The announcement of this edict rolled another
surge of excitement and consternation over the kingdom.
Count d'Artois called upon the queen and informed her of the terrible agitation
pervading the public mind. She sat down in silence and wept. Brienne, pale,
haggard, and trembling, frightened by the storm now raging, having contrived to
secure for himself property to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year, gave in his resignation, entered his carriage and drove off to Italy,
leaving the king to struggle alone against the Revolution.[77]
During these conflicts for power between the king and the nobles the moan of
twenty-five millions crushed beneath the chariot-wheels of feudal aristocracy
ascended, not unheeded, to the ear of Heaven. The hour of retribution if not of
recompense approached. For weary ages the people had waited for its coming
with hope ever deferred. Generation after generation had come and gone, and
still fathers and mothers, sons and daughters were toiling in the furrows and in
the shop, exclaiming, "O God, how long!" The dawn after the apparently
interminable night was now at hand, but it was the dawn not of a bright but of a
lurid day. France at this time presented the spectacle of millions in misery, of
some thousands obtaining by the severest toil the bare necessaries of life, and of
a few hundred rioting in wealth and luxury.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] Histoire Philosophique de la Revolution de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. i., p. 58.
[59] "Calonne has published a work on the French Revolution. At the end of it he gives an outline of his
plan. Nothing can be more reasonable; and it remains an eternal indictment on the people of consequence
then in France, more particularly on that part of them that composed the Assembly of Notables."—Lectures
on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 122.
[60] Montgaillard, vol. i., p. 300.
[61] There was at this time a nominal tax of two twentieths upon all incomes, which the clergy and the
nobility were to pay as the rest. They contrived, however, in a great measure to evade this tax. "The princes
of the blood, for example," says Bouillé, in his Memoirs, "who enjoyed among them from twenty-four to
twenty-five millions yearly ($5,000,000), paid for their two twentieths only 188,000 livres ($37,600)
instead of 2,400,000 ($480,000). The Duke of Orleans, who presided over the committee to which I
belonged in the Assembly of the Notables, said to me, one day, after a deliberation in which we had
considered and approved the establishment of provincial administrations, 'Are you aware, sir, that this
pleasantry will cost me at least 300,000 livres ($60,000) a year?' 'How is that, my lord?' I asked. 'At
present,' he replied, 'I arrange with the intendants, and pay pretty nearly what I like. The provincial
administrations, on the contrary, will make me pay what is strictly due.'"—Bouillé's Memoirs, p. 41.
[62] "This body at first courageously sustained the blow which had fallen upon them. But soon men
accustomed to the pleasures of Paris threw aside the mask of stoicism which they had assumed, and
redeemed themselves from exile by promising to adopt the views of the court, provided that no new
taxation was proposed."—Desodoards, vol. i., p. 68.
[63] The Marquis of Ferrières, a noble of high rank, was a deputy of the nobles. He was a warm patron of
the old opinions and customs, and voted perseveringly with the majority of his order. In his very interesting
Memoirs he writes thus of the Duke of Orleans, upon whom, of course, he could not look with a partial eye.
"The duke was himself without talents, and debased by a life of drunkenness; greedy of money to a degree
that would have been perfectly reprehensible in a private man, but which was disgraceful and degrading in
a prince. He had every vice which can make crime odious, and none of the brilliant qualities by which it
can be in some degree illustrated in the eyes of posterity. The dead feelings of the duke it was necessary to
animate in some way or other, that he might appear to have a wish for something, and so they held out to
him the supreme power, under the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom; all the public money at his
disposal, and in the event, which it was for him to hasten, the crown for his children, and himself thus made
the commencement of a new dynasty."
[64] Carlyle, French Revolution, vol. i., p. 48.
[65] Biographie Moderne.
"Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which did our young prince hide in the hold! Our
poor young prince gets his opera plaudits changed into mocking tehees, and can not become Grand Admiral
—the source to him of woes which one may call endless."—Carlyle, French Revolution, vol. i., p. 43.
[66] This was the princess who subsequently experienced such terrible suffering in the prison of the
Temple, with her brother, the dauphin. She was released by Napoleon, and afterward married the Duke
d'Angoulême.
[67] Desodoards, vol. i., p. 28. Thiers, vol. i., p. 23.
[68] Desodoards, vol. i., p. 50.
[69] Histoire Phil. de la Rev. de Fr. par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, vol. i., p. 45.
[70] Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, vol. i., p. 243.
[71] "Paris is what they call in figurative speech flooded with pamphlets (regorgé des brochures), flooded
and eddying again. Hot deluge from so many patriot ready-writers, all at the fervid or boiling point; each
ready-writer now in the hour of eruption going like an Iceland geyser! Against which what can a judicious
friend, Morellet, do; a Rivarol, an unruly Linguet (well paid for it), spouting cold?"—Carlyle, vol. i., p. 91.
[72] Montgaillard, tome i., p. 405.
[73] The following was the commission of D'Agoust: "J'ordonne au sieur d'Agoust, capitaine de mes gardes
françaises, de se rendre au palais à la tête de six companies, d'en occuper toutes les avenues, et d'arrêter
dans la grand chambre de mon parlement, ou partout aillieurs, messieurs Duval d'Espréménil et Goislard,
conseillers, pour les remettre entre les mains des officiers de la prévôte de l'hôtel."—Desodoards, tome i.,
p. 82.
[74] Carlyle, vol. i., p. 101.
[75] Weber, vol. i., p. 275.
[76] Campan, vol. iii., p. 104.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE APPEAL TO THE PEOPLE.
Recall of Necker.—Reassembling the Notables.—Pamphlet of the Abbé
Sièyes.—Vote of the King's Brother.—His supposed Motive.—The Basis of
Representation.—Arrangements for the Meeting of the States.—Statement
of Grievances.—Mirabeau: his Menace.—Sympathy of the Curates with the
People.—Remonstrance of the Nobles.—First Riot.—Meeting of the States-
General.—New Effort of the privileged Classes.
THE king again turned to Necker, as one strong in the confidence of the people.
The announcement of his recall filled France with enthusiasm. Guns were fired,
bells rung, and masses of people surged through the streets of Paris and of
Versailles, shouting exultingly. It was the 24th of August, 1788. Necker's first
exclamation, at the intimation of his recall, was, "Ah! that I could recall the
fifteen months of the Archbishop of Toulouse." He found but two hundred and
fifty thousand francs ($50,000) in the treasury. Though disorder and ruin had
made rapid progress, the reputation of Necker was such that he immediately had
loans offered him, and the public funds rose thirty per cent.[78]
Preparations were immediately made for the assembling of the States-General,
and the public announcement was given that it was to be convened on the 27th
of April. There had been no meeting of the States-General for one hundred and
seventy-five years, and the question now rose, How shall the members be
elected? who shall be voters? of how many shall the body be composed? what
proportion shall be from the privileged and what from the unprivileged class?
The learned bodies and popular writers were invited to express their views upon
these points. Thousands of political pamphlets immediately appeared, and every
mind in the nation was roused.[79] The all-important and most agitating question
was, What proportion shall the people occupy in this assembly? The
unprivileged class composed ninety-eight hundredths of the nation; the
privileged class two hundredths. And yet the privileged class demanded
inexorably that they should have two thirds of the representatives, and the people
one third. This would place the people in a hopeless minority, and leave them
entirely at the mercy of the privileged class.
To settle these agitating questions the Notables were again summoned on the 6th
of September, 1788. It was the same body which Calonne had called together.
Parliament had firmly declared in favor of allowing the people a representation
of but one third, giving the nobles a third and the clergy a third. The king and
Necker were fully assured that such an arrangement could by no means satisfy
the nation—that it would be a mockery of the people which would only
exasperate them. They hoped that these Notables, carefully selected, though
from the aristocracy, would be willing to give ninety-eight of the people at least
an equal voice with two of the aristocracy.
The Abbé Sièyes had written a pamphlet which had produced a profound
impression throughout France. He thus asked, and answered, three questions:
"What is the Third Estate? The whole people. What has it hitherto been in our
form of government? Nothing. What does it want? To become something."
But the Notables were now alarmed, and a warm discussion ensued between the
advocates of ancient traditions and of national justice. One alone of the several
committees into which the Notables were divided voted in favor of allowing the
people an equal representation with the privileged classes. Monsieur, afterward
Louis XVIII., was chairman of that committee. When the king was informed of
this vote he remarked, "Let them add my vote: I give it willingly."[80] After a
month's session, the Notables, on the 12th of December, having accomplished
nothing, vanished, to appear no more forever.
The question was still unsettled, and the clamor was growing louder and more
exciting. It was a vital struggle. To give the people an equal voice was death to
aristocratic usurpation. To give the privileged class two votes, to the people one,
hopelessly perpetuated abuses. The question could only be settled by the
authority of the king. On the 27th of December Necker made a report to the king
recommending that the unprivileged class should send the same number of
delegates as the privileged.[81] In accordance with this report, on the 24th of
January, 1789, the royal edict was issued.[82] The dissatisfaction on the part of
the nobles amounted almost to rebellion. In Brittany the nobles, who had sent in
a strong protest, refused to send any delegates to the States-General, hoping
probably that the nobles and the clergy generally would follow their example,
and that thus the measure might be frustrated.
But events ran onward like the sweep of ocean tides. Nothing could retard them.
Preparations were made for the elections. Among the people every man over
twenty-five years of age who paid a tax was allowed to vote.[83] A more sublime
spectacle earth has rarely witnessed. Twenty-five millions of people suddenly
gained the right of popular suffrage. Between five and six millions of votes were
cast. The city of Paris was divided into sixty districts, each of which chose two
electors, and these electors were to choose twenty deputies. The people were
also enjoined to send in a written statement of their grievances, with instructions
to the deputies respecting the reforms which they wished to have introduced.
These statements of grievances, now existing in thirty-six compact folio
volumes, present appalling testimony to the outrages which the people had for
ages been enduring. With propriety, dignity, and marvelous unanimity of purpose
the people assembled at the polls.[84]
There were a few of the nobles who were in favor of reform. In Provence the
nobility in their provincial parliament protested against the royal edict, declaring
that such innovations as were contemplated tended to "impair the dignity of the
nobility." One of their number, Count Mirabeau, ventured to remonstrate against
this arrogance, and to advocate the rights of the people. He was a man of
extraordinary genius and courage, and before no mortal or assemblage of mortals
could his eye be compelled to quail. He persisted and stood at bay, the whole
Parliament, in a tumult of rage, assailing him. With amazing powers of
vituperative eloquence he hurled back their denunciations, and glared upon them
fiercely and unconquerably. He was a man of Herculean frame, with a gigantic
head, thickly covered with shaggy locks, and he would have been an exceedingly
handsome man had not his face been horribly scarred with the small-pox. He
was a man of iron nerve and soul, and knew not what it was to fear any thing.
Like most of the noblesse and the higher clergy, he had lived a dissolute life. The
parliamentary assembly, in a storm of wrath, expelled him from their body. He
left the house, but in departing, in portentous menace, exclaimed:
"In all countries and in all times the aristocrats have implacably pursued every
friend of the people; and with tenfold implacability if such were himself born of
the aristocracy. It was thus that the last of the Gracchi perished by the hands of
the Patricians. But he, being struck with the mortal stab, flung dust toward
heaven and called on the avenging deities; and from this dust there was born
Marius—Marius, not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri, as for
overturning in Rome the tyranny of the nobles."[85]
Mirabeau now threw himself into the arms of the Third Estate. That he might
more perfectly identify himself with them, he hired a shop, it is said, in
Marseilles, and put up his sign—Mirabeau, Woolen-draper. By such influences
he was elected deputy by the Third Estate both at Aix and at Marseilles. With
enthusiasm was he elected—with ringing of bells, booming of cannon, and
popular acclaim. He decided to accept the election of Aix. His measureless
audacity was soon called into requisition to repel the haughtiness of the court.[86]
The nobles had obtained the decision that the people should not be allowed the
secret ballot, but should vote with an audible voice. They cherished the hope that
inferior people so dependent upon the higher and wealthy classes, would not
venture openly to vote in opposition to the wishes of their superiors.[87] It was
thought that the nobles might thus be able to control the popular election. To
render this more certain, the people, in their primary assemblies, were only to
choose electors; and these electors were to choose the delegates. Thus then was a
double chance for intimidation and bribery.
But the people had made progress in intelligence far beyond the conceptions of
the nobles. They had an instinctive perception of their rights, and, in the
presence of their frowning lords, unawed, yet respectfully, they chose electors
who would be true to the popular cause.[88] Thus the nobles not only failed in
introducing an aristocratic element into the popular branch, but, much to their
chagrin, they found a very powerful popular party thrown into the order of the
clergy.[89] The higher offices in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which gave the
possessor vast revenue and no labor, were generally in the hands of nobles,
haughty, intolerant, united in all their sympathies with their brethren of the
privileged class. But the curates, the pastors of the churches, who preached, and
visited the rich, and instructed the children, working hard and living in penury,
came from the firesides of the people. They were familiar with the sufferings of
their parishioners, and their sympathies were warmly with them. Many of these
curates were men of unaffected piety. Nearly every writer upon the Revolution is
compelled to do them justice.[90]
It had been decided that the States-General should consist of twelve hundred
members. The people were consequently to choose six hundred, and the clergy
and nobility six hundred. But, as the three orders held their elections separately,
the two privileged classes were entitled to three hundred each. Two hundred
curates were chosen as representatives of the clergy. And though these parish
ministers were much overawed by their ecclesiastical superiors, and would
hardly venture openly to vote in contradiction to their wishes, still both nobles
and bishops understood that they were in heart with the people. There was also a
very small minority among the nobles who were advocates of the popular cause,
some from noble impulses, like La Fayette, and some from ignoble motives, like
the Duke of Orleans. Thomas Jefferson, who was at this time in Paris, wrote four
days after the opening of the States-General to Mr. Jay, "It was imagined the
ecclesiastical elections would have been generally in favor of the higher clergy;
on the contrary, the lower clergy have obtained five sixths of these deputations.
These are the sons of peasants, who have done all the drudgery of the service for
ten, twenty, and thirty guineas a year, and whose oppressions and penury,
contrasted with the pride and luxury of the higher clergy, have rendered them
perfectly disposed to humble the latter."
These facts, and the harmony with which the inexperienced multitude took this
first great step toward national regeneration, excited throughout aristocratic
Europe amazement and alarm. Kings and nobles alike trembled. All the states of
Europe, like France, were oppressed by feudal despotism. All the people of
Europe might, like the French, demand reform. The formidable aspect which this
popular unity of thought and action presented struck such terror that many of the
leading nobles of France combined, among whom was Count d'Artois, brother of
the king, afterward Charles X., and wrote a menacing letter to the king, to induce
him to break his pledge and forbid the meeting of the States.[91]
pic
FIRST RIOT IN THE FAUBOURG ST. ANTOINE.
It was now, however, too late to retract. The train was in motion and could not be
stopped. The meeting had been appointed for the 27th of April, but was
postponed until the 4th of May. Another effort, and one still more desperate, was
now made to prevent the meeting. By bribery, secret agents, and false rumors, a
riot was fomented in Paris. It was apparently judged that if fifty thousand men
could be turned loose into the streets, starving and without work, to pillage and
destroy, it would authorize the concentration of the army at Paris; the deluded
rioters could be easily shot down, and it could plausibly be affirmed that public
tranquility required the postponement of the meeting of the States. The mob was
roused by secret instigators. Guns were skillfully placed here and there, which
they could seize. Two cart-loads of paving-stones were placed in their way. For
twenty-four hours a tumultuous mass of people were left to do as they pleased,
apparently waiting for the tumult to gain strength.
But the effort was a failure; it proved but an artificial mob, and the outbreak
almost died of itself. One house, that of M. Reveillon, was sacked, and the winebottles
from his cellar distributed through the streets. At length the soldiers were
called in, and at the first discharge of the guns the riot was quelled. How many
were shot down by the discharge of grapeshot is uncertain. The court made a
foolish endeavor to exaggerate the disturbance, and represented that the people
were ferocious in violence. Others, on the popular side, represented that
multitudes were assembled from curiosity to see what was going on, that the
streets were swept with grapeshot, and that hundreds of innocent spectators were
cut down. M. Bailly, on the contrary, says, that the rioters fled as soon as the
soldiers appeared, and that no one was injured.
The court did not venture to prosecute inquiries respecting the outbreak.[92]
The cold winds of winter were now sweeping over France. All the industrial
energies of the nation were paralyzed. The loss of the harvest had created a
general famine, and famine had introduced pestilence. Men, women, and
children, without number, wandered over the highways, and by a natural instinct
flocked to Paris. The inhabitants of the city looked appalled upon these
multitudes, with haggard faces and in rags, who crowded their pavements. They
could not be fed, and starving men are not willing to lie down tranquilly and die
when they have strong arms to seize that food which the rich can obtain with
money. The eloquent and impassioned writers of the day had fully unveiled to
the nation the abuses which it had for ages endured, and yet the people, with
wonderful patience and long-suffering, were quietly waiting for the meeting of
the States-General, as the only means for the redress of their grievances.
On the 4th of May, 1789, the States-General were convened at Versailles. The
clergy and the nobility appeared, by royal decree, magnificently attired in purple
robes emblazoned with gold, and with plumed hats. The deputies of the Third
Estate were enjoined to present themselves in plain black cloaks and slouched
hats, as the badge of their inferiority.[93] On Saturday, the 2d of May, the king
gave a reception, in the magnificent audience-chamber of the palace, to the
delegates. When one of the nobles or of the high clergy presented himself both
of the folding doors were thrown open as his name was announced; but when
one of the Third Estate was presented one door only was thrown back. This
studied indignity was of course annoying to men who were really the most
distinguished in the realm, and who were conscious of their vast superiority to
the corrupt and decaying aristocracy.[94]
pic
THE THREE ORDERS.
On the Paris Avenue at Versailles there was an immense hall called the Salle des
Menus, which no longer exists. It was sufficiently large to contain the twelve
hundred deputies, and in whose spacious galleries and wide side-aisles four
thousand spectators could be assembled. It was a magnificent hall, and was
ornamented for the occasion with the highest embellishments of art. Here the
king could meet all the deputies of the three orders. But the nobles and the clergy
had already formed the plan still to keep the power in their own hands by
insisting that the States should meet in three separate chambers and give three
separate votes. Thus three hundred nobles and three hundred clergy would give
two votes, and six hundred of the people but one. This was the last chance for
the privileged class to retain their domination, and this battle they would fight to
desperation. The people were equally determined not to be thus circumvented.
The privileged class, resolved upon the accomplishment of their plan, had
prepared for themselves two smaller halls, one for the nobility and one for the
clergy.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] Brienne, in addition to the Archbishopric of Toulouse, was appointed Archbishop of Sens, and Louis
XVI. obtained for him from Pius VI. a cardinal's hat. The Cardinal of Loménie as he was then called,
subsequently returned to France, where he was arrested, and, Feb. 19, 1794, was found dead on the floor of
his cell, in the 67th year of his age.—Enc. Am.
[78] Alison, Hist. of Europe, vol. i., p. 63.
[79] "For, behold, this monstrous twenty-million class, hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to
agree about the sheering of, is now also arising with hopes! It has ceased or is ceasing to be dumb. It speaks
through pamphlets. It is a sheer snowing of pamphlets, like to snow up the government
thoroughfares."—Carlyle, vol. i., p. 112.
[80] Labaume, vol. ii., p. 323.
It was supposed that the Count of Provence, afterward Louis XVIII., was then intriguing to gain popularity,
that he might dethrone his brother and take his place. "Le Comte de Provence," writes Villaumé, "intrigoit
et profitait des fautes du roi, pour se frayer un chemin vers le trône."—Hist. de Rev. Fr., par Villaumé, vol.
i., p. 13.
[81] Rapport fait au Roi dans son Conceil, le 27 Décembre, 1788.
[82] The edict convening the States contained the following sentiments: "We have need of the concourse of
our faithful subjects to aid in surmounting the difficulties arising from the state of the finances, and
establishing, in conformity with our most ardent desire, a durable order in the parts of government which
affect the public welfare. We wish that the three estates should confer together on the matters which will be
exhibited for their examination. They will make known to us the wishes and grievances of the people in
such a way that, by a mutual confidence and exchange of kindly offices between the king and the people,
the public evils should, as rapidly as possible, be remedied.
"For this purpose we enjoin and command that immediately upon the receipt of this letter, you proceed to
elect deputies of the three orders, worthy of confidence from their virtues and the spirit with which they are
animated; that the deputies should be furnished with powers and instructions sufficient to enable them to
attend to all the concerns of the state, and introduce such remedies as shall be deemed advisable for the
reform of abuses, and the establishment of a fixed and durable order in all parts of the government, worthy
of the paternal affections of the king, and of the revolutions of so noble an assembly."—Calonne, Etat de la
France, p. 315.
[83] Michelet, vol. i., p. 75.
[84] "I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) who live without government, enjoy in their
general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European
governments. Among the former public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as
laws ever did any where. Among the latter, under the pretense of governing, they have divided their nations
into two classes—wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate."—Thomas Jefferson. Life by Henry S. Randall,
vol. i., p. 464.
[85] Tils Adoptif, vol. v., p. 256.
[86] Art. Mirabeau, Biographie Moderne.
[87] "The popular assemblies were to vote by acclamation (à haute voix). They did not suppose that inferior
people in such a mode of election, in presence of the nobles and Notables, would possess sufficient
firmness to oppose them—enough assurance to pronounce other names than those which were dictated to
them."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 76.
[88] "The long-looked-for has come at last; wondrous news of victory, deliverance, enfranchisement,
sounds magical through every heart. To the proud strong man it has come whose strong hands shall be no
more gyved. The weary day-drudge has heard of it; the beggar with his crust moistened in tears. What! to
us also has hope reached—down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal? The bread we
extorted from the rugged glebe, and with the toil of our sinews reaped, and ground, and kneaded into
loaves, was not wholly for another then, but we shall cut of it and be filled?"—Carlyle, vol. i., p. 118.
[89] "The prelates and dignified clergy felt the utmost disquietude at the number of curés and ecclesiastics
of inferior rank who attended them as members of the States-General. It was evident, from their
conversation, habits, and manners, that they participated in the feelings of the Tiers Etat, with whom they
lived in constant communication; and that the unjust exclusion of the middling ranks from the dignities and
emoluments of the Church had excited as much dissatisfaction in the ecclesiastical classes as the invidious
privileges of the noblesse had awakened in the laity."—Alison's History of Europe, vol. i., p. 68.
[90] Michelet, vol. i., p. 77. Desodoards, vol. i., p. 135. Rabaud, vol. i., p. 41. De Tocqueville, Old Régime,
vol. i., p. 144.
[91] Michelet, vol. i., p. 78. Mémoire présenté au Roi par Monseigneur Compte d'Artois (Charles X.), M. le
Prince de Condé, M. le Duc de Bourbon, M. le Duc d'Enghien, et M. le Prince de Conti.
[92] It has been denied that the nobles were guilty of this act. For proof see Mémoires de Bensenval, tome
ii., p. 347; L'OEuvre des Sept Jours, p. 411; Exposé Justificatif; Bailly's Mémoires, tome ii., p. 51. M.
Rabaud de St. Etienne writes: "If the agents of despotism devised this infernal stratagem, as was afterward
believed, it makes one crime more to be added to all those of which despotism had already become guilty."
[93] "A hall had been hastily got ready; the costumes were determined upon, and a humiliating badge had
been imposed upon the Tiers Etat. Men are not less jealous of their dignity than of their rights. With a very
just pride the instructions forbade the deputies to condescend to any degrading ceremonial."—Thiers, vol.
i., p. 35.
[94] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 43.
CHAPTER IX.
ASSEMBLING OF THE STATES-GENERAL.
Opening of the States-General.—Sermon of the Bishop of Nancy.—Insult
to the Deputies of the People.—Aspect of Mirabeau.—Boldness of the
Third Estate.—Journal of Mirabeau.—Commencement of the Conflict.—
First Appearance of Robespierre.—Decided Stand taken by the Commons.
—Views of the Curates.—Dismay of the Nobles.—Excitement in Paris.—
The National Assembly.—The Oath.
ON the 4th of May, 1789, the day of the opening of the States-General, a solemn
procession took place. Nearly all Paris flocked out to Versailles, which is but ten
miles from the metropolis, and countless thousands from the surrounding regions
crowded the avenues of the city of the court. The streets were decorated with
tapestry. The pavements, balconies, and house-tops were covered with
spectators. Joy beamed from almost every face,[95] for it was felt that, after a
long night, a day of prosperity was dawning. The court, the clergy, and the
nobles appeared in extraordinary splendor; but, as the procession moved along, it
was observed that the eyes of the multitude, undazzled by the pageant of
embroidered robes and nodding plumes, were riveted upon the six hundred
deputies of the people, in their plain garb—the advance-guard of freedom's
battalions. They were every where greeted, as they moved along, with clapping
of hands and acclaim which seemed to rend the skies.
"Rapturous, enchanting scene!" exclaims Ferrières, "to which I faintly strive to
do justice. Bands of music, placed at intervals, filled the air with melodious
sounds. Military marches, the rolling of the drums, the clang of trumpets, the
noble chants of the priests, alternately heard without discordance, without
confusion, enlivened this triumphal procession to the temple of the Almighty."
On their arrival at the church, the three orders were seated on benches placed in
the nave. The king and queen occupied thrones beneath a canopy of purple
velvet sprinkled with golden fleur de lis. The princes and princesses, with the
great officers of the crown and the ladies of the palace, occupied conspicuous
positions reserved for them by the side of their majesties. After the most
imposing ceremonies, and music by a majestic choir, "unaccompanied by the din
of instruments," the Bishop of Nancy preached a sermon enforcing the sentiment
that religion constitutes the prosperity of nations.[96]
It was a noble discourse, replete with political wisdom and Christian philosophy.
The two can never be dissevered. In glowing colors he depicted the vices of the
financial system, and showed the misery and demoralization which it necessarily
brought upon the people. "And it is," said he, "in the name of a good king, of a
just and feeling monarch, that these miserable exactors exercise their acts of
barbarism." This sentiment, so complimentary to the personal character of the
king, so denunciatory of the institutions of France, was received with a general
burst of applause, notwithstanding the sacredness of the place, and the etiquette
of the French court, which did not allow applause in the presence of the king
even at the theatre.[97] With these religious ceremonies the day was closed.
The next day, May 5th, the court and all the deputies of the three orders were
assembled in the great hall, to listen to the instructions of the king. And here,
again, the deputies of the people encountered an insult. A particular door was
assigned to them, a back door which they approached by a corridor, where they
were kept crowded together for several hours, until the king, the court, the
nobles, and the clergy had entered in state at the great door, and had taken their
seats. The back door was then opened, and the deputies of the people, in that
garb which had been imposed upon them as a badge of inferiority, were
permitted to file in and take the benches at the lower end of the hall which had
been left for them.[98]
As they entered, the galleries were filled with spectators. The king and queen
were seated upon a throne gorgeously decorated. The court, in its highest
splendor, nearly encircled the throne. The nobility and the clergy, with plumes
and robes of state, occupied elevated seats. All eyes were fixed upon the
deputies as they entered one by one, plainly dressed, with slouched hat in hand.
Mirabeau, in particular, attracted universal observation. He was not only by birth
and blood an aristocrat, but he was an aristocrat in taste and manners. The spirit
of revenge had driven him into the ranks of the people. As he strode along the
aisle to his seat, he turned a threatening glance to the plumed and embroidered
noblesse, from whose seats he had been driven, and a smile, haughty and bitterly
menacing, curled his lips.[99]
The king's speech was favorably received. He appeared before the
representatives with dignity, and recited very appropriately the cordial and
conciliatory words which Necker had placed in his mouth. On finishing his
speech, he sat down and put on his plumed hat. The clergy and the nobles, in
accordance with custom, did the same. But to their astonishment, the Third
Estate also, as by an instinctive simultaneous movement, placed their slouched
hats upon their heads. The nobles, amazed at what they deemed such insolence
of the people, shouted imperiously, "Hats off, hats off!" But the hats remained,
as if glued to the head. The king, to appease the tumult, again uncovered his
head. This necessitated the nobles and the clergy to do the same. Immediately
the Third Estate followed their example, and, for the remainder of the session, all
sat with uncovered heads.[100] When the last States-General met, the Third Estate
were compelled to throw themselves upon their knees in the presence of the
king, and to address him only upon their knees.[101]
When Necker arose to speak, all eyes were riveted and all ears were on the alert.
As the organ of the king and his council, the minister was to communicate the
real opinions and intentions of the court. The clergy and the nobility were
agreeably disappointed; but the people, on their back benches, listened silent and
sorrowful. They heard none of those noble ideas of equality and liberty which
they were ready to receive with enthusiastic acclaim. Necker was evidently
trammeled by the king, the court, and the nobles, now uniting in the feeling that
the rising power of the Third Estate must be repressed. Thus ended the second
day.
Mirabeau had commenced a journal, to contain, for popular information, a
record of the proceedings of the States-General. The court promptly issued a
decree prohibiting the publication of this journal, and also prohibiting the issuing
of any periodical without permission of the king. A rigid censorship of the press
was thus re-established, and the deputies were excluded from all effectual
communication with their constituents. This was another measure of folly and
madness. It led individual members to issue written journals, which were read in
the saloons, the clubs, and at the corners of the streets to excited multitudes, and
it induced thousands to crowd the spacious galleries of the hall to listen to the
debates. Thus the speakers were animated by the presence of four thousand of
the most earnest of the people, eager to applaud every utterance in behalf of
popular liberty. The public mind was also increasingly irritated by the petty
persecution; so much so, that at length the king thought it not safe to enforce the
decree, and the defiant Mirabeau soon resumed the publication of his journal,
under the title of Letters to my Constituents.[102]
The next day the deputies of the Third Estate at the appointed hour repaired to
the hall; but they found there none either of the clergy or of the nobles. These
two parties, resolved to perpetuate the division of orders, had met in their
respective halls and had organized as distinct bodies. The Third Estate, assuming
the name of the Commons, abstained from any organic measures and waited to
be joined by their colleagues. Thus matters continued for several days. Every
effort was made on the part of the clergy and nobles to ensnare the Commons
into some measure which would imply their organization as the Third Estate, but
all was in vain. Assuming that they were a meeting of citizens assembled by
legitimate authority to wait for other citizens that they might organize a political
assembly, they merely chose a temporary chairman for the preservation of order,
and waited.[103]
Here, then, the vital question was to be decided whether the States-General
should compose one body where the majority should rule, or three separate
bodies where two could unite, a perpetual majority, against one. Upon this
question the whole issue of reform was suspended. All equally understood the
bearings of the question, and all equally saw that there was no room for
compromise. It was a death-struggle. If united in one assembly the people would
have a majority, and could maintain popular rights. If there were three bodies the
people would be in a hopeless minority, having two against them. The attention
of all France was engrossed by the conflict, and the nation, with all its interests
paralyzed, began to grow impatient of the delay. "The nobles," M. Bailly writes,
"decreed that the deliberation by order, and the power of each order to put a veto
on the proceedings of the other two, were part of the very constitution of the
monarchy, and that they must maintain them as the defenders of the throne and
freedom. What a strange decree! The representatives of about two hundred
thousand individuals, or more, who are nobles take upon themselves to decide,
and in their own favor, a question that concerns twenty-five millions of men.
They assume for themselves the right of the veto; they declare the powers and
the principles of the constitution; and who are they more than others who thus
declare?"[104]
During this protracted conflict the higher clergy cunningly devised the following
plan to place the Commons in a false position: They sent an imposing
delegation, headed by the Archbishop of Aix, with a pathetic allusion to the
miseries of the people, and entreated the Commons to enter into a conference to
assuage their sufferings. The snare was shrewdly contrived. If the Commons
assented, it was the commencement of business with three chambers; if they
refused, the clergy would apparently be those alone who regarded the starving
population. For a moment there was much embarrassment.
A young man rose in the Assembly, who was unknown to nearly all the
members, and in a calm, distinct, deliberate voice, which arrested universal
attention, said:
"Go, tell your colleagues that we are waiting for them here to aid us in assuaging
the sorrows of the people; tell them no longer to retard our work; tell them that
our resolution is not to be shaken by such a stratagem as this. If they have
sympathy for the poor, let them, as imitators of their Master, renounce that
luxury which consumes the funds of indigence, dismiss those insolent lackeys
who attend them, sell their gorgeous equipages, and with these superfluities
relieve the perishing. We wait for them here."[105]
The snare was adroitly avoided. There was a universal hum of approval, and all
were inquiring the name of the young deputy. This was the first public
appearance of Maximilian Robespierre.[106]
At last, on the 27th of May, twenty-two days after the convening of the States,
the Commons sent a deputation to the halls of the clergy and of the nobility,
urging them, in the name of the God of peace, to meet in the hall of the
Assembly to deliberate upon the public welfare. This led to a series of
conferences and of suggested compromises from the king and the court which
continued for a fortnight, and all of which proved unavailing. At last, on the 10th
of June, Mirabeau arose, and said,
"A month is passed.[107] It is time to take a decisive step. A deputy of Paris has
an important motion to make. Let us hear him."
The Abbé Sièyes[108] then rose and proposed to send a last invitation to the other
orders to join them; and, if they refused, to proceed to business, not as a branch
of the convention, but as the whole body. The proposition was received with
enthusiasm. This was on Wednesday. As the next day, Thursday, was
appropriated to religious solemnities, Friday, the 12th, was fixed upon as the day
in which this important summons was to be sent.[109]
This last appeal was sent in the following words, which the committee from the
Commons were charged to read to the clergy and the nobles, and a copy of
which they were to leave with them:
"Gentlemen, we are commissioned by the deputies of the Commons of France to
apprise you that they can no longer delay the fulfillment of the obligation
imposed on all the representatives of the nation. It is assuredly time that those
who claim this quality should make themselves known by a common verification
of their powers, and begin at length to attend to the national interest, which
alone, and to the exclusion of all private interests, presents itself as the grand aim
to which all the deputies ought to tend by one general effort. In consequence,
and from the necessity which the representatives of the nation are under to
proceed to business, the deputies of the Commons entreat you anew, gentlemen,
and their duty enjoins them to address to you, as well individually as
collectively, a last summons to come to the hall of the States, to attend, concur
in, and submit like themselves to the common verification of powers. We are, at
the same time, directed to inform you that the general call of all the bailliages
convoked will take place in an hour; that the Assembly will immediately proceed
to the verification, and that such as do not appear will be declared defaulters."
This summons, so bold and decisive, excited not a little consternation in both of
the privileged bodies. The curates among the clergy received the message with
applause, and were in favor of immediate compliance. But their ecclesiastical
superiors held them in check, and succeeded in obtaining an adjournment.
The Commons waited the hour, and then proceeded to the examination of the
credentials of the deputies. This occupied three days. On the first day three of the
curates came from the clergy and united with them. They were received with
enthusiasm. On the second day six came, on the third ten, and then it was
announced that one hundred and forty were coming in a body. This excited
thorough alarm with all the high dignitaries of Church and State. "The
aristocracy," says Thiers, "immediately threw itself at the feet of the king. The
Duke of Luxembourg, the Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, the Archbishop of
Paris, implored him to repress the audacity of the Tiers Etat and to support their
rights which were attacked. The Parliament proposed to him to do without the
States, promising to assent to all the taxes. The king was surrounded by the
princes and the queen. This was more than was requisite for his weakness. They
hurried him off to Marly in order to extort from him a vigorous measure."
This state of things had secured perfect reconciliation between the court and the
aristocracy. The lines were now distinctly drawn; the king, nobles, and clergy on
one side, the people on the other. The excitement in Paris during this protracted
conflict was very great. A large wooden tent was erected in the garden of the
Palais Royal, where a crowd was almost constantly gathered to receive the news
brought by couriers from Versailles. At every street corner, in every café, the
subject was discussed. Almost every hour produced a pamphlet. "There were
thirteen issued to-day," writes Arthur Young, "sixteen yesterday, ninety-two last
week." In the mean time the court was concentrating the troops from all parts of
the kingdom around Paris and Versailles, and a hundred pieces of field artillery
menaced the two cities.
It was now necessary to give the Assembly a name, a name which should define
its functions. The assumption that they were the nation would be bold and
defiant. The admission that they were but a branch of the national representation
would be paralyzing. The Assembly was impelled to prompt and decisive action
by the apprehension, universally entertained, that the court might employ the
army, now assembled in such force, to arrest the principal deputies, dissolve the
States, and, if the people of Paris manifested any opposition, to surround the city
and starve them into subjection. Sièyes, in a celebrated pamphlet which he had
issued to prepare the public mind for this movement, had said, "The Third Estate
alone, they affirm, can not form the States-General. Well! so much the better; it
shall compose a National Assembly." A body which, by universal admission
represented ninety-six hundredths of the nation, might with propriety take the
name of National.[110]
Upon the morning of the 17th of June, after a long and animated discussion of
the preceding day, the Commons met to decide this all-important question. The
king, the court, and the aristocracy were greatly alarmed. If this bold, resolute
body were the nation, what were they? Nothing. The people were intensely
excited and animated. Thousands in every conceivable vehicle flocked out from
Paris to Versailles. The galleries of the vast hall, rising like an amphitheatre,
were crowded to their utmost capacity. The building was surrounded and the
broad avenues of Versailles thronged with the excited yet orderly multitude.
The members had but just assembled when the president, Bailly, was summoned
to the chancellor's office to receive a message from the king. It was well
understood that this message would be a regal prohibition for them to do any
thing without the concurrence of the three orders. The Assembly immediately,
with firmness, postponed the reception of the message until the vote then before
them was taken. Again they were interrupted by a communication from the
nobles, who in their alarm made a desperate endeavor to thwart the proceedings.
But the Assembly calmly and firmly proceeded, and by a vote of four hundred
and one against ninety declared themselves the NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
In the presence of four thousand spectators the deputies then arose, and with
uplifted hands took the oath of fidelity. As with simultaneous voice they
pronounced the words "We swear," a burst of acclamation rose from the
galleries, which was caught by those outside the door and rolled along the streets
like reverberating thunder. "Vive le Roi! Vive l'Assemblée Nationale!" was the
cry which came from gushing hearts, and thousands in intensity of emotion
bowed their heads and wept.
A more heroic deed than this history has not recorded. It was a decisive
movement. It gave the people an organization and arrayed them face to face
against royalty and aristocracy. The king, the court, the nobles, and the higher
clergy were all against them. They were surrounded with armies. They were
unarmed and helpless, save in the righteousness of their cause. They were
menaced with all the terrors of exile, the dungeon, and the scaffold; but,
regardless of all these perils, faithful to the sacred cause of popular liberty, they
pledged in its support their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Even
Alison, the unrelenting foe of popular rights, the untiring advocate of aristocratic
assumption, is constrained to say,
"It is impossible to refuse a tribute of admiration to those intrepid men, who,
transported by a zeal for liberty and the love of their country, ventured to take a
step fraught with so many dangers, and which, to all appearance, might have
brought many to prison or the scaffold. Few situations can be imagined more
dignified than that of Bailly, crowning a life of scientific labor with patriotic
exertion, surrounded by an admiring assembly, the idol of the people, the
admiration of Europe."
FOOTNOTES:
[95] "Like the nation, I was full of hope, hope that I then could not suppose vain. Alas! how can one now
think without tears on the hopes and expectations then every where felt by all good Frenchmen, by every
friend of humanity!"—Necker on the French Revolution.
[96] "The Tiers Etat numbered among its members a great proportion of the talent and almost all the energy
of France. The leading members of the bar, of the mercantile and medical classes, and many of the ablest of
the clergy were to be found in its ranks."—Alison, vol. i., p. 69.
[97] France and its Revolutions, by Geo. Long, Esq., p. 2.
[98] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 47.
[99] Madame de Staël.
[100] Histoire Parlementaire, vol. i., p. 356.
[101] "Who would believe that this mad court remembered and regretted the absurd custom of making the
Third Estate harangue on their knees? They were unwilling to dispense from this ceremony expressly, and
preferred deciding that the President of the Third Estate should make no speech whatever."—Michelet, vol.
i., p. 88.
[102] Procès verbal des électeurs redigé par Bailly et Duveyrier, t. i., p. 34.
[103] "The chairman was M. Bailly, a simple and virtuous man, an illustrious and modest cultivator of the
sciences, who had been suddenly transported from the quiet studies of his closet into the midst of civil
broils. Elected to preside over a great assembly, he had been alarmed at his new office, had deemed himself
unworthy to fill it, and had undertaken it solely from a sense of duty. But, raised all at once to liberty, he
found within him an unexpected presence of mind and firmness. Amid so many conflicts, he caused the
majesty of the assembly to be respected, and represented it with all the dignity of virtue and
reason."—Thiers, vol. i., p. 42.
[104] Indignantly Desodoards exclaims, "The descendants of the Sicumbrians, or of I know not what
savages, who ages ago came prowling from the forests of Germany, could they assume at the end of
eighteen centuries that their blood was more pure than that which flowed in the veins of the descendants of
the Gauls, or the Romans, the ancient inhabitants of France? Do they pretend that they are nobles because
they are conquerors? Then we, being now more powerful, have only to drive them across the Rhine, and in
our turn we shall be conquerors and consequently nobles."-Histoire Philosophique de la Revolution de
France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, Citoyen Français.
[105] "What a spectacle for France! Six hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and
salvation, sit there on their elliptic benches longing passionately toward life, in painful durance, like souls
waiting to be born. Speeches are spoken, eloquent, audible within doors and without. Mind agitates itself
against mind; the nation looks on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the Commons deputies sit
incubating."—Carlyle, vol. i., p. 148.
[106] Bailly's Mémoires, t. i., p. 114.—Dumont, Souvenirs, etc., vol. i., p. 59.
[107] "A month lost! One month in open famine. Observe that in this long expectation the rich kept
themselves motionless, and postponed every kind of expenditure. Work had ceased. He who had but his
hands, his daily labor to supply the day, went to look for work, found none—begged—got nothing—
robbed. Starving gangs overran the country."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 93.
[108] The Abbé Sièyes was one of the deputies sent by the Third Estate from Paris, and the only clergyman
in their delegation.
[109] Sièyes' motion was to summon the privileged. By vote of the Assembly the word was changed to
invite.—France and its Revolutions, by G. Long, Esq., p. 12.
"The Assembly," writes M. Bailly, its president, "deliberating after the verification of its powers, perceives
that it is already composed of representatives sent directly by ninety-six hundredths, at least, of the whole
nation. Nothing can be more exact than this assertion. The four hundredths that are absent, but duly
summoned, can not impede the ninety-six hundredths that are present.
"The Assembly will never lose the hope of uniting in its bosom all the deputies that are now absent; will
never cease to call upon them to fulfill the obligation that has been imposed upon them of concurring with
the sitting of the States-General. At whatever moment the absent deputies may present themselves in the
session about to open, the Assembly declares beforehand that it will hasten to receive them, to share with
them, after the verification of their powers, the continuance of the great labors which can not but procure
the regeneration of France."
[110] Necker estimated the Third Estate at ninety-eight hundredths of the population.
CHAPTER X.
THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
First Acts of the Assembly.—Confusion of the Court.—Hall of the
Assembly closed.—Adjournment to the Tennis-court.—Cabinet Councils.
—Despotic Measures.—The Tennis-court closed.—Exultation of the Court.
—Union with the Clergy.—Peril of the Assembly.—The Royal Sitting.—
Speech of the King.
THE first measure adopted by the National Assembly was worthy of itself. It was
voted that the taxes already decreed, though not legally assessed by the consent
of the nation, should be punctiliously paid. Instead of repudiating the enormous
public debt, they appropriated it as their own and placed it under the safeguard
of the nation. They then appointed a committee immediately to attend to the
distresses of the people, and to devise measures for their relief. How vast the
contrast between this magnanimity of the people and the selfishness and
corruption of the court, as developed through ages! Thus terminated the eventful
17th of June, 1789, which may almost be considered the birthday of the nation of
France. Before this event the people had hardly a recognized existence. Though
the cradle of its infancy has been rocked with storms, and though in its
advancing manhood it has encountered fearful perils and the sternest conflicts,
yet its progress is surely onward to dignity and repose.
At an early hour the Assembly adjourned. Couriers from the hall hastened to
expectant Paris with the glad tidings. The most fervid imagination can not
conceive the joyful enthusiasm which the intelligence excited in the metropolis
and throughout France. The king and his court were at this time a few miles from
Versailles, in the Palace of Marly. The clergy and the nobles, in consternation,
sent a committee of their most prominent members to implore the interposition
of the royal power.[111] But the king had not sufficient nerve for so decisive an
act. It was urged that the nobility and the clergy should immediately combine in
forming a united body which should constitute an upper house; and thus
naturally the kingdom would have fallen into a monarchy like that of England,
with its House of Lords and its House of Commons. This would have been a
most salutary reform, and would have prepared the way for the gradual and safe
advance of the nation from servitude to freedom. But, with madness almost
inconceivable, the high nobility with contempt repelled all idea of union.[112]
They deemed it a degradation to form a permanent association with the lower
clergy and with men who had been within a few centuries ennobled by a decree
of the king. Thus the formation of two separate chambers was rendered
impossible by the folly of those very men whose existence depended upon it.
Thus all was confusion and dismay with the nobles and the clergy, while
unanimity and vigor pervaded every movement of the Assembly.[113]
In this state of affairs a large proportion of the clergy, composing nearly all the
parish ministers, were in favor of uniting with the Assembly. The Duke of
Orleans also, among the nobility, led a small minority of the nobles in advocacy
of the same measure. But the court generally entreated the king immediately to
dissolve the Assembly, by violence if needful. The popular excitement in Paris
and in Versailles became intense. The only hope of the people was in the
Assembly. Its dissolution left them hopeless and in despair. The king was
vacillating, intensely anxious to crush the popular movement, now become so
formidable, but still fearing to adopt those energetic measures by which alone it
could be accomplished. He at length decided, in accordance with that system of
folly with which the court seems to have been inspired, to resort to the very
worst measure which could have been adopted. On Friday the 17th of June the
majority of the clergy, consisting of a few prelates and about one hundred and
forty curates, resolved to withdraw from the dignitaries of the Church and unite
with the people, in the Assembly, the next day. The prospect of such an
accession to the popular branch struck consternation into the ranks of the
privileged classes. A delegation of bishops and nobles in the night hastened to
the king at Marly, and persuaded him to interfere to prevent the junction.
Yielding to their importunities he consented to shut up the hall of Assembly the
next day, and to guard the entrance with soldiers, so that there might be no
meeting. As an excuse for this act of violence it was to be alleged that the hall
was needed for workmen to put up decorations, in preparation for a royal sitting
which was to be held on Monday. The king thus gained time to decide upon the
measures which he would announce at the royal sitting.[114]
At six o'clock in the morning of Saturday, placards were posted through the
streets of Versailles announcing this decree. At seven o'clock, M. Bailly,
president of the Assembly, received a note from one of the officers of the king's
household, informing him of the decision. The Assembly had adjourned the
evening before to meet at eight o'clock in the morning. It was, of course, proper
that such a communication should have been made, not to the president at his
lodgings, but to the assembled body. It was a stormy morning; sheets of rain,
driven by a fierce wind, flooded the streets. At the appointed hour the president,
accompanied by several deputies, approached the hall. They found the door
guarded by a detachment of the royal troops, and a large number of the
representatives assembled before it. Admission was positively refused, and it
was declared that any attempt to force an entrance would be repelled by the
bayonet.[115]
pic
THE DOORS OF THE ASSEMBLY CLOSED AND GUARDED.
The Assembly and the people were greatly alarmed: measures of violence were
already commenced. Their immediate dissolution was menaced, and thus were to
perish all hopes of reform. The rain still fell in torrents. There was no hall in
Versailles to which they could resort. Some proposed immediately adjourning to
Paris, where they could throw themselves upon the protection of the masses.
This measure, however, was rejected as too revolutionary in its aspect. One
suggested that there was in the city an old dilapidated tennis-court, and it was
immediately resolved to assemble upon its pavements. The six hundred deputies,
now roused to the highest pitch of excitement and followed by a vast concourse
of sympathizing and applauding people, passed through the streets to the
unfurnished tennis-court. Here, with not even a seat for the president, the
Assembly was organized, and Bailly, in a firm voice, administered the following
oath, which was instantly repeated in tones so full and strong, by every lip, as to
reach the vast concourse which surrounded the building:
"We solemnly swear never to separate, and to assemble wherever circumstances
shall require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established, and founded on
a solemn basis."
Every deputy then signed this declaration excepting one man; and this Assembly
so nobly respected private liberty as to allow him to enter his protest upon the
declaration.
It was now four o'clock in the afternoon, and the Assembly, having immortalized
the place as the cradle of liberty, adjourned.
The next day was the Sabbath, and Monday had been appointed for the royal
sitting. The excitement of the court at Marly now amounted almost to a tumult of
consternation. Necker, the minister, was proposing measures of conciliation, and
had drawn up a plan which would probably have been accepted by the people,
for none then wished for the overthrow of the monarchy.[116] All the leaders in
the Assembly were united in the desire to preserve the monarchical form of
government. Surrounded as they were by thrones, England, not America, was
their model. They wished for a constitutional monarchy where the voice of the
people should be heard, and where all the citizens should live in the enjoyment
of equal rights. Their wishes were wise and noble. Necker, closeted in council
with the king and his cabinet, had at last brought the king and the majority of the
cabinet over to his views, when an officer of the household came in and
whispered to the king. The king immediately arose, and, requesting the council
to await his return, left the room.
"This can only be a message from the queen," said M. de Montmorin to Necker;
"the princes of the blood have got her to interfere, and persuade the king to
adjourn his decision."
It was so. After half an hour the king returned, declined giving his assent to the
plan till after another meeting, and dismissed the council. The royal sitting was
also postponed until Tuesday.
On Monday, the 22d, the king held another council at Versailles. His two
brothers, Count of Provence (Louis XVIII.) and Count d'Artois (Charles X.),
with four other dignitaries of the privileged class, met with the council and took
an active part in their deliberations. The project of Necker was here discussed
and almost indignantly rejected. And yet the most earnest Royalists admit that it
was extremely favorable to the privileged class, and no Republican can read it
without being surprised that so much could then have been yielded by the people
to aristocratic assumption.[117] But still this plan, in which Necker had gone to
the utmost extreme of concession to propitiate the court, was peremptorily
rejected, and another, insulting in its tone, imperious in its exactments, and
utterly despotic in its principles, was adopted, and the Assembly was to be
sternly dissolved. Necker remonstrated in vain, and at last, in mortification and
despair, declared that he could not countenance such a message by his presence,
and that he should be under the necessity of resigning his ministry. The feeble,
vacillating king was in judgment and in heart with Necker, as were also one or
two other of the ministers; but the queen, inheriting the spirit of Austrian
despotism, acting through the two brothers of the king and the majority of the
court, carried her point. This agitated discussion continued until midnight of
Sunday, and then it was too late to propose the defiant message for the next day.
The royal sitting was consequently postponed until Tuesday.[118]
To prevent the Assembly from meeting in the tennis-court on Monday, where the
curates could join them, the Count d'Artois sent word to the keeper that he
wished for the tennis-court on that day to play. On Monday morning, when the
Assembly, according to its adjournment, met at the door, they found the entrance
guarded, and they were excluded under the plea that the Count d'Artois wished
for the room for his own amusement. Thus an Assembly, now consisting of
seven or eight hundred of the most illustrious men of France, the representatives
of twenty-five millions of people, were driven again into the streets, because a
young nobleman wished for their room that he might play a game of ball.
Some of the younger deputies, exasperated by such treatment, were in favor of
forcing an entrance. But armed bands, all under aristocratic officers, were
parading the streets, bayonets glittered around the hall, and fifty thousand troops
were within summons. The court did not disguise its merriment as it again
contemplated the Assembly wandering houseless like vagabonds in the street.
The nobles now felt exultant. They had compelled the king to adopt their plan.
The Assembly was to be dismissed in disgrace, and an ample force of infantry,
cavalry, and artillery was at hand to carry out their arrogant decree. They no
longer feared the Assembly. They no longer hesitated openly to deride them.[119]
These representatives of the people, thus insulted beyond all endurance, were for
a time in great perplexity. It so happened, however, that the curates who had
voted to unite with the Third Estate, about one hundred and forty in number,[120]
with the Archbishop of Vienne at their head, had met in the Church of St. Louis,
intending to go from there in procession to join the Assembly. They immediately
sent to the Commons an invitation to repair to the church where they were
assembled, and, taking themselves the choir, left the nave for their guests. The
clergy then descended and united with the Commons, where they were received
with shouts, embracings, and tears. It was a solemn hour, and emotions too deep
for utterance agitated all hearts. Fearful perils were now accumulating. Rumors
had reached the ears of the deputies that the court intended the violent
dissolution and dispersion of the Assembly. Thus would end all hopes of reform.
The troops marching and countermarching, the new regiments entering the city,
the hundred pieces of field artillery approaching, the cannon frowning before the
door of their hall, the exultant looks and defiant bearing of their foes, all were
portents of some decisive act.[121]
The morning of the 23d of June arrived. It was dark and stormy. At the
appointed hour, ten o'clock, the members repaired to the hall of the Assembly to
meet the king and court. In various ways they had received intimations of the
measures which were to be adopted against them, and anxiety sat upon every
countenance. As they approached the hall they found that the same disrespect
which they had received on the 5th of May was to be repeated with aggravations.
The court wished to humiliate the Commons; they did but exasperate them. The
front entrance was reserved as before for the clergy and the nobles. The
Commons were guided to a side door not yet opened, where they were left
crowded together in the rain. They made several endeavors to gain admission,
but could not, and at last sought refuge from the storm in an adjoining shed.[122]
In the mean time the two privileged classes approached with an unusual display
of pompous carriages and gorgeous liveries. Files of soldiers protected them,
bands of music greeted them, and with the most ostentatious parade of respect
they were conducted to their seats. Then the side door was thrown open, and the
Commons, with garments drenched and soiled, filed in to take the back benches
left for them. They found the aristocracy in their seats, as judges awaiting the
approach of criminals. The nobles and the high clergy could not repress their
feelings of exultation. The Commons were now to be rebuked, condemned, and
crushed.[123]
Military detachments patrolled the streets and were posted around the hall. Four
thousand guards were under arms, and there were besides several regiments in
the vicinity of Versailles, within an hour's call. A tumultuous mass of people
from Paris and Versailles surged around the building and flooded all the
adjoining avenues. As the carriage of the king and queen, surrounded by its
military retinue, approached, no voice of greeting was heard. The multitude
looked on silent and gloomy. The king was exceedingly dejected, for his
judgment and heart alike condemned the measures he had been constrained to
adopt. The queen was appalled by the ominous silence, and began to fear that
they had indeed gone too far. When a few voices shouted "Vive le Duc
d'Orleans!" she correctly interpreted this greeting of her implacable foes as an
intended insult, and was observed to turn pale and almost to faint.
The king entered the hall with the queen, his two brothers, and his ministers,
excepting Necker. The absence of Necker so exclusively arrested all thoughts,
that the royal pageant was disregarded. Here again the monarch was received in
silence, interrupted only by faint applause from the nobles.
The king hardly knew how to utter the arrogant, defiant words which had been
put into his mouth. It was the lamb attempting to imitate the roar of the lion. He
addressed a few words to the Assembly, and then placed his declaration in the
hands of one of his secretaries to be read.[124]
It declared his intention to maintain the distinction of the three orders, and that
they should vote separately; that they might occasionally meet together, with the
consent of the king, to vote taxes. The decree of the Commons, constituting a
National Assembly, was pronounced illegal and null. The deputies were forbid to
receive any instructions from their constituents. No spectators were allowed to
be present at the deliberations of the States-General, whether they met together
or in different chambers. No innovation was to be allowed in the organization of
the army. Nobles, and nobles only, were to be officers. The old feudal privileges
were to remain unaltered. No ecclesiastical reforms were to be allowed, unless
sanctioned by the clergy.[125]
Such were the prohibitions. Then came the benefits. The king promised to
sanction equality of taxation, whenever the clergy and the nobles should consent
to such taxation. The king promised to adopt any measures of finance and
expenditure which the States-General should recommend, if he judged such
measures compatible with the kingly dignity. He invited the States—which, be it
remembered, were to be assembled in three chambers, the clergy and the nobility
being thus able to outvote the Commons by two votes to one—to propose
measures for abolishing lettres de cachet, measures which should not interfere
with the power of repressing sedition, and of secretly punishing those whose
relatives would be dishonored by their being brought to trial. They were also
invited to seek the means of reconciling liberty of the press with the respect due
to religion and to the honor of the citizens. In conclusion, the king threatened
that if the Commons refused obedience to these declarations he would
immediately dissolve the States, and again take the reins of government entirely
into his own hands. This address was closed with the following words:
"I command you, gentlemen, immediately to disperse, and to repair to-morrow
morning to the chambers appropriate to your order."[126]
The king then, with his attendant court, left the hall. A large part of the nobility
and nearly all the bishops followed him. Exultation beamed upon their faces, for
they supposed that the National Assembly was now effectually crushed.
FOOTNOTES:
[111] Michelet, vol. i., p. 105.
[112] "The party which professed to be the defender of the throne spoke with infinite disdain of the
authority of the King of England. To reduce a King of France to the miserable condition of the British
monarch was, in the bare conception, heinous and treasonable."—Considerations on the French Revolution,
by Madame de Staël.
[113] Madame de Staël, vol. i., p. 106.
[114] Michelet, vol. i., p. 106.
The Marquis of Ferrières, a deputy of the nobles and an earnest advocate of aristocratic assumption, writes
in his Mémoires: "The court, unable any longer to hide from themselves the real truth that all their petty
expedients to separate the orders served only to bring on their union, resolved to dissolve the States-
General. It was necessary to remove the king from Versailles, to get Necker and the ministers attached to
him out of the way. A journey to Marly was arranged. The pretext was the death of the dauphin. The mind
of the king was successfully worked upon. He was told it was high time to stop the unheard-of enterprises
of the Third Estate; that he would soon have only the name of a king. The Cardinal Rochefoucault and the
Archbishop of Paris threw themselves at the feet of the king and supplicated him to save the clergy and
protect religion. The Parliament sent a secret deputation proposing a scheme for getting rid of the States-
General. The keeper of the seals, the Count d'Artois, the queen, all united. All was therefore settled, and an
order from the king announced a royal sitting and suspended the States under the pretense of making
arrangements in the hall."
[115] "The deputies stand grouped on the Paris road, on this umbrageous Avenue de Versailles, complaining
aloud of the indignity done them. Courtiers, it is supposed, look from their windows and giggle."—Carlyle,
vol. i., p. 156.
"Is it decent," writes M. Bailly in his Memoirs, "that the members of the National Assembly, or even the
deputies of the Commons, as you may still please to consider them, should thus be apprised of the
intentions of the king, of the suspension of their own sittings, only by the public criers and by notices
posted on the wall, as the inhabitants of a town would be made acquainted with the shutting up of a
theatre?"
[116] "It is quite certain that, mixed with a little personal vanity, the most sincere wish for the happiness of
France, and the happiness of mankind, was the ruling motive with Necker."—Lectures on the French
Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 287.
"Let us not forget that at that period the whole Assembly was Royalist, without excepting a single
member."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 108.
[117] For a full detail of this project see OEuvres de Necker, vol. vi., p. 119. Necker is condemned by
Michelet with merciless severity for presenting a project which, though it secured a few reforms, still
allowed the despotic court such sway. But if the minister could not carry even this project, what could he
have done with one making still greater demands? The British government, with its king and its houses of
lords and commons, was Necker's model; though he still allowed the court powers which would not be
tolerated by the people of Great Britain for an hour. But the French court looked with contempt upon the
limited powers of the king and the nobles of England, and would consent to no approximation to the
government which prevailed there. The Tiers Etat would have been more than satisfied with the English
Constitution. No one then desired the overthrow of the monarchy.
[118] Smyth, Lectures on French Revolution, i., 192; Michelet, i., 110.
[119] Michelet, i., 110.
[120] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 53, says that the clergy voted for union one hundred and forty-nine
voices against one hundred and twenty-six.
[121] "The nobility that I converse with," writes Arthur Young, "are most disgustingly tenacious of all old
rights, however hard they may bear upon the people. They will not hear of giving way in the least to the
spirit of liberty beyond the point of paying equal land-taxes, which they hold to be all that can with reason
be demanded."
"It was only very late," writes Wm. Smyth, "and when too late, that they reached even this point."
[122] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, i., 56.
[123] Id., 57; Michelet, i., 112.
[124] Hist. Parl., vol. ii., p. 15.
[125] "The nobles having applauded the article consecrating feudal rights, loud, distinct voices were heard
to utter, 'Silence there!'"—Michelet, vol. i., p. 115.
[126] Mr. Alison strangely says that "These decrees contained the whole elements of rational freedom,
abolished pecuniary privileges, regulated the expenses of the royal household, secured the liberty of the
press, regulated the criminal code, and the personal freedom of the subject."—Alison, Hist. of Europe, vol.
i., p. 74. The French people did not think so. See Michelet's indignant rejection of the mockery of these
decrees.—Mich., Hist. Fr. Rev., vol. i., p. 115. M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, member of the Assembly, writes,
"In these benefits which the king was thus promising to the nation, no mention was made either of the
constitution so much desired, or of the participation of the States-General in all acts of legislation, or of the
responsibility of ministers, or of the liberty of the press; and almost every thing which constitutes civil
liberty was passed over in total silence. Nevertheless, the pretensions of the privileged orders were
maintained, the despotism of the ruler was sanctioned, and the States-General were abased and subject to
his power."—Hist. of Rev. of Fr., vol. i., p. 56.
The Marquis of Ferrières writes, "The hall was surrounded by soldiers and by guards. Every thing about the
throne was silent and melancholy. The declaration itself satisfied no one; and the king spoke rather like a
despot who commanded than a monarch who discussed with the representatives of his people the interests
of a great nation."
CHAPTER XI.
REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES.
Speech of Mirabeau.—Approach of the Soldiers and Peril of the Assembly.
—Elation of the Queen.—Triumph of Necker.—Embarrassment of the
Bishops and the Nobles.—Letter of the King.—The Bishops and Nobles
join the Assembly.—Desperate Resolve of the Nobles.—The Troops
sympathizing with the People.
AS the king, followed by the nobles and the clergy, left the hall, the Commons
remained in their seats. The crisis had now arrived. There was no alternative but
resistance or submission, rebellion or servitude. For a moment there was an
entire silence. But the spirit of indomitable determination glowed on every
cheek. Mirabeau was the first to rise. In a few of those impassioned sentences,
which pealed over France like clarion notes, he exclaimed,
"Why this dictatorial language, this train of arms, this violation of the national
sanctuary? Who is it who gives commands to us—to us to whom alone twentyfive
millions of men are looking for happiness? Let us arm ourselves with our
legislative authority, remember our oath—that oath which does not permit us to
separate until we have established the constitution!"[127]
While he was yet speaking the Marquis of Brézé, one of the officers of the king,
perceiving that the Assembly did not retire, advanced into the centre of the hall,
and, in a loud authoritative voice, a voice at whose command nearly fifty
thousand troops were ready to march, demanded,
"Did you hear the commands of the king?"
"Yes, sir," responded Mirabeau, with a glaring eye and a thunder tone which
made Brézé quail before him, "we did hear the king's command; and you, who
have neither seat nor voice in this house, are not the person to remind us of his
speech. Go, tell those who sent you that we are here by the power of the people,
and that nothing shall drive us hence but the power of the bayonet."[128]
The officer, the marquis, turned to the president, as if inquiring his decision.
"The Assembly," said M. Bailly, "resolved yesterday to sit after the royal
session. That question must be discussed."
"Am I to carry that answer to the king?" inquired the marquis.
"Yes, sir," replied the president. The marquis departed. Armed soldiers now
entered the hall accompanied by workmen to take away the benches and
dismantle the room. Soldiers surrounded the building and the life-guard
advanced to the door. But a word from the president arrested the workmen, and
they stood with their tools in their hands contemplating with admiration the calm
majesty of the Assembly. The body-guard had now formed a line in front of the
hall, and the position of its members was full of peril. It was expected that all the
prominent deputies would be arrested. A vote was then passed declaring the
person of each member of the Assembly inviolable, and pronouncing any one
guilty of treason who should attempt to arrest any one of the representatives of
the nation.
In the mean time the nobility were in exultation. They deemed the popular
movement now effectually crushed. In a crowd they hastened to the residences
of the two brothers of the king, the Count of Provence and Count d'Artois, with
their congratulations. They then repaired to the queen and assured her that the
work was done and that all was safe. The queen was much elated, and received
them with smiles. Presenting to them her son, the young dauphin, she said, "I
intrust him to the nobility."
But at this very moment loud shouts were heard in the streets, swelling in a roar
of tumult from countless voices, which penetrated the inmost apartments of the
Palace of Versailles. All were eager to ascertain the cause. The whole body of
the people by a simultaneous movement had gathered around the apartments of
M. Necker, and were enthusiastically applauding him for refusing to attend the
royal sitting.
This manifestation of popular feeling was so decisive, that alarm took the place
of joy. Even the fears of the queen were aroused, and Necker was promptly sent
for. He entered the palace accompanied by a crowd of many thousands who
filled the vast court-yard. Both king and queen entreated Necker to withdraw his
resignation, the king good-naturedly saying, "For my part I am not at all
tenacious about that declaration."
Necker willingly complied with their request.[129] As he left the palace he
informed the multitude that he should remain at his post. The announcement was
received with unbounded demonstrations of joy. As the exultant shouts of the
populace resounded through the castle, Brézé entered to inform the king that the
deputies still continued their sitting, and asked for orders. The king impatiently
walked once or twice up and down the floor, and then replied hastily, "Very well!
leave them alone."
The next day, Wednesday, June 24th, the Assembly met in its hall and transacted
business as quietly as if there had been no interruption. The clergy, who had
joined them in the Church of St. Louis, still resolutely continued with them,
notwithstanding the prohibition, and this day one half of the remaining clergy
joined the Assembly. A few individuals from the nobles had also gone over.
These two bodies thus broken were now quite powerless, and were fast sinking
into insignificance. Thousands continually thronged the galleries and the aisles
of the National Assembly, while no one seemed to turn a thought to the two
chambers where the few remaining clergy and the nobles were separately
lingering.
The next day, June 26th, after a long and exciting debate, in which the
overwhelming majority of the nobles resolved to remain firm in opposition to
union, forty-seven of their number, led by the Duke of Orleans and La Fayette,
and embracing many of the most eminent for talent and virtue, repaired to the
Assembly, where they were received with hearty demonstrations of joy. One of
the nobles, Clermont Tonnere, speaking in behalf of the rest, said,
"We yield to our conscience, but it is with pain that we separate from our
colleagues. We have come to concur in the public regeneration. Each of us will
let you know the degree of activity which his mission allows him."[130]
The king now wrote a letter to his "faithful clergy" and his "loyal nobility,"
urging them to join the Assembly without further? delay. In compliance with this
request, the next day, June 27th, the remaining portion of the nobility and of the
clergy entered the hall and united with the Third Estate. The Marquis of
Ferrières, who was one of the nobles who at this time united with the Assembly,
records,
"It was now a grievous mortification and affliction to the nobility to join the
Third Estate. The Vicomte de Noailles assured the nobles that the union would
be but temporary; that the troops were coming up, and that in fifteen days every
thing would be changed. The king sent a second letter assuring the nobles that
the safety of the state and his own personal security depended upon the union.
The assembly of nobles rose in a tumultuous manner, they were joined by the
minority of the clergy, and entered in silence the hall of the Tiers Etat."
But the nobles and the dignitaries of the Church had hardly entered the hall of
the Assembly ere they regretted the step. The Assembly was proceeding
energetically in the formation of a constitution which would sweep away abuses.
"Many of the nobles," says Ferrières, with wonderful frankness, "would have
quitted the Assembly, but a partial secession would have done nothing. They
were assured that the troops were coming up, were praised for the resistance they
had already made, and were urged that they must dissemble a little longer. And,
indeed, thirty regiments were now marching upon Paris. The pretext was public
tranquillity; the real object the dissolution of the Assembly." Many petty artifices
were resorted to still to keep up the appearance of distinct orders. The very day
of the junction they endeavored to eject M. Bailly, a citizen, from the presidency,
and to place a clerical noble, the Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, in the chair. The
movement was promptly checked.[131] They for some time entered in a body
after the openings of the sittings, and stood together, declining to sit down with
the deputies. But M. Bailly, by his prudence and firmness, upheld the rights of
the Assembly, and maintained the dignity of his post. It was indeed a strange
spectacle for France to see a plain citizen, illustrious only in virtue and talent,
presiding over the proudest nobles and the highest dignitaries of the Church.
The leading members of the Assembly were patriots seeking reform, not
revolution. It was expected that this union would promote harmony.
"How honorable," said Mirabeau, "will it be for France that this great revolution
has cost humanity neither offenses nor crimes." After describing the sanguinary
scenes which accompanied the revolutions in England and America, he
continued, "We, on the contrary, have the happiness to see a revolution of the
same nature brought about by the mere union of enlightened minds with patriotic
intentions. Our battles are only discussions. Our enemies are only prejudices that
may indeed be pardoned. Our victories, our triumphs, so far from being cruel,
will be blessed by the very conquered themselves.
"History too often records actions which are worthy only of the most ferocious
animals; among whom, at long intervals, we can sometimes distinguish heroes.
There is now reason to hope that we have begun the history of man, the history
of brothers, who, born for mutual happiness, agree even when they vary, since
their objects are the same and their means only are different."
This triumph of the Third Estate exasperated the privileged classes, and they
were eager for revenge. It was evident that their exclusive power was imperiled,
and they resolved, at whatever expense of bloodshed, to secure the dissolution of
the Assembly. It soon became manifest to all that violence was meditated; that a
secret conspiracy was ripening; that the nobles had united with the Assembly
merely to subserve a momentary purpose, and that the Assembly was to be
dispersed by force, the leaders punished, and that all who should interfere for
their protection were to be shot down.[132]
"I could never ascertain," writes Necker, "to what lengths their projects really
went. There were secrets upon secrets; and I believe that even the king himself
was far from being acquainted with all of them. What was intended was
probably to draw the monarch on, as circumstances admitted, to measures of
which they durst not at first have spoken to him. With me, above all others, a
reserve was maintained, and reasonably, for my indisposition to every thing of
the kind was decided."
The nobles again became arrogant and defiant. Openly they declared their
intentions to crush the Assembly, and boasted that with an army of fifty thousand
men they would bring the people to terms.[133] Loaded cannon were already
placed opposite the hall, and pointed to the doors of the Assembly. This state of
menace and peril excited the Parisians to the highest pitch, and united all the
citizens high and low to defend their rights. The French soldiers, who came from
the humble homes of the people, sympathized in all these feelings of their fathers
and brothers. The women, as they met the soldiers in the streets, would ask,
"Will you fire upon your friends to perpetuate the power of your and our
oppressors?" Ere long there came a very decisive response, "No! we will not."
Thus the soldiers who had been collected to overawe the capital were soon seen
in most friendly intercourse with the citizens, walking with them arm in arm,
comprehending the issues which now agitated the nation, and evidently ready to
give their energies to the defense of the popular cause.
FOOTNOTES:
[127] The curate, M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, one of the most illustrious members of the Assembly, and who
finally perished on the guillotine, writes, "These memorable expressions have been since engraved upon the
bust of Mirabeau which was executed for the society of Friends to the Constitution. A print of this hath
been struck off, in which we behold, not the downcast look of a cunning conspirator, but the ardent air and
attitude of a noble-hearted man, who sincerely meant the welfare of his country; and such a man was
Mirabeau."
[128] Michelet, vol. i., p. 116. "In the middle of the night Bailly was called up and privately informed that
Necker disapproved of the measures adopted, and that he would not attend the sitting, and would probably
be dismissed. It had been settled between Bailly and the Assembly that no reply should be made to the king
whatever he might say to them. It was afterward intimated to Bailly by the king, that he wished no reply to
be made. And under these most unfortunate circumstances the royal sitting opened."—Lectures on the
French Revolution, by William Smyth, vol. i., p. 269.
[129] Michelet, vol. i., p. 118.
[130] Thiers, Fr. Rev., vol. i., p. 51.
[131] Bailly's Mem., vol. i., p. 252, 257, 260.
[132] For abundant proof of the conspiracy, see Memoirs of Marmontel, a man of letters and of elegant
attainments, who resided in Paris at this time.
[133] "Before the Revolution the number of noble families in France did not exceed 17,500. Reckoning
five individuals to a family there might have been about 90,000 nobles. The disasters of the Revolution
must have reduced them to less than 40,000."--L'Europe après le Congrès d'Aix la Chapelle, by Abbé de
Pradt, note at the end of chap. ix.
CHAPTER XII.
THE TUMULT IN PARIS.
Marshal Broglie.—Gatherings at the Palais Royal.—Disaffection of the
Soldiers.—Imprisonment and Rescue.—Fraternization.—Petition to the
Assembly.—Wishes of the Patriots.—Movement of the Troops.—Speech of
Mirabeau.—New Menaces.—Declaration of Rights.—Dismissal of Necker.
—Commotion in Paris.—Camille Desmoulins.—The French Guards join
the People.—Terror in Paris.—Character of the King.
NOTWITHSTANDING the National Assembly was thus organized, rumors filled the
air that the junction was but transient, and that the court was making preparation
for some deed of violence. The citizens of Paris were in a great ferment, all
business was at a stand, the poorer classes had no employment, and their
families were actually perishing from hunger. Troops were continually parading
the streets, and an army of fifty thousand men, now placed under the command
of the veteran Marshal Broglie, encircled the city of Versailles. The spacious
garden of the Palais Royal in Paris, surrounded by the most brilliant shops in
Europe, was the general rendezvous of the populace anxiously watching the
progress of events. The people in their misery had nothing to do but to meet
together to hear the news from Versailles. Often ten thousand men were
assembled in the garden, where impassioned orators harangued them upon their
rights and upon their wrongs. The Duke of Orleans, with his boundless wealth,
encouraged every insurrectionary movement. He was willing so far to renounce
aristocratic privileges as to adopt a constitution like that of England, if he, as the
head of the popular party, could be placed upon the throne, from which he hoped
to eject his cousin Louis XVI.
It soon became evident that there was a Tiers Etat in the army as well as in the
state. The French Guards, consisting of three thousand six hundred picked men,
in the highest state of discipline and equipment, were stationed at Paris. They
began to echo the murmurs of the populace. The declaration of the king had
informed them that no reform whatever was to be tolerated in the army; that the
common soldier was to be forever excluded from all promotion. The privates
and subalterns were doomed to endure all the toil of the army and its most
imminent perils, but were to share none of its honors or emoluments. The troops
were governed by young nobles, generally the most dissolute and ignorant men,
who merely exhibited themselves upon the field on parade days, and who never
condescended even to show themselves in the barracks.
The discontent of the soldiers reached the ears of their officers. Apprehensive
that by association with the people the troops might become allied to them by a
common sympathy, the officers commanded the guards no longer to go into the
streets, and consigned them to imprisonment in their barracks. This of course
increased their exasperation, and, being left to themselves and with nothing to
do, they held meetings very much like those which they had attended in the
Palais Royal, and talked over their grievances and the state of the monarchy.[134]
Patriotic enthusiasm rapidly gained strength among them, and they took an oath
that they would not fire upon the people. The colonel of the regiment arrested
eleven of the most prominent in this movement and sent them to the prison of
the Abbaye, where they were to await a court-martial and such punishment as
might be their doom. This was the 30th of June.[135] On the evening of that day,
as a vast and agitated multitude was assembled at the Palais Royal, listening to
the speakers who there, notwithstanding reiterated municipal prohibitions, gave
intelligence of all that was passing at Versailles, tidings came of the arrest of the
soldiers. A young man, M. Lourtalot, editor of a Parisian paper, mounted a chair
and said,
"These are the brave soldiers who have refused to shed the blood of their fellowcitizens.
Let us go and deliver them. To the rescue!"
There was an instantaneous cry, rising from a thousand voices in the garden and
reverberating through the streets, "To the Abbaye!" The throng poured out of the
gate, and, seizing axes and crowbars as they rushed along, every moment
increasing in numbers, soon arrived at the prison, six thousand strong. There was
no force there which could for a moment resist them. The doors were speedily
battered down, the soldiers liberated and conducted in triumph to the Palais
Royal. Here they were provided with food and lodging, and placed under the
protection of a citizens' guard.
While on their way to the Palais Royal a squadron of cavalry was ordered to
charge upon the people. They approached at full gallop, and then, regardless of
their officers, reined in their horses, and, lifting their caps, with true French
politeness saluted their citizen-friends. There was then a scene of fraternization
such as the French metropolis alone can exhibit. Men and women ran out from
the houses and the shops presenting to the dragoons goblets of wine, shouting
"Vive le Roi! Vive la Nation!"[136]
The people were still disposed to love their king. They instinctively felt that his
sympathies were with them. Thus far they desired only reform, not the
overthrow of the monarchy. The court, however, were instructed by these scenes
that they could not rely upon the French Guards to execute the bloody mandates
they were about to issue. Hence vigorous efforts were immediately adopted to
concentrate in the metropolis an efficient force of foreign mercenaries, Swiss
and German troops, who would be less scrupulous in shooting down and
trampling under iron hoofs the French people. The Parisians distinctly
understood this movement, and one can hardly conceive of a measure more
exasperating. It is worthy of record that the citizens, ascertaining that they had
liberated one soldier who was accused of what they deemed a crime,
immediately sent that one back to his prison cell.
The next day, July 1st, the populace at the Palais Royal, who were thus far under
the guidance of the most virtuous, intelligent, and influential citizens, sent a
committee to the National Assembly at Versailles urging them to interpose with
the king for a pardon for the soldiers. This was a movement quite unexampled.
The citizens, heretofore deprived of all political rights, had never before
ventured to make their wishes known to their rulers. Even then it was considered
by the privileged classes in the Assembly very impudent.[137] The Assembly
very prudently sent back word to the Parisians, exhorting them to refrain from all
acts of violence, and assuring them that the maintenance of good order was
essential to the prosperity of their cause.[138] At the same time the Assembly sent
a deputation to the king imploring his clemency for the soldiers.
Troops were, however, still rapidly approaching the city from different parts of
the kingdom. The nobles and the higher clergy were throwing every possible
obstruction in the way of either deliberation or action by the Assembly, and it
was manifest to all that a conspiracy was in progress for its violent dissolution.
[139]
The courtiers could not conceal their exultation, and began openly to boast that
their hour of triumph was at hand. Fifteen regiments of Swiss and German troops
were now between Paris and Versailles. It was supposed that they, without
reluctance, would fire upon French citizens. It was very evident that the court
was studiously endeavoring to foment disturbances in Paris, that an appeal to the
military might be necessary. On the other hand, the leaders of the revolution
were doing every thing in their power to keep the people calm. A very able
pamphlet was circulated through the city, containing the following sentiments:
"Citizens! the ministers, the aristocrats, are endeavoring to excite sedition. Be
peaceful, tranquil, submissive to good order. If you do not disturb the precious
harmony now reigning in the National Assembly, a revolution the most salutary
and the most important will be irrevocably consummated, without causing the
nation blood or humanity tears."
One is bewildered in learning that these sentiments came from the pen of Jean
Paul Marat![140]
The next day, the 2d of July, the king returned an answer to the deputation from
the Assembly, that the soldiers should be pardoned as soon as order was reestablished
in the capital. Upon the receipt of the message at the Palais Royal,
the guards were taken back to prison, from whence they were speedily released
by a pardon from the king.
On the 3d of July, M. Bailly having resigned the presidency of the Assembly, the
Archbishop of Vienne, one of the high clergy, who had warmly espoused the
popular cause, was chosen president, and the Marquis de la Fayette, equally
devoted to popular rights, was elected vice-president. Thus the two most
important offices of the Assembly were conferred upon men selected from the
highest ranks of the privileged class. But this act of conciliation did not in the
least degree conciliate men who were determined at every hazard to perpetuate
despotism.
The aspect of affairs was every hour becoming more threatening. New regiments
of foreigners were continually marching into the metropolis, and occupying all
the avenues which conducted to Paris and Versailles. Squadrons of horse were
galloping through the streets and heavy artillery rumbling over the pavements of
both the cities. The Elysian Fields, the Place Louis XV., the Field of Mars,
presented the aspect of an encampment. Sentinels were placed around the French
Guards, who were confined in their barracks, to prevent them from holding any
intercourse with the citizens or with the other soldiers.[141] Versailles was
encompassed by armies, and a battery of artillery was pointed at the very doors
of the Assembly.
On Friday, the 10th of July,[142] Mirabeau rose in the Assembly, and proposed
that the discussion of the Constitution should be suspended while a petition was
sent to the king urging the removal of these menacing armies.
"Fresh troops," said he, "are daily advancing; all communications are
intercepted. All the bridges and promenades are converted into military posts.
Movements, public and secret, hasty orders and counter-orders, meet all eyes.
Soldiers are hastening hither from all quarters. Thirty-five thousand men are
already cantoned in Paris and Versailles. Twenty thousand more are expected.
They are followed by trains of artillery; spots are marked for batteries; every
communication is secured, every pass is blocked up; our streets, our bridges, our
public walks are converted into military stations. Events of public notoriety,
concealed facts, secret orders, precipitate counter-orders—in a word,
preparations for war strike every eye and fill every heart with indignation."
At the same time a pamphlet was circulated through Paris, stating that the king
was to hold another royal sitting on the 13th; that he had determined to enforce
his declarations of the 23d of June; that the National Assembly was to be
dissolved by violence, its leaders arrested, and Necker to be driven from the
kingdom.
The tidings excited great consternation in the city, and the crowd in the Palais
Royal began to talk of arming in self-defense. In the evening of that day an
artillery company, which had been posted at the Hôtel des Invalides, came to the
Palais Royal to fraternize with the people there. The citizens gave them a supper
in the Elysian Fields, where they were joined by many troops from other
regiments, and the friendly festivities were continued late into the hours of the
warm summer night.[143]
This speech of Mirabeau was received with applause, and a deputation of
twenty-four members was sent with a petition to the king. The address was
drawn up by Mirabeau, and is of world-wide celebrity.[144]
"It is not to be dissembled," says Bailly, "that Mirabeau was in the Assembly its
principal force. Nothing could be more grand, more firm, more worthy of the
occasion than this address to the king. The great quality of Mirabeau was
boldness. It was this that fortified his talents, directed him in the management of
them, and developed their force. Whatever might be his moral character, when
he was once elevated by circumstances he assumed grandeur and purity, and was
exalted by his genius to the full height of courage and virtue."
Though Necker earnestly advised the removal of the troops, the king, now in the
hands of his worst counselors, returned to the Assembly almost an insulting
answer. He affirmed that the troops were mustered for the maintenance of public
order and for the protection of the Assembly; and that if the members of the
Assembly were afraid of their protectors, they might adjourn to Noyon or to
Soissons, cities some fifty or sixty miles north of Paris, where, removed from the
protection of the capital, they would have been entirely at the mercy of their
enemies.[145]
"We have not," Mirabeau indignantly retorted, "asked permission to run away
from the troops, but have requested that the troops may be removed from the
capital."
Upon the reception of this answer from the king, La Fayette presented the
Assembly a declaration of rights based upon that Declaration of American
Independence which is almost the gospel of popular liberty. It is probable that
Thomas Jefferson, who was then in Paris, aided La Fayette in preparing this
paper. It affirmed that nature has made all men free and equal, that sovereignty
resides in the nation, and that no one can claim authority which does not
emanate from the people.
On the evening of this day, Saturday, July 11th, as Necker was dressing for
dinner, he received a note announcing his dismissal. A confidential letter from
the king at the same time informed him that the monarch was unable to prevent
his removal, and urged the minister to leave the kingdom without delay, and not
to communicate to any one the knowledge of his dismissal lest it should excite
public disturbance.[146] Necker, true to the confidence thus reposed in him,
quietly dined, and then taking his carriage, as if for an evening drive with his
wife, took the direction to the Netherlands, the nearest frontier, and pressed on
rapidly through the night.
The next day was the Sabbath, July 12th. Early in the morning an extraordinary
degree of activity was observed among the troops. Infantry and artillery were
marching and countermarching through the streets of Paris and Versailles. The
next day, Monday, was secretly appointed for the great coup d'état, in which the
National Assembly was to be dispersed, and the citizens of Paris, if they
manifested any resistance, were to be mown down by grapeshot. Redoubts were
thrown up upon the heights of Montmartre, where cannon could be placed which
would command the metropolis. Enormous placards were posted, enjoining the
people to remain at home and not to assemble in the streets. The numerous staff
of Marshal Broglie were galloping in all directions, disgusting the people with
their insolent and consequential airs.[147] A battery of cannon was placed at the
Sevres bridge, cutting off all direct communication between Versailles and Paris.
The Place of Louis XV. was filled with troops, presenting the aspect of an
encampment. In the adjoining Elysian Fields the Swiss Guards, with four pieces
of artillery, were drawn up in battle array.
The people wondered what all this meant. At an early hour the garden of the
Palais Royal was filled with an anxious and inquiring crowd. About ten o'clock
an unknown person announced that Necker was dismissed, and that a new
ministry was organized, composed of members of most determined hostility to
popular reform. These tidings explained the formidable military display, and
excited universal alarm and indignation. A young man, Camille Desmoulins,
sprung upon a table, his dress disarranged, his hair disheveled, his face flushed,
his eyes gleaming with indignation and tears, and, with a pistol in each hand to
protect himself from the police, shouted,
"To arms! to arms! This dismissal is but the precursor to another St.
Bartholomew. This night the Swiss and German troops are to march to our
massacre. We have but one resource; it is to defend ourselves."
The impassioned cry was immediately echoed by the multitude, "To arms! to
arms!" A rallying sign was needed. Desmoulins plucked a green leaf from a tree
and attached it to his hat. Instantly all the chestnut-trees which embellished the
garden were stripped of their foliage, and the leaf became the pledge of union.
The flash of a moment had brought the whole body of the populace into a
recognized uniform and a rude organization.
An army of more than a hundred thousand souls was in an hour enlisted, inspired
with deathless enthusiasm, and crying out for leaders and for weapons. The
movement was now in progress which was to scatter like chaff the battalions of
foreign mercenaries, and to prostrate in dust and ashes the court and the throne.
But alas for man! the flame which cheers the fireside may lay palaces and
temples and happy homes in ruins. A new power had arisen, and it proved to be
as blind and ignorant as it was resistless. Had the populace been imbued with
Christian principles and intelligence, blessings only would have resulted from
their sway.
pic
CAMILLE DESMOULINS IN THE PALAIS ROYAL.
In this wild hour of turmoil the multitude were bewildered, and knew not what to
do. They had no arms, and no recognized leaders except the National Assembly
at Versailles, from whom they were now cut off by detachments of troops.
Near by there was a museum of wax figures. Some men ran to the spot and
brought out busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orleans, who was also, it was
said, threatened with exile. Decorating these busts with crape they bore them
aloft through the streets with funeral honors. As the procession, rapidly
increasing to many thousands, approached the Place of Louis XV., a detachment
of German troops were marched up to charge them. But these soldiers had but
little spirit for their work, and they were speedily put to flight by a shower of
stones. A company of dragoons then made a charge. The unarmed procession
was broken and put to flight in all directions. The busts were hacked to pieces by
the sabres of the soldiers, and one man, a French guardsman, who disdained to
run, was cut down and killed.
The French Guards were all this time locked up in their barracks, and the Prince
of Lambesc had stationed a squadron of German dragoons in front of their
quarters to prevent them coming to the aid of the people. But nothing now could
restrain them. They broke down and leaped over the iron rails, and fiercely
attacked the hated foreigners. The dragoons fled before them, and the Prince of
Lambesc, who commanded, fell back upon the garden of the Tuileries, and,
entering the gates, charged upon the people who were there. One old man was
killed and the rest were put to flight.
The French Guards, however, immediately drew up in battle array, and placed
themselves between the citizens and the royal troops. In the mean time a
formidable array of Swiss and German troops had been collected in the Field of
Mars. They received orders to march to the Place Louis XIV. and dislodge the
French Guards. In obedience to the command they marched to the spot, and then
reversing their arms, positively refused to fire upon their comrades.[148]
The populace, however, unconscious of the support which they were receiving
from the soldiers, were in a state of phrensy. The women and children, who had
been passing the pleasant day in the recreations of the Elysian Fields, and who
had fled shrieking before the horses and the sabres of the dragoons, speedily
carried the tidings of the assault to every part of the city. An indescribable scene
of tumult ensued. The multitude were running to and fro in search of arms. Upon
all the steeples every bell rang the alarm. A population of nearly a million of
souls was agitated by the most intense emotions of indignation and terror.[149]
"It would be difficult," writes Bertrand de Moleville, "to paint the disorder,
fermentation, and alarm that prevailed in the capital during this dreadful day. A
city taken by storm and delivered up to the soldiers' fury could not present a
more dreadful picture. Imagine detachments of cavalry and dragoons making
their way through different parts of the town at full gallop to the posts assigned
them; trains of artillery rolling over the pavements with a monstrous noise;
bands of ill-armed ruffians and women, drunk with brandy, running through the
streets like furies, breaking the shops open, and spreading terror every where by
their howlings, mingled with frequent reports of guns or pistols fired in the air;
all the barriers on fire; thousands of smugglers taking advantage of the tumult to
hurry in their goods; the alarm-bells ringing in almost all the churches; a great
part of the citizens shutting themselves up at home, loading their guns and
burying their money, papers, and valuable effects in cellars and gardens; and
during the night the town paraded by numerous patrols of citizens of every class,
and even of both sexes, for many women were seen with muskets or pikes upon
their shoulders. Such is the exact picture of the state of Paris on the 12th of July."
To add to the alarm, a letter which had been intercepted from Marshal Broglie
was printed and circulated through the city, in which the marshal wrote to the
Prince of Condé that the greater part of the National Assembly were hungry
wolves, ready to devour the nobility; that with fifty thousand troops he would
quickly disperse them and the crowd of fools who applauded them.[150]
As the sun went down and darkness enshrouded the city, the tumult increased,
and the night was passed in sleeplessness, terror, and bewilderment. All were
apprehensive that the dawn would usher in a dreadful day. A report of the
agitated state of the metropolis was carried to the Assembly at Versailles,
exciting very great anxiety in the minds of the patriots deliberating there. The
nobles rejoiced. They earnestly desired such violence on the part of the people as
should compel the king to restore the ancient order of things by the energies of
grapeshot and the bayonet.[151]
M. Bailly, a man of unblemished character, whose purity and whose patriotism
never can be questioned, gives the following testimony to the integrity of Louis
XVI.:
"Despotism is what never entered into the head of the king. He never had any
wish but the happiness of his people, and this was the only consideration that
could be ever employed as a means of influencing him. If any acts of authority
were to be resorted to, he was never to be persuaded but by showing him that
some good was to be attained or some evil avoided. I am convinced that his
authority was never considered by him, nor did he wish to maintain it but as the
best means of supporting and securing the tranquillity and peace of the
community. As we are now speaking of the causes that produced this
regeneration of the country, let us state the first to be the character of Louis XVI.
A king less of a good man and ministers more adroit, and we should have had no
revolution."
FOOTNOTES:
[134] "The French Guards, those generous citizens, rebels to their masters, in the language of despotism,
but faithful to the nation, are the first to swear never to turn their arms against her."—M. Rabaud de St.
Etienne, vol. i., p. 62.
Mr. Alison calls this the "revolt and treason of the French Guards." The same occurrence assumes very
different aspects as seen from different stand-points.
[135] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne.
[136] Hist. Parlementaire, vol. ii., p. 32. Michelet, vol. i., p. 127.
[137] Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 15.
[138] Thiers, vol. i., p. 61.
[139] "While on this subject I can not refrain from remarking on the impolitic conduct of the nobles and the
bishops. As they aimed only to dissolve the Assembly, to throw discredit on its operations, when the
president stated a question they left the hall, inviting the deputies of their party to follow them. With this
senseless conduct they combined an insulting disdain, both of the Assembly and of the people who attended
the sittings. Instead of listening, they laughed and talked aloud, thus confirming the people in the
unfavorable opinion which it had conceived of them; and instead of striving to recover the confidence and
the esteem of the people, they strove only to gain their hatred and contempt."—Ferrières, t. ii., p. 122.
[140] Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 15.
[141] France and its Revolutions, by George Long, Esq.
[142] Some authorities say the 9th.
[143] France and its Revolutions, by George Long, Esq., vol. i., p. 25.
[144] It is said that this famous address to the king was composed by M. Dumont, the leading ideas having
been communicated to him by Mirabeau. A few extracts will give one an idea of the spirit of the piece.
"In the emotions of your own heart, sire, we look for the true safety of the French. When troops advance
from every quarter, when camps are forming around us, when the capital is besieged, we ask one another
with astonishment, 'Hath the king distrusted the fidelity of his people? What mean these menacing
preparations? Where are the enemies of the state and of the king that are to be subdued?'
"The danger, sire, is urgent, is universal, is beyond all the calculations of human prudence.
"The danger is for the provinces. Should they once be alarmed for our liberty we should no longer have it in
our power to restrain their impetuosity.
"The danger is for the capital. With what sensations will the people, in their state of indigence, and tortured
with the keenest anguish, see the relics of its subsistence disputed for by a throng of threatening soldiers?
"The danger is for the troops. They may forget that the ceremony of enlisting made them soldiers, and
recollect that nature made them men.
"The danger, sire, is yet more terrible. And judge of its extent by the alarms which bring us before you.
Mighty revolutions have arisen from causes far less striking.
"Sire, we conjure you, in the name of our country, in the name of your own happiness, and your own glory,
to send back your soldiers to the posts from which your counselors have drawn them. Send back that
artillery," etc.
[145] The Marquis of Ferrières acknowledges the insincerity of the court in the king's answer. "The
Assembly saw," he writes, "through the snare that was spread for them. They would have lost all their hold
if they had once removed themselves from the security which the vicinity of Paris afforded. Inclosed
between the two camps (of Flanders and Paris) they would have found themselves at the mercy of the
court."—See also Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, vol. i., p. 150.
[146] Madame de Staël's Considerations, etc., ch. xii.
[147] Alison, vol. i., p. 73.
[148] Miguet, vol. i., p. 50. Thiers, vol. i., p. 62.
[149] The following journal kept by the king during these stormy days singularly illustrates the weakness of
his character. We give it as found in the interesting work, Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse
Esquiros.
"July 1st, 1789, Wednesday. Nothing; deputation from the States. Thursday 2d. Mounted horseback at the
gate Du Main to hunt a stag at Port Royal; took one. Friday 3d. Nothing. Saturday 4th. Hunted a buck at
Boutard; took one and shot twenty-nine game. Sunday 5th. Vespers and benediction. Monday 6th. Nothing.
Tuesday 7th. Hunted a stag at Port Royal; took two. Wednesday 8th. Nothing. Thursday 9th. Nothing;
deputation from the States. Friday 10th. Nothing; answer to the deputation from the States. Saturday 11th.
Nothing; departure of M. Necker. Sunday 12th. Nothing; departure of M. Montmorin, St. Priest and
Luzerne. Sunday 12th. Nothing; took medicine."
Such was the record of the predecessor of Napoleon upon the throne of France when the monarchy was
tottering to its foundations.
[150] France and its Revolutions, by Geo. Long, Esq., vol. i., 23.
[151] "During this day of mourning and consternation the conspirators gave loose to a guilty joy. At
Versailles, in that orangery where were lodged, or, to speak more properly, dispersed in ambuscade, the
German troops of Nassau, princes, princesses, favorites, male and female, were entertaining themselves
with the music of the martial instruments. They were loading the soldiers with caresses and presents; and
the latter, amid their brutal orgies, were pleasing themselves with the thought of dispersing the National
Assembly, and of subjugating the kingdom. Calamitous night! when the courtiers were dancing to that
foreign music, and enjoying the idea of the massacre."—M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 66.
CHAPTER XIII.
STORMING THE BASTILLE.
The Assembly petitions the King.—Resolves of the Assembly.—Narrative
of M. Dumont.—Scenes in Paris.—The People organize for Self-defense.—
The new Cockade.—The Abbé Lefebvre d'Ormesson.—Treachery of the
Mayor, Flesselles.—Character of De Launey, Governor of the Bastille.—
Sacking the Invalides.—The Bastille Assailed.—Assassination of De
Launey and of Flesselles.
IT will be remembered that in the election of deputies to the States-General Paris
had been divided into sixty sections, each of which chose two electors. These
hundred and twenty electors, composed of the most wealthy and influential
citizens of Paris, immediately met and passed the night deliberating respecting
the anarchy into which the city was so suddenly plunged. There were two foes
whom the city had now equally to dread—the court and the mob; the princes,
bishops, and nobles of the realm, with the armies and the resources of the
kingdom, on the one hand, and the starving multitude, infuriated by misery and
brutalized by ages of misrule, on the other. These were the two foes against
which the Revolution ever had to struggle. The mob triumphed in the Reign of
Terror. Napoleon rescued the Revolution from their bloody hands. The princes,
with the aid of all the despotisms of Europe, triumphed at Waterloo, and the
Revolution was crushed for a time.
Early on Monday morning, July 12th, the electors sent a deputation to the
National Assembly at Versailles soliciting the establishment of a citizens' guard
for the preservation of order. They gave a true and of course a terrible
description of the tumult prevailing in the city.[152]
The Assembly immediately sent a committee of twenty-four members to the
king, entreating him to withdraw the foreign troops from the capital. But the
queen and the court had now obtained such an ascendency over the feebleminded
king that he was constrained to send a reply that he should make no
change whatever in his measures, and that the Assembly could accomplish no
useful purpose by interfering with matters in the metropolis.
This was the day on which it was supposed armed bands were to march to
disperse the Assembly. It was publicly stated at Versailles that a parliament
composed of the nobles was to be suddenly organized at Versailles, that all the
deputies of the Third Estate were to be tried for treason, that those members of
the clergy and of the nobility who had declared in their favor were to be
consigned to perpetual imprisonment, and that those who had been particularly
active in the cause of popular liberty were to be sent to the scaffold.[153]
In preparation for this event, the day before (Sunday, 12th), the new ministry,
bitterly hostile to the popular cause, had taken their seats in the king's cabinet;
Necker, a fugitive, was hastening into the Netherlands; fifty thousand troops
under Marshal Broglie, the most determined advocate of aristocratic privilege,
crowded the environs of Paris and Versailles; and the troops on the 12th had
been ordered to those movements which were preliminary to the great event.[154]
Under such perilous circumstances the Assembly, with a heroism which was
truly sublime, determined, if they must perish, to perish in the discharge of duty.
No impartial man can read the record of these days without paying the tribute of
admiration to those men who thus periled liberty and life in the cause of popular
rights. "I have studied history extensively," says De Tocqueville, "and I venture
to affirm that I know of no other revolution at whose outset so many men were
imbued with a patriotism as sincere, as disinterested, as truly great."[155]
When the Assembly received the answer of the king refusing to withdraw the
troops, the only response it could make was in the passing of resolutions.
Unintimidated by menaces which might well appal the stoutest heart, they
resolved,
1. That M. Necker carried with him the regrets of the nation.
2. That it was the duty of the king immediately to remove the foreign troops.
3. That the king's advisers, of whatever rank, were responsible for present
disorders.
4. That to declare the nation bankrupt was infamous.[156]
These were bold resolves. The third, it was well understood, referred to the
queen and to the two brothers of the king. The fourth branded with infamy the
measure which the court had already adopted in virtually proclaiming
bankruptcy and in making payments only in paper.[157] After passing these
resolutions the members of the Assembly were in such peril that they deemed it
best to keep together for mutual protection. They voted their session permanent,
and for seventy-two hours, day and night, continued in their seats, one half
deliberating while the other half slept upon their benches. La Fayette, who was
one of the most resolute of this Spartan band, relieved the venerable president in
the labors of the chair.[158]
During the whole of Monday, even the king knew not what was passing in Paris;
and the Assembly, all communication being cut off between Versailles and the
metropolis, were in a state of most painful suspense. Every moment they dreaded
receiving the news that the city was attacked, and the clangor of martial bands
and arms around them led them momentarily to expect the entrance of a military
force for their arrest. During the night of the 13th but little business was done,
and the wearied members remained talking in groups or dozing in their seats.
Tuesday morning, July 14th, dawned—ever-memorable day. The Assembly, in
the most perplexing anxiety, resumed its labors of preparing a constitution.
During the whole day no definite tidings could be received from the city, and yet
the booming of cannon was heard proclaiming serious and sanguinary trouble.
M. Dumont, who wrote under the nom de plume of Groenvelt,[159] thus describes
the scene of which he was an eye-witness:
"But it was in the evening (of July 14th) that the spectacle exhibited by the
Assembly was truly sublime. I shall not attempt to describe the various emotions
of joy, grief, and terror which at different moments agitated those who were
merely spectators and strangers in the Assembly. But the expression is improper;
we were none of us strangers. For myself, I felt as a Frenchman, because I felt as
a man. Nothing could be more distracting than our uncertainty concerning the
state of Paris, from whence no person was suffered to stir. The Viscount de
Noailles[160] after repeated interruptions had contrived at last to get away; but the
intelligence which he brought served only to quicken our impatience and
increase our alarms.
"He knew that a multitude of people in search of arms had forced their way into
the Hospital for Military Invalids; that the Bastille was besieged; that there had
been already much bloodshed; that the troops encamped in the Field of Mars
were expected every moment to march to the relief of that fortress, which could
not be effected without deluging all Paris in blood.
"At this dreadful news the Assembly was penetrated with horror. A number of
the members started from their seats by a kind of involuntary impulse, as if
determined to hasten to the defense of their fellow-citizens. Others were for
immediately bursting into the king's presence to remonstrate with him on what
had happened; to say to him 'Behold the fruits of your counsels; hear the cries of
your victims; see the destruction which is about to overwhelm your capital; say,
are you the king or the murderer of your people?'
"But these tumultuous emotions gave place to the more temperate measure of
sending a numerous deputation to the king, to represent to him the calamities
which threatened Paris, and again to conjure him to remove the army. A long
time elapsed, and the deputation did not return. No one could account for the
delay. In the mean time there came a message that two deputies from the body of
electors at Paris desired admittance. They were instantly ordered in. Not a breath
was heard; every ear was attentive: every eye was strained; every mind was upon
the rack. From some unaccountable mistake it was some time before they
entered. Never was impatience wrought up to a higher pitch. At last they
appeared at the bar."[161]
But let us leave the Assembly listening at midnight of the 14th to the narrative of
the deputies from Paris, while we enter the city to witness the transactions there.
At three o'clock Monday morning tumultuous masses of men were filling the
streets. The barriers, at which a tax had been levied upon all articles of food and
other merchandise which entered the city, had been seized, set on fire, and were
now blazing. It was expected every moment that the troops would enter to sweep
the streets with grapeshot; and from every steeple the tocsin was pealing,
summoning the people to arms. Thousands of those who thronged the city,
houseless wanderers, were haggard and wan with famine, and knew not where to
get a mouthful of bread.
There was a rumor that in the convents of the Lazarites a vast amount of wheat
was hoarded up. Resistless, like an inundation, the hungry multitude poured in at
the doors and filled the convent from attic to cellar. They found vast quantities of
wine in the vaults and more than fifty cart-loads of wheat. They drank the wine
freely, fed themselves, and sent the wheat to the market to be distributed. But
they would allow no stealing. One wretch who was detected as a thief was
immediately hung by the populace![162]
They then ransacked the city in pursuit of arms. Every sword, musket, and pistol
from private residences was brought forward. The shops of the gunsmiths
furnished a small supply. The royal arsenal, containing mainly curiosities and
suits of ancient armor, was ransacked, and, while all the costly objects of interest
were left untouched, every available weapon was taken away. The prison of La
Force was filled with debtors. The populace broke down the doors and liberated
these unfortunate men, incarcerated for no crime. The prison of the Chatelet was
filled with convicts. These felons, hearing of the tumult and of the release of the
prisoners of La Force, rose upon their keepers and endeavored to batter down
their doors. The same populace, called upon by the keepers of the Chatelet,
entered the court-yard of the prison, and, with pike and bayonet, drove the
convicts back again to their cells.
pic
SACKING THE ROYAL ARSENAL.
Crowds were assembled around the Hôtel de Ville, where the electors had met,
demanding arms and the immediate establishment of a citizen's guard. But the
electors moved with great caution. They did not feel authorized to establish the
guard without the approval of the Assembly; and the Assembly had not ventured
to adopt the measure without the consent of the king.
The excitement at last became so intense, and the importunity so pressing, that
the electors referred the people to the mayor of the city. Flesselles, the mayor,
was an officer of the crown, but he immediately obeyed the summons of the
people, and came to the Hôtel de Ville. Here he feigned to be entirely on their
side, declared that he was their father, and that he would preside over their
meetings only by the election of the people. This announcement was received
with a burst of enthusiasm. It was immediately decided that a citizen's guard
should be established.
Paris then contained nearly a million of inhabitants, and almost every ablebodied
man was eager to mount guard for the protection of the city. There was
no want of men, but as yet there was no efficient organization, and there were no
arms. The electors were very anxious to avoid insurrection, and at first wished
only for a guard simply strong enough to protect the city. They therefore decreed
that each of the sixty districts should elect and arm two hundred of its most
respectable citizens. These twelve thousand men would constitute a very
admirable police, but a very poor army. Matters, however, were so rapidly
approaching a crisis, and the peril so fast increasing, that on the afternoon of the
same day it was decided that this citizen's guard should consist of forty-eight
thousand men, and that the colors of the cockade should be blue and red. La
Fayette proposed that they should add white, the old color of France, saying, "I
thus give you a cockade which will go round the world."
The electors then appointed a committee to watch day and night over the safety
of the city. Thus a new and independent government, with its strong army of
defense, entirely detached from the throne, was established in a day. It was the
sudden growth of uncontrollable events, which no human wisdom had planned.
"But to whom," said the mayor, Flesselles, "shall the oath of fidelity be taken?"
"To the Assembly of the citizens," an elector promptly replied.
Every thinking man saw clearly that matters were approaching a fearful crisis.
Marshal Broglie, proud and self-confident, was at Versailles in constant
conference with the court, and having at his command fifty thousand men,
abundantly armed and equipped, all of whom could in a few hours be
concentrated in the streets of Paris. Bensenval had assembled his force of several
thousand Swiss and German troops, cavalry and artillery, in the Field of Mars.
The enormous fortress of the Bastille, with its walls forty feet thick at its base
and ten at the top, rising with its gloomy towers one hundred and twenty feet in
the air, with cannon, charged with grapeshot, already run out at every embrasure
to sweep the streets, commanded the city. It was garrisoned by about eighty
French soldiers; but, as it was feared that they could not be wholly relied upon,
forty Swiss troops were thrown in as a re-enforcement who would be as blindly
obedient as the muskets they shouldered. Every moment rumors were reaching
the city that Marshal Broglie was approaching with all his troops. Still no arms
or ammunition could be obtained.
In this state of things a report was brought that a large quantity of powder had
been embarked in a boat from the Hôtel des Invalides, and was floating down the
Seine to be conveyed to Versailles. The people immediately ran to the Electors,
and obtained an order to have the powder seized and brought to the hotel. It was
promptly done. A heroic clergyman, the Abbé Lefebvre, who had great influence
over the populace, assumed the perilous task of guarding the powder in one of
the lower rooms of the Hôtel de Ville and distributing it among the people. For
forty-eight hours this brave man guarded his dangerous treasure in the midst of
fire-arms and the surging of the multitude. A drunken man at one time staggered
in smoking amid the casks.[163]
Guns only were wanting now. It was well known that there were large stores of
them somewhere in the city, but no one knew where to find them.
The mayor, Flesselles, who the people now began to suspect was deluding them
merely to gain time for the royal troops to enter the city, being urged to point out
the dépôt, said that the manufactory at Charleville had promised to send him
thirty thousand guns, and that twelve thousand he was momentarily expecting.
Soon a large number of boxes were brought, marked "guns." The mayor ordered
them to be stored in the magazine till he should have time to distribute them. But
the impatient people so urged the electors that they broke open the boxes and
found them filled with rubbish. Was the mayor deceiving them? many anxiously
inquired. Flesselles, much embarrassed, sent the people to two monasteries
where he said guns were concealed; but the friars promptly threw open the
doors, and no arms were to be found.
It soon became evident that Flesselles was trifling with the people, hoping to
keep them unarmed until the troops should arrive to crush them mercilessly. He
was well known as a dissolute man, hostile to popular liberty, and was
undoubtedly a traitor, and a spy at the Hôtel de Ville, acting in communication
with the court.[164]
The electors now ordered thirty thousand pikes to be manufactured. Every smith
was immediately employed, every forge was glowing, and for thirty-six hours,
day and night, without intermission, the anvils rang till the pikes were finished.
All this day of Monday the people thought only of defending themselves, but
night again came, another night of terror, tumult, and sleeplessness.
The Bastille was the great terror of Paris. While that remained in the hands of
their enemies, with its impregnable walls and heavy guns commanding the city,
there was no safety. As by an instinct, during the night of the 13th, the Parisians
decided that the Bastille must be taken. With that fortress in their hands they
could defend themselves and repel their foes. But how could the Bastille be
taken? It was apparently as unassailable as Gibraltar's rock. Nothing could be
more preposterous than the thought of storming the Bastille. "The idea," says
Michelet, "was by no means reasonable. It was an act of faith."
The Bastille stood in the very heart of the Faubourg St. Antoine, enormous,
massive, and blackened with age, the gloomy emblem of royal prerogative,
exciting by its mysterious power and menace the terror and the execration of
every one who passed beneath the shadow of its towers. Even the sports of
childhood dare not approach the empoisoned atmosphere with which it seemed
to be enveloped.
M. de Launey was governor of the fortress, He was no soldier, but a mean,
mercenary man, despised by the Parisians. He contrived to draw from the
establishment, by every species of cruelty and extortion, an income of twentyfive
thousand dollars a year. He reduced the amount of fire-wood to which the
shivering inmates were entitled; made a great profit on the wretched wine which
he furnished to those who were able to buy, and even let out the little garden
within the inclosure, thus depriving those prisoners who were not in dungeon
confinement of the privilege of a walk there, which they had a right to claim. De
Launey was not merely detested as Governor of the Bastille, but he was
personally execrated as a greedy, sordid, merciless man. Linguet's Memoirs of
the Bastille had rendered De Launey's name infamous throughout Europe. Such
men are usually cowards. De Launey was both spiritless and imbecile. Had he
not been both, the Bastille could not have been taken.[165]
Still the people had no guns. It was ascertained that there was a large supply at
the Hôtel des Invalides, but how could they be taken without any weapons of
attack? Sombrueil, the governor, was a firm and fearless man, and, in addition to
his ordinary force, amply sufficient for defense, he had recently obtained a
strong detachment of artillery and several additional cannon, showing that he
was ready to do battle. Within fifteen minutes march of the Invalides, Bensenval
was encamped with several thousand Swiss and German troops in the highest
state of discipline, and provided with all the most formidable implements of war.
Every moment rumors passed through the streets that the troops from Versailles
were on the march, headed by officers who were breathing threatenings and
slaughter.
With electric speed the rumor passed through the streets that there was a large
quantity of arms stored in the magazine of the Hôtel of the Invalides. Before
nine o'clock in the morning of the 14th, thirty thousand men were before the
Invalides; some with pikes, pistols, or muskets, but most of them unarmed. The
curate of St. Etienne led his parishioners in this conflict for freedom. As this
intrepid man marched at the head of his flock he said to them, "My children, let
us not forget that all men are brothers." The bells of alarm ringing from the
steeples seemed to invest the movement with a religious character. Those
sublime voices, accustomed to summon the multitude to prayer, now with their
loudest utterance called them to the defense of their civil and religious rights.
[166]
Sombrueil perceived at once that the populace could only be repelled by
enormous massacre, and that probably even that, in the phrensied state of the
public mind, would be ineffectual. He dared not assume the responsibility of
firing without an order from the king, and he could get no answer to the
messages he sent to Versailles. Though his cannon charged with grapeshot could
have swept down thousands, he did not venture to give the fatal command to
fire. The citizens, with a simultaneous rush in all directions, leaped the trenches,
clambered over the low wall—for the hotel was not a fortress—and, like a
resistless inundation, filled the vast building. They found in the armory thirty
thousand muskets. Seizing these and six pieces of cannon they rushed, as by a
common instinct, toward the Bastille to assail with these feeble means one of the
strongest fortresses in the world—a fortress which an army under the great
Condé had in vain besieged for three and twenty days![167]
De Launey, from the summit of his towers, had for many hours heard the roar of
the insurgent city. As he now saw the black mass of countless thousands
approaching, he turned pale and trembled. All the cannon, loaded with
grapeshot, were thrust out of the port-holes, and several cart-loads of pavingstones,
cannon-balls, and old iron had been conveyed to the tops of the towers to
be thrown down to crush the assailants. Twelve large rampart guns, charged
heavily with grape, guarded the only entrance. These were manned by thirty-two
Swiss soldiers who would have no scruples in firing upon Frenchmen. The
eighty-two French soldiers who composed the remainder of the garrison were
placed upon the towers, and at distant posts, where they could act efficiently
without being brought so immediately into conflict with the attacking party.
A man of very fearless and determined character, M. Thuriot, was sent by the
electors at the Hôtel de Ville to summon the Bastille to surrender. The drawbridge
was lowered, and he was admitted. The governor received him at the head
of his staff.
"I summon you," said Thuriot, "in the name of the people, in the name of honor,
and of our native land."
The governor, who was every moment expecting the arrival of troops to disperse
the crowd, refused to surrender the fortress, but replied that he was ready to give
his oath that he would not fire upon the people, if they did not fire upon him.
After a long and exciting interview, Thuriot came forth to those at the Hôtel de
Ville who had sent him.
He had hardly emerged from the massive portals, and crossed the draw-bridge of
the moat, which was immediately raised behind him, ere the people commenced
the attack. A scene of confusion and uproar ensued which can not be described.
A hundred thousand men, filling all the streets and alleys which opened upon the
Bastille, crowding all the windows and house-tops of the adjacent buildings,
kept up an incessant firing, harmlessly flattening their bullets against walls of
stone forty feet thick and one hundred feet high.[168]
The French soldiers within the garrison were reluctant to fire upon their relatives
and friends. But the Swiss, obedient to authority, opened a deadly fire of bullets
and grapeshot upon the crowd. While the battle was raging an intercepted letter
was brought to the Hôtel de Ville, in which Bensenval, commandant of the
troops in the Field of Mars, exhorted De Launey to remain firm, assuring him
that he would soon come with succor.[169] But, fortunately for the people, even
these foreign troops refused to march for the protection of the Bastille.
The French Guards now broke from their barracks, and, led by their subaltern
officers, came with two pieces of artillery in formidable array to join the people.
They were received with thunders of applause which drowned even the roar of
the battle. Energetically they opened their batteries upon the fortress, but their
balls rebounded harmless from the impregnable rock.
Apparently the whole of Paris, with one united will, was combined against the
great bulwark of tyranny.[170] Men, women, and boys were mingled in the fight.
Priests, nobles, wealthy citizens, and the ragged and emaciate victims of famine
were pressing in the phrensied assault side by side.[171] The French soldiers were
now anxious to surrender, but the Swiss, sheltered from all chance of harm, shot
down with deliberate and unerring aim whomsoever they would. Four hours of
the battle had now passed, and though but one man had been hurt within the
fortress, a hundred and seventy-one of the citizens had been either killed or
wounded. The French soldiers now raised a flag of truce upon the towers, while
the Swiss continued firing below. This movement plunged De Launey into
despair. One hundred thousand men were beleaguering his fortress. The king
sent no troops to his aid; and three fourths of his garrison had abandoned him
and were already opening communications with his assailants. He knew that the
people could never pardon him for the blood of their fathers and brothers with
which he had crimsoned their streets—that death was his inevitable doom. In a
state almost of delirium he seized a match from a cannon and rushed toward the
magazine, determined to blow up the citadel. There were a hundred and thirtyfive
barrels of gunpowder in the vaults. The explosion would have thrown the
Bastille into the air, buried one hundred thousand people beneath its ruins, and
have demolished one third of Paris.[172] Two subaltern officers crossed their
bayonets before him and prevented the accomplishment of this horrible design.
Some wretches seized upon a young lady whom they believed to be the
governor's daughter, and wished, by the threat of burning her within view of her
father upon the towers, to compel him to surrender. But the citizens promptly
rescued her from their hands and conveyed her to a place of safety. It was now
five o'clock, and the assault had commenced at twelve o'clock at noon. The
French soldiers within made white flags of napkins, attached them to bayonets,
and waved them from the walls. Gradually the flags of truce were seen through
the smoke; the firing ceased, and the cry resounded through the crowd and was
echoed along the streets of Paris, "The Bastille surrenders." This fortress, which
Louis XIV. and Turenne had pronounced impregnable, surrendered not to the
arms of its assailants, for they had produced no impression upon it. It was
conquered by that public opinion which pervaded Paris and which vanquished its
garrison.[173]
The massive portals were thrown open, and the vast multitude, a living deluge,
plunging headlong, rushed in. They clambered the towers, penetrated the cells,
and descended into the dungeons and oubliettes. Appalled they gazed upon the
instruments of torture with which former victims of oppression had been torn
and broken. Excited as they were by the strife, and exasperated by the shedding
of blood, but one man in the fortress, a Swiss soldier, fell a victim to their rage.
The victorious people now set out in a tumultuous procession to convey their
prisoners, the governor and the soldiers, to the Hôtel de Ville. Those of the
populace whose relatives had perished in the strife were roused to fury, and
called loudly for the blood of De Launey. Two very powerful men placed
themselves on each side of him for his protection. But the clamor increased, the
pressure became more resistless, and just as they were entering the Place de
Grève the protectors of the governor were overpowered—he was struck down,
his head severed by a sabre stroke, and raised a bloody and ghastly trophy into
the air upon a pike.
In the midst of the great commotion two of the Swiss soldiers of the Bastille,
whom the populace supposed to have been active in the cannonade, were seized,
notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts to save them, and hung to a lamppost.
A rumor passed through the crowd that a letter had been found from the
mayor, Flesselles, who was already strongly suspected of treachery, directed to
De Launey, in which he said,
"I am amusing the Parisians with cockades and promises. Hold out till the
evening and you shall be relieved."[174]
Loud murmurs rose from the crowd which filled and surrounded the hall. Some
one proposed that Flesselles should be taken to the Palais Royal to be tried by
the people. The clamor was increasing and his peril imminent. Pallid with fear
he descended from the platform, and, accompanied by a vast throng, set out for
the Palais Royal. At the turning of the first street an unknown man approached,
and with a pistol shot him dead. Infuriate wretches immediately cut off his head,
and it was borne upon a pike in savage triumph through the streets.
The French Guards, with the great body of the people, did what they could to
repress these bloody acts. The French and Swiss soldiers took the oath of fidelity
to the nation, and under the protection of the French Guard were marched to
places of safety where they were supplied with lodgings and food. Thus
terminated this eventful day. The fall of the Bastille broke the right arm of the
monarchy, paralyzed its nerves of action, and struck it a death blow. The
monarch of France, from his palace at Versailles, heard the distant thunders of
the cannonade, and yet inscribed upon his puerile journal "Nothing!"[175]
FOOTNOTES:
[152] "Thus Paris, without courts of justice, without police, without a guard, at the mercy of one hundred
thousand men who were wandering idly in the middle of the night, and for the most part wanting bread,
believed itself on the point of being besieged from without and pillaged from within; believed that twentyfive
thousand soldiers were posted around to blockade it and cut off all supplies of provisions, and that it
would be a prey to a starving populace."—Memoirs of Marmontel.
[153] Hist. Phil. de la Rev. Fr., par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. i., p. 148.
[154] Professor William Smyth, in his very able and candid lectures, delivered at the University of
Cambridge, England, though his sympathies are with the court in this conflict, writes:
"On the whole, it appears to me that there can be no doubt that a great design had been formed by the court
for the dissolution of the National Assembly and the assertion of the power of the crown. That military
force was to have been produced, and according to the measure of its success would, in all probability, have
been the depression of the spirit of liberty, even of national liberty, then existing in France. Less than this
can not well be supposed; much more may be believed."—Lectures on the French Revolution, vol. i., p.
251.
[155] The Old Régime and the Revolution, by M. de Tocqueville, p. 190.
[156] Michelet, vol. i., p. 136.
[157] "They were going to make payments with a paper money, without any other guarantee than the
signature of an insolvent king."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 137.
[158] "A list of the proscribed had been drawn up in the committee of the queen. Sixty-nine deputies, at the
head of whom were placed Mirabeau, Sièyes, and Bailly, were to be imprisoned in the citadel of Metz, and
from thence led to the scaffold, as guilty of rebellion. The signal agreed upon for this St. Bartholomew of
the representatives of the people was the change of the ministry."—Histoire des Montagnards, par
Alphonse Esquiros, p. 15.
[159] Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 241.
[160] Louis, Viscount of Noailles, was a deputy of the nobles. With La Fayette, Rochefoucault, and others
he warmly espoused the cause of popular liberty. He voted in favor of uniting with the National Assembly,
and was the first to exhort the clergy and the nobility to renounce their privileges, as injurious to the
common weal. When the Revolution sank degraded into the hands of low and worthless men, he retired
from the public service; but when Napoleon came to the rescue, he again entered the army, and was
subsequently killed in a battle with the English.—Enc. Am., Art. Noailles.
[161] "The better part of the Assembly," writes Ferrières, "strangers to all the intrigues which might be
going forward, was filled with alarm at the sad reports that were circulating, and terrified at the designs of
the court, which they were assured went to the seizing of Paris, the dissolution of the Assembly, and the
massacre of the citizens. In the mean time the partisans of the court concealed their joy under an
appearance of indifference. They came to the sittings to see what turns the deliberations would take, to
enjoy their triumph, and the humiliation of the Assembly. The Assembly they looked upon as annihilated."
[162] Michelet, vol. i., p. 38; Geo. Long, Esq., vol. i., p. 28.
[163] "This heroic man was the Abbé Lefebvre d'Ormesson. No man rendered a greater service to the
Revolution and the city of Paris."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 140.
"A patriot, in liquor, insisted on sitting to smoke on the edge of one of the powder-barrels. There smoked
he, independent of the world, till the Abbé purchased his pipe for three francs, and pitched it far."—Carlyle,
vol. i., p. 191.
[164] Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution Française, vol. ii., p. 365.
[165] Michelet, vol. i., p. 156.
[166] Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 16.
[167] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., p. 66.
[168] "Its walls, ten feet thick at the top of its towers, and thirty or forty at the base, might long laugh at
cannon-balls. Its batteries, firing down upon Paris, could in the mean time demolish the whole of the
Marais and the Faubourg St. Antoine. Its towers pierced with windows and loop-holes, protected by double
and triple gratings, enabled the garrison in full security to make a dreadful carnage of its
assailants."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 143.
[169] Thiers, vol. i., p. 69.
[170] "Old men," says Michelet, "who have had the happiness and the misery to see all that has happened
in this unprecedented half century, declared that the grand and national achievements of the Republic and
the Empire had, nevertheless, a partial non-unanimous character. But that the 14th of July alone was the day
of the whole people."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 144.
[171] Histoire Des Montagnards par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 17.
[172] Michelet, vol. i., p. 156.
[173] "Properly speaking the Bastille was not taken, it surrendered. Troubled by a bad conscience, it went
mad, and lost all presence of mind."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 156.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE KING RECOGNIZES THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
Rout of the Cavalry of Lambesc.—Tidings of the Capture of the Bastille
reach Versailles.—Consternation of the Court.—Midnight Interview
between the Duke of Liancourt and the King.—New Delegation from the
Assembly.—The King visits the Assembly.—The King escorted back to his
Palace.—Fickleness of the Monarch.—Deputation sent to the Hôtel de
Ville.—Address of La Fayette.—La Fayette appointed Commander of the
National Guard.
WHILE these scenes were transpiring in Paris, the court, but poorly informed
respecting the real attitude of affairs, were preparing, on that very evening, with
all the concentrated troops of the monarchy, to drown the insurrection in Paris in
blood, to disperse the Assembly, consigning to the dungeon and the scaffold its
prominent members, and to rivet anew those shackles of despotism which for
ages had bound the people of France hand and foot.
M. Berthier, one of the high officers of the crown, aided by his father-in-law, M.
Foulon, under minister of war, was intensely active marshaling the troops, and
giving orders for the attack. Conscious of the opposition they must encounter,
and regardless of the carnage which would ensue, they had planned a
simultaneous assault upon the city at seven different points. Entertaining no
apprehension that the Bastille could be taken, or that the populace, however
desperate, could present any effectual resistance to the disciplined troops of the
crown, they were elated with the hope that the decisive hour for the victory of
the court had arrived.
The queen could not conceal her exultation. With the Duchess of Polignac, one
of the most haughty of the aristocratic party, and with others of the court, she
went to the Orangery, where a regiment of foreign troops were stationed, excited
the enthusiasm of the soldiers by her presence, and caused wine and gold to be
freely distributed among them. In the intoxication of the moment the soldiers
sang, danced, shouted, clashed their weapons, and swore eternal fidelity to the
queen.[176]
But these bright hopes were soon blighted. A cloud of dust was seen, moving
with the sweep of the whirlwind through the Avenue of Paris. It was the cavalry
of Lambesc flying before the people. Soon after a messenger rushed breathless
into the presence of the court, and announced that the Bastille was taken, and
that the troops in Paris refused to fire upon the people. While he was yet
speaking another came with the tidings that De Launey and Flesselles were both
slain. The queen was deeply affected and wept bitterly. "The idea," writes
Madame Campan, "that the king had lost such devoted subjects wounded her to
the heart." The court party was now plunged into consternation. The truth
flashed upon them that while the people were exasperated to the highest pitch,
the troops could no longer be depended upon for the defense of the court.
The masses, enraged by the insults and aggressions of the privileged classes, still
appreciated the kindly nature of the king, and spoke of him with respect and
even affection. Efforts were made by the court to conceal from Louis the
desperate state of affairs, and at his usual hour of eleven o'clock he retired to his
bed, by no means conscious that the sceptre of power had passed from his hands.
The Duke of Liancourt, whose office as grand master of the wardrobe, allowed
him to enter the chamber of the king at any hour, was a sincere friend of Louis.
He could not see him rush thus blindly to destruction, and, accordingly, entering
his chamber and sitting down by his bedside, he gave him a truthful narrative of
events in Paris. The king, astonished and alarmed, exclaimed, "Why, it is a
revolt!" "Nay, sire," replied Liancourt, "it is a revolution!"
The king immediately resolved that he would the next morning, without any
ceremony, visit the National Assembly, and attempt a reconciliation. The leading
members of the court, now fully conscious of their peril, were assembled in the
saloons of the Duchess of Polignac, some already suggested flight from the
realm to implore the aid of foreign kings. The Assembly was still, during these
midnight hours, deliberating in great anxiety. Many of the members, utterly
exhausted by their uninterrupted service by day and by night, were slumbering
upon the benches. It was known by all that this was the night assigned for the
great assault; and a rumor was passing upon all lips that the hall of the Assembly
had been undermined that all the deputies might be blown into the air.
Paris at this hour presented a scene of awful tumult. It was momentarily
expected that the royal troops would arrive with cavalry and artillery, and that
from the heights of Montmartre bomb-shells would be rained down upon the
devoted city. Men, women, and children were preparing for defense. The Bastille
was guarded and garrisoned. The pavements were torn up, barricades erected,
and ditches dug. The windows were illuminated to throw the light of day into the
streets. Paving stones and heavy articles of furniture were conveyed to the roofs
of the houses to be thrown down upon the assailing columns. Every smith was
employed forging pikes, and thousands of hands were busy casting bullets.
Tumultuous throngs of characterless and desperate men swept through the
streets, rioting in the general anarchy. The watch-words established by the
citizen patrols were "Washington and Liberty." Thus passed the night of the 14th
of July in the Chateau of Versailles, in the hall of the Assembly, and in the streets
of Paris.
At two o'clock in the morning of the 15th the Assembly ceased its deliberations
for a few hours, and the members, though the session was still continued, sought
such repose as they could obtain in their seats. At eight o'clock the discussions
were resumed. It was resolved to send a deputation of twenty-four members,
again to implore the king to respect the rights of the people, and no longer to
suffer them to be goaded to madness by insults and oppression. As the
deputation was about to leave, Mirabeau rose and said, "Tell the king that the
foreign hordes surrounding us received yesterday the caresses, encouragement,
and bribes of the court; that all night long these foreign satellites, gorged with
money and wine, in their impious songs have predicted the enslavement of
France, and have invoked the destruction of the National Assembly; tell him that
in his very palace the courtiers have mingled dancing with these impious songs,
and that such was the prelude to the massacre of St. Bartholomew."
He had hardly uttered these words ere the Duke of Liancourt entered and
announced that the king was coming in person to visit the Assembly. The doors
were thrown open, and, to the astonishment of the Assembly, the king, without
guard or escort and accompanied only by his two brothers, entered. A shout of
applause greeted him. In a short and touching speech the king won to himself the
hearts of all. He assured them of his confidence in the Assembly; that he had
never contemplated its violent dissolution; and that he sincerely desired to unite
with the Assembly in consulting for the best interests of the nation. He also
declared that he had issued orders for the withdrawal of the troops both from
Paris and Versailles, and that, hereafter, the counsels of the National Assembly
should be the guide of his administration.[177]
This conciliatory speech was received by the mass of the deputies with rapturous
applause. The aristocratic party were, however, greatly chagrined, and, retiring
by themselves, with whispers and frowns gave vent to their vexation; but the
general applause drowned the feeble murmurs of the nobles. Nearly the whole
Assembly rose in honor of the king as he left, and, surrounding him in
tumultuous joy, they escorted him back to his palace. A vast crowd from Paris
and Versailles thronged the streets, filling the air with their loyal and
congratulatory shouts. The queen, who was sitting anxiously in her boudoir,
heard the uproar and was greatly terrified. Soon it was announced to her that the
king was returning in triumph: she stepped out upon a balcony and looked down
upon the broad avenue filled with a countless multitude. The king was on foot;
the deputies encircled him, interlacing their arms to protect him from the crowd,
which was surging tumultuously around with every manifestation of attachment
and joy.
The people really loved the kind-hearted king; but they already understood that
foible in his character which eventually led to his ruin. A woman of Versailles
pressed her way through the deputies to the king and, with great simplicity, said,
"Oh, my king! are you quite sincere? Will they not make you change your mind
again?"
"No," replied the king, "I will never change."
The feeble Louis did not know himself. He was then sincere; but in less than an
hour he was again wavering, being undecided whether to carry out his pacific
policy of respecting the just demands of the people, or to fly from the realm, and
invoke the aid of foreign despots, to quench the rising flame of liberty in blood.
It was well known that the queen, the brothers of the king, and the Polignacs,
were the implacable foes of reform, and that it was through their councils that
the Assembly and the nation were menaced with violence.[178]
As soon as the queen was seen upon the balcony, with her son and daughter by
her side, the shouts of applause were redoubled. But now murmurs began to
mingle with the acclaim. A few execrations were heard against the obnoxious
members of the court. Still the general voice was enthusiastic in loyalty; and
when the queen descended to the foot of the marble stairs and threw herself into
the arms of the king, every murmur was hushed, and confidence and happiness
seemed to fill all hearts.[179]
A cabinet council was immediately held in the palace to deliberate respecting the
next step to be taken. The Assembly returned to their hall and immediately chose
a deputation of one hundred members, with La Fayette at their head, to convey
to the municipal government at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris the joyful tidings of
their reconciliation with the king. A courier was sent in advance to inform of the
approach of the delegation.
It was now two o'clock in the afternoon. The deputation left Versailles
accompanied by an immense escort of citizen-soldiers, and followed by a crowd
which could not be numbered. They were received in Paris with almost delirious
enthusiasm. Throughout the whole night the citizens, men, women, and children,
had been at work piling up barricades, tearing up the pavements, and preparing
with every conceivable weapon and measure of offense and defense to meet the
contemplated attack from the artillery and cavalry of the crown. Fathers and
mothers, pallid with terror, had anticipated the awful scenes of the sack of the
city by a brutal soldiery. Inexpressible was the joy to which they surrendered
themselves in finding that the king now openly avowed himself their friend and
espoused the popular cause. Windows and balconies were crowded, the streets
were strewn with flowers, and the deputies were greeted with waving of
handkerchiefs and cheers.
At the Place Louis XV. the deputies left their carriages and were conducted
through the garden of the Tuileries, greeted by the music of martial bands, to the
vestibule of the palace. There they were met by a committee of the municipality,
with one of the clergy, the Abbé Fauchet, at its head, who accompanied them to
the Hôtel de Ville.
La Fayette addressed the electors, informing them of the king's speech, and
describing the monarch's return to his palace in the midst of the National
Assembly and of the people of Versailles, "protected by their love and their
inviolable fidelity." Lally Tollendal, who was remarkable for his eloquence, then
addressed the electors and the assembled multitude. He spoke of the king, whom
he loved, in the highest terms of eulogy, and in a strain so persuasive and spiritstirring
that he was immediately crowned with a wreath of flowers, and, in a
tumult of transport, was carried in triumph to the window to receive the applause
of the thousands who filled the streets. Love for the king seemed to be an instinct
with the populace. Shouts of "Vive le Roi!" rose from the vast assembly, which
were reverberated from street to street through all the thronged thoroughfares of
the metropolis.
The king had authorized the establishment of the National Guard, but the guard
was yet without a commander-in-chief. The government of Paris also, by the
death of Flesselles, had no head. There was in the hall of the Assembly a bust of
La Fayette which had been presented by the United States to the city of Paris. It
stood by the side of the bust of Washington. As the momentous question was
discussed, who should be intrusted with the command of the National Guard, a
body which now numbered hundreds of thousands and was spread all over the
kingdom, Moreau de St. Mèry, Chairman of the Municipality, rose, and, without
uttering a word, silently pointed to the bust of La Fayette. The gesture was
decisive. A general shout of acclaim filled the room. He who had fought the
battles of liberty in America was thus intrusted with the command of the citizensoldiery
of France. M. Bailly was then chosen successor of Flesselles, not with
the title of Prévôt des Marchands, but with the more comprehensive one of
Mayor of Paris.
On the 27th of September the banners of the National Guard, each one of which
had been previously consecrated in the church of its district, were all taken to the
Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, and there, with the utmost pomp of civil, military, and
religious ceremonies, were consecrated to the service of God and the nation.
pic
BLESSING THE BANNERS.
FOOTNOTES:
[174] It has not subsequently appeared that there was any conclusive evidence of the existence of this letter.
[175] Histoire Des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 17.
[176] The Duchess of Polignac was the most intimate friend of the queen. Though enjoying an income from
the crown of two hundred and ninety thousand francs ($58,400) annually, she was deemed, when compared
with others of the nobles, poor. The queen had assigned her a magnificent suite of apartments in the Palace
of Versailles at the head of the marble stairs. The saloons of the duchess were the rendezvous of the court in
all its plottings against the people. Here originated that aristocratic club which called into being
antagonistic popular clubs all over the kingdom.—Madame Campan, vol. i., p. 139; Weber, vol. ii., p. 23.
[177] Hist. Phil. de la Rev. Fr., par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, vol. i., p. 165; M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i.,
p. 69; Hist. Parlem., vol. ii., p. 117.
[178] Necker, speaking of the plots of the court, writes, "I could never ascertain certainly what design was
contemplated. There were secrets and after-secrets, and I am convinced that the king himself was not in all
of them. It was intended, perhaps, according to circumstances, to draw the monarch into measures which
they did not dare to mention to him beforehand."—Vol. ii., p. 85.
[179] Madame Campan's Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, vol. ii., p. 48.
CHAPTER XV.
THE KING VISITS PARIS.
Views of the Patriots.—Pardon of the French Guards.—Religious
Ceremonies.—Recall of Necker.—The King visits Paris.—Action of the
Clergy.—The King at the Hôtel de Ville.—Return of the King to Versailles.
—Count d'Artois, the Polignacs, and others leave France.—Insolence of the
Servants.—Sufferings of the People.—Persecution of the Corn-dealers.—
Berthier of Toulon.—M. Foulon.—Their Assassination.—Humane
Attempts of Necker.—Abolition of Feudal Rights.
THE new government was now established, consolidated with power which
neither the court nor the people as yet even faintly realized. The National
Assembly and the municipality of Paris were now supreme. A million of men
were ready to draw the sword and spring into the ranks to enforce their decrees.
The king was henceforth but a constitutional monarch; though by no means
conscious of it, his despotic power had passed away, never to be regained. The
Revolution had now made such strides that nothing remained but to carry out
those plans which might be deemed essential for the welfare of France. The
Revolution thus far had been almost bloodless. And had it not been for the
interference of surrounding despots, who combined their armies to rivet anew
the chains of feudal aristocracy upon the French people, the subsequent horrors
of the Revolution, in all probability, never would have occurred. Men of wisdom
and of the purest patriotism were at the head of these popular movements. Every
step which had been taken had been wisely taken. The object which all sought
was reform, not revolution—the reign of a constitutional monarchy, like that of
England, not the reign of terror.
A republic was not then even thought of. A monarchy was in accordance with
the habits and tastes of the people, and would leave them still in sympathy with
the great family of governments which surrounded them. La Fayette, Talleyrand,
Sièyes, Mirabeau, Bailly, and all the other leaders in this great movement,
wished only to infuse the spirit of personal liberty into the monarchy of France.
But when all the surrounding despotisms combined and put their armies in
motion to invade France, determined that the French people should not be free,
and when the aristocracy of France combined with these foreign invaders to
enslave anew these millions who had just broken their chains, a spirit of
desperation was roused which led to all the woes which ensued. We can not tell
what would have been the result had there not been the combination of these
foreign kings, but we do know that the results which did ensue were the direct
and legitimate consequence of that combination.
It will be remembered that the French Guards, espousing the popular side, had
refused to fire upon the people. This disobedience to the royal officers was, of
course, an act of treason. The Duke of Liancourt, speaking in behalf of the king,
said, "The king pardons the French Guards." At the utterance of the obnoxious
word pardon, a murmur of displeasure ran through the hall. Some of the guards
who were present immediately advanced to the platform, and one, as the organ
of the rest, said, firmly and nobly,
"We can not accept a pardon. We need none. In serving the nation we serve the
king; and the scenes now transpiring prove it."
The laconic speech was greeted with thunders of applause, and nothing more
was said about a pardon. The lower clergy, who were active in these movements,
were not unmindful of their obligations to God. The whole people seemed to
sympathize in this religious sentiment. At the suggestion of the Archbishop of
Paris a Te Deum was promptly voted, and the electors, deputies, and new
magistrates, accompanied by an immense concourse of citizens, and escorted by
the French Guards, repaired to the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, where the solemn
chant of thanksgiving was devoutly offered. La Fayette and Bailly then took the
oath of office.
Upon the return of the deputation to the Assembly at Versailles, Lally Tollendal
reported that the universal cry of the Parisians was for the recall of Necker, with
which minister the popular cause was held to be identified. A motion was
immediately introduced to send a deputation to the king soliciting his recall.
They had but just entered upon the discussion of this question when a message
was received from Louis announcing the dismissal of the obnoxious ministers,
accompanied by an unsealed letter addressed to Necker, summoning him to
return to his post. Inspired by gratitude for this act, the Assembly immediately
addressed a vote of thanks to the king.
The populace of Paris had expressed the earnest wish that the king would pay
them a visit. During the afternoon and evening of the 16th, the question was
earnestly discussed by the court at Versailles, whether the king should fly from
the kingdom, protected by the foreign troops whom he could gather around him,
and seek the assistance of foreign powers, or whether he should continue to
express acquiescence in the popular movement and visit the people in Paris. The
queen was in favor of escape. She told Madame Campan that, after a long
discussion at which she was present, the king, impatient and weary, said, "Well,
gentlemen, we must decide. Must I go away, or stay? I am ready to do either."
"The majority," the queen continued, "were for the king's stay. Time will show
whether the right choice has been made."[180]
The king was very apprehensive that in going powerless to Paris he might be
assassinated. In preparation of the event, he partook of the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper, and nominated his brother, subsequently Louis XVIII., Lieutenant
of France, in case of his detention or death. Early the next morning, the 17th of
July, he took an affecting leave of his weeping, distracted family, to visit the
tumultuous metropolis. His pale and melancholy countenance impressed every
observer. The queen, who was bitterly hostile to the movement, was almost in
despair. She immediately retired to her chamber, and employed herself in writing
an address to the Assembly, which she determined to present in person in case
the king should be detained a prisoner.[181]
It was ten o'clock in the morning when the king left Versailles. He rode in an
unostentatious carriage, without any guards, but surrounded by the whole body
of the deputies on foot.[182]
It was three o'clock in the afternoon before the long procession arrived at the
gates of the city. Thus far they had proceeded in silence. M. Bailly, the newlyappointed
mayor, then, met him and presented him with the keys of the city,
saying "These are the keys presented to Henry the Fourth. He had reconquered
his people. Now the people have reconquered their king."
Two hundred thousand men, now composing the National Guard, were
marshaled in military array to receive their monarch. They lined the avenue four
or five men deep from the bridge of Sevres to the Hôtel de Ville. They had but
30,000 muskets and 50,000 pikes. The rest were armed with sabres, lances,
scythes, and pitchforks. The Revolution thus far was the movement, not of a
party, but of the nation. Even matrons and young girls were seen standing armed
by the side of their husbands and fathers. The clergy, lower clergy, and some of
the bishops, not forgetting that they were men and citizens, were there also in
this hour of their country's peril, consecrating all their influence to the cause of
freedom. They did not ingloriously take refuge beneath their clerical robes from
the responsibilities of this greatest of conflicts for human rights. Shouts were
continually heard swelling from the multitude of "Vive la Nation!" As yet not a
voice had been heard exclaiming "Vive le Roi!" The people had again become
suspicious. Rumors of the unrelenting hostility of the court had been circulating
through the crowd, and there were many fears that the ever-vacillating king
would again espouse the cause of aristocratic usurpation. Passing through these
lines of the National Guard, with the whole population of Paris thronging the
house-tops, the balconies, and the pavements, the king at length arrived, at four
o'clock in the afternoon, at the Hôtel de Ville, the seat of the new government.
He alighted from his carriage and ascended the stairs beneath a canopy of steel
formed by the grenadiers crossing their bayonets over his head. This was
intended not as a humiliation, but as a singular act of honor.[183]
The king took his position in the centre of the spacious hall, which presented an
extraordinary aspect. It was crowded with the notabilities of the city and of the
realm, and those near the centre with true French politeness dropped upon their
knees, that those more remote might have a view of the king. Bailly then
presented the king with the tricolored cockade. He received it, and immediately
pinned it upon his hat. This was the adoption of the popular cause. It was
received with a shout of enthusiasm, and "Vive le Roi!" burst from all lips with
almost delirious energy. Tears gushed into the eyes of the king, and, turning to
one of his suite, M. de Cubieres, he said, "My heart stands in need of such shouts
from the people."
"Sire," replied Cubieres, "the people love your majesty, and your majesty ought
never to have doubted it."
The king rejoined, in accents of deep sensibility, "The French loved Henry the
Fourth; and what king ever better deserved to be beloved?"
The king could not forget that the affection of the people did not protect Henry
from the dagger of the assassin. Moreau de St. Mèrry, president of the Assembly
of Electors, in his address to the king, said, "You owed your crown to birth; you
are now indebted for it only to your virtues."[184] The minutes of the proceedings
of the municipality were then read, and the king, by silence, gave his assent to
the appointment of La Fayette as Commander of the National Guard, of Bailly as
Mayor of Paris, and to the order for the utter demolition of the Bastille. It was
also proposed that a monument should be erected upon its site to Louis XVI.,
"the Regenerator of public liberty, the Restorer of national prosperity, the Father
of the French people." These were, to the monarch, hours of terrific humiliation.
He bore them, however, with the spirit of a martyr, struggling in vain to assume
the aspect of confidence and cordiality.
pic
ARRIVAL OF THE KING AT THE HÔTEL DE VILLE, JULY 17, 1789.
When Bailly led him to the balcony, to exhibit him to the people with the
tricolored cockade upon his hat, and shouts of triumph, like thunder-peals, rose
from the myriad throng, tears flooded the eyes of the king, and he bowed his
head in silence and sadness, as if presenting himself a victim for the sacrifice.
Some one whispered to the monarch that it was expected that he would make an
address. Two or three times he attempted it, but his voice was choked with
emotion, and he could only, in almost inarticulate accents, exclaim, "You may
always rely upon my affection!"
As the king returned through the vast throng to Versailles, the tide of enthusiasm
set strongly in his favor. Shouts of "Vive le Roi!" almost deafened his ears. The
populace bore him in their arms to his chariot. A woman threw herself upon his
neck and wept with joy. Men ran from the houses with goblets of wine for his
postillions and his suite. A few words from his lips then would have re-echoed
through the crowd, and might have saved the monarchy. But Louis was a man of
feeble intellect, and of no tact whatever. He was pleased with the homage which
was spontaneously offered him, and, stolid in his immense corpulence, sat
lolling in his chariot, with a good-natured smile upon his face, but uttered not a
word. It was after nine o'clock in the evening when he returned to the palace at
Versailles. The queen and her children met him on the stairs, and, convulsively
weeping, threw themselves into his arms. Clinging together, they ascended to the
saloon. There the queen caught sight of the tricolored cockade, which the king
had forgotten to remove from his hat. The queen recoiled, and looking upon it
contemptuously, exclaimed, "I did not think that I had married a plebeian." The
good-natured king, however, forgot all his humiliations in his safe return, and
congratulated himself that no violence had been excited.
"Happily," he said, "no blood has been shed; and it is my firm determination that
never shall a drop of French blood be spilled by my order."[185]
While these scenes were transpiring on this the 17th of July, the Count d'Artois,
second brother of the king, the Condés, the Polignacs, and most of the other
leaders of the aristocratic party fled from France. The conspiracy they had
formed had failed, the nation had risen against them, and no reliance could be
placed on the vacillating king. Their only hope now was to summon the
combined energies of foreign despotisms to arrest the progress of that liberty in
France which alike threatened all their thrones. The palace was now forsaken
and gloomy as a tomb. For three days the king sadly paced the deserted halls,
with none of his old friends to cheer or counsel him but Bensenval and
Montmorin. His servants, conscious that he had fallen from his kingly power,
became careless even to insolence. Even the French Guard mounted guard at
Versailles only on orders received from the Electors at Paris.[186]
On the 19th Bensenval presented an order for the king to sign. A footman
entered the cabinet, and looked over the king's shoulder to see what he was
writing. Louis, amazed at such unparalleled effrontery, seized the tongs to break
the head of the miscreant. Bensenval interposed to prevent the undignified blow.
The king clasped the hand of his friend, and, bursting into tears, thanked him for
the interposition. Thus low had fallen the descendant of Louis XIV. in his own
palace at Versailles.[187]
There was now, in reality, no government in France. The kingly power was
entirely overthrown, and the National Assembly had hardly awoke to the
consciousness that all power had passed into its hands. Even in Paris, the
municipality, now supreme there, had by no means organized an efficient
government. Famine desolated the kingdom. Ages of misrule had so utterly
impoverished the people that they were actually dying of starvation. "Bread!
bread!" was every where the cry, but bread could not be obtained. Many boiled
grass and fern-roots for sustenance. Every where the eye met wan and haggard
men in a state of desperation. The king, constitutionally humane, felt deeply
these woes of his subjects. With a little apparent ostentation, quite pardonable
under the circumstances, he occasionally walked out and administered relief
with his own hands to the haggard beggary he every where met. He was by
nature one of the kindest of men, but he had hardly a single quality to fit him to
be the ruler of a great people. A nation was on the brink of famine, and the
monarch was giving gold to beggars instead of introducing vigorous measures
for relief.
pic
LOUIS XVI. GIVING MONEY TO THE POOR.
As the National Assembly met on the morning of the 18th of July, reports were
brought from all parts of violence and riots. The most vigorous efforts were
adopted by the Electors in Paris to supply the city with food. Nearly a million of
people were within its walls. Vast numbers had crowded into the city from the
country, hoping to obtain food. No law could restrain such multitudes of men,
actually dying of hunger. As it was better to die by the bullet or the bayonet than
by starvation, they would, at all hazards, break into the dwellings of the wealthy,
and into magazines, to obtain food, unless food in some other way could be
provided for them. The disorders of the times had put a stop to all the enterprises
of industry, and thus the impoverished millions were left without money, without
employment, and without food.
In one of the villages near Paris it was reported that a rich farmer had concealed
a large quantity of grain, to enrich himself by its sale at an exorbitant price. A
haggard multitude of men, women, and children surrounded his dwelling, and
threatened to hang the farmer unless he delivered up his stores. The Assembly
hastily sent a deputation of twelve members to attempt to save the unfortunate
corn-dealer's life.[188] While engaged in this business, a delegation entered from
the Faubourg San Antoine, stating that the wretched inhabitants of that faubourg
had for the last five days been without work and without bread, and entreating
that some measure might be devised to save them from starvation. Nine
thousand dollars were immediately subscribed by the deputies for their relief.
Four thousand of this sum were given by the Archbishop of Paris.
pic
PERSECUTION OF THE CORN-DEALERS.
The rage of the people, during these days of distress, was particularly directed
against those whom they deemed monopolists, who were accused of keeping
from the market the very sources of life. The sufferings of the people and their
desperation were so intense that it was necessary to send military bands from the
city of Paris to convoy provisions through the famishing districts. The peasants,
who saw their children actually gasping and dying of hunger, would attack the
convoys with the ferocity of wolves, and, though it seemed absolutely necessary
to resist them even unto death, no one could severely blame them.
There were two men, M. Foulon and M. Berthier, who were conspicuous
members of the court, and who had both been very active in their hostility to the
popular cause. Upon the overthrow of the Necker ministry, these men were
called into the new ministry, antagonistic to the people. It was reported that M.
Foulon, who was the father-in-law of M. Berthier, had frequently said, "If the
people are hungry, let them eat grass. It is good enough for them; my horses eat
it."[189] He is also stated to have uttered the terrible threat, "France must be
mowed as we mow a meadow." He was reputed to be a man of great wealth, and
had long been execrated by the people. These brutal remarks, which have never
been proved against him, but which were universally believed, and which were
in entire harmony with his established character, excited the wrath of the people
to the highest pitch.[190]
Berthier, his son-in-law, even the Royalists confess to have been a very hardhearted
man, unscrupulous and grasping.[191] Though fifty years of age he was
an atrocious libertine, and seemed to exult in the opportunity of making war
upon the Parisians, by whom he was detested. He showed "a diabolical activity,"
says Michelet, "in collecting arms, troops, every thing together, and in
manufacturing cartridges. If Paris was not laid waste with fire and sword it was
not his fault."[192]
Both Berthier and Foulon were now at the mercy of the people. Neither the court
nor the royal army had any power to protect them, and murmurs loud and deep
fell upon their ears. Berthier attempted to escape from France to join the
Royalists who had already emigrated. Fleeing by night and hiding by day, in four
nights he reached as far as Soissons. Foulon adopted the stratagem of a
pretended death. He spread the report that he had died suddenly of apoplexy. He
was buried by proxy with great pomp, one of his servants having by chance died
at the right moment. He then repaired to the house of a friend, where he
concealed himself. He would have been forgotten had he not been so utterly
execrated by all France. Those who knew him best hated him the worst. His
servants and vassals detected the fraud, and, hunting him out, found him in the
park of his friend.
"You wanted to give us hay," said they; "you shall eat some yourself."
The awful hour of blind popular vengeance had come. They tied a truss of hay
upon his back, threw a collar of thistles over his neck, and bound a nosegay of
nettles upon his breast. They then led him on foot to Paris, to the Hôtel de Ville,
and demanded that he should be fairly tried and legally punished. At the same
time Berthier was arrested as he was hastening to the frontier.
The municipality were in great perplexity. They had no power to sit in judgment
as a criminal court. The old courts were broken up and no new ones had as yet
been established. It was six o'clock in the morning when he was presented at the
Hôtel de Ville. The news of his arrest spread rapidly through Paris, and the Place
de Grève was soon thronged with an excited multitude. Foulon was universally
known as well as execrated. La Fayette was anxious to send him to the
protection of a prison, that he might subsequently receive a legal trial for his
deeds of inhumanity.
"Gentlemen," said La Fayette to the people, "I can not blame your indignation
against this man. I have always considered him a great culprit, and no
punishment is too severe for him. He shall receive the punishment he merits. But
he has accomplices, and we must know them. I will conduct him to the Abbaye,
where we will draw up charges against him, and he shall be tried and punished
according to the laws."[193]
The people applauded this speech, and Foulon insanely joined with them in the
applause. This excited their suspicion that some plot was forming for his rescue.
A man from the crowd cried out,
"What is the use of judging a man who has been judged these thirty years?"
This cry was Foulon's death-warrant. It kindled anew the flame of indignation
and it now burned unquenchably. The enraged populace clamored for their
victim. The surgings of the multitude were like the tumult of the ocean in a
storm. The countless thousands pressed on, sweeping electors, judges, and
witnesses before them, and Foulon was seized, no one can tell by whom or how,
till at last he was found in the street with a cord around his neck, while the mob
were attempting to hang him upon a lamp-post. Twice the iron cut the cord, and
the old man on his knees begged for mercy. But the infuriated populace were
unrelenting. A third rope was obtained, and the poor man was soon dangling
lifeless in the air.
While these scenes were transpiring Berthier was brought into the city. He was
in a cabriolet, that the people might have a sight of their inhuman persecutor. A
frightful mob surrounded him, filling the air with menaces and execrations. A
placard was borne before him with this inscription in large letters:
"He has devoured the substance of the people; he has been the slave of the rich
and the tyrant of the poor; he has robbed the king and France; he has betrayed
his country."[194]
pic
THE ASSASSINATION OF BERTHIER.
The miserable wretch was dragged up the steps of the Hôtel de Ville. But the
mob was now in the ascendency. There was no longer law or even semblance of
authority. An attempt was made by the National Guard to convey him to the
Abbaye; but the moment they appeared with their prisoner in the street the
crowd fell irresistibly upon him. Seizing a gun, he fought like a tiger; but he
soon fell, pierced with bayonets.[195] A dragoon tore out his heart, and carried it
dripping with blood to the Hôtel de Ville, saying, "Here is the heart of Berthier!"
[196] The man attempted an extenuation of his ferocity by declaring that Berthier
had caused the death of his father. His comrades, however, deemed such
brutality a disgrace to their corps. They told him that he must die, and that they
would all fight him in turn until he was killed. He was killed that night.[197]
These deeds of violence excited the disgust of Bailly, the mayor, and La Fayette.
Having such evidence that both the municipality and the National Guard were
impotent, both La Fayette and Bailly tendered their resignations.
They were, however, prevailed upon to continue in office by the most earnest
solicitations of the friends of France.[198]
A report was spread throughout the kingdom that the fugitive princes and nobles
were organizing a force on the frontiers for the invasion of France, that the
armies of foreign despots were at their command, and that all the Royalists in
France were conspiring to welcome them. The panic which pervaded the
kingdom was fearful. France, just beginning to breathe the atmosphere of liberty,
was threatened with chains of slavery more heavy than had ever been worn
before. The energies of a semi-enfranchised people were roused to the utmost
vigor. Every city, and every village of any importance, organized a municipal
government in sympathy with the municipality in Paris. The peasantry in the
rural districts, hating the nobles who had long oppressed them, attacked and
burned their castles. There was a universal rising of the Third Estate against the
tyranny of the privileged classes, assailing that tyranny with the only instrument
at its command—blind brutal force. In one week three millions of men assumed
the military character, and organized themselves for the defense of the kingdom.
The tricolored cockade became the national uniform.
The National Assembly, intently occupied in framing a constitution, was greatly
disturbed by reports of these wide-spread acts of violence; yet daily delegations
arrived with vows of homage from the different provinces, and with their
recognition of the authority of the national representatives.
Necker was in exile at Basle. He had left the Polignacs in pride and power at
Versailles; they now were fugitives. One morning one of the Polignacs hastened
to Necker's apartment and informed him of the overthrow of the court and the
triumph of the people. Necker had just received these tidings when a courier
placed in his hand the letter of the king recalling him to the ministry. The
grandest of triumphs greeted him from the moment his carriage entered France
until he was received with a delirium of joy in the streets of Paris. The people,
who had with lawless violence punished Foulon and Berthier, who had conspired
so inhumanly for the overthrow of their liberties, were determined that others,
who with equal malignity had conspired against them, should also be
condemned. Necker humanely resolved that an act of general amnesty should be
passed. Many of his friends assured him that it was not safe to attempt to secure
the passage of such a measure; that the crimes of the leaders of the court were
too great to be thus easily forgotten; that the indignant nation, finding Necker
pleading the cause of the court, would think that he had been bought over; and
that thus he would only secure his own ruin. But Necker, relying upon his
popularity, resolved to make the trial. On the 29th of July he repaired to the
Hôtel de Ville. As he passed through the streets and entered the spacious hall, he
was received with rapturous applause. Deeming his popularity equal to the
emergence, he demanded a general amnesty. In the enthusiasm of the moment it
was granted by acclamation. Necker retired to his apartments delighted with his
success; but before the sun had set he found himself cruelly deceived. The
Assembly, led by Mirabeau, remonstrated peremptorily against this usurpation of
power by the Municipality of Paris, asserting that that body had no authority
either to condemn or to pardon. The measure of amnesty was annulled by the
Assembly, and the detention of the prisoners confirmed.
The great question which now agitated the Assembly was, what measures were
to be adopted to bring order out of the chaos into which France was plunged. All
the old courts were virtually annihilated. No new courts had been organized with
the sanction of national authority. The nobles and all their friends, in conference
with the emigrants and foreign despots, were conspiring to reinstate the reign of
despotic power. The people were in a state of terror. The degraded, the desperate,
the vicious, in banditti hordes, were sweeping the country, burning and pillaging
indiscriminately. It was proposed to publish a decree enjoining upon the people
to demean themselves peaceably, to pay such taxes and duties as were not yet
suppressed, and to yield obedience for the present to the old laws of the realm,
obnoxious and unjust as they undeniably were.
While this question was under discussion, the Viscount de Noailles and the Duke
d'Aguillon, both distinguished members of the nobility, ascended the tribune and
declared that it was vain to attempt to quiet the people by force, that the only
way of appeasing them was by removing the cause of their sufferings. They then,
though both of them members of the privileged class, nobly avowed the
enormity of the aggressions under which, by the name of feudal rights, the
people were oppressed, and voted for the repeal of those atrocities.
It is a remarkable fact that in this great revolution the boldest and ablest friends
of popular rights came out from the body of the nobles themselves. Some were
influenced by as pure motives as can move the human heart. With others,
perhaps, selfish and ambitious motives predominated. Among the most active in
all these movements, we see La Fayette, Talleyrand, Sièyes, Mirabeau, and the
Duke of Orleans. But for the aid of these men, whatever may have been the
motives which influenced the one or the other, the popular cause could not have
triumphed. And now we find, in the National Assembly, two of the most
distinguished of the nobles rising and themselves proposing the utter abolition of
all feudal rights.
It was the 4th of August, 1789, when this memorable scene was enacted in the
National Assembly, one of the most remarkable which ever transpired on earth.
The whole body of the nobles seems to have been seized with a paroxysm of
magnanimity and disinterestedness. One of the deputies of the Tiers Etat, M.
Kerengal, in the dress of a farmer, gave a frightful picture of the sufferings of the
people under feudal oppression.[199] There was no more discussion. No voice
defended feudality. The nobles, one after another, renounced all their
prerogatives. The clergy surrendered their tithes. The deputies of the towns and
of the provinces gave up their special privileges, and, in one short night, all those
customs and laws by which, for ages, one man had been robbed to enrich another
were scattered to the winds. Equality of rights was established between all
individuals and all parts of the French territory. Louis XVI. was then proclaimed
the restorer of French liberty. It was decreed that a medal should be struck off in
his honor, in memory of that glorious night. And when the Archbishop of Paris
proposed that God's goodness should be acknowledged in a solemn Te Deum, to
be celebrated in the king's chapel, in the presence of the king and of all the
members of the National Assembly, it was carried by acclamation. During the
whole of this exciting scene, when sacrifices were made such as earth never
witnessed before; when nobles surrendered their titles, their pensions, and their
incomes; when towns and corporations surrendered their privileges and
pecuniary immunities; when prelates relinquished their tithes and their
benefices; not a solitary voice of opposition or remonstrance was heard. The
whole Assembly—clergy, nobles, and Tiers Etat—moved as one man. "It
seemed," says M. Rabaud, "as if France was near being regenerated in the course
of a single night. So true it is that the happiness of a people is easily to be
accomplished, when those who govern are less occupied with themselves than
with the people."[200]
It subsequently, however, appeared that this seeming unanimity was not real.
"The impulse," writes Thiers, "was general; but amid this enthusiasm it was easy
to see that certain of the privileged persons, so far from being sincere, were
desirous only of making matters worse." This was the measure which the
unrelenting nobles adopted to regain their power. Finding that they could not
resist the torrent, they endeavored to swell its volume and to give impulse to its
rush, that it might not only sweep away all the rubbish which through ages had
been accumulating, but that it might also deluge every field of fertility, and
sweep, in indiscriminate ruin, all the abodes of industry and all the creations of
art. It was now their sole endeavor to plunge France into a state of perfect
anarchy, with the desperate hope that from the chaos they might rebuild their
ancient despotism; that the people, plunged into unparalleled misery, might
themselves implore the restoration of the ancient régime.
This combination of the highest of the aristocracy and of the clergy to exasperate
the mob immeasurably increased the difficulties of the patriots. The court party,
with all its wealth and influence—a wealth and influence which had been
accumulating for ages—scattered its emissaries every where to foster discord, to
excite insurrection, to stimulate the mob to all brutality, that the Revolution
might have an infamous name through Europe, and might be execrated in
France. In almost every act of violence which immediately succeeded, the hand
of these instigators from palaces and castles was distinctly to be seen. Indeed, it
was generally supposed that even Berthier and Foulon were wrested from the
protection of La Fayette by emissaries of the court. And the British government
was so systematically assailed for exciting disturbances in France, that the Duke
of Dorset, British embassador at the time, found it necessary to present a formal
contradiction of the charge.
FOOTNOTES:
[180] Madame Campan, Memoirs, p. 251.
[181] "She got this address by heart," writes Madame Campan. "I remember it began with these words,
'Gentlemen, I come to place in your hands the wife and family of your sovereign. Do not suffer those who
have been united in Heaven to be put asunder on earth.' While she was repeating this address her voice was
often interrupted by her tears, and by the sorrowful exclamation, 'They will never let him return.'"
[182] The Parliamentary History, vol. ii., p. 130, records that 100 deputies accompanied the king; Thiers
states 200; Louis Blanc, 240; Michelet, 300 or 400. M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, a member of the Assembly,
says that the whole body of the deputies accompanied the king; and M. Ant. Fantin Desodoards, an eyewitness,
writes, "L'Assemblée National, entière l'accompagnait à pied dans son costume de ceremonie," vol.
i., p. 34. The probability is that 100 were chosen, but all went.
[183] Michelet, vol. i., p. 173.
[184] Histoire de la Revolution Française, par Louis Blanc, vol. ii., p. 420.
[185] Madame Campan, Memoirs, etc., ii., 59.
[186] Michelet, 186.
[187] Michelet, 175.
[188] "He was saved only by a deputation of the Assembly, who showed themselves admirable for courage
and humanity, risked their lives, and preserved the man only after having begged him of the people on their
knees."—Michelet, p. 186.
[189] Bertrand de Moleville testifies that this was an habitual expression in the mouth of Foulon.—Annals,
vol. i., p. 347.
[190] "The old man (Foulon) believed, by such bravado, to please the young military party, and recommend
himself for the day he saw approaching, when the court, wanting to strike some desperate blow, would look
out for a hardened villain."—Michelet, vol. ii., p. 10.
[191] Beaulieu's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 10.
[192] "Foulon had a son-in-law after his own heart—Berthier, the intendant of Paris, a shrewd but hardhearted
man, and unscrupulous, as confessed by the Royalists. A libertine at the age of fifty, in spite of his
numerous family, he purchased on all sides, so it was said, little girls twelve years of age. He knew well
that he was detested by the Parisians, and was but too happy to find an opportunity of making war upon
them."—Michelet, p. 184.
[193] An appeal to the then existing courts would have secured the trial of Foulon by his own colleagues
and accomplices, the ancient magistrates, the only judges then empowered to act. This was evident to all.
See Michelet, p. 187.
[194] Deux Amis de la Liberté, vol. ii., p. 60.
[195] "These people," says Michelet, "whom Mirabeau termed so well the refuse of public contempt, are as
if restored to character by punishment. The gallows becomes their apotheosis. They are now become
interesting victims—the martyrs of monarchy; their legend will go on increasing in pathetic fictions. Mr.
Burke canonized them and prayed on their tomb."—Historical View of the French Revolution, p. 190.
[196] Sir Archibald Alison, true to his instincts as the advocate of aristocratic usurpation, carefully conceals
the character of these men, which drew down upon them the vengeance of the mob. Impartial history, while
denouncing the ferocity of the mob, should not conceal those outrages which roused the people to madness.
[197] "It is an indisputable fact that the murder of Foulon and Berthier was not looked upon by the majority
of the people of Paris with horror and disgust. So unpopular were these two men that their death was
viewed as an act of justice, only irregular in its execution. Frenchmen were still accustomed to witness the
odious punishment of torture and the wheel; and society may hence learn a lesson that the sight of cruel
executions tends to destroy the feelings of humanity."—France and its Revolutions, by George Long, Esq.,
p. 47.
[198] "The people and the militia did actually throng around La Fayette, and promised the utmost
obedience in future. On this condition he resumed the command; and subsequently he had the satisfaction
of preventing many disturbances by his own energy and the zeal of the troops."—Thiers, vol. i., p. 76.
[199] "You would have prevented," said Kerengal, "the burning of the chateau, if you had been more
prompt in declaring that the terrible arms which they contain, and which for ages have tormented the
people, were to be destroyed. Let these arms, the title-deeds, which insult not only modesty but even
humanity, which humiliate the human species by requiring men to be yoked to a wagon like beasts of labor,
which compel men to pass the night in beating the ponds to prevent the frogs from disturbing the sleep of
their voluptuous lords, let them be brought here. Which of us would not make an expiatory pile of these
infamous parchments? You can never restore quiet to the people until they are redeemed from the
destruction of feudalism."
[200] "That night, which an enemy of the Revolution designated at the time the Saint Bartholomew of
property, was only the Saint Bartholomew of abuses."—Miguet, p. 54.
CHAPTER XVI.
FORMING THE CONSTITUTION.
Arming of the Peasants.—Destruction of Feudal Charters.—Sermon of the
Abbé Fauchet.—Three Classes in the Assembly.—Declaration of Rights.—
The Three Assemblies.—The Power of the Press.—Efforts of William Pitt
to sustain the Nobles.—Questions on the Constitution.—Two Chambers in
one?—The Veto.—Famine in the City.—The King's Plate melted.—The
Tax of a Quarter of each one's Income.—Statement of Jefferson.
AN utterly exhausted treasury compelled Louis XVI. and the court of France to
call together the States-General. The deputies of the people, triumphing over the
privileged classes, resolved themselves into a National Assembly, and then
proceeded to the formation of a constitution which should limit the hitherto
despotic powers of the crown. Though there were a few individuals of the nobles
and of the higher clergy who cordially espoused the popular cause, the great
mass of the privileged class clung firmly together in desperate endeavors to
regain their iniquitous power. Many of these were now emigrants, scattered
throughout Europe, and imploring the interference of foreign courts in their
behalf. The old royalist army, some two hundred thousand strong, amply
equipped and admirably disciplined, still retained its organization, and was still
under its old officers, the nobles; but the rank and file of this army were from the
people, and their sympathies were with the popular cause.
The nobles were now prepared for the most atrocious act of treason. They
wished to surrender the naval arsenals of France to the English fleet, so that
England, in possession of the great magazines of war, could throw any number
of soldiers into the kingdom unresisted, while the Prussians and Austrians,
headed by the emigrant noblesse, should invade France from the east. The
English government, however, which subsequently became an accomplice in the
conspiracy of the French nobles, by accepting the surrender of Toulon, was not
yet prepared to take the bold step of invading France simply to rivet the chains
of despotism upon the French people.
The English embassador, Dorset, who was residing at Versailles, revealed the
plot to the ministers of the king. They, however, kept the secret until it was
disclosed by an intercepted letter from Dorset to the Count d'Artois
(subsequently Charles X). This discovery vastly increased the alarm of the
nation. Perils were now multiplying on every side. The most appalling rumors of
invasion filled the air. Bands of marauders, haggard, starving, brutal, swept over
the country, burning, devouring, and destroying. It was supposed at first that they
were the advance battalions of the invaders, sent by the emigrants to chastise
France into subjection. Alarm increased to terror. Mothers in almost a delirium
of fear sought places of concealment for their children. The peasant in the
morning ran to his field to see if it had been laid waste. At night he trembled lest
he should awake to behold conflagration and ruin. There was no law. The king's
troops were objects of especial dread. The most insolent of the nobles were in
command, and with money and wine they sought to bribe especially the
Germans and the Swiss to be obedient to their wishes.
It was this peril which armed France. Villages, peasants, all were united to
defend themselves against these terrible brigands. The arsenals of the old castles
contained arms. Nerved by despair, the roused multitudes simultaneously
besieged all these castles, and demanded and seized the weapons necessary for
their defense. It was as a movement of magic. A sudden danger, every where
menacing, every where worked the same result. In one short week France sprung
up armed and ready for war. Three millions of men had come from the furrow
and the shop, and fiercely demanded "Where are the brigands? Lead us to meet
our foes, whoever and wherever they may be."[201]
The lords in an hour found themselves helpless. The peasants, hitherto so tame
and servile, were now soldiers, roused to determination and proud of their newly
discovered power. Awful was the retribution. The chateaux blazed—funeral fires
of feudality—on every hill and in every valley. One can only be surprised that
the hour of retribution should have been delayed for so many ages, and that
when it came the infuriated, degraded, brutalized masses did not proceed to even
greater atrocities. Though deeds of cruelty were perpetrated which cause the ear
that hears to tingle, still, on the whole, mercy predominated.
In many cases lords who had treated their serfs kindly were protected by their
vassals, as children would protect a father. The Marquis of Montfermail was thus
shielded from harm. In Dauphiné a castle was assailed during the absence of the
lord. His lady was at home alone with the children. The peasants left the castle
and its inmates unharmed, destroying only those feudal charters which were the
title-deeds of despotism.
These titles, engrossed on fine parchment and embellished with gorgeous seals,
were the pride of the noble family—the evidence of their antiquity. They were
preserved with great reverence, deposited in costly caskets, which caskets,
enveloped in velvet, were safely placed in oaken chests, and those chests, ironribbed
and with ponderous locks, were guarded in a strong part of the feudal
tower. The peasants ever gazed with awe upon the tower of the archives. They
understood the significancy of those title-deeds—the badges of their
degradation, the authority to which the lords appealed in support of their tyranny,
insolence, and nameless outrages.
"Our country-people," writes Michelet, "went straight to the tower. For many
centuries that tower had seemed to sneer at the valley, sterilizing, blighting,
oppressing it with its deadly shadow. A guardian of the country in barbarous
times, standing there as a sentinel, it became later an object of horror. In 1789
what was it but the odious witness of bondage, a perpetual outrage to repeat
every morning to the man trudging to his labor the everlasting humiliation of his
race? 'Work, work on, son of serfs! Earn for another's profit. Work, and without
hope.' Every morning and every evening, for a thousand years, perhaps more,
that tower had been cursed. A day came when it was to fall.
"O glorious day, how long have you been in coming! How long our fathers
expected and dreamed of you in vain! The hope that their sons would at length
behold you was alone able to support them, otherwise they would have no longer
consented to live. They would have died in their agony. And what has enabled
me, their companion, laboring beside them in the furrow of history and drinking
their bitter cup, to revive the suffering Middle Ages, and yet not die of grief?
Was it not you, O glorious day, first day of liberty? I have lived in order to relate
your history!"
Thus far the religious sentiment of France, as expressed by nearly all the pastors
and the great proportion of their Christian flocks, was warmly in favor of the
Revolution. The higher clergy alone, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, who
were usually the younger sons of the nobles, and were thus interested in the
perpetuation of abuses, united with the lords. As in the National Assembly so it
was in the nation itself, that the working clergy were among the most
conspicuous of the sons of freedom. Religious services were held in the churches
in grateful commemoration of the fall of the Bastille.[202] The vast cathedral of
Nôtre Dame was thronged to listen to a sermon from the Abbé Fauchet, who
consecrated to the memory of those who fell on that occasion the homage of his
extraordinary eloquence. He selected for his text the words of St. Paul, "For,
brethren, ye have been called unto liberty."—Gal. v. 13.
"The false interpreters of the divine oracle," said the abbé, "have wished, in the
name of heaven, to keep the people in subjection to the will of their masters.
They have consecrated despotism. They have rendered God an accomplice with
tyrants. These false teachers exult because it is written, 'Render unto Cæsar the
things that are Cæsar's.' But that which is not Cæsar's, is it necessary to render
to him that? And liberty does not belong to Cæsar. It belongs to human nature."
[203]
The abbé unquestionably read the divine oracles aright. The corner-stone of true
democracy can only be found in the word of God. The revelation there presented
of God as a common father, and all mankind as his children, made of one blood,
brethren—it is that revelation upon which is founded the great fundamental
principle of democracy, equality of rights. The very highest attainment of
political wisdom is the realization of the divine word, "Whatsoever ye would that
others should do unto you, do ye even so unto them."
The whole audience were transported with the clear and eloquent enunciation of
the politics of the gospel of Christ. As the orator left the sacred cathedral he was
greeted with the loudest plaudits. A civic crown was placed upon his brow, and
two companies of the National Guard escorted him home, with the waving of
banners and the clangor of trumpets, and through the acclamations of the
multitudes who thronged the streets.[204]
While France was in this state of tumult and terror, threatened with invasion
from abroad, and harassed by brigands at home, the nobles plotting treason, law
powerless, and universal anarchy reigning, the National Assembly was anxiously
deliberating to restore order to the country and to usher in the reign of justice
and prosperity. The old edifice was destroyed. A new one was to be erected. But
there were now three conspicuous parties developing themselves in the
Assembly.
The first was composed of the nobles and the higher clergy, who still, as a body,
adhered to the court, and who eagerly fomented disorders throughout the
kingdom, hoping thus to compel the nation, as the only escape from anarchy, to
return to the old monarchy.
The second was composed of the large proportion of the Assembly, sincere,
intelligent, patriotic men, earnest for liberty, but for liberty restrained by law.
They were almost to a man monarchists, wishing to ingraft upon the monarchy
of France institutions similar to those of republican America. The English
Constitution was in the main their model.
A third party was just beginning to develop itself, small in numbers, of turbulent,
visionary, energetic men, eager for the overthrow of all the institutions and
customs of the past, and for the sudden introduction of an entirely new era.
Making no allowance for the ignorance of the masses, and for the entire
inexperience of the French in self-government, they wished to cut loose from all
the restraints of liberty and of law, and to plunge into the wildest freedom.
The first and the third classes, the Aristocrats and the ultra-Democrats, joined
hand in hand to overthrow the Moderates, as the middle party were called, each
hoping thus to introduce the reign of its own principles. Thus they both were
ready to exasperate the masses and to encourage violence. These were the two
implacable foes against whom the Revolution, and subsequently the Empire
under Napoleon, had ever to contend. Despotism and Jacobinism have ever been
the two allied foes against rational liberty in France.
The patriots of the middle, or moderate party, who had not as yet assumed any
distinctive name, for the parties in the Assembly were but just beginning to
marshal their forces for the fight, earnestly deplored all scenes of violence. Such
scenes only thwarted their endeavors for the regeneration of France.
The Assembly now engaged with great eagerness in drawing up a declaration of
rights, to be presented to the people as the creed of liberty. It was thought that if
such a creed could be adopted, based upon those self-evident truths which are in
accordance with the universal sense of right, the people might then be led to
rally around this creed with a distinct object in view.
For two months, from the 1st of August till the early part of October, the
Assembly was engaged in discussing the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. But
it was found that there had now suddenly sprung up three Assemblies instead of
one, each potent in its sphere, and that between the three a spirit of rivalry and of
antagonism was very rapidly being engendered.
The first was the National Assembly at Versailles, originally consisting of twelve
hundred deputies, but now dwindled down by emigration and other absence to
about eight hundred.
The second was the municipal government of Paris, consisting of three hundred
representatives from the different sections or wards of the city, and which held
its sessions at the Hôtel de Ville. As Paris considered itself France, the
municipality of Paris began to arrogate supreme power.
The third was the colossal assembly of the Parisian populace, an enormous,
tumultuous, excitable mass, every day gathered in the garden of the Palais
Royal. This assembly, daily becoming more arrogant, often consisted of from ten
to twelve thousand. It was continually in session. Here was the rendezvous for
all of the lower orders, men and women. Impassioned orators, of great powers of
popular eloquence, but ignorant and often utterly unprincipled, mounted tables
and chairs, and passionately urged all their crude ideas.
Reflecting men soon began to look upon this assembly with alarm. Its loud
murmurs were echoed through the nation, boding only evil; but emancipated
France could not commence its career by prohibiting liberty of speech. La
Fayette anxiously looked in upon this portentous gathering, and listened to the
falsehood, the exaggerations, and the folly with which its speakers deluded the
populace, but he could not interfere. Indeed, it soon became perilous for any one
in that assembly to plead the cause of law and order. He was at once accused as
an aristocrat, and was in peril of the doom of Berthier and Foulon.
And now suddenly there uprose another power which overshadowed all the rest
—the power of a free press. Newspapers and pamphlets deluged the land. They
were read universally; for the public mind was so roused that those who could
not read themselves eagerly listened to the reading from others, at the corners of
the streets, in shops and hovels.[205]
France was now doomed to blood and woe. It is easy to say that if the populace
had been virtuous and enlightened all would have gone well; or if the nobles and
the higher clergy would have united with the true patriots freedom might have
been saved. But the populace were not virtuous and enlightened, and the nobles
were so inexorably hostile to all popular rights that they were resolute to whelm
France in ruin rather than relinquish their privileges. France, as France then was,
could have been saved by no earthly wisdom. The Royalists openly declared that
the only chance of restoring the old system of government was to have recourse
to civil war, and they were eager to invoke so frightful a remedy.
One of the most popular of the journals was "The Friend of the People," by
Marat. This journal already declared that the National Assembly was full of
aristocrats, and that it must be dissolved to make way for a better.[206] "We have
wrested power," wrote Marat, "from the nobles but to place it in the hands of the
moneyed class. What have we gained? The people are still poor and starving. We
need another revolution." "Yes," echoed the mob of Paris, "we need another
revolution."
The roar from the Palais Royal fell ominously upon the ears of the Assembly at
Versailles, and of the municipality at the Hôtel de Ville. And now all the starving
trades and employments began to congregate by themselves for discussion and
combined action. First came the servants, destitute of place, of shelter, of bread,
whose masters had fled from insurgent Paris into the country or had emigrated.
The court-yard of the Louvre was their rendezvous. The soldiers debated at the
Oratoire, the hair-dressers in the Elysian Fields, and the tailors at the Colonnade.
[207] These bodies soon became, as it were, committees of the great central
congress of the populace ever gathered at the Palais Royal.
The noblest men in the National Assembly were already beginning to despond.
Firmly, however, they proceeded in the endeavor to reconstruct society upon the
basis of justice and liberty. The measure to which their attention was now chiefly
devoted was to adopt a Constitution, which was to be prefaced by a Bill of
Rights. La Fayette was active in this movement, and was unquestionably assisted
by Thomas Jefferson, then American minister at Paris.
This celebrated declaration of rights, adopted on the 18th of August, 1789, was a
simple enunciation of those principles which are founded in nature and truth and
which are engraven on all hearts. They were axioms upon which every
intelligent legislator must proceed in forming a just code of laws. It declares that
all mankind are born free and equal; that the objects to be gained by human
governments are liberty, the security of property, and protection from
oppression; that sovereignty resides in the nation and emanates from the people;
that law is the expression of the will of the people; that the expenses of
government should be assessed upon the governed in proportion to their
property; that all the adult male inhabitants are entitled to vote; that freedom
consists in the liberty to do any thing which does not injure another, and should
have no limits but its interference with the rights of others.[208]
These were noble sentiments nobly expressed; and, though execrated in
monarchical Europe, were revered in republican America. These were the
principles against which despotic Europe, coalesced by the genius of William
Pitt, rose in arms.[209] The battle was long and bloody. Millions perished. The
terrible drama was closed, for a season, by the triumph of despots at Waterloo.
[210]
The Assembly now turned its attention to the organization of the legislative body
of the nation. The all-absorbing question was whether the National Congress or
Parliament should meet in one chamber or in two; if in two, whether the upper
house should be an aristocratic, hereditary body, like the House of Lords in the
British Parliament, or an elective republican Senate, as in the American
Congress. The debate was long and impassioned. The people would not consent
to an hereditary House of Lords, which would remain an almost impregnable
fortress of aristocratic usurpation. They were, however, inclined to assent to an
upper house to be composed exclusively of the clergy and the nobles, but to be
elected by the people. To this arrangement the haughty lords peremptorily
refused their assent. They were equally opposed to an election to the upper house
even by the nobles and the clergy, for the high lords and great dignitaries of the
Church looked down upon the lower nobility and upon the working clergy with
almost as much contempt as they regarded the people. Finding the nobles hostile
to any reasonable measure, the masses of the people became more and more
irritated. The vast gathering at the Palais Royal soon became unanimous in
clamoring for but one chamber. The lords were their enemies, and in a house of
lords they could see only a refuge for old and execrable feudality and an
insurmountable barrier to reform.[211]
When the vote was taken there were five hundred for a single chamber and but
one hundred for two chambers.[212] It was unquestionably a calamity to France
that two chambers could not have been organized. But the infatuation of the
nobles now for the second time prevented this most salutary check upon hasty
legislation.
The next question to be decided was the royal veto. All were united that the laws
should be presented to the king for his sanction or refusal. The only question was
whether the veto should be absolute or limited. That of the King of England is
absolute. That of the President of the United States is limited. All France was
agitated by this question. Here the aristocracy made their last desperate stand
and fought fiercely. Many of the popular party, alarmed in view of the rapid
progress of events, advocated the absolute veto. Its inconsistency, however, with
all enlightened principles of liberty was too apparent to be concealed. That the
caprice of a single man, and he perhaps weak or dissolute, should permanently
thwart the decrees of twenty-seven millions of people appeared so absurd that
the whole nation rose against it.
The fate of liberty seemed to depend upon this question, as the absolute veto
would enable the court, through the king, to annul every popular measure. The
crowds in Paris became turbulent and menacing. Threatening letters were sent to
members of the National Assembly. The Parisian mob even declared its
determination to march to Versailles, and drive from the Assembly those in favor
of the veto. The following letter, addressed to the Bishop of Langres, then
president of the Assembly, may be presented as a specimen of many with which
the hall was flooded:
"The patriotic assembly of the Palais Royal have the honor to make it known to
you, sir, that if the aristocratic faction, formed by some of the nobility and the
clergy, together with one hundred and twenty ignorant and corrupt deputies,
continue to disturb the general harmony, and still insist upon the absolute veto,
fifteen hundred men are ready to enlighten their country seats and houses, and
particularly your own."[213]
"I shall never forget," writes Dumont, "my going to Paris one of those days with
Mirabeau, and the crowd of people we found waiting for his carriage about Le
Say the bookseller's shop. They flung themselves before him, entreating him,
with tears in their eyes, not to suffer the absolute veto."
"They were in a phrensy. 'Monsieur le Comte,' said they, 'you are the people's
father. You must save us. You must defend us against those villains who are
bringing back despotism. If the king gets this veto, what is the use of the
National Assembly? We are all slaves! All is undone.'[214] There was as much
ability in the tumultuous gathering at the Palais Royal as in the National
Assembly, and more of impassioned, fiery eloquence. This disorderly body
assumed the name of the Patriotic Assembly, and was hourly increasing in
influence and in the boldness of its demands. Camille Desmoulins was one of its
most popular speakers. He was polished, keen, witty, having the passions of his
ever-varying, ever-excitable audience perfectly at his command. He could play
with their emotions at his pleasure, and though not an earnest man, for jokers
seldom are, he was eager and reckless."[215]
St. Huruge was, however, the great orator of the populace, the Mirabeau of the
Palais Royal. A marquis by birth, he had suffered long imprisonment in the
Bastille by lettre de cachet. Oppression had driven him mad, and he was
thoroughly earnest. Every day he uttered the most fierce and envenomed
invectives against that aristocratic power by whose heel he had been crushed. He
was a man of towering stature, impassioned gesticulation, and with a voice like
the roar of a bull.
On Monday, August 30th, there was a report at the Palais Royal that Mirabeau
was in danger of arrest. St. Huruge immediately headed a band of fifteen
hundred men, and set out for Versailles for his protection. It was a mob
threatening violence, and La Fayette, at the head of a detachment of the National
Guard, stopped them and drove them back. Murmurs now began to arise against
La Fayette and the National Guard. Rumors were set in circulation that La
Fayette was in league with the aristocrats. Excitement was again rapidly
increasing, as the people feared that, after all, they were to be betrayed and again
enslaved.
pic
LA FAYETTE REVIEWING THE NATIONAL GUARD.
The agitated assembly at the Palais Royal sent a deputation to Versailles to
Mounier, one of the most influential and truly patriotic of the deputies,
announcing to him that twenty thousand men were ready to march to Versailles
to drive the aristocrats out of the Assembly. At the same time an address was
received by the president from the citizens of Rennes, declaring that those who
should vote for the absolute veto were traitors to their country. Under these
circumstances, the king sent a message to the National Assembly, stating that he
should be satisfied with a limited, or, as it was then called, a suspensive veto. In
taking the question the absolute veto was rejected, and the suspensive veto
adopted by a vote of 673 to 355. By this measure the veto of the king would
suspend the action of any legislative enactment during two subsequent sessions
of the Legislature. If, after this, the Legislature still persisted, the king's veto was
overruled and the act went into effect. This was giving the king much greater
power than the President of the United States possesses. A two-thirds vote of
both houses can immediately carry any measure against the veto of the
President. Freedom of opinion, of worship, and of the press were also decreed.
These questions being thus settled, it was now voted that the measures thus far
adopted were constitutional, not legislative; and that, consequently, they were to
be presented to the king, not for his sanction, but for promulgation. It was also
voted by acclaim that the crown should be hereditary and the person of the king
inviolable, the ministers alone being responsible for the measures of
government. To republican eyes these seem like mild measures of reform,
though they have been most severely condemned by the majority of writers upon
the French Revolution in monarchical Europe. If the nobles had yielded to these
reasonable reforms, the horrors which ensued might have been avoided. If
combined Europe had not risen in arms against the Revolution, the regeneration
of France might, perhaps, have been peacefully achieved.[216]
In every nation there are thousands of the ignorant, degraded, miserable, who
have nothing to lose and something to hope from anarchy. The inmates of the
dens of crime and infamy, who are only held in check by the strong restraints of
law, rejoice in the opportunity to sack the dwellings of the industrious and the
wealthy, and to pour the tide of ruin through the homes of the virtuous and the
happy. This class of abandoned men and women was appallingly increasing.
They flocked to the city from all parts of the kingdom, and Paris was crowded
with spectres, emaciate and ragged, whose hideous and haggard features spoke
only of vice and misery. Sièyes expressed to Mirabeau his alarm in view of the
portentous aspect of affairs.
"You have let the bull loose," Mirabeau replied, "and now you complain that he
butts with his horns."[217]
Much has been said respecting the motives which influenced Mirabeau.
Whatever his motives may have been, his conduct was consistent. All his words
and actions were in favor of liberty sustained by strong law. He wished for the
overthrow of aristocratic insolence and feudal oppression, from which he had so
severely suffered. He wished to preserve the monarchical form of government,
and to establish a constitution which should secure to all the citizens equality of
rights.[218]
Feudality was now destroyed, and a free constitution adopted. Still, business was
stagnant, the poor destitute of employment and in a state of starvation. As an act
of charity, seventeen thousand men were employed by the municipality of Paris
digging on the heights of Montmartre at twenty sous a day. The suffering was so
great that the office of the municipality was crowded with tradesmen and
merchants imploring employment on these terms. "I used to see," writes the
mayor, Bailly, "good tradespeople, mercers and goldsmiths, who prayed to be
admitted among the beggars employed at Montmartre in digging the ground.
Judge what I suffered."
The city government sunk two thousand dollars a day in selling bread to the poor
at less than cost; and yet there were emissaries of the court buying up this bread
and destroying it to increase the public distress.[219] On the 19th day of August
the city of Paris contained food sufficient but for a single day. Bailly and La
Fayette were in an agony of solicitude. So great was the dismay in Paris, that all
the rich were leaving. Sixty thousand passports were signed at the Hôtel de Ville
in three months.[220]
Armed bands were exploring the country to purchase food wherever it could be
found, and convey it to the city. Six hundred of the National Guard were
stationed by day and by night to protect the corn-market from attack. It is
surprising that when the populace were in such distress so few acts of violence
should have been committed.[221]
The kind heart of the king was affected by this misery. He sent nearly all his
plate to be melted and coined at the mint for the relief of the poor. This noble
example inspired others. General enthusiasm was aroused, and the hall of the
National Assembly was crowded with the charitable bringing voluntary
contributions for the relief of the poor. Rich men sent in their plate, patriotic
ladies presented their caskets of jewelry, and the wives of tradesmen, artists, and
mechanics brought the marriage gifts which they had received and the ornaments
which embellished their dwellings. Farmers sent in bags of corn, and even poor
women and children offered their mites. A school-boy came with a few pieces of
gold which his parents had sent to him for spending-money. This overflowing of
charity presented a touching display of the characteristic magnanimity and
impulsiveness of the French people.[222]
pic
PATRIOTIC CONTRIBUTIONS.
But private charity, however profuse, is quite inadequate to the wants of a nation.
These sums were soon expended, and still the unemployed poor crawled fasting
and emaciated about the streets. Necker's plans for loans were frustrated. No one
would lend. To whom should he lend? The old régime was dying; the new not
yet born. In this terrible emergency Necker proposed the desperate measure of
imposing a tax of one quarter of every man's income, declaring that there was no
other refuge from bankruptcy. The interest upon the public debt could no longer
be paid, the wages of the soldiers were in arrears, and the treasury utterly empty.
The proposal frightened the Assembly, but Mirabeau ascended the tribune, and
in one of his most impassioned appeals carried the measure by acclamation.[223]
The distracted state of the kingdom, however, prevented the act thus
enthusiastically adopted from being carried into effect.[224]
Thomas Jefferson was at this time, as we have before mentioned, the American
minister in Paris, and was constantly consulted by the leaders of the Revolution.
In his memoirs, speaking of these events, he writes,
"The first question, whether there should be a king, met with no opposition, and
it was readily agreed that the government of France should be monarchical and
hereditary.
"Shall the king have a negative on the laws? Shall that negative be absolute, or
suspensive only? Shall there be two chambers of legislation, or one only? If two,
shall one of them be hereditary, or for life, or for a fixed term; and named by the
king or elected by the people?
"These questions found strong differences of opinion, and produced repulsive
combinations among the patriots. The aristocracy was cemented by a common
principle of preserving the ancient régime, or whatever should be nearest to it.
Making this their polar star, they moved in phalanx, gave preponderance on
every question to the minorities of the patriots, and always to those who
advocated the least change. The features of the new constitution were thus
assuming a fearful aspect, and great alarm was produced among the honest
patriots by these dissensions in their ranks.
"In this uneasy state of things I received one day a note from the Marquis de la
Fayette, informing me that he should bring a party of six or eight friends to ask a
dinner of me the next day. I assured him of their welcome. When they arrived,
they were La Fayette himself, Dupont, Barnave, Alexander Lameth, Blacon,
Mounier, Maubourg, and Dagout. These were leading patriots of honest but
differing opinions, sensible of the necessity of effecting a coalition by mutual
sacrifices; knowing each other, and not afraid therefore to unbosom themselves
mutually. This last was a material principle in the selection. With this view the
marquis had invited the conference, and had fixed the time and place,
inadvertently as to the embarrassment under which he might place me.
"The cloth being removed and wine set on the table, after the American manner,
the marquis introduced the objects of the conference by summarily reminding
them of the state of things in the Assembly, the course which the principles of
the Constitution were taking, and the inevitable result, unless checked by more
concord among the patriots themselves. He observed that though he also had his
opinion, he was ready to sacrifice it to that of his brethren of the same cause; but
that a common opinion must now be formed, or the aristocracy would carry
every thing, and that, whatever they should now agree on, he, at the head of the
national force, would maintain.
"The discussions began at the hour of four, and were continued till ten o'clock in
the evening, during which time I was a silent witness to a coolness and candor of
argument unusual in the conflicts of political opinion; to a logical reasoning and
chaste eloquence disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation, and
truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity, as
handed to us by Plato, by Xenophon, and Cicero. The result was that the king
should have a suspensive veto on the laws, that the Legislature should be
composed of a single body only, and that to be chosen by the people. This
concordat decided the fate of the Constitution. The patriots all rallied to the
principles thus settled, carried every question agreeably to them, and reduced the
aristocracy to insignificance and impotence."[225]
FOOTNOTES:
[201] "Our Revolution," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "was a natural convulsion, as irresistible in its effects
as an eruption of Vesuvius. When the mysterious fusion which takes place in the entrails of the earth is at
such a crisis that an explosion follows, the eruption bursts forth. The unperceived workings of the
discontent of the people follow exactly the same course. In France the sufferings of the people, the moral
combinations which produce a revolution, had arrived at maturity, and an explosion accordingly took
place."
[202] Madame de Genlis, who witnessed the demolition of the Bastille, in her gossiping yet very interesting
memoirs, writes, "I experienced the most exquisite joy in witnessing the demolition of that terrible
monument, in which had been immured and where had perished, without any judicial forms, so many
innocent victims. The desire to have my pupils see it led me to take them from St. Leu to pass a few hours
in Paris, that they might see from the garden of Beaumarchais all the people of Paris engaged in destroying
the Bastille. It is impossible to give one an idea of that spectacle. It must have been seen to conceive of it as
it was. That redoubtable fortress was covered with men, women, and children, toiling with inexpressible
ardor upon the loftiest towers and battlements. The astonishing number of workmen, their activity, their
enthusiasm, the joy with which they saw this frightful monument of despotism crumbling down, the
avenging hands which seemed to be those of Providence, and which annihilated with so much rapidity the
work of many ages, all that spectacle spoke equally to the imagination and the heart."—Mémoires sur le
Dix-huitième Siècle et la Revolution Française de Madame la Comtesse de Genlis, tome iii., p. 261.
[203] Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 18.
[204] "Tyranny," said Fauchet, in reference to the skeletons found in the Bastille, "had sealed them within
the walls of those dungeons, which she believed to be eternally impenetrable to the light. The day of
revelation is come. The bones have arisen at the voice of French liberty. They depose against centuries of
oppression and death, prophesying the regeneration of human nature and the life of nations."—Dussaulx,
OEuvre des Sept Jours.
[205] At St. Helena, the subject of conversation one day turned upon the freedom of the press. The subject
was discussed with much animation by the companions of the emperor, he listening attentively to their
remarks. "Nothing can resist," said one, "the influence of a free press. It is capable of overthrowing every
government, of agitating every society, of destroying every reputation." "It is only its prohibition," said
another, "which is dangerous. If it be restricted it becomes a mine which must explode; but if left to itself it
is merely an unbent bow, that can inflict no wound."
"The liberty of the press," said Napoleon, "is not a question open for consideration. Its prohibition under a
representative government is a gross anachronism, a downright absurdity. I therefore, on my return from
Elba, abandoned the press to all its excesses, and I am confident that the press in no respect contributed to
my downfall."
In Napoleon's last letter to his son he writes, "My son will be obliged to allow the liberty of the press. This
is a necessity in the present day. The liberty of the press ought to become, in the hands of the government, a
powerful auxiliary in diffusing through all the most distant corners of the empire sound doctrines and good
principles. To leave it to itself would be to fall asleep upon the brink of danger. On the conclusion of a
general peace I would have instituted a Directory of the Press, composed of the ablest men of the country,
and I would have diffused, even to the most distant hamlet, my ideas and my intentions."—Las Casas.
[206] Mirabeau, Camille Desmoulins, Brissot, Condorcet, Mercier, Carra, Gorsas, Marat, and Barrere, all
published journals, and some of them had a very extensive circulation. L'Ami du Peuple, by Marat, was a
very energetic sheet. Mirabeau printed ten thousand copies of his Courrier de Province. But by far the most
popular and influential paper was the Revolutions de Paris, whose unknown editor was Loustalot, a sincere,
earnest, laborious young man, who died in 1792, at the age of twenty-nine. Two hundred thousand copies
of his paper were frequently sold.—Michelet, vol. i., p. 240.
[207] Miguet, p. 64.
[208] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, a Christian patriot and one of the most active members of the National
Assembly, writes: "It is possible that all the kings of Europe may form a coalition against a humble page of
writing; but, after a number of cannon-shots, and when those potentates have destroyed three or four
hundred thousand men and laid waste twenty countries, it will not be the less true that men are born free
and equal as to their rights, and that the nation is the sovereign. And it is possible that their obstinacy may
have occasioned the discovery of other truths which, but for the wrath of those great princes, mankind
would never have thought of."—Political Reflections, p. 176.
[209] "All the wars of the European Continent against the Revolution and against the Empire were begun
by England and supported by English gold. At last the object was attained; not only was the ancient family
restored to the throne, but France was reduced to its original limits, its naval force destroyed, and its
commerce almost annihilated."—Encyclopædia Americana, Art. Great Britain.
[210] "William Pitt," said the Emperor Napoleon at St. Helena, "was the master of European policy. He
held in his hands the moral fate of nations. He kindled the fire of discord throughout the universe; and his
name, like that of Erostratus, will be inscribed in history amid flames, lamentations, and tears. The first
sparks of our Revolution, then the resistance that was opposed to the national will, and finally the horrid
crimes that ensued, all were his work. Twenty-five years of universal conflagration; the numerous
coalitions that added fuel to the flame; the revolution and devastation of Europe; the bloodshed of nations;
the frightful debt of England, by which all these horrors were maintained; the pestilential system of loans,
by which the people of Europe are oppressed; the general discontent that now prevails—all must be
attributed to Pitt.
"Posterity will brand him as a scourge, and the man so lauded in his own time will hereafter be regarded as
the genius of evil. Not that I consider him to have been willfully atrocious, or doubt his having entertained
the conviction that he was acting right. But St. Bartholomew had also its conscientious advocates. The Pope
and cardinals celebrated it by a Te Deum, and we have no reason to doubt their having done so in sincerity.
Such is the weakness of human reason and judgment! Whether it be the effect of admiration and gratitude
or the result of mere instinct and sympathy, Pitt is, and will continue to be, the idol of the European
aristocracy. There was, indeed, a touch of the Sylla in his character. His system has kept the popular cause
in check and brought about the triumph of the nobles.
"As for Fox, one must not look for his model among the ancients. He is himself a model, and his principles
will sooner or later rule the world. Certainly the death of Fox was one of the fatalities of my career. Had his
life been prolonged affairs would have taken a totally different turn. The cause of the people would have
triumphed, and we should have established a new order of things in Europe."
[211] The higher nobility of Great Britain consists of 26 dukes, 35 marquises, 217 earls, 65 viscounts, 191
barons. Each of these takes the title of lord and is entitled by birth to a seat in the House of Lords, if we
except the peers of Scotland and Ireland, who have a seat with the lords only by deputation, the Scotch
peers choosing 16 and the Irish 28. There are, besides, six archbishops and 42 bishops, who, by virtue of
their office, are styled lords and have a seat in the House of Lords. The lower nobility, consisting of
baronets and knights, have no privileges but the honor of their title. They are somewhere between one and
two thousand in number. The higher nobility, including the dignitaries of the Church, six archbishops and
42 bishops, in 1813 amounted to 554 families. The total revenue of the temporal nobility, according to
Colquhoun, was $25,000,000, which makes an average of about $48,000 a year for each noble family.
According to the same authority, the total revenue of the spiritual lords was $1,200,000, which would
average $25,000 a year for each. The English say that those nobles are exceedingly valuable. They ought to
be. They cost enough. See Enc. Am., Art. Great Britain.
[212] Michelet. M. Rabaud de St. Etienne says 911 for one, 89 for two. Alison, without giving his authority,
states 499 for one, 87 for two.
[213] The French Revolutions from 1789 to 1848, by T.W. Redhead, vol. i., p. 59.
[214] Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 156.
[215] "What will always astonish those who are acquainted with the history of other revolutions is, that in
this miserable and famished state of Paris, denuded of all authority, there were, on the whole, but very few
serious acts of violence. One word, one reasonable observation, occasionally a jest, was sufficient to check
them. On the first days only subsequent to the 14th of July there were instances of violence committed. The
people, full of the idea that they were betrayed, sought for their enemies hap-hazard, and were near making
some cruel mistakes. M. de la Fayette interposed several times at the critical moment, and was attended to.
On these occasions M. de la Fayette was truly admirable. He found in his heart, in his love for order and
justice, words and happy sayings above his nature."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 227.
[216] "I hear it sometimes said that the French should have contented themselves with laying down
principles for their own particular state, without spreading abroad those principles among other nations. But
is it really their fault if their principles are so general as to be adapted to all men, of all times, and of all
countries? Nay, is it not a proof of the excellence of their principles, which depend neither upon ages, nor
on prejudices, nor on climates? Have they invented them maliciously, and in order to impose on kings and
on the great? And is there any man so silly as to scruple to rebuild his shattered dwelling, because others
might be tempted to re-edify theirs? If the French language is understood through all Europe, are the French
to blame? Ought they, through fear of being listened to and imitated, to observe a strict silence, or speak a
language different from their own?"—History of the Revolutions of France, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p.
180.
[217] Dumont, vol. i., p. 66.
[218] "The particulars of Mirabeau's conduct are not yet thoroughly known, but they are soon likely to be. I
have had in my hands several important documents, and especially a paper written in the form of a
profession of faith, which constituted his secret treaty with the court. I am not allowed to give the public
any of these documents, or to mention the names of the holders. I can only affirm what the future will
sufficiently demonstrate, when all these papers shall have been published.
"What I am able to assert with sincerity is, that Mirabeau never had any hand in the supposed plots of the
Duke of Orleans. Mirabeau left Provence with a single object, that of combating arbitrary power, by which
he had suffered, and which his reason as well as his sentiments taught him to consider as detestable. In his
manners there was great familiarity, which originated in a feeling of his strength. Hence it was that he was
frequently supposed to be the friend and accomplice of many persons with whom he had no common
interest. I have said, and I repeat it, he had no party. Mirabeau remained poor till his connection with the
court. He then watched all parties, strove to make them explain themselves, and was too sensible of his own
importance to pledge himself lightly."—Hist, of the Fr. Rev., by M.A. Thiers, vol. i., p. 94.
[219] Histoire de la Revolution Française, par Villiaumé, p. 54.
[220] Revolutions de Paris, t. 11, No. 9, p. 8.
[221] "Occasionally loads of flour were seized and detained on their passage by the neighboring localities
whose wants were pressing. Versailles and Paris shared together. But Versailles kept, so it was said, the
finest part, and made a superior bread. This was a great cause of jealousy. One day, when the people of
Versailles had been so imprudent as to turn aside for themselves a supply intended for the Parisians, Bailly,
the honest and respectful Bailly, wrote to M. Necker that, if the flour were not restored, thirty thousand men
would go and fetch it on the morrow. Fear made him bold. It often happened at midnight that he had but
half the flour necessary for the morning market."—Michelet, p. 231.
[222] Even the courtesans came forward with their contributions. The following letter was received by the
National Assembly, accompanied by a purse of gold:
"Gentlemen! I have a heart to love. I have amassed some property in loving. I place it in your hands, a
homage to the country. May my example be imitated by my companions of all ranks."—Hist. des
Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 21.
[223] M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., 89.
[224] Alison.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ROYAL FAMILY CARRIED TO PARIS.
Waning Popularity of La Fayette.—The King contemplates Flight.—Letter
of Admiral d'Estaing.—The Flanders Regiment called to Versailles.—Fête
in the Ball-room at Versailles.—Insurrection of the Women; their March to
Versailles.—Horrors of the Night of October 5th.—The Royal Family
conveyed to Paris.
THE press now began to assail Bailly and La Fayette as in league with the
aristocrats. The Assembly at the Palais Royal was becoming paramount, a
terrific power, threatening ruin to all who should advocate measures of
moderation. The most violent harangues roused the populace, and it was evident
that they could be easily turned by their leaders into any path of destruction.
Threatening letters flooded the National Assembly, and one of great ferocity was
signed by St. Huruge. Though he declared it a forgery, he was arrested and
imprisoned. The municipal authority also forbade farther meetings in the Palais
Royal, and La Fayette, with the National Guard, dispersed the gatherings.
The king now seriously contemplated flight, that, at a safe distance from Paris
and surrounded by chosen troops, he might dictate terms to his people, or, if they
refused, prepare, by the aid of foreign arms, for war. About one hundred and
eighty miles northeast of Paris, on the frontiers of France, was the city of Metz.
The city contained about fifty thousand inhabitants, and its fortifications,
constructed by Vauban, were of the most extensive and formidable kind. The
Marquis de Bouille, one of the most devoted servants of the king, and
subsequently one of the most active agents in urging the foreign powers to march
against France, commanded, in garrison there, thirty thousand picked troops,
resolute Royalists, and who had been taught to regard the popular movement
with contempt.
The plan was well matured for the king to escape to Metz. There he was to be
joined by the court, the nobles with all their retainers, the ancient parliaments of
the provinces, all composed of the aristocratic class, and by all the soldiers
whom the Royalist officers could induce to follow them to that rendezvous.
Then, by the employment of all the energies of fire and blood, France was to be
brought back into subjection to the old régime.
La Fayette knew of this plan, and yet he did not dare to divulge it to the people,
for he knew that it would provoke a fierce and terrible outbreak. He saw the peril
in which the royal family was involved, and he wished for their protection. He
saw the doom with which the liberties of France were menaced, and the liberty
for which he was struggling was dearer to him than life. If the king had been
either a merciless despot or a reliable friend of liberty, then would La Fayette's
path of duty have been plain. But the king was an amiable, kindly-intentioned,
weak-minded, vacillating man, quite the tool of the inexorable court.
It is difficult to conceive of a situation more embarrassing than that in which La
Fayette was now placed. He was at the head of the National Guard and was
informed of all the plots of the court. He wished to be faithful to his sovereign,
and wished also to be true to his country. Without the connivance, or at least
secret assent of La Fayette, it was hardly possible for the king to escape.
The old admiral D'Estaing was commander of the National Guard at Versailles.
He was a man of noble birth, of magnanimous character, and, though with true
patriotism he espoused the popular cause, he was, like La Fayette, in favor of a
monarchy, and was sincerely friendly to the king. On the 13th of September he
dined with La Fayette at Paris. Here the marquis unfolded to the amazed admiral
the terrible secret in all its details; that the Baron Breteuil, one of the most
implacable enemies of the Revolution, was arranging with the Austrian
embassador for the co-operation of Austria; that eighteen regiments had already
taken the oath of fidelity to the court; that the Royalists, in large numbers, were
already congregating at Metz; that the nobles and the clergy had combined in
raising funds, so that fifteen hundred thousand francs ($300,000) a month were
secured; that measures were already adopted to besiege Paris, cut off all
supplies, and starve the city into subjection; and that more than sixty thousand of
the clergy and nobility were pledged to rally around the king.
D'Estaing was appalled by the tidings. He knew that if the populace were
informed of the conspiracy it would rouse them to phrensy, that no earthly power
could protect the royal family from their fury, and that instantly the fiercest civil
war would blaze from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. Aware of the imbecility of the
king, and that the queen was the author of every vigorous measure, he
immediately addressed a very earnest letter to her. He wrote as follows in a letter
long, earnest, and imploring:
"It is necessary—my duty and my loyalty require it—that I should lay at the feet
of the queen the account of the visit which I have paid to Paris. I am praised for
sleeping soundly the night before an assault or a naval engagement. I venture to
assert that I am not timorous in civil matters, but I must confess to your majesty
that I did not close my eyes all night.
"I was told—and, gracious heaven! what would be the consequence if this were
circulated among the people—I was told that the king was to be carried off to
Metz. La Fayette told me so in a whisper at dinner. I trembled lest a single
domestic should overhear him. I observed to him that a word from his lips might
become the signal of death. I implore your majesty to grant me an audience
some day this week."[226]
Such a secret could not long be kept. It soon began to be openly spoken of in the
streets as a suspicion, a rumor. Under pretense of protecting the National
Assembly from any violence by the mob from Paris, the king called a regiment
to Versailles from Flanders. This was a regiment in whose officers and soldiers
he could rely, and which was to aid him in his flight. The troops marched into
the city with an imposing array of artillery and infantry, exciting increasing
suspicion, and were assembled as a guard around the palace.
It was on the 23d of September that this Flanders regiment entered Versailles,
and were stationed around the regal chateau, thus doubling the body-guard of the
king. It was also observed that a very unusual number of officers crowded the
streets of Versailles, estimated at from a thousand to twelve hundred.[227] A
dinner was given to these officers on the 1st of October, in the hall of the Opera
at the palace. No expense was spared to add splendor to the fête, to which all
were invited who could probably be led to co-operate with the court. Wine
flowed freely, and, deep in the hours of the night, when all heads were delirious,
the king and queen, with the young dauphin, entered the banqueting-hall. They
were received with almost phrensied acclaim. The boxes of the Opera were
thronged with ladies of the court, adding to the enthusiasm. The king, the queen,
the dauphin, were toasted with delirious shouts. When some one proposed "the
nation," the toast was scornfully rejected. As the royal family made the tour of
the tables, the band struck up the air, "O Richard, O my king, the world is all
forsaking thee." The officers leaped upon the chairs and the tables, drew their
swords, and vowed eternal fidelity to the king. And now ensued a scene which
no language can describe. The officers clambered into the boxes, and received
the cordial greetings of the ladies; the revolutionary movement was cursed
intensely; the tricolored cockade, the badge of popular rights, was trampled
under foot, and the white cockade, the emblem of Bourbon power, was accepted
in its stead from the hands of the ladies. The next day there was another similar
entertainment in the palace, to which a still larger number of guests were invited,
and the convivialities were still more exciting and violent. The courtiers, with
that fatuity which ever marked their conduct, were now so encouraged, that they
began with insolent menaces to manifest their exultation.
pic
FESTIVAL IN THE BALL-ROOM AT VERSAILLES, OCT. 1, 1789.
The tidings of these fêtes spread rapidly through Versailles and Paris, exciting
intense indignation. The court was feasting; the people starving. Versailles was
filled with rejoicing; Paris with mourning. Despotism was exulting in its
anticipated triumph, while the nation was threatened with the loss of its newlyacquired
rights. The king had thus far delayed giving his assent to the
Constitution. Disquietude pervaded the National Assembly, and confused
murmurs filled the thoroughfares of Paris—terrible rumors of the approaching
war, of the league with the German princes, of the increasing famine, and the
threatened blockade of Paris. "We must bring the king to Paris," all said, "or the
court will carry him off, and war will immediately be commenced."
The morning of the 5th of October dawned, dark, cold, and stormy. A dismal rain
flooded the streets. There were thousands in Paris that morning who had eaten
nothing for thirty hours.[228] The women, in particular, of the humbler class,
were in an awful state of destitution and misery. The populace of Paris were
actually starving. An energetic woman, half delirious with woe, seized a drum,
and strode through the streets beating it violently, occasionally shrieking,
"Bread! bread!" She soon collected a crowd of women, which rapidly increased
from a few hundred to seven or eight thousand. The men gazed with wonder
upon this strange apparition, such as earth had, perhaps, never seen before. Like
a swelling inundation the living flood rolled through the streets, and soon the cry
was heard, "To Versailles!" As by a common instinct, the tumultuous mass
rushed along by the side of the Tuileries and through the Elysian Fields toward
Versailles. A few of the more fierce and brutal of the women had guns or pistols.
Chancing to find a couple of cannon, they seized them, and also horses to drag
the ponderous engines, upon which female furies placed themselves astride,
singing revolutionary songs.
pic
THE WOMEN OF PARIS MARCHING TO VERSAILLES.
La Fayette gazed appalled upon the strange phenomenon. The troops of the
National Guard refused to arrest their course, declaring that they could not resist
starving women, who were going to implore bread of their king. La Fayette was
powerless. He had under arms that morning thirty-five thousand troops, cavalry,
infantry, and artillery. He could only follow the women, to watch the opening of
events. Behind these troops advancing in all the glittering panoply of war,
followed a straggling mass of, no one can tell how many thousands of the
populace of Paris, of all classes, characters, conditions. The city seemed emptied
of its inhabitants, as the road to Versailles, ten or twelve miles in length, was
filled with the tumultuous multitude. No one, apparently, had any definite object,
but each one was going to see what the others would do.
Couriers were sent forward to warn the king and queen of the impending peril.
The good-natured, silly king had gone to Meudon to amuse himself in chasing
hares. Nothing can more conclusively show his utter incapacity to govern a great
kingdom, than that he should have been so employed at such an hour. The king
was sent for, and speedily returned to Versailles. Marie Antoinette had all the
energy and heroism of her mother, Maria Theresa. When entreated immediately
to secure her escape with her two children, she replied,
"Nothing shall induce me to be separated from my husband. I know that they
seek my life; but I am the daughter of Maria Theresa, and have learned not to
fear death."
The king was entreated to escape, but he was fearful that his flight might
embolden the Assembly to declare the throne vacant, and to place the crown
upon the head of the Duke of Orleans, who had, with that object probably in
view, vociferously espoused the popular cause. From the windows of Versailles
the royal family soon descried the vast multitude plodding along through the
mud and the rain as they approached Versailles. It is said that there were some
men in the mob, disguised as women, who gave impulse and direction to the
mass. A man by the name of Maillard, of gigantic stature, and possessed of
wonderful tact, succeeded in obtaining the post of leader. In this alarming state
of affairs, the king sent to the Assembly a partial acceptance of the Constitution.
As the Assembly were discussing this question, the women arrived at the hall.
Maillard entered, and the women crowded after him. Respectfully, but earnestly,
on behalf of the women, he represented the starving condition of Paris, and
complained of the insult which the nation had received in the fête at the palace.
It was now three o'clock in the afternoon. The rain was still falling. A dark,
stormy night was at hand, and the streets of Versailles were filled with countless
thousands of the most desperate men and women, utterly destitute of shelter. The
Assembly, in alarm, requested their president, M. Mounier, to go to the palace
and petition for fresh measures of relief. M. Mounier was compelled to allow
twelve women to accompany him. The king received them kindly. The women
had adroitly selected, as the leader of their deputation, a very beautiful young
flower-girl, but seventeen years of age, of remarkably graceful form and lovely
features. The girl, overcome by her sensations, endeavored in vain to speak, and
fainted. The king took her in his arms, embraced her as if she had been his child,
and was so paternal that he completely won the hearts of all the women. They
left the palace with such enthusiastic accounts of the goodness of the king, that
the Amazons on the outside accused them of having been bribed, and, in their
rage, were ready to tear them in pieces. The poor flower-girl would have been
hanged with garters to a lamp-post had not the soldiers rescued her.
The king now summoned a council, which continued in session until ten o'clock.
Still, by some unpardonable neglect, no measures were adopted to provide for
the wants of the famished mob. It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening before
La Fayette arrived with the National Guard.[229] The soldiers of the guard,
intelligent citizens, were only to be controlled by the personal influence of their
general. Authority is only established by time and consolidated institutions. La
Fayette hastened to the palace to assure the royal family that every thing in his
power should be done to secure their safety. The king, however, would not
intrust the guard of the palace to La Fayette, as he thought he could place more
reliance in the Flanders regiment, the Swiss mercenaries, and his own Life-
Guard, than in the National Guard, who were all devoted to the popular cause.
In the confusion of those dreadful hours, all the entrances to the palace had not
been defended. La Fayette, however, stationed an effectual guard at all the
outposts which had been assigned to him. Through all the hours of the night,
until five o'clock in the morning, La Fayette was sleeplessly engaged sending out
patrols and watching over the public peace. Then, finding all tranquil, he threw
himself upon a sofa for rest, having been constantly and anxiously employed for
the last twenty-four hours. Groups of shivering, famished people were gathered
around large fires, which they had built in the streets, and in one place they were
devouring the half-roasted flesh of a horse which they had killed. The queen,
worn out with sleeplessness, had retired to her chamber. The king had also gone
to his chamber, which was connected with that of the queen by a hall, through
which they could mutually pass. Two soldiers guarded the door of the queen's
chamber. Some of the mob, prowling around the palace, found a gate unguarded,
and, entering the palace without any obstruction, ascended the stairs, and,
pressing blindly on, came to the door of the queen's apartment. The soldiers
heroically resisted them, and shouted to others to save the queen. She heard the
cry, and, springing from her bed, rushed in her night-clothes to the king's room.
The brigands pushed resolutely forward, and found the royal bed forsaken. A
number of the Life-Guards hastened to the spot, and arrested their farther
progress; and the soldiers of La Fayette, who had been stationed at a little
distance, hearing the tumult, hastened to their aid.
The noise roused the mob, and a conflict immediately ensued between the
soldiers and the phrensied multitude. La Fayette, who had not yet fallen asleep,
sprung from his couch, and, hastening to the palace, found several of the king's
troops on the point of being slaughtered. One of the brigands aimed a musket at
La Fayette, but the mob seized him and dashed out his brains upon the
pavement. The Life-Guards and the Grenadiers of La Fayette soon cleared the
palace; and the whole court acknowledged that they were indebted to La Fayette
for their lives. Madame Adelaide, the queen's aunt, threw her arms around him,
exclaiming "General, you have saved us."[230]
pic
HEROIC DEFENSE OF THE ROYAL APARTMENTS BY THE GARDE DU CORPS, OCT. 5, 1789.
The morning of the 6th was now dawning, and the whole multitude, swarming
around the palace, demanded as with one voice that the king should go to Paris.
A council was held, and it was decided by the court that the king should comply.
Slips of paper announcing the decision were thrown to the people from the
windows. Loud shouts now rose of "Long live the King!" But threatening voices
were raised against the queen, who was hated as an Austrian, and as one who
was endeavoring to bring the armies of Austria to crush liberty in France.
"Madame," said La Fayette to the queen, "the king goes to Paris; what will you
do?"
"Accompany the king," was the queen's undaunted reply.
"Come with me, then," rejoined the general.
He led the queen upon a balcony, from whence she looked out upon the
multitude, agitated like the ocean in a storm. All eyes were speedily fixed upon
her as she stood by the side of La Fayette, and held by the hand her little son, the
dauphin. The murmurs of the crowd were immediately succeeded by expressions
of admiration. La Fayette took her hand, and, raising it to his lips, respectfully
kissed it. An almost universal shout of "Long live the Queen!" was the response
of the multitude to this graceful and well-timed act. The queen then stepped back
into the room, and said to La Fayette, "My guards, can you not do something for
them?" "Give me one," said La Fayette, and, leading the soldier to the balcony,
he presented him to the people, and handed him the tricolored cockade. The
guard kissed it, and placed it on his hat. The people were satisfied, reconciled,
and cheered with hearty plaudits. Many of the garde du corps had been taken
prisoners, and they all would have been murdered by the mob but for the
vigorous efforts of La Fayette to rescue them from their hands.
pic
LA FAYETTE RESCUING THE GARDE DU CORPS, OCT. 6, 1789.
The Assembly, being apprised of the king's intention to go to Paris, passed a
resolution that the Assembly was inseparable from the person of the king, and
nominated a hundred deputies to accompany him to the metropolis. Two of the
king's body-guard had been killed, and some wretches had cut off their heads,
and were parading them about on pikes.[231]
pic
THE ROYAL FAMILY CONVEYED TO PARIS, OCT. 6, 1789.
It was one o'clock when the carriages containing the royal family left Versailles.
[232] The whole mob of Paris, men and women, a tumultuous, clamorous
multitude, went in advance. Following immediately the carriages of the court
came the hundred deputies, also in coaches. Then came the National Guard.
Carts laden with corn and flour, escorted by Grenadiers, followed the immense
train. None were so malignant and merciless as the degraded women who
composed so large a part of this throng. "We shall now," they exclaimed, "have
bread, for we have with us the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy."
It required seven hours for this unwieldy mass to urge its slow progress to Paris.
The king was conducted to the Hôtel de Ville, where he was received by M.
Bailly, the mayor. The royal family descended from their carriages by torchlight,
and entered the great hall, where they were received with acclamations.
After the ceremony of reception by the municipality of Paris was over, the king
and his family were conducted to the Tuileries. The vast palace had not been the
residence of the royal family for a hundred years, and its spacious and poorlyfurnished
apartments presented but a cheerless aspect. The National Guard were
stationed around the palace, and thus La Fayette was made responsible for the
safe-keeping of the person of the king. Thus terminated the eventful days of the
5th and 6th of October, 1789. The king was now virtually a prisoner, and the
nobles could no longer avail themselves of his name in enforcing, by the aid of
foreign armies, despotism upon France.
FOOTNOTES:
[225] Mounier, who was strongly in favor of two chambers and an absolute veto, in his Report to his
Constituents, writes, in reference to some private and friendly conferences held at this time:
"These conferences, twice renewed, were unsuccessful. They were recommenced at the house of an
American known for his abilities and his virtues, who had both the experience and the theory of the
institutions proper for maintaining liberty. He gave an opinion in favor of my principles."
This American was unquestionably Thomas Jefferson. He saw the peril with which the Revolution was
menaced, and that freedom needed as strong a guard against the blind impulses of the populace as against
the encroachments of the court. Two houses might perhaps have checked the rush to ruin, but could hardly
have averted the disaster. For ages the nobles had been "sowing the wind." It was the decree of God that
they should "reap the whirlwind." "He visiteth the iniquities of the fathers upon the children."
[226] Brouillon: le Lettre de M. d'Estaing à la Reine (in Histoire Parlementaire, vol. iii., p. 24).
[227] "Le ministre de la guerre multiplia les congés de semestre, afin d'avoir un corps de volontaires
royaux, composé de douze cent cents officiers."—Villiaumé, p. 34.
[228] Moniteur, vol. i., p. 568. Histoire de Deux Amis de la Liberté, t. iii.
[229] Thiers, vol. i., p. 106.
[230] "M. de la Fayette has been so calumniated, and his character is nevertheless so pure, so consistent,
that it is right to devote at least one note to him. His conduct during the fifth and sixth of October was that
of continual self-devotion, and yet it has been represented as criminal by men who owed their lives to it.
The spirit of party, feeling the danger of allowing any virtues to a Constitutionalist, denied the services of
La Fayette, and then commenced that long series of calumnies to which he has ever since been
exposed."—Thiers, vol. i., p. 108.
[231] Thiers, vol. i., p. 111.
[232] "I saw her majesty in her cabinet an instant before her departure for Paris. She could scarcely speak.
Tears poured down her face, to which all the blood in her body seemed to have mounted. She did me the
favor to embrace me, and gave her hand to M. Campan to kiss, saying to us, Come immediately to take up
your abode in Paris. We are utterly lost; dragged probably to death. Captive kings are always very near
it."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 84.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FRANCE REGENERATED.
Kind Feelings of the People.—Emigration receives a new Impulse.—The
National Assembly transferred to Paris.—The Constituent Assembly.—
Assassination of François.—Anxiety of the Patriots.—Gloomy Winter.—
Contrast between the Bishops and the laboring Clergy.—Church Funds
seized by the Assembly.—The Church responsible for the Degradation of
the People.—New Division of France.—The Right of Suffrage.—The
Guillotine.—Rabaud de St. Etienne.
THE royal family was now in Paris. The poor were, however, still perishing of
famine. The night of the 6th of October passed without disturbance. It was dark
even to blackness, and torrents of rain deluged the streets. Early in the morning
of the 7th a vast multitude thronged the garden of the Tuileries, eager to catch a
glimpse of the king. They all seemed animated by the kindest feelings toward
their sovereign. The king, in response to reiterated calls, showed himself upon
the balcony, and was received with universal acclamations. All the members of
the royal family appeared to share in this popularity. Madame Elizabeth, sister of
the king, a princess of rare loveliness both of person and character, caused her
window to be opened, and sat partaking of refreshments in the presence of
thousands of spectators. Men, women, and children, a vast multitude, gathered
around the window, and words of kindness, love, and joy were on all lips.
"We have now our king restored to us," they said. "He is taken away from his
bad advisers, and will now be, as he has always wished to be, our good father."
This generous, confiding spirit had taken such full possession of the public mind
—the people, notwithstanding the intolerable wrongs they had endured for so
many ages, were so ready to forgive—that not a word of disrespect was uttered,
even to the foreign body-guard of the king, or to the haughty lords and
aristocratic ladies who had accompanied the court to Paris. The people even
cheered these nobles, against whom they had been so long contending, and
addressed them in words of kindness.[233]
pic
THE ROYAL FAMILY ABOUT TO EXHIBIT THEMSELVES TO THE PEOPLE.
The nobles were, however, so alarmed by this triumph of the people that
emigration received a new impulse. One hundred and fifty of the Royalist
deputies of the National Assembly immediately obtained passports and left the
kingdom. Some of the nobles repaired to Turin. The Comte d'Artois (Charles X.)
took up his residence with his father-in-law, the King of Sardinia. The emigrants,
thus scattered through all the courts of Europe, were busy in endeavors to rally
the aristocratic courts to crush popular liberty in France. The emigration
throughout the country was so extensive that sixty thousand, it was said, went to
Switzerland alone.
The king, on the contrary, appeared pleased with the affection of his people. He
walked, without guards, through the crowds which thronged the Elysian Fields,
and was every where treated with respect. On the 9th of October, three days after
his arrival in the city, he sent a letter to the Assembly at Versailles, informing
that body that the testimonials of affection and fidelity which he had received
from the city of Paris had determined him to fix his ordinary residence there.[234]
He accordingly invited the Assembly to transfer its sitting to Paris. Incredible as
it may seem, the imbecile king sent for his smith tools, put up his forge, and
amused himself with file and hammer tinkering at locks.[235]
The Archbishop of Paris had fled with the emigrants. On the 19th of October the
National Assembly left Versailles and held its first sitting in Paris, in a room of
the archbishop's palace, from which room it soon removed to the riding-hall of
the Tuileries, a much more commodious apartment which had been prepared for
its accommodation.[236] As the great object of the Assembly was now to
reorganize the government upon the basis of a free constitution, it dropped the
name of National Assembly on leaving Versailles, and assumed in Paris the
name of Constituent Assembly. Thus the same body in the course of five months
was called by three different names. It was first the States-General, from the
period of its meeting on the 5th of May until the union of the three orders on the
27th of June. It was then the National Assembly until its removal from Versailles
to Paris, on the 19th of October. It then took the name of the Constituent
Assembly, and continued in existence for nearly two years, until the 30th of
September, 1791, when it expired, and a new body, the Legislative Assembly,
commenced its session.
The storm of revolution for a time seemed to lull, and there were but few acts of
violence. The people of Paris were still in a state of fearful suffering from
famine, and on the 21st of October a few half-starved wretches seized a baker
named François, whom they accused of holding back his bread, and in a moment
of phrensy, before the police could interfere, strung him up at a lamp-post, and
then cut off his head.
The deed was denounced by even the most violent of the revolutionists, and the
Assembly took advantage of the feeling which the outrage excited to pass a
martial law against tumultuous assemblies of the people. This law, which was
almost a repetition of the English riot act, was assailed by many of the journals
as a gross infringement of the rights of the people. Robespierre in the Assembly
and Marat in his wide-spread journal were conspicuous in denouncing it.
The atrocious murder of François, who was a generous and a charitable man, and
entirely innocent of the crime of which he was accused, produced a profound
impression. It was indicative of the rapid and fearful rise of mob violence. The
king and queen sent to his young widow a letter of condolence, with a gift in
money amounting to about twenty-five hundred dollars. The city government of
Paris sent a committee of its members to visit and console her. La Fayette,
mortified and indignant at the outrage, scoured the faubourgs in search of the
miscreants who perpetrated the deed. Two of the ringleaders were arrested and
handed over to immediate trial.
They were condemned to death, and the next morning were hanged in the same
Place de Grêve which had been the scene of the outrage. This was the only
murder, perpetrated by a Parisian mob, during the Revolution, which the law was
sufficiently powerful to punish.[237]
pic
ASSASSINATION OF FRANÇOIS THE BAKER.
In other parts of the kingdom there were occasional acts of violence. Bread was
so enormously dear that the corn-dealers were accused of hoarding up immense
stores for the sake of speculation. The ignorant mob in some instances seriously
maltreated those suspected of this crime. The innocent were thus often punished,
for the violence of the mob is as likely to fall upon the innocent as upon the
guilty.
Many of the most intelligent friends of reform began now to fear that the nation
was going "too fast and too far." The scenes of the 5th of October, and the
omnipotence of the mob as evinced on that day, had inspired fearful
apprehensions for the future. Even La Fayette felt that the salvation of the cause
of liberty depended upon strengthening the power of the king. He induced the
king to send the Duke of Orleans from Paris, and when the duke wished to return
he sent him word that, the day after his return, he would have to fight a duel with
him.
Mirabeau united with La Fayette in these endeavors to stop the nation in its
headlong rush, and to secure constitutional liberty by giving strength to the
monarchical arm. They were both of the opinion that France, surrounded by
powerful and jealous monarchies, and with millions of peasants unaccustomed to
self-government, who could neither read nor write, and who were almost as
uninstructed as the sheep they tended, needed a throne founded upon a free
constitution.[238] Even in the Assembly Mirabeau ventured to urge that it was
necessary to restore strength to the executive power.[239] But the court hated both
La Fayette and Mirabeau, and were opposed to any diminution of their own
exclusive privileges. They would accept of no compromise, and all the efforts of
the moderate party were unavailing.
Gloomy winter now commenced, and there was no money, no labor, no bread.
The aristocratic party all over the realm were packing their trunks, and sending
before them across the frontiers whatever funds they could collect. They wished
to render France as weak and miserable as possible, that the people might be
more easily again subjugated to the feudal yoke by the armies of foreign despots.
Hence there was a frightful increase of beggary. In Paris alone there were two
hundred thousand. It is one of the greatest of marvels that such a mass of men,
literally starving, could have remained so quiet. The resources of the kingdom
were exhausted during the winter in feeding, in all the towns of France, paupers
amounting to millions. All eyes were now directed to the National Assembly for
measures of relief.
pic
FIRES IN THE STREETS FOR THE POOR.
The wealth of the clergy was enormous. Almsgiving, which has filled Europe
with beggary, has ever been represented by the Catholic Church as the first act of
piety. During long ages of superstition, the dying had been induced, as an
atonement for godless lives, to bequeath their possessions to the Church, to be
dispensed in charity to the people. Thus many a wealthy sinner had obtained
absolution, and thus the ecclesiastics held endowments which comprised one
fifth of the lands of the kingdom, and were estimated at four thousand millions
of francs ($800,000,000).[240]
Notwithstanding this immense opulence of the Church, nearly all the parish
pastors, the hard and faithful workers for Christianity—and there were many
such, men of true lives and of unfeigned religion—were in the extreme of
poverty. The bishops were all nobles, for even Louis XVI. would elect no other.
These bishops were often the most dissolute and voluptuous of men, and reveled
in incomes of a million of francs ($250,000) a year. The working clergy, on the
contrary, who were from the people, seldom received more than two hundred
francs ($40) a year. They were so poor as to be quite dependent upon their
parishioners for charity.[241]
The Assembly assumed that these treasures had been intrusted to the Church for
the benefit of the people; that the luxurious ecclesiastics, by unfaithfulness to
their trust, had forfeited the right of farther dispensing the charity. After a very
fierce strife, a motion was made by Mirabeau, that the possessions of the Church
were at the disposal of the state. Many of the lower clergy voted for the
resolution, and it was adopted by a majority of 568 against 346. Forty deputies
refused to vote. This measure placed at once immense resources in the hands of
the Assembly, and necessarily exasperated tenfold the privileged classes, and
rolled a wave of alarm over the whole wide-spread domain of the Pope. It was
the signal for Catholic Europe to rise in arms against the Revolution. As it was
impossible, under the pressure of the times, to force the sale of the enormous
property of the Church without an immense sacrifice, bonds were issued, called
assignats, assigned or secured on this church property.
Thus was the haughty Gallican Church deprived of its ill-gotten and worse used
wealth. The dignitaries of this Church had ever been the most inveterate foes of
popular elevation. Treasure which had been wrested from the poor and extorted
from the dying, as a gift to God for the promotion of human virtue, they were
using to forge chains for the people, and were squandering in shameless
profligacy.
Nearly all the nobles were infidels, disciples of Voltaire. For years, while
reveling in wine and debauchery, they had held up religion to contempt. But they
now suddenly became very devout, espoused the cause of their boon
companions, the bishops, and remonstrated against laying unholy hands upon the
treasury of the Lord. All over Europe the two most formidable forces, secular
and religious aristocracy, were now combined against popular reform. It was this
principle which led the Protestant English noble and the papal Austrian bishop to
make common cause against the regeneration of France.
There were some French nobles and French bishops who recognized, whatever
may have been their motives, the rights of the people, and espoused their side.
Talleyrand, the Bishop of Autun, introduced the measure, and Mirabeau
supported it with all the energy of his eloquence.
The degradation of the people is the condemnation of the papal Church. For
many centuries the office of elevating the people had devolved upon the clergy.
Instead of instructing their congregations, the forms of worship had been
converted into a senseless pantomime; the prayers were offered in an unknown
tongue; the word of God was excluded from their sight. The rich became infidels
and atheists, and by robbing the poor luxuriated in profligacy. The poor became
brutalized and savage, and were held under restraint only by the terrors of a soulhardening
superstition.
There is no hope of peace for the world but in that doctrine of Christ which
promotes the brotherhood of man. Where this fraternity is recognized and its
sympathies circulate, there is peace. The aristocratic Church in France had been
the tool of the court in degrading and enslaving the people. The awful day of
retribution was but the inevitable progress of the divine law. Man, crushed and
trampled upon by his brother man, may endure it for an age, for a century, but
the time will come when he will endure it no longer, and the ferocity of his rising
will be proportionate to the depth and the gloom of the dungeon in which he has
been immured.[242] The progress of the world is toward justice, equality, and
nature. If that progress be not peaceful it will be violent and bloody. The vital
energies of the soul of man can not forever be repressed.
France had for some time been divided into thirteen large provinces,
incorporated at different periods and possessing different immunities and a
diversity of customs and laws. The Assembly broke down all these old barriers
that a character of unity might be given to the nation. The kingdom was divided
into eighty-three departments, each department being about fifty-four miles
square. These departments were divided into districts, and the districts into
communes. This division somewhat resembled that of the United States, into
states, counties, and towns.
The right of suffrage was extended to all male citizens twenty-five years of age,
who had resided in the electoral district one year, who had paid a direct tax
amounting to the value of three days' labor, about sixty cents, who were not in
the condition of servants, and who were enrolled in the National Guard. These
were called active citizens. The rest of the population were deemed passive
citizens. To be eligible to office either as a magistrate or a representative, it was
required that one should pay a direct tax of about ten dollars, and also be a
landholder. The aristocrats considered this extension of the right of suffrage as
awfully radical and democratic. On the other hand the democracy, from its lower
depths, exclaimed with the utmost vehemence and indignation against the
restriction of the right of suffrage and of office to tax-payers and propertyholders.
"There is but one united voice," cried Camille Desmoulins, "in the city and in the
country, against this ten-dollar decree (le décret du marc d'argent). It is
constituting in France an aristocratic government, and it is the most signal
victory which the aristocrats have yet gained in the Assembly. To demonstrate
the absurdity of the decree it is necessary but to mention that Rousseau,
Corneille, Mably, under it could not have been eligible. As for you, ye
despicable priests, ye lying cheating knaves, do you see that you make even your
God ineligible?[243] Jesus Christ, whom you recognize as divine, you thrust out
into the ranks of the mob. And do you wish that I should respect you, ye priests
of an ignominious God (d'un Dieu proletaire), who is not even an active citizen?
Respect that poverty which Jesus Christ has ennobled."[244]
Such fierce appeals produced a profound and exasperating impression upon the
army of two hundred thousand beggars in Paris and upon the millions utterly
impoverished in France. "We have overthrown the aristocracy of birth," the
orators of the populace exclaimed, "only to introduce the still more hateful
aristocracy of the purse." The working clergy, who were among the foremost in
favor of reform, were almost to a man efficient members of the moderate party,
and cordially co-operated with La Fayette in the endeavor to prevent liberty from
being whelmed in lawlessness. The clergy had great influence, and hence the
venom of the popular speakers and writers was perseveringly directed against
them.[245]
The Assembly then abolished the oppressive duty upon salt.[246] The old
parliaments of the old provinces, as corrupt bodies as have perhaps ever existed,
and the subservient instruments of aristocratic oppression, were suppressed, and
new courts of a popular character substituted in their place. All trials were
ordered to be public; no punishment, on accusation for crime, could be inflicted
unless by a vote of two thirds of the court. The penalty of death required a vote
of four fifths. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was blotted out, and thus
some thousands of Protestants who had long been banished from France were
permitted to return and to enjoy all their political rights. It was decreed that all
citizens, of whatever condition, should be subject to the same laws and judged
by the same tribunals. Those accused of crime were to be tried by jury, but not
till a court had previously determined that the evidence against them was
sufficiently strong to warrant their arrest. It is remarkable that both Robespierre
and Marat were most earnest in their endeavors to abrogate the death-penalty.
During this discussion Dr. Guillotin urged the adoption, in capital punishment, of
a new machine which he had invented.
"With my machine," said the doctor, "I can clip off your head in the twinkling of
an eye without your feeling it."
These words, most earnestly uttered, caused a general burst of laughter in the
Assembly. But a few months passed ere many of those deputies were bound to
the plank and experienced the efficiency of the keen blade. The introduction of
the guillotine was intended as a measure of humanity. The unfortunate man
doomed to death was thus to be saved from needless suffering.[247]
The measures adopted by the Constituent Assembly seem to republican eyes just
and moderate. Experience, it is true, has proved that it is safer to have two
houses of legislation, a senate and a lower house, than one, but the subsequent
decrees passed by this one house were manifestly dictated, not by passion, but
by patriotism and a sense of right.[248]
The clergy now made immense efforts to rouse the peasantry all over the
kingdom to oppose the Revolution. Religious fanaticism exhausted all its
energies. The parliaments also of the old provinces, composed exclusively of the
nobles, roused themselves anew and were vehement in remonstrances and
protests. They became active agents in organizing opposition, in maligning the
action of the Assembly, and in inciting the credulous multitude to violence. The
Assembly punished the parliaments by abolishing them all.
The court bitterly accused the Assembly of a usurpation of power, which called
from Mirabeau a reply which electrified France.
"You ask," he said, "how, from being deputies, we have made ourselves a
convention. I will tell you. The day when, finding our assembly-room shut,
bristling and defiled with bayonets, we hastened to the first place that could
contain us, and swore that we would perish rather than abandon the interests of
the people—on that day, if we were not a convention, we became one. Let them
now go and hunt out of the useless nomenclature of civilians the definition of the
words National Convention! Gentlemen, you all know the conduct of that
Roman who, to save his country from a great conspiracy, had been obliged to
outstep the powers conferred upon him by the laws. A captious tribune required
from him the oath that he had respected them. He thought, by that insidious
proposal, to leave the consul no alternative but perjury or an embarrassing
avowal. 'I swear,' said that great man, 'that I have saved the republic.' Gentlemen,
we also swear that we have saved the commonwealth."
This sublime apostrophe brought the whole Assembly to its feet. The charge of
usurpation was not repeated.
A great effort was at the same time made to compel the Assembly to adopt the
resolution that the "Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion is, and shall ever be,
the religion of the nation, and that its worship is the only one authorized." As
one of the court party was urging this resolve, and quoting, as a precedent, some
intolerant decree of Louis XIV., Mirabeau sent dismay to the heart of the court
by exclaiming,
"And how should not every kind of intolerance have been consecrated in a reign
signalized by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes?"
Then, pointing to a window of the Louvre, he continued, in deep and solemn
tones which thrilled through every heart,
"Do you appeal to history? Forget not that from this very hall I behold the
window whence a king of France, armed against his people by an execrable
faction that disguised personal interest under the cloak of religion, fired his
musket and gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew!"
The effect was electric, and the spirit of intolerance was crushed.
The true Christian charity which the Assembly assumed was cordially accepted
by the mass of the nation. We love to record the fact that the great majority of
the Catholic population were delighted to see the Protestants restored to their
civil and religious rights. Even Michelet, hostile as he is to all revealed religion,
testifies: "The unanimity was affecting, and one of the sights the most worthy to
call down the blessing of God upon earth. In many parts the Catholics went to
the temple of the Protestants, and united with them to return thanks to
Providence together. On the other hand the Protestants attended at the Catholic
Te Deum. Far above all the altars, every temple and every church, a divine ray
had appeared in heaven."[249] In every place where the Protestants were in the
majority they presented the most affecting spectacle of fraternity.
A Protestant, M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, was chosen president of the Assembly—
a position at that time higher than that of the throne. He was the son of the
celebrated Protestant martyr of Cevennes, who for long years had been hunted
like a wild beast, as he hid in dens in the forest, escaping from the ferocity of
religious persecution. The venerable parent was still living, and received from
his son a letter containing the declaration, "The president of the National
Assembly is at your feet."
The higher ecclesiastics were, however, exasperated by this triumph of religious
liberty. They succeeded, in Montauban and in Nimes, in exciting a Roman
Catholic mob against the Protestants. The ignorant populace, roused by
superstition, seized their arms, shouted "Down with the nation!" and fell with the
most cruel butchery upon the Protestants. The violent insurrection was, however,
soon quelled, and without any acts of retaliatory vengeance.[250] The bishops
anathematized every priest friendly to the Revolution, and designated all such to
the hatred and contempt of the fanatic populace. The bishop who, under the old
régime, had enjoyed an income of eight hundred thousand francs ($160,000),
and was rejoicing in his palaces, horses, and concubines, invoked the wrath of
God upon the curate who was now receiving twelve hundred francs ($240) from
the nation. The power of the papal ecclesiastics was so strong that most of the
humble curates were eventually compelled to abandon the Revolution and rally
again around the sceptre of the Pope.
The air was still filled with rumors of plots to disperse the Assembly and carry
the king off to the protection of the royalist army at Metz, where he could be
forced by the nobles to sanction their course, in invading France with foreign
armies. On the 25th of December the Marquis of Favrus was arrested, accused of
forming a plot to seize the king with an army of thirty thousand men, and to
assassinate La Fayette and Bailly. It was said that twelve hundred horse were
ready at Versailles to carry off the king, and that a powerful force, composed of
Swiss and Piedmontese, was organized to march upon Paris. The king's brother,
the Count of Provence, subsequently Louis XVIII., was reported as in the plot,
and to have supplied the conspirators with large sums of money. Louis was
willing to be abducted as if by violence, but was not willing to assume any
responsibility by engaging in measures for escape. He assumed the attitude of
contentment, and with such apparent cordiality professed co-operation in the
measures of the Assembly for the regeneration of France that many supposed
that he had honestly espoused the popular cause.
FOOTNOTES:
[233] For overwhelming evidence that such was the state of the public mind, see Weber, vol. i., p. 257;
Beaulieu, vol. ii., p. 203; Amis de la Liberté, vol. iv., p. 2-6; Michelet, vol. i., p. 284.
[234] Weber, an eye-witness of the king's reception in Paris, though a zealous Royalist, testifies that the
reception was most kind and affectionate on the part of the masses of the people. See Weber, vol. ii., p. 228.
See also Arthur Young, vol. i., p. 264-280.
[235] Le Chateau des Tuileries, par Roussel, in Hist. Parl., vol. iv., p. 195.
[236] That hall has since been destroyed. It stood upon the place now occupied by the houses No. 36 and 38
Rue de Rivoli.
[237] Even the most zealous of the revolutionary journals denounced with unmeasured severity the murder
of François. Loustalot exclaimed, "Des Français! des Français! non, non de tels monstres n'appartiennent à
aucun pays; le crime est leur element, le gibet leur patrie."
[238] On the 15th of March, M. de Lamarck took to Mirabeau the overtures of the court, but found him
very cool. When pressed by Lamarck, he said that the throne could only be restored by establishing it upon
a basis of liberty; that, if the court wanted any thing else, he would oppose instead of serving it.—Michelet,
p. 328.
[239] In attestation of the correctness of these remarks, see the statements of Mirabeau, La Fayette, and
Alexander de Lameth.
[240] Michelet, vol. i., p. 290.
[241] In the army there was the same inequality. According to the budget for war in 1784, the officers
received forty-six millions of francs, and the whole body of soldiers but forty-four. "It is true," says
Michelet, "that, under Louis XVI., another pay was added, settled with the cudgel. This was to imitate the
famous discipline of Prussia, and was supposed to contain the whole secret of the victories of Frederick the
Great: man driven like a machine, and punished like a child." The soldiers under the Empire knew how to
appreciate the change.
[242] "Every body was acquainted with the morals of the prelates and the ignorance of the inferior clergy.
The curates possessed some virtues but no information. Wherever they ruled they were an obstacle to every
improvement of the people, and caused them to retrograde. To quote but one example, Poitou, civilized in
the sixteenth century, became barbarous under their influence; they were preparing for us the civil war of
Vendée."—Michelet, p. 222.
[243] Some curious facts were elicited during the progress of this discussion respecting the manner in
which a portion of the vast revenues of the Church had been obtained. The clergy of Condom promised the
simple, kind-hearted peasants, in consideration for a large quantity of grain, that they would every year
conduct two hundred and fifty souls from purgatory directly to Paradise. In some places a regular tariff of
prices had been established for the pardon of crimes. Absolution for incest could be purchased for one
dollar, arson required one dollar and a quarter, parricide one dollar, and absolution could be obtained for all
sins united for about sixteen dollars. These prices seem very moderate. But it must be remembered that the
peasants were excessively poor, and could not, even to escape from purgatory, pay large sums.—Villiaumé,
p. 52.
[244] Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 25.
[245] In the Faubourg St. Antoine, which contained a population of thirty thousand, it is said that there
were but two hundred active citizens. Marat, in his addresses to the "unfortunate citizens of the faubourgs,"
urged them to vote, notwithstanding the decree of the Assembly. "No power under the sun," said he, "can
deprive you of the right of suffrage, which is inherent in society itself."
[246] The price of salt immediately fell from fourteen sous a pound to less than one sou.—Villiaumé.
[247] It was not until the month of March, 1792, that the guillotine was first used,
[248] "The government of the Revolution was rapidly becoming established. The Assembly had given to
the new régime its monarch, its national representation, its territorial division, its armed force, its municipal
and administrative power, its popular tribunals, its currency, its clergy; it had made an arrangement with
respect to its debt, and had found means to reconstruct property without injustice."—Miguet, p. 87.
[249] Michelet's French Revolution, p. 358.
[250] "What was the National Assembly doing at this time in Paris? Its more than Christian meekness is a
surprising spectacle."—Michelet, p. 365.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE KING ACCEPTS THE CONSTITUTION.
The King visits the Assembly.—His Speech.—The Priests rouse the
Populace.—The King's Salary.—Petition of Talma.—Views of Napoleon.—
Condemnation and Execution of the Marquis of Favrus.—Spirit of the New
Constitution.—National Jubilee.—The Queen sympathizes with the Popular
Movement.—Writings of Edmund Burke.
ON the 4th of February the king, without any previous announcement, to the
surprise of all, entered the hall of the Assembly. A burst of welcome greeted his
entrance. The tidings of this movement spread with electric speed through Paris,
and thousands of spectators speedily filled all parts of the hall to listen to the
king's speech. The king stood upon the platform, and addressed the Assembly
with words of dignity and eloquence which seemed above his nature. There was
such an air of sincerity pervading every sentence that no one could doubt that he
was giving utterance to his real opinions. This remarkable speech contained the
following expressions:[251]
"Gentlemen, the critical circumstances in which France is placed bring me
among you. A grand goal is presented to your view, but it is requisite that it be
attained without any increase of agitation, and without any new convulsions. It
was, I must say, in a more agreeable and a more quiet manner that I had hoped to
lead you to it, when I formed the design of assembling you, and of bringing
together for the public welfare the talents and the opinions of the representatives
of the nation; but my happiness and my glory are not the less connected with the
success of your labors.
"I think that the time is come when it is of importance to the interests of the state
that I should associate myself, in a more express and manifest manner, in the
execution and success of all that you have planned for the benefit of France. I
can not seize a more signal occasion than when you submit to my acceptance
decrees destined to establish a new organization in the kingdom, which must
have so important and so propitious an influence on the happiness of my subjects
and on the prosperity of this empire.
"You know, gentlemen, it is more than ten years ago, at a time when the wishes
of the nation relative to provincial assemblies had not yet been expressed, I
began to substitute that kind of administration for the one which ancient and
long habit had sanctioned. You have improved upon these views in several ways,
and the most essential, no doubt, is that equal and wisely-calculated subdivision
which, by breaking down the ancient partitions between province and province,
and establishing a general and complete system of equilibrium, more intimately
unites all parts of the kingdom in one and the same spirit, in one and the same
interest. This grand idea, this salutary design, is all your own. I will promote, I
will second, by all the means in my power, the success of that vast organization
on which depends the welfare of France.
"Let it be known every where that the monarch and the representatives of the
nation are united in the same interest, in the same wish. Some day, I fondly
believe, every Frenchman, without exception, will acknowledge the benefit of
the total suppression of the differences of order and condition. No doubt those
who have relinquished their pecuniary privileges—those who will no longer
form, as of old, an order in the state, find themselves subjected to sacrifices, the
importance of which I fully appreciate; but I am persuaded that they will have
generosity enough to seek an indemnification in all the public advantages of
which the establishment of national assemblies holds out a hope.
"I will defend, therefore, I will uphold constitutional liberty, the principles of
which the public wish, in accordance with mine, has sanctioned. I will do more,
and, in concert with the queen, who shares all my sentiments, I will early adapt
the mind and heart of my son to the new order of things which circumstances
have brought about. I will accustom him from his very first years to seek
happiness in the happiness of the French, and ever to acknowledge that, in spite
of the language of flatterers, a wise constitution will preserve him from the
dangers of inexperience, and that a just liberty adds a new value to the
sentiments of affection and loyalty of which the nation has, for so many ages,
given such touching proofs to its kings."
These noble words, which were uttered with as much sincerity as a weak and
vacillating mind was capable of cherishing, were received with the most
enthusiastic expressions of pleasure and gratitude. Thunders of applause filled
the house, in which the galleries tumultuously joined. All past jealousies seemed
forgotten forever, and the queen and the dauphin shared in the transporting
acclaim. The multitude, with shouts of applause, conducted the king back to the
Tuileries, while the Assembly voted thanks to him and to the queen.
The king had thus publicly accepted the Constitution even before it was
completed, and promised to support it. Each deputy took the oath to uphold the
"Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king." The
example was contagious, and the oath was repeated, with festivities and
illuminations, in every district of Paris, and through all the cities and villages of
France.
Thus far the reforms adopted had been, on the whole, most eminently wise, and
such as the welfare of the nation imperiously demanded. Had the privileged
classes acceded, as they ought to have done, to these measures of justice, and
contributed their influence in favor of law and order, all might have been well,
and the Iliad of woes which succeeded might never have been known. But the
nobles and the higher clergy did every thing in their power to stimulate the mob
to violence, to fill France with lawlessness and blood, that they might more
effectually appeal to religious fanaticism at home and to despotism abroad to
forge chains and rivet them anew upon the enfranchised people.
Every effort was now made to combine the clergy against the Revolution—to
rouse the ignorant and superstitious masses with the cry that religion was in
danger, and to march the armies of surrounding monarchies in a war of invasion
upon France. The nobles of the Church and the State were responsible for that
terrific outburst of the mob, which might easily have been repressed if they
would have united with the true patriots in favor of liberty and of law.[252]
In many of the rural districts the priests roused the fanatic populace to forcible
resistance. Many of the priests had been in a condition of almost compulsory
subservience to the higher clergy. Trained to obedience as the primal law of the
Church, they combined their efforts with those of the exasperated nobility, and
thus, in several of the remote sections of France, mobs were instigated against
the Revolution. Here commenced the conflict between the people and the clergy.
Pure democracy and true Christianity meet and embrace. They have but one
spirit—fraternity, charity. Despotism and ecclesiasticism are also natural
congenial allies. The pope and the king, the cardinal and the duke, all over
Europe became accomplices.
The Assembly, with much delicacy, invited the king himself to fix the income
necessary for the suitable support of the crown. He fixed it at twenty-five
millions of francs ($5,000,000). This enormous salary, two hundred times as
much as the President of the United States receives, was instantly voted by
acclamation. There were but four votes in opposition. Nothing can more
conclusively show than this the kindly feelings of the people toward the
monarch, and the then desire merely to ingraft the institutions of liberty upon the
monarchy.
The Revolution had humanely extended its helping hand to all the debased and
defrauded classes, to the Protestants, the Jews, the negroes, the slaves, the playactors.
The relentless proscription of play-actors is one of the most remarkable
of the contradictions and outrages of the old régime. They were doubtless a very
worthless set of men and women; but that the Church should have refused them
either marriage or burial is indeed extraordinary. "Oh, barbarous prejudices!"
exclaimed Michelet. "The two first men of England and France, the author of
Othello and of Tartufe, were they not comedians?"
Notwithstanding the general decree of democratic enfranchisement pronounced
by the Assembly, the world-renowned Talma, having applied to the Church for
the rite of marriage, which the Church alone could solemnize, met with a
peremptory refusal. He sent the following characteristic petition to the National
Assembly:
"I implore the succor of the constitutional law, and claim the rights of a citizen,
from which rights the Constitution does not exclude me because I am a member
of the theatrical profession. I have chosen a companion to whom I wish to be
united by the ties of marriage. My father has given his consent. I have called
upon the curé of St. Sulpice for the publication of the banns. After a first refusal
I have served upon him a judicial summons. He replies to the sheriff that he has
referred the matter to his ecclesiastical superiors, and is instructed by them that
the Church refuses to perform the rites of marriage for a play-actor unless he
first renounces that profession. I can, it is true, renounce my profession, be
married, and resume my profession again the next day. But I do not wish to show
myself unworthy of that religion which they invoke against me, and unworthy of
the Constitution in thus accusing your decrees of error and your laws of
powerlessness."[253]
It was in such ways as these that the Romish Church began to throw every
possible obstacle in the way of liberty, and to exasperate the people, rejoicing in
their new enfranchisement.
It was a long stride which Napoleon took when he subsequently conferred the
Cross of the Legion of Honor upon an illustrious tragedian. "My object," says
Napoleon, "was to destroy the whole of the feudal system as organized by
Charlemagne. I sought for true merit among all ranks of the great mass of French
people, and was anxious to organize a true and general system of equality. I was
desirous that every Frenchman should be admissible to all the employments and
dignities of the state, provided he was possessed of talents and character equal to
the performance of the duties, whatever might be his family. In a word, I was
eager to abolish to the last trace the privileges of the ancient nobility, and to
establish a government which, at the same time that it held the reins of
government with a firm hand, should still be a popular government. The
oligarchs of every country in Europe soon perceived my design, and it was for
this reason that war to the death was carried on against me by England. The
noble families of London, as well as those of Vienna, think themselves
prescriptively entitled to the occupation of all the important offices in the state.
Their birth is regarded by them as a substitute for talents and capacities."
Soon after Napoleon's attainment of the consulship he restored to France the
Christian religion, which revolutionary fury had swept away. In consistency with
his unvarying principles, he established perfect freedom of opinion and of
worship. Some of the reinstated priests began to assume much of their former
arrogance. A celebrated actress died in Paris. A priest, adopting the intolerance
of the old régime, refused her remains Christian burial. Napoleon caused the
following article to be inserted the next day in the Moniteur, expressive of his
emphatic denunciation:
"The curate of St. Roche, in a moment of hallucination, has refused the rites of
burial to Mademoiselle Cameroi. One of his colleagues, a man of sense, received
the procession into the church of St. Thomas, where the burial service was
performed with the usual solemnities. The Archbishop of Paris has suspended
the curate of St. Roche for three months, to give him time to recollect that Jesus
Christ commanded us to pray even for our enemies. Being thus called by
meditation to a proper sense of his duties, he may learn that all these
superstitious observances, the offspring of an age of credulity or of crazed
imaginations, tend only to the discredit of true religion, and have been
proscribed by the recent Concordat of the French Church."
The trial of Marquis Favrus was continued. On the 18th of February he was
adjudged guilty of plotting the crime of assassinating Bailly and La Fayette, of
seizing and abducting the king, and of exciting insurrection and civil war. He
was sentenced to be taken by the executioner to the principal door of the
Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, in a tumbrel, barefooted, bareheaded, and dressed
simply in his night-robe, with a rope round his neck, a blazing torch in his hands,
and with a label on his breast and back inscribed with the words "Conspirator
against the State." After having on his knees asked pardon of God, the nation,
the king, and justice, he was to read aloud his own death-warrant, and then to be
taken to the Place de Grève and hanged. This cruel sentence was immediately
executed, the court, conscious of its powerlessness, making no attempts to save
him.
This was the first time that a nobleman had been hanged, and the mob, deeming
him an infamous conspirator against the rights of the people, rejoiced in his
execution. They witnessed with delight this indication that the reign of equality
had really commenced; that the sword of retribution would hereafter fall as
surely upon the head of the high-born as upon that of the low-born offender.
It was now nearly a year since the fall of the Bastille, and France, even in the
midst of famine, and almost starvation, had passed from the reign of the most
execrable despotism to the reign of constitutional liberty. Never before had so
vast a revolution been effected so peaceably. The enslaved people had broken
and thrown away their fetters, and were enfranchised. Instead of falling upon
their past oppressors in indiscriminate massacre, they had spared them, wresting
from them only the exclusive privileges of tyranny. The Assembly sought only
constitutional liberty and peace with all the world. The decrees enacted by the
Constituent Assembly were essentially the same with those adopted by
republican America.
pic
THE MARQUIS OF FAVRUS READING HIS DEATH-WARRANT.
Free principles had been infused into the government; lettres de cachet, the most
infamous instruments of oppression the world has ever known, abolished; feudal
impediments and oppressions of every kind removed; the right of suffrage
established and made almost universal; the offices of honor and emolument in
the state thrown open to merit, with but the slightest limitations; religious liberty
proclaimed, the Protestant, the Jew, the negro, and the play-actor enfranchised;
law made uniform, criminal jurisprudence reformed, monasteries, those haunts
of indolence and vice, abolished, and the military force of the country intrusted
to the citizens of the country. Such a transformation from the slavery, corruption,
and horror of the old régime was translation from the dungeon to the blaze of
day. All this was done almost without violence. The court here and there shot
down a few hundred, some chateaux were burned, and there were a few acts of
mob violence; but that a nation of twenty millions of people should have been
able to accomplish so vast a change so bloodlessly must ever be a marvel.
But the armies of aristocratic opposition were gathering to crush this liberty,
which threatened to spread to other states. Despotic Europe combined, and with
all her accumulated armies fell upon the people of France. The recently
emancipated people fought to protect themselves from new chains with all the
blind fury and ferocity of despair. Then ensued scenes of blood and woes which
appalled the world.[254]
The French people, unconscious of the terrific storm which was gathering,
prepared for a great national jubilee. It was to be held on the 14th of July, the
anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. All France was to be represented at the
festival. The Field of Mars, a vast parade-ground in Paris, a mile in length and
half a mile in width, extending from the military school to the banks of the
Seine, was the selected theatre for this national festivity. The centre was made
smooth as a floor, and the removed earth was placed on the sides so as to create
slopes in the form of an amphitheatre capable of accommodating nearly half a
million of spectators. But so immense was the work to be performed, that at
length apprehensions were felt that the field could not be in readiness in season
for the appointed fête. No sooner was this idea suggested than all Paris, in a
flame of enthusiasm, volunteered to aid in the toil.
A more extraordinary scene of enthusiasm earth has never witnessed. All heads
and hearts were electrified. Men, women, and children, of all ages and ranks,
spread over the field and shared in the toil. The Carthusian monk and the
skeptical philosopher, the hooded nun and the brawny fish-woman, merchants,
lawyers, students, scholars, gray-haired patriots, and impetuous boys, matrons
and maidens, delicate ladies and the rugged daughters of toil, blended
harmoniously together in immense groups, ever varied, incessantly moving, yet
guided by engineers with almost military order and precision. Moving tents and
portable restaurants, decorated with tricolored ribbons, added to the gayety of
the spectacle. Trumpets sounded the charge against banks of earth, and willing
hands wielded energetically all the potent enginery of wheel-barrows, hoes, and
spades. Bands of music animated and enlivened the scene, blended with shouts
of joy and songs of fraternal sympathy. Three hundred thousand persons were
thus seen at once laboring upon this spacious arena to rear an altar for the great
sacrament of French liberty. It was a work of love. The long twilight allowed
them to labor until the clock struck nine. Then the groups separated. Each
individual repaired to the station of his section, and marched in procession,
accompanied by triumphal music and with the illumination of torches, to his
home. Even the Marquis of Ferrières, inveterate Royalist as he was, can not
withhold his tribute of admiration in view of this astonishing drama. "The mind
felt sinking," says he, "under the weight of a delicious intoxication at the sight of
a whole people who had descended again to the sweet sentiments of a primitive
fraternity."
pic
PREPARATION FOR THE FESTIVAL ON THE FIELD OF MARS.
The field was thus prepared, and the long-expected day arrived. Numerous
delegates from all the eighty-three departments of France had come up to Paris
to share in the celebration of the nation's enfranchisement. The morning of the
14th dawned dark and stormy. Heavy clouds curtained the sky and the rain fell in
torrents. Regardless of the unpropitious weather, at an early hour four hundred
thousand spectators had taken their seats in the vast amphitheatre three miles in
circuit.
The delegates, twenty thousand in number, ranged beneath eighty-three banners,
emblematic of the departments of France, formed in line on the site of the
demolished Bastille, and, with a very magnificent array of troops of the line,
sailors of the royal navy, and the National Guard, marched through the thronged
and garlanded streets of St. Martin, St. Denis, and St. Honoré, and by the Cours
la Reine to a bridge of boats constructed across the river. All the way they were
greeted with acclamations, and the ladies regaled them sumptuously by letting
down in baskets from the windows wine, ham, and fruits. The country members
shouted "Long live our Parisian brothers!" and the Parisians responded with
accordant greetings and with exuberant hospitality and loving-kindness.
To the patriot La Fayette this was an hour of inexpressible triumph. As he rode
along the lines on a noble charger he was every where greeted with shouts of
heartfelt affection. A man whom nobody knew pressed through the crowd, and,
approaching the general, with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, said,
"General, you are hot. Take a glass."
Raising the bottle he filled the tumbler and presented it to La Fayette. The
marquis took the glass, fixed his eye for a moment upon the stranger, and drank
the wine at a draught. This confidence of La Fayette in the multitude gave rise to
a burst of applause.[255]
Just as the procession had entered the field, and the shouts of the congregated
thousands were ringing through the air, the rain ceased to fall, the clouds broke,
and the sun came out in glorious brilliance. The spectacle now assumed an
aspect of unparalleled sublimity. Near the centre of the field there was
constructed an immense altar of imposing and antique architecture, upon whose
spacious platform, twenty-five feet high, three hundred priests were assembled,
in white surplices and broad tricolored sashes. Near this altar a majestic throne
was reared, where the king sat, the acknowledged sovereign of France, attended
by the queen, the court, and all the deputies of that Constituent Assembly which
had conferred the inestimable boon of a free constitution upon France.
An awning, decorated with golden fleurs de lis, embellished and protected the
throne. Fifty thousand of the National Guard, in new and brilliant uniform, with
waving banners, martial bands, glittering arms, and richly-caparisoned horses,
filled the spaces around the altar and the throne. Then four hundred thousand
spectators crowded the ascending seats which, in thirty concentric rows,
encircled this vast inclosure. Every house-top and steeple in the vicinity
swarmed with the rejoicing multitude; and even the distant heights of
Montmartre, St. Cloud, Meudon, and Sevres, seemed alive with the masses
assembled to witness the magnificent spectacle. Tear-drops from the passing
storm, pendent from the leaves, and trembling on every blade of grass, glittered
in the sun, as if betokening that the day of darkness and sorrow had passed, and
that light had dawned, in which tears were to be dried from every eye.
All hearts thrilled with emotion. Mass was performed, and the oriflamme, the
national banner of France, and the banners of the eighty-three departments, were
blessed by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun. Gratitude to God was then expressed in
the majestic Te Deum, chanted by twelve hundred musicians. A peal of thunder
from the assembled cannon uttered the national Amen to these solemn services.
La Fayette, as the representative of the military forces of the kingdom, both by
land and sea, now ascended the altar, and, in the presence of more than half a
million of spectators, in behalf of the army and of the navy, took the oath of
allegiance. Breathless silence pervaded the assembly, and every eye was riveted
upon this patriot of two continents, while he uttered the solemn words,
"We swear eternal fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king; to maintain, to the
utmost of our power, the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and
accepted by the king, and to remain united with every Frenchman by the
indissoluble ties of fraternity."
When he closed, every banner waved, every sabre gleamed, and sixty thousand
voices shouted, as with thunder peal, "We swear it!"
The president of the National Assembly then repeated the oath, and all the
deputies and the four hundred thousand spectators responded, "We swear it."
The king then rose in front of his throne. In a loud, distinct voice, which seemed
to vibrate through the still air to the remotest part of the vast and thronged
amphitheatre, he repeated the solemn oath,
"I, King of the French, swear to the nation to employ all the powers delegated to
me by the constitutional law of the state in maintaining the Constitution decreed
by the National Assembly and accepted by me."
pic
GRAND CELEBRATION ON THE FIELD OF MARS.
A more sublime moment never occurred in a nation's history. Every heart
throbbed, and thousands of eyes were dimmed with tears. Even the queen was
roused by the enthusiasm of the scene. Inspired by the impulse which glowed in
every bosom, she rose, stepped forward into the presence of the people, and,
raising her beautiful boy, the little dauphin, in her arms, said, in a loud voice,
"See my son! he joins, as well as myself, in the same oath."
Every eye beheld the act, and the words she uttered were repeated with electric
speed along the lines. Enthusiasm burst all bounds. The spectators rose from
their seats, and the air was filled with the roar of five hundred thousand voices,
as every man, woman, and child shouted, "Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! Vive le
Dauphin!" The crowds on Montmartre, St. Cloud, Sevres, and Meudon caught
the shout, and re-echoed it in tumultuous reverberations. And then came another
peal still louder, as battery after battery of artillery, on the field, on the bridges,
in the streets, and on the heights, simultaneously mingled their majestic voices
with the clash of martial bands and the acclaim of regenerated France.
God seemed to smile upon this jubilee of his enfranchised children. The clouds
had all disappeared. The sun shone brilliantly, and the Majesty of heaven
apparently condescended to take a prominent part in the ceremonies of the
eventful day. In conclusion, the Te Deum was again chanted by the vast choir,
and the deep-voiced cannon proclaimed "Peace to the nation and praise to the
Lord."
At the same hour all France, assembled in the eighty-three departments, took the
same oath of fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king. Discord seemed to have
passed away. No murmurs were heard. No man raised a voice of opposition. The
general tide of rejoicing swept resistlessly over the land. From mountain to
mountain the roar of cannon transmitted the tidings, from valley to valley chimes
from the church bells caught and re-echoed the joyful sound, and from central
Paris to the ocean, to the Rhine, to the Alps, and to the Pyrenees, twenty-four
millions of people in one hour raised the shout of emancipation. Such a shout
never before or since has ascended from earth to the ear of God.
For a week these rejoicings were continued in Paris. The Field of Mars was
converted into an immense ball-room, where thousands listened to enchanting
music, and with the overflowings of fraternal love engaged in feasting, dancing,
and all manner of games. At night the city blazed with illuminations, and the
flame of fireworks turned darkness into day. The trees of the Elysian Fields were
festooned with brilliant lamps, shedding a mild light upon the most attractive of
scenes. There was no intoxication, no tumult, no confusion. All classes
intermingled, with kind words on every lip and kind looks beaming from every
face. No carriages were permitted to enter these avenues, that the rich and the
poor might share the festivities alike. Pyramids of fire were placed at intervals in
the midst of the mass of foliage. The white dresses of the ladies who were
sauntering through those umbrageous alleys, the music, the dances, the games,
the shouts of laughter, led almost every one to the delusive hope that the old
world of care and sorrow had vanished to give place to a new era of universal
love and joy.[256]
The site of the Bastille was converted into an open square, and at the entrance of
the inclosure was an inscription "Ici l'on danse" (Dancing here). For centuries
the groans of the captive had resounded through the vaults of that odious prison.
The groans had now ceased, and happy hearts throbbed with the excitement of
the song and the dance.
La Fayette gave a splendid review of the National Guard. The king, the queen,
and the dauphin attended the review, and were warmly greeted by the people.
The queen assumed the attitude of reconciliation, and graciously presented her
hand to the delegates to kiss.
The delegates from the departments, before they left Paris, went in a body to
present their homage to the king. With one voice they expressed to him their
respect, gratitude, and affection. The chief of the Bretons dropped on his knee
and presented to the monarch his sword.
"Sire," said he, "I deliver to you, pure and sacred, the sword of the faithful
Bretons. It shall never be stained but with the blood of your enemies."
pic
LOUIS XVI. AND THE DEPUTATION OF THE BRETONS.
The heart of the kind-hearted king was touched. He returned the sword, and,
throwing his arms around the neck of the chief of the Bretons, said, in tones
broken with emotion,
"That sword can not be in better hands than those of my dear Bretons. I have
never doubted their fidelity and affection. Assure them that I am the father, the
brother, the friend of all the French."
For a moment there was silence, and all alike were moved by the affecting scene.
The chief of the Bretons then rejoined,
"Sire, all the French, if I may judge from our hearts, love and will love you
because you are a citizen-king."
Many of the most influential men in England contemplated with admiration this
immense reform, in which, to use the language of Professor William Smyth, one
of the most candid of English writers, "the Constituent Assembly was supposed
to have freed the country from temporal and spiritual thraldom; the government
had been rested on free principles; the Bastille had been destroyed, lettres de
cachet abolished, feudal impediments and oppressions of every kind removed,
religious liberty established, the system of law made uniform, the criminal
jurisprudence reformed, monasteries abolished; and by making the military force
consist of the citizens of the country, freedom, and all those new and weighty
advantages, seemed to be forever secured from the machinations of arbitrary
power."
The aristocracy, however, of England and Europe were struck with alarm. The
emancipation of the people in France threatened their emancipation throughout
the civilized world. Edmund Burke espoused the cause of the aristocracy. With
eloquence quite unparalleled he roused England and Europe to war. In view of
his fierce invectives Michelet exclaims, in language which will yet be
pronounced by the world as not too severe,
"Mr. Pitt, feeling sure of the European alliance, did not hesitate to say in open
parliament that he approved of every word of Burke's diatribe against the
Revolution and against France—an infamous book, full of calumny, scurrilous
abuse, and insulting buffoonery; in which the author compares the French to
galley-slaves breaking their chains, treads under foot the declaration of the rights
of man, tears it in pieces and spits upon it. Oh! what a cruel, painful discovery.
Those whom we thought our friends are our most bitter enemies."[257]
Thirty thousand copies of Burke's memorable "Reflections" were sold almost in
a day. The sovereigns of Europe were so highly elated that they transmitted to
him their thanks. The nobles and the higher clergy of France wrote to him letters
of acknowledgment, and the nobility of England lavished upon him their
applause. These "Reflections" combined aristocratic Europe against popular
rights, and the people had no resource left them but to defend their liberties with
the sword.
FOOTNOTES:
[251] For the speech in full, see Thiers, vol. i., p. 126.
[252] M. Fromont, in his memoirs entitled "Recueil de divers Ecrits relatifs à la Revolution," very frankly
writes, "I repaired secretly to Turin (January, 1790), to the French princes, to solicit their approbation and
their support. In a council which was held on my arrival, I demonstrated to them that, if they would arm the
partisans of the altar and of the throne, and make the interests of religion go hand in hand with those of
royalty, it would save both. The real argument of the revolutionists being force, I felt that the real answer
was force. Then, as at present, I was convinced of this great truth—that religious zeal alone can stifle the
Republican mania.
"In consequence of this dread (of the new order of things), they secretly set at work the most efficacious
means for ruining the internal resources and for thwarting the proposed plans, several of which were
calculated to effect the re-establishment of order, if they had been wisely directed and supported."
[253] "There is no country in the world," says Voltaire, "where there are so many contradictions as in
France. The king gives the actors wages, and the curé excommunicates them."
[254] "The whole of Europe—on the one hand Austria and Russia, on the other England and Prussia—were
gradually gravitating toward the selfsame thought, the hatred of the Revolution. However, there was this
difference, that liberal England and philosophical Prussia needed a little time in order to pass from one pole
to the other—to prevail upon themselves to give themselves the lie, to abjure and disown their principles,
and avow that they were the enemies of liberty."—Michelet, p. 327.
[255] Memoirs of the Marquis of Ferrières.
[256] No one familiar with the writings of that day will affirm that this description is too highly drawn.
Upon this point Patriots and Royalists agree. See Ferrières, t. ii., p. 89, on the part of the Royalists, and
Alphonse Esquiros, p. 38, on the part of the Revolutionists.
[257] Michelet's French Revolution, p. 415.
CHAPTER XX.
FLIGHT OF THE KING.
Riot at Nancy.—Prosecution of Mirabeau.—Issue of Assignats.—
Mirabeau's Interview with the Queen.—Four political Parties.—Bishops
refuse to take the Oath to the Constitution.—Character of the Emigrants.—
The King's Aunts attempt to leave France.—Debates upon Emigration.—
Embarrassment of the Assembly.—Death of Mirabeau.—His Funeral.—The
King prevented from visiting St. Cloud.—Duplicity of the King.—
Conference of the Allies.—Their Plan of Invasion.—Measures for the
Escape of the King.—The Flight.
THE grand gala days, in the Field of Mars, celebrating the formation of the
Constitution, soon passed. The twenty thousand delegates, having been fêted
even to satiety, returned to their homes; the Constituent Assembly resumed its
labors.[258] The cares and toils of life again pressed heavily upon the taxexhausted
and impoverished millions of France.
The Belgians, in imitation of France, had commenced a struggle for freedom.
The King of France permitted Austria to send her troops across the French
territory into Belgium to crush the patriots. Many of the most influential of the
opponents of the Revolution were still leaving France and uniting with the armed
emigrants on the frontiers. England, Austria, Sardinia, and Prussia were
manifestly forming an alliance to punish the French patriots, and to restore the
tyranny of the execrable old régime. The court, emboldened by these
proceedings, were boasting of the swift destruction which was to overwhelm the
advocates of reform, and commenced a prosecution of Mirabeau, the Duke of
Orleans, and others of the popular party, for instigating the movement of the 5th
and 6th of October, when the royal family were taken from Versailles to Paris.
These movements created much alarm, and even the royal troops at Metz and
Nancy, who were mostly composed of Swiss and Germans, fraternized with the
populace.
A new issue of eight hundred millions of bonds or assignats was decreed, which
quite abundantly replenished the treasury. There was never a paper currency
created upon so valuable a pledge, or sustained by security more ample and
undoubted. The assignats represented the whole public domain, and could at any
time be exchanged for the most valuable landed property. Still, Talleyrand with
singular precision predicted the confusion which eventually resulted from these
issues.
In the majestic march of events, Necker had for some time been passing into
oblivion. The king had been forced to recall him. Hated by the court, neglected
by the Assembly, forgotten by the people, he soon found his situation
insupportable, and, sending in his resignation, retired to Switzerland, from which
safe retreat he watched the terrific gatherings of the revolutionary storm.
Civil war was sure to break out the moment the court could obtain possession of
the person of the king. The pliant nature of the monarch would immediately
yield to the influences which surrounded him, and the court, under such
circumstances, could find no difficulty in inducing him to sanction any acts of
violence to regain their power. But while the king was in Paris, in the hands of
the Assembly, he would sanction the decrees of the Assembly, and thus the
aristocrats could not wage war against the patriots without at the same time
waging war against the king. Foreign monarchies could not be induced to take
this step. Thus the retention of the king was peace; his escape, civil war. The
court were plotting innumerable plans to effect his escape. La Fayette, at the
head of the National Guard, was fully awake to the responsibility of guarding
him with the utmost vigilance. The king was apparently left at perfect liberty, but
he was continually watched. The queen was exceedingly anxious for flight. The
king was ever vacillating, but generally, influenced by such advisers as Mirabeau
and La Fayette, inclined to accept the Revolution. He was also haunted with the
idea that his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, wished to frighten him into flight, that
the Assembly might declare the throne vacant, and place the sceptre in the duke's
hand as the sworn friend and supporter of the Revolution.
Mirabeau had commenced his career as one of the most ardent advocates of
reform, but he now wished to arrest the progress of the revolutionary chariot, as
he affirmed that it had passed beyond its proper goal. His course was attributed
by some to bribery on the part of the court. His friends say that he was only
influenced by his own patriotic intelligence. At St. Cloud there is a retired
summer-house, embowered in foliage, at the summit of a hill which crowns the
highest part of the park. The queen appointed an interview with Mirabeau at this
secluded spot.
The statesman of gigantic genius, who seemed to hold in his hand the destinies
of France, left Paris on horseback one evening, under pretense of visiting a
friend. Avoiding observation, he turned aside into a by-path until he reached a
back gate of the park. Here he was met in the dark by a nobleman, who
conducted him to the retreat of the queen, who was waiting to receive him. His
constitution was already undermined by dissipation and unintermitted labors. His
cheeks were sunken, his eyes inflamed, his complexion sallow, and a flabby
corpulency announced the ravages of disease; but, notwithstanding all these
defects, his genial spirit and courtly bearing made him one of the most
fascinating of men.[259]
The queen was then thirty-five years of age. Care and grief had sadly marred her
marvelous beauty. Her proud spirit was chagrined in being compelled to look for
support to one of the leaders of the people. But little is known respecting what
passed at this private interview. At its close Mirabeau said to the queen,
"Madam, when your august mother admitted one of her subjects to the honor of
her presence, she never dismissed him without allowing him to kiss her hand."
The queen, responding to the gallantry, graciously presented her hand. Mirabeau,
bowing profoundly, kissed it, and then, raising his head, said proudly,
"Madam, the monarchy is saved."[260]
Suddenly Mirabeau became rich, set up a carriage, furnished his house
sumptuously, and gave magnificent entertainments. He immediately commenced
a course of cautious but vigorous measures to overthrow the Constitution and
establish one less democratic, which should give more stability and efficiency to
the royal power. He affirmed that this was essential to the peace and prosperity
of France, and that, instead of being bought over by the court, he had bought the
court over to his views.
"But suppose the court refuses," said one of his friends, "to adopt your plans?"
"They have promised me every thing," Mirabeau replied.
"But suppose they should not keep their word?" it was rejoined.
"Then," said Mirabeau, "I will overthrow the throne and establish a republic."
It can hardly be denied that the Constitution was too democratic for a monarchy
and hardly democratic enough for a republic. In the natural course of events
public opinion would sway either to strengthening the throne or to diminish still
more its prerogatives. There were now four parties in France. The first consisted
of the old aristocratic classes of the clergy and the nobles, now mostly emigrants,
and busy in effecting a coalition of surrounding monarchies to quell the
Revolution, and by fire and sword to reinstate the rejected despotism of the
Bourbons.
The second class was composed of the king and Mirabeau, with the queen
reluctantly assenting to its principles, and others of the nobles and priests who
were disposed, some from choice and others from the consciousness of
necessity, partially to accept the Revolution. They were willing to adopt a
constitution which should seriously limit the old prerogatives of the crown. But
they wished to repudiate the constitution now adopted, and to form one less
democratic, which would still grant many prerogatives to the king.
The third party consisted of the great majority of the Assembly, headed by
sincere and guileless patriots like La Fayette, and sustained probably by the great
majority of the purest and best men in the kingdom, who were in favor of the
constitution which the nation had accepted. While they did not regard it as
perfect, they felt that it was a noble advance in the right direction, and that the
salvation of the liberties of France now depended upon allegiance to this
constitution.
There was a fourth class, restless, tumultuous, uninformed, composed of the
lowest portion of the populace, who could ever be roused to phrensy by the cry
of "Aristocracy," who were ripe for any deeds of violence, and who regarded that
firmness of law which protected order, property, and life as tyranny. They
occupied the lowest possible platform of democracy.
Such was the condition of France as the Constituent Assembly now endeavored
to consolidate the new institutions and to bring harmony from the chaos into
which the nation had been plunged. While in these circumstances of unparalleled
peril, combined Europe was watching for an opportunity to pounce upon the
distracted nation.
All public functionaries were required to take oath to the new constitution. The
clergy, as bound by the laws of the Romish Church, appealed to the Pope for
instructions. At the same time the opposing bishops and nobles wrote to the Pope
urging him to withhold his assent.[261] The king had sanctioned the decrees. The
Pope, under various pretexts, postponed an answer. Many of the bishops and
curates consequently refused to take the oath. The Assembly was not disposed to
wait for the decision of a foreign potentate, and, accepting those bishops and
curates who took the oath, immediately nominated new bishops and curates to
take the place of those who refused. Justly and frankly the Assembly declared
that it wished to do no violence to conscience, but that it could not appoint as
public functionaries those men who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the
Constitution of the kingdom. This increased exasperation, and enabled many of
the bishops to appeal to the fanatic populace to rise in defense of the endangered
Church.
The emigrants now made a general rendezvous at Coblentz, in the territory of the
Elector of Treves, and at other points of the frontier.[262] These men, composing
what was called the court, consisted mainly of the higher nobles who had long
been pampered with the favors of the monarchy, and who looked with contempt
upon the nobles of the rural districts. Haughty, dissolute, and frivolous, they
scorned any appeal to the popular arm, even to popular fanaticism for support.
The only recourse to which they would condescend were the armies of England,
Austria, and Prussia. The rural nobles, on the other hand, and the rural bishops,
were secretly organizing their friends within the kingdom to fall fiercely in civil
war upon the patriots so soon as the solid battalions of the allies should cross the
frontiers.[263]
In this state of things the king's aunts decided to leave France. They had
proceeded in their carriage on the way to Rome as far as Arnay-le-Duc, when
they were arrested. The feverish state of the public mind led to suspicions that
their emigration might accelerate impending perils. The Assembly took the
matter into deliberation whether the ladies should be permitted to depart. The
question was settled by a keen sally of Menou.
pic
MOB OPPOSING THE FLIGHT OF THE KING'S AUNTS.
"All Europe," said he, "will be astonished to learn that a great Assembly has
spent several days in deciding whether two old ladies shall hear mass at Paris or
at Rome."
The worthy ladies continued the journey without interruption. The king's next
elder brother, usually called Monsieur, subsequently Louis XVIII., remained
with the king in Paris. The next brother, however, the Count d'Artois,
subsequently Charles X., was actively participating with the emigrants at
Coblentz. The very difficult question respecting emigration was now brought
forward in the Assembly. It seemed to be a gross act of tyranny to prohibit
French citizens from withdrawing from or entering France at their pleasure. On
the other hand the enemies of regenerated France were daily leaving the
kingdom with all the resources they could collect; and from the frontier, where
they were plotting foreign and civil war, they were continually entering the
kingdom to make preparations for the invasion.
Mirabeau, who was at this time conspiring for the escape of the king, with his
accustomed vehemence and his overpowering audacity, opposed any law against
emigration.[264]
"I admit," said he, "that a bad use is made of this liberty at the present moment.
But that by no means authorizes this absurd tyranny. I beg you to remember that
I have all my life combated against tyranny, and that I will combat it wherever I
find it. That popularity to which I have aspired, and which I have enjoyed, is not
a feeble reed. I will thrust it deep into the earth, and will make it shoot up in the
soil of justice and of reason. And I now solemnly swear, if a law against
emigration is voted, I swear to disobey you."[265]
The Assembly was truly in a dilemma. They could not prohibit emigration
without grossly violating that declaration of rights which they had just adopted
with solemnities which had arrested the attention of the world. They could not
permit this flood of emigration without exposing France to ruin; for it was well
known that the nobles, with all the wealth they could accumulate, were crossing
the frontiers merely to organize themselves into armies for the invasion of
France.
Mirabeau never displayed more power than on this occasion, in overawing and
commanding the Assembly. He succeeded in arresting the measure. This,
however, was his last triumph. Disease was making rapid ravages, his frame was
exhausted, and death approached. A sudden attack of colic confined him to his
chamber, and soon all hope of recovery was relinquished. He was still the idol of
the people, and crowds, in breathless silence, thronged around his abode,
anxious to receive bulletins of his health. The king and the people alike
mourned, for both were leaning upon that vigorous arm.
He could not repress an expression of satisfaction in view of his labors and his
accomplishments. To his servants he said, "Support this head, the greatest in
France." "William Pitt," he remarked, "is the minister of preparations. He
governs with threats. I would give him some trouble if I should live."[266] On the
morning of his death he said to an attendant,
"Open the window. I shall die to-day. All that can now be done is to envelop
one's self in perfumes, to crown one's self with flowers, to surround one's self
with music, that one may sink quietly into everlasting sleep."
Soon, in a paroxysm of extreme agony, he called for opium, saying, "You
promised to save me from needless suffering."
To quiet him a cup was presented, and he was deceived with the assurance that it
contained the desired fatal opiate. He swallowed the draught, and in a moment
expired, in the forty-second year of his age. It was the 2d of April, 1791. His
death caused profound grief. All parties vied alike in conferring honor upon his
remains. The nation went into mourning, a magnificent funeral was arranged,
and the body was deposited in the tomb with pomp surpassing that which had
accompanied the burial of the ancient kings of France. Suspicions are still
cherished that Mirabeau died the victim of poison.[267]
The funeral of Mirabeau was the most imposing, popular, and extensive of any
recorded in history, always excepting that unparalleled display of a nation's
gratitude and grief which accompanied the transfer of the remains of Napoleon
from St. Helena to the Invalides. It is estimated that four hundred thousand men
took a part in the funeral pageant of Mirabeau. The streets were draped in
mourning, and pavements, windows, balconies, and house-tops were thronged
with sad and silent spectators.
La Fayette headed the immense procession, and was followed by the whole
Constituent Assembly, and by the whole club of Jacobins, who, in a dense mass,
assumed to be chief mourners on the occasion, though Mirabeau had for some
time held himself aloof from their tumultuous meetings. It was eight o'clock in
the evening before the procession arrived at the Church of Saint Eustache, where
a funeral oration was pronounced by Cérutti. The arms of twenty thousand of the
National Guard were then discharged at once. The crash caused the very walls of
the church to rock, shivering to atoms every pane of glass.
It was now night, and, by the light of a hundred thousand torches, the procession
resumed its course. New instruments of music had been invented, which were
then heard for the first time—the trombone and the tamtam. As the vast
procession traversed the streets through the gloomy shades of night, illumined by
the glare of flickering torches, with the tolling of bells, blending, now with the
wail of the chant and now with the pealing requiems of martial bands, all the
elements of sublimity seemed combined to affect the heart and overawe the soul.
It was near midnight when the sarcophagus was deposited in its tomb at the
Church of Saint Geneviève, over whose portal was inscribed these words,
"AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE."
Mirabeau was the master-spirit of the Revolution. After his death there were
multitudes struggling for the leadership, with no man of sufficient prominence to
attain and retain it. The funeral of Mirabeau was the funeral of emancipated
France. From that hour the Revolution was on the rush to ruin.
"Time," writes Michelet, "which reveals every thing, has revealed nothing that
really proves the reproach of treason to be well founded. Mirabeau's real
transaction was an error, a serious, fatal error, but one that was then shared by all
in different degrees. At that time all men, of every party, from Cazalès and
Maury down to Robespierre, and even to Marat, believed France to entertain
Royalist opinions. All men wanted a king. The number of Republicans was truly
imperceptible. Mirabeau believed that it was necessary to have a king with
power, or no king at all. It is true that Mirabeau appears to have received sums to
defray the expense of his immense correspondence with the Departments—a sort
of ministry that he was organizing at his own house. He makes use of this subtle
expression—this excuse which does not excuse him—that he had not been
bought; that he was paid, not sold."[268]
pic
FUNERAL OF MIRABEAU.
The death of Mirabeau seemed to paralyze the hopes of the king, and he now
resolved to spare no endeavors to secure his escape. On the 18th of April the
king took his carriage at Versailles, intending to ride to St. Cloud. A rumor
spread through the city that he was contemplating flight. The populace collected
and stopped the horses. La Fayette immediately hastened to the spot with a
company of the guards, dispersed the mob, who offered no other violence than to
obstruct the departure of the king, and cleared a passage. The king, however,
who now wished to have it appear that he was held a prisoner, as most certainly
he virtually was, refused to go, and returned indignantly into the palace.
By the advice of his ministers he repaired to the Assembly, and complained
warmly of the insult he had encountered. The king was received with the utmost
kindness by the Assembly, cordially greeted, and was assured that every thing
should be done to prevent the possible occurrence of another similar outrage.
To disarm suspicion and appease the public mind the king, on the 23d of April,
sent a letter to the foreign embassadors declaring that he had no intention of
leaving France, that he was resolved to be faithful to the oath which he had taken
to the Constitution, and that all those who intimated any thing to the contrary
were his enemies and the enemies of the country. He soon after, however,
declared to an envoy sent to him from the Emperor Leopold, that this letter by no
means contained his real sentiments, but that it was wrung from him by the peril
of his situation.[269]
A conference of the foreign powers was held on the 20th of May, 1791, at
Mantua, in Italy, where Leopold, Emperor of Austria, and brother of Marie
Antoinette, then chanced to be. At this conference Count d'Artois appeared in
behalf of the emigrants. Prussia was represented by Major Bischofverder,
England by Lord Elgin, and Louis XVI. by the Count de Durfort. Several other
of the kingdoms and principalities of Europe were represented on the occasion.
The Count de Durfort returned from this conference to Louis XVI. in Paris, and
brought him the following secret declaration in the name of the Emperor
Leopold:[270]
Austria engaged to assemble thirty-five thousand men on the frontiers of
Flanders. At the same time fifteen thousand men from the smaller German States
would attack Alsace. Fifteen thousand Swiss troops were to be marched on
Lyons, and the King of Sardinia, whose daughter the Count d'Artois had married,
was to assail Dauphiné. The king of Spain, cousin of Louis XVI., was to gather
twenty thousand troops upon the slopes of the Pyrenees, to fall like an avalanche
down upon southern France. Prussia engaged to co-operate cordially. The King
of England, notwithstanding the eloquence of Burke's pamphlet, could not yet
venture to call upon the liberty-loving English to engage in this infamous
crusade against the independence and the liberty of a sister kingdom. But the
king, as Elector of Hanover, engaged to take an active part in the war. A protest
against the Revolution was to be drawn up in the name of the whole house of
Bourbon, whose divine right to despotism in France had been questioned by the
French people, and this protest was to be signed by those branches of the
Bourbons who were occupying the thrones of Spain, Naples, and Parma.[271]
Plans for the invasion having been thus arranged, Louis XVI. resolved
immediately to effect his escape to the frontier. He could then place himself at
the head of these foreign armies, and lash France into obedience, and consign
those patriots who had been toiling for liberty to the dungeon and the scaffold.
Never was the condition of a nation more full of peril, or apparently more
hopeless. This impending destruction was enough to drive any people into the
madness of despair. It is hard to wear the fetters of bondage even when one has
never known any thing better. But, after having once broken those chains and
tasted the sweets of liberty, then to have the shackles riveted anew is what few
human spirits can endure.
It was not the intention of the king immediately to leave France. He arranged to
go to Montmedy, about two hundred miles from Paris, taking the very retired
Chalons road through Clermont and Varennes. The Marquis of Bouillé, a general
entirely devoted to the court party, formed a camp at Montmedy to receive the
king, under the pretense of watching hostile movements on the frontiers. Small
detachments of cavalry were also very quietly posted at different points on the
road to aid in the flight. All the arrangements were made for starting on the 20th
of June.[272]
The king, though on the whole a worthy man, and possessing some excellent
traits of character, was in some points weak almost to imbecility. All the energy
of the family was with the queen, and she, with the Marquis of Bouillé, planned
the escape. They were often thwarted, however, in their wishes by the obstinacy
of the king. La Fayette was entirely deceived, and but few even of the court were
intrusted with the secret. Still, rumors of flight had been repeatedly circulated,
and the people were in a state of constant anxiety lest the court should carry off
the king. They hardly believed that the king himself wished to join the
emigrants, and to urge war against the Constitution which he had sworn to
accept.
The Swiss Guards still surrounded the Tuileries. They were stationed, however,
only at the exterior posts. The interior of the palace, the staircases, and the
communications between the rooms were occupied by the National Guard, in
whom the nation could place more reliance. It was a long-established custom
that troops should be thus stationed throughout the palace, that the royal family
might be protected from impertinence or from any irruption of popular violence.
Since the terrible scenes of the 5th and 6th of October it became more important
than ever that a strong guard should encircle the royal family. But while the
ostensible duty of this guard was only to protect the king from insult, it had also
a secret mission to prevent the king's escape.
La Fayette, to whom the whole business was intrusted, oppressed with the
responsibility of his office, was continually, by night and by day, visiting the
posts. To the officers who had charge of the night-watch he had given secret
orders that the king was not to be permitted to leave the palace after midnight.
Thus the king was truly a prisoner, and he was fully conscious of it, though
every possible effort was adopted to conceal from him the humiliating fact.
M. Bouillé and the queen were compelled to yield to the whims of the king, and
to adopt measures which threatened to frustrate the plan. The king insisted upon
having an immense carriage constructed which could take the whole party,
though the unusual appearance of the carriage would instantly attract all eyes; he
insisted upon traveling a very unfrequented route, which would excite the
curiosity of every one who should see the carriage pass; he insisted upon
stationing military detachments along the route, though Bouillé urged that such
detachments if small could render no service, and if large would excite
suspicion; he insisted upon taking the governess of the children, because the
governess said that she loved the children too much to be separated from them,
though Bouillé urged that instead of the incumbrance of a governess they should
take in the carriage an officer accustomed to traveling, and who could aid in any
unexpected emergency. The king, though fickle as the wind upon questions of
great moment, was, like all weak men, inflexible upon trifles.[273]
At midnight of the 20th of June, the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the
sister of the king, the two royal children, and Madame Tourzel their governess,
carefully disguised themselves in one of the interior rooms of the Tuileries.
Creeping cautiously down, in three successive parties, an obscure flight of stairs,
and emerging by a gate which was contrived to be left unguarded, the fugitives,
mingling with the groups of people who ever at that time were leaving the
chateau, crossed the Carrousel, and, taking different streets, groped along
through the darkness until they all met on the Quai des Théatins, where two
hackney-coaches awaited them. In breathless silence they took their seats. The
Count de Fersen, a Prussian noble, young, handsome, enthusiastic, who was
inspired with a chivalric admiration of Marie Antoinette, had made all the
arrangements for the escape from the city. Disguised as a coachman, he
conducted the king, who led the young dauphin by the hand. The count
immediately mounted the box of the coach which contained the royal family, and
drove rapidly some twelve miles to the little town of Bondy, where the capacious
carriage constructed for the king was waiting before the door of an Englishman,
Mr. Crawford. At the same hour in a similar manner the king's brother, Monsieur
the Count of Provence, subsequently Louis XVIII., left the Palace of the
Luxembourg, and with his family traveled all night toward Flanders, where he
crossed the frontiers in safety.
At Bondy the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the two children, Maria
Theresa being about ten years of age and Louis seven, with their governess, took
their seats in the large carriage. One of the body-guard of the king, disguised as a
servant, sat on the box, and another, as footman, sat behind. M. de Vallory rode
on horseback, that he might gallop forward and order the relays of horses. The
waiting women of the queen, who, by the strangest infatuation, had been
included in the party, took the other carriage.
The Marquis of Bouillé, an energetic, heroic man, finding that he could not
control the arrangements of the king, did every thing in his power to avert the
suspicion which the strange-looking cortège would be likely to excite. He had a
passport prepared, in which the governess was represented as a German
baroness, Madame de Korff, traveling with her two children. The king was her
valet-de-chambre, the queen her waiting-maid. The proverbial wealth of the
German barons and the peculiar style of the equipage to which they were
accustomed happily favored this idea.[274]
The morning was just beginning to dawn as Count Fersen kissed the hands of the
king and queen and left them to prosecute their perilous journey, while he took
flight for the frontier through Flanders. The coach was drawn by six horses, who
were driven at the utmost speed, relays of horses having been established at short
stages. The sun at length rose bright and cheerful. The country was smiling in all
the verdure of blooming June. Every revolution of the wheels was bearing them
farther from Paris. It was hardly possible that their flight could be discovered
until a late hour in the morning. There were no telegraphs in those days to send
intelligence with lightning speed to arrest their flight. Having six or eight hours
the start of their pursuers, and being abundantly supplied with fresh horses,
escape seemed now almost certain. Hope began to cheer their hearts.
Some slight interruptions had retarded their progress, and it was about three
o'clock in the afternoon when they entered Chalons, some ninety miles from
Paris. The queen, with an exultant smile, exclaimed, "All goes well. If we were
to have been stopped at all it would have been before now."
At Chalons they exchanged horses. The king now felt that he was safe, for the
Marquis of Bouillé had posted detachments of troops at every important point
between Chalons and Montmedy. With characteristic imprudence, as the carriage
was surrounded with idlers at Chalons, the king put his head out of the window,
showing his well-known face to the crowd. The postmaster instantly recognized
the king, but, being himself an ardent Royalist, divulged not his secret, but aided
in putting in the fresh horses, and ordered the postillions to drive on.
About ten miles from Chalons is the bridge of Sommeville, which crosses a
narrow stream, where the Duke of Choiseul and M. Goguelat were stationed
with fifty hussars. They were to secure the king's passage, and then to remain
and block up the road against all pursuers. Faithful to the plan, they were at the
bridge, with the mounted hussars, at the appointed hour. The strange assemblage
of a military force at that spot excited the curiosity of the peasants, and a great
crowd was gathered. Every mind throughout France was then in a very sensitive
state. The crowd increased, and in the adjoining villages the alarm-bells were
beginning to ring. As the royal carriages did not appear for five or six hours later
than they were expected, the Duke of Choiseul, to appease the ferment, left the
spot, and the people then dispersed.
Soon after the detachment had left the king arrived, and was surprised to find no
troops. It was then between four and five o'clock in the evening. In great
perplexity and anxiety he drove rapidly on two hours farther to St. Menehould,
where he was to find another detachment of troops; but the Duke of Choiseul
had sent forward to St. Menehould and Chalons, informing the detachments
there that he had waited six hours for the arrival of the king; that the plan had
probably miscarried; that excitement was rapidly rising among the people; and
that the detachments had better retire.
The king, unaware of all this, was astonished and bewildered in still finding no
troops, and naturally, but imprudently, again looked out of the window. The
excited crowd which was gathered around the carriages suspected that they
contained the royal family. A young man named Drouet, son of the postmaster,
instantly recognized the king, from his resemblance to the imprint on the coins in
circulation. Without communicating his discovery to any one, he mounted a
horse, and, taking a cross road, galloped some twelve or fifteen miles to
Varennes, to inform the municipality and cause the arrest of the party.
FOOTNOTES:
[258] "I have read many histories of revolutions, and can affirm what a Royalist avowed in 1791, that never
had any great revolution cost less bloodshed and weeping. In reality, only one class, the clergy, was able,
with any appearance of truth, to call itself robbed; and, nevertheless, the result of that spoliation was, that
the great bulk of the clergy, starved under the old system for the emolument of a few prelates, had at length
a comfortable livelihood."—Michelet, p. 417.
[259] "If I had never lived with Mirabeau," says Dumont, "I should never have known what a man can
make of one day—what things may be placed within the interval of twelve hours. A day for this man is
more than a week or a month is for others. The mass of things he guided on together was prodigious; from
the scheming to the executing, not a moment lost."—Dumont, p. 311.
[260] Michelet, p. 333.
[261] Thiers, vol. i., p. 166. Ferrières, t. ii., p. 198.
[262] "Many of the emigrants had joined the army in a state of complete destitution. Others were spending
improvidently the last relics of their fortunes. All were in good spirits, for the camp life was free and
joyous. They confidently believed that the end of autumn would find them restored to their splendid homes,
to their groves, to their forests, and to their dove-cots."—Chateaubriand's Memoirs of the Duke de Berri.
[263] See Recueil de divers Ecrits relatif à la Revolution, p. 62; also Chateaubriand's Memoirs of the Duke
de Berri.
In reference to England Michelet remarks, with much truth: "The first power is aristocracy, the second
aristocracy, and the third aristocracy. This aristocracy goes on incessantly recruiting its body with all those
who grow rich. To be rich in order to be noble is the absorbing thought of the Englishman. Property,
specially territorial and feudal, is the religion of the country."—Michelet's French Revolution, p. 432.
[264] "The meeting ended at half past five, and Mirabeau went to the house of his sister, his intimate and
dear confidante, and said to her, 'I have pronounced my death-warrant. It is now all over with me, for they
will kill me.'"—Michelet, p. 461.
[265] The peculiar character of Mirabeau is illustrated by the following well-authenticated anecdote. He
was, on one occasion, reading a report to the Assembly upon some riots in Marseilles, which he affirmed
were fomented by the partisans of the court. He was incessantly interrupted by the aristocratic party with
such abusive epithets as "calumniator, liar, assassin, scoundrel." He stopped a moment, looked at them with
an imperturbable smile, and, in his most honeyed tones, said, "Gentlemen, I wait till these amenities be
exhausted."—Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 278.
[266] The English people were at this time generally in sympathy with the Revolution. The aristocratic
government of England was in deadly hostility to it. In 1792, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then head scholar in
Jesus College, Cambridge, wrote an Ode to France, commencing with the words,
"When France, in wrath, her giant limbs upreared,
And, with that oath which smote air, earth, and sea,
Stamped her strong foot, and said she would be free,
Bear witness for me how I hoped and feared."
In consequence of this ode, and his avowed attachment to the principles of the Revolution, he became so
obnoxious to his superiors that he was constrained to leave the college abruptly, without a degree.
—Cyclopædia of English Literature, Article S.T. Coleridge.
[267] M. Thiers, in the impetuosity of his narrative, is not always accurate in details. He gives the 20th of
April as the date of Mirabeau's death. Mignet assigns it to the 2d of March. Nearly all other authorities
agree upon the 2d of April. It is indeed wonderful that upon such a subject there should be such a diversity
of statement. The event at the time was deemed so momentous, that the Jacobin Club voted that the
anniversary of his death should, through all future time, be celebrated with funereal pomp.
[268] Mirabeau claims, and his friends claim for him, and probably with justice, that he wished to be the
mediator between the Revolution and the monarchy—to save royalty and liberty, believing that, under the
circumstances, royalty was essential to liberty. But the folly of the court thwarted every endeavor. They
would not accede to any measure of justice and moderation. The court wished only to make him unpopular.
Mirabeau saw his position, from which no struggles could extricate him, and he died of disappointment and
grief. Had he not then died, he would, in a few months, have inevitably perished upon the scaffold. See
Mémoires de Mirabeau, vol. viii.
[269] Bertrand de Moleville.
[270] Mignet, p. 101. Villiaumé, p. 91.
[271] Fox and others of the most illustrious of the English commoners had in the parliament expressed their
sympathy for the French patriots. A very strenuous effort was made to unite the Whig party in opposition to
liberty in France. A meeting was held at Burlington House. Mr. Burke was the organ of the aristocracy. The
animated discussion was continued from ten o'clock at night until three in the morning. But the differences
of opinion were found irreconcilable, and only resulted in the permanent alienation of Fox and Burke.—See
Lectures on the French Revolution, by Prof. Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 84.
[272] "The princes," writes M. Fromont, "conceived the plan of forming legions of all the loyal subjects of
the king. Desiring to be at the head of those Royalists whom I had commanded in 1789, I wrote to Count
d'Artois, begging his royal highness to grant me the commission of colonel, worded so that every Royalist
who would raise a legion might hope for a like favor. The members of his council thought it so strange that
a commoner should aspire to a military commission, that one of them said to me angrily, 'Why did you not
ask for a bishopric?'"—Recueil de divers Ecrits relatifs à la Revolution, p. 62.
[273] "What grieves us, moreover, among other things, in this journey to Varennes, and lessens the idea we
would like to entertain of the king's goodness of heart, is the indifference with which he sacrificed, by his
departure, and abandoned to death men who were sincerely attached to him. By the force of circumstances
La Fayette found himself to be the involuntary guardian of the king, and responsible to the nation for his
person. He had shown in various ways, and sometimes even in compromising the Revolution, that he
desired, beyond every thing else, the restoration of the kingly power, as the guarantee of order and
tranquillity. There was every reason to suppose that, at the startling news of the king's departure, La Fayette
would be torn to pieces.
"La Fayette, receiving warnings from several quarters, would believe nobody but the king himself. He went
to him and asked him whether there was any truth in the reports. Louis XVI. gave such a decided, simple
answer, and in such a good-natured manner, that La Fayette went away completely satisfied, and it was
merely to calm the anxiety of the public that he doubled his guard."—Michelet, p. 573.
[274] The passport was made out as follows: "De par le roi. Mandons de laisser passer Madame le Baron de
Korff, se rendant à Franckfort avec ses deux enfants, une femme de chambre, un valet de chambre, et trois
domestiques."
CHAPTER XXI.
ARREST OF THE ROYAL FUGITIVES.
Arrival at Varennes.—The Party arrested.—Personal Appearance of the
King.—The Guards fraternize with the People.—Indignation of the Crowd.
—The Captives compelled to return to Paris.—Dismay of M. de Bouillé.—
Excitement in Paris.—The Mob ransack the Tuileries.—Acts of the
Assembly.—Decisive Action of La Fayette.—Proclamation of the King.—
The Jacobin Club.—Unanimity of France.
THE carriages were driven rapidly forward, while the royal family sat perplexed
and silent, yet quite unprepared for the doom which was impending. An hour's
drive brought them to Clermont. Here the king found two squadrons of horse,
under Count de Dumas. But the detachments of dragoons moving to and fro had
excited suspicion, and the populace of Clermont had been roused, and gathered
alarmingly around the carriages.
The municipal authorities examined the passports of the travelers, and, finding
all apparently correct, allowed them to proceed, but, calling out a detachment of
the National Guard, forbade the Dragoons to leave the town. The Dragoons,
whose sympathies were with the people, and who knew not on what mission
they had been led by their officers, immediately fraternized with the Guards, and
their commander, Count Dumas, was indebted to the fleetness of his horse for
his escape from arrest. It was midnight when the carriages arrived at Varennes.
This little town is situated on both banks of a narrow stream united by a bridge.
A tower is at one end of the bridge, supported by a massive and gloomy arch,
which arch must be traversed with care to enter upon the bridge, and where a
very slight obstacle would prevent any advance; "a relic," says Lamartine, "of
the feudal system, in which the nobles captured the serfs, and where, by a
strange retribution, the people were destined to capture the monarchy."
The royal family, entirely exhausted with sleeplessness, anxiety, and the travel of
twenty-four hours, were all asleep, when the few scattering lights of the town
were perceived. They were to change horses here, and the king was distinctly
informed that they would find the horses before crossing the river. It was,
however, afterward decided, without communicating the change to the king, that
the fresh horses should be stationed on the other side of the bridge. Thus the
carriages could cross the bridge at full speed, and, in case of any popular tumult,
could more easily effect a change of horses and departure on the other side.
The king and queen, greatly alarmed in finding no relay of horses, themselves
left the carriage, and groped about through the darkened streets seeking for them
in vain. A few lights burned dimly here and there in the houses, but all else was
the silence and gloom of midnight. The king even knocked at a few doors where
lights were seen, and inquired for the relays. The half-roused sleepers could give
him no intelligence.
In thus traveling by relays of horses in Europe, each relay has its postillions, who
go their appointed stage only. The postillions who had drawn the carriage from
the last post-house, entirely unconscious of the dignity of their passengers,
having fulfilled their appointed task, weary of waiting, threatened to unharness
their horses and leave the carriage in the street until the relay should arrive. By
dint of bribes the king induced them to cross the bridge and continue the journey.
Just as they entered the arch beneath the tower to cross the bridge, and when
enveloped in almost Egyptian darkness, the horses were stopped by a cart which
obstructed the way. Some men seized the bridles of the leaders, and one man on
horseback shouted at the window of the carriage the appalling words,
"In the name of the nation, stop! You are driving the king."
Drouet had effectually accomplished his design. Taking a shorter road than that
which the carriage pursued, he rode directly to a stable, communicated his secret
to the inn-keeper and sent him to give the alarm, while he, with a few comrades
whom he hastily gathered, barricaded the bridge with the cart and such other
heavy articles as they could lay their hands upon. The delay upon the other side
just gave them time to do this before the carriage entered the vaulted archway.
The king and queen were thunderstruck, and their hearts sank in dismay.
Immediately they perceived the signs of a great tumult. The village bells were
ringing. Lights were flashing through the gloom. An undefined uproar seemed to
increase in the streets, while crowds were collecting on the bridge. One man
with a lantern in his hand half entered the carriage and cast the light full upon the
faces of each one of the inmates. The travelers were then commanded to alight
and exhibit their passports. Drouet, taking the passports, conducted the captives
in their carriage back again from the bridge to the door of the mayor of the little
town, a grocer by the name of Sausse.
Here there was quite a debate. The passports were made out correctly. The party
corresponded with the description. They all declared that they were the Baroness
de Korff with her attendants. Sausse appeared to be satisfied. But Drouet, a
young man of unusual intelligence and energy, demanded,
"Why is not the passport signed by the President of the National Assembly? And
if you are foreigners, how is it that you have influence to procure fifty dragoons
to escort you at St. Menehould, and as many more at Clermont? And why is
there a detachment of hussars waiting for you at Varennes?"
pic
LOUIS XVI. ARRESTED AT VARENNES.
In the eagerness of the altercation it became very evident that the counterfeit
servants were not menials, and that the assumed baroness was not accustomed to
exercise authority over her pretended maid-servant and valet de chambre. By this
time a sufficient number of the National Guard had assembled to prevent the
possibility of the rescue of the captives by the Hussars. The queen, seeing that all
farther attempts at deception were useless, and indignant at the disrespect with
which her husband was treated, exclaimed,
"Since you acknowledge him to be your king, speak to him with the respect
which you owe him!"
pic
SCENE AT VARENNES.
The whole party had thus far remained in the carriage. The tumult was rapidly
increasing. The bells were ringing, guns firing, drums beating, and a crowd of
men and women, in disordered dresses and eagerly vociferating, was fast
gathering around the captives. Lights in the distance were seen hurrying to and
fro, and armed men in tumultuous bands of excitement and consternation were
rushing from all directions. Respectfully Sausse, who appears to have been a
very humane man, urged them to alight, and for their own protection to enter the
door of the grocery. They did so, and sat down upon the boxes, barrels, and bags
which were scattered around. The king now, to save himself from farther insults,
appealed to the loyalty of his subjects. He rose, and with dignity said to the
crowd,
"Yes! I am your king. Behold the queen and my children. We entreat you to treat
us with the respect which the French have always shown to their sovereigns."
With the exception of that courtliness of manners which is almost the inheritance
of high birth, there was nothing in the king's personal appearance to inspire
deference. Though a somewhat educated and accomplished man, he was totally
destitute of any administrative skill or of any initiative powers. He would have
embellished almost any situation in private life, as a kind-hearted, conscientious,
exemplary man. The costume of a servant, a steward, a tutor, a clerk, was far
more in accordance with his abilities and his character than the insignia of
royalty. His figure was swollen by a flabby obesity, the result of a ravenous
appetite and indolent habits. His legs were too short for his body; the expression
of his countenance unintellectual and stolid.
As he appeared before the peasants and townsmen of Varennes that night,
exhausted with fatigue and terror, in the mean dress of a valet, in a disordered
wig, his fat cheeks pale and shrunken, with livid lips aghast and speechless, he
excited first emotions of surprise, then of contempt, then of unfeigned pity.
"What, that the king! that the queen!" the crowd exclaimed in amazement. The
piteous spectacle brought tears into the eyes even of many of the most hostile
and obdurate.
Varennes was but thirty miles from Montmedy, which, though in France, was
directly on the Germanic frontier. Thus the citizens of Varennes were at but a
few hours' march from those terrible armies of the Continent which were
threatening to sweep over France with flame and blood. Knowing that their town
might be one of the first to encounter the horrors of war, they had been living in
the midst of the most terrific alarms. They had hoped that the king was, in heart,
in sympathy with the nation, and would place himself at the head of the nation to
resist the invaders. Surprise, grief, and indignation struggled in their hearts as
they found that the king was actually endeavoring to escape from France to join
their enemies. None but those who live on the frontier at such a time can fully
realize the terrible significance of the words the enemy.
"What!" exclaimed the multitude, "the king running away, abandoning us, his
children, and becoming a traitor to the nation; going over to the enemy, to aid
them to burn our homes and massacre us all!"
Some wept; others execrated; others threatened to shoot the king upon the spot.
The simple-hearted peasants were, in intelligence, mere children. They had been
educated to regard the monarchy as paternal and the king as their father.
Choiseul and Goguelat, who, it will be remembered, were stationed at the bridge
of Sommeville with fifty hussars, now came clattering into the streets of
Varennes with their detachment. At the same time Count Dumas arrived, who
had escaped alone from his dragoons, they having abandoned him at St.
Menehould.
The grocer's shop was surrounded with a crowd armed with muskets, pitchforks,
and axes. Notwithstanding many fierce threats, the officers forced their way
through the crowd and entered the shop. There they found the royal family in a
deplorable condition. The little boy, Louis, the dauphin, was happily asleep on a
low cot bed. His sister, Maria Theresa, three years older, in great terror, was
sitting on a bench between her governess and her aunt Elizabeth, clinging
tremblingly to their hands. The king and queen were standing by the side of M.
Sausse, imploring him to permit them to continue on their way.
Choiseul, grasping significantly the hilt of his sword, said boldly to the king,
"Sire, please give immediate orders to depart. I have forty hussars. No time is to
be lost. In one hour they will be gained over by the people."
This was true. The hussars were Germans. Blindly obeying their officers, they
had no idea of the commission upon which they had been sent. They were now
surrounded by the populace, and were listening, with surprise and sympathy, to
their narrative of the events. At this critical moment the municipality of
Varennes, accompanied by the officers of the National Guard in that place,
entered the shop. Accustomed as they had long been to revere and almost to
adore royalty, for the rural districts had by no means kept pace with Paris in
disregard of the throne, the officers threw themselves upon their knees before the
king and said,
"In God's name, sire, do not forsake us; do not quit the kingdom."
"It is not my intention," the king replied, "to leave France. The insults I have
suffered force me to leave Paris. I am going only to Montmedy, and I invite you
to accompany me thither; only give orders, I pray you, for my carriages to be got
ready."
The municipal authorities departed to deliberate, begging the king to wait till the
light should dawn. It was now two o'clock in the morning. The chances of escape
were every moment diminishing. The crowd, armed with such weapons as they
could on the moment seize, had become formidable; the bridge was so
barricaded that it could not be passed; and but little reliance could be placed in
the fidelity of the hussars. There was, however, a ford near by, where the stream
could be passed on horseback. Choiseul and Goguelat entreated the king and
queen, with the ladies, immediately to mount on horseback, the king holding the
dauphin on the saddle, and, protected by the forty hussars, to cross the stream,
and attempt to effect their escape.
The queen, whose personal heroism never forsook her, looked at her children,
thought of the bullets which might be showered upon them, and, yielding to a
mother's love, hesitated. The king also, who never dishonored himself by an act
of cowardice, thought only of the peril of those who were dearer to him than life,
and said,
"But can you assure me that in this struggle a shot may not strike the queen, my
sister, or the children? Besides, the municipality does not forbid to let us pass; it
merely requests me to wait till daybreak. Moreover, the Marquis de Bouillé is at
Stenay, but twenty-four miles distant. He can not fail to learn of my detention,
and he will be here with his troops in the morning."
Another weary hour of agitation, tumult, and gathering excitement passed away,
and the clock struck three. The hussars were now completely gained over by the
people, and were drinking with them "To the Nation."
The municipal authorities, having briefly deliberated, returned to the king with
this short but terrible announcement,
"The people, being absolutely opposed to the king continuing his journey, have
resolved to dispatch a courier to the National Assembly in order to be informed
of its intentions."
M. de Goguelat now went out into the surging crowd to judge if it were possible
to fight their way through. Mounting his horse he rode slowly around, when
Drouet approached him and said, "You want to carry off the king, but you shall
not have him alive."
The carriage was surrounded by a body of the National Guard. Goguelat
approached the carriage with a few hussars who still hesitatingly obeyed his
orders, when the major in command of the detachment of the National Guard
said to him, "One step farther, and I shoot you."
Goguelat spurred his horse on, when a pistol was discharged. Two bullets struck
him, and he fell bleeding to the ground. He was, however, able to rise and enter
the shop, but the hussars immediately with acclaim avowed themselves the
soldiers of the nation. Goguelat had observed also that at the end of the street
there were two cannons planted which seemed ready to fire upon them. There
was no longer the possibility of escape by force, unless M. de Bouillé should
chance to arrive in season with his well-trained dragoons.
As Goguelat, wounded and covered with blood, again entered the presence of the
royal family, they presented a heart-rending spectacle. The queen was sitting
upon a bench between two boxes of candles, piteously pleading with the grocer's
wife to intercede with her husband in their behalf.
"You are a mother, madame," said the queen; "you are a wife; the fate of a wife
and mother is in your hands. Think what I must suffer for these children, for my
husband. At one word from you I shall owe them to you. The Queen of France
will owe you more than her kingdom, more than life."
There is an instinct, unreflecting, in the human heart, which says that it would
have been noble in the woman to have periled every thing to save the queen. The
universal heart does homage to disinterested benevolence, even when it is
unthinking and mistaken. But in this case the good woman, with very natural and
prosaic common sense, said,
"I wish it were in my power to help you. But bless me! you are thinking of your
husband and I am thinking of mine. Every woman for her own husband."
This speech certainly did not indicate a heroic nature. But it is obvious that M.
Sausse had now no power to save the king. Matters had proceeded far beyond
his control. If he could by any stratagem have facilitated the flight, his own life
would have been the inevitable forfeit. It would have been treason to the nation.
Humanity also seemed imperiously to demand that the king should be stopped.
His escape would place him at the head of foreign and hostile armies to ravage
France with the horrors of war, and to quench the kindling flame of liberty in
blood.
The queen, whose energetic mind foresaw the awful future, was overwhelmed
and burst into tears. The king had now lost all self-possession, and was
bewildered as a child. The people, who began to be apprehensive that the troops
of Bouillé might come to the rescue, were crowding the door and shouting,
"Back, back to Paris."
The king was urged to show himself, that he might tranquilize the people. He
went to a window and looked out upon the excited multitude, over whom a few
torches shed a lurid light. The sight of the king at first produced profound
silence. The people then, as versatile as children, were so affected by the
appearance of the king in his servile dress, and with his woe-worn countenance,
that many wept; and while not one word of insult was heard, many cried out, in
compassionate tones, Vive le Roi!
The day was then just beginning to dawn. Gradually the sun rose, and shone
upon a strange spectacle. The guns, the drums, the alarm-bells had roused the
whole country around. Ten thousand men had already assembled in Varennes,
choking the narrow street where the grocery stood. From all directions the
country people were seen hurrying to the town, as the strange tidings of the
attempted flight and arrest were spreading far and wide. As the crowd increased
in the streets, and the gloom of night was dispelled by the bright blaze of day, the
tumult rose higher and higher. All sympathy for the royal family seemed to give
place to a feeling of indignation, that they should be stealing away to lead
foreign armies to make war upon the liberties of France.
At seven o'clock the door opened, and the king beheld, to his surprise, an officer
of the National Guard of Paris. His dress was disordered, and he was dusty and
worn with hurried travel. The man was greatly agitated when he found himself in
the presence of the king, and could only stammer, in broken and almost
incoherent phrase, the words,
"Sire, all Paris is being murdered; our wives and children are perhaps
assassinated; you shall not go any farther; sire, the interests of the state; yes, sire,
our wives and our children."
The queen seized the hand of the officer, and, leading him to a humble bed in the
corner, where the two royal children, Maria and Louis, utterly exhausted, were
sleeping, said to him, as she pointed to the children,
"Am I not a mother also?"[275]
The king, interrupting her, turned abruptly to the officer, and said,
"What do you want?"
"Sire," he replied, "I have a decree of the Assembly."
"Where is it?" inquired the king.
"My comrade has it," was the reply.
Just then the door opened, and M. de Romeuf entered. He was an aide-de-camp
of the Marquis de la Fayette and a true patriot, while at the same time he was
well known by the royal family as a friend of the king. He entered, holding the
decree in his hand, greatly agitated; and, as he beheld the humiliating condition
of the sovereign of France, and was conscious of the most painful duty
devolving upon himself, he could not restrain his emotions, but bowed his head
and wept bitterly. There is not a generous heart on earth which will not be in
sympathy with that grief.
As the queen raised her eyes and saw M. de Romeuf enter, she exclaimed, with
surprise and indignation,
"What, sir, is it you? Oh! I could never have believed it possible." Romeuf
replied sadly, "We have done only our duty; but we hoped not to have overtaken
your majesties."[276]
The king took from the hand of Romeuf the decree of the Assembly and hastily
read it. It was an order enjoining upon all public functionaries "to stop, by all the
means in their power, the abduction of the king, and to prevent the continuance
of the journey."
The king indignantly threw the decree upon the bed where the children were
sleeping, and exclaimed, in words whose truth he then by no means fully
realized,
"There is no longer any King in France."
The queen, with pardonable but very injudicious passion, picked up the decree of
the National Assembly and threw it upon the floor, saying vehemently,
"It shall not defile my children."
"Madame," said Romeuf sorrowfully to the queen, to whom he was much
attached, "in the name of your safety, your glory, I entreat you to control your
grief. Would you rather have any one but me witness these passions?"
The gentle reproach recalled the queen to herself, and she nerved herself to
endurance, calmness, and dignity. The mental agony of that dreadful night had
already turned her hair from auburn into the whiteness of snow.
It was greatly feared that the troops of Bouillé might come and rescue the king.
Preparations for the departure were therefore hastened. Six horses were
harnessed into the carriage, and the royal family, notwithstanding they did every
thing in their power to cause delay, were forced to take their seats. The queen
would not allow any one to touch her son, but carried him in her own arms to the
carriage.
The melancholy cortège now commenced its slow progress toward Paris,
escorted by four thousand of the National Guard.
M. de Bouillé, as we have mentioned, was at Stenay, at but the distance of eight
leagues from Varennes, with several regiments of soldiers under his command,
waiting the arrival of the king. Had the king but reached that stage he would
have been safe. Bouillé was in a state of great anxiety, and during the night had
rode forward to within six miles of Varennes, hoping to meet the king. Perplexed
by the delay, and anxious lest he should be abandoned by his soldiers, in whom
he could place but little confidence, he rode back to Stenay, and had just arrived
there, at half past four in the morning, when he received the intelligence that the
king was arrested, that the alarm-bells were ringing, that the whole country was
aroused, and the National Guard in Stenay, Metz, and Verdun were rapidly
forming in defense of the Nation.
Under these circumstances there was but one regiment in whom M. Bouillé
could repose any confidence—the Royal German—and but one officer, his own
son, in whom he could confide.
Bouillé was an energetic and brave man. He immediately called out the German
regiment, and by the influence of impassioned language and enormous bribes to
every man induced them to start for the rescue. Almost with the speed of the
whirlwind these strongly mounted dragoons swept the space intervening
between Stenay and Varennes. It was a quarter of nine o'clock before they
reached the town. The National Guard, anticipating this movement, was strongly
posted to repel them. As Bouillé was reconnoitring in preparation for an attack,
he was informed that the king had been gone more than an hour and a half; that
the bridge was broken down, the streets barricaded; that M. de Choiseul, M. de
Goguelat, and M. de Dumas were prisoners; that their hussars had fraternized
with the people; that the garrisons of Metz and Verdun were rapidly approaching
to attack him, and that the whole country around was swarming with troops and
National Guards roused by the peril of the nation.
The horses of the dragoons were entirely exhausted by the forced drive of
twenty-four miles; the soldiers themselves gave manifest symptoms of
hesitation. All hope was gone. Bouillé slowly, sadly, silently retraced his steps.
At Stenay popular enthusiasm had gained all hearts. His soldiers abandoned him,
and he narrowly escaped with his life across the frontier to Luxembourg.
We must now return to Paris to record the scenes which transpired there after the
flight of the king. At seven o'clock in the morning of the 21st of June the
servants at the Tuileries, on entering the apartments of the king and queen, found
the beds undisturbed and the rooms deserted. The alarm was speedily spread
through the palace, and flew from the chateau like wild-fire through the streets
and into the faubourgs. "The king has escaped!" was upon all lips. The crowd, in
countless thousands, rushed to the Tuileries. They pressed in at the doors and up
the stairs, and explored all the mysterious interior of the palace. The most vile
and degraded of the population of the city are always foremost on such
occasions. The awe which they at first felt soon gave place to derision.
A portrait of the king was taken from his bed-chamber and hung up at the gate of
the chateau. A fruit-woman emptied her basket of cherries upon the queen's bed,
and sat down upon the bed to sell her venture, saying "It is the Nation's turn today
to take their ease." Some one placed a cap from the queen's wardrobe upon
the head of a young girl. She threw it contemptuously on the floor and trampled
upon it, saying "It will sully my forehead."
For several hours the whole city was in a state of intense consternation. The
departure of the king was associated in all minds with the approach of foreign
armies, the bombardment of Paris, the sweep of dragoons through the streets, the
assassination of the patriots, and the extinction of liberty. The alarm-bells rang,
drums beat to arms, minute-guns were fired, and the National Guard rallied at all
their rendezvous. But in the midst of these alarms there appeared an apparition
which excited intense alarm in the bosoms of all the friends of enlightened
liberty and order.
It consisted of vast gatherings of haggard, wretched-looking men, the most
worthless and abandoned of the population of a great city, under their own fierce
leaders, armed with pikes and all wearing a red cap, the bonnet rouge. Santerre, a
brewer, an uneducated man, of vast energies, and of great power to lead the
passions of the populace, led a band of two thousand of these red-caps through
the streets. The indignation of the people was now roused to the highest pitch
against the king, and against all who were supposed to have connived at his
flight. La Fayette was loudly accused of treason in having allowed the king to
escape. His coolness and presence of mind alone saved him from the fury of the
mob.
At nine o'clock the Constituent Assembly met, calm, yet fully conscious of the
momentous state of affairs. The president immediately informed them that M.
Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, had come to acquaint them that the king and royal
family had been carried off, during the night, by some enemies of the nation.
These noble men conducted, in this crisis, with their accustomed moderation and
dignity. Hesitating to assume that the king had perjured himself by violating the
oath he had so solemnly taken to sustain the Constitution, they adopted the more
generous idea of his abduction.
La Fayette, at eight o'clock, had been informed of the escape, and immediately
hastened to the Tuileries, where he found M. Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, and M.
Beauharnais, President of the National Assembly. They were both oppressed in
view of the momentous posture of affairs, and were lamenting the hours which
must elapse before the Assembly could be convoked and a decree issued
authorizing pursuit. The course pursued by La Fayette upon this occasion was
worthy of his heroic and noble nature. He proved himself a consistent disciple of
his great friend and model, Washington.
"Is it your opinion," inquired La Fayette, "that the arrest of the king and royal
family is absolutely essential to the public safety, and can alone preserve us from
civil war?"
"No doubt can be entertained upon that subject," both replied.
"Well, then," returned La Fayette, "I take upon myself all the responsibility of
this arrest."
He immediately issued an order to the National Guard throughout France for the
arrest of the king.[277] It was placed in the hands of two of his officers, who set
out instantly on the pursuit.
Leaving the Tuileries, La Fayette hastened on horseback to the Hôtel de Ville.
He passed excited crowds, who inveighed bitterly against him, accusing him of
traitorous complicity in the king's flight. Arriving at the Place de Grève, in front
of the Hôtel de Ville, he found one of his officers, the Duke d'Aumont, in the
hands of the infuriate mob, who were on the point of massacring him.
La Fayette instantly plunged into the crowd, by his authoritative voice and
gesture overawed them, and at the imminent peril of his own life rescued his
friend. A moment's hesitation, an emotion of cowardice, and both would
inevitably have perished. An infuriate man, almost delirious with rage,
approached La Fayette, and, shaking his fist in his face, exclaimed,
"You are a traitor. You have permitted the king to escape, and now France is
ruined."
"How ruined?" La Fayette replied, serenely smiling. "France has twenty-five
millions of inhabitants; the salary of the king is twenty-five millions of francs.
Every one of us gains twenty sous by Louis XVI. relieving us of this payment."
This pleasantry created a general laugh, and the words, repeated through the
crowd, soon restored good-nature. The heroism of La Fayette also struck their
imaginations, and he was greeted with applause as he rode away.
He then hastened to the Assembly, which was now convened. Some of the
deputies had suspected him as conniving at the flight, and as he entered a few
murmurs arose. He, however, ascended the tribune and gained a hearing. He
proposed that his second officer in command, M. de Gouvion, to whom had been
especially intrusted the guard of the Tuileries, should be examined by the
Assembly.
"I will answer for this officer," said he, "and take upon myself the responsibility
of his acts."
M. de Gouvion was summoned to their bar, and testified that all the ordinary
outlets from the palace were carefully guarded. The king could only have
escaped in disguise and through some unusual mode of egress. M. Bailly
confirmed this testimony, and La Fayette was reinstated in the confidence of the
patriots.
The people, who had suspected La Fayette, refused to allow the aides whom he
had dispatched to pass the barriers. The Assembly immediately issued an order
sanctioning the measures of La Fayette, and the officers were permitted to
depart. The ministers of the king were then summoned, and a decree passed that
all orders were to be received from the Assembly alone. With calmness truly
majestic, and with unanimity which apparently pervaded every act, thought, and
resolution, preparations were adopted to meet the fearful invasion which was
impending.
It was decreed at every hazard to defend the Constitution. The Assembly
assumed the Regency. Couriers were dispatched on every road toward the
frontiers to arrest every individual leaving the kingdom. Guns were ordered from
the arsenals more effectually to arm the National Guard. These measures were so
manifestly just and vital, that the most interested partisans of the old despotism
ventured no opposition.
While engaged in passing these decrees, M. de la Porte, superintendent of the
civil list, entered, bringing with him a private note and a memorial which he had
received from the king. The memorial was dated the 20th of June, and was
written and signed by the king. It was entitled "Proclamation of the King to all
the French upon his Departure from Paris."
In this long recital of his grievances the king complained that he had only a
suspensive veto; that his salary was cut down to five millions of dollars annually,
which was not sufficient to support him comfortably; that he was very badly
lodged in the palace of the Tuileries; that he had been incessantly annoyed by the
National Assembly, the clubs, and the journals, and that he was not properly
applauded when he appeared in public. He bitterly censured the decrees of the
National Assembly, and avowed that of his own free will he left Paris, that he
might at a safe distance from Paris regain his lost power.[278]
M. de la Porte placed this memorial and the private note to him, which
accompanied it, upon the table, stating, however, his wish that the private note
might not be read. With delicacy and honor worthy of commemoration it was
returned to him unopened. The memorial was read and was listened to in
respectful silence. The Assembly pitying the weakness of the king took no action
upon it whatever.
pic
INTERIOR OF THE JACOBIN CLUB.
When the National Assembly was in session at Versailles there was a club
organized by the deputation from Bretaigne, called the Breton Club. It was
composed of the patriotic members of the Assembly. After the removal of the
Assembly to Paris this club held its meetings in an old smoky convent of the
Jacobin monks, and was hence called the Jacobin Club. It rapidly increased,
admitting members not belonging to the Assembly, until it numbered twelve
hundred members in Paris alone. Its affiliated clubs were established all over the
kingdom, and were filled with the most ardent advocates of reform. In less than
two years they numbered two thousand four hundred societies in as many towns.
The Jacobin Club soon became so intensely and fiercely democratic, that La
Fayette, who was one of its original members, and others of the more
conservative of the patriots, withdrew from its tumultuous gatherings. This club
was now rapidly assuming the reins of government, and marshaling the mob as
its resistless and terrific arm of defense, a weapon wielded by the Revolution of
incalculable and terrible power. It soon became the relentless and despotic
sovereign of France, more relentless and more despotic than any single
sovereign who ever sat upon a throne.
La Fayette, upon leaving the Assembly, hastened to the club of the Jacobins,
which already in numbers and influence rivaled the Assembly. He was here also
successful in stemming the torrent of obloquy which was beginning to roll
against him. As he left the club he met, on the Quai Voltaire, Camille
Desmoulins. The impetuous journalist, in a state of intense excitement, hastened
toward the white horse on which La Fayette rode, and exclaimed:
"Monsieur de la Fayette, for more than a year I have constantly spoken ill of
you. This is the moment to convict me of falsehood. Prove that I am a
calumniator. Cover me with infamy by saving the state."
La Fayette grasped the hand of Desmoulins, whose patriotism he respected, and
replied,
"I have always recognized you as a good citizen. You will see that you have been
deceived. Our common oath is to live free or to die. All goes well. There is but
one feeling in the Assembly. The common danger has united all parties."
"But why," rejoined Desmoulins, "does the Assembly affect to speak of the
carrying off (enlévement) of the king in its decrees, when the king himself writes
that he escaped of his own free will? What baseness or what treason in the
Assembly to use such language, when we are threatened by three millions of
bayonets!"
"The word carrying off," La Fayette replied, "is a mistake in dictation, which the
Assembly will correct. This conduct of the king is infamous."
The news of the flight of the king created consternation through all the
departments of France. It was regarded as the signal for both foreign and civil
war, and all expected immediately to hear the tramp of hostile legions. With
singular unanimity the people of France rallied to meet the crisis. From the
Gironde a message was sent to the Assembly, saying,
"We have eighty thousand men enrolled in the National Guard, who are all ready
to march. But we have not as many guns as we have intrepid and patriotic men.
Send us arms."
The municipality of Villepaux sent word, "We are all ready to be torn into
ribbons rather than allow the integrity of the Constitution to be violated."
"Our fields," wrote the citizens of Allier and Nivernais, "are covered with
harvests and men. Men and harvests are alike at the service of the country, if she
needs them."
"We are but few, but we are determined," wrote the inhabitants of a little town in
Normandy. "We have but two hundred men capable of bearing arms, but they are
young, strong, and courageous. They are all ready to rush upon any foe who
shall invade the soil of France."
Bordeaux assured the Assembly that it would immediately send two thousand
four hundred men to meet the foe. The whole kingdom was in this blaze of
patriotic enthusiasm. The ladies, ever participating in devotion to a noble cause,
sent in their jewelry to the Assembly, saying,
"Change these ornaments into arms. It is not in our power to combat for our
country; but we can at least aid in arming our brave defenders."
Merchants left their shops, artisans their benches, and laborers the fields, to toil
as volunteers in throwing up fortifications around the exposed towns. All hearts
seemed to vibrate with the same hopes and fears, and all hands united in the
same patriotic toils. The partisans of the court, few in numbers, were silent,
waiting for the approach of foreign armies before they should throw off the mask
and avow their treason.
FOOTNOTES:
[275] Mirabeau, after his interview with Marie Antoinette, remarked in confidence to a friend, "You know
the queen. Her force of mind is prodigious. She is a man for courage."—Dumont, p. 211.
[276] Napoleon, at St. Helena, speaking in the light of subsequent events, said, "The National Assembly
never committed so great an error as in bringing back the king from Varennes. A fugitive, and powerless, he
was hastening to the frontier, and in a few hours would have been out of the French territory. What should
they have done in these circumstances? Clearly have facilitated his escape, and declared the throne vacant
by his desertion. They would thus have avoided the infamy of a regicide government, and attained their
great object of republican institutions. Instead of which, by bringing him back, they encumbered
themselves with a sovereign whom they had no just reason for destroying, and lost the inestimable
advantage of getting quit of the royal family without an act of cruelty."
[277] Our readers will not generally sympathize with Lamartine in the exclamation, "This was a
dictatorship, and the most personal of all dictatorships, that a single man, taking the place of the Assembly
and the whole nation, thus assumed. He, on his private authority and the right of his civic foresight, struck
at the liberty and perhaps at the life of the lawful ruler of the nation. This order led Louis XVI. to the
scaffold, for it restored to the people the victim who had just escaped their clutches."—History of the
Girondists, by Alphonse de Lamartine, vol. i., p. 75.
[278] Histoire de la Rev. Fr., par Villiaumé, p. 13.
CHAPTER XXII.
RETURN OF THE ROYAL FAMILY FROM VARENNES.
Proclamation of Marat.—Three Commissioners sent to meet the King.—
Address to the Nation from the Assembly.—The slow and painful Return.
—Conversation between Barnave and the Queen.—Brutality of Pétion.—
Sufferings of the Royal Family.—Reception of the King in Paris.—Conduct
of the Queen.—Noble Avowal of La Fayette.—Statement of the King.—
Menace of Bouillé.
ALMOST immediately after the flight of the king the club of the Jacobins became
the most formidable power in France. It embraced all the desperate and the
reckless advocates of reform. Marat, one of its most popular and energetic
members, the morning after the flight of the king, issued the following
proclamation to the populace of Paris:[279]
"People! behold the loyalty, the honor, the religion of kings. Remember Henry
III. and the Duke of Guise. At the same table with his enemy did Henry receive
the sacrament, and swear on the same altar eternal friendship. Scarcely had he
quit the table than he distributed poniards to his followers, summoned the duke
to his cabinet, and there saw him fall, pierced with wounds. Trust then to the
oaths of princes!
"On the morning of the 19th, Louis XVI. laughed at his oath and enjoyed
beforehand the alarm his flight would cause you. The Austrian woman has
seduced La Fayette. Louis XVI., disguised in a priest's robe, fled with the
dauphin, his wife, his brother, and all the family. He now laughs at the folly of
the Parisians, and will soon swim in their blood. Citizens! this escape has been
long prepared by the traitors of the National Assembly.
You are on the brink of ruin; hasten to provide for your safety. Instantly choose a
dictator. Let your choice fall upon the citizen who has, up to the present,
displayed most zeal, activity, and intelligence, and do all he bids you to do to
strike at your foes. This is the time to lop off the heads of Bailly, La Fayette, and
all the scoundrels of the staff, all the traitors of the Assembly. A tribune, a
military tribune, or you are lost without hope."
Similar impassioned appeals were issued from all the Jacobin journals, and the
nation was roused to phrensy. The popularity of the king was now gone, and he
was almost universally regarded as a traitor, plotting to deluge the kingdom in
blood.
At ten o'clock in the evening of the 22d of June a courier arrived in Paris with a
letter from the municipality of Varennes announcing the arrest of the king. The
cry resounded from street to street, "He is arrested! he is arrested!" Three
commissioners were immediately appointed, Latour Maubourg, Pétion, and
Barnave, invested with authority to secure the return of the king and the royal
family, and they were enjoined to observe all the respect due to their rank. The
Assembly also issued an address to the French nation, containing the following
sentiments:
"The king swore, on the 14th of July, to protect the Constitution; he has therefore
consented to perjure himself. The changes made in the Constitution of the
kingdom are attributed to a few of the factious. We are twenty-six millions of
factious. We have preserved the monarchy because we believe it useful to
France. We have doubtless reformed it, but it was to save it from its abuses and
its excesses. We have granted the yearly sum of fifty millions of francs
($10,000,000) to maintain the legitimate splendor of the throne. We have
reserved to ourselves the right of declaring war, because we would not that the
blood of the people should belong to the ministers.[280] Frenchmen, all is
organized. Every man is at his post. The Assembly watches over all. You have
naught to fear save from yourselves, should your just emotion lead you to
commit any violence or disorders. The people who seek to be free should remain
unmoved in great crises.
"Behold Paris, and imitate the example of the capital. All goes on as usual. The
tyrants will be deceived. Before they can bend France beneath their yoke, the
whole nation must be annihilated. Should despotism venture to attempt it, it will
be vanquished; or even though it triumph, it will triumph over naught but ruins."
Let us now return to Varennes, and accompany the royal family on their
melancholy route to Paris. We left the royal carriages, under the escort of the
National Guard, just starting from Varennes on their return. It was eight o'clock
in the morning. The progress toward Chalons was slow, for the carriages could
only keep pace with the guards. The heat was intense, and clouds of dust almost
suffocated the captives. For a time emotions were too deep for utterance, and not
a word was spoken. But often torrents of abuse fell upon the ears of the king
from the crowds who seemed to line the way. At times the crowd was so dense
that with some difficulty the guards forced their way through. But for the
protection of their bayonets, the whole royal family would probably have fallen
victims to the popular fury.
The commissioners from the Assembly met the carriages between Dormans and
Epernay, and immediately assumed the command of the troops, and took the
royal family under their charge. The whole populace, excited as it was, respected
the orders of the Assembly. Latour Maubourg, a gentleman of noble character
and an intimate friend of La Fayette, was ardently attached to the Constitution,
while at the same time he was anxious to save the monarchy. The tendencies of
both of his colleagues were to a more radical democracy. Hoping to excite their
sympathy in behalf of fallen greatness, he yielded to his companions the honor
of being with the royal family in their carriage, while he took the second coach,
with Madame de Tourzel and some other ladies of the party. Barnave and Pétion
entered the king's carriage to share his danger and to shield him from insult.
Barnave sat on the back seat, between the king and the queen. Pétion sat in front,
between Maria Theresa, the daughter of the king, and Madame Elizabeth, his
sister. The little dauphin, seven years of age, sat on the lap now of one, then of
another.
Barnave was a young lawyer of distinguished abilities and generous impulses.
He was a man of polished manners, of attractive person, and of accomplished
education. His generous heart was saddened by the pitiable condition of his
captives. He did every thing he could, by kindness and respectful attentions, to
mitigate their woe. An obnoxious priest at one time approached the carriage with
an ostentatious demonstration of his attachment to the court party, now
threatening France with invasion. The exasperated people fell upon him, and he
would probably have been massacred but for the energetic interposition of
Barnave.
"Frenchmen!" he exclaimed, "will you, a nation of brave men, become a nation
of murderers?"
He would have sprung out of the carriage to have rescued the priest had not
Madame Elizabeth, who had already appreciated his noble character, held him in
by the skirt of his coat. She feared that he also, now almost their sole defender,
might be torn in pieces. At first the queen sat closely veiled and maintained
unbroken silence. But gradually the character of Barnave won the esteem of the
whole party. The king entered calmly into conversation with Barnave upon the
momentous questions of the day. Barnave replied with courtesy and sympathy,
though still faithful in his devotion to liberty and sincere in his advocacy of a
constitutional throne. The queen, much mollified, at length withdrew her veil
and gradually became social and almost confiding.
Barnave spoke of the great mistakes which the Royalists had made in refusing to
accept a constitutional monarchy, thus exposing the throne to entire overthrow
and the nation to democratic anarchy.
"What were the means," inquired the queen, "which you would have advised me
to resort to?"
"Popularity, madam," was the reply.
"But how," continued the queen, "could I have obtained popularity? It was all
taken from me."
"Ah, madam," said Barnave, "it was much easier for you to conquer it than for
me to obtain it."[281]
The queen subsequently remarked to Madame Campan that Barnave "was a
young man full of intelligence and noble sentiments, and one every way worthy
to inspire esteem. A feeling of pride," she continued, with candor which honors
her memory, "has caused him to applaud all that tends to smooth the way to
honors and glory for the class in which he was born. If power should ever again
fall into our hands the pardon of Barnave is written before in our hearts."
The royal family only occasionally alighted for a moment at an inn as the horses
were being changed. By day and by night they continued their slow progress,
taking all their refreshments in the carriage. Barnave, with that delicacy which is
instinctive in noble natures, never for a moment forgot the rank of his august
captives. Being pressed by the queen to take some refreshment, he replied,
"Madam, the deputies of the National Assembly, under circumstances so solemn,
ought to trouble your majesty solely with their mission, and by no means with
their wants."
Pétion was a very different character. He was one of those coarse and vulgar
demagogues who have done so much to cast dishonor upon the word democracy.
His brutality disgusted the whole party. Equality of rights was with him but
social insolence. He affected a rude familiarity with the royal family, munching
his food like a boor and throwing the rind of fruit and the bones of fowls out of
the window, at the risk of hitting the king in the face. The king made a slight
attempt, by introducing conversation with him, to awaken some sympathy.
"It was my wish," said the king, "to increase the force of the executive power. I
did not think that this constitutional act could be maintained without more power
being placed in the hands of the sovereign, since France does not wish to be a
republic."
"Not yet, to be sure," Pétion brutally replied; "the French are not yet quite ripe
enough for a republic."
No more conversation was held with Pétion. The movement of the carriages,
encumbered by the escort and the immense crowds who thronged the way, was
very slow. Four days were occupied in the return. It was seven o'clock in the
evening of the 25th when the long procession entered Paris. As the carriages
approached the suburbs the crowd increased in density. It had been a day of
intense heat. The blaze of the sun, reflected by the pavements and by the
bayonets which surrounded the carriage, was almost intolerable. The carriages
were continually enveloped in a dense cloud of dust. The inmates panted for
breath and were bathed in perspiration. One of the children suffered so much that
the queen, alarmed, appealed to the compassion of the crowd.
"See, gentlemen," she said, letting down one of the windows, "in what a state my
poor children are; one is choking."
A brutal wretch exclaimed, in an under tone, "We will soon choke you, after
another fashion."
Generally the crowd looked on in amazement and silence. Feelings of pity and
humanity triumphed over indignation. Great eagerness was of course manifested
to catch a sight of the king and queen, but well-armed guards on horseback
surrounded the carriages. La Fayette came out of the city to meet the cortège at a
few miles distance and to assume the command. Apprehensive of violence from
the infuriate populace of Paris, if the immense cortège, now numbering nearly
three hundred thousand and rapidly increasing, were to pass through the narrow
streets of the city, the carriages were ordered to take a circuit and enter by the
broad avenue of the Elysian Fields, which conducted directly to the Tuileries. As
an additional precaution he placed troops in a deep line on both sides of the
avenue from the Barrier de l'Etoile to the palace.
It was resolved that the king should be received in silence, without applause and
without abuse. Placards were posted every where with the laconic
announcement,
"Whoever applauds the king shall be flogged; whoever insults him shall be
hanged."[282]
The procession now entered the city amid the clashing of sabres, the trampling
of horses, and the confused, suppressed murmurs of half a million of men. It was
another sublime act in that most terrible tragedy of time. It can not be described;
it can not be fully conceived; it has never been paralleled.
The crowd-encompassed, dust-enveloped carriages entered the city at the close
of one of the most lovely of June afternoons. The cloudless sun, still an hour
above the horizon, shone brilliantly upon the spectacle, gilding steeples and
domes as with rejoicing light. The whole military array of Paris, horsemen,
artillery, and infantry, lined that majestic avenue. Behind them the whole
population of Paris seemed to flood the field, filling windows, balconies, housetops,
steeples, trees, and every point of observation.
La Fayette and his staff first made their appearance as the vast procession
commenced its entrance. A numerous cavalcade of mounted guards then
succeeded. These were followed by the two royal carriages, each drawn by six
horses, and surrounded by dragoons whose sabres gleamed in the rays of the
setting sun. Several regiments of artillery and infantry, in compact order, ensued,
and then came a motley mass of three hundred thousand stragglers, men,
women, and children, whom the strange event had gathered from all the suburbs
of the metropolis.
Almost perfect silence reigned. It was like a procession of the shades of the
departed in the spirit land. There was no ringing of bells, no explosion of
cannon, no plaudits of the multitude, no bursts of martial bands in requiems or
jubilata. The king, humiliated, sunk back in his carriage, and concealed himself
as far as possible from observation. The bayonets of the soldiers held in check
the ferocious and brutal wretches who would gladly have assailed the monarch
with execrations. The same power closed the lips of the Royalists, who would
have greeted their sovereign with applause.
Thousands gazed upon the scene in silent sympathy, with their eyes bathed in
tears. They loved the cause of constitutional liberty; they wept over the
infatuation and folly of the king. The reception was sublime in its
appropriateness. No honors were conferred upon the king, for surely he deserved
none. No abuse assailed him, for that would but have degraded those who
offered it.
pic
RETURN OF THE ROYAL FAMILY FROM VARENNES.
The crowd grew more and more dense as the carriages entered the garden of the
Tuileries, and the way became so obstructed by the throng that it was with no
little difficulty that a passage was secured. As soon as the carriages arrived at the
door of the palace, near the end of the terrace, the royal family alighted and
passed through a double file of the National Guard drawn up for their protection.
In this hour of misfortune, those who had been most hostile to the despotism of
the court vied with each other in their endeavors to protect fallen royalty from
indignities. The Viscount of Noailles, a warm friend of reform, and a humane,
magnanimous man, approached the queen, who was the last to alight from the
carriage, and offered her his arm to conduct her into the palace. The queen, with
imprudent but perhaps pardonable pride, haughtily rejected the aid of the friend
of the people, and, seeing one of the partisans of the court near by, asked his
arm.
The hall of the Assembly, since destroyed, looked out upon the garden of the
Tuileries. The excitement of the hour suspended the sitting, but it was
immediately resumed when the king had safely entered the palace. The king
seemed perfectly calm. La Fayette, with profound respect and with his
sympathies most deeply moved, presented himself at the king's apartment, and,
making no allusion to the unprecedented scene which had transpired, said, "Has
your majesty any orders to give me?"
"It appears to me," replied the king with a smile, "that I am much more under
your orders than you are under mine." The conduct of the queen in this trying
hour was peculiarly unfortunate. The royal family then needed every friend it
could win. But the queen, losing the control of her passions, seemed to bid
defiance to all who were not the partisans of the court, and endeavored to gratify
her resentment in goading those she deemed her foes by those taunts of action
which are even more exasperating than words.
Assuming that La Fayette was her jailer, she approached that noble patriot, who
was willing to shed the last drop of his blood to save her from indignities, and
handed him the keys of her trunks. La Fayette, wounded by conduct so
ungenerous, and commiserating the condition of the queen, bowed, refusing to
receive them, and, in tones saddened by pity and sorrow, declared that no one
would think of interfering with her private property.
The unhappy queen so far forgot herself as peevishly to throw the keys into La
Fayette's hat, which was upon the table. This was the conduct of a spoiled child.
Such was Marie Antoinette. It was this spirit which accelerated her passage to
the scaffold. The compassion of La Fayette triumphed over resentment.
Overlooking the insult, he calmly replied,
"Madam, you must pardon me the trouble I give you in returning these keys. I
certainly can not touch them."
"Well, then," replied the queen, pettishly, "I shall find other persons less
scrupulous than you are."[283]
Such conduct on the part of the queen was ever adding to her unpopularity. The
king was much more considerate. Though by no means equal to the queen in
energy, he had a far more comprehensive view of the real attitude of affairs. Had
the spirit of the queen been dominant, it is possible that the Revolution in its
infancy might have been crushed with an iron hand. All the disciplined armies of
Europe were ready to fall upon the unorganized and unarmed populace of
France, and to chastise them into submission. Had the moderate and humane
spirit of the king prevailed, the Constitution might have been accepted; the king
might have been revered and beloved as a constitutional monarch, and France
might have passed from despotism to free institutions without bloodshed. But the
discordant union of the defiant energies of the one and the yielding moderation
of the other rendered ruin inevitable.
The king entered into a brief conversation with La Fayette, in which the devoted
patriot said to his monarch,
"Your majesty is well aware of my attachment to your royal person, but at the
same time, you were not ignorant that, if you separated yourself from the cause
of the people, I should side with the people."
"This is true," replied the king. "You follow your principles. And I tell you
frankly that until lately I had believed you had surrounded me by a turbulent
faction of persons of your own way of thinking, but that yours was not the real
opinion of France. I have learned during my journey that I was deceived, and
that the general wish is in accordance with your views."
The conduct of the Assembly in this momentous crisis, when the liberties of
France were so fearfully imperiled, was firm and noble. On the day of the king's
return they passed decrees suspending him from his functions, until they should
have heard, through a committee of three, the declarations of the king and queen.
With that delicacy which had ever, thus far, characterized the action of the
Assembly, these decrees were passed in terms of studied decorum, and the king
and queen were shielded from answering before the whole Assembly, which
would have been required of any offenders of less exalted rank. A guard was
placed over the royal family, and was made responsible for its safe custody.[284]
Barnave, covered with the dust of his journey, hastened to the Assembly, and
gave the official announcement of the return of the king. Both the king and the
queen had learned to repose great confidence in this noble young man, and
Barnave assisted the king in composing the declaration to be presented to the
commissioners of the Assembly in extenuation of his flight.[285] The king could
hardly have expected that the assertions which he made in this document could
be credited by the Assembly. "Never was it my intention," said he, "to leave the
kingdom. I had no concert either with foreign powers, or with my relatives, or
with any of the French emigrants. I had selected Montmedy, because, being near
the frontiers, I should have been better able to oppose every kind of invasion of
France, had a disposition been shown to attempt any. One of my principal
motives for quitting Paris was to set at rest the argument of my non-freedom,
which was likely to furnish occasion for disturbances."
He concluded this declaration in words characteristic of his whole course. "I
have ascertained during my journey that public opinion is decidedly in favor of
the Constitution. I did not conceive that I could fully judge of this public opinion
in Paris. As soon as I had ascertained the general will, I hesitated not, as I have
never hesitated, to make a sacrifice of every thing that is personal to me. I will
gladly forget all the crosses that I have experienced, if I can but ensure the peace
and felicity of the nation."[286]
Thus the king pledged himself anew to support the Constitution. The Assembly
received these asseverations in respectful silence, though it was no longer
possible for them to give the king credit for sincerity. While the king was thus
apologizing, Bouillé, who had fled to the protection of foreign armies, sent a
menacing letter to the Assembly, in the name of the allied sovereigns of Europe,
containing the following declarations:
"I know your means of defense," he wrote. "They are nothing; and your
chastisement shall be an example to other people. Listen to the words of a man
who regards you and your people but with indignation and horror. I know the
roads. I will guide the foreign armies which will assail you. There shall not rest
one stone upon another in Paris, if you dare to touch a hair of the head of my
king."[287]
If Bouillé had wished to provoke the nation to throw down the head of the king
as a gauntlet of defiance to the foes of the liberties of France, he could have done
nothing more effectual than the utterance of such a menace. Both parties were
now preparing vigorously for war. The emigrants at Coblentz, proclaiming that
the king was a prisoner, and could no longer have any will of his own, declared
monsieur the king's elder brother (Louis XVIII.) to be Regent of France. The
most vigorous measures were adopted for accumulating troops and munitions of
war for the great invasion.
FOOTNOTES:
[279] Marat, who edited "The Friend of the People," was, says Lamartine, "the fury of the Revolution. He
had the clumsy tumblings of the brute in his thought and its gnashings of teeth in his style. His journal
smelt of blood in every line."—History of the Girondists, vol. i., p. 115.
[280] The Constitution conferred upon the king and the Assembly the right of making peace and war. The
king complained bitterly that he was no longer authorized alone to declare war and make peace.
[281] Mémoires de Madame de Campan, t. ii., p. 150.
[282] "Quiconque applaudira le roi sera bâttonné; quiconque l'insultera sera pendu."
[283] La Fayette's Memoirs.
[284] Robespierre was opposed to this act of special respect, and exclaimed,
"What means this obsequious exception? Do you fear to degrade royalty by handing over the king and
queen to ordinary tribunals? A citizen, a citoyenne, any man, any dignity, however elevated, can never be
degraded by the law."
[285] Thiers, vol. i., p. 185.
[286] Even Lamartine says, "The king addressed to the commissioners of the Assembly a reply, the bad
faith of which called for the smile rather than the indulgence of his enemies."—Lamartine's Hist. of the
Girondists, vol. i., p. 105.
"The Assembly accepted the declaration of the king, although it was evident to them that the king did not
intend merely to go to Montmedy, where no preparations had been made to receive him, but that he
intended to go to the magnificent monastery of Orval, three leagues beyond the frontier, in Luxembourg,
then occupied by the Austrians. Troops, commanded by the Prince of Condé, were there awaiting his
arrival. The flight of the king was the signal for the loyalist officers to desert. All those of a regiment in
garrison at Dunkirk fled to the Austrians, carrying with them the banners of the regiment."—Hist. de la
Rev. Française, par Villiaumé.
CHAPTER XXIII.
COMMOTION IN PARIS.
The Remains of Voltaire removed to the Pantheon.—Decision of the
Assembly on the Flight of the King.—Thomas Paine.—Views of the
Constitutional Monarchists.—Message from La Fayette to the King of
Austria.—The Jacobins summon the Populace to the Field of Mars.—
Mandate of the Jacobins.—The Crowd on the Field of Mars dispersed by
the Military.—Completion of the Constitution.—Remarkable Conversation
of Napoleon.—The King formally accepts the Constitution.—Great, but
transient, Popularity of the Royal Family.
IN the midst of these stormy scenes the Assembly voted to remove the remains
of Voltaire, which had slumbered for thirteen years in the obscure abbey of
Scellières in Champagne, to the Pantheon in Paris. On the 11th of July his coffin
was received with great pomp at the barriers, and conducted to a pedestal on the
ancient site of the Bastille, constructed from one of the foundation-stones of the
fortress. Voltaire had once been imprisoned in that gloomy citadel. Upon the
pedestal which supported the coffin were engraved the words,
"Receive on this spot, where despotism once fettered thee, the honors decreed
thee by thy country."
The next day a brilliant sun invited the whole population of Paris to the fête. The
car which bore the coffin to the Pantheon was drawn by twelve white horses,
harnessed four abreast. They were very richly caparisoned, and led by postillions
in antique attire. An immense body of cavalry headed the procession. The wail
of requiems and the roar of muffled drums blended with the booming of minute
guns from the adjacent heights. The sarcophagus was preceded, surrounded, and
followed by the National Assembly, the municipal authorities of the city, and by
deputations from all the illustrious and dignified bodies of France. Scholars,
laborers, artists, and, conspicuously, all the actors and actresses of Paris, took
part in the pageant. Arches, with garlands of leaves and wreaths of roses,
spanned the streets. Groups of beautiful girls, dressed in white, carpeted the path
with flowers. At intervals, bands of music were placed, saluting the car as it
approached with bursts of melody. Before each of the principal theatres the
procession stopped, and a hymn was sung in commemoration of the
achievements of the great dramatist. It was ten o'clock at night before the
immense procession reached the Pantheon. The coffin was deposited between
those of Descartes and Mirabeau.
pic
THE REMAINS OF VOLTAIRE TRANSFERRED TO THE PANTHEON.
It was the pen of Voltaire which overthrew despotism in France. It was also the
pen of Voltaire which banished for so long from human hearts thoughts of God
and of future responsibility. Thus then sprung up, in the place of the despotism
he had overthrown, another despotism a thousand fold more terrible. With
consummate genius and utter destitution of all moral principle, he was the
demon of destruction, sweeping the good and the bad alike into indiscriminate
ruin. He could fawn upon the infamous Frederic, and palliate his vices. He was
ever ready to bow the knee to the paramours of Louis XV. There was no
prostitution of genius which could cause him to blush. The venomous spirit with
which he pursued the religion of Christ is fully expressed by his motto, "Crush
the wretch." The genius of Voltaire induced France to attempt to establish liberty
without religion. The terrific result will probably dissuade from any future
repetition of that experiment.
The club of the Jacobins was greatly roused by the moderation of the Assembly,
and began to clamor for the entire overthrow of the monarchy and the
establishment of a republic. On the evening of the 15th of July a meeting of the
club was held at which four thousand persons were present. It was a scene of
wild enthusiasm. La Fayette, Barnave, and others who were in favor of a
constitutional monarchy were denounced as traitors. Robespierre and Danton
were the orators of the evening, and they were greeted with thunders of
applause. A petition was sent to the Assembly, which assumed the tone of an
order, demanding that the king should be deposed as a perfidious traitor to his
oaths. It was a meeting of the mob virtually repudiating the Assembly, and
assuming for itself both legislative and executive power. The tumultuous
gathering was not dispersed until after midnight. Here originated that spirit of
lawless violence which subsequently transformed Paris into a field of blood.
On the 16th the commissioners made their report to the Assembly on the flight
of the king. Both the commissioners and the Assembly were disposed to be
lenient. They were already very anxious in view of popular tumult and menacing
anarchy. They had still no wish to overthrow the monarchy and establish a
republic. Such a measure would be full of danger to France in its distracted state,
and would exasperate a thousand fold the surrounding monarchies. There was no
one for whom they wished to exchange their present king. He was the legitimate
monarch, which gave him vast power over all the aristocracy of Europe. He had
sworn to defend the Constitution, and it was so manifestly for his interest now to
consent to be a constitutional monarch that it was hoped that he would sincerely
accept that popular cause which would secure for him popular support. Though
no one doubted that it had been the intention of the vacillating monarch to throw
himself into the midst of foreign armies, and by the aid of their artillery and
swords to force the Old Régime again upon France, a very generous report,
exculpating the king from blame, was presented and adopted.
Influenced by these views, it was argued that the king had committed no crime.
He surely had a right, if he wished, to take a journey to Montmedy. There was no
proof that he intended any thing more, he had violated no law. The Assembly
therefore decreed that "in the journey there was nothing culpable."[288]
The Jacobin press now became very bold. "No more king," exclaimed Brissot in
the Patriot; "let us be Republicans. Such is the cry at the Palais Royal, and it
does not gain ground fast enough."
"No king! no protector! no regent!" shouted Fauchet in the Bouche de Fer (the
Mouth of Iron).
An address was read to the Jacobin Club openly demanding the annihilation of
royalty; and though this address was received at first with murmurs—for the
majority, even of the Jacobins, were not then prepared for such a step—the new
doctrine with marvelous rapidity spread through the lower orders of Paris, and
very speedily gained the ascendency in the club. Danton mounted the tribune of
the Jacobin Club on the 23d of June, and demanded the forfeiture of the throne.
"Your king," said he, "is either a knave or an idiot. If we must have one of the
two, who would not prefer the latter?"
The Jacobin Club had now become very formidable. It already numbered
eighteen hundred members in Paris alone, each of whom was admitted to its
meetings by a ticket. Two hundred and fifty affiliated clubs were scattered
throughout the principal cities. It occupied the large chapel of the Convent, and
had its president, its secretaries, its tribune, its regular order of business, and its
journal, in which its debates and resolutions were published. Many of the ablest
members of the Assembly were members of the club, and their most powerful
efforts of eloquence were addressed to the club, regarding its voice as beginning
to be more potent than that of the Assembly. The Jacobin Club was rapidly
becoming the great power of the kingdom, with an excitable mob ever at its
disposal as its military arm.
The Journal of the Jacobins, edited by Laclos, a confidant of the Duke of
Orleans, overwhelmed the monarch with a torrent of insults and objurgations.
Thomas Paine, the notorious reviler of Christianity, was then in Paris, and one of
the most violent of the Jacobin Club. He wrote an inflammatory address, which
was posted on all the walls of Paris, urging the peremptory dethronement of the
king.
The views entertained by La Fayette and the Constitutional Monarchists can not
be better conveyed than in the eloquent language of Barnave, in a speech
addressed to the Assembly on this occasion.
"I will not dilate," said he, "on the advantages of monarchical government. You
have proved your conviction by establishing it in your country. Some men,
whose motives I shall not impugn, seeking for examples to adduce, have found
in America a people occupying a vast territory with a scanty population,
nowhere surrounded by very powerful neighbors, having forests for their
boundaries, and having for customs the feelings of a new race, and who are
wholly ignorant of those factitious passions and impulses which effect
revolutions of government. They have seen a republican government established
in that land, and have thence drawn the conclusion that a similar government
was suitable for us.
"But if it be true that in our territory there is a vast population; that we have a
multitude of men exclusively devoted to those intellectual speculations which
excite ambition and the love of fame; that powerful neighbors compel us to form
one compact body in order to resist them—if these circumstances are wholly
independent of ourselves, then it is undeniable that the sole existing remedy lies
in a monarchical government.
"When a country is populous and extensive, there are but two modes of assuring
to it a solid and permanent existence. Either you must organize those parts
separately, placing in each section of the empire a portion of the government,
thus maintaining security at the expense of unity, strength, and all the advantages
which result from a great and homogeneous association, or else you will be
forced to centralize an unchangeable power, which, never renewed by the law,
presenting incessant obstacles to ambition, resists with advantage the shocks,
rivalries, and rapid vibrations of an immense population, agitated by all the
passions engendered by long-established society.
"These facts decide our position. We can only be strong through a federative
government, which no one here has the madness to propose, or by a monarchical
government such as you have established. You have intrusted to an inviolable
king the exclusive function of naming the agents of his power, but you have
made those agents responsible.
"Immense damage is done us when that revolutionary impetus, which has
destroyed every thing there was to destroy, and which has urged us to the point
where we must at last pause, is perpetuated. The Revolution can not advance one
step farther without danger. In the line of liberty the first act which follows is the
annihilation of royalty. In the line of equality the first act which must follow is
an attempt on all property. It is time to end the Revolution. It ought to stop when
the nation is free, and all men have equal rights. If it continue in trouble it is
dishonored, and we with it. Yes! all the world ought to agree that the common
interest is involved in now closing the Revolution.
"Those who have lost ought to perceive that it is impossible to make the
Revolution retrograde. Those who fashioned the Revolution should see that it
has attained its consummation. Kings themselves—if from time to time profound
truths can penetrate the councils of kings, if occasionally the prejudices which
surround them will permit the sound views of a great and philosophical policy to
reach them—kings themselves must learn that there is for them a wide difference
between the example of a great reform in government and that of the abolition of
royalty; that if we pause here, where we are, they are still kings! But, be their
conduct what it may, let the fault come from them and not from us. Regenerators
of the empire, follow straightly your undeviating line. You have been courageous
and potent—be to-day wise and moderate. In this will consist the glorious
termination of your efforts. Then again returning to your domestic hearths you
will obtain, if not blessings, at least the silence of calumny."
Though these views of moderation were opposed alike by the aristocrats and the
Jacobins, they were accepted with applause by the great majority of the
Assembly. Aristocrats and Jacobins now combined to disturb in every possible
way the action of the Assembly. They both hoped through tumult and anarchy to
march into power. Mobs began to reassemble in the streets of Paris, and cries of
treason were uttered against La Fayette and his fellow-constitutionalists. Already
in the market-place, at the Palais Royal, and in the hall of the Jacobins,
individuals denounced that Constitution as tyrannical which the nation had so
recently, with unutterable enthusiasm, sworn to support.[289]
La Fayette, Barnave, the Lameths, Talleyrand, and other illustrious friends of a
constitutional monarchy, sent a confidential note to the Emperor of Austria,
assuring him that the Constitution conferred as much power upon the king as it
was possible now to obtain from the French nation; that any invasion of France
by the allies would only exasperate the people, bring the Jacobins into power,
endanger the life of the king, and that it could not be successful in restoring the
Old Régime. The king was consulted upon this measure, and gave it his
approval.[290]
Notwithstanding these warnings, the monarchs of Europe, who were trembling
lest the spirit of liberty, rising in France, should undermine their despotic
thrones, resolved to crush the patriots beneath the tramp of their dragoons.
Leopold of Austria, Frederick William of Prussia, and Count d'Artois, with
Bouillé and other of the emigrants, met at Pilnitz, and on the 27th of August
signed an agreement that the French Revolution was an "open revolt," "a
scandalous usurpation of power," and that all the governments of Europe were
bound to unite to abate the nuisance.[291]
The Jacobin Club, it will be remembered, in a stormy midnight debate, had
drawn up a petition to the Assembly demanding the deposition of the king as a
perjured traitor. They wished, by a demonstration of popular enthusiasm, to
terrify the Assembly into obedience to their mandate. Accordingly, the whole
populace of Paris were summoned to meet on the Field of Mars, to sign, with
much parade, the petition on the Altar of Federation, which had not yet been
taken down.
At an early hour on the morning of the 17th of July the multitude began to
congregate. It was the Sabbath-day. Every scene in the drama of the Revolution
seems to have been arranged on the sublimest scale. Soon from fifty to one
hundred thousand, including the lowest of the population of Paris, were
thronging the field, and clambering over the gigantic altar.[292] Two men were
seized, under the absurd accusation that they were intending to blow up the altar
and all upon it by means of a barrel of gunpowder. The cry of "Aristocrats!"
which passed like a tornado through the crowd, precluded any trial, and settled
their doom. The two unhappy men were literally torn to pieces, and their heads
were borne about on pikes by brutal wretches who were now beginning to
emerge from dens of obscurity into confidence and power.
The rumor of these murders and of the threatening attitude of the mob spread
through the city and reached the ears of the Assembly. The principal ringleaders
of the Jacobins were nowhere to be found, and it was asserted and generally
believed that they were in a secret place, that they might escape responsibility,
while, through their agents, they were rousing the mob to a demonstration which
should overawe the Assembly. In the midst of the wildest imaginable scene of
tumult and uproar, the mandate of the Jacobins—for it could with no propriety
be called a petition—was placed upon the altar upon many separate sheets of
paper, and speedily received six thousand signatures. This was a new order,
drawn up at the moment, for the original document could not be found. It read as
follows:
"Representatives of the people! your labors are nearly ended. A great crime has
been committed. Louis has fled, abandoning his post. The country is on the
verge of ruin. The king has been arrested, brought back to Paris, and the people
demand that he be tried. You declare that he shall be king. The people do not
wish it, and therefore annul your decree. The king has been carried off by the
two hundred and ninety-two aristocrats who have themselves declared that they
have no longer a voice in the National Assembly. Your decree is annulled,
because it is in opposition to the voice of the people, your sovereign. Repeal it.
The king has abdicated by crime. Receive his abdication."
Nothing could be more execrable than this usurpation of authority by the mob.
The Assembly was composed of the representatives of twenty-five millions of
people, acting under the calm deliberation which the forms of law exacted. And
here six thousand men, women, and boys, belched forth perhaps from the dens of
infamy in Paris, and arming themselves with a mob of fifty thousand of the most
degraded of the populace of a great city, assumed to be the nation—the law
makers and the law executors of the kingdom of France.[293]
The municipality ordered La Fayette, with a detachment of the National Guard,
to proceed to the scene of tumult and disperse the rioters. The moment the
soldiers appeared they were received with hisses, shouts, and a shower of stones
from the populace. Several of the stones struck La Fayette, and he narrowly
escaped death from a pistol-shot fired at him. The attitude of the mob was so
threatening that La Fayette retired for a stronger force. He soon returned,
accompanied by Bailly, the mayor of the city, and all the municipal authorities,
and followed by ten thousand of the National Guard. The red flag, which
proclaimed that the city was placed under martial law, was now floating from the
Hôtel de Ville. The tramp of ten thousand men,[294] with the rolling of artillery
and the beating of four hundred drums, arrested the attention of the throng. The
troops, debouching by three openings which intersected the glacis, were, as by
magic, drawn up facing the throng. M. Bailly, upon horseback, displayed the red
flag, in accordance with the Riot Act law, and ordered the mob to disperse.[295]
The response was a shout from fifty thousand men, women, and boys of "Down
with the red flag! Down with Bailly! Death to La Fayette!" The clamor became
hideous, and a shower of mud and stones fell upon La Fayette and the mayor,
and several pistol-shots from a distance were discharged at them. The crowd,
accustomed to lawlessness, did not believe that the municipal government would
dare to order the soldiers to fire.
pic
PUBLICATION OF MARTIAL LAW ON THE FIELD OF MARS, JULY 17, 1791.
La Fayette, with mistaken humanity, ordered the advance guard to fire into the
air. The harmless volley was followed by shouts of derision and defiance. It now
became necessary to give the fatal order. One volley swept the field. The crash
was followed by a shriek, as four hundred dead or wounded fell upon the plain,
and as the smoke passed away the whole tumultuous mass was seen flying in
terror over the embankments and through the avenues. The artillerymen, with the
coolness of trained soldiers, were just upon the point of opening their fire of
grapeshot upon the panic-stricken fugitives, when La Fayette, unable to make his
voice heard through the uproar, heroically threw himself before the cannon, and
thus saved the lives of thousands. The National Guard, saddened by the
performance of a duty as painful as it was imperious, returned in the evening
through the dark streets of Paris and dispersed to their homes.[296]
The next day M. Bailly appeared before the Assembly, and, in terms of dignity
and manly sorrow, reported the triumph of the law. Both the National Assembly
and the municipality of Paris voted their cordial approval of the conduct of
Bailly and La Fayette. The Jacobin press, however, gave utterance to the fiercest
invectives. Bailly and La Fayette were denounced as murderers, and every effort
was made to exasperate the passions of the populace.
Amid such scenes of agitation and violence the Assembly concluded its task of
forming a constitution. The important document, which was but partially
finished at the great celebration on the 14th of July, 1790, was now completed.
None were, however, fully satisfied with the Constitution. The aristocratic party
abhorred the democratic spirit with which it was pervaded, and yet wished to
make it still more obnoxiously democratic, that monarchical Europe might be
more thoroughly exasperated. The Jacobins held it up to derision and execration
because it was not democratic enough. The moderate party, represented by such
men as La Fayette and Barnave, wished to invest the king with more power, but
dared not attempt any revision of the Constitution, with the aristocrats and the
Jacobins both ready to combine against them.
Napoleon was at this time a young officer in the army, twenty-three years of age.
His brother Joseph was studying law in Italy. The whole family had warmly
espoused the popular cause. From the beginning Napoleon was the ardent
advocate of equal rights, and the determined foe of mob violence. At this early
period of the Revolution, he expressed the views to which he adhered through
the whole of his career.
There was about this time a large party given by M. Necker. All the illustrious
men and women of Paris were present. The youthful Napoleon, then quite a boy
in appearance, and almost a stranger in Paris, was introduced to this brilliant
assembly by his friend the Abbé Raynal. The genius of Napoleon, and his
commanding conversational eloquence, soon drew around him quite a group.
"Who is that young man," inquired the proud Alfieri, "who has collected such a
group around him?"
"He is," replied the abbé, "a protégé of mine, and a young man of extraordinary
talent. He is very industrious, well read, and has made remarkable attainments in
history, mathematics, and all military science."
The Bishop of Autun commended the soldiers for having refused to obey their
officers, who had ordered them, on a certain occasion, by a discharge of
musketry, to disperse a mob.
"Excuse me, my lord," said Napoleon, in tones of earnestness which arrested
general attention, "if I venture to interrupt you, but, as I am an officer, I must
claim the privilege of expressing my sentiments. It is true that I am young, and it
may appear presumptuous in me to address so many distinguished men. But
during the past three years I have paid intense attention to our political troubles.
I see with sorrow the state of our country, and I will incur censure rather than
pass unnoticed principles which are not only unsound, but which are subversive
of all government.
"As much as any I desire to see all abuses, antiquated privileges, and usurped
rights annulled. Nay, as I am at the commencement of my career, it will be my
best policy, as well as my duty, to support the progress of popular institutions,
and to promote reform in every branch of the public administration. But as, in
the last twelve months, I have witnessed repeated alarming popular disturbances,
and have seen our best men divided into factions which threaten to be
irreconcilable, I sincerely believe that now, more than ever, a strict discipline in
the army is absolutely necessary for the safety of our constitutional government
and for the maintenance of order.
"Nay, if our troops are not compelled unhesitatingly to obey the commands of
the executive, we shall be exposed to the blind fury of democratic passions
which will render France the most miserable country on the globe. The ministry
may be assured that, if the daily-increasing arrogance of the Parisian mob is not
repressed by a strong arm and social order rightly maintained, we shall see not
only this capital but every other city in France thrown into a state of
indescribable anarchy, while the real friends of liberty, the enlightened patriots
now working for the best good of our country, will sink beneath a set of
demagogues who, with louder cries for freedom on their tongues, will be in
reality but a horde of savages, worse than the Neros of old."[297]
The whole future career of Napoleon was in consistency with the spirit of these
remarks. "I frankly declare," said Napoleon, subsequently, "that if I were
compelled to choose between the old monarchy and Jacobin misrule, I should
infinitely prefer the former."
On the 3d of September the Constitution was presented to the king for his
acceptance with imposing ceremonies.[298] At nine o'clock in the evening a
deputation left the chamber of the Assembly, and, escorted by a numerous and
brilliant guard of honor, entered the Chateau of the Tuileries. The multitudes
who thronged the way applauded loudly. The king, surrounded by his ministers
and other high officers of the kingdom, received the deputation in his councilchamber.
M. Thouret, president of the commission, presented the Constitution to
the king, saying,
"Sire! the representatives of the nation come to present to your majesty the
constitutional act which consecrates the indefeasible rights of the French people,
which gives to the throne its true dignity, and regenerates the government of the
empire."
The king, with a countenance expressive of satisfaction, received the document,
and replied that he would examine it, and, after the shortest possible delay,
communicate his decision to the Assembly. On the 13th he sent a message to the
Assembly, which Barnave had assisted him in drawing up, and which contained
the following conciliatory and noble sentiments:
"I have examined the Constitution. I accept it and will carry it into execution.
The will of the people is no longer doubtful to me, and therefore I accept the
Constitution. I freely renounce the co-operation I had claimed in this work, and I
declare that when I have renounced it no other but myself has any right to claim
it. Let the absent who are restrained by the fear of persecutions return to their
country in safety. Let us consent to a mutual forgiveness of the past and
obliterate all accusations arising from the events of the Revolution in a general
reconciliation. I do not refer to those which have been caused by an attachment
to me. Can you see any guilt in them? I will present myself to-morrow at noon to
the National Assembly, and take oath to the Constitution in the very place where
it has been drawn up."
This frank and cordial assent was unanticipated. It created a burst of
extraordinary joy. La Fayette, in response to the suggestion of the king,
immediately proposed a general amnesty for all acts connected with the
Revolution. The motion was carried by acclaim. For a moment all parties
seemed again to be united, prisons were thrown open, captives liberated, and
shouts of fraternity and happiness resounded through Paris.
The next day the king went to the Assembly and took his seat by the side of the
president. He was received by all the members standing, and they remained
standing while he addressed them. With the most earnest expression of sincerity
and satisfaction, the king said,
"I come to consecrate solemnly here the acceptance I have given to the
Constitutional Act. I swear to be faithful to the nation and the law, and to employ
all the powers delegated to me for maintaining the Constitution and carrying its
decrees into effect. May this great and memorable epoch be that of the reestablishment
of peace, and become the gage of the happiness of the people and
the prosperity of the empire."
As the king withdrew the whole Assembly enthusiastically escorted him to his
palace. But it was a bitter trial for the once absolute monarch to lay aside his
unlimited power and become a constitutional king. The monarch, though feeling
humiliated, was still enabled to maintain his aspect of smiles and composure
until he reached the privacy of his own apartment. He then threw himself into a
chair, and, losing all control, burst into tears.[299] A weeping king excites
universal sympathy. The heroic struggles of twenty millions of people to gain
their liberties also secure the sympathy and the admiration of every noble heart.
On the 18th of November the Constitution was proclaimed in the streets of Paris.
Every thing was done which art could devise to invest the scene with splendor.
pic
PROCLAMATION OF THE CONSTITUTION IN THE MARKET-PLACE.
Paris was again in a delirium of joy. The bells rang, salvos of artillery were fired,
and the acclamations of hundreds of thousands, blending with peals of music
from martial bands, filled the air with a confusion of all the sounds of exultation.
The people were never weary of calling the king, the queen, the children, to the
windows of the palace, and whenever they appeared they were greeted with
outbursts of love and joy.[300]
On the 18th there was another magnificent festival on the Field of Mars. The
Constitution was read to the people. It was accepted by them with the
simultaneous shout from three hundred thousand voices of "Vive la Nation! Vive
le Roi!" No discordant cry was heard. "After the tempest, those who have been
beaten by it, as well as those who have not suffered, enjoy in common the
serenity of the sky." In the evening Paris and all France blazed with illuminations
and resounded with the shout of enfranchised millions. Balloons rose, from
which copies of the Constitution were scattered as snow-flakes upon the
multitude. The Elysian Fields, from the Arc de l'Etoile to the Tuileries, was
brilliant with garlands and stars and pyramids of flame. Every tree blazed with
quivering tongues of fire. Majestic orchestras pealed forth the notes of national
triumph, and a multitude which no man could number filled that most
magnificent avenue of Europe with plays, dances, shouts, and songs of
exultation.
La Fayette, on his well-known white charger, rode at the head of his staff
through the almost impenetrable throng, accompanied by the king, the queen,
and their children. Enthusiasm now reached its culminating point. Hats were
thrown into the air, and from the whole mighty mass, as by electric sympathy,
rose the cry "Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! Vive le Dauphin!"
The king and queen were overjoyed in view of the happiness of the people, and
of the love thus spontaneously and enthusiastically manifested for the royal
family. The queen was bewildered by so marvelous a change. But four weeks
before the royal family were conducted as captives through that same avenue,
surrounded by the same countless throng, and not a voice bade them welcome.
They could then read in every eye the expression of hatred and defiance. The
contrast led the queen to exclaim, "They are no longer the same people." Even
her proud heart was touched, and she, for the first time, began to feel some
respect for popular rights. Returning to the palace, of her own accord she
stepped out upon the balcony, and presented her children to the crowd who
thronged the terrace. They received such greeting as can only come from hearts
glowing with sincerity and joy. These days of rejoicing were terminated by an
offering of thanksgiving to God, as the sublime chant of the Te Deum was sung
in the cathedral of Nôtre Dame.
The Constituent Assembly, having now completed its task, prepared to dissolve.
As a conclusive reply to all who had accused it of ambitious designs to
perpetuate its powers, and as a magnanimous display of patriotic
disinterestedness, it decreed that none of its members should be re-eligible to the
next Legislature.
At three o'clock in the afternoon of the 30th of September, the king, surrounded
by his ministers, entered the Assembly. He was no longer the hostage of the
nation, but its recognized sovereign; the guard which the law assigned him being
now placed under his own command. Upon his entrance the applause was so
enthusiastic and prolonged that for some time he was unable to commence
speaking. He then said,
"Gentlemen, after the completion of the Constitution, you have resolved on today
for the termination of your labors. I will exercise all the power confided to
me in assuring to the Constitution the respect and obedience which is its due. For
you, gentlemen, who, during a long and painful career, have evinced an
indefatigable zeal in your labors, there remains a last duty to fulfill, when you
are scattered over the face of the empire. It is to enlighten your fellow-citizens as
to the spirit of the laws you have made; to purify and unite opinions by the
example you will give to the love of order and submission to the laws. Be, on
your return to your homes, the interpreters of my sentiments to your fellowcitizens.
Tell them that the king will always be their first and most faithful
friend; that he desires to be loved by them, and can only be happy with them and
by them."
The king left the hall amid the loudest acclamations. They were the last with
which he was greeted. Thouret, the president of the Assembly, as soon as the
king had retired, said in a loud voice, "The Constituent Assembly pronounces its
mission accomplished, and that its sittings now terminate." Thus closed the truly
patriotic Assembly. It had accomplished the greatest and the most glorious
revolution ever achieved in so short a time, and with so little violence.
Repressing alike the despotism of aristocracy and the lawlessness of the mob, it
established a constitution containing the essential elements of liberty protected
by law. Under this constitution France might have advanced in prosperity. But
the aristocrat and the Jacobin combined in its overthrow. They were fatally
successful in their efforts.
It is interesting to observe how differently the same events were regarded by
different minds. Bertrand de Moleville, a warm partisan of the aristocracy, says,
"Thus terminated this guilty Assembly, whose vanity, ambition, cupidity,
ingratitude, ignorance, and audacity have overturned the most ancient and the
noblest monarchy of Europe, and rendered France the theatre of every crime, of
every calamity, and of the most horrible catastrophe. Can these treacherous
representatives ever justify themselves in the eyes of the nation for having so
unworthily abused their confidence and their powers?"
On the other hand, the democratic historians, the "Two Friends of Liberty," while
regretting that the Constitution was not more thoroughly democratic, say,
"The Constitution of 1791, with all its faults, forever deserves the gratitude of
the French people, because it has destroyed, never to return, every trace of
feudalism, imposts the most fatal to agriculture, the privileges of particular
persons, the usurpations of the priesthood over the civil power, and the proud
pretensions of ancient corporations; because it has realized what philosophy for
ages has in vain wished, and what monarchs the most absolute have never dared
to undertake; and because it has established that uniformity which no one could
have ever hoped for in an empire formed by gradual accretions from time to
time, and with which, under a good government, there is no prosperity which
France may not realize."
But whatever may be the estimate which political partisans may place upon the
labors of the Assembly, no intelligent man will now deny that the great majority
of that body were true patriots, sincerely desiring the welfare of their country. It
will be admitted by all that they abolished judicial torture, placed all men upon
the basis of equality in the eye of the law, annulled obnoxious privileges,
introduced vast reform into commercial jurisprudence, established liberty of
worship and of conscience, suppressed monastic vows, abolished the execrable
system of lettres de cachet, rendered personal liberty sacred, introduced equality
of taxation, and swept away those provincial jealousies and that interior line of
custom-houses which had for ages seriously embarrassed the internal trade of the
kingdom. All feudal rights were abrogated, industry encouraged, and the citizens
of the kingdom were enrolled into a National Guard, for the preservation of
domestic peace and to resist aggression.
This most noble reform combined Europe assailed with all its marshaled
bayonets. The crime deluged the Continent in woe. After nearly a quarter of a
century of conflagration and carnage, French liberty was trampled into the
bloody mire of Waterloo, and the Old Régime was reinstated.
FOOTNOTES:
[287] "Je connais vos moyens de defense; ils sont nul. Et votre châtiment servira d'exemple aux autres
peuples. Voilà ce que voit vous dire un homme qui n'a pour vous et votre peuple qu'indignation et horreur.
Je connais les chemins; je guiderais les armées étrangères qui vous attaqueront. Si l'on ôte un seul cheven
de la tête de mon roi, il ne restera pas pièrre sur pièrre à Paris. Adieu, messieurs."—Histoire de la
Revolution Française, par Villaumé, p. 160.
[288] The Assembly, while exonerating the king, condemned Bouillé and three Guards du Corps who
accompanied the king in his flight. It is impossible to refute the logic with which Robespierre opposed this
decision. "The measures you propose," he said, "can not but dishonor you. If you adopt them, I demand to
declare myself the advocate of all the accused. I will be the defender of the three Guards du Corps, the
governess, even of Monsieur de Bouillé. By the principles of your committee, no crime has been
committed. Where there is no crime there can be no accomplices. Gentlemen, to visit the weaker culprit
when the greater one escapes is cowardice. You must condemn all or acquit all." To this no reply was made.
The Assembly voted.
[289] "The Republican party now began to appear. The struggle, which lay at first between the Assembly
and the court, then between the Constitutionalists and the aristocrats, was now about to commence between
the Constitutionalists and the Republicans."—Mignet, p. 104.
[290] Villiaumé, p. 112; Desodoards, p. 42.
[291] Hist. de la Rev. Fr., par Villiaumé, p. 112. "The Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, and the
Count d'Artois met at Pilnitz, where they made the famous declaration of the 27th of August, which, far
from improving the condition of the king, would have imperiled him, had not the Assembly, in its wisdom,
continued to follow out its new designs, regardless at once of the clamors of the multitude at home and of
the foreign powers."—Mignet, p. 107.
[292] Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 49.
[293] "It is easy to discern how many a hasty and tremulous hand has traced the witness of its fury or
ignorance upon this document. Many were even unable to write. A circle of ink with a cross in the centre
marks their anonymous adhesion to the petition. Some female names are to be seen, and numerous names
of children are discernible from the inaccuracy of their hand, guided by another."—History of the
Girondists, Lamartine, vol. i., p. 125.
This document is still preserved in the archives of the municipality of Paris. On it may be read the names of
Chaumette, Maillard, Hebert, Hauriot, Santerre, and others who subsequently became most conspicuous in
deeds of cruelty and infamy.
[294] History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. i., p. 126.
[295] The Riot Act established by the Constitution was a great improvement upon the Riot Act of England.
It declared that the municipal officers, if the public peace is endangered, shall declare that military force
must be produced; and the signal of this declaration shall be a red flag upon the Hôtel de Ville, and then
carrying before them a red flag through the streets, wherever they, with their armed force, go. On the
appearance of the red flag, all crowds refusing instantly to disperse shall be held criminal, and shall be
liable to be dispersed by force. In a crowd a voice can not always be heard, but a red flag can always be
seen. The crowd, though thus dispersed, were authorized to depute six persons to state their grievance to the
government.
[296] There are many conflicting partisan accounts of this event. The most careful and thorough
investigation has led me to the statement given above. When the Jacobins came into power they sent Bailly
to the guillotine for this noble deed. La Fayette would have perished with him had he not been sheltered in
the dungeons of Olmutz. Bailly, in his narrative of this affair, says that there were but twelve killed and
about as many wounded.
[297] The narrative of this interview is given in full in Chambers' Edinburgh Journal. It was communicated
to that journal by an Italian gentleman, a pupil of Condorcet, who was present on the occasion.
[298] The Constitution was commenced the 17th of June, 1789, and completed the 3d of September, 1791.
[299] Madame Campan's Memoirs, vol. ii., p. 157.
[300] All contemporary history unites in testifying to the enthusiasm displayed on this occasion.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE APPROACH OF WAR.
Sentiments of the King and Queen upon the Constitution.—The Legislative
Assembly.—Its democratic Spirit.—The King's Speech.—Painful Scene.—
The Queen plans Escape.—Riot in the Theatre.—Infatuation of the
Aristocrats.—Insult to the Duke of Orleans.—Embarrassment of the Allies.
—Replies to the King from the European Powers.—The Emigrants at
Coblentz.—The King's Veto.—Letters of the King to his Brothers.—Their
Replies.—Cruel Edicts.—Pétion chosen Mayor.—The King visits the
Assembly.—Rise of the Republican Party.
THE monarch of France, though deprived of absolute power, was still in the
enjoyment of extensive prerogatives. The Assembly had conferred upon him the
title of King of the French, an annual income of five millions of dollars, the
command of the armies, and the right of suspending the national decrees. The
king and queen were probably at this time sincere in their resolve to be resigned
to the change, and to accept the Constitution. In the first interview which
Bertrand de Moleville, a Royalist whom the king had appointed Minister of
Marine, had with the king, the following remarks were made by the monarch:
"In my opinion the Constitution has serious defects, and if I had been at liberty
to address some observations to the Assembly, very beneficial reforms might
have resulted from them. But now it is too late, and I have accepted it, such as it
is. I have sworn to cause it to be executed, and I ought to be, and will be, strictly
faithful to my oath."
"But may I be permitted," inquired the minister, "to ask your majesty if the
queen's opinion on this point agrees with the king's?"
"Yes, precisely," said the king; "she will tell you so herself."
"I went down stairs," continues Bertrand de Moleville in his interesting
narrative, "to the queen, who, after declaring with extreme kindness that she, as
well as the king, felt under much obligation to me for having accepted the
ministry under such critical circumstances, added these words:
"'The king has acquainted you with his intentions relative to the Constitution. Do
you think that the only plan he has to follow is to adhere to his oath?'
"'Most certainly, madam,' I replied.
"'Well, then,' said the queen, 'be assured that nothing shall induce us to change.
Come, M. Bertrand, courage! I hope that with patience, firmness, and
perseverance, all is not yet lost.'"[301]
Just before the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, elections had been held,
in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, to choose the first
Legislative Assembly. This legislature was to be renewed every two years. No
member of the Constitutional Assembly was eligible. The Legislative Assembly,
consequently, was composed mostly of obscure men with but little political
experience. They numbered seven hundred and forty-five.
The Legislative Assembly was convened the 1st day of October, the day after the
dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, and in the hall which had been
occupied by that body.[302] At its first sitting it was observed that the exterior
aspect of the Assembly had greatly changed; that nearly all the white heads had
disappeared; and that France had fallen into the hands of young men. Sixty of
the deputies were under twenty-six years of age. The spirit of the new Assembly
was developed in its first decrees. A deputation was sent to inform the king that
the Assembly was organized. The president of the deputation, in conformity with
court etiquette, approached the king, and, when at four paces distance, bowed
and said,
"Sire, the Assembly is formed, and has deputed us to inform your majesty."
Upon reporting the result of their mission, some of the deputies were offended
that the ancient titles of royalty had been retained.
"I demand," cried one, "that this title of majesty be no longer employed."
"I demand," exclaimed another, "that this title of Sire be abolished. It is only an
abbreviation of Seigneur, which recognizes a sovereignty in the man to whom it
is given. There is no other majesty here than that of the law and the people. Let
us leave the king no other title than that of King of the French."
In the room there was a gilded chair, raised above the seat of the president,
which was occupied by the king when he attended the Assembly. It had always
been a respectful custom for the members to remain uncovered when the king
was present, and to stand while he addressed them. It was the custom for the
king, in addressing the Assembly, to be seated and to wear his hat.
"Let this scandalous gilded chair be removed," another said. "Let an equality
exist between us and the king as regards ceremony. When he is uncovered and
standing, let us stand and uncover our heads. When he is covered and seated, let
us sit and wear our hats."
These decrees, abolishing the respect due to rank, and the courtesies so essential
to mitigate the ferocity of political strife, were promptly passed. The
Constitutional party throughout France were generally mortified and alarmed,
and the king was deeply wounded. He declared that the Constitution did not
require of him to expose the monarchical dignity to insult, and that he would not
preside at the opening of the legislative body in person, but would assign the
duty to his ministers.[303] Alarmed by the decision of the king and by the
indications of public disapproval, the Assembly, after a debate of two days,
repealed the obnoxious decrees.
The Jacobins regarded the repeal as a defeat, and in the Assembly, in their clubs,
and in their journals, did what they could to rouse the indignation of the
populace. The royalist journals also united with them in the attempt to
overwhelm this return to moderation with derision. "See," they cried, "how
contemptible is this revolution; how conscious of its own weakness. See, in two
days, how often it has given itself the lie." The Royalists still persisted in their
endeavor to goad the revolutionary party to every conceivable outrage, that
Europe might be more effectually roused to crush the Revolution.[304]
On the 7th the king proceeded to the Assembly. He was received, apparently,
with unanimous applause, some shouting energetically "Vive le Roi!" and others,
still more energetically, "Vive sa majesté!" The king's speech was conciliatory,
and was received with warm approval. The members of the Assembly, however,
retained their seats while the king was addressing them. Louis regarded this as
an insult, and it wounded him most keenly.
The queen attended the sitting in a private box. The disrespect with which the
king was treated pierced her very soul. She sat as in a stupor of silence, her
countenance, pallid and wan, betraying the bitterness of her anguish. The king,
upon leaving the Assembly, hastened immediately to the private apartment of the
queen. He was so pale and agitated that the queen uttered an exclamation of
surprise. The unhappy monarch threw himself upon a sofa, and, pressing a
handkerchief to his eyes, said,
"All is lost! Ah! madam, and you are witness to this humiliation. What! you are
come to France to see—"
"These words," writes Madame Campan, "were interrupted by sobs. The queen
threw herself upon her knees before him, and pressed him in her arms. I
remained with them, not from any blamable curiosity, but from a stupefaction
which rendered me incapable of determining what I ought to do. The queen said
to me, 'Oh go, go,' with an accent which expressed, 'Do not remain to witness the
dejection and despair of your sovereign.' I withdrew, struck with the contrast
between the shouts of joy without the palace, and the profound grief which
oppressed the sovereigns within."
The queen resolved immediately to leave Paris and to return to her friends in
Vienna, that from the heart of Austria she might plan for the recovery of the
throne. The king so far fell in with this plan as to write a letter which M.
Goguelat was to take to the emperor. During the whole day the garden and courtyard
of the Tuileries were thronged, and the rejoicing shouts of the people filled
the air. The ignorant populace, believing that the king and the queen shared their
joy, called loudly for them to take an airing in their carriage in the Elysian
Fields. It was not deemed prudent to decline. With heavy hearts they entered
their carriage, and rode slowly along the magnificent avenue, escorted by the
officers of the Parisian army. Here a new insult awaited them. Though they were
repeatedly greeted with shouts of "Vive le Roi!" a gigantic man, with stentorian
voice, kept near the carriage window, ever interrupting those shouts with the cry,
"No, don't believe them. Vive la Nation!" This one ill-omened voice, incessantly
reiterated, sank deep into their hearts, and obliterated all impressions of public
acclaim. In the deepest dejection they returned to the palace.[305]
That night Paris blazed with illuminations, and the shouts of joyful revelry filled
all the streets; but in these resounding plaudits the queen heard but the deathknell
of the monarchy, and, in the retirement of her boudoir, she was at midnight
planning her escape from France.
It was deemed by the king and queen of the utmost importance to assume
publicly the appearance of content. A few evenings after this, the royal family
attended the Théâtre Italien. As Madame Duguzon sang the words, "Ah! how I
love my mistress," she turned to the royal box, and gracefully courtesied to the
queen. Immediately many Jacobins in the pit shouted, "No mistress! no master!
liberty!" This caused others to shout, "Long live the king! long live the queen!"
Still more energetically the Jacobins replied, "No king! no queen!" In an instant
the theatre was thrown into a Babel of tumult. The infuriated antagonists from
words proceeded to blows, and a fierce fight took place under the eyes of the
royal family. News of the affray spread rapidly through Paris, and the excitable
mob was rapidly gathering, when the royal guards surrounded the king and
queen and bore them safely to the palace. This was the last time the royal family
ventured into the theatre.[306]
The queen was all this time carrying on a private correspondence with the
foreign powers in cipher, and through her agents was conferring with William
Pitt in London. "The queen told me," writes Madam Campan, "that her secret
envoy was returned from London, and that all he had been able to wring from
Pitt, whom he found alarmingly reserved, was, that he would not suffer the
French monarchy to fall; that to suffer the revolutionary spirit to erect an
organized republic in France would be a great error as regarding the tranquillity
of Europe."[307]
The queen complained that she herself was greatly embarrassed by the arrogance
of the nobles. "When I do any thing," she said to Madame Campan, "which the
noblesse do not like, I am treated with marked neglect. No one will come to my
card-parties, and the king is left in solitude."[308]
The Royalists, indeed, seem to have been abandoned to utter infatuation. They
did every thing in their power to insult and exasperate those who were not their
political confederates. The Duke of Orleans went to the Tuileries to attend the
king's levee. The courtiers who thronged the anterooms, as soon as he entered,
crowded around him, hustled him about, trod on his toes, and punched him with
their elbows. "Gentlemen," they shouted to each other, "watch the dishes!"
implying that the duke was provided with poison to sprinkle upon the
refreshments. The duke was at last compelled to retire without seeing the royal
family. The crowd followed him to the staircase, and, as he descended, spit upon
him, covering his head and clothes with saliva. The duke supposed, though
erroneously, that the king and queen instigated this unpardonable outrage. It is
not strange that this man, when his hour of power came, voted to send the king
to the guillotine.[309]
The queen was unrelenting in her hostility to La Fayette, and often treated him
with the most irritating rudeness. "Her aversion," says Madame Campan, "for the
general increased daily, and grew so powerful that when, toward the end of the
Revolution, he seemed willing to support the tottering throne she could never
bring herself to incur so great an obligation to him."[310] On one occasion La
Fayette met the queen in a private interview, while his aids waited for him in the
saloon. Some of the ladies of the court, to insult La Fayette and his aids, said
loudly, "It is very alarming to see the queen alone with a rebel and a brigand."
The feelings of the king were now so outraged that he could not cheerfully
persevere in his resolves to maintain the new order of affairs. The allied
sovereigns were, however, so embarrassed by the acceptance of the Constitution
by the king, and by the reiterated declaration of the king that he accepted and
adopted the whole system of governmental reform, that they hesitated for a time
to carry into execution the declaration of Pilnitz. Louis XVI. notified all the
courts of Europe of the change which had been introduced into the government
of France, and sent to them all, with much ceremonial pomp, a copy of the
Constitution elegantly engrossed upon satin paper. The allies could no longer
pretend that they were waging war against a revolted people. It was now
necessary, if they continued hostile, to assail the legitimate king, and to deny, in
the face of the world, that the government of France had any right to mitigate the
severity of its despotism.
The courts of Europe were quite bewildered by the new aspect which affairs thus
assumed. It was necessary for them to take some notice of the courteous
communication which had been transmitted to them. Leopold of Austria seemed
disposed to give up the conflict, thinking that the safety of his sister Marie
Antoinette would be promoted by peace. He therefore returned a pacific answer.
Prussia and England sent back courteous replies with assurances of their
amicable intentions. Holland, the Italian principalities, and Switzerland assumed
a friendly attitude. Russia was cold, haughty, and reserved. Gustavus of Sweden
returned the insulting reply that the King of France was a prisoner, and that his
assent to the Constitution was obtained upon compulsion, and therefore deserved
no respect from the foreign powers.[311] The Electors of Treves and of Mentz, in
whose territories the emigrants had mostly taken refuge, returned evasive and
unsatisfactory replies. Spain, also, while declaring that she had no wish to
disturb the internal tranquillity of France, could not conceal her displeasure that
free institutions were established so near her borders.
The emigrants, however, were still rallying at Coblentz and making formidable
preparations for war. The king was vacillating. It is certain that he sent,
apparently, the most sincere injunctions to the emigrants at Coblentz to disband
and to return to France, accepting the new order of things. It is equally certain
that he kept up a private correspondence with the emigrants, encouraging them
to persevere and to march to his rescue.[312]
This hostile gathering at Coblentz, ever threatening the kingdom with invasion,
kept France in a continual state of ferment. The Minister of War reported to the
Assembly that nineteen hundred of the officers of the army had deserted their
posts and joined the menacing foe. After a long and very anxious debate, a
decree was passed declaring that the French emigrants assembled at Coblentz
were believed to be conspiring against France; that if, on the 1st of January next,
they still continued assembled, they should be declared guilty of conspiracy,
prosecuted as such, and punished with death; and that the revenues of those who
refused to comply with this decree should be levied, during their lives, for the
benefit of the nation, without prejudice to the rights of wives, children, and
lawful creditors.[313]
The king, on the 10th of November, returned this law with his veto. It was an
imposing scene. All the ministers of the king, in a body, went to the Assembly. It
was generally understood that the power of the veto was to be exercised.
Breathless silence pervaded the Assembly. The bill was returned to the president
with the official formula, "The king will examine it." Loud murmurs immediately
rose from all parts of the house, and the ministers retired, leaving the Assembly
in deep irritation. The conviction was strengthened that the king was in
sympathy with the conspirators.
To efface this impression the king the next day issued a proclamation to the
emigrants exhorting them to cease to harass France by their threatening attitude,
and like good citizens to return and respect the established laws of their country.
He entreated them not to compel him to employ severe measures against them.
As to the charge that he was deprived of his liberty, he said that the veto which
he had just interposed in their favor was sufficient proof of the freedom of his
actions. At the same time he published two very decisive letters to his two
brothers. To Louis he wrote as follows:
"Paris, November 11, 1791.
"TO LOUIS STANISLAS XAVIER, FRENCH PRINCE, THE KING'S BROTHER,—I wrote
to you, my brother, on the 16th of October last, and you ought not to have
had any doubt of my real sentiments. I am surprised that my letter has not
produced the effect which I had a right to expect from it. In order to recall
you to your duty I have used all the arguments that ought to touch you
most. Your absence is a pretext for all the evil disposed; a sort of excise for
all the deluded French, who imagine that they are serving me by keeping all
France in an alarm and agitation, which are the torment of my life.
"The Revolution is finished. The Constitution is completed. France wills it;
I will maintain it. Upon its consolidation now depends the welfare of the
monarchy. The Constitution has conferred rights upon you; it has attached
to them one condition which you ought to lose no time in fulfilling. Believe
me, brother, and repel the doubts which pains are taken to excite in you
respecting my liberty. I am going to prove to you, by a most solemn act, and
in a circumstance which interests you, that I can act freely. Prove to me that
you are my brother and a Frenchman by complying with my entreaties.
Your proper place is by my side; your interests, your sentiments alike urge
you to come and resume it. I invite you, and, if I may, I order you to do so.
(Signed), LOUIS."
In a similar strain he wrote to his brother Charles. But neither the proclamation
to the emigrants nor the letters to his brothers produced any effect. The Count of
Provence (Louis XVIII.), in his reply, said,
"The order which the letter contains for me to return and resume my place by
your majesty's person is not the free expression of your will. My honor, my duty,
nay, even my affection alike forbid me to obey."
The Count of Artois (Charles X.) replied,
"The decisions referred to in this letter have furnished me with a fresh proof of
the moral and physical captivity in which our enemies dare to hold your majesty.
After this declaration your majesty will think it natural that, faithful to my duty
and the laws of honor, I should not obey orders evidently wrung from you by
violence."
Another very serious difficulty now arose. The Constitution established freedom
of conscience and of worship. It, however, justly required that all governmental
officers should take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution. The Church had
been so long in intimate alliance with the State, that that alliance was not
severed, and the clergy, as public functionaries who received their salaries from
the national treasury, were consequently required to take the oath. Any one was
at liberty to refuse to take this oath. By so doing he merely forfeited employment
by the nation. He was still permitted to perform the functions of the ministry for
any who were disposed to support him as their pastor.
In the Province of Vendée the majority of the clergy refused to take the oath, and
carried with them the immense majority of the simple and superstitious peasants.
The churches in which they had ministered were immediately assigned to other
priests who had taken the oath. The great mass of the people abandoned the
churches and followed their nonjuring pastors to private houses, barns, and into
the fields. Great enthusiasm was excited, and the nonjuring priests endeavored to
excite the people against their colleagues who had taken the oath, and against the
people who accepted their ministrations. Acts of violence were frequent and civil
war was imminent.
The Legislative Assembly was alarmed, and endeavored to meet the difficulty by
adopting measures totally hostile to the free spirit of the Constitution. They
resolved that the nonjuring priests should again be called upon to take the oath of
allegiance to the Constitution; that, if they refused, they should be not only
deprived of all salary, but should be removed from their parishes, and even
imprisoned, if need be, that they might not excite their former parishioners to
civil war. They were also forbidden to exercise the privilege of private worship.
The administrative bodies were required to transmit a list of such priests to the
Assembly, with notes relative to the conduct of each one.
These decrees were surely unconstitutional. The bishops and the priests who
were endangered by them sent to the king an earnest remonstrance against them.
Many of the most influential of the Constitutionalists were opposed to them as
both tyrannical and cruel. The king was so moved that he said to his ministers,
who coincided with him in opinion, "They shall take my life before they shall
compel me to sanction such decrees."
The king returned the bill with his veto, and aggravated the odium this would
naturally excite by retaining, contrary to the solicitations of his best friends,
nonjuring ecclesiastics to perform the religious services of his chapel. Though
we can not commend the prudence we must respect the spirit which impelled
him to say,
"The Constitution decrees freedom of religious worship for every body. The king
is surely entitled to that liberty as much as his subjects."
All argument was on one side, but peril, more powerful than argument, on the
other. "The nonjuring priests," it was exclaimed, "are exciting civil war. The law
of self-defense renders it imperative that we should strike them down."
Upon the completion of the Constitution, La Fayette, emulating the character of
Washington, resigned the command of the National Guard and retired to his
estates. Bailly also resigned his post as mayor of Paris. The command of the
Guard was intrusted to six generals, who were to exercise it in rotation. A new
mayor of Paris was to be chosen. La Fayette was the candidate of the
Constitutionalists, and Pétion of that radical portion of the Republicans who
were termed Jacobins. The aristocracy, with their accustomed infatuation,
supported Pétion with their influence and with a large outlay of money. They
feared that a constitutional monarchy might be sustained, but they believed that
the Jacobins would introduce such anarchy as might secure the recall of the old
monarchy.
"The Marquis de la Fayette," said the queen, "only desires to be Mayor of Paris
that he may be mayor of the palace. Pétion is a Jacobin and a Republican; but he
is a fool, incapable of ever being the leader of a party. He will be a nullity of a
mayor. Besides, it is possible that the knowledge of the interest we take in his
election may bring him over to the king."[314]
Pétion was chosen by a large majority. Bitterly did the king and queen afterward
bewail his election. But thus through all this tragedy did they spurn those who
alone had the heart and the ability to help them.
In the midst of these troubles the most alarming rumors were every day reaching
Paris respecting the threatening aspect of the emigrants. All along the Germanic
frontiers, at Strasbourg, Coblentz, Worms, they were marshaling their battalions
and collecting munitions of war. Exasperated by these persistent and audacious
threats, the Assembly sent a deputation of twenty-four members to the king with
a decree declaring that the Electors of Treves and Mentz, and other princes of the
Germanic empire should be required to break up these hostile assemblages
formed within their territories for the invasion of France. M. de Vaublanc, who
headed the deputation, said to the king,
"Sire, if the French who were driven from their country by the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes had assembled in arms on the frontiers, and had been protected
by Germanic princes, we ask you, sire, what would have been the conduct of
Louis XIV.? Would he have suffered these assemblages? That which he would
have done for the sake of his authority, your majesty can not hesitate to do for
the maintenance of the Constitution."
The king, anxious to regain the ground he had lost by his veto, decided to go to
the Assembly and reply in person to their message. On the evening of the 14th of
December, his coming having been previously announced, he entered the hall.
He was received with the most frigid silence. His speech, however, soon
enkindled enthusiasm and applause.
He assured the Assembly that he warmly sympathized with them in all their
solicitude for the honor of France, that he had already signified to the Electors of
Treves and Mentz that the continued assemblage of troops within their borders
for the invasion of France would be deemed cause for war. He said that he had
written to Leopold, the Emperor of Germany, demanding his interference to
prevent the gathering of troops, hostile to France, within the limits of the
Germanic empire, and concluded with the declaration that he would faithfully
guard the Constitution, and that he appreciated the glory of being the king of a
free people.[315]
This speech was received with great applause, and it was immediately voted that
it should be sent to each of the eighty-three departments of the empire.
Immediately upon the king's retiring, the Count Louis de Narbonne, minister of
war, entered, and informed the Assembly that one hundred thousand men were
immediately to be assembled, by order of the king, upon the Rhine, to repel
invasion; that three generals were appointed to command them—Luckner,
Rochambeau, and La Fayette; that he was about to set out immediately to inspect
the fortresses on the frontiers. At the same time all the diplomatic agents who
were accused of favoring the aristocratic party were removed, and more
democratic officers were appointed in their place. These measures were so
popular, and gave such evidence that the king sincerely intended to defend the
Constitution, that even the obnoxious vetos were accepted without farther
murmurs.
These measures were prosecuted with vigor. Luckner and Rochambeau, having
been appointed marshals of France, hastened to the frontiers. La Fayette soon
followed them. Battalions of the National Guard escorted him as he left Paris,
and he was greeted every where with shouts of applause.
The emigrants were unanimous in their desire for the invasion of France, for the
entire overthrow of the Constitution, and the restoration of the Old Régime.
Leopold of Austria, however, anxious for the safety of his sister Marie
Antoinette, and embarrassed by the king's acceptance of the Constitution, was
desirous of effecting some compromise by which a constitution should be
permitted to France, but one much more aristocratic in its provisions. Gustavus
of Sweden and Catherine of Russia were eager for prompt and energetic war.
Catherine wrote a strong letter to Leopold to rouse him to action.
"The King of Prussia," she wrote, "for a mere incivility offered to his sister, sent
an army into Holland to punish the affront. And will the Emperor of Austria
patiently suffer insults and affronts to be heaped upon his sister, the Queen of
France, the degradation of her rank and dignity, and the overthrow of the throne
of a king who is his brother-in-law and his ally?"[316]
Under this state of affairs, the French embassador, in January, 1792, was
instructed to inform the Austrian government that there was reason to apprehend
that a coalition was being formed against the sovereignty and independence of
France, and to inquire of Leopold whether he did or did not intend to interfere
against the French Revolution. Thus pressed, the Austrian cabinet returned an
answer containing the following avowal:
"When France gave to Europe the spectacle of a lawful king forced by atrocious
violence to fly, protesting solemnly against the acquiescence which they had
extorted from him, and a little afterward stopped and detained prisoner by his
subjects—yes, it then did concern the brother-in-law and the ally of the king to
invite the other powers of Europe to join with him in a declaration to France that
they all view the cause of his most Christian majesty as their own; that they
demand that this prince and his family be set at liberty and have power to go
where they please; and they require for these royal personages inviolability and
due respect, which by the law of nature and nations are due from subjects to their
princes; that they will unite to avenge in the most signal manner every farther
attempt that may be committed, or may be suffered to be committed, against the
liberty, the honor, and the safety of the king, the queen, and the royal family; and
that, finally, they will not acknowledge as constitutional and legally established
in France any laws but those which shall have the voluntary acquiescence of the
king, enjoying perfect liberty. But if, on the other hand, these demands are not
complied with, they will in concert employ all the means in their reach to put a
stop to the scandalous usurpation of power which bears the appearance of an
open rebellion, and which, from the dangers of the example, it concerns all the
governments of Europe to repress."
The Republican party in the Legislative Assembly were called the Girondists
because their leaders were generally from the department of the Gironde. The
evidence to them was conclusive, and is now universally admitted, that the king,
instead of sustaining the Constitution, was conspiring with the emigrants and the
foreign powers for its overthrow. The Girondists, thus assured that the king was
hostile to constitutional liberty while pretending that he was its friend that he
might more effectually assail it, were anxious for his dethronement and for the
establishment of a republic. Candor surely can not censure them. Twenty-five
millions of men were not bound to place their liberties in the hands of a monarch
who was conspiring with foreign foes to enslave them anew.
The Republican party increased so rapidly and swayed such an influence that the
king was compelled early in 1792 to dismiss his Royalist ministers, and to call
into his cabinet the leaders of the Republicans, Dumouriez, Roland, and others.
He was compelled very reluctantly to take this step, and soon by them he was
compelled, with still greater reluctance, to declare war against Austria.
FOOTNOTES:
[301] Bertrand de Moleville, t. vi., p. 22. See also Mémoires de Madame Campan, t. ii., p. 161.
[302] "This Assembly (the Constituent) had consisted of the most imposing body of men that had ever
represented, not only France, but the human race. The men of the Constituent Assembly were not
Frenchmen, they were universal men. They were, and they felt themselves to be, workmen of God, called
by him to restore social reason, and found right and justice throughout the universe. The declaration of the
Rights of Man proves this. Thus there was not one of its apostles who did not proclaim peace among the
nations. Mirabeau, La Fayette, Robespierre himself, erased war from the symbol which they presented to
the nation."—Hist. of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. i., p. 250.
[303] Lamartine, in cautious apology for these decrees, says, "The people was a slave, freed but yesterday,
and who still trembled at the clank of his chains."—Hist. of the Girondists, vol. i., p. 210.
[304] "The aristocratic party preferred any thing, even the Jacobins, to the establishment of the
constitutional laws. The most unbridled disorders seemed preferable, because they buoyed up the hope of a
total change; and, twenty times over, upon occasions when persons but little acquainted with the secret
policy of the court expressed the apprehensions they entertained of the popular societies, the initiated
answered that a sincere Royalist ought to favor the Jacobins."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 162.
[305] "What King Louis is, and can not help being, readers already know. A king who can not take the
Constitution, nor reject the Constitution, nor do any thing at all but miserably ask, 'What shall I
do?'"—Carlyle, History of the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 22.
[306] The king's government hired hand-clappers and applauders. Fifty thousand dollars a month were
devoted to paragraph-writers and journalists. Two hundred and eighty applauders were hired at three
shillings each a day to clap and shout whenever the king made his appearance, and to crowd the galleries of
the Legislative Assembly whenever the king presented himself there. The account-books of this
expenditure still exist.—Montgaillard, vol. iii., p. 141.
[307] Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 189.
[308] Id., 174.
[309] Bertrand Moleville, vol. i., p. 177. Bertrand was an eye-witness of this scene, which he graphically
describes.
[310] Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 127.
[311] The Empress Catharine of Russia wrote to Marie Antoinette a letter with her own hand, containing
the following sentence: "Kings ought to proceed in their career, undisturbed by the cries of the people, as
the moon pursues her course unimpeded by the howling of dogs."—Madame Campan, vol. i., p. 207.
[312] Mémoires de Madame Campan, t. ii., p. 172.
[313] Thiers, vol. i., p. 204.
[314] Bertrand's Private Memoirs, vol. v., p. 106.
[315] There was an earnest debate in February, 1800, in the British House of Commons as to who were the
aggressors in this war. Mr. Pitt denounced the French as the aggressors. Mr. Fox, on the contrary, affirmed
that the war was unavoidable on the part of France from the menacing conduct of the German powers.
[316] Mémoires de Bouillé, p. 314.
CHAPTER XXV.
AGITATION IN PARIS, AND COMMENCEMENT OF HOSTILITIES.
Death of Leopold.—Assassination of Gustavus.—Interview between
Dumouriez and the Queen.—Discussion in the Assembly.—The Duke of
Brunswick.—Interview of Barnave with the Queen.—Interview between
Dumouriez and the King.—Dismissal of M. Roland.—The Palace invaded.
—Fortitude of the King.—Pétion, the Mayor.—Affecting Interview of the
Royal Family.—Remarks of Napoleon.
ON the 1st of March, 1792, the Emperor Leopold died. His son, Francis II., a
young man twenty-four years of age, ascended the throne. The court of Leopold
had been a harem of unblushing sensuality and sin. He did not condescend to
spread any veil over his amours. His attachments were numerous and fugitive,
and his guilty favorites associated with each other and braved the frowns of the
humiliated queen amid the voluptuousness of the palace. At the time of his death
there dwelt with him Donna Maria, a young girl from Tuscany, whose surpassing
charms had given her celebrity throughout Europe as "the beautiful Florentine;"
a Polish girl of great attractions, Mademoiselle Prokache; and the Countess of
Walkenstein, whose charms of person and fascination of manners gave her
celebrity through all the European courts. Upon this latter favorite alone he
lavished gifts, in drafts on the Bank of Vienna, to the amount of two hundred
thousand dollars. There were also various other of these favorites of infamy,
inferior in notoriety and rank. The annals of Roman story may be searched in
vain to find a monarch more utterly profligate. Immediately after his death his
widow said to her son Francis,
"My son, you have before you the sad proofs of your father's disorderly life and
of my long afflictions. Remember nothing of them except my forgiveness and
his virtues. Imitate his great qualities, but beware lest you fall into the same
vices, in order that you may not, in your turn, put to the blush those who
scrutinize your life."
Marie Antoinette doubted not that her cousin Francis would be as devoted to her
interests as her brother Leopold had been. Fifteen days after the death of
Leopold, Gustavus III. of Sweden was assassinated at a masked ball by the
nobles of his court. His death momentarily embarrassed the movements of the
emigrants, for he was actively engaged in raising an army for the invasion of
France.[317]
The allies were now vigorously raising troops and directing their march towards
the frontiers of France. Some hoped that the demonstration would overawe the
French and frighten them into submission. Others were eager, by prompt
invasion, to submit the question to the arbitrament of battle. The Assembly
speedily dispatched to the threatened frontier three armies of defense.
Rochambeau was placed in command of the army of the north, at Flanders,
consisting of 63,000 men; La Fayette was sent to the army of the centre, at Metz,
which was 52,000 strong; Luckner occupied Alsace, with 48,000 troops.[318]
In calling the Girondists into the ministry, General Dumouriez, a brave and
veteran soldier, was appointed to the ministry of foreign affairs. With great vigor
he prosecuted arrangements for the defense of France. In addition to the troops,
amounting to 163,000, stationed along the northwestern frontier from Dunkirk to
Besançon, he raised a fourth army to repel invasion from Spain through the
passes of the Pyrenees.
Dumouriez had acquired great popularity in the club of the Jacobins by
frequenting their meetings, and by wearing the red cap of liberty, an emblem
borrowed from the Phrygians. The queen was highly indignant that one in
sympathy with the Jacobins should be called into the ministry, and, as she was
now heartily in sympathy with the emigrants and the allies, she was provoked by
the vigorous measures adopted to repel them. Dumouriez was a soldier, not a
statesman; a man of heroic character, brave, impulsive, and generous. He had
great power over the mind of the king; and the queen, anxious to see him,
appointed an audience. In the memoirs of Dumouriez we find a narrative of this
interview. Upon being ushered into her apartment, he found the queen, with
flushed cheeks, rapidly pacing the floor, and giving every indication of extreme
excitement. Dumouriez, embarrassed by this aspect of affairs, advanced in
silence to a corner of the fire-place, when the queen turned toward him and
abruptly said, with an air and tone of anger,
"Sir, you are all-powerful at this moment, but it is through the favor of the
people, who soon break their idols in pieces. Your existence depends upon your
conduct. It is said that you possess great abilities. You must be aware that neither
the king nor myself can endure these innovations, nor the Constitution. This I
tell you frankly. Choose your side."
"Madame," Dumouriez replied, "I am deeply pained by the secret which your
majesty has just imparted to me. I will not betray it. But I stand between the king
and my nation, and I belong to my country. Permit me to say that the welfare of
the king, your own, and that of your children, are linked with the Constitution.
You are surrounded by enemies who are sacrificing you to their private interests.
The Constitution, when once in vigor, so far from bringing misery upon the king,
will constitute his happiness and glory. It is absolutely necessary that he should
concur in establishing it solidly and speedily."
The queen could never endure contradiction. Losing all self-control, she
exclaimed, in a loud and angry tone, "The Constitution will not last. Take care of
yourself."
Dumouriez quietly and firmly replied, "Madame, I am past fifty; my life has
been crossed by many perils; and, in accepting the ministry, I was thoroughly
sensible that responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers."
The queen, in the blindness of her passion, saw fit to interpret this remark as an
insinuation that she might cause him to be assassinated. With inflamed cheeks
and tears gushing into her eyes, she replied,
"Nothing more was wanting but to calumniate me. You seem to think me capable
of causing you to be murdered."
The scene had now become painful in the extreme, and Dumouriez, greatly
agitated, answered,
"God preserve me, madame, from doing you so cruel an injury. The character of
your majesty is great and noble. You have given heroic proofs of it which I have
admired, and which have attached me to you. Believe me, I have no interest in
deceiving you. I abhor anarchy and crime as much as you do. But this is not a
transient popular movement, as you seem to think. It is an almost unanimous
insurrection of a mighty nation against inveterate abuses. Great factions fan this
flame. In all of them there are villains and madmen. In the Revolution I keep in
view only the king and the entire nation; all that tends to part them leads to their
mutual ruin. I strive as much as possible to unite them. If I am an obstacle to
your designs, tell me so. I will instantly send my resignation to the king, and
hide myself in some corner to mourn over your fate and that of my country."[319]
This conversation restored Dumouriez to the confidence of the queen, and she
conversed frankly and with a friendly spirit with him upon her griefs and perils.
"You see me," she said, "very sad. I dare not approach the window which looks
into the garden. Yesterday evening I went to the window toward the court just to
take a little air. A gunner of the guard addressed me in terms of vulgar abuse,
adding, 'How I should like to see your head on the point of my bayonet!' In this
horrid garden you see on one side a man, mounted on a chair, reading aloud the
most abominable calumnies against us; on the other, a military man or an abbé
dragged through one of the basins, overwhelmed with abuse, and beaten, while
others are playing at ball, or quietly walking about. What an abode! what a
people!"
The Austrian monarchy, supported by the other powers of Europe, now sent to
France the insolent demand that the French monarchy should be restored almost
to its pristine despotic power; that the three estates of the realm—the clergy, the
nobles, and the tiers état, should be re-established, and that there should be the
restitution of Church property. It is not surprising that an independent nation of
twenty-five millions should have resented such impertinence. There was a
general cry of indignation from the Assembly, which was re-echoed by the
people, and new vigor was infused on both sides into the preparations for the
war.
The king was sorely perplexed. In the event of war, victory would but strengthen
the Revolutionary party; defeat would expose him to the charge of treason in
feebly conducting hostilities. But France would not yield to this insulting foreign
dictation, and the pressure of public opinion fell so strong upon the king that he
was constrained, much against his will, to issue a declaration of war. Pale and
care-worn the king entered the Assembly, and, after presenting through his
minister a report of the demands of Austria, with a faltering voice read his
speech.
"Gentlemen," said he, "you have heard the result of the negotiation in which I
have been engaged with the court of Vienna. The conclusions of the report have
been unanimously adopted by my council. I have myself adopted them. All
would rather have war than see the dignity of the French people any longer
insulted and the national security threatened. Having employed all possible
means to obtain peace, I come now, agreeably to the terms of the Constitution, to
propose to the National Assembly war against the King of Hungary and
Bohemia."[320]
The proposal was received with shouts of "Vive le Roi," and the decree was
passed by a great majority.[321] In the debates which the question of war had
excited, great eloquence was displayed in the Assembly. M. Isnard spoke in
terms of enthusiasm which brought the whole Assembly to their feet.
pic
LOUIS XVI. IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY.
"Capitulations," said he, "are proposed to you. It is proposed to increase the
power of the king—of a man whose will can paralyze that of a whole nation—of
a man who receives thirty millions ($6,000,000) while thousands of citizens are
perishing from want. It is proposed to bring back the nobility. Were all the
nobles on earth to attack us, the French, holding their gold in one hand, and their
sword in the other, would combat that haughty race, and force it to endure the
punishment of equality.
"Tell Europe that you will respect the Constitutions of all other countries, but
that, if a war of kings is raised against France, you will raise a war of people
against kings. The battles which nations fight at the command of despots are like
the blows which two friends, excited by a perfidious instigator, strike at each
other in the dark. The moment a light appears they embrace and take vengeance
on him who deluded them. In like manner, if, at the moment when the hostile
armies shall be engaged with ours, the light of philosophy bursts upon their
sight, the nations will embrace each other before the face of dethroned tyrants, of
consoled earth, and of delighted heaven."[322]
Vergniaud, the illustrious leader of the Gironde, said eloquently, "Our resolution
has spread alarm among all thrones, for it has given an example of the
destruction of the despotism which sustains them. Kings hate our Constitution
because it renders men free, and they would reign over slaves. This hate has
been manifested on the part of the Emperor of Germany by all the measures he
has adopted to disturb us or to strengthen our enemies and encourage those
Frenchmen who have rebelled against the laws of their country.
"Let us demand that the emigrants be dispersed. I might demand that they be
given up to the country they insult and to punishment. But no. If they have been
greedy for our blood, let us not show ourselves greedy for theirs. Their crime is
having wished to destroy their country. Let them be vagrants and wanderers on
the face of the earth, and let their punishment be never to find a country."
The most vigorous preparations were now made on both sides for the
prosecution of the war. Francis of Austria and Frederick of Prussia met the Duke
of Brunswick, Generallissimo of the Confederation, at Frankfort. The duke, who
had married a sister of George III. of England, was an energetic, veteran soldier,
fifty years of age. His head-quarters were at Coblentz, a town at the confluence
of the Moselle and the Rhine, in the state of the Elector of Treves. Twenty-two
thousand French emigrants had assembled there in arms. Seven French princes
of the House of Bourbon were marshaling them for battle against their native
land—to crush the people struggling for liberty—to rivet anew the fetters of the
most execrable despotism. These princes were the two brothers of the king,
Louis and Charles, the one subsequently Louis XVIII., the other Charles X.; the
Duke of Berri and the Duke of Angoulême, sons of Charles; the Prince of
Condé, cousin of the king, his son, the Duke of Bourbon, and his grandson, the
Duke d'Enghien. All the military noblesse of the kingdom, with the exception of
the few who had accepted the Constitution, had deserted their garrisons and
united in the most atrocious act of treason. They were not only ready to march
themselves, but were combining despotic Europe to march with them to crush
the liberties of their country.
The peril of the king was now hourly increasing, for he was playing a double
part. While publicly declaring war he was secretly carrying on a correspondence
with the emigrants and with the foreign powers, encouraging them to make war
upon France. This was known by some, and suspicions of the king's sincerity
were spreading rapidly among the people. He had many papers in his possession,
which, if discovered, would cause his ruin. To conceal them he had an iron chest
built into the thick wall of one of his apartments. This was done by the
confidential locksmith who had been his companion at the forge for ten years.
The wall was painted to resemble large stones. The openings of the panel were
masked in the brown grooves. But after constructing this safe the king was
apprehensive that his locksmith would betray him, and he consequently intrusted
a portfolio containing many of his most important papers to the care of Madame
Campan.
On the 28th of April, one week after the declaration of war, a very ill-advised
attack was made by the French in three detachments upon three separate
positions of the Austrians. But the Austrians, minutely informed of the plan,
were prepared, in stronger numbers, to meet their foes. The undisciplined French
troops were driven back in confusion and shame. They thought that the king had
treacherously ordered them to be led into a snare. The populace generally
adopted the same belief. After this the troops, on both sides, widely dispersed
and poorly provided with ammunition, provisions, and camp-equipage, could
only observe each other for several weeks, and make preparation for the opening
of the campaign.
Suspicions of the insincerity of the king were rapidly spreading among the
people, while those acquainted with the royal family saw plainly that they were
placing all their reliance in hopes of assistance from the armed emigrants.
Barnave, who, since the return from Varennes, had periled his influence and his
life in his endeavor to save the royal family, finding all his efforts rejected, and
that the king and queen were rushing to ruin, solicited a last audience with the
queen.
"Your misfortunes," said he, "and those which I anticipate for France determined
me to sacrifice myself to serve you. I see that my advice does not agree with the
views of your majesties. I augur but little advantage from the plan you are
induced to pursue; you are too remote from your succors; you will be lost before
they reach you. Most ardently do I wish I may be mistaken in so lamentable a
prediction. But I am sure to pay my head for the interest your misfortunes have
raised in me and the services I have sought to render you. I request for my sole
reward the honor of kissing your hand."
The queen, her eyes suffused with tears, presented her hand to Barnave, and he,
with much emotion imprinting a kiss upon it, took his leave. His devotion to the
queen, however, cost him his life. Hardly a year elapsed ere he was led to the
scaffold.
Two decrees had been passed by the Assembly which were quite obnoxious to
the king. One decree enacted that any nonjuring priest who should be denounced
by twenty citizens as endeavoring to excite faction should be banished the
kingdom. The other established a camp of twenty thousand men[323] under the
walls of Paris for its protection. The king, expecting that the foreign armies
would soon arrive and rescue him, put his veto upon both of these measures.
Dumouriez entreated the king to sanction these decrees, but in vain, and he was
compelled to resign his post in the ministry. He was immediately commissioned
to the frontiers to aid in the war against the invaders. As he entered the cabinet
of the king to render in his accounts and to take leave, the king said,
"You go, then, to join the army of Luckner?"
"Yes, sire," replied Dumouriez, "and I am delighted to leave this tumultuous city.
I have but one regret—your majesty is in danger."
"Yes," replied Louis, with a sigh, "I certainly am."
"Ah! sire," returned the minister, "you can no longer suppose that I spoke from
any interested motive. Let me implore you not to persist in your fatal resolution."
"Speak no more of it," said the king, "my part is taken."
"Ah! sire," rejoined Dumouriez, "you said the same when in this very chamber
in the presence of the queen you gave me your word."
"I was wrong then," replied the king, "and I repent that I did so."
"It is now, sire, that you are wrong," continued Dumouriez, "not then. I shall see
you no more. They abuse your religious scruples. They are leading you to a civil
war. You are without force, and you will be overpowered. History will accuse
you of having caused the calamities of France."
"God is my witness," said Louis in tones of the deepest affliction, and at the
same time placing his hands affectionately upon those of Dumouriez, "that I
wish the happiness of France."
Tears gushed into the eyes of Dumouriez, and his voice was broken with
emotion as he replied, "I do not doubt it, sire; but you are answerable to God, not
only for the purity but for the enlightened direction of your intentions. You think
that you are protecting religion, and you are destroying it. The priests will be
massacred. You will lose your crown, perhaps your wife, your children."
There was a moment of silence, during which the king pressed the hand of his
faithful friend; Dumouriez then continued:
"Sire, if all the French knew you as I know you, our calamities would soon be at
an end. You wish the happiness of France. You have been sacrificing yourself to
the nation ever since 1789. Continue to do so, and our troubles will soon cease,
the Constitution will be established, the French will return to their natural
character, and the remainder of your reign will be happy."
"I expect my death," the king rejoined mournfully, "and I forgive my enemies. I
thank you for the sensibility you have shown. You have served me well, and you
have my esteem, and you shall have proofs of it if I am ever to see a better day."
The king then rose, and, to conceal his emotion, went hastily to a window.
Dumouriez gathered up his papers slowly that he might have time to regain his
composure. As he was leaving the room the king again approached him, and in a
tremulous tone said "Adieu! may all happiness attend you." They parted, both in
tears.[324]
M. Roland, Minister of the Interior, presented a letter to the king, urging him to
sanction the decrees, and to adopt a course more in accordance with the spirit of
constitutional liberty. This letter has obtained world-wide celebrity. It was
written by Madame Roland, the wife of the minister, one of the most
extraordinary women of that or any other age. She was, in fact, the soul of the
Republican party. The leaders of that party met every evening in her saloon, and
her sagacity originated the measures which they adopted. She was a woman of
heroic mould, and endowed with wonderful powers of intellect and eloquence.
The letter contained a lively exposition of the peril to which the king was
exposed by opposing the establishment of constitutional liberty in France. The
indignation of the king was aroused by its plain utterance, and he instantly
dismissed the Republican minister, Roland, with his associates, Servan and
Clavieres. Roland presented to the Assembly the letter which had caused his
dismission. It roused the indignation of the Assembly against the king, and
fanned Paris into almost a flame of fury. The letter was printed and copies sent to
the eighty-three departments, and a vote was passed that the three ministers
whom the king had rejected retained the entire confidence of the nation. This
was another accusation against the king, which greatly increased his
unpopularity.
The vetos of the king and the dismissal of the popular ministers roused a new
storm of indignation. Neither the king nor queen could appear at the windows of
the palace without exposing themselves to the most atrocious insults of language
and gesture from the brutal men who ever thronged the garden.[325]
The king lost all heart, and sank into the most deplorable condition of mental
and physical weakness. For ten days he wandered restlessly through his
apartments with a bewildered, vacant stare, without uttering a single word even
to his wife and children, and scarcely making any reply to questions addressed to
him. His sister, Madame Elizabeth, endeavored to interest him in a game of
backgammon. He sat listlessly at the board, mechanically throwing the dice, and
simply repeating the words which belong to the game.
"The queen," says Madame Campan, "roused him from this state, so fatal at a
critical period, when every minute increased the necessity for action, by
throwing herself at his feet, urging every idea calculated to excite alarm, and
employing every affectionate expression. She represented, also, what he owed to
his family, and went so far as to tell him that, if they were doomed to fall, they
ought to fall honorably, and not to wait to be both smothered upon the floor of
their apartment."[326]
On the 20th of June there was an immense gathering of the populace of Paris,
and of delegates from other parts of the kingdom, to celebrate the anniversary of
the meeting in the tennis-court, and to present a petition to the king urging him
to withdraw his vetos. Deep apprehensions were felt in several quarters
respecting the results of the day. Pétion, who was then mayor of the city, did not
venture to prohibit the celebration, but adopted the precaution of doubling the
guard of the Tuileries.
pic
FESTIVAL IN HONOR OF LIBERTY.
Early in the morning the whole city was in commotion, and vast crowds were
hurrying to the various points of concentration. The Assembly met at eleven
o'clock, and was alarmed in view of the possible issues of the day, and agitated
by discordant councils. The session soon became tumultuous, the
Constitutionalists wishing to repress the disorder which the Jacobins were ready
to foment. In this state of affairs a letter was brought into the Assembly from
Santerre, a brewer, who had become notorious as a leader of the populace.[327] It
stated that the citizens were merely celebrating the anniversary of the 20th of
June; that they were calumniated in the Assembly; and that they beg to be
admitted to the bar of the Assembly that they might confound their slanderers.
The reading of this letter vastly increased the tumult. In the midst of cries of
order, and a scene of indescribable confusion, it was announced that the
petitioners, with arms and banners, in a prolonged procession of thirty thousand
men, were approaching the hall. All power of law seemed paralyzed, and
bewilderment and consternation reigned. Soon the head of the procession, like a
lava-flood, crowded in at the door, and, pressed by the resistless mass behind,
was forced slowly through the hall, and made its egress at an opposite portal.
They bore enormous tables, upon which were placed the Declaration of Rights.
Around these tables danced women and boys waving olive-branches and
brandishing pikes, thus emblematically declaring themselves ready for peace or
war.
The enormous procession filed slowly through the hall, shouting in deafening
chorus the famous "Ça ira" (bravely it goes), armed with every conceivable
weapon, and waving banners inscribed with revolutionary devices. Several bore
ragged breeches upon poles, while the crowd around shouted, "Vivent les sans
culottes!" One man bore on the point of a pike a calf's heart, with the inscription
beneath, "The heart of an aristocrat."[328]
For three hours this extraordinary scene continued. The Assembly, agitated with
grief and indignation, had no resource but submission. The mob, having passed
through the hall of the Assembly, now attempted to enter the garden of the
Tuileries, but the gates were closed and defended by numerous detachments of
the National Guard. The king, however, perhaps hoping, by a show of
confidence, to disarm the mob, ordered the garden gates to be thrown open. The
mob, like an inundation, rushed in, and with their mighty mass soon filled the
whole inclosure. Some cried out for the king to show himself. Others shouted,
"Down with the veto!" A few voices kindly gave utterance to the old excuse,
"The king means well, but he is imposed upon."
The mob, which now appeared countless and almost limitless, flowing out from
the garden by the gate leading to the Pont Royal, proceeded along the quay and
through the wickets of the Louvre into the Place du Carrousel. They were soon
gathered in a dense mass before the royal gate of the palace. A strong guard there
refused them admittance. Santerre brought up two pieces of cannon to blow
down the gate. Two municipal officers then strangely ordered the gates to be
thrown open.
The multitude rushed impetuously into the court, filling it in an instant, and
crowding into the vestibule of the palace. It was now four o'clock in the
afternoon. They clambered the magnificent staircase, even dragging a piece of
cannon up to the first floor, and poured in locust legions into every part of the
palace. Wherever they found a door barred against them they speedily, with
swords and hatchets, hewed it down.
The king was in one of the interior apartments, surrounded by some of the
servants of his household and by several officers of the National Guard. His
sister, Madame Elizabeth, happened to be with him; but the queen, who was in
another room with her children, had not been able to join her husband, so sudden
had been the irruption. The crowd arrested her in her flight in the councilchamber.
She begged earnestly to be led to her husband, but the throng pouring
by was so dense that it was impossible. Her friends placed her in a corner, and
rolled the council-table before her as a barrier.
There she stood stupefied with horror, and her eyes suffused with tears, while the
low and brutal masses, with no apparent exasperation, end, or aim, crowded by.
Her daughter clung to her side, terrified and weeping. Her son, but seven years
of age, too young to understand the terrible significance of such an inundation,
gazed upon the spectacle with half alarmed, half pleased wonder. Some of the
palace-guard gathered around the group for its protection. Occasional scowls and
mutterings of defiance and insult alarmed the queen in behalf of her children
rather than herself. Some one handed her son the red cap of the Jacobins. The
queen, hoping that it might appease the mob, placed it upon his head.
Just then Santerre came along, forcing his way with the crowd. He spoke kindly
to the queen, repeating the only excuse which could be made for her, "Madame,
you are imposed upon." Seeing the red cap upon the head of the dauphin, he,
with a sense of delicacy hardly to be expected in so coarse a man, took it and
threw it aside, saying, "The child is stifling." He then urged the people to treat
the queen with respect.
A young girl stopped before the queen and assailed her with an incessant volley
of imprecations.
"Have I ever," said the queen, calmly, "done you any wrong?"
"No," replied the girl, "not me personally; but you are the cause of the misery of
the nation."
"You have been told so," answered the queen; "but you are deceived. As the wife
of the King of France and mother of the dauphin, I am a Frenchwoman. I shall
never see my own country again. I can be happy only in France. I was happy
when you loved me."
These words touched the heart of the passionate but not hardened girl, and she
began to weep, saying,
"I ask your pardon. It was because I did not know you. I see that you are good."
While these scenes were transpiring in the council-chamber, the cries of the mob
were heard at the door of the king's apartment, and blows from a hatchet fell
heavily upon the panels. As a panel, driven by a violent blow, fell at the king's
feet, he ordered the door to be thrown open. A forest of pikes and bayonets
appeared, and the crowd rushed in. The king, with that courage of resignation
which never forsook him, stepped forward with dignity to meet the rabble, and
said, "Here I am."
His friends immediately threw themselves around him, forming a rampart with
their bodies. The mob, who seemed to have no definite object in view, fell back,
and the friends of the king placed him in the embrasure of a window, where he
could more easily be protected from the pressure. There was a moment's lull, and
then came renewed clamor and uproar. Some said that they had a petition which
they wished to present to the king. Others shouted, "No veto! No priests! No
aristocrats! The camp near Paris."
The king stood upon a bench, and with marvelous serenity gazed upon the
unparalleled spectacle. Légendre, the butcher, one of the leaders of the mob,
stepped up, and with a firm voice demanded in the name of the people the
sanction of the two decrees which the king had vetoed.[329]
"This is not the place, neither is this the time," answered the king, firmly, "to
grant such a request. I will do all the Constitution requires."
This bold answer seemed to exasperate the crowd, and they shouted, as it were
defiantly, "Vive la Nation!"
"Yes," replied the king, heroically, "Vive la Nation! and I am its best friend."
"Prove it, then," cried one of the rabble, thrusting toward him, on the end of a
pike, the red cap of the Jacobins.
The king took the cap and placed it upon his head. The mob responded with
shouts of applause. The day was oppressively hot, and the king, who was very
corpulent, was almost suffocated with the heat and the crowd. A drunken fellow,
who had a bottle and a glass, staggered up to the king, and offered him a tumbler
of wine, saying, "If you love the people, drink to their health."
Though the king had long been apprehensive of being poisoned, he took the
glass and without hesitation drank its contents. Again he was greeted with shouts
of applause. Some of the crowd, as they caught sight of Madame Elizabeth, cried
out, "There is the Austrian woman!" The unpopularity of the queen excited
murmurs and imprecations, and the princess was in great danger of violence.
Some of her friends around her endeavored to undeceive the mob.
"Leave them," said the generous and heroic princess, "leave them to think that I
am the queen, that she may have time to escape."
The Assembly was immediately informed of the invasion of the palace. The
Constitutionalists were indignant. The Jacobins were satisfied, for they wished to
see the king and the king's party frightened into obedience. An angry and almost
furious altercation ensued in the Assembly. A deputation of twenty-four
members was, however, immediately sent to surround the king, and this
deputation was renewed every half hour. But the deputies could not force their
way through the crowd. Hoisted upon the shoulders of the grenadiers they
endeavored in vain to harangue the mob to order. It was half past five o'clock, an
hour and a half after the attack upon the Tuileries had commenced, before
Pétion, the Mayor of Paris, made his appearance in the presence of the king. He
attempted an apology for coming so late, saying,
"I have only just learned the situation of your majesty."
pic
THE CAP OF LIBERTY PLACED UPON THE KING.
"That is very astonishing," replied the king, "for it is a long time that it has
lasted."
"It was half past four," Pétion rejoined, "when I heard of the attack. It took me
half an hour to get to the palace; and I could not overcome the obstacles which
separated me from your majesty until the present moment. But fear nothing, sire;
you are in the midst of your people."
Louis XVI., taking the hand of a grenadier who stood by his side, placed it upon
his heart, saying, "Feel whether it beats quicker than usual."
This noble answer again elicited applause. The mayor then, mounting the
shoulders of four grenadiers, addressed the mob, urging them to retire.
"Citizens, male and female," said he, "you have used with moderation and
dignity your right of petition. You will finish this day as you begun it. Hitherto
your conduct has been in conformity with the law, and now, in the name of the
law, I call upon you to follow my example and to retire."
The crowd obeyed and slowly moved off through the long suite of apartments of
the chateau. As soon as they began to retire the king and his sister threw
themselves into each other's arms, and neither was able to repress a flood of
tears. Locked in an embrace they left the room to find the queen. She, with her
children, had just regained her apartment. The meeting of the royal family, after
these scenes of violence, insult, and terror, drew tears into the eyes of all the
beholders. One of the deputies, Antoine Merlin of Thionville, though one of the
most virulent of the Jacobins, could not refrain from weeping. Marie Antoinette
observing it, and knowing his bitter hostility to the court, said,
"You weep to see the king and his family treated so cruelly by a people whom he
has always wished to render happy."
"It is true, madam," replied Merlin, "I weep over the misfortunes of a beautiful,
tender-hearted woman and mother of a family. But do not mistake; there is not
one of my tears for the king or the queen; I hate kings and queens."
At this moment the king, from the reflection of a mirror, saw the red bonnet still
upon his head. A crimson glow flushed his face and he hastily threw the badge of
the Jacobin from him. Sinking into a chair he for a moment buried his face in his
handkerchief, and then, turning a saddened look to the queen, said,
"Ah, madame, why did I take you from your country to associate you with the
ignominy of such a day!"
It was eight o'clock in the evening before the apartments and corridors of the
palace ceased to echo with the voices and the footsteps of the barbarian invaders.
Detachments of the National Guard gradually assembled, the court-yard and the
garden were cleared, and night with its silence and darkness again settled down
over the wretched royal family in the halls of their palace, and the wretched
famishing outcasts wandering through the streets. Such was the 20th of June,
1792.
Napoleon Bonaparte, then twenty-two years of age, was in Paris, and with
indignation witnessed this spectacle of lawlessness. Bourrienne thus describes
the event: "In the month of April, 1792, I returned to Paris, where I again met
Bonaparte, and renewed the friendship of our youthful days. I had not been
fortunate, and adversity pressed heavily upon him. We passed our time as two
young men of three and twenty may be supposed to have done who had little
money and less occupation. At this time he was soliciting employment from the
Minister of War, and I at the office of foreign affairs.
"While we were thus spending our time the 20th of June arrived, a sad prelude of
the 10th of August. We met by appointment at a restaurateur's, in the Rue St.
Honoré, near the Palais Royal. On going out we saw a mob approaching in the
direction of the market-place, which Bonaparte estimated at from five to six
thousand men. They were a parcel of blackguards, armed with weapons of every
description, and shouting the grossest abuse, while they proceeded at a rapid rate
toward the Tuileries. This mob appeared to consist of the vilest and most
profligate of the population of the suburbs.
pic
THE ATTACK UPON THE TUILERIES.
"'Let us follow the rabble,' said Bonaparte. We got the start of them, and took up
our station on the terrace bordering on the river. It was there that he was an eyewitness
of the scandalous scenes which ensued, and it would be difficult to
describe the surprise and indignation which they excited in him. Such weakness
and forbearance, he said, could not be excused. But when the king showed
himself at the window which looked out upon the garden, with the red cap which
one of the mob had just placed upon his head, he could no longer repress his
indignation.
"'What madness!' he loudly exclaimed. 'How could they have allowed that rabble
to enter? Why did they not sweep away four or five hundred of them with the
cannon? The rest would then have speedily taken to their heels.'"
FOOTNOTES:
[317] At the moment of Leopold's death all was ready for hostilities. Two hundred thousand men were
under arms for the invasion. The Duke of Brunswick, who was placed in command, was at Berlin receiving
the final commands of the king. Another Prussian general was at Vienna receiving from Leopold advice as
to the time and point of attack. Leopold, whose constitution was shattered by debauchery, was taken
suddenly sick, and, after two days of excruciating pain, died in convulsions. His death was probably caused
by an immoderate use of drugs to recruit his system, enervated by dissipation. This event for a short time
paralyzed the energies of the coalition. See History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. i., p. 364.
[318] Memoirs of Count Mathieu Dumas, vol. i., p. 190.
[319] Dumouriez's Memoirs, book iii., ch. vi. Madame Campan gives an account of this interview with a
little different coloring. "One day," she writes, "I found the queen in extreme agitation. She told me that she
knew not what to do; that the leaders of the Jacobins had offered themselves to her through Dumouriez, or
that Dumouriez, forsaking the party of the Jacobins, had come and offered himself to her; that she had
given him an audience; that, being alone with her, he had thrown himself at her feet, and told her that he
had put on the red cap, and even pulled it down over his ears, but that he neither was, nor ever could be, a
Jacobin; that the Revolution had been suffered to roll on to that mob of disorganizers, who, aspiring only to
pillage, were capable of every thing. While speaking with extreme warmth, he had taken hold of the queen's
hand and kissed it with transport, saying, 'Allow yourself to be saved.' The queen told me that it was
impossible to believe the protestations of a traitor; that all his conduct was so well known that the wisest
plan was not to trust in him, and, besides, the princes earnestly recommended that no confidence should be
placed in any proposal from the interior."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 202.
[320] Francis was not yet elected Emperor of Germany.
[321] Condorcet, in a paper which he drew up in exposition of the motives which led to this strife, says,
"The veil which concealed the intentions of our enemy is at length torn. Citizens, which of you could
subscribe to these ignominious proposals? Feudal servitude and a humiliating inequality; bankruptcy and
taxes which you alone would pay; tithes and the Inquisition; your possessions, bought upon the public faith,
restored to their former usurpers; the beasts of the chase re-established in their right of ravaging your fields;
your blood profusely spilled for the ambitious projects of a hostile house—such are the conditions of the
treaty between the King of Hungary and perfidious Frenchmen! Such is the peace which is offered to you!
No! never will you accept it!"—Exposition of the motives which determined the National Assembly to
decree, on the formal proposal of the King, that there is reason to declare war against the King of Hungary
and Bohemia, by M. Condorcet.
[322] Prof. Wm. Smyth, of the University of Cambridge, England, though cherishing no sympathies with
the revolutionary party in France, in his admirable lectures upon the French Revolution, with his
accustomed candor, says,
"The question then is, Was this (the conduct of Austria) an interference in the internal affairs of France that
justified a declaration of war on the part of France or not? This is a point on which, under the extraordinary
circumstances of the case, reasoners may differ, but I conceive that it was. The rulers of France, at the time,
saw themselves menaced, stigmatized, and, as nearly as possible, proscribed by a foreign power on account
of their conduct to their own king, in their own country. They could expect nothing but exile,
imprisonment, and death if these foreign powers invaded their country in defense of the monarchy and
succeeded; and not only this, but, in that case, a counter-revolution was inevitable.
"I must confess that, with all my horror of war, of counsels of violence, of enthusiastic and furious men like
these Girondists, and of dreadful and guilty men like these Jacobins, I must confess that upon this particular
point of the Austrian war I am, on the whole, compelled to agree with them. I see not how, upon any other
principle, the peace of the world can be maintained, or the proper sovereignty and independence of nations
be preserved, nor, finally, upon any other principle, what chance there can ever be for the general cause of
the freedom of mankind."
[323] Dumas, vol. i., p. 213.
[324] Memoirs of Dumouriez.
[325] "The most menacing cries were uttered aloud, even in the Tuileries. They called for the destruction of
the throne and the murder of the sovereign. These insults assumed the character of the very lowest of the
mob. The queen, one day, hearing roars of laughter under her windows, desired me to see what it was
about. I saw a man, almost undressed, turning his back toward her apartments. My astonishment and
indignation were apparent. The queen rose to come forward. I held her back, telling her it was a very gross
insult offered by one of the rabble."—Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 205.
[326] Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 206.
[327] Montjoie, one of the most decided of Royalist writers, thus describes Santerre: "The muscular
expansion of his tall person, the sonorous hoarseness of his voice, his rough manners, and his easy and
vulgar eloquence, of course made him a hero among the lower rabble. And, in truth, he had gained a
despotic empire over the dregs of the faubourgs. He moved them at will, but that was all he knew how to
do, or could do, for, as to the rest, he was neither wicked nor cruel. He engaged blindly in all conspiracies,
but he never was guilty of the execution of them, either by himself or by those who obeyed him. He was
always concerned for an unfortunate person, of whatever party he might be. Affliction and tears disarmed
his hands."—History of Marie Antoinette, by Montjoie, p. 295.
[328] Madame Campan says, "There was one representing a gibbet, to which a dirty doll was suspended;
the words 'Marie Antoinette à la lanterne' were written beneath it. Another was a board to which a bullock's
heart was fastened, with an inscription round it, 'Heart of Louis XVI.;' and then a third showed the horns of
an ox, with an obscene legend."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 212.
[329] Léegendre was a butcher of Paris. He was one of the most violent leaders of the mob. In 1791 he was
deputed by the city of Paris to the National Convention. In 1793 he voted for the king's death, and, the day
before his execution, proposed to the Jacobins to cut him into eighty-four pieces, and send one to each of
the eighty-four departments. He died at Paris in 1797, aged forty-one, and bequeathed his body to the
surgeons, "in order to be useful to mankind after his death."—Biographie Moderne.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE THRONE ASSAILED.
Angry Interview between the King and the Mayor.—Decisive Action of La
Fayette.—Expectations of the Queen.—Movement of the Prussian Army.—
Efforts of the Priests.—Secret Committee of Royalists.—Terror in the
Palace.—The Queen's View of the King's Character.—Parties in France.—
Energetic Action of the Assembly.—Speech of Vergniaud.
THE next day after the fearful scenes of the 20th of June, the Assembly held a
very tumultuous sitting. Various measures were proposed to prevent a repetition
of armed petitions, and the filing of processions through the hall. The Jacobins
were, however, in sympathy with the mob; and the Royalists, waiting the
approach of foreign armies, had no wish to introduce order but by the sword of
invasion. It was apprehended that the mob, who had now risen above the power
of law, might again invade the palace. In the afternoon of the 21st, crowds began
to assemble at various points, but the mayor, Pétion, succeeded in inducing them
to disperse. He then hastened to the king, and said to him,
"Sire, there is no longer cause for alarm. Order is restored. The people have
become tranquil and satisfied."
The king, who now appreciated the peril of his position, was exasperated, and
replied, with suppressed emotion, "That is not true."
"Sire—" rejoined Pétion.
"Be silent," said the king sternly, interrupting him.
"It befits not the magistrate of the people," replied Pétion, "to be silent when he
does his duty and speaks the truth."
"The tranquillity of Paris rests on your head," added the king.
"I know my duty," Pétion replied, "and shall perform it."
The king could no longer restrain himself, and passionately exclaimed, "Enough;
go and perform it. Retire."
Pétion, thus summarily turned out of doors, bowed and left. The report of the
angry interview was speedily spread through Paris. It was rumored through the
palace that the mob were preparing to rise to murder the king and all the royal
family. It was rumored through the streets that the Royalists were endeavoring to
provoke the people to rise, that they might shoot them down with artillery. The
mayor issued a proclamation urging the people not to allow themselves to be
excited to fresh commotions. The king issued a proclamation, spirited and
defiant in its tone, and yet calculated only to exasperate those whom he had no
power to restrain.[330]
La Fayette, who was at this time with his division of the army on the frontiers,
heard these tidings from Paris with intense alarm. Had the court not prevented
his election as mayor, the outrages of the 20th of June could not have occurred.
His only hope for France was in the Constitution. The invasion of the Legislative
Assembly by the mob, the irruption into the palace, and the outrages inflicted
upon the royal family, impressed him with shame and horror. He saw the terrific
reign of anarchy approaching, and was fully conscious that no one could attempt
to resist the popular torrent but at the peril of his life. He wrote a very earnest
letter of remonstrance to the Assembly, and resolved to hasten immediately to
Paris, and to brave every possible danger in endeavoring to restore to his country
the dominion of law. Making all the arrangements in his power, that his
temporary absence might not be detrimental to the military operations then in
progress, he set out for the capital, and arrived there on the 28th of June.[331] He
thought that he might rely upon the National Guard to aid him in maintaining the
Constitution, and that, throwing himself into the breach to save the monarchy
and the king, he might place some reliance upon the co-operation of the court.
But the court hated La Fayette and constitutional liberty, and wished for no
assistance but from the armies of the allies, through whom they might dictate
terms to the re-enslaved people.
La Fayette, immediately upon his arrival in Paris, sent a message to the
Assembly that he wished for permission to address them. At half-past one of the
28th of June, he entered the hall. The Constitutionalists received him with
plaudits. The Republicans, both the Girondists and the Jacobins, were silent. The
general, in his bold and spirited address, spoke of the disgrace which the
outrages of the 20th of June had brought upon the nation, and the indignation
which it had excited in the army, and urged that the instigators of the riot should
be prosecuted; that the Jacobin Club, ever urging violence and revolution, should
be suppressed; and that the Constitution and the laws should be maintained by
all the armed force of the government.
This speech introduced an angry debate, in which La Fayette was reproached
with neglecting his own duties in the army to meddle with matters in which he
had no concern. La Fayette left the Assembly in the midst of the debate, and
repaired to the palace to see what assistance he could render to the king and
queen. The courtiers surrounding the monarch, with their wonted infatuation,
assailed La Fayette with the most abusive epithets. The king and queen received
him with great coldness, and refused to accept from him of any sympathy or aid.
"If the court and the people attached to the king," writes the Marquis de
Ferrières, a decided Royalist, "had but resolved to support La Fayette, there was
force to have annihilated the two factions. But the queen recoiled from any idea
of owing her safety to a man whom she had resolved to ruin. They refused to
enter into his views, and they thus rejected the only means of safety that
Providence offered them. Inexplicable blindness, if an explanation were not
afforded by the approaching entry of the foreign troops and the confidence
reposed in them."
The historian Toulongeon, describing these events, says, "Retired to his hotel, La
Fayette set himself to consider what was the force of which he could avail
himself. A review of the first division of the National Guard was fixed for the
next morning at break of day. The king was to pass along the line, and La
Fayette was then to harangue the troops. But the mayor, Pétion, was advertised
of their movements by the queen, who feared the success of La Fayette even
more than that of the Jacobins, and a counter-order was given, and the review
did not take place."
La Fayette returned to the army thwarted and disheartened. His retirement in
despair from Paris was the last expiring sigh of the Constitutional party. From
this moment the Jacobins resolved upon his destruction, and that very evening
his effigy was burned at the Palais Royal. Bertrand de Moleville, one of the most
false and envenomed of the Royalist writers, condemns La Fayette for thus
leaving Paris. But even Professor Smyth, whose English sympathies are strongly
with the court, exclaims,
"M. Bertrand de Moleville may surely be asked, on this occasion, what resource
was left for La Fayette but to move away from Paris, if the king and the court,
for whom he was hazarding both his fame and his safety, would not honor him
with the slightest countenance? Was it to be endured that they were to seem
neutral and indifferent, at the least, and sitting with folded arms, while he was to
be left to rush into a combat in the Assembly and in the streets of Paris with their
furious and murderous enemies, and with the men who had just been assailing
the king in his palace, and who evidently only waited for an opportunity to rob
him of his crown and take away his life; was this, I repeat, to be endured? Many
are the sensations by which the heart of man may be alienated and imbittered,
but there are few more fitted for that purpose than to find indifference to services
offered, and ingratitude for sacrifices made."[332]
Both the king and the queen knew that Prussia had already combined with
Austria, and was secretly marching an army of eighty thousand men under the
Duke of Brunswick to unite with the emigrants at Coblentz. The queen thought
that the allies would be in Paris in six weeks. She was minutely informed of their
contemplated movements; when they would be at Verdun, when at Lille; and
she, in confidence, informed her ladies that she expected to be rescued in a
month.[333]
The peril of France was now truly great, and the patriots were deeply agitated.
Foreign armies were approaching. The king not only was taking no effectual
measures for the defense of the kingdom, but had vetoed the decrees of the
Assembly raising an army for the protection of the capital, and was also believed
to be in sympathy and in traitorous correspondence with the foe. France was
threatened with invasion, and the court of France was virtually guiding the
march of the invading armies, weakening every point of defense, and striving to
betray the patriot forces into the hands of the enemy. The only excuse which
history can offer for the king is, that he was the tool of others, and so weak and
characterless that he was unconscious of the enormity of his crime. But this
excuse, which ought to have commended him to pity, could not be an argument
for maintaining him upon his throne.
Though it was well known to all intelligent men that the Prussian armies were
marching to unite with the Austrian for the invasion of France, yet the king, in
grossest violation of duty, had made no communication of the fact to the
Legislative Assembly. All the great roads were crowded with priests, nobles, and
their partisans, hastening to join the emigrants at Coblentz. Couriers were every
where traversing Europe, from St. Petersburg to Rome, from Stockholm to
Madrid, from Berlin to Naples, openly announcing the coalition of all Europe to
crush the revolution in France, and declaring that the armies would move in such
force that the French would not be able to resist them for a single month. The
allies were not unwilling to have their plans known and even exaggerated, for
some of them hoped that the terror of the threat might be sufficient to drive the
French patriots to submission.[334]
It was consequently proclaimed, not officially, but with great soundings of
trumpets, that Spain was to indemnify herself for the war by taking possession of
the four beautiful southern provinces of France which lean against the Pyrenees
—Navarre, Roussillon, Languedoc, and Guienne. The King of Sardinia was to
receive the provinces adjacent to his kingdom, whose romantic valleys
penetrated the lower Alps—Dauphiny, Provence, Lyonnois, and Bretagne. The
Stadtholder of Holland was to extend his sway over the Provinces of Flanders
and Picardy. Austria was to grasp the provinces adjoining the Rhine—Alsace,
Lorraine, Champagne. The Swiss were offered Franche Comte if they would join
the coalition. And, finally, England was to regain her old possession of
Normandy, and was to seize all the colonial possessions of France in the two
Indies.[335]
Though the British government was at this time strongly in sympathy with the
coalition, it did not venture openly to join the alliance, for the masses of the
British people were cordially with the French patriots and rejoiced in the
establishment of constitutional liberty in France. These extravagant threats filled
Europe. It was every where assumed that only a small minority of the French
people were opposed to the Old Régime, and that the mass of the nation would at
once arise and welcome the invading armies.
With this terrific storm from without menacing the liberties of France, a large
number of priests who had refused to accept the Constitution were plying all the
energies of the most potent superstition earth has ever known to rouse the
ignorant peasantry against civil and religious liberty. They were told that eternal
damnation was their inevitable doom if they were not willing to lay down their
lives in defense of the king and the Pope; and that eternal blessedness was the
sure inheritance of all who should labor and pray for holy mother Church. The
queen, it was well known, was in constant conference with the enemy,
counseling, encouraging, and aiding with all the pecuniary means she could
obtain from the revenues of France. The king was a weak-minded, fickle man,
with no decision of his own, and entirely at the disposal of those who surrounded
him. Being quite in subjection to the imperial mind of the queen, he delayed
adopting any vigorous measure to repel the approaching foe, thwarted the
decrees of the Assembly, and allowed his own enormous salary of six millions of
dollars to be appropriated by the queen and her counselors to hasten the march of
foreign invaders upon Paris.
In the very palace of the Tuileries a secret committee of old Royalists were in
session every day, planning for the enemy, informing them of all the movements
in Paris, advising them as to the best points of attack, and organizing, in different
parts of the empire, their partisans to rise in civil war the moment the first
thunderings of hostile artillery should be heard upon the plains of France. Here
surely was a combination of wrong and outrage sufficient to drive any people
mad.[336]
During the whole month of July the interior of the palace was the abode of terror.
The inmates, apprehensive every hour of attack, had no repose by day or night.
Almost daily there was an alarm that the mob was gathering. "During the whole
month," writes Madame Campan, "I was never once in bed. I always dreaded
some night attack. One morning, about one o'clock, footsteps were heard in the
anteroom of the queen's chamber, and then a violent struggle and loud outcries,
as the groom of the chambers grasped a man who was stealthily approaching
with a dagger, apparently to assassinate the queen."
"I begin to fear," said the queen one day, "that they will bring the king to a trial.
Me they will assassinate. But what will become of our poor children? If they
assassinate me, so much the better; they will rid me of an existence that is
painful."
"One morning, at about four o'clock, near the close of July," writes Madame
Campan, "a person came to give me information that the Faubourg St. Antoine
was preparing to march against the palace. We knew that at least an hour must
elapse before the populace, assembled upon the site of the Bastille, could reach
the Tuileries. It seemed to me sufficient for the queen's safety that all about her
should be awakened. I went softly into her room. She was asleep. I did not
awaken her.
"The king had been awakened, and so had Madame Elizabeth, who had gone to
him. The queen, yielding to the weight of her griefs, slept till nine o'clock on that
day, which was very unusual with her. The king had already been to know
whether she was awake. I told him what I had done, and the care I had taken not
to disturb her rest. He thanked me, and said,
"'I was awake, and so was the whole palace. She ran no risk. I am very glad to
see her take a little rest. Alas! her griefs double mine.'
"What was my chagrin, when the queen, awaking and learning what had passed,
began to weep bitterly from regret at not having been called. In vain did I
reiterate that it was only a false alarm, and that she required to have her strength
recruited.
"'My strength is not exhausted,' said she; 'misfortune gives us additional
strength. Elizabeth was with the king, and I was asleep! I, who am determined to
perish by his side. I am his wife. I will not suffer him to incur the smallest risk
without my sharing it.'"
The queen appears to have understood very perfectly the character of her
dejected, spiritless, long-suffering husband. "The king," said she, "is not a
coward. He possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is overwhelmed by
an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education
as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things,
dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at
ease, under the eyes of Louis XV., until the age of twenty-one. This constraint
confirmed his timidity. Circumstanced as we are, a few well-delivered words
addressed to the Parisians would multiply the strength of our party a hundredfold.
He will not utter them. What can be expected from those addresses to the
people which he has been advised to post up? Nothing but fresh outrages. As for
myself, I could do any thing, and would appear on horseback if necessary; but, if
I really were to begin to act, that would be furnishing arms to the king's enemies.
The cry against the Austrian, and against the sway of a female, would become
general in France, and, moreover, by showing myself I should render the king a
mere nothing. A queen who is not regent ought, under these circumstances, to
remain passive or to die."[337]
There were now three prominent parties in France. First, the Royalists, with the
queen and the court, controlling the ever-vacillating king, at their head. They
were plotting, through foreign armies and civil war, to restore the political and
ecclesiastical despotism of the Old Régime. This party would have been utterly
powerless but for the aid of foreign despots. Second came the Constitutional
party, with La Fayette at its head. The king professed to belong to this party, and
at times, perhaps, with sincerity, but, overruled by others, he conducted with a
degree of feebleness and fickleness which amounted to treachery. This party had
originally embraced nearly the whole nation. Never did a nobler set of men
undertake national reform than were the leaders of the French Revolution. They
sought only the happiness of France, were anxious for peace with all nations,
were decidedly conservative in their views. They had no desire to overthrow the
French monarchy, but wished only to limit that monarchy by a Constitution
which should secure to the nation civil and religious liberty.
But the Constitutional party was now daily growing weaker, simply because its
best friends saw that it was impossible to maintain the Constitution while the
king himself was co-operating with foreign armies for its overthrow. Why should
the people sustain a king, and furnish him with a salary of five millions of
dollars a year, only to enable him to overthrow the Constitution and reinstate the
rejected despotism? Thus were thousands of the purest men in France driven
with great reluctance to the conviction that constitutional liberty could only be
preserved by dethroning the king and establishing a republic. They were
originally decidedly in favor of a constitutional monarchy. They felt that the
transition was altogether too great and too sudden from utter despotism to
republican freedom. The vast mass of the peasant population in France could
neither read nor write. They were totally unacquainted with the forms of popular
government. They were as ignorant as children, and almost entirely under the
tutelage of the priests, to whom they believed that the keys of heaven and of hell
had been intrusted. The establishment of republican forms would render France
still more obnoxious to surrounding monarchies, and therefore they had wished
to maintain the monarchy, and they took the British Constitution and not the
American republic as their model, wishing, however, to infuse more of the
popular element into their Constitution than has been admitted into the
aristocratic institutions of England.
But now they found, to their surprise and grief, that all Europe was combining
against their liberties, and that the king, instead of being grateful that his throne
was preserved to him, was lamenting his loss of despotic power, and was cooperating
with combined Europe for the re-enslavement of France. This left the
friends of liberty no alternative. They must either hold out their hands to have
the irons riveted upon them anew, or they must dethrone the king, rouse the
nation to repel invasion, and attempt the fearful experiment of a republican
government with a nation turbulent, unenlightened, and totally unaccustomed to
self-control. In the old despotism there was no hope. It presented but poverty,
chains, and despair. In republicanism, with all its perils, there was at least hope.
Hence arose republicanism. It was the child of necessity. In the Constituent
Assembly not an individual was to be found who advocated a republic.[338] But
after the flight of the king to Varennes, republican sentiments, as the only hope
of the nation, rapidly gained ground, and at the very commencement of the
Legislative Assembly we see that a republican party is already organized. From
the beginning there were two divisions of this party—the conservative
republicans, called Girondists, because their leaders were from the department of
the Gironde; and the radical democrats, called Jacobins from the hall where the
club held its meeting.
All France was now in a state of alarm. The Assembly passed a very solemn
decree announcing that the country is in danger. It declared its sitting to be
permanent, that the king might not dissolve it. All the citizens were required to
give up their arms that they might be suitably distributed to the defenders of the
country. Every man, old and young, capable of bearing arms was ordered to be
enrolled in the National Guards for the public defense. M. Vergniaud, the leader
of the Girondists, a man of exalted virtue and of marvelous powers of eloquence,
concluded a speech which roused the enthusiasm of the whole Assembly by
proposing a firm but respectful message to Louis XVI., which should oblige him
to choose between France and foreigners, and which should teach him that the
French were resolved to perish or triumph with the Constitution.
"It is in the name of the king," said Vergniaud, "that the French princes have
endeavored to raise up Europe against us. It is to avenge the dignity of the king
that the treaty of Pilnitz has been concluded. It is to come to the aid of the king
that the sovereign of Hungary and Bohemia makes war upon us, and that Prussia
is marching toward our frontiers. Now, I read in the Constitution,
"'If the king puts himself at the head of an army and directs its forces against the
nation, or if he does not oppose by a formal act an enterprise of this kind, that
may be executed in his name, he shall be considered as having abdicated
royalty.'
"What is a formal act of opposition? If one hundred thousand Austrians were
marching toward Flanders, and one hundred thousand Prussians toward Alsace,
and the king were to oppose to them ten or twenty thousand men, would he have
done a formal act of opposition? If the king, whose duty it is to notify us of
imminent hostilities, apprised of the movements of the Prussian army, were not
to communicate any information upon the subject to the National Assembly; if a
camp of reserve necessary for stopping the progress of the enemy into the
interior were proposed, and the king were to substitute in its stead an uncertain
plan which it would take a long time to execute; if the king were to leave the
command of an army to an intriguing general (La Fayette) of whom the nation
was suspicious. If another general (Luckner) familiar with victory were to
demand a re-enforcement, and the king were by a refusal to say to him, I forbid
thee to conquer, could it be asserted that the king had performed a formal act of
opposition.
"If while France were swimming in blood the king were to say to you, 'It is true
that the enemies pretend to be acting for me, for my dignity, for my rights, but I
have proved that I am not the accomplice. I have sent armies into the field; these
armies were too weak, but the Constitution does not fix the degree of their force.
I have assembled them too late; but the Constitution does not fix the time for
collecting them. I have stopped a general who was on the point of conquering,
but the Constitution does not order victories. I have had ministers who deceived
the Assembly and disorganized the government, but their appointment belonged
to me. The Assembly has passed useful decrees which I have not sanctioned, but
I had a right to act so. I have done all that the Constitution enjoined me. It is
therefore impossible to doubt my fidelity to it.'
"If the king were to hold this language would you not have a right to reply, 'O
king, who, like Lysander, the tyrant, have believed that truth was not worth more
than falsehood, who have feigned a love for the laws, merely to preserve the
power which enabled you to defy them—was it defending us to oppose to the
foreign soldiers forces whose inferiority left not even uncertainty as to their
defeat? Was it defending us to thwart plans tending to fortify the interior? Was it
defending us not to check a general who violated the Constitution, but to enchain
the courage of those who were serving it? No! no! man, in whom the generosity
of the French has excited no corresponding feeling, insensible to every thing but
the love of despotism, you are henceforth nothing to that Constitution which you
have so unworthily violated, nothing to that people which you have so basely
betrayed.'"
This was the first time any one had ventured to speak in the Assembly of the
forfeiture of the crown, though it was a common topic in the journals and in the
streets. The speech of Vergniaud was received with vehement applause. The
king, alarmed, immediately sent a message to the Assembly informing them that
Prussia had allied her troops with those of Austria in their march upon France.
This message, thus tardily extorted, was received by the Assembly with a smile
of contempt.
It was now manifest, beyond all dispute, that the foe of French liberty most to be
dreaded was the king and the court. M. Brissot, who had been the bosom friend
and the ardent eulogist of La Fayette, could no longer sustain the king.
Ascending the tribune he gave bold utterance to the sentiment of the nation.
"Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in
danger, not because we are in want of troops—not because those troops want
courage. No! it is in danger because its force is paralyzed. And who has
paralyzed it. A man—one man, the man whom the Constitution has made its
chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe. You are told to fear the
Kings of Prussia and Hungary; I say the chief force of those kings is at the court,
and it is there we must first conquer them. They tell you to strike at the
dissentient priests. I tell you to strike at the Tuileries, and fell all the priests with
a single blow. You are told to persecute all factious and intriguing conspirators.
They will all disappear if you knock loud enough at the door of the Cabinet of
the Tuileries; for that cabinet is the point to which all these threads tend, where
every scheme is plotted, and whence every impulse proceeds. This is the secret
of our position; this is the source of the evil, and here the remedy must be
applied."[339]
FOOTNOTES:
[330] "Immediately after the 20th of June," writes Madame Campan, "the queen lost all hope but from
foreign succors. She wrote to implore her own family, and the brothers of the king; and her letters became
probably more and more pressing, and expressed her fears from the tardy manner in which the succors
seemed to approach."—Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 214.
[331] "Marshal Luckner blamed extremely the intention La Fayette announced of repairing to Paris,
'because,' said he, 'the sans culottes (ragamuffins) will cut off his head.' But as this was the sole objection
he made, the general resolved to set out alone."—La Fayette's Memoirs.
[332] Lectures on the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 296. "The queen and the court," writes Prof. Smyth,
"could never endure La Fayette, as having been the first great mover and originator of the Revolution; the
cause, as he thought, of the liberties of his country, but a cause with which they unfortunately had no
sympathy."
"The queen said to me," writes Madame Campan, "that La Fayette was offered to them as a resource, but
that it would be better for them to perish than to owe their safety to a man who had done them the most
mischief, or to place themselves under the necessity of treating with him."—Mémoires of Marie Antoinette,
by Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 223.
[333] Thiers, vol. i., p. 278.
[334] "The king had committed himself, on the subject of the Constitution, to the allied powers, in the
instructions he had given to Mallet du Pan, and was no longer at liberty, even if he had been disposed, on
account of any such object as the Constitution, to have united himself with La Fayette, not even though La
Fayette was endeavoring to accomplish the great point, of all others to be most desired, the overthrow of
the Girondists and the Jacobins. On the whole, the court must be considered as now preferring the chance
of the invasion of the allied powers, and the king the chance of some mediation between them and the
people of France, that is, the chance of better terms than the Constitution offered. This must, I think, be
supposed the line of policy that was now adopted. It was one full of danger, and, on the whole, a mistake;
but with the expectation that was then so generally entertained of the certain success of the allied powers, a
mistake not unnatural."—Prof. Smyth's Lectures, vol. ii., p. 295.
[335] Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de Fr., par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. ii., p. 45.
[336] "A court apparently in concert with the enemy resorted to no means for augmenting the armies and
exciting the nation, but, on the contrary, employed the veto to thwart the measures of the legislative body,
and the civil list (the king's salary) to secure partisans in the interior."—Thiers, vol. i., p. 280.
[337] Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 230.
[338] "It becomes evident that a republic was desired only from despair of the monarchy, that it never was a
fixed fact, and that, on the very eve of attaining it, those who were accused of having long paved the way to
it, would not sacrifice the public weal for its sake, but would have consented to a constitutional monarchy,
if it were accompanied with sufficient safeguards."—Thiers, vol. i., p. 308.
[339] M. Brissot was a lawyer of considerable literary distinction, who, when but twenty years of age, had
been imprisoned in the Bastille for some of his political writings. He was a passionate admirer of the
Americans, and despairing, in consequence of the fickleness or treachery of the king, of a constitutional
monarchy, endeavored to secure for France a republic. About a year from the time of the above speech he
perished with the rest of the Girondists upon the scaffold.—Biographe Moderne.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE THRONE DEMOLISHED.
The Country proclaimed in Danger.—Plan of La Fayette for the Safety of
the Royal Family.—Measures of the Court.—Celebration of the Demolition
of the Bastille.—Movement of the Allied Army.—Conflicting Plans of the
People.—Letter of the Girondists to the King.—Manifesto of the Duke of
Brunswick.—Unpopularity of La Fayette.—The Attack upon the Tuileries,
Aug. 10th.—The Royal Family take Refuge in the Assembly.
THE danger to which the country was exposed had now united Constitutionalists
and Republicans, or rather had compelled most of the Constitutionalists to
become Republicans. A patriotic bishop, whose soul was glowing with the spirit
of true Christian fraternity, addressed the Assembly in an appeal so moving, that,
like reconciled brothers, the two parties rushed into each other's arms to unite in
the defense of that liberty which was equally dear to them all.
On the 11th of July the solemn proclamation was made with great pomp through
the streets of Paris and of France, that the country was in danger. Minute guns
were fired all the day. The bells tolled, and the reveille was beat in all quarters of
the city summoning the National Guard to their posts. A cavalcade of horse
paraded the streets with a large banner containing the inscription, Citizens, the
country is in danger. At all the principal places the cortège? halted and the
legislative decree was read. Rendezvous were established in all parts of the city
for the enlistment of volunteers. Unparalleled enthusiasm pervaded all classes. In
Paris alone fifteen thousand were enrolled the first day.
Petitions were poured in upon the Assembly from all parts of the empire
declaring that the king had forfeited the crown, and demanding his
dethronement. This sudden change, these bold utterances, threw the court into
consternation. The king's life now was in imminent peril, and he resolved if
possible to effect his escape. Several plans were suggested which seemed to him,
with his constitutional feebleness of purpose, too hazardous to be undertaken. La
Fayette, with generous credulity, still tried to believe the king sincere in his
acceptance of constitutional liberty, and he proposed a plan which would have
saved the king and would have saved France had there been a particle of
sincerity in the bosom of the monarch. It was most noble in La Fayette thus to
forget the insults he had received from the court, and to peril his life in the
endeavor to save a family who had only loaded him with injuries. His plan,
boldly conceived, was as patriotic as it was humane, and needed but sincerity on
the part of the king to secure its triumphant execution. It was an amiable
weakness on the part of La Fayette still to believe that the king could by any
possibility be led to espouse the Revolution. His proposition was briefly this:
pic
THE COUNTRY PROCLAIMED IN DANGER.
"General Luckner and I," said he to the king, "will come to Paris to attend the
celebration of the demolition of the Bastille on the 14th of July. In company with
us, the next day, the king with his family shall visit Compiègne, fifty miles north
of Paris. The people will have sufficient confidence in us to make no opposition.
Should there be opposition we will have a sufficient force of dragoons at hand to
strike by surprise and release you. Ten squadrons of horse-artillery shall there
receive the monarch and conduct him to the army on the frontiers. The king shall
then issue a decided proclamation forbidding his brothers and the emigrants to
advance another step toward the invasion of France, declaring, in terms which
can not be misinterpreted, his determination to maintain the Constitution, and
announcing his readiness to place himself at the head of the army to repel the
enemy. This decisive measure will satisfy France that the king is its friend not its
foe. The allies can make no headway against France united under its monarch.
The king can then return triumphant to Paris, amid the universal acclamations of
the people, a constitutional monarch beloved and revered by his subjects."[340]
This was the wisest course which, under the circumstances, could possibly have
been pursued. It was constitutional. It would have been the salvation of the king
and of France. Many of the king's personal friends entreated him, with tears, to
repose confidence in La Fayette, and to comply with the counsels of the only
man who could rescue him from destruction. But the fickle-minded king was
now in the hands of the queen and the courtiers, and was guided at their
pleasure. All their hopes were founded in the re-establishment of despotism by
foreign invasion. The generous plan of La Fayette was rejected with a cold and
almost insulting repulse.
"The best advice," replied the king, "which can be given to La Fayette is to
continue to serve as a bugbear to the factions by the able performance of his duty
as a general."
The queen was so confident that in a few weeks the allied armies would be in
Paris, and that any acts of disrespect on the part of the people would only tend to
hasten their march, that when Colombe, the aid-de-camp of La Fayette,
remonstrated against the infatuation of so fatal a decision, she replied, "We are
much obliged to your general for his offer, but the best thing which could happen
to us would be to be confined for two months in a tower."
When La Fayette was thus periling his life to save the royal family he knew that,
by the queen's orders, pamphlets filled with calumny were composed against
him, and were paid for out of the king's salary.[341]
The court was secretly and very energetically recruiting defenders for the
approaching crisis. They had assembled at the Tuileries a regiment of Swiss
mercenaries, amounting to about a thousand men, who, under rigid military
discipline, would be faithful to the king. A large number of general and subaltern
officers, strong royalists, were provided with lodgings in Paris, awaiting any
emergence. Several hundred royalist gentlemen from the provinces, in chivalrous
devotion to the monarchy, were residing in hotels near the Tuileries, always
provided with concealed weapons, and with cards which gave them admission at
any hour into the palace. Secret bodies of loyalists were organized in the city,
who were also ready to rush, at a given signal, to the defense of the inmates of
the Tuileries. The servants in the chateaux were very numerous, and were all
picked men. There were also in garrison in Paris ten thousand troops of the line
who were devoted to the king.
With such resources immediately at hand, and with nearly all the monarchies of
Europe in alliance to march to their rescue, it is not surprising that the king and
queen should have felt emboldened to brave the perils which surrounded them.
[342] The Royalists were exultant, and already, in the provinces of La Vendée and
on the Rhone, they had unfurled the white banner of the Bourbons, were rallying
around it by thousands, and had commenced the slaughter of the patriots who, in
these provinces, were in the minority.
pic
STORMING THE BASTILLE.
Such was the state of affairs when the 14th of July arrived, the day for the great
celebration of the demolition of the Bastille. The king and queen could not avoid
participating in the ceremonies, though it was greatly feared that attempts might
be made for their assassination. A breast-plate, in the form of an under waistcoat,
was secretly made for the king, consisting of fifteen folds of Italian silk, strongly
quilted, which was found, upon trial, to be proof against dagger or bullet.
Madame Campan wore it for three days before an opportunity could be found for
the king to try it on unperceived. The king, as he drew it on, said,
"It is to satisfy the queen that I submit to this inconvenience."
A corset of similar material was also prepared for the queen. She, however,
refused to wear it, saying, "If the rebels assassinate me it will be a most happy
event. It will release me from the most sorrowful existence, and may save from a
cruel death the rest of the family."
The Field of Mars was the site for the festival. Eighty-three gorgeous tents were
reared, representing the eighty-three departments of France. Before each of these
was planted a tree of liberty, from the tops of which waved the tricolored banner.
On one side of this vast parade-ground there was an immense tree planted, called
the tree of feudalism. Its boughs were laden with memorials of ancient pride and
oppression—blue ribbons, tiaras, cardinals' hats, St. Peter's keys, ermine,
mantles, titles of nobility, escutcheons, coats of arms, etc. It was in the
programme of the day that the king, after taking anew the oath of fidelity to the
Constitution, was to set fire to the tree of feudalism with all its burden of hoary
abuses.
The king and royal family joined the procession at the Tuileries, and with
saddened hearts and melancholy countenances performed their part in the
ceremonies. "The expression of the queen's countenance," says Madame de
Staël, "on this day will never be effaced from my remembrance. Her eyes were
swollen with tears, and the splendor of her dress and the dignity of her
deportment formed a striking contrast with the train that surrounded her."
When the procession arrived at the Field of Mars, where an immense concourse
was assembled, the queen took her station upon a balcony which was provided
for her, while the king was conducted slowly through the almost impenetrable
throng to the altar where the oath was to be administered. The queen narrowly
and anxiously watched his progress with a glass. In ascending the altar the
monarch took a false step, and seemed to fall. The queen, thinking he had been
struck by a dagger, uttered a shriek of terror, which pierced the hearts of all
around her. The king, however, ascended the altar, and took the oath.
The people wished him then to set fire to the feudal tree. But he declined, very
pertinently remarking that there was no longer any feudalism in France. Some of
the deputies of the Assembly then lighted the pile, and as it was wreathed in
flames the shoutings of the multitude testified their joy. The partisans of the king
succeeded in raising a few shouts of Vive le Roi, which lighted up a momentary
smile upon the wan face of the king. But these were the last flickering gleams of
joy. The royal family returned in deepest dejection to the palace. They were
conscious that they had but performed the part of captives in gracing a triumph,
and they never again appeared in the streets of Paris until they were led to their
execution.
The alarming decree of the Assembly that the country was in danger, and the
call for every man to arm, had thrown all France into commotion. The restless,
violent, and irresponsible are ever the first to volunteer for war. These were
rapidly organized in the departments into regiments and battalions, and sent on
to Paris. Thus, notwithstanding the veto of the king, an immense force was fast
gathering in the capital, and a force who felt that the king himself was the secret
treacherous foe from whom they had the most to fear. The Assembly, dreading
conspiracy at home more than open war from abroad, now sent the king's troops,
upon whose fidelity to the nation they could not rely, to the frontiers. The court
opposed this measure, as they did not wish to strengthen even the feeble
resistance which they supposed the allies would have to encounter, and also
wished to retain these troops for their own protection against any desperate
insurrection of the people. The king consequently wished to interpose his veto,
but was advised that he could not safely adopt that measure in the then
exasperated state of the public mind. The removal of these troops very decidedly
weakened the strength of the Royalists in Paris.
Such was the state of affairs on the 28th of July, when the allied army,
amounting in its three great divisions to one hundred and thirty-eight thousand
men, commenced its march upon France.
pic
THE PRUSSIANS CROSSING THE FRONTIERS OF FRANCE.
The Duke of Brunswick was to pass the Rhine at Coblentz, ascend the left bank
of the Moselle, and march upon Paris by the route of Longwy, Verdun, and
Chalons. His immense force of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, with its enormous
array of heavy guns and its long lines of baggage and munition wagons, covered
a space of forty miles. The Prince of Hohenlohe, marching in a parallel line
some twenty miles on his left, led a division of the emigrants and the Hessian
troops. His route led him through Thionville and Metz. The Count de Clairfayt,
an Austrian field-marshal, who has been esteemed the ablest general opposed to
the French during the Revolutionary war, conducted the Austrian troops and
another division of the emigrants along other parallel roads upon the right, to fall
upon La Fayette, who was stationed before Sedan and Mézieres. It was supposed
that he would easily scatter the feeble forces which Louis XVI. had permitted to
be stationed there; and then he was to press rapidly upon Paris by Rheims and
Soissons.[343]
The friends of liberty now saw no possible way of rescuing France from its peril
and of saving themselves from the scaffold, but by wresting the executive power
from the king and the court, who were in co-operation with the foe. This could
only be done by a revolution, for the Constitution conferred no right upon the
Assembly to dethrone the king. The Girondists or moderate Republicans,
detesting the Jacobins and appalled in view of the anarchy which would ensue
from arming the mob of Paris, wished to have the Assembly usurp the power and
dethrone the king. The Jacobins, who hoped to ride into authority upon the
waves of popular tumult, deliberately resolved to demolish the throne by hurling
against it the infuriate masses of the people. It was calling into action the terrible
energies of the earthquake and the tornado, knowing that their ravages, once
commenced, could be arrested by no earthly power.
The plan first formed was to rouse the people in resistless numbers, march upon
the Tuileries, take the king a prisoner, and hold him in the Castle of Vincennes as
a hostage for the good conduct of the emigrants and the allies. The appointed
day came, and Paris was thrown into a state of terrible confusion. But the court
had been admonished of the movement. The palace was strongly defended, and
in consequence of some misunderstanding it was found that there was not
sufficient concert of action to attempt the enterprise.
A new scheme was now formed, energetic and well-adapted to the effectual
accomplishment of its purpose. At the ringing of the tocsin forty thousand men
were to be marshaled in the faubourg St. Antoine. Another immense gathering of
the populace was to rally in the faubourg St. Marceau. All the troops in the
metropolis from the provinces were to be arrayed at the encampment of the
Marseilles battalion. They were then to march simultaneously to the palace, fill
the garden and the court of the Carrousel, and invest the Tuileries on all sides.
Here they were to encamp with all the enginery of war, and fortify their position
by ditches, barricades, and redoubts. No blood was to be shed. There was to be
no assault upon the palace, and no forcible entry. The king was to be blockaded,
and the Assembly was to be informed that the populace would not lay down their
arms until the king was dethroned, and the Legislature had adopted measures to
secure the safety of the country.[344] In this plan there was something generous
and sublime. It endeavored to guard carefully against disorder, pillage, and
blood. It was the majestic movement of the people rising in self defense against
its own executive in combination with foreign foes. Barbaroux, the leader of the
Marseillese, sketches this plan in pencil. It was copied by Fournier, and adopted
by Danton and Santerre.[345]
Several of the leaders of the Girondists, anxious to avert the fearful crisis now
impending, wrote a noble letter to the king containing considerations just and
weighty, which ought to have influenced him to corresponding action. The letter
was written by Vergniaud, Gaudet, and Gensonné, three of the brightest
ornaments of the Legislative Assembly.
"It ought not to be dissembled," said these men to the king, "that it is the conduct
of the executive power that is the immediate cause of all the evils with which
France is afflicted, and of the dangers with which the throne is surrounded. They
deceive the king who would lead him to suppose that it is the effervesence of the
clubs, the manoeuvres of particular agitators and powerful factions that have
occasioned and continued those disorderly movements, of which every day
increases the violence, and of which no one can calculate the consequences.
Thus to suppose is to find the cause of the evil in what are only the symptoms.
The only way to establish the public tranquillity is for the king to surround
himself with the confidence of his people. This can only be done by declaring, in
the most solemn manner, that he will receive no augmentation of his power that
shall not be freely and regularly offered him by the French nation without the
assistance or interference of any foreign powers.
"What would be, perhaps, sufficient at once to re-establish confidence would be
for the king to make the coalesced powers acknowledge the independence of the
French nation, cease from all farther hostilities, and withdraw the troops that
menace our frontiers. It is impossible that a very great part of the nation should
not be persuaded that the king has it in his power to put an end to the coalition;
and while that coalition continues and places the public liberty in a state of peril,
it is in vain to flatter the king that confidence can revive."
The court regarded this letter as insolent, and the king returned an answer which
declared that he should pay no attention whatever to its suggestions.
On the 30th of July the troops from Marseilles had arrived, five hundred in
number, composed of the most fiery and turbulent spirits of the South. The clubs
and journals and shouts of the people had for some time been demanding of the
Assembly the suspension of the king. But the Assembly, restrained by respect for
the Constitution, hesitated in the adoption of a measure so revolutionary and yet
apparently so necessary. The insurrection now planned, unless it could be
quelled by the king's forces, was sure to accomplish its end. If the Assembly did
not in its consternation pronounce the throne vacant, or if the king did not in his
terror abdicate, the whole royal family was to be held in a state of blockade, and
it could not be disguised that they were in danger of falling victims to the rage of
the ungovernable mob. This was the plan deliberately formed and energetically
executed. It was patriotism's last and most terrible resort. Humanity is shocked
by the measure. Yet we must not forget that foreign armies were approaching,
and the king was in complicity with them, and thwarting all measures for
effectual resistance. The court was organizing the partisans of the king to unite
with the foreigners in all the horrors of civil war. A nation of twenty-five
millions of freemen were again to be enslaved. All the patriots who had been
instrumental in securing liberty for France were to be consigned to exile, the
dungeon, and the scaffold. If ever a people were excusable in being thrown into
a state of blind ungovernable fury, it was the people of France in view of such
threats.
Paris was in this state of panic when the atrocious proclamation of the Duke of
Brunswick reached the city. The king had sent a secret embassador, Mallet du
Pan, to the allies, suggesting the tone of the manifesto he wished them to issue.
Some of his suggestions they adopted, and added to them menaces as cruel and
bloody as any deeds ever perpetrated by a mob.
"Their majesties," said the duke in this manifesto, "the emperor, and the king of
Prussia, having intrusted me with the command of the combined armies,
assembled by their orders on the frontiers of France, I am desirous to acquaint
the inhabitants of that kingdom with the motives which have determined the
measures of the two sovereigns, and the intentions by which they are guided."
He then stated that one object which the sovereigns had deeply at heart was "to
put an end to the anarchy in the interior of France; to stop the attacks directed
against the throne and the altar, to re-establish the regal power, to restore to the
king the security and liberty of which he is deprived, and to place him in a
condition to exercise the legitimate authority which is his due."
He then declared, in violation of all the rules of civilized warfare, that "such of
the national guards as shall have fought against the troops of the two allied
courts, and who shall be taken in arms, shall be punished as rebels against their
king." This doomed every French patriot who should resist the invaders to be
shot or hanged.
"The inhabitants of cities, towns, and villages," continued this savage
declaration, "who shall dare to defend themselves against the troops of their
imperial and royal majesties, and to fire upon them either in the open field or
from their houses, shall be instantly punished with all the rigor of the laws of
war, and their houses demolished or burned.
"The city of Paris and all its inhabitants without distinction, are required to
submit immediately to the king, to set him at entire liberty, to insure to him, as
well as to all the royal personages, the inviolability and respect which subjects
owe their sovereigns. Their imperial and royal majesties hold the members of the
National Assembly, of the department, of the district, of the municipality, and of
the National Guard of Paris, the justices of the peace, and all others whom it may
concern, personally responsible with their lives for all that may happen; their
said majesties declaring, moreover, on their faith and word as emperor and king,
that if the palace of the Tuileries is forced or insulted, that if the least violence,
the least outrage is offered to their majesties the king and queen and to the royal
family, if immediate provision is not made for their safety, their preservation,
and their liberty, they will take an exemplary and ever-memorable vengeance, by
giving up the city of Paris to military execution and total destruction, and the
rebels guilty of outrages to the punishments they shall have deserved."[346]
This ferocious document was printed in all the Royalist papers in Paris on the
28th of July. The king immediately issued a message disavowing any agency in
the manifesto. But the people no longer had any confidence in the word of the
king. Paris was thrown into a state of terrible agitation. The forty-eight sections
of Paris met, and commissioned the mayor, Pétion, to appear before the General
Assembly, and petition, in their name, the dethronement of the king. On the 3d
of August, Pétion, at the head of a numerous deputation, presented himself
before the Assembly. In an address, calm, unimpassioned, but terrible in its
severity, he retraced the whole course of the king from the commencement of the
Revolution, and closed with the solemn demand for the dethronement of Louis
XVI., as the most dangerous enemy of the nation. The Assembly was
embarrassed by its desire to adhere to the Constitution which it had sworn to
obey. The dethronement of the king was not a constitutional but a revolutionary
act. A long and stormy debate ensued, during which the hall was flooded with
petitions against the king. The king's friends were again intensely anxious to
secure his escape. But the king would not listen to their plans, for he was so
infatuated as to believe that the Duke of Brunswick would soon, by an
unimpeded march, be in Paris for his rescue.
The sympathy which La Fayette had manifested for the royal family had now
ruined him in the esteem of the populace. He was every where denounced as a
traitor, and a strong effort was made to compel the Assembly to indite a bill of
accusation against him. But La Fayette's friends in the chamber rallied, and he
was absolved from the charge of treason by a vote of four hundred and forty-six
against two hundred and eighty. The populace was so exasperated by this result
that they heaped abuse upon all who voted in his favor, and several of them were
severely maltreated by the mob. The National Assembly had now become
unpopular. It was ferociously denounced in the club of the Jacobins and in all the
corners of the streets. In the mean time the insurrectionary committee, formed
from the Jacobin club, were busy in preparation for the great insurrection. All
hearts were appalled, for all could see that a cloud of terrific blackness was
gathering, and no one could tell what limit there would be to the ravages of the
storm.
At midnight, on the 9th of August, the dismal sound of the tocsin was heard.
From steeple to steeple the boding tones floated through the dark air. A thousand
drums beat the alarm at the appointed rendezvous, and the booming of guns
shook the city. In an hour all Paris was in tumult. The clatter of iron hoofs, the
rumbling of heavy artillery, the tramp of disciplined battalions, and the rush and
the clamor of a phrensied mob, presented the most appalling scene of tumult and
terror. A city of a million and a half of inhabitants was in convulsions. The
friends of the king hurried to the palace, announcing with pale lips that the
terrible hour had come. The event needed no announcement, for the whole city
was instantly trembling beneath earthquake throes. The king, the queen, the two
children, and Madame Elizabeth had assembled tremblingly in one of the rooms
of the palace, as lambs huddle together when wolves are howling round the fold.
Marie Antoinette was imperially brave, but she could not in that hour look upon
her helpless son and daughter and not feel her maternal heart sink within her.
Louis XVI. had the endurance of a martyr, but he could not, unmoved,
contemplate the woes of his family.
The friends of the king speedily rallied, and brought up all their forces for his
defense. The apartments of the palace were filled with Royalist gentlemen armed
with swords, pistols, and even with shovels and tongs. Nine hundred Swiss
guards, upon whom it was thought reliance could be reposed, were placed on the
stairs, in the halls, and the large saloons. Six or eight hundred mounted dragoons
were in one of the court-yards. Several battalions of the National Guard, who
were most friendly to the king, were stationed in the garden with twelve pieces
of artillery.[347] The defenders of the palace amounted in all to about four or five
thousand men. But many of these were very lukewarm in their loyalty, and might
at any moment be expected to fraternize with the populace.[348]
Pétion, the mayor, was sent for. He came, and after an awkward interview
retired, leaving Mandat, who was general-in-chief of the National Guard,
commander of the troops at the Tuileries. It was a sultry night. Every window at
the Tuileries was thrown open, and the inmates listened anxiously to the uproar
which rose from every part of the city. The queen and Madame Elizabeth
ascended to a balcony opening from one of the highest stories of the palace. The
night was calm and beautiful, the moon brilliant in the west, and Orion and the
Pleiades shining serenely in the east.[349] There the queen and the princess stood
for some time, trembling and in silence as the peal of bells, the clangor of drums,
the rumbling of artillery wheels, and the shouts of the advancing bands, filled the
air. From every direction, the east, the west, the north and the south, the
portentous booming of the tocsin was heard, and infuriated insurgents, in
numbers which could not be counted, through all the streets and avenues, were
pouring toward the palace. The bridges crossing the river echoed with their
tread, while the blaze of bonfires and the gleam of torches added to the appalling
sublimities of the scene.[350]
The queen broke the silence. Pointing to the moon she said, "Before that moon
returns again, either the allies will be here and we shall be rescued, or I shall be
no more. But let us descend to the king."
The spectacle seemed but to have aroused the energies of Marie Antoinette. The
spirit of her imperial mother glowed in her bosom.[351] Her cheeks were pale as
death, her lips were compressed, her eyes flashed fire, and, as she returned to the
room where her husband stood bewildered and submissive to his lot, she
approached a grenadier, drew a pistol from his belt, and, presenting it to her
husband, said,
"Now, sire! now is the time to show yourself a king."
But Louis XVI. was a quiet, patient, enduring man, with nothing imperial in his
nature. With the most imperturbable meekness he took the pistol and handed it
back to the grenadier. The mayor, Pétion, an active member of the Jacobin Club,
had manifested no disposition to render effectual aid in the defense of the palace.
But lest it should seem that he was heading the mob, he had reluctantly signed an
order, as he left the Tuileries, authorizing the employment of force to repel force.
The insurgents had organized an insurrectional committee at the Hôtel de Ville,
and immediately sent a summons for Mandat to present himself before them.
Mandat, misinformed, understood that the summons came from the municipal
government, and, as in duty bound, promptly obeyed. He had hardly left the
palace ere word was brought back to the king that he had been assassinated by
the mob. There was no longer any leader at the palace; no one to organize the
defense; no one to issue commands. The soldiers in the court of the Tuileries and
in the Garden were looking listlessly about and bandying jokes with the mob
who were crowding against the iron railing.[352]
It was, however, now decided that the king should descend into the courts of the
Carrousel, in the rear of the palace, and into the Garden, in front, to review the
troops and ascertain the spirit with which they were animated.
The king was very fat, had an awkward hobbling gait, and a countenance only
expressive of a passionless nature. He was dressed in a plain mourning-suit, with
silk stockings, and buckles in his shoes. His dress was quite disarranged. In the
early part of the night he had thrown himself upon a sofa for rest, and thus his
hair, which was powdered and curled on one side, was without powder and in
disorder on the other. Apprehensive that he might be assassinated before
morning, he had spent some time in devotional exercises with his confessor, and
his cheeks deathly pale, his swollen eyes and his trembling lips, plainly showed
that he had been weeping. Thus he presented the aspect but of a king in his
degradation. Had he been a spirited man, in uniform, mounted on horseback, he
might, perhaps, have rallied the enthusiasm of the troops. As it was he could
excite no other emotion than that of compassion, blended, perhaps, with
contempt.
It was five o'clock of one of the most brilliant of summer mornings as the king,
followed by the queen and his children, and accompanied by six staff officers,
descended the marble stairs of the Tuileries and entered the royal court. The
music of martial bands greeted him, the polished weapons of the soldiers
gleamed in the rays of the sun as they presented arms, and a few voices rather
languidly shouted Vive le Roi. Others, however, defiantly shouted Vive la Nation,
thus showing that many of those who were marshaled for his defense were ready
to unite with his assailants. The king stammered out a few incoherent words and
returned to the palace.
The appearance of the queen in this terrible hour riveted every eye and excited
even the enthusiasm of her foes. Her flushed cheek, dilated nostril, compressed
lip, and flashing eye invested her with an imperial beauty almost more than
human. Her head was erect, her carriage proud, her step dignified, and she
looked around her upon applauding friends and assailing foes with a majesty of
courage which touched every heart. Even the most ardent patriots forgot for the
moment their devotion to liberty in the enthusiasm excited by the heroism of the
queen. Re-entering the palace, the queen, in despair, ascended the stairs to the
saloon, saying,
"All is lost. The king has shown no energy. A review like this has done us more
harm than good."
The king, however, instead of ascending to his apartment, passed through the
palace into the Garden to ascertain the disposition of the troops stationed there.
With his small retinue he traversed the whole length of the Garden. Some of the
battalions received him with applause, others were silent, while here and there
voices in continually increasing numbers cried, "Down with the veto; down with
the tyrant." As the king turned to retrace his steps, menaces and insults were
multiplied. Some of the gunners even left their guns and thrust their fists in his
face, assailing him with the most brutal abuse. The clamor penetrated the interior
of the palace and the queen, turning pale as death, sank into a chair, exclaiming,
"Great God! they are hooting the king. We are all lost."
The king returned to the palace, pale, exhausted, perspiring at every pore, and
overwhelmed with confusion and shame. He immediately retired to his cabinet.
Roederer,[353] chief magistrate of the Department of the Seine, who had
witnessed the hostile disposition of the troops, now hastened to the chateau and
asked permission to speak to his majesty in private, with no witnesses but the
royal family. He entered the royal cabinet and found the king with his elbows
resting on his knees and his face buried in his hands. All retired but the royal
family and the king's ministers.
"Sire," said M. Roederer, "you have not a moment to lose. Neither the number
nor the disposition of the men here assembled can guarantee your life or the lives
of your family. There is no safety for you but in the bosom of the Assembly."
The hall of the Assembly was in the old monastery of the Feuillants, situated on
the western side of the Garden, where the Rue de Rivoli now runs. The royal
family could consequently descend into the Garden, which was filled with troops
collected there for their defense, and crossing the Garden could enter the hall
with but little exposure.
But such a refuge to the high-spirited queen was more dreadful than death. It
was draining the cup of humiliation to its dregs.
"Go to the Assembly!" exclaimed the queen; "never! never will I take refuge
there. Rather than submit to such infamy I would prefer to be nailed to the walls
of the palace."
"It is there only," M. Roederer replied, "that the royal family can be in safety.
And it is necessary to escape immediately. In another quarter of an hour,
perhaps, we shall not be able to command a retreat."
"What," rejoined the queen, "have we no defenders? Are we alone?"
"Yes, madame," replied Roederer, "we are alone. The troops in the Garden and in
the court are fraternizing with your assailants and turning their guns against the
palace. All Paris is on the march. Action is useless. Resistance is impossible."
A gentleman present, who had been active in promoting reform, ventured to add
his voice in favor of an immediate retreat to the Assembly. The queen turned
upon him sternly, and said,
"Silence, sir, silence! It becomes you to be silent here. When the mischief is
done, those who did it should not pretend to wish to remedy it."[354]
M. Roederer resumed, saying, "Madame, you endanger the lives of your husband
and your children. Think of the responsibility which you take upon yourself."
The king raised his head, fixed a vacant stare of anguish for a moment on M.
Roederer, and then, rising, said, "Marchons" (Let us go).
The queen, unable any longer to shut her eyes to the fatality, turning to M.
Roederer, eagerly added, "You, sir, are answerable for the life of the king and for
that of my son."
"Madame," M. Roederer replied, "we undertake to die by your side, but that is
all we can promise." It was then eight o'clock in the morning.
A guard of soldiers was instantly called in, and the melancholy cortège left the
palace. The Swiss troops and the loyalist gentlemen, who filled the apartments,
looked on in consternation and despair. There was no apparent escape for them,
and they seemed to be abandoned to their fate. As the king was crossing the
threshold he thought of his friends, and his heart seemed to misgive him. He
hesitated, stopped, and, turning to M. Roederer, said, "What is to become of our
friends who remain behind?" M. Roederer pacified the king by assuring him,
though falsely, that by throwing aside their arms and their uniform they would be
able to escape in safety.
They then entered the Garden and crossed it, unopposed, between the two files
of bayonets. The leaves of autumn strewed the paths, and the young dauphin
amused himself in kicking them as he walked along. It is characteristic of the
mental infirmities of the king that in such an hour he should have remarked,
"There are a great many leaves. They fall early this year."
When they arrived at the door at the foot of the staircase which led to the hall of
the Assembly, they found an immense crowd of men and women there blocking
up the entrance. "They shall not enter here," was the cry; "they shall no longer
deceive the nation. They are the cause of all our misfortunes. Down with the
veto! Down with the Austrian woman! Abdication or death!"
"Sire," said one, in compassionate tones to the king, "Don't be afraid. The people
are just. Be a good citizen, sire, and send the priests and your wife away from
the palace."
The soldiers endeavored to force their way through the crowd, and, in the
struggle, the members of the royal family were separated from each other. A
stout grenadier seized the dauphin and raised him upon his shoulders. The queen,
terrified lest her child was to be taken from her, uttered a piercing shriek. But the
grenadiers pressed forward through the crowd, and, entering the hall with the
king and queen, placed the prince royal on the table of the Assembly.
The illustrious Girondist M. Vergniaud was in the chair. The king approached
him and said,
"I have come hither to prevent a great crime. I thought I could not be safer than
with you."
"You may rely, sire," Vergniaud replied, "on the firmness of the Assembly. Its
members have sworn to die in supporting the rights of the people and the
constituted authority."
The king took his seat. There were but few members present. A mournful silence
pervaded the hall as the deputies, with saddened countenances and sympathetic
hearts, gazed upon the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the beautiful young
princess, and the dauphin, whom the queen held by the hand. All angry feelings
died in presence of the melancholy spectacle, for all felt that a storm was now
beating against the throne which no human power could allay.
FOOTNOTES:
[340] La Fayette's Memoirs.
"M. de La Fayette seemed not to have been quite discouraged by the ill-success of his former embassy; for
on the 10th of July M. de Lally came to me with a long letter written by M. La Fayette from his army, in
which he drew a plan, ready as he said, for execution, to open the way for the king through his enemies,
and to establish him in safety either in Compiègne or in the north part of France, surrounded by his
constitutional guards and his faithful army,"—Bertrand de Moleville.
[341] "That there should be no more sympathy," says Professor Smyth, "expressed by the king or the
Royalists ever after, with the elevated nature of the principles of La Fayette or the steadiness of his loyalty,
whenever he saw, as he thought, the king in danger, is quite intolerable; and there are no occasions on
which the royal party appear to so little advantage as when it is desirable that they should show some little
candor, some common justice to La Fayette."—Lectures on French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 298.
[342] History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 36.
[343] "Russia and England secretly approved the attacks of the European league, without as yet cooperating
with it."—Mignet, p. 142. The British government were at this time restrained from active
measures by the British people, the great mass of whom sympathized with the French in their struggle for
liberty.
[344] "The chiefs," says Bertrand do Moleville, "of the Gironde faction, who had planned the insurrection,
did not, at that time, intend to overset the monarchy. Their design was to dethrone the king, make the crown
pass to his son, and establish a council of regency."
[345] Lamartine's History of the Girondists, vol. 2, p. 40. Barbaroux, one of the most active of the leaders
in this movement, "a man of genius, fine affections, and noble sentiments," in his memoirs writes, "It was
our wish that this insurrection in the cause of liberty should be majestic as is Liberty herself; holy as are the
rights which she alone can ensure, and worthy to serve as an example to every people, who, to break the
chains of their tyrants, have only to show themselves."
[346] "The greatest sensation was produced in our own country of Great Britain, and all over Europe, by a
manifesto like this, which went in truth to say, that two military powers were to march into a neighboring
and independent kingdom to settle the civil dissensions there as they thought best, and to punish by military
law, as rebels and traitors, all who presumed to resist them. No friend to freedom or the general rights of
mankind could, for a moment, tolerate such a procedure as this. Even the success of the Jacobins and
Anarchists was thought preferable to the triumph of invaders like these."—Prof. Smyth's Lectures on the Fr.
Rev., vol. ii., p. 326.
[347] The Garden of the Tuileries includes an area of about sixty-seven acres. A whole army could encamp
there.
[348] One of the officers of the staff said to Madame Campan, in the midst of this scene of terror and
confusion, "Put your jewels and money into your pockets. Our dangers are unavoidable. The means of
defense are unavailing. Safety might be obtained from some degree of energy in the king; but that is the
only virtue in which he is deficient."—Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 240.
[349] Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante Jours.
[350] "List! through the placid midnight; clang of the distant storm-bell. Steeple after steeple takes up the
wondrous tale. Black courtiers listen at the windows opened for air; discriminate the steeple-bells. This is
the tocsin of St. Roch; that, again, is it not St. Jaques, named de la Boucherie? Yes, messieurs! or even St.
Germain l'Auxerrois, hear ye it not? The same metal that rang storm two hundred and twenty years ago; but
by a majesty's order then; on St. Bartholomew's Eve!"—Carlyle, vol. ii., p. 138.
[351] "The behavior of Marie Antoinette was magnanimous in the highest degree. Her majestic air, her
Austrian lip and aquiline nose, gave her an air of dignity which can only be conceived by those who beheld
her in that trying hour."—Peltier.
[352] Where the iron railing now stands which separates the spacious court of the Tuileries from the
Carrousel, so called because Louis XIV., in 1662, held a great tournament here, there were, in 1792, rows of
small houses and sheds. The court was then divided by railings into three divisions. The central one, which
was rather larger than the others, was called the Cour Royale. The king's troops were stationed in these
courts, while the insurgents were filling the Carrousel. These court-yards, now thrown into one, afforded
Napoleon ample space for the review of his troops.
[353] M. Roederer, a constitutional monarchist, was one of the most illustrious men of the Revolution.
Denounced by the Jacobins he was compelled, like La Fayette, to seek refuge in flight. Upon Napoleon's
return from Egypt he aided effectually in rescuing France from anarchy, and in establishing the Consulate
and the Empire. He co-operated cordially with the Emperor in his plans of reform, was the chief instrument
in concluding a treaty between France and the United States, and took a large share in the regeneration of
the Kingdom of Naples by Joseph Bonaparte. When Napoleon fell beneath the blows of allied Europe,
Roederer, in sadness, withdrew to retirement.—Enc. Am.
[354] Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 274, note.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ROYAL FAMILY IMPRISONED.
Tumult and Dismay in the Assembly.—Storming the Tuileries.—Aspect of
the Royal Family.—The Decree of Suspension.—Night in the Cloister.—
The Second Day in the Assembly.—The Royal Family Prisoners.—Third
Day in the Assembly.—The Temple.—The Royal Family Transferred to the
Temple.
BUT few of the excited thousands who crowded all the approaches to the
Tuileries were conscious that the royal family had escaped from the palace. The
clamor rapidly increased to a scene of terrific uproar. First a few gun-shots were
heard, then volleys of musketry, then the deep booming of artillery, while shouts
of onset, cries of fury, and the shrieks of the wounded and the dying filled the air.
The hall of the Assembly was already crowded to suffocation, and the deputies
stood powerless and appalled. A tumultuous mass pressed the door. Blows,
pistol-shots, and groans of death were heard beneath the windows, and it was
every moment apprehended that the assassins would break into the hall, and that
the royal family and all their defenders would be cut down. Several bullets
shattered the windows, and one or two cannon-balls passed through the roof of
the building. Every one was exposed to fearful peril.
There was no longer any retreat for the king. By the side of the president's chair
there was a space inclosed by an iron railing, appropriated to the reporters.
Several of the members aided the king in tearing down a portion of this railing,
and all the royal family sought refuge there. At this moment the door of the hall
was attacked, and tremendous blows seemed to shake the whole building. "We
are stormed!" shouted one of the deputies. There was, however, no escape for
any one in any direction, and for some moments there was witnessed a scene of
confusion and terror which no language can describe.
At the same time there was a frightful conflict raging in and around the palace.
Immediately upon the departure of the king, all the Swiss troops, who were
hated as foreign mercenaries hired to shoot down the French, were drawn into
the palace from the court-yard, and were mingled in confusion through its
apartments with the loyalist gentlemen, the officers, and the domestics.
Notwithstanding the vast dimensions of the palace, it was so crowded that there
was scarcely space to move.
pic
STORMING THE TUILERIES, AUGUST 10, 1792.
The throng in the Carrousel attacked one of the gates, broke it down, and rushed
into the royal court, which was nearly vacated by the retirement of the Swiss.
The companies of the National Guard in the Carrousel, instead of opposing,
looked approvingly on, and were evidently quite disposed to lend the assailants a
helping hand. A large piece of timber was placed at the foot of the staircase of
the palace in the form of a barrier, and behind this were intrenched in disorder,
crowding the steps, the Swiss and some of the National Guard who adhered to
the king.[355]
Just then the whole Faubourg St. Antoine came marching along in solid column.
They marched through the Carrousel, entered the court, and placed six pieces of
cannon in battery to open a fire upon the palace. It was to avoid, if possible, a
conflict, that the guards had been withdrawn from the court into the palace. The
shouts of a countless multitude applauded this military movement of the mob.
The Swiss had received command from the king not to fire. The crowd
cautiously pressed nearer and nearer to the door, and at length, emboldened by
the forbearance of the defenders of the palace, seized, with long poles to which
hooks were attached, one after another of the sentinels, and, with shouts,
captured and disarmed them. Thus five of the Swiss troops were taken prisoners.
pic
MASSACRE OF THE ROYAL GUARD, AUGUST 10, 1792.
At last a single shot was fired, no one can tell on which side. It was the signal for
blood. The Swiss, crowded upon the magnificent marble stairs, rising one above
another, occupied a very formidable position. They instantly opened a deadly
fire. Volley succeeded volley, and every bullet told upon the dense mass
crowding the court. At the same moment, from every window of the palace, a
storm of shot was showered down upon the foe. In a moment the pavement was
red with blood, and covered with the dying and the dead. The artillerymen
abandoned their pieces, and the whole multitude rushed pell-mell, trampling the
dead and wounded beneath them in frantic endeavors to escape from the court
into the Carrousel. In a few moments the whole court was evacuated, and
remained strewed with pikes, muskets, grenadiers' caps, and gory bodies.
The besiegers, however, soon rallied. Following the disciplined troops from
Marseilles, who were led by able officers, the multitude returned with
indescribable fury to the charge. Cannon-balls, bullets, and grapeshot dashed in
the doors and the windows. Most of the loyalist gentlemen escaped by a secret
passage through the long gallery of the Louvre, as the victorious rabble, with
pike, bayonet, and sabre, poured resistlessly into the palace and rushed through
all its apartments. The Swiss threw down their arms and begged for quarter. But
the pitiless mob, exasperated by the slaughter of their friends, knew no mercy.
Indiscriminate massacre ensued, accompanied with every conceivable act of
brutality. For four hours the butchery continued, as attics, closets, cellars,
chimneys, and vaults were searched, and the terrified victims were dragged out
to die. Some leaped from the windows and endeavored to escape through the
Garden. They were pursued and mercilessly cut down. Some climbed the marble
monuments. The assassins, unwilling to injure the statuary, pricked them down
with their bayonets and then slaughtered them at their feet. Seven hundred and
fifty Swiss were massacred in that day of blood.
The Assembly during these hours were powerless, and they awaited in intense
anxiety the issue of the combat. Nothing can more impressively show the weak
and frivolous mind of the king than that, in such an hour, seeing the painter
David in the hall, he inquired of him,
"How soon shall you probably have my portrait completed?"
David brutally replied, "I will never, for the future, paint the portrait of a tyrant
until his head lies before me on the scaffold."[356]
The queen sat in haughty silence. Her compressed lip, burning eye, and hectic
cheek indicated the emotions of humiliation and of indignation with which she
was consumed. The young princess wept, and her fevered face was stained with
the dried current of her tears. The dauphin, too young to appreciate the terrible
significance of the scene, looked around in bewildered curiosity.
At eleven o'clock reiterated shouts of victory, which rose from the Garden, the
palace, the Carrousel, and all the adjoining streets and places, proclaimed that
the triumph of the people was complete. The Assembly, now overawed,
unanimously passed a decree suspending the king, dismissing the Royalist
ministers, recalling the Girondist ministry, and convoking a National Assembly
for the trial of the king. As Vergniaud read, in accents of grief, this decree to
which the Assembly had been forced, the king listened intently, and then said
satirically to M. Coustard, who was standing by his side,
"This is not a very constitutional act."
"True," M. Coustard replied; "but it is the only means of saving your majesty's
life."
The Assembly immediately enacted the decrees, which the king had vetoed,
banishing the refractory priests and establishing a camp near Paris. Danton,[357]
whose tremendous energies had guided the insurrection, was appointed Minister
of Justice. Monge, the illustrious mathematician, by the nomination of his
equally illustrious friend Condorcet, was placed at the head of the Marine.
Lebrun, a man of probity and untiring energy, was appointed Minister of Foreign
Affairs.
Thus was the whole government effectually revolutionized and reorganized.
During all the long hours of this day the royal family sat in the crowded
Assembly almost suffocated with heat, and enduring anguish which no tongue
can tell. The streets were filled with uproar, and the waves of popular tumult
dashed against the old monastery of the Feuillans, even threatening to break in
the doors. The regal victims listened to the decrees which tore the crown from
the brow of the king, and which placed his sceptre in the hands of his most
envenomed foes. In the conflict with the defenders of the palace, between three
and four thousand of the populace had perished, in revenge for which nearly
eight hundred of the inmates of the Tuileries had been massacred. The relatives
of the slain citizens, exasperated beyond measure, were clamorous for the blood
of the king as the cause of the death of their friends. There was no possible
covert for the royal family but in the Assembly. Fifty armed soldiers, with
bayonets fixed, surrounded them in their box, and yet it was every moment
feared that the populace would break in and satiate their rage with the blood of
the monarch and his family.
The king was ever famed for his ravenous appetite. Even in the midst of these
terrific scenes he was hungry and called for food. Bread, wine, and cold viands
were brought to him. He ate and drank voraciously to the extreme mortification
of the queen, who could not but perceive how little respect the conduct of the
king inspired. Neither she, Madame Elizabeth, nor the children could taste of
any food. They merely occasionally moistened their fevered lips with iced water.
It was now ten o'clock in the evening. The night was calm and beautiful. The
tumult of the day was over, but the terrific excitement of the scene had brought
the whole population of Paris out into the promenades. Fires were still blazing
beneath the trees of the Tuileries, consuming the furniture which had been
thrown from the windows of the chateau. Lurid flames flashed from the barracks
of the Swiss in the court-yard, which had been set on fire, streaming over the
roof of the palace, and illuminated both banks of the Seine.
The whole number slain during the day, Royalists and Revolutionists, amounted
to over four thousand. Many of the dead had been removed by relatives, but the
ground was still covered with the bodies of the slain, who were entirely naked,
having been stripped of their clothing by those wretches who ever swarm in the
streets of a great city, and who find their carnival in deeds of violence and blood.
By order of the insurrectional committee at the Hôtel de Ville, who had deposed
the municipal government and usurped its authority, these dead bodies were
collected and piled in vast heaps in the court-yards, in the Garden, in the Place
Louis XV., and in the Elysian Fields. Immense quantities of wood were thrown
upon them, and the whole city was illuminated by the glare of these funeral fires.
The Swiss and the Marsellais, the Royalists and the Jacobins, were consumed
together, and the ashes were swept clean from the pavement into the Seine.
As these scenes at midnight were transpiring in the streets, the Assembly sent a
summary of its decrees to be read by torch-light to the groups of the people. It
was hoped that these decrees would satisfy them, and put a stop to any farther
acts of violence on the morrow. It was two o'clock in the morning before the
Assembly suspended its sitting. For seventeen hours the royal family had sat in
the reporters' box, enduring all of humiliation and agony which human hearts
can feel.
In the upper part of the old monastery, above the committee-rooms of the
Assembly, there was a spacious corridor, from which opened several cells
formerly used by the monks. These cells, with walls of stone and floors of brick,
and entirely destitute of furniture, were as gloomy as the dungeons of a prison.
Here only could the king and his family find safety for the night. Some articles
of furniture were hastily collected from different parts of the building, and four
of these rooms were prepared for the royal party. Five nobles, who had
heroically adhered to the king in these hours of peril, occupied one, where,
wrapped in their cloaks and stretched out upon the floor, they could still watch
through the night over the monarch. The king took the next. It was furnished
with a table, and a plain wooden bedstead. He bound a napkin around his head
for a night-cap, and threw himself, but partially undressed, upon his uncurtained
bed. The queen, with her two children, took the next cell. Madame Elizabeth,
with the governess of the children, Madame de Tourzel, and the Princess
Lamballe, who had joined the royal family in the evening, took the fourth. Thus,
after thirty-six hours of sleeplessness and terror, the royal family were left to
such repose as their agitated minds could attain.
The sun had long arisen when the queen awoke from her fevered slumber. She
looked around her for a moment with an expression of anguish, and then,
covering her eyes with her hands, exclaimed,
"Oh, I hoped that it had all been a dream!"
The whole party soon met in the apartment of the king. As Madame Tourzel led
in the two royal children, Marie Antoinette looked at them sadly, and said,
"Poor children! how heart-rending it is, instead of handing down to them so fine
an inheritance, to say, it ends with us!"
"I still see, in imagination," writes Madame Campan, "and shall always see, that
narrow cell of the Feuillans, hung with green paper; that wretched couch where
the dethroned queen stretched out her arms to us, saying that our misfortunes, of
which she was the cause, aggravated her own. There, for the last time, I saw the
tears, I heard the sobs of her whom her high birth, the endowments of nature,
and, above all, the goodness of her heart, had seemed to destine for the ornament
of a throne and for the happiness of her people."
The tumult of the streets still penetrated their cells, and warned them that they
had entered upon another day of peril. The excited populace were still hunting
out the aristocrats, and killing them pitilessly wherever they could be found. At
ten o'clock the royal family were conducted again to the Assembly, probably as
the safest place they could occupy, and there they remained all day. Several of
the Swiss had been taken prisoners on the previous day, and by humane people
had been taken to the Assembly that their lives might be saved. The mob now
clamored loudly at the door of the hall, and endeavored to break in, demanding
the lives of the Swiss and of the escort of the king, calling them murderers of the
people. Vergniaud, the president, was so shocked by their ferocity that he
exclaimed, "Great God, what cannibals!"
At one time the doors were so nearly forced that the royal family were hurried
into one of the passages, to conceal them from the mob. The king, fully
convinced that the hour of his death had now come, entreated his friends to
provide for their safety by flight. Heroically, every one persisted in sharing the
fate of the king. Danton hastened to the Assembly, and exerted all his rough and
rude energy to appease the mob. They were at length pacified by the assurance
that the Swiss, and all others who had abetted in the slaughter of the people on
the preceding day, should be tried by a court-martial and punished. With great
difficulty the Assembly succeeded in removing the Swiss and the escort of the
king to the prison of the Abbaye.
At the close of this day the king and his family were again conducted to their
cells, but they were placed under a strict guard, and their personal friends were
no longer permitted to accompany them. This last deprivation was a severe blow
to them all, and the king said bitterly,
"I am, then, a prisoner, gentlemen. Charles I. was more fortunate than myself.
His friends were permitted to accompany him to the scaffold."
Another morning dawned upon this unhappy family, and again they were led to
the hall of the Assembly, where they passed the weary hours of another day in
the endurance of all the pangs of martyrdom.
It was at length decided that the royal family, for safe keeping, should be
imprisoned in the tower of the Temple. This massive, sombre building, in whose
gloomy architecture were united the palace, the cloister, the fortress, and the
prison, was erected and inhabited by the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages.
Having been long abandoned it was now crumbling to decay. It was an enormous
pile which centuries had reared near the site of the Bastille, and with its palace,
donjon, towers, and garden, which was choked with weeds and the débris of
crumbling walls, covered a space of many acres.
pic
THE TEMPLE.
The main tower was one hundred and fifty feet high, nine feet thick at the base,
surrounded by a wide, deep ditch, and inclosed by an immensely high wall. This
tower was ascended by a very narrow flight of circular stairs, and was divided
into four stories, each containing a bare, dismal room about thirty feet square.
The iron doors to these rooms were so low and narrow that it was necessary to
stoop almost double to enter them. The windows, which were but slits in the
thick wall, were darkened by slanting screens placed over them, and were also
secured by stout iron bars.
Such were the apartments which were now assigned to the former occupants of
the Tuileries, Versailles, and Fontainebleau. It was a weary ride for the royal
captives through the Place Vendôme and along the Boulevards to the Temple. An
immense crowd lined the road. All the royal family, with Pétion, the mayor,
occupied one carriage, and the procession moved so slowly that for two hours
the victims were exposed to the gaze of the populace before the carriages rolled
under the arches of the Temple. It was late in the afternoon when they left the
Assembly, and the shades of night darkened the streets ere they reached the
Temple.
The Assembly had surrendered the safe-keeping of the king to the Commune of
Paris, and appropriated one hundred thousand dollars to meet the expenses of the
royal family until the king should be brought to trial. Conscious that an army of
nearly two hundred thousand men was within a few days' march of Paris,
hastening to rescue the king, and that there were thousands of Royalists in the
city, and tens of thousands in France, who were ready at any moment to lay
down their lives to secure the escape of the monarch, and conscious that the
escape of the king would not only re-enslave France, but consign every friend of
the Revolution to the dungeon or the scaffold, they found it necessary to adopt
the most effectual measures to hold the king securely. They, therefore, would no
longer allow the friends of the king to hold free communication with him.
The Temple itself, by outworks, had been promptly converted into a fortress, and
was strongly garrisoned by the National Guard. Twelve commissioners were
without interruption to keep watch of the king's person. No one was allowed to
enter the tower of the Temple without permission of the municipality. Four
hundred dollars were placed in the hands of the royal family for their petty
expenses. They were not intrusted with more, lest it might aid them to escape. A
single attendant, the king's faithful valet Clery,[358] was permitted to accompany
the captives. It does not appear that the authorities wished to add unnecessary
rigor to the imprisonment. Thirteen cooks were provided for the kitchen, that
their table might be abundantly supplied. One of these only was allowed to enter
the prison and aid Clery in serving at the table, the expenses of which for two
months amounted to nearly six thousand dollars.[359]
It was an hour after midnight when the royal family were led from the
apartments of the Temple to which they had first been conducted to their prison
in the tower. The night was intensely dark. Dragoons with drawn sabres marched
by the side of the king, while municipal officers with lanterns guided their steps.
Through gloomy and dilapidated halls, beneath massive turrets, and along the
abandoned paths of the garden, encumbered with weeds and stones, they groped
their way until they arrived at the portals of the tower, whose summit was lost in
the obscurity of night. As in perfect silence the sad procession was passing
through the garden, a valet-de-chambre of the king inquired in a low tone of
voice whither the king was to be conducted.
"Thy master," was the reply, "has been used to gilded roofs. Now he will see
how the assassins of the people are lodged."
The three lower rooms of the tower were assigned to the captives. They had been
accompanied by several of their friends who adhered to them in these hours of
adversity. All were oppressed with gloom, and many shed bitter tears. Still they
were not in despair. Powerful armies were marching for their rescue, and they
thought it not possible that the French people, all unprepared for war, could
resist such formidable assailants. A week thus passed away, when on the 19th the
municipal officers entered and ordered the immediate expulsion of all not of the
royal family. This harsh measure was deemed necessary in consequence of the
conspiracies which were formed by the Royalists for the rescue of the king.
Unfeeling jailers were now placed over them, and, totally uninformed of all that
was passing in the world without, they sank into the extreme of woe.
FOOTNOTES:
[355] "Napoleon se trouvait au 10ième Août à Paris; il avait été présent à l'action. Il m'écrevit une lettre très
détaillée, que je lus à mes collègues du directoire du département; voici les deux traits principaux. 'Si Louis
XVI. se fût montré à cheval la victoire lui fût restée; c'est ce qui m'a paru, à l'esprit qui animait les groupes
le matin.
"'Après la victoire des Marseillais, j'en vis un sur le point de tuer un garde du corps; je lui dis,
"'Homme du midi, sauvons ce malheureux!
"'Es tu du midi?
"'Oui!
"'Eh, bien! sauvons le!'"—Mémoires du Roi Joseph, t. i., p. 47.
[356] History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 77.
[357] Danton was one of the fiercest of the Jacobins. Madame Roland, a political opponent, thus describes
him: "I never saw any countenance that so strongly expressed the violence of brutal passions, and the most
astonishing audacity, half disguised by a jovial air, an affectation of frankness, and a sort of simplicity, as
Danton's. In 1778 he was a needy lawyer, more burdened with debts than causes. He went to Belgium to
augment his resources, and, after the 10th of August, had the hardihood to avow a fortune of £158,333
($791,665), and to wallow in luxury while preaching sans culottism and sleeping on heaps of slaughtered
men." "Danton," says Mignet, "was a gigantic revolutionist. He deemed no means censurable so they were
useful. He has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace. Mirabeau's vices were those of a patrician.
Danton's those of a democrat. He was an absolute exterminator without being personally ferocious;
inexorable toward masses, humane, generous even, toward individuals."—Mignet, p. 158.
[358] "Clery we have seen and known, and the form and manners of that model of pristine faith and loyalty
ran never be forgotten. Gentlemanlike and complaisant in his manners, his deep gravity and melancholy
features announced that the sad scenes in which he had acted a part so honorable were never for a moment
out of his memory."—Scott's Life of Napoleon.
[359] Thiers's Hist. French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 26.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE MASSACRE OF THE ROYALISTS.
Supremacy of the Jacobins.—Their energetic Measures.—The Assembly
threatened.—Commissioners sent to the Army.—Spirit of the Court Party in
England.—Speech of Edmund Burke.—Triumphant March of the Allies.—
The Nation summoned en masse to resist the Foe.—Murder of the Princess
Lamballe.—Apology of the Assassins.—Robespierre and St. Just.—Views
of Napoleon.
THE majestic armies of the Allies were now rapidly on the march toward France,
and there was no force on the frontiers which could present any effectual
resistance. La Fayette was at Sedan, about one hundred and fifty miles northwest
of Paris, at the head of twenty thousand troops who were devoted to him. His
opposition to the Jacobins had already caused him to be denounced as a traitor,
and it was feared that he might go over to the enemy, and by his strong influence
carry not only his own troops, but those of General Luckner with him. The
condition of the Patriots was apparently desperate. The Allies were confident of
a triumphant and a rapid march to Paris, where all who had sacrilegiously laid
hands upon the old despotism of France would be visited with condign
punishment.
The Jacobin Club was now the sovereign power in France. It was more
numerous than the Legislative Assembly, and its speakers, more able and
impassioned, had perfect control of the populace. The Jacobins had, by the
insurrection, or rather revolution of the 10th of August, organized a new
municipal government. Whatever measure the Jacobin Club decided to have
enforced it sent to the committee which the club had organized as the city
government at the Hôtel de Ville. This committee immediately demanded the
passage of the decree by the Legislative Assembly. If the Assembly manifested
any reluctance in obeying, they were informed that the tocsin would be rung, the
populace summoned, and the scenes of the 10th of August renewed, to make
them willing. Such was now the new government instituted in France.
The Commune of Paris, as this municipal body at the Hôtel de Ville was called,
immediately entered upon the most vigorous measures to break up the
conspiracy of the Royalists, that they might not be able to rise and join the
invading armies of the Allies. The French Patriots had two foes equally
formidable to dread—the emigrants with the Allies marching upon the frontiers,
composing an army nearly two hundred thousand strong, and the Royalists in
France, who were ready, as soon as the Allies entered the kingdom, to raise the
standard of civil war, and to fall upon the Patriots with exterminating hand.
There was thus left for the leaders of the Revolution only the choice between
killing and being killed. It was clear that they must now either exterminate their
foes or be exterminated by them. And it must on all hands be admitted that the
king and the court, by refusing to accept constitutional liberty, had brought the
nation to this direful alternative.
To prevent suspected persons from escaping, no one was allowed to leave the
gates of Paris without the most careful scrutiny of his passport. A list was made
out of every individual known to be unfriendly to the Revolution, and all such
were placed under the most vigilant surveillance. The citizens were enjoined to
denounce all who had taken any part in the slaughter of the citizens on the 10th
of August. All writers who had supported the Royalist cause were ordered to be
arrested, and their presses were given to Patriotic writers. Commissioners were
sent to the prisons to release all who had been confined for offenses against the
court. As it was feared that the army, influenced by La Fayette, might manifest
hostility to the revolutionary movement in Paris, which had so effectually
demolished the Constitution, commissioners were sent to enlighten the soldiers
and bring them over to the support of the people. It was at first contemplated to
assign the palace of the Luxembourg as the retreat of the royal family. The
Commune of Paris, however, decided that the public safety required that they
should be held in custody where escape would be impossible, and that their safekeeping
should be committed to the mayor, Pétion, and to Santerre, who had
been appointed commander of the National Guards.
The Assembly, alarmed at the encroachments of the self-constituted Commune of
Paris, ordered a re-election of a municipal government to take the place of that
which the insurrection had dissolved. The Commune instantly dispatched a
committee to inform the Assembly that if they made any farther move in that
direction the tocsin should again be rung, and that the populace, who had
stormed the Tuileries, should be directed against their hall. The deputies,
overawed by the threat, left the Commune in undisputed possession of its power.
The Commune now demanded of the Assembly the appointment of a special
tribunal to punish the Royalists who had fired upon the people from the
Tuileries, and those who "as conspirators and traitors" were ready to join the
Allies as soon as they should enter France. The Assembly hesitated. The
Commune sent Robespierre at the head of a deputation to inform them in those
emphatic terms which he ever had at his command, that the country was in
danger, that the Allies and emigrants were on the march, that no delay could be
tolerated, and that if the decree were not immediately passed the tocsin should be
rung. The appalling threat was efficient, and the decree, though some heroically
opposed, was passed.[360] Such was the origin of the first revolutionary tribunal.
pic
LA FAYETTE IN PRISON AT OLMUTZ.
As soon as the commissioners from Paris arrived at the camp of La Fayette they
were by his orders arrested and imprisoned, and the soldiers took anew the oath
of fidelity to the law and the king. The news of their arrest reached Paris on the
17th, and excited intense irritation. La Fayette was denounced more vehemently
than ever, and a fresh deputation was dispatched to the army. La Fayette was
now ruined. The court was ready to hang him for his devotion to liberty. The
Jacobins thirsted for his blood because he thwarted their plans. Every hour his
situation became more desperate, and it was soon evident that he could do no
more for his country, and that there was no refuge for him but in flight. On the
20th, accompanied by a few friends, he secretly left his army, and took the road
to the Netherlands. When he reached the Austrian outposts at Rochefort, he was
arrested as a criminal in defiance of all law. With great secrecy he was taken into
the interior of Austria, and thrown into a dungeon in the impregnable fortress of
Olmutz. His only crime was that he had wished to introduce constitutional
liberty to his country. This, in the eye of despots, was an unpardonable sin. Here
we must leave him to languish five years in captivity, deprived of every comfort.
Many efforts were made in vain for his release. Washington wrote directly to the
Emperor of Austria in his behalf, but without effect. It was not till Napoleon,
thundering at the walls of Vienna with his invincible legions, demanded the
release of La Fayette, in 1797, that the doors of his dungeon were thrown open.
[361]
The British people sympathized deeply with La Fayette, but the British
government assailed him with unrelenting ferocity. On the 17th of March, 1794,
General Fitzpatrick moved an address in the House of Commons, to his majesty,
requesting his interference with the King of Prussia in behalf of La Fayette. Mr.
Fox advocated the measure in a speech of great eloquence and power. Nothing
can more clearly show the spirit of the court party in England at this time than
the speeches made by them on this occasion. William Pitt assailed La Fayette in
the most unfeeling manner, declaring that "he would never admit that La Fayette
was a true friend of liberty or deserved well of his country or of Europe." "He
said," writes Prof. Smyth, "every thing that it is painful to read—he was
rendered insensible on this occasion to all the better notions of his education and
natural intuitions of his understanding. There is no pleasure in reading the
abstract of his speech. It might have been made by the most vulgar minister that
ever appeared." Edmund Burke followed in a speech of unmeasured abuse. In
glowing colors he depicted all the scenes of violence which had occurred in
France, and, declaring La Fayette responsible for them all, concluded with the
words, "I would not debauch my humanity by supporting an application like the
present in behalf of such a horrid ruffian."[362] Mr. Windham followed in the
same strain. He expressed exultation in view of the calamities which had fallen
upon this great patriot. "La Fayette," said he, "has brought himself into that state
into which all fomenters of great and ruinous revolutions must necessarily fall;
he has betrayed and ruined his country and his king. I am not sorry. I rejoice to
see such men drink deep of the cup of calamity which they have prepared for the
lips of others; and I never will consent to do an act which will put a premium on
revolution, and which will give the example of sanction to treason, and of
reward to rebellion."
Such was the spirit of the court of St. James at this time. These speeches were
made after La Fayette had been languishing for two years in the dungeons of
Olmutz, exposed to almost every conceivable indignity, the particulars of which
Mr. Fox had affectingly narrated. The debate was concluded by Mr. Dundas,
who thanked Mr. Windham for his admirable speech. When the vote was taken
but fifty were found in sympathy with La Fayette, while one hundred and thirtytwo
voted against him.
The two sovereigns of Prussia and Austria were now at Mayence. Sixty thousand
Prussians were marching in single column by Luxembourg upon Longwy,
flanked on the right by twenty thousand Austrians, and on the left by twenty-six
thousand Austrians and Hessians. This majestic force was strengthened by
several co-operating corps of French emigrants, destined to attack exposed
positions, and to afford rallying points for treason. The invaders crossed the
frontiers unimpeded, and after a short and bloody strife captured Longwy.
Onward they rushed. The feeble, undisciplined patriots, could make no
resistance, and fled rapidly before them. Thionville and Verdun were
surrounded, and after a short but terrific storm of balls and shells capitulated.
There were many Royalists in each of these towns, and they received the
invaders with every demonstration of joy. Their daughters in congratulatory
procession met the King of Prussia at the gates and strewed his path with
flowers.
The garrison of Verdun might have held out for several days, though they would
have eventually been compelled to surrender. General Beaurepaire urged very
strenuously that they should maintain the siege to the last possible moment. But
the defensive council of the city, with whom rested the decision, voted an
immediate capitulation.
"Gentlemen," said Beaurepaire, "I have sworn never to surrender but with my
life. You may live in disgrace, since you wish it; but as for me, faithful to my
oath, behold my last words: I die free."
Immediately he discharged a pistol-shot through his brain, and fell dead before
them. The Convention decreed to him the honors of the Pantheon, and granted a
pension to his widow.
pic
SUICIDE OF BEAUREPAIRE.
The victorious allies, having surmounted these first obstacles, now plunged into
the defiles of the Argonne, and in fierce and bloody assaults drove before them
the troops of Dumouriez, who had hoped in these forest-encumbered passes to
present effectual resistance to the foe. The invaders were now triumphantly
marching on the high-road to Paris, and fugitives were continually arriving in the
metropolis, declaring that the army of the north was destroyed, and that there
was no longer any obstacle to the advance of the enemy. No language can
describe the consternation which pervaded the capital. The exultation in the
enemy's camp was immense. The "cobblers and tailors," as the emigrants
contemptuously called the Patriots, were running away, it was said, like sheep.
[363]
As each day brought tidings of the fearful strides which the Allies were making
toward the capital, indescribable terror was enkindled. The Constitutionalists and
the Girondists were utterly paralyzed. But the leaders of the Jacobins—Danton,
Robespierre, and Marat—resolved that, if they were to perish, their Royalist
enemies should perish with them. It was known that the Royalists intended, as
soon as the Allies should be in Paris, to rise, liberate the king, and with the
immense moral force they would attain by having the king at their head, join the
invaders. Nothing would then remain for the Revolutionists but exile, death, and
the dungeon.[364]
It was now with them but a desperate struggle for life. They must either destroy
or be destroyed. The first great peril to be apprehended was the rising of the
Royalists in Paris. The barriers were immediately ordered to be closed, and
guard-boats were stationed on the river that no one might escape. At the beat of
the drum every individual was enjoined to repair to his home. Commissioners
then, accompanied by an armed force, visited every dwelling. Party lines were so
distinctly drawn that the Royalists could not easily escape detection. At the
knock of the commissioners they held their breath with terror. Many attempted
concealment in chimneys, in cellar-vaults, beneath the floors, and in recesses
covered by pictures of tapestry. But workmen, accustomed to all such arts,
accompanied the commissioners. Chimneys were smoked, doors burst open, and
cellars, floors, and walls sounded. In one short night five thousand suspected
persons were torn from their homes and dragged to prison. Every man was
deemed guilty who could not prove his devotion to the popular cause.[365]
Still the enemy was approaching. "In three days," rumor said, "the Prussians will
be in Paris." The whole city was in a state of phrensy, and ready for any deed of
desperation which could rescue them from their peril. Danton entered the
Assembly and ascended the tribune with pallid face and compressed lips.
Silence, as of the grave, awaited his utterance.
"The enemy," said he, "threatens the kingdom, and the Assembly must prove
itself worthy of the nation. It is by a convulsion that we have overthrown
despotism; it is only by another vast national convulsion that we shall drive back
the despots. It is time to urge the people to precipitate themselves en masse
against their enemies. The French nation wills to be free, and it shall be."
There was lurking beneath these words a terrible significance then little dreamed
of. Jacobins and Girondists were now united by the pressure of a common and a
terrible danger. A decree was immediately passed for every citizen in Paris
capable of bearing arms to repair to the Field of Mars, there to be enrolled to
march to repel the Allies. It was the morning of the Sabbath. The générale was
beat, the tocsin rung, alarm-guns fired, and placards upon the walls, and the
voice of public criers, summoned every able-bodied man to the appointed
rendezvous. The philosophic Vergniaud, in a word, explained to Paris the
necessity and the efficacy of the measure.[366]
"The plan of the enemy," said he, "is to march directly to the capital, leaving the
fortresses behind him. Let him do so. This course will be our salvation and his
ruin. Our armies, too weak to withstand him, will be strong enough to harass him
in the rear. When he arrives, pursued by our battalions, he will find himself face
to face with our Parisian army drawn up in battle array under the walls of the
capital. There, surrounded on all sides, he will be swallowed up by the soil
which he has profaned."
In the midst of the uproar of the multitudes surging through the streets, as the
bells were ringing, drums beating, and the armed citizens hurrying to the Field of
Mars, the rumor was widely circulated that the Royalists had formed a
conspiracy to strike down their jailers, break from their prisons, liberate the king,
take possession of the city, rally all their confederates around them, and thus
throw open the gates of Paris to the Prussians. It was manifest to all that, in the
confusion which then reigned, and when the thunders of the Prussian and
Austrian batteries were hourly expected to be heard from the heights of
Montmartre, this was far from an impracticable plan. It was certain that the
Royalists would attempt it, whether they had already formed such a plan or not.
It is, however, probable that shrewd men, foreseeing this peril, had deliberately
resolved to hurl the mob of Paris upon the prisons for the assassination of all the
Royalists, before emptying the city of its defenders to march to meet the foe.
While the bewildered masses were in this state of terrific excitement, six
hackney-coaches left the Hôtel de Ville, conducting twenty-four Royalist priests,
who had refused to take the oath, to the prisons of the Abbaye. The people
crowding around and following the carriages began to murmur. "Here are the
traitors," said they, "who intend to murder our wives and children while we are
on the frontiers."
The first carriage reached the door of the prison. One priest alighted. He was
instantly seized, and fell pierced by a thousand poniards. It was the signal for the
slaughter of the whole. The murderers fell upon every carriage, and in a few
moments all but one, who miraculously escaped, were slain. This hideous
massacre roused the populace as the tiger is roused when he has once lapped his
tongue in blood. The cry was raised, "To the Carmelites, to the Carmelites." In
this prison two hundred priests were confined. The mob broke in and butchered
them all.
pic
BUTCHERY AT THE CARMELITES.
A man by the name of Maillard headed this mob, which consisted of but a few
hundred men. Having finished the work at the Carmelites and gorged themselves
with wine, Maillard exclaimed, "Now to the Abbaye." The blood-stained crew
rushed after him through the streets, and dashed in the doors of the prison. The
Abbaye was filled with debtors and ordinary convicts as well as suspected
aristocrats. As the mob rushed into the corridor one of the jailers mounted a
stool, and, addressing the assassins, said, "My friends, you wish to destroy the
aristocrats, who are the enemies of the people, and who meant to murder your
wives and children while you were at the frontiers. You are right no doubt; but
you are good citizens; you love justice; and you would be very sorry to steep
your hands in innocent blood."
"Yes, certainly," one of the leaders replied.
"Well, then," continued the jailer, "when you are rushing like furious tigers upon
men who are strangers to you, are you not liable to confound the innocent with
the guilty?"
These thoughts seemed to impress them, and it was immediately decided that
Maillard should judge each prisoner. He took his seat at a table; the prison list
was placed in his hands, and the prisoners, one by one, were brought before his
prompt and terrible tribunal. It was agreed, in order to spare unnecessary
suffering, that when the judge should say, "Sir, you must go to the prison of La
Force," as soon as the prisoner was led out into the court-yard he should be cut
down.
A Swiss officer was first brought forward. "It was you," said Maillard, "who
murdered the people on the 10th of August."
"We were attacked," the unfortunate man replied, "and only obeyed our superior
officers."
"Very well," said Maillard, "we must send you to the prison of La Force."
He was led into the court-yard and instantly slain. Every Swiss soldier in the
prison met the same fate. Thus the work went on with terrible expedition until
one hundred and eighty were put to death. All the women were left unharmed.
Many who were brought before the tribunal were acquitted, and the crowd
manifested great joy in rescuing them as their friends. Amid these horrid scenes
there were some gleams of humanity. The Governor of the Invalides was
doomed to death. His daughter clasped her father in her arms and clung to him
so despairingly that the hearts of the assassins were melted. One, in a strange
freak, presented her with a cup of blood, saying, "If you would save your father
drink this blood of an aristocrat." She seized the cup and drained it. Shouts of
applause greeted the act, and her father was saved.[367]
All the night long these horrid scenes were continued. Every prison in Paris
witnessed the same massacres, accompanied with every conceivable variety of
horrors.
The unfortunate Princess Lamballe, bosom friend of Marie Antoinette, was
confined in the prison of La Force. She was brought before the revolutionary
judge, and after a brief interrogation she was ordered to "swear to love liberty
and equality; to swear to hate the king, the queen, and royalty." "I will take the
first oath," the princess replied; "the second I can not take; it is not in my heart."
One of the judges, wishing to save her, whispered in her ear, "Swear every thing
or you are lost." But the unhappy princess was now utterly bewildered with
terror, and could neither see nor hear. Her youth and beauty touched the hearts
even of many of these brutal men. They desired her rescue, and endeavored to
lead her safely through the crowd. Cry out, said they, 'long live the nation,' and
you will not be harmed. But as she beheld the pavement strewn with corpses of
the slain, she could not utter a word. Her silence was taken for defiance. A sabre
blow struck her down. The murderers fell upon her like famished wolves upon a
lamb. Her body was cut into fragments, and a band of wretches, with her head
and heart upon pikes, shouted "Let us carry them to the foot of the throne." They
rushed through the streets to the Temple, and shouted for the king and queen to
look out at the windows. A humane officer, to shield them from the awful sight,
informed them of the horrors which were transpiring. The queen fainted. As the
king and Madame Elizabeth bent over her, for hours they were appalled by the
clamor of the rabble around the walls of the Temple.
At last the prisons were emptied, and the murderers themselves became weary of
blood. It is impossible to ascertain the numbers who perished. The estimate
varies from six to twelve thousand. The Commune of Paris, which was but the
servant of the Jacobin Club, issued orders that no more blood should be shed.
Assuming that the assassination was demanded by the public danger, and that the
wretches who had perpetrated it had performed a patriotic though a painful duty,
they rewarded them for their work. Nothing can more clearly show the terrible
excitation of the public mind, produced by a sense of impending danger, than
that a circular should have been addressed to all the communes of France, giving
an account of the massacre as a necessary and a praiseworthy deed. In this
extraordinary memorial, signed by the Administrators of the Committee of
Surveillance, the writers say,
"BRETHREN AND FRIENDS,—A horrid plot, hatched by the court, to murder all
the Patriots of the French empire, a plot in which a great number of
members of the National Assembly are implicated, having, on the ninth of
last month, reduced the Commune of Paris to the cruel necessity of
employing the power of the people to save the nation, it has not neglected
any thing to deserve well of the country.
"Apprised that barbarous hordes are advancing against it, the Commune of
Paris hastens to inform its brethren in all the departments that part of the
ferocious conspirators confined in the prisons have been put to death by the
people—acts of justice which appear to it indispensable for repressing by
terror the legions of traitors encompassed by its walls, at the moment when
the people were about to march against the enemy; and no doubt the nation,
after the long series of treasons which have brought it to the brink of the
abyss, will eagerly adopt this useful and necessary expedient; and all the
French will say, like the Parisians, 'We are marching against the enemy, and
we will not leave behind us brigands to murder our wives and children.'"
The instigators of these atrocious deeds defended the measure as one of absolute
necessity. "We must all go," it was said, "to fight the Prussians, and we can not
leave these foes behind us, to rise and take the city and assail us in the rear." "If
they had been allowed to live," others said, "in a few days we should have been
murdered. It was strictly an act of self-defense." Danton ever avowed his
approval of the measure, and said, "I looked my crime steadfastly in the face and
I did it." Marat is reproached as having contributed to the deed.[368] Robespierre
appears to have given his assent to the massacre with reluctance, but it is in
evidence that he walked his chamber through the whole night in agony, unable to
sleep.
At eleven o'clock at night of this 2d of September Robespierre and St. Just
retired together from the Jacobin Club to the room of the latter. St. Just threw
himself upon the bed for sleep. Robespierre exclaimed in astonishment,
"What, can you think of sleeping on such a night? Do you not hear the tocsin?
Do you not know that this night will be the last to perhaps thousands of our
fellow-creatures, who are men at the moment you fall asleep, and when you
awake will be lifeless corpses?"
"I know it," replied St. Just, "and deplore it; and I wish that I could moderate the
convulsions of society; but what am I?" then, turning in his bed, he fell asleep. In
the morning, as he awoke, he saw Robespierre pacing the chamber with hasty
steps, occasionally stopping to look out of the window, and listening to the
noises in the streets. "What, have you not slept?" asked St. Just.
"Sleep!" cried Robespierre; "sleep while hundreds of assassins murdered
thousands of victims, and their pure or impure blood runs like water down the
streets! Oh no! I have not slept. I have watched like remorse or crime. I have had
the weakness not to close my eyes, but Danton, he has slept."[369]
Paris was at this time in a state of such universal consternation, the government
so disorganized, and the outbreak so sudden and so speedy in its execution, that
the Legislative Assembly, which was not in sympathy with the mob, and which
was already overawed, ventured upon no measures of resistance.[370]
But there can be no excuse offered in palliation of such crimes. Language is too
feeble to express the horror with which they ever must be regarded by every
generous soul. But while we consign to the deepest infamy the assassins of
September, to equal infamy let those despots be consigned who, in the fierce
endeavor to rivet the chains of slavery anew upon twenty-five millions of
freemen, goaded a nation to such hideous madness. The allied despots of Europe
roused the people to a phrensy of despair, and thus drove them to the deed. Let it
never be forgotten that it was despotism, not liberty, which planted the tree
which bore this fruit. If the government of a country be such that there is no
means of redress for the oppressed people but in the horrors of insurrection, that
country must bide its doom, for, sooner or later, an outraged people will rise.
While, therefore, we contemplate with horror the outrages committed by the
insurgent people, with still greater horror must we contemplate the outrages
perpetrated by proud oppressors during long ages, consigning the people to
ignorance and degradation. They who brutalize a people should be the last to
complain that, when these people rise in the terribleness of their might, they
behave like brutes. There is no safety for any nation but in the education, piety,
and liberty of its masses.[371]
The Duke of Brunswick, urging resistlessly on his solid columns, battering down
fortresses, plunging through defiles, anticipated no check. But on the 20th of
September, to his great surprise, he encountered a formidable army intrenched
upon the heights of Valmy, near Chalons, apparently prepared for firm
resistance. Here Dumouriez, with much military skill, had rallied his retreating
troops. All France had been roused and was rushing eagerly to his support. Paris,
no longer fearing a rise of the Royalists, was dispatching several thousand
thoroughly-armed men from the gates every day to strengthen the camp at
Valmy, which was hardly a hundred miles from Paris. Dumouriez, when first
assailed, had less than forty thousand troops in his intrenchments, but the
number rapidly increased to over seventy thousand.
These were nearly all inexperienced soldiers, but they were inspired with intense
enthusiasm, all struggling for national independence, and many conscious that
defeat would but conduct them to the scaffold. Macdonald,[372] who afterward so
gloriously led the columns at Wagram, and Kellerman, who subsequently headed
the decisive charge at Marengo, were aids of Dumouriez. Louis Philippe also,
then the Duke of Chartres and eldest son of the Duke of Orleans, signalized
himself on the patriot side at the stern strife of Valmy.
The Duke of Brunswick brought forward his batteries and commenced a terrific
cannonade. Column after column was urged against the redoubts. But the young
soldiers of France, shouting Vive la Nation, bravely repulsed every assault. The
Prussians, to their inexpressible chagrin, found it impossible to advance a step.
Here the storm of battle raged with almost incessant fury for twenty days. The
French were hurrying from all quarters to the field; the supplies of the invaders
were cut off; dysentery broke out in their camp; autumnal rains drenched them;
winter was approaching; and they were compelled, in discomfiture and
humiliation, to turn upon their track and retire.
On the 15th of October the Allies abandoned their camp and commenced a
retreat. They retired in good order, and recrossed the frontier, leaving behind
them twenty-five thousand, who had perished by sickness, the bullet, and the
sword. Dumouriez did not pursue them with much vigor, for the army of the
Allies was infinitely superior in discipline to the raw troops under his command.
Winter was now at hand, during which no external attack upon France was to be
feared. All government was disorganized, and the question which agitated every
heart was, "What shall be done with the king?"
The Duke of Chartres, subsequently Louis Philippe, King of the French, then a
young man but seventeen years of age, after vigorously co-operating with
Dumouriez in repelling the invaders, returned to Paris. He presented himself at
the audience of Servan, Minister of War, to complain of some injustice. Danton
was present, and, taking the young duke aside, said to him,
"What do you do here? Servan is but the shadow of a minister. He can neither
help nor harm you. Call on me to-morrow and I will arrange your business."
The next day Danton, the powerful plebeian, received the young patrician with
an air of much affected superiority. "Well, young man," said he, "I am informed
that your language resembles murmurs; that you blame the great measures of
government; that you express compassion for the victims and hatred for the
executioners. Beware; patriotism does not admit of lukewarmness, and you have
to obtain pardon for your great name."
The young prince boldly replied, "The army looks with horror on bloodshed any
where but on the battle-field. The massacres of September seem in their eyes to
dishonor liberty."
"You are too young," Danton replied, "to judge of these events; to comprehend
these you must be in our place. For the future be silent. Return to the army; fight
bravely; but do not rashly expose your life. France does not love a republic; she
has the habits, the weaknesses, the need of a monarchy. After our storms she will
return to it, either through her vices or necessities, and you will be king. Adieu,
young man. Remember the prediction of Danton."[373]
In reference to these scenes Napoleon remarked at St. Helena, on the 3d of
September, 1816, "To-day is the anniversary of a hideous remembrance; of the
massacres of September, the St. Bartholomew of the French Revolution. The
atrocities of the 3d of September were not committed under the sanction of
government, which, on the contrary, used its endeavors to punish the crime. The
massacres were committed by the mob of Paris, and were the result of fanaticism
rather than of absolute brutality. The Septembriseurs did not pillage, they only
wished to murder. They even hanged one of their own party for having
appropriated a watch which belonged to one of their victims.
"This dreadful event arose out of the force of circumstances and the spirit of the
moment. We must acknowledge that there has been no political change
unattended by popular fury, as soon as the masses enter into action. The Prussian
army had arrived within one hundred miles of Paris. The famous manifesto of
the Duke of Brunswick was placarded on all the walls of the city. The people had
persuaded themselves that the death of all the Royalists in Paris was
indispensable to the safety of the Revolution. They ran to the prisons and
intoxicated themselves with blood, shouting Vive la Revolution. Their energy had
an electric effect, from the fear with which it inspired one party, and the example
which it gave to the other. One hundred thousand volunteers joined the army,
and the Revolution was saved.
"I might have preserved my crown by turning loose the masses of the people
against the advocates of the restoration. You well recollect, Montholon, when, at
the head of your faubouriens, you wished to punish the treachery of Fouché and
proclaim my dictatorship. I did not choose to do so. My whole soul revolted at
the thought of being king of another mob. As a general rule no social revolution
can take place without terror. Every revolution is in principle a revolt, which
time and success ennoble and render legal, but of which terror has been one of
the inevitable phases. How, indeed, can we say to those who possess fortune and
public situations, 'Begone and leave us your fortunes and your situations,'
without first intimidating them, and rendering any defense impossible. In France
this point was effected by the lantern and the guillotine."[374]
FOOTNOTES:
[360] "As a citizen, as a magistrate of the people," said one of the deputation, "I come to inform you that at
twelve o'clock this night the tocsin will be rung and the alarm beaten. The people are weary of not being
avenged. Beware lest they do themselves justice. I demand that you forthwith decree that a citizen be
appointed by each section to form a criminal tribunal."—Thiers, i, 341.
[361] "However irritated they might be by La Fayette's behavior at the outset of the Revolution, the present
conduct of the monarchs toward him was neither to be vindicated by morality, the law of nations, nor the
rules of sound policy. Even if he had been amenable for a crime against his own country, we know not what
right Austria or Prussia had to take cognizance of it."—Scott's Life of Napoleon.
[362] "Such were the reasonings and expressions of Mr. Burke on this striking occasion. So entirely was the
mind of this extraordinary man now over excited and overthrown; so entirely estranged from those elevated
feelings and that spirit of philanthropic wisdom which have made his speeches in the American contest, and
many paragraphs of his Reflections on this Revolution of France, so justly the admiration of
mankind."—Prof. Smyth's Lectures on the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 409.
[363] Jean Debry, in the Assembly, exclaimed with fervor, "The most instant and vigorous measures must
be adopted in defense of our country. The expense must not be thought of. Within fifteen days we shall
enjoy freedom or meet with death. If we are conquered we shall have no need of money, for we shall not
exist. If we are victorious, still we shall not feel the want of money, for we shall be free."—Journal of John
Moore, M.D., vol. i., p. 116.
[364] "The intelligence of the flight of La Fayette, the entry of the army of the coalition into the French
territory, the capture of Longwy, and the surrender of Verdun burst like thunder in Paris, and filled every
heart with consternation, for France had never approached more nearly those sinister days which presage
the decay of nations. Every thing was dead in her save the desire of living; the enthusiasm of the country
and liberty survived. Abandoned by all, the country did not abandon itself. Two things were required to
save it—time and a dictatorship. Time? The heroism of Dumouriez afforded it. The dictatorship? Danton
assumed it in the name of the Commune of Paris."—Lamartine, Hist. Gir., vol, ii., p. 119.
[365] Dr. John Moore, a very intelligent English physician, who, in company with Lord Lauderdale, was in
Paris during all these scenes, writes in his journal, "This search was made accordingly in the course of last
night and this morning. The commissioners were attended with a body of the National Guards, and all
avenues of the section were watched to prevent any persons from escaping. They did not come to our hotel
till about six in the morning. I attended them through every room, and opened every door of our
apartments. They behaved with great civility. We had no arms but pistols, which lay openly on the chimney.
They admired the nicety of the workmanship of one pair, but never offered to take them."—Vol. i., p. 116.
[366] "The people are told that there was a horrid plot between the Duke of Brunswick and certain traitors
in Paris; that as soon as all the new levies were completed, and all the men intended for the frontiers had
marched out of Paris, then those same traitors were to take command of a large body of men, now dispersed
over the capital and its environs, who have been long in the pay of the court, though they also are
concealed; that these concealed leaders at the head of their concealed troops were to have thrown open the
prisons and to arm the prisoners, then to go to the Temple, set the royal family free, and proclaim the king;
to condemn to death all the Patriots who remain in Paris, and most of the wives and children of those who
have marched out of it against the enemies of their country."—Moore's Journal, vol. i., p. 144.
[367] "Some inexplicable and consolatory acts astonish us amid these horrors. The compassion of Maillard
appeared to seek for the innocent with as much care as his vengeance sought for the guilty. He exposed his
life to snatch victims from his executions."—Lamartine, History of the Girondists, vol. ii., p. 140.
[368] M. Chabot, a patriotic orator, who had been a Franciscan friar, spoke in the Society of Jacobins as
follows of Marat: "Marat is reproached with being of a sanguinary disposition; that he contributed to the
late massacres in the prisons. But in so doing he acted in the true spirit of the Revolution, for it was not to
be expected that while our bravest patriots were on the frontiers we should remain here exposed to the rage
of the prisoners, who were promised arms and the opportunity of assassinating us. It is well known that the
plan of the aristocrats has always been, and still is, to make a general carnage of the common people. Now,
as the number of the latter is to that of the former in the proportion of ninety-nine to one, it is evident that
he who proposes to kill one to prevent the killing of ninety-nine is not a blood-thirsty man."
[369] Lamartine, History of the Girondists, ii., 132.
[370] Dr. Moore, while denouncing in the strongest terms the brutality of the populace, says, "In such an
abominable system of oppression as the French labored under before the Revolution, when the will of one
man could control the course of law, and his mandate tear any citizen from the arms of his family and throw
him into a dungeon for years or for life—in a country where such a system of government prevails,
insurrection, being the sole means of redress, is not only justifiable, but it is the duty of every lover of
mankind and of his country, as soon as any occasion presents itself which promises success."
[371] "Amid the disorders and sad events which have taken place in this country of late, it is impossible not
to admire the generous spirit which glows all over the nation in support of its independency. No country
ever displayed a nobler or more patriotic enthusiasm than pervades France at this period, and which glows
with increasing ardor since the publication of the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto, and the entrance of the
Prussians into the country. None but those whose minds are obscured by prejudice or perverted by
selfishness will refuse this justice to the general spirit displayed by the French in defense of their national
independence. A detestation of the excesses committed at Paris, not only is compatible with an admiration
of this spirit, but it is such well-informed minds alone as possess sufficient candor and sensibility to admire
the one, who can have a due horror of the other."—Journal of John Moore, M.D., vol. i., p. 160.
[372] "The young Macdonald, descended from a Scotch family transplanted to France, was aid-de-camp to
Dumouriez. He learned at the camp of Grandpré, under his commander, how to save a country.
Subsequently he learned, under Napoleon, how to illustrate it. A hero at his first step, he became a marshal
of France at the end of his life."—Lamartine, Hist. Gir., ii., 158.
[373] History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, ii., 185.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE KING LED TO TRIAL.
Assassination of Royalists at Versailles.—Jacobin Ascendency.—The
National Convention.—Two Parties, the Girondists and the Jacobins.—
Abolition of Royalty.—Madame Roland.—Battle of Jemappes.—Mode of
life in the Temple.—Insults to the Royal Family.—New Acts of Rigor.—
Trial of the King.—Separation of the Royal Family.—The Indictment.—
The King begs for Bread.
THE massacre of the Royalists in Paris was not followed by any general violence
throughout the kingdom, for it was in Paris alone that the Patriots were in
imminent danger. In Orleans, however, there were a number of Royalists
imprisoned under the accusation of treason. These prisoners were brought to
Versailles on the night of the 9th of September to be tried. A band of assassins
from Paris rushed upon the carriages, dispersed the escort, and most brutally
murdered forty-seven out of fifty-three.[375] They then went to the prison, where
twelve were taken out, and, after a summary trial, assassinated.
In the mean time elections were going on for the National Convention. The
Jacobin Clubs, now generally dominant throughout France, almost every where
controlled the elections. Some sober Patriots hoped that the Convention would
be disposed and able to check the swelling flood of anarchy. But others, when
they saw that the most violent Revolutionists were chosen as deputies, and that
they would be able to overawe the more moderate Patriots by the terrors of the
mob, began to despair of their country. Paris sent to the Convention Robespierre,
Danton, Marat, Chabot, and others who have attained terrible notoriety through
scenes of consternation and blood. The Girondists in the Convention, Vergniaud,
Condorcet, Barbaroux, Gensonné, though much in the minority, were heroic
men, illustrious in intelligence and virtue. There was no longer a Royalist party,
not even a Constitutional Royalist party, which dared to avow itself in France.
The court and the Allies had driven France to the absolute necessity of a
Republic.
On the 20th of September the Legislative Assembly was dissolved, and at the
same hour and in the same hall the National Convention commenced its session.
The spirit of the Girondists may be seen in their first motion.
"Citizen representatives," said M. Manuel, "in this place every thing ought to be
stamped with a character of such dignity and grandeur as to fill the world with
awe. I propose that the President of the Assembly be lodged in the Tuileries, that
in public he shall be preceded by guards, that the members shall rise when he
opens the Assembly. Cineas, the embassador of Pyrrhus, on being introduced to
the Roman senate, said that they appeared like an assembly of kings."
This proposition was contemptuously voted down by the Jacobins. Collot
d'Herbois, one of the leading Jacobins, then proposed the immediate abolition of
royalty. "The word king," said he, "is still a talisman, whose magic power may
create many disorders. The abolition of royalty therefore is necessary. Kings are
in the moral world that which monsters are in the natural. Courts are always the
centre of corruption and the work-houses of crime."
No one ventured to oppose this, and the president declared that by a unanimous
vote royalty was abolished. It was then voted the 22d of September, 1792,
should be considered the first day of the first year of the Republic, and that all
documents should follow the date of this era. It was on the eve of this day that
intelligence arrived of the cannonade of Valmy, in which the Patriot armies had
beaten back the foe. For one short night Paris was radiant with joy.
The most illustrious of the Girondists met that evening in the saloon of Madame
Roland, and celebrated, with almost religious enthusiasm, the advent of the
Republic. Madame Roland, in the accomplishment of the most intense desire of
her heart, appeared radiant with almost supernatural brilliance and beauty. It was
observed that M. Roland gazed upon her with a peculiar expression of fondness.
The noble and gifted Vergniaud conversed but little, and pensive thoughts
seemed to chasten his joy.
At the close of the entertainment he filled his glass, and proposed to drink to the
eternity of the Republic.
"Permit me," said Madame Roland, "after the manner of the ancients, to scatter
some rose-leaves from my bouquet in your glass."
Vergniaud held out his glass, and some leaves were scattered on the wine. He
then said, in words strongly prophetic of their fate, "We should quaff, not roses,
but cypress-leaves, in our wine to-night. In drinking to a republic, stained at its
birth with the blood of September, who knows that we do not drink to our own
death? No matter; were this wine my blood, I would drain it to liberty and
equality."
To this all responded with the words Vive la République. But a few months
elapsed ere almost every individual then present perished on the scaffold.
pic
BATTLE OF JEMAPPES.
In the mean time Dumouriez, with thirty-five thousand men, was pursuing a
division of the retreating Allies, consisting of twenty-five thousand Austrians,
under General Clairfayt, through Belgium. On the 4th of November he overtook
them strongly intrenched upon the heights of Jemappes. One day was consumed
in bringing up his forces and arranging his batteries for the assault. Sixty
thousand men were now arrayed for a deadly strife. One hundred pieces of
cannon were in battery to hurl into the dense ranks destruction and death. On the
morning of the 6th the storm of war commenced. All the day long it raged with
pitiless fury. In the evening ten thousand of the dying and the dead covered the
ground, and the Austrians were every where retreating in dismay. This new
victory caused great rejoicing in Paris, and inspired the revolutionary party with
new courage.
The day at length arrived for the trial of the king. It was the 11th of December.
For four months the royal family, with ever-alternating hopes and fears, which
had been gradually deepening into despair, had now endured the rigors of
captivity. The king, with that wonderful equanimity which distinguished him
through all these days of trial, immediately upon taking possession of his
gloomy abode introduced system into the employment of his time.
His room was on the third story. He usually rose at six o'clock, shaved himself,
and carefully dressed his hair. He then entered a small room or closet, which
opened from his sleeping-room, and engaged in devotional reading and prayer
for an hour. He was not allowed to close the door, for a municipal officer ever
stationed in his room was enjoined never to allow the king to leave his sight. He
then read till nine o'clock, during which time his faithful servant, Clery, put the
room in order, and spread the table for the breakfast of the royal family. At nine
o'clock the queen, the children, and Madame Elizabeth came up from the rooms
which they occupied below to breakfast.
The meal occupied an hour. The royal family then all descended to the queen's
room, where they passed the day. The king employed himself in instructing his
son, giving him lessons in geography, which was a favorite study of the king;
teaching him to draw and color maps, and to recite choice passages from
Corneille and Racine. The queen assumed the education of her daughter, while
her own hands and those of Madame Elizabeth were busy in needle-work,
knitting, and working tapestry.
At one o'clock, when the weather was fine, the royal family were conducted by
four municipal officers into the spacious but dilapidated garden for exercise and
the open air. The officials who guarded the king were frequently changed.
Sometimes they chanced to be men of humane character, who, though devoted to
the disinthrallment of France from the terrible despotism of ages, still pitied the
king as the victim of circumstances, and treated him with kindness and respect.
But more generally these men were vulgar and rabid Jacobins, who exulted in
the opportunity of wreaking upon the king the meanest revenge. They chalked
upon the walls of the prison, "The guillotine is permanent and ready for the
tyrant Louis." "Madame Veto shall swing." "The little wolves must be
strangled." Under a gallows, to which a figure was suspended, was inscribed the
words, "Louis taking an air-bath." From such ribald insults the monarch had no
protection.
A burly brutal wretch, named Rocher, was one of the keepers of the Tower. He
went swaggering about with a bunch of enormous keys clattering at his belt,
seeming to glory in his power of annoying, by petty insults, a king and a queen.
When the royal family were going out into the garden he would go before them
to unlock the doors. Making a great demonstration in rattling his keys, and
affecting much difficulty in finding the right one, all the party would be kept
waiting while he made all possible delay and noise in drawing the bolts and
swinging open the ponderous doors. At the side of the last door he not
unfrequently stationed himself with his pipe in his mouth, and puffed tobaccosmoke
into the faces of the king, the queen, and the children. Some of the guards
stationed around would burst into insulting laughter in view of these indignities,
which the king endured with meekness which seems supernatural.
pic
LOUIS XVI. AND THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE TEMPLE.
The recital of such conduct makes the blood boil in one's veins, and leads one
almost to detest the very name of liberty. But then we must not forget that it was
despotism which formed these hideous characters; that, age after age and century
after century, kings and nobles had been trampling upon the people, crushing
their rights, lacerating their heart-strings, dooming fathers and mothers, sons and
daughters, by millions upon millions, to beggary, degradation, and woe. It was
time for the people to rise at every hazard and break these chains. And while
humanity must weep over the woes of Louis XVI. and his unhappy household,
humanity can not forget that there are other families and other hearts who claim
her sympathies, and that this very Louis XVI. was at this very time doing every
thing in his power, by the aid of the armies of foreign despots, to bring the
millions of France again under the sway of the most merciless despotism. And it
can not be questioned that, had kings and nobles regained their power, they
would have wreaked a more terrible vengeance upon the re-enslaved people than
the people wreaked upon them.
For an hour the royal family continued walking in the garden. From the roofs of
the adjacent houses and the higher windows they could be seen. Every day at
noon these roofs and windows were crowded by those anxious to obtain a view
of the melancholy group of captives. Frequently they were cheered by gestures
of affection from unknown friends. Tender words were occasionally unrolled in
capital letters, or a flower to which a pebble was attached would fall at their feet.
These tokens of love, slight as they were, came as a balm to their lacerated
hearts. So highly did they prize them, that regardless of rain, cold, and snow, and
the intolerable insults of their guards, they looked forward daily with eagerness
to their garden walk. They recognized particular localities as belonging to their
friends, saying, "such a house is devoted to us; such a story is for us; such a
room is loyal; such a window friendly."
At two o'clock the royal family returned to the king's room, where dinner was
served. After dinner the king took a nap, while the queen, Madame Elizabeth,
and the young princess employed themselves with their needles, and the dauphin
played some game with Clery, whose name should be transmitted with honor to
posterity as faithful in misfortune. When the king awoke from his nap he usually
read aloud to his family for an hour or two until supper-time. Soon after supper,
the queen, with her children and Madame Elizabeth, retired to their rooms for
the night. With hearts bound together by these terrible griefs, they never parted
but with a tender and sorrowful adieu.[376]
Such was the monotonous life of the royal family during the four months they
occupied the Temple before the trial of the king. But almost every day of their
captivity some new act of rigor was enforced upon them. As the armies of the
Allies drew nearer, and city after city was falling before their bombardments,
and Paris was in a phrensy of terror, apprehensions of a conspiracy of the king
with the Royalists, and of their rising and aiding the invaders with an outburst of
civil war, led to the adoption of precautions most irksome to the captives.
Municipal officers never allowed any member of the royal family to be out of
their sight, except when they retired to bed at night. They then locked the doors,
and placed a bed against the entrance to each apartment, and there an officer
slept, so as to prevent all possibility of egress. Every day Santerre, commander
of the National Guard, made a visit of inspection to all the rooms with his staff.
At first the royal family had been allowed pen, ink, and paper, but this privilege
was soon withdrawn, and at last the cruel and useless measure was adopted of
taking from them all sharp instruments, such as knives, scissors, and even
needles, thus depriving the ladies not only of a great solace, but of the power of
repairing their decaying apparel. It was not the intention of the Legislative
Assembly that the royal family should be exposed to needless suffering. Four
hundred dollars were placed in their hands at the commencement of their
captivity for their petty expenses, and the Governor of the Temple was ordered
to purchase for them whatever they might need, five hundred thousand francs
($100,000) having been appropriated by the Convention for their expenses.[377]
They were not allowed to see the daily journals, which would have informed
them of the triumphant march of the Allies, but occasionally papers were sent to
them which recorded the victories of the Republic. Clery, however, devised a
very shrewd expedient to give them some information of the events which were
transpiring. He hired a newsman to pass daily by the windows of the Temple,
under the pretense of selling newspapers, and to cry out the principal details
contained in them. Clery, while apparently busy about the room, was always sure
to be near the window at the appointed hour, listening attentively. At night,
stooping over the king's bed to adjust the curtains, he hastily whispered the news
he had thus gathered. All this required the greatest caution, for a municipal
officer was always in the room, watching every movement.
Early in the morning of the 11th of December all Paris was in commotion to
witness the trial of the king, which was to commence on that day. The beating of
drums in the street, the mustering of military squadrons at their appointed places
of rendezvous, the clatter of hoofs, and the rumbling of artillery over the
pavements penetrated even the gloomy apartments of the Temple, and fell
appallingly upon the ears of the victims there.
The royal family were at breakfast as they heard these ominous sounds, and they
earnestly inquired the cause. After some hesitation the king was informed that
the Mayor of Paris would soon come to conduct him to his trial, and that the
troops gathering around the Temple were to form his escort. He was also
required immediately to take leave of his family, and told that he could not be
permitted to see them again until after his trial. Expressions of heart-rending
anguish and floods of tears accompanied this cruel separation. The king pleaded
earnestly and with gushing eyes that, at least, he might enjoy the society of his
little son, saying,
"What, gentlemen! deprive me of even the presence of my son—a child of seven
years!"
But the commissioners were inexorable. "The Commune thinks," said they, "that,
since you are to be au secret during your trial, your son must necessarily be
confined either with you or his mother; and it has imposed the privation upon
that parent who, from his sex and courage, was best able to support it."
The queen, with the children and Madame Elizabeth, were conducted to the
rooms below. The king, overwhelmed with anguish, threw himself into a chair,
buried his face in his hands, and, without uttering a word, remained immovable
as a statue for two hours. At noon M. Chambon,[378] the Mayor of Paris, with
Santerre, commander of the National Guard, and a group of officers, all wearing
the tricolored scarf, entered the king's chamber.
Chambon, with solemnity and with a faltering voice, informed the king of the
painful object of their mission, and summoned him, in the name of the
Convention, as Louis Capet, to appear before their bar.
"Gentlemen," replied the king, "Capet is not my name. It is the name of one of
my ancestors. I could have wished that my son, at least, had been permitted to
remain with me during the two hours I have awaited you. However, this
treatment is but a part of the system adopted toward me throughout my captivity.
I follow you, not in obedience to the orders of the Convention, but because my
enemies are more powerful than I."
Immediately rising, he put on his great-coat, took his hat, and, following the
mayor, and followed by the staff of officers, descended the stairs of the tower.
Before the massive portal of the Temple the carriage of the mayor was drawn up,
surrounded by a guard of six hundred picked men. A numerous detachment of
cavalry, as an advance-guard, dragging six pieces of cannon, led the melancholy
procession which was conducting a monarch to the judgment-bar and to death. A
similar body of cavalry followed in the rear with three pieces of cannon. These
precautions were deemed necessary to guard against any possible rescue by the
Royalists. Every soldier was supplied with sixteen rounds of cartridges, and the
battalions marched in such order that they could instantly form in line of battle.
The National Guard lined the streets through which they passed, one hundred
thousand men being under arms in Paris that day.
The cavalcade passed slowly along the Boulevards. The house-tops, the
windows, the side-walks, were thronged with countless thousands. The king,
deprived of his razor, had been unable to shave, and his face was covered with
shaggy hair; his natural corpulence, wasted away by imprisonment, caused his
garments to hang loose and flabby about him; his features were wan through
anxiety and suffering. Thus, unfortunately, every thing in his personal
appearance combined to present an aspect exciting disgust and repulsion rather
than sympathy. The procession passed down the Place Vendôme and thence to
the Monastery of the Feuillants. The king alighted. Santerre took his arm and led
him to the bar of the Convention. There was a moment of profound silence. All
were awe-stricken by the solemnity of the scene. The president, Barrere,[379]
broke the silence, saying,
"Citizens! Louis Capet is before you. The eyes of Europe are upon you. Posterity
will judge you with inflexible severity. Preserve, then, the dignity and the
dispassionate coolness befitting judges. You are about to give a great lesson to
kings, a great and useful example to nations. Recollect the awful silence which
accompanied Louis from Varennes—a silence that was the precursor of the
judgment of kings by the people." Then, turning to the king, Barrere said,
"Louis, the French nation accuses you. Be seated, and listen to the Act of
Accusation." It was then two o'clock in the afternoon.
The formidable indictment was read. The king was held personally responsible
for all the acts of hostility to popular liberty which had occurred under his reign.
A minute, truthful, impartial recapitulation of those acts, which we have
recorded in the previous pages, constituted the accusation. The king listened
attentively to the reading, and without any apparent emotion. The accusation
consisted of fifty-seven distinct charges. As they were slowly read over, one by
one, the president paused after each and said to the king, "What have you to
answer?" But two courses consistent with kingly dignity were open for the
accused. The one was to refuse any reply and to take shelter in the inviolability
with which the Constitution had invested him. The other was boldly to avow that
he had adopted the measures of which he was accused, believing it to be
essential to the welfare of France that the headlong progress of the Revolution
should be checked. Neither would have saved his life, but either would have
rescued his memory from much reproach. But the king, cruelly deprived of all
counsel with his friends, dragged unexpectedly to his trial, and overwhelmed
with such a catalogue of accusations, unfortunately adopted the worst possible
course. The blame of some of the acts he threw upon his ministers; some facts he
denied; and in other cases he not only prevaricated but stooped to palpable
falsehood. When we reflect upon the weak nature of the king and the confusion
of mind incident to an hour of such terrible trial, we must judge the unhappy
monarch leniently. But when the king denied even the existence of the iron chest
which the Convention had already found, and had obtained proof to
demonstration that he himself had closed up, and when he denied complicity
with the Allies, proofs of which, in his own handwriting, were found in the iron
safe, it is not strange that the effect should have been exceedingly unfavorable to
his defense.[380]
pic
DISCOVERY OF THE IRON SAFE.
This interrogation was continued for three hours, at the close of which the king,
who had eaten nothing since his interrupted breakfast, was so exhausted that he
could hardly stand. Santerre then conducted him into an adjoining committeeroom.
Before withdrawing, however, the king demanded a copy of the
accusation, and counsel to assist him in his defense. In the committee-room the
king saw a man eating from a small loaf of bread. Faint with hunger, the
monarch approached the man, and, in a whisper, implored a morsel for himself.
"Ask aloud," said the man, retreating, "for what you want." He feared that he
should be suspected of some secret conspiracy with the king.
"I am hungry," said Louis XVI., "and ask for a piece of your bread."
"Divide it with me," said the man. "It is a Spartan breakfast. If I had a root I
would give you half."
The king entered the carriage eating his crust. The same cavalcade as in the
morning preceded and accompanied him. The same crowds thronged the streets
and every point of observation. A few brutal wretches, insulting helplessness,
shouted Vive la Révolution! and now and then a stanza of the Marseillaise Hymn
fell painfully upon his ear. Chambon, the mayor, and Chaumette, the public
prosecutor, were in the carriage with the king. Louis, having eaten as much of
the half loaf of bread as he needed, had still a fragment in his hand.
"What shall I do with it?" inquired the simple-hearted monarch. Chaumette
relieved him of his embarrassment by tossing it out of the window.
"Ah," said the king, "it is a pity to throw bread away when it is so dear."
"True," replied Chaumette; "my grandmother used to say to me, 'Little boy,
never waste a crumb of bread; you can not make one.'"[381]
"Monsieur Chaumette," Louis rejoined, "your grandmother appears to me to
have been a woman of great good sense."
It was half-past six o'clock, and the gloom of night enveloped the Temple, when
Louis was again conducted up the stairs of the tower to his dismal cell. He
piteously implored permission again to see his family. But Chambon dared not
grant his request in disobedience to the commands of the Commune.
The most frivolous things often develop character. It is on record that the toils
and griefs of the day had not impaired the appetite of the king, and that he ate for
supper that night "six cutlets, a considerable portion of a fowl, two eggs, and
drank two glasses of white wine and one of Alicante wine, and forthwith went to
bed."[382]
During these dreadful hours the queen, with Madame Elizabeth and the children,
were in a state of agonizing suspense, not even knowing but that the king was
being led to his execution. Clery, however, late in the evening, went to their
room and informed them of all the details he had been able to gather respecting
the king's examination.
"Has any mention been made of the queen?" asked Madame Elizabeth. "Her
name was not mentioned," Clery replied, "in the act of accusation."
"Ah," rejoined the princess, "perhaps they demand my brother's life as necessary
for their safety; but the queen—these poor children—what obstacle can their
lives present to their ambition?"
FOOTNOTES:
[374] Napoleon at St. Helena, 394.
[375] Peltier.
[376] The queen undressed the dauphin, when he repeated the following prayer, composed by the queen
and remembered and recorded by her daughter: "Almighty God, who created and redeemed me, I love you!
Preserve the days of my father and my family. Protect us against our enemies. Give my mother, my aunt,
my sister, the strength they need to support their troubles."—Lamartine, History of the Girondists, vol. ii.,
p. 287.
[377] "We must not exaggerate the faults of human nature, and suppose that, adding an execrable meanness
to the fury of fanaticism, the keepers of the imprisoned family imposed on it unworthy privations, with the
intention of rendering the remembrance of its past greatness the more painful. Distrust was the sole cause of
certain refusals. Thus, while the dread of plots and secret communications prevented them from admitting
more than one attendant into the interior of the prison, a numerous establishment was employed in
preparing their food. Thirteen persons were engaged in the duties of the kitchen, situated at some distance
from the tower. The report of the expenses of the Temple, where the greatest decency is observed, where
the prisoners are mentioned with respect, where their sobriety is commended, where Louis XVI. is justified
from the low reproach of being too much addicted to wine—these reports, which are not liable to suspicion,
make the total expenses of the table amount in two months to 28,745 livres ($5749)."—Thiers, vol. ii., p.
26.
[378] "M. Chambon, the successor of Bailly and Pétion, was a learned and humane physician, whom public
esteem rather than Revolutionary favor had raised to the dignity of the first magistrate of Paris. Of modéré
principles, kind and warm-hearted, accustomed, by his profession, to sympathize with the unfortunate,
compelled to execute orders repugnant to his feelings, the pity of the man was visible beneath the
inflexibility of the magistrate."—Lamartine, Hist. des Girondistes, vol. ii., p. 321.
[379] "Barrere escaped during the different ebullitions of the Revolution because he was a man, without
principle or character, who changed and adapted himself to every side. He had the reputation of being a
man of talent, but I did not find him such. I employed him to write, but he displayed no ability. He used
many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument."—Napoleon at St. Helena.
[380] Gamain, the locksmith, who for ten years had worked for and with the king, and who had aided him
in constructing this iron safe, basely betrayed the secret. The papers were all seized and intrusted by the
Convention to a committee of twelve, who were to examine and report upon them. This Judas received, as
his reward from the Convention, a pension of two hundred and forty dollars a year. See France and its
Revolutions, by Geo. Long, Esq., p. 241.
CHAPTER XXXI.
EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.
Close of the Examination.—The King's Counsel.—Heroism of
Malesherbes.—Preparations for Defense.—Gratitude of the King.—The
Trial.—Protracted Vote.—The Result.—The King solicits the Delay of
Execution for three Days.—Last Interview with his Family.—Preparation
for Death.—The Execution.
AS soon as the king had withdrawn from the Assembly, that body was thrown
into great tumult in consequence of the application of Louis for the assistance of
counsel. It was, however, after an animated debate, which continued until the
next day, voted that the request of the king should be granted, and a deputation
was immediately sent to inform the king of the vote, and to ask what counsel he
would choose. He selected two of the most eminent lawyers of Paris—M.
Tronchet and M. Target. Tronchet heroically accepted the perilous commission.
Target, with pusillanimity which has consigned his name to disgrace, wrote a
letter to the Convention stating that his principles would not allow him to
undertake the defense of the king.[383] The venerable Malesherbes, then seventy
years of age, immediately wrote a letter to the president, imploring permission to
assume the defense of the monarch. This distinguished statesman, a friend of
monarchy and a personal friend of the monarch, had been living in the retirement
of his country-seat, and had taken no part in the Revolution. By permission of
the Commune he was conducted, after he had been carefully searched, to the
Temple. With a faltering step he entered the prison of the king. Louis XVI. was
seated reading Tacitus. The king immediately arose, threw his arms around
Malesherbes in a cordial embrace, and said,
"Ah, is it you, my friend! In what a situation do you find me! See to what my
passion for the amelioration of the state of the people, whom we have both loved
so much, has reduced me! Why do you come hither? Your devotion only
endangers your life and can not save mine."
Malesherbes, with eyes full of tears, endeavored to cheer the king with words of
hope.
"No!" replied the monarch, sadly. "They will condemn me, for they possess both
the power and the will. No matter; let us occupy ourselves with the cause as if
we were to gain it. I shall gain it in fact, since I shall leave no stain upon my
memory."
The two defenders of the king were permitted to associate with them a third, M.
Deséze, an advocate who had attained much renown in his profession. For a
fortnight they were employed almost night and day in preparing for the defense.
Malesherbes came every morning with the daily papers, and prepared for the
labors of the evening. At five o'clock Tronchet and Deséze came, and they all
worked together until nine.
In the mean time the king wrote his will; a very affecting document, breathing in
every line the spirit of a Christian. He also succeeded in so far eluding the
vigilance of his keepers as to open a slight correspondence with his family. The
queen pricked a message with a pin upon a scrap of paper, and then concealed
the paper in a ball of thread, which was dropped into a drawer in the kitchen,
where Clery took it and conveyed it to his master. An answer was returned in a
similar way. It was but an unsatisfactory correspondence which could thus be
carried on; but even this was an unspeakable solace to the captives.
At length the plan of defense was completed. Malesherbes and the king had
furnished the facts, Tronchet and Deséze had woven them all into an exceedingly
eloquent and affecting appeal. Deséze read it aloud to the king and his
associates. The pathetic picture he drew of the vicissitudes of the royal family
was so touching that even Malesherbes and Tronchet could not refrain from
weeping, and tears fell from the eyes of the king. At the close of the reading, the
king turned to Deséze, and, in the spirit of true majesty of soul, said,
"I have to request of you to make a painful sacrifice. Strike out of your pleading
the peroration. It is enough for me to appear before such judges and show my
entire innocence. I will not move their feelings."[384]
Deséze was very reluctant to accede to this request, but was constrained to yield.
After Tronchet and Deséze had retired that night, the king, left alone with
Malesherbes, seemed to be troubled with some engrossing thought. At last he
said,
"I have now a new source of regret. Deséze and Tronchet owe me nothing. They
devote to me their time, exertions, and perhaps their life. How can I requite
them? I possess nothing; and were I to leave them a legacy it would not be paid;
besides, what fortune could repay such a debt?"
pic
LOUIS XVI. AND MALESHERBES.
"Sire," replied Malesherbes, "their consciences and posterity will reward them.
But it is in your power to grant them a favor they will esteem more than all those
you had it in your power to bestow upon them formerly."
"What is it?" added the king.
"Sire, embrace them," Malesherbes replied.
The next day, when they entered his chamber, the king approached them and
pressed each to his heart in silence. This touching testimonial of the king's
gratitude, and of his impoverishment, was to the noble hearts of these noble men
an ample remuneration for all their toil and peril.
The 26th of December had now arrived, the day appointed for the final trial. At
an early hour all Paris was in commotion, and the whole military force of the
metropolis was again marshaled. The sublimity of the occasion seemed to have
elevated the character of the king to unusual dignity. He was neatly dressed, his
beard shaved, and his features were serene and almost majestic in their
expression of imperturbable resignation. As he rode in the carriage with
Chambon, the mayor, and Santerre, the commander of the National Guard, he
conversed cheerfully upon a variety of topics. Santerre, regardless of the
etiquette which did not allow a subject to wear his hat in the presence of his
monarch, sat with his hat on. The king turned to him, and said, with a smile,
"The last time, sir, you conveyed me to the Temple, in your hurry you forgot
your hat; and now, I perceive, you are determined to make up for the omission."
On entering the Convention the king took his seat by the side of his counsel, and
listened with intense interest to the reading of his defense, watching the
countenances of his judges to see the effect it was producing upon their minds.
Occasionally he whispered, and even with a smile, to Malesherbes and Tronchet.
The Convention received the defense in profound silence.
The defense consisted of three leading divisions. First, it was argued that by the
Constitution the king was inviolable, and not responsible for the acts of the
crown—that the Ministers alone were responsible. He secondly argued that the
Convention had no right to try the king, for the Convention were his accusers,
and, consequently, could not act as his judges. Thirdly, while protesting, as
above, the inviolability of the king, and the invalidity of the Convention to judge
him, he then proceeded to the discussion of the individual charges. Some of the
charges were triumphantly repelled, particularly that of shedding French blood
on the 10th of August. It was clearly proved that the people, not Louis XVI.,
were the aggressors. As soon as Deséze had finished his defense, the king
himself rose and said, in a few words which he had written and committed to
memory,
"You have heard the grounds of my defense. I shall not repeat them. In
addressing you, perhaps for the last time, I declare that my conscience
reproaches me with nothing, and that my defenders have told you the truth. I
have never feared to have my public conduct scrutinized. But I am grieved to
find that I am accused of wishing to shed the blood of my people, and that the
misfortunes of the 10th of August are laid to my charge. I confess that the
numerous proofs I have always given of my love for the people ought to have
placed me above this reproach."
He resumed his seat. The President then asked if he had any thing more to say.
He declared he had not, and retired with his counsel from the hall. As he was
conducted back to the Temple, he conversed with the same serenity he had
manifested throughout the whole day. It was five o'clock, and the gloom of night
was descending upon the city as he re-entered his prison.
No sooner had the king left the hall than a violent tumult of debate commenced,
which was continued, day after day, with a constant succession of eager, agitated
speakers hurrying to the tribune, for twelve days. Some were in favor of an
immediate judgment, some were for referring the question to the people; some
demanded the death of the king, others imprisonment or exile. On the 7th of
January all seemed weary of these endless speeches, and the endless repetition of
the same arguments. Still, there were many clamorous to be heard; and, after a
violent contest, it was voted that the decisive measure should be postponed for a
week longer, and that on the 14th of January the question should be taken.
The fatal day arrived. It was decreed that the subject should be presented to the
Convention in the three following questions: First, Is Louis guilty? Second,
Shall the decision of the Convention be submitted to the ratification of the
people? The whole of the 15th was occupied in taking these two votes. Louis
was unanimously pronounced to be guilty, with the exception of ten who refused
to vote, declaring themselves incapable of acting both as accusers and judges.
On the question of an appeal to the people, 281 voices were for it, 423 against it.
[385] And now came the third great and solemn question, What shall be the
sentence? Each member was required to write his vote, sign it, and then, before
depositing it, to ascend the tribune and give it audibly, with any remarks which
he might wish to add.
The voting commenced at seven o'clock in the evening of the 16th, and
continued all night, and without any interruption, for twenty-four hours. All
Paris was during the time in the highest state of excitement, the galleries of the
Convention being crowded to suffocation. Some voted for death, others for
imprisonment until peace with allied Europe, and then banishment. Others voted
for death, with the restriction that the execution should be delayed. They wished
to save the king, and yet feared the accusation of being Royalists if they did not
vote for his death. The Jacobins all voted for death. They had accused their
opponents, the Girondists, of being secretly in favor of royality, and as such had
held them up to the execration of the mob. The Girondists wished to save the
king. It was in their power to save him. But it required more courage, both moral
and physical, than ordinary men possess, to brave the vengeance of the assassins
of September who were hovering around the hall.
It was pretty well understood in the Convention that the fate of the king
depended upon the Girondist vote, and it was not doubted that the party would
vote as did their leader. It was a moment of fearful solemnity when Vergniaud
ascended the tribune. Breathless silence pervaded the Assembly. Every eye was
fixed upon him. His countenance was pallid as that of a corpse. For a moment he
paused, with downcast eyes, as if hesitating to pronounce the dreadful word.
Then, in a gloomy tone which thrilled the hearts of all present, he said, Death.
[386] Nearly all the Girondists voted for death, with the restriction of delaying the
execution. Many of the purest men in the nation thus voted, with emotions of
sadness which could not be repressed. The noble Carnot gave his vote in the
following terms: "Death; and never did word weigh so heavily on my heart."
When the Duke of Orleans was called, deep silence ensued. He was cousin of the
king, and first prince of the blood. By birth and opulence he stood on the highest
pinnacle of aristocratic supremacy. Conscious of peril, he had for a long time
done every thing in his power to conciliate the mob by adopting the most radical
of Jacobin opinions. The Duke, bloated with the debaucheries which had
disgraced his life, ascended the steps slowly, unfolded a paper, and read in
heartless tones these words:
"Solely occupied with my duty, convinced that all who have attempted, or shall
attempt hereafter, the sovereignty of the people, merit death, I vote for death."
The atrocity of this act excited the abhorrence of the Assembly, and loud
murmurs of disapprobation followed the prince to his seat. Even Robespierre
despised his pusillanimity, and said,
"The miserable man was only required to listen to his own heart, and make
himself an exception. But he would not or dare not do so. The nation would have
been more magnanimous than he."[387]
At length the long scrutiny was over, and Vergniaud, who had presided, rose to
announce the result. He was pale as death, and it was observed that not only his
voice faltered, but that his whole frame trembled.
"Citizens," said he, "you are about to exercise a great act of justice. I hope
humanity will enjoin you to keep the most perfect silence. When justice has
spoken humanity ought to be listened to in its turn."
He then read the results of the vote. There were seven hundred and twenty-one
voters in the Convention. Three hundred and thirty-four voted for imprisonment
or exile, three hundred and eighty-seven for death, including those who voted
that the execution should be delayed. Thus the majority for death was fifty-three;
but as of these forty-six demanded a suspension of the execution, there remained
but a majority of seven for immediate death. Having read this result, Vergniaud,
in a sorrowful tone, said, "I declare, in the name of the Convention, that the
punishment pronounced against Louis Capet is death."[388]
The counsel of Louis XVI., who, during the progress of the vote, had urged
permission to speak, but were refused, were now introduced. In the name of the
king, Deséze appealed to the people from the judgment of the Convention. He
urged the appeal from the very small majority which had decided the penalty.
Tronchet urged that the penal code required a vote of two thirds to consign one
to punishment, and that the king ought not to be deprived of a privilege which
every subject enjoyed. Malesherbes endeavored to speak, but was so overcome
with emotion that, violently sobbing, he was unable to continue his speech, and
was compelled to sit down. His gray hairs and his tears so moved the Assembly
that Vergniaud rose, and, addressing the Assembly, said, "Will you decree the
honors of the sitting to the defenders of Louis XVI.?" The unanimous response
was, "Yes, yes."
It was now late at night, and the Convention adjourned. The whole of the 18th
and the 19th were occupied in discussing the question of the appeal to the
people. On the 20th, at three o'clock in the morning, the final vote was taken.
Three hundred and ten voted to sustain the appeal; three hundred and eighty for
immediate death. All the efforts to save the king were now exhausted, and his
fate was sealed. A deputation was immediately appointed, headed by Garat,
Minister of Justice, to acquaint Louis XVI. with the decree of the Convention.
At two o'clock in the afternoon of the 20th, Louis heard the noise of a numerous
party ascending the steps of the tower. As they entered his apartment he rose and
stepped forward with perfect calmness and dignity to meet them. The decree of
the Convention was read to the king, declaring him to be guilty of treason, that
he was condemned to death, that the appeal to the people was refused, and that
he was to be executed within twenty-four hours.
The king listened to the reading unmoved, took the paper from the hands of the
secretary, folded it carefully, and placed it in his portfolio. Then turning to Garat,
he handed him a paper, saying,
"Monsieur Minister of Justice, I request you to deliver this letter to the
Convention."
Garat hesitated to take the paper, and the king immediately rejoined, "I will read
it to you," and read, in a distinct, unfaltering voice, as follows:
"I demand of the Convention a delay of three days, in order to prepare myself to
appear before God. I require, farther, to see freely the priest whom I shall name
to the commissaries of the Commune, and that he be protected in the act of
charity which he shall exercise toward me. I demand to be freed from the
perpetual surveillance which has been exercised toward me for so many days. I
demand, during these last moments, leave to see my family, when I desire it,
without witnesses. I desire most earnestly that the Convention will at once take
into consideration the fate of my family, and that they be allowed immediately to
retire unmolested whithersoever they shall see fit to choose an asylum. I
recommend to the kindness of the nation all the persons attached to me. There
are among them many old men, and women, and children, who are entirely
dependent upon me, and must be in want."
The delegation retired. The king, with a firm step, walked two or three times up
and down his chamber, and then called for his dinner. He sat down and ate with
his usual appetite; but his attendants refused to let him have either knife or fork,
and he was furnished only with a spoon. This excited his indignation, and he
said, warmly,
"Do they think that I am such a coward as to lay violent hands upon myself? I
am innocent, and I shall die fearlessly."
Having finished his repast, he waited patiently for the return of the answer from
the Convention. At six o'clock, Garat, accompanied by Santerre, entered again.
The Convention refused the delay of execution which Louis XVI. had solicited,
but granted the other demands.
In a few moments M. Edgeworth, the ecclesiastic who had been sent for, arrived.
He entered the chamber, and, overwhelmed with emotion, fell at the monarch's
feet and burst into tears. The king, deeply moved, also wept, and, as he raised M.
Edgeworth, said,
"Pardon me this momentary weakness. I have lived so long among my enemies
that habit has rendered me indifferent to their hatred, and my heart has been
closed against all sentiments of tenderness; but the sight of a faithful friend
restores to me my sensibility, which I believed dead, and moves me to tears in
spite of myself."
The king conversed earnestly with his spiritual adviser respecting his will, which
he read, and inquired earnestly for his friends, whose sufferings moved his heart
deeply. The hour of seven had now arrived, when the king was to hold his last
interview with his family. But even this could not be in private. He was to be
watched by his jailers, who were to hear every word and witness every gesture.
The door opened, and the queen, pallid and woe-stricken, entered, leading her
son by the hand. She threw herself into the arms of her husband, and silently
endeavored to draw him toward her chamber.
"No, no," whispered the king, clasping her to his heart; "I can see you only
here."
Madame Elizabeth, with the king's daughter, followed. A scene of anguish
ensued which neither pen nor pencil can portray. The king sat down, with the
queen upon his right hand, his sister upon his left, their arms encircling his neck,
and their heads resting upon his breast. The dauphin sat upon his father's knee,
with his arm around his neck. The beautiful princess, with disheveled hair, threw
herself between her father's knees, and buried her face in his lap. More than half
an hour passed during which not an articulate word was spoken; but cries,
groans, and occasional shrieks of anguish, which pierced even the thick walls of
the Temple and were heard in the streets, rose from the group.
For two hours the agonizing interview was continued. As they gradually
regained some little composure, in low tones they whispered messages of
tenderness and love, interrupted by sobs, and kisses, and blinding floods of tears.
It was now after nine o'clock, and in the morning the king was to be led to the
guillotine. The queen implored permission for them to remain with him through
the night. The king, through tenderness for his family, declined, but promised to
see them again at seven o'clock the next morning. As the king accompanied them
to the staircase their cries were redoubled, and the princess fainted in utter
unconsciousness at her father's feet. The queen, Madame Elizabeth, and Clery
carried her to the stairs, and the king returned to the room, and, burying his face
in his hands, sank, exhausted, into a chair. After a long silence he turned to M.
Edgeworth and said,
"Ah! monsieur, what an interview I have had! Why do I love so fondly? Alas!
why am I so fondly loved? But we have now done with time. Let us occupy
ourselves with eternity."
pic
LAST INTERVIEW BETWEEN LOUIS XVI. AND HIS FAMILY.
The king passed some time in religious conversation and prayer, and, having
arranged with M. Edgeworth to partake of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in
the earliest hours of the morning, at midnight threw himself upon his bed, and
almost immediately fell into a calm and refreshing sleep.
The faithful Clery and M. Edgeworth watched at the bedside of the king. At five
o'clock they woke him. "Has it struck five?" inquired the king. "Not yet by the
clock of the tower," Clery replied; "but several of the clocks of the city have
struck." "I have slept soundly," remarked the king. "I was much fatigued
yesterday."
He immediately arose. An altar had been prepared in the middle of the room
composed of a chest of drawers, and the king, after engaging earnestly in prayer,
received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Then leading Clery into the recess
of a window, he detached from his watch a seal, and took from his finger a
wedding-ring, and handing them to Clery, said,
"After my death you will give this seal to my son, this ring to the queen. Tell her
I resign it with pain that it may not be profaned with my body. This small parcel
contains locks of hair of all my family: that you will give her. Say to the queen,
my dear children, and my sister, that I had promised to see them this morning,
but that I desired to spare them the agony of such a bitter separation twice over.
How much it has cost me to depart without receiving their last embraces!"
He could say no more, for sobs choked his utterance. Soon recovering himself,
he called for scissors, and cut off his long hair, that he might escape the
humiliation of having that done by the executioner.
A few beams of daylight began now to penetrate the gloomy prison through the
grated windows, and the beating of drums, and the rumbling of the wheels of
heavy artillery were heard in the streets. The king turned to his confessor, and
said,
"How happy I am that I maintained my faith on the throne! Where should I be
this day but for this hope? Yes, there is on high a Judge, incorruptible, who will
award to me that measure of justice which men refuse to me here below."
Two hours passed away, while the king listened to the gathering of the troops in
the court-yard and around the Temple. At nine o'clock a tumultuous noise was
heard of men ascending the staircase. Santerre entered, with twelve municipal
officers and ten gens d'armes. The king, with commanding voice and gesture,
pointed Santerre to the door, and said,
"You have come for me. I will be with you in an instant. Await me there."
Falling upon his knees, he engaged a moment in prayer, and then, turning to M.
Edgeworth, said,
"All is consummated. Give me your blessing, and pray to God to sustain me to
the end."
He rose, and taking from the table a paper which contained his last will and
testament, addressed one of the municipal guard, saying, "I beg of you to
transmit this paper to the queen." The man, whose name was Jacques Roux,
brutally replied, "I am here to conduct you to the scaffold, not to perform your
commissions."
"True," said the king, in a saddened tone, but without the slightest appearance of
irritation. Then carefully scanning the countenances of each member of the
guard, he selected one whose features expressed humanity, and solicited him to
take charge of the paper. The man, whose name was Gobeau, took the paper.
The king, declining the cloak which Clery offered him, said, "Give me only my
hat." Then, taking the hand of Clery, he pressed it affectionately in a final adieu,
and, turning to Santerre, said, "Let us go." Descending the stairs with a firm
tread, followed by the armed escort, he met a turnkey whom he had the evening
before reproached for some impertinence. The king approached him and said, in
tones of kindness,
"Mathey, I was somewhat warm with you yesterday; excuse me for the sake of
this hour."
As he crossed the court-yard, he twice turned to look up at the windows of the
queen's apartment in the tower, where those so dear to him were suffering the
utmost anguish which human hearts can endure. Two gens d'armes sat upon the
front seat of the carriage. The king and M. Edgeworth took the back seat. The
morning was damp and chill, and gloomy clouds darkened the sky. Sixty drums
were beating at the heads of the horses, and an army of troops, with all the most
formidable enginery of war, preceded, surrounded, and followed the carriage.
The noise of the drums prevented any conversation, and the king sat in silence in
the carriage, evidently engaged in prayer. The procession moved so slowly along
the Boulevards that it was two hours before they reached the Place de la
Révolution. An immense crowd filled the place, above whom towered the lofty
platform and blood-red posts of the guillotine.
pic
EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.
As the carriage stopped the king whispered to M. Edgeworth, "We have arrived,
if I mistake not." The drums ceased beating, and the whole multitude gazed in
the most solemn silence. The two gens d'armes alighted. The king placed his
hand upon the knee of the heroic ecclesiastic, M. Edgeworth, and said to the
gens d'armes,
"Gentlemen, I recommend to your care this gentleman. Let him not be insulted
after my death. I entreat you to watch over him."
"Yes, yes," said one, contemptuously; "make your mind easy, we will take care
of him. Let us alone."
Louis alighted. Two of the executioners came to the foot of the scaffold to take
off his coat. The king waved them away, and himself took off his coat and
cravat, and turned down the collar of his shirt, that his throat might be presented
bare to the knife. They then came with cords to bind his hands behind his back.
"What do you wish to do?" said the king, indignantly.
"Bind you," they replied, as they seized his hands, and endeavored to fasten
them with the cords.
"Bind me!" replied the king, in tones of deepest feeling. "No, no; I will never
consent. Do your business, but you shall not bind me."
The executioners seized him rudely, and called for help. "Sire," said his Christian
adviser, "suffer this outrage, as a last resemblance to that God who is about to be
your reward."
"Assuredly," replied the king, "there needed nothing less than the example of
God to make me submit to such an indignity." Then, holding out his hands to the
executioners, he said, "Do as you will! I will drink the cup to the dregs."
With a firm tread he ascended the steep steps of the scaffold, looked for a
moment upon the keen and polished edge of the axe, and then, turning to the vast
throng, said, in a voice clear and untremulous,
"People, I die innocent of all the crimes imputed to me! I pardon the authors of
my death, and pray to God that the blood you are about to shed may not fall
again on France."
He would have continued, but the drums were ordered to beat, and his voice was
immediately drowned. The executioners seized him, bound him to the plank, the
slide fell, and the head of Louis XVI. dropped into the basket.
No one has had a better opportunity of ascertaining the true character of the king
than President Jefferson. Speaking of some of the king's measures he said,
"These concessions came from the very heart of the king. He had not a wish but
for the good of the nation; and for that object no personal sacrifice would ever
have cost him a moment's regret; but his mind was weakness itself, his
constitution timid, his judgment null, and without sufficient firmness even to
stand by the faith of his word. His queen, too, haughty and bearing no
contradiction, had an absolute ascendency over him; and round her were rallied
the king's brother, D'Artois, the court generally, and the aristocratic part of his
ministers, particularly Breteuil, Broglio, Vauguyon, Foulon, Luzerne—men
whose principles of government were those of the age of Louis XIV. Against this
host, the good counsels of Necker, Montmorin, St. Priest, although in unison
with the wishes of the king himself, were of little avail. The resolutions of the
morning, formed under their advice, would be reversed in the evening by the
influence of the queen and the court."
The Royalists were exceedingly exasperated by the condemnation of the king. A
noble, Lepelletier St. Fargeau, who had espoused the popular cause, voted for
the king's death. The Royalists were peculiarly excited against him, in
consequence of his rank and fortune. On the evening of the 20th of January, as
Louis was being informed of his sentence, a life-guardsman of the king tracked
Lepelletier into a restaurateur's in the Palais Royal, and, just as he was sitting
down to the table, stepped up to him and said,
"Art thou Lepelletier, the villain who voted for the death of the king?"
"Yes," replied Lepelletier, "but I am not a villain. I voted according to my
conscience."
"There, then," rejoined the life-guardsman, "take that for thy reward," and he
plunged his sword to the hilt in his side. Lepelletier fell dead, and his assassin
escaped before they had time to arrest him.
This event created intense excitement, and increased the conviction that the
Royalists had conspired to rescue the king, by force of arms, at the foot of the
scaffold.
pic
ASSASSINATION OF LEPELLETIER DE ST. FARGEAU.
FOOTNOTES:
[381] Hist. Parl., vol. xxi., p. 314.
[382] Résumé du Rapport du Commissaire Albertier, Hist. Parl., vol. xxi., p. 319.
[383] One of Napoleon's first acts upon becoming First Consul was to show his appreciation of the heroism
of Tronchet by placing him at the head of the Court of Cassation. "Tronchet," he said, "was the soul of the
civil code, as I was its demonstrator. He was gifted with a singularly profound and correct understanding,
but he could not descend to developments. He spoke badly, and could not defend what he
proposed."—Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 192.
[384] Lacretelle.
[385] Lamartine, History of the Girondists, vol. ii., p. 342.
[386] "The crowd in the galleries received with murmurs all votes that were not for death, and they
frequently addressed threatening gestures to the Assembly itself. The deputies replied to them from the
interior of the hall, and hence resulted a tumultuous exchange of menaces and abusive epithets. This
fearfully ominous scene had shaken all minds and changed many resolutions. Vergniaud, who had appeared
deeply affected by the fate of Louis XVI., and who had declared to his friends that he never could condemn
that unfortunate prince, Vergniaud, on beholding this tumultuous scene, imagined that he saw civil war
kindled in France, and pronounced sentence of death, with the addition, however, of Mailhe's amendment
(which required that the execution should be delayed). On being questioned respecting his change of
opinion, he replied that he thought he saw civil war on the point of breaking out, and that he durst not
balance the life of an individual against the welfare of France."—Thiers's History of the French Revolution,
vol. ii., p. 68.
[387] "Robespierre was by no means the worst character who figured in the Revolution. He opposed trying
the queen. He was not an atheist; on the contrary, he had publicly maintained the existence of a Supreme
Being, in opposition to many of his colleagues. Neither was he of opinion that it was necessary to
exterminate all priests and nobles, like many others. Robespierre wanted to proclaim the king an outlaw,
and not to go through the ridiculous mockery of trying him. Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster; but he
was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing or of causing the deaths of others, either from personal enmity
or a desire of enriching himself. He was an enthusiast, but one who really believed that he was acting right,
and died not worth a sou. In some respects Robespierre may be said to have been an honest
man."—Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 590.
[388] "Of those who judged the king many thought him willfully criminal; many that his existence would
keep the nation in perpetual conflict with the horde of kings who would war against a generation which
might come home to themselves, and that it were better that one should die than all. I should not have voted
with this portion of the Legislature. I should have shut up the queen in a convent, putting harm out of her
power, and placed the king in his station, investing him with limited powers, which I verily believe he
would honestly have exercised, according to the measure of his understanding."—Thomas Jefferson, Life
by Randall, vol. i., p. 533. There were obviously insuperable objections to the plan thus suggested by Mr.
Jefferson.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
Charges against the Girondists.—Danton.—The French Embassador
ordered to leave England.—War declared against England.—Navy of
England.—Internal War.—Plot to assassinate the Girondists.—Bold Words
of Vergniaud.—Insurrection in La Vendée.—Conflict between Dumouriez
and the Assembly.—Flight of Dumouriez.—The Mob aroused and the
Girondists arrested.—Charlotte Corday.—France rises en masse to repel the
Allies.—The treasonable Surrender of Toulon.
THE execution of the king roused all Europe against republican France. The
Jacobins had gained a decisive victory over the Girondists, and succeeded in
turning popular hatred against them by accusing them of being enemies of the
people, because they opposed the excesses of the mob; of being the friends of
royalty, because they had wished to save the life of the king; and of being hostile
to the republic, because they advocated measures of moderation.[389]
Danton was now the acknowledged leader of the Jacobins. He had obtained the
entire control of the mob of Paris, and could guide their terrible and resistless
energies in any direction. With this potent weapon in his hand he was
omnipotent, and his political adversaries were at his mercy. The Reign of Terror
had now commenced. The Girondists made a heroic attempt to bring to justice
the assassins of September, but the Jacobins promptly stopped the proceedings.
The aristocracy of birth was now effectually crushed, and the Jacobins
commenced a warfare against the aristocracy of wealth and character. An elegant
mansion, garments of fine cloth, and even polished manners, exposed one to the
charge of being an aristocrat, and turned against him the insults of the rabble.
Marat was particularly fierce, in his journal, against the aristocracy of the
burghers, merchants, and statesmen.
Upon the arrival of the courier in London conveying intelligence of the
execution of the king, M. Chauvelin, the French embassador, was ordered to
leave England within twenty-four hours.
"After events," said Pitt, "on which the imagination can only dwell with horror,
and since an infernal faction has seized on the supreme power in France, we
could no longer tolerate the presence of M. Chauvelin, who has left no means
untried to induce the people to rise against the government and the laws of this
country."
The National Convention at once declared war against England.[390] Pitt, with
almost superhuman energy, mustered the forces of England and Europe for the
strife. In less than six months England had entered into a treaty of alliance with
Russia, Prussia, Austria, Naples, Spain, and Portugal, for the prosecution of the
war; and had also entered into treaties by which she promised large subsidies to
Hesse Cassel, Sardinia, and Baden. England thus became the soul of this
coalition, which combined the whole of Europe, with the exception of Venice,
Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Turkey, against France. These combined
armies were to assail the Republic by land, while the invincible fleet of England
was to hurl a storm of shot and shells into all her maritime towns.
France, at this time, had but one hundred and fifty-nine vessels of war all told.
England had four hundred and fifteen, and her ally, Holland, one hundred. Most
of these were large ships, heavily armed; and, consequently, England had but
little fear that any French armies could reach her isles.[391] Parliament voted an
extraordinary supply of £3,200,000 ($16,000,000). One hundred and thirty-one
thousand Austrians, one hundred and twelve thousand Prussians, and fifty
thousand Spaniards were speedily on the march to assail France at every point
on the frontier.[392]
The Royalists in La Vendée rose in arms against the Republic, and unfurled the
white banner of the Bourbons. France was now threatened more fearfully than
ever before with external and internal war. The Convention, controlled by the
Jacobins and appalled by the danger, decreed a levy of three hundred thousand
men to repel the assailants, and also organized an extraordinary revolutionary
tribunal, invested with unlimited powers to arrest, judge, and punish any whom
they should deem dangerous to the Republic. Violence filled the land, terror
reigned every where, and even Robespierre was heard to exclaim, "I am sick of
the Revolution."
Dumouriez had driven the Austrians out of Belgium and the Netherlands, and
was at the head of an army of about seventy-five thousand men. Disgusted with
the anarchy which reigned in France, he formed the bold design of marching
upon Paris with his army, dispersing the Convention, abolishing the Republic,
reinstituting a constitutional monarchy by establishing the Constitution of 1791,
and by placing a king, probably the son of the Duke of Orleans, subsequently
Louis Philippe, upon the throne. The Jacobins, goaded by these accumulating
dangers—all Europe assailing France from without, and Royalists plotting
within—were prepared for any measures of desperation. The Girondists, with
unavailing heroism, opposed the frantic measures of popular violence, and the
Jacobins resolved to get rid of them all by a decisive blow. The assassins of
September were ready to ply the dagger, under the plea that murder was
patriotism. A plan was formed to strike them all down, in the Convention, on the
night of the 10th of March. But the Girondists, informed of the plot, absented
themselves from the meeting and the enterprise failed. The bold spirit of the
Girondists was avowed in the words of Vergniaud:
"We have witnessed," said he, "the development of that strange system of liberty
in which we are told 'You are free, but think with us, or we will denounce you to
the vengeance of the people; you are free, but bow down your head to the idol
we worship, or we will denounce you to the vengeance of the people; you are
free, but join us in persecuting the men whose probity and intelligence we dread,
or we will denounce you to the vengeance of the people.' Citizens! we have
reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, will devour successively all its
children, and only engender despotism and the calamities which accompany it."
The Province of La Vendée contained a population of about three hundred
thousand. It was a rural district where there was no middle class. The priests and
the nobles had the unlettered peasantry entirely under their influence. Three
armies were raised here against the Republic, of about twelve thousand each.
Royalists from various parts of the empire flocked to this region, and emigrants
were landed upon the coast to join the insurgents. For three years a most cruel
and bloody war was here waged between the Royalists and the Republicans.
The intelligence of this formidable insurrection increased the panic of the
Convention. A law was passed disarming all who had belonged to the privileged
class, and declaring those to be outlaws who should be found in any hostile
gathering against the Republic. The emigrants were forbidden to land in France
under the penalty of death. Every house in the kingdom was to inscribe upon its
door the names of all its inmates, and was to be open at all times to the visits of
the Vigilance Committee.
Dumouriez sullied his character by surrendering to the Austrians several
fortresses, and agreeing with them that he would march upon Paris and restore a
monarchical government to France. The Austrians trusted that he would place
upon the throne the young son of Louis XVI., though it was doubtless his
intention to place there the young Duke of Chartres (Louis Philippe), who would
be the representative of popular ideas.
The Jacobin Club sent a deputation of three of its members to the camp, to sound
the views of Dumouriez. The general received them with courtesy, but said, with
military frankness,
"The Convention is an assembly of tyrants. While I have three inches of steel by
my side that monster shall not exist. As for the Republic, it is an idle word. I had
faith in it for three days. There is only one way to save the country; that is, to reestablish
the Constitution of 1791 and a king."
"Can you think of it!" one of the deputation exclaimed; "the French view royalty
with horror. The very name of Louis is an abomination."
"What does it signify," replied Dumouriez, "whether the king be called Louis, or
Jacques, or Philippe?"
"And what are your means to effect this revolution?" they inquired.
"My army," Dumouriez proudly replied. "From my camp or from the stronghold
of some fortress they will express their resolve for a king."
"But your plan will peril the lives of the rest of the royal family in the Temple."
"If every member of that family in France or at Coblentz should perish,"
Dumouriez replied, "I can still find a chief. And if any farther barbarities are
practiced upon the Bourbons in the Temple I will surround Paris with my army
and starve the Parisians into subjection."
The deputation returned to Paris with their report, and four commissioners were
immediately dispatched, accompanied by the Minister of War, to summon
Dumouriez to the bar of the Convention. Dumouriez promptly arrested the
commissioners and sent them off to the Austrians, to be retained by them as
hostages.
pic
DUMOURIEZ ARRESTING THE ENVOYS.
The Convention immediately offered a reward for the head of Dumouriez, raised
an army of forty thousand men to defend Paris, and arrested all the relatives of
the officers under Dumouriez as hostages.
Dumouriez now found that he had not a moment to lose. Perils were
accumulating thick around him. There were many indications that it might be
difficult to carry the army over to his views. On the 4th of April, as he was
repairing to a place of rendezvous with the Austrian leaders, the Prince of
Coburg and General Mack, a battalion of soldiers, suspecting treachery,
endeavored to stop him. He put spurs to his horse and distanced pursuit, while a
storm of bullets whistled around his head. He succeeded, after innumerable
perils, in the circuitous ride of a whole day, in reaching the head-quarters of the
Austrians. They received him with great distinction, and offered him the
command of a division of their army. After two days' reflection, he said that it
was with the soldiers of France he had hoped to restore a stable government to
his country, accepting the Austrians only as auxiliaries; but that as a Frenchman
he could not march against France at the head of foreigners. He retired to
Switzerland. The Duke of Chartres (Louis Philippe), in friendlessness and
poverty, followed him, and for some time was obliged to obtain a support by
teaching school.
The Jacobins now accused their formidable rivals, the Girondists, of being
implicated in the conspiracy of Dumouriez. Robespierre, in a speech of the most
concentrated and potent malignity, urged that France had relieved herself of the
aristocracy of birth, but that there was another aristocracy, that of wealth, equally
to be dreaded, which must be crushed, and that the Girondists were the leaders of
this aristocracy. This was most effectually pandering to the passions of the mob,
and directing their fury against the Girondists. The Girondists were now in a
state of terrible alarm. They knew the malignity of their foes, and could see but
little hope for escape. They had overturned the throne of despotism, hoping to
establish constitutional liberty: they had only introduced Jacobin phrensy and
anarchy. Immense crowds of armed men paraded the streets of Paris, surrounded
the Convention, and demanded vengeance against the leaders of the Gironde.[393]
The moderate Republicans, enemies of these acts of violence, striving to stem
the torrent, endeavored to carry an act of accusation against Marat. He was
charged with having encouraged assassination and carnage, of dissolving the
National Convention, and of having established a power destructive of liberty.
Marat replied to the accusation by summoning the mob to his aid. They
assembled in vast, tumultuous throngs, and the tribunal, overawed, after the trial
of a few moments, unanimously acquitted him. This was the 24th of April. The
mob accompanied him back to his seat in the Convention. He was borne in
triumph into the hall in the arms of his confederates, his brow encircled by a
wreath of victory.
"Citizen President," shouted one of the burly men who bore Marat, "we bring
you the worthy Marat. Marat has always been the friend of the people, and the
people will always be the friends of Marat. If Marat's head must fall, our heads
must fall first."
As he uttered these words he brandished a battle-axe defiantly, and the mob in
the aisles and crowded galleries vehemently applauded. He then demanded
permission for the escort to file through the hall. The president, appalled by the
hideous spectacle, had not time to give his consent before the whole throng,
men, women, and boys, in rags and filth, rushed pell-mell into the hall, took the
seats of the vacant members, and filled the room with indescribable tumult and
uproar, shouting hosannas to Marat. The successful demagogue could not but
boast of his triumph. Ascending the tribune, he said,
"Citizens! indignant at seeing a villainous faction betraying the Republic, I
endeavored to unmask it and to put the rope about its neck. It resisted me by
launching against me a decree of accusation. I have come off victorious. The
faction is humbled, but not crushed. Waste not your time in decreeing triumphs.
Defend yourselves with enthusiasm."
pic
MARAT'S TRIUMPH.
Robespierre now demanded an act of accusation against the Girondists.
Resistance was hopeless. The inundation of popular fury was at its flood,
sweeping every thing before it. The most frightful scenes of tumult took place in
the Convention, members endeavoring by violence to pull each other from the
tribune.[394]
The whole Convention was now in a state of dismay, eighty thousand infuriate
men surrounding it with artillery and musketry, declaring that the Convention
should not leave its hall until the Girondists were arrested. The Convention, in a
body, attempted to leave and force its way through the crowd, but it was
ignominiously driven back. Under these circumstances it was voted that the
leaders of the Girondists, twenty-two in number, should be put under arrest. This
was the 2d of June, 1793.[395]
The Jacobins, having thus got rid of their enemies, and having the entire control,
immediately decided to adopt a new Constitution, still more democratic in its
character; and a committee was appointed to present one within a week. But the
same division which existed in the Convention between the Jacobins and the
Girondists existed all over France. In many of the departments fierce battles rose
between the two parties.
In the mean time the Allies were pressing France in all directions. The Austrians
and Prussians were advancing upon the north; the Piedmontese threading the
passes of the maritime Alps; the Spaniards were prepared to rush from the
defiles of the Pyrenees, and the fleet of England threatened every where the
coast of France on the Mediterranean and the Channel.[396]
With amazing energy the Convention aroused itself to meet these perils. A new
Constitution, exceedingly democratic, was framed and adopted. Every
Frenchman twenty-one years of age was a voter. Fifty thousand souls were
entitled to a deputy. There was but a single Assembly. Its decrees were
immediately carried into execution.[397]
Danton, Robespierre, and Marat were now the idols of the mob of Paris and the
real sovereigns of France. All who ventured opposition to them were proscribed
and imprisoned. Members of the Republican or Girondist party every where, all
over France, were arrested, or, where they were sufficiently numerous to resist,
civil war raged.
At Caen there was a very beautiful girl, Charlotte Corday, twenty-five years of
age, highly educated and accomplished. She was of spotless purity of character,
and, with the enthusiasm of Madame Roland, she had espoused the cause of
popular constitutional liberty. The principles of the Girondist party she had
embraced, and the noble leaders of that party she regarded almost with
adoration.
When she heard of the overthrow of the Girondists and their imprisonment, she
resolved to avenge them, and hoped that, by striking down the leader of the
Jacobins, she might rouse the Girondists scattered over France to rally and
rescue liberty and their country. It was a three days' ride in the diligence from
Caen to Paris. Arriving at Paris on Thursday the 11th of July, she carefully
inspected the state of affairs, that she might select her victim, but confided her
design to no one.
Marat appeared to her the most active, formidable, and insatiable in his
proscription. She wrote him a note as follows:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for your country inclines me
to suppose you will listen with pleasure to the secret events of that part of the
Republic. I will present myself at your house. Have the goodness to give orders
for my admission, and grant me a moment's private conversation. I can point out
the means by which you can render an important service to France."
She dispatched this note from her hotel, the Inn de la Providence in the Rue des
Vieux Augustins, went to the Palais Royal and purchased a large sheath knife,
and, taking a hackney-coach, drove to the residence of Marat, No. 44 Rue de
l'Ecole de Médecine. It was Saturday night. Marat was taking a bath and reading
by a light which stood upon a three-footed stool. He heard the rap of Charlotte,
and called aloud to the woman who, as servant and mistress, attended him, and
requested that she might be admitted.
Marat was a man of the most restless activity. Eagerly he inquired respecting the
proscribed at Caen and of others who were opposed to Jacobin rule. Charlotte,
while replying coolly, measured with her eye the spot she should strike with the
knife. As she mentioned some names, he eagerly seized a pencil and began to
write them down, saying,
"They shall all go to the guillotine."
"To the guillotine?" exclaimed Charlotte, and, instantly drawing the knife from
her bosom, plunged it to the handle directly in his heart.
The miserable man uttered one frantic shriek of "Help!" and fell back dead into
the water. The paramour of Marat and a serving-man rushed in, knocked
Charlotte down with a chair, and trampled upon her. A crowd soon assembled.
Without the slightest perturbation she avowed the deed. Her youth and beauty
alone saved her from being torn in pieces. Soldiers soon arrived and conveyed
her to prison.
"The way to avenge Marat," exclaimed Robespierre from the tribune in tones
which caused France to tremble, "is to strike down his enemies without mercy."
The remains of the wretched man, whom all the world now execrates, were
buried with the highest possible honors. His funeral at midnight, as all Paris
seemed to follow him to his grave in a torch-light procession, was one of the
most imposing scenes of the Revolution.
On Wednesday morning Charlotte was led to the Revolutionary Tribunal in the
Palace of Justice. She appeared there dignified, calm, and beautiful. The
indictment was read, and they were beginning to introduce their witnesses, when
Charlotte said,
"These delays are needless. It is I that killed Marat."
There was a moment's pause, and many deplored the doom of one so youthful
and lovely. At last the president inquired, "By whose instigation?"
"By that of no one," was the laconic reply.
"What tempted you?" inquired the president.
"His crimes," Charlotte answered; and then, continuing in tones of firmness and
intensity which silenced and overawed all present, she said,
"I killed one man, to save a hundred thousand; a villain, to save the innocent; a
savage wild beast, to give repose to my country. I was a Republican before the
Revolution. I never wanted energy."[398]
pic
CHARLOTTE CORDAY ARRESTED.
She listened to her doom of immediate death with a smile, and was conducted
back to the prison, to be led from thence to the guillotine. A little after seven
o'clock on this same evening a cart issued from the Conciergerie, bearing
Charlotte, in the red robe of a murderess, to the guillotine. A vast throng
crowded the streets, most of whom assailed her with howls and execrations. She
looked upon them with a serene smile, as if she were riding on an excursion of
pleasure. She was bound to the plank. The glittering axe glided through the
grove, and the executioner, lifting her severed head, exhibited it to the people,
and then brutally struck the cheek.
Robespierre and Danton, the idols of the mob, now divided the supreme power
between them. The organization of a revolutionary government was simply the
machine by means of which they operated.
On the 10th of August there was another magnificent festival in Paris to
commemorate the adoption of the Jacobin Constitution. The celebrated painter
David arranged the fête with great artistic skill, and again all Paris, though on the
verge of ruin, was in a blaze of illumination and in a roar of triumph. The
Austrian armies were now within fifteen days' march of Paris, and there was no
organized force which could effectually arrest their progress. But the fear of the
old Bourbon despotism rallied the masses to maintain, in preference, even the
horrors of Jacobin ferocity. The aristocrats crushed the people; the Jacobins
crushed the aristocrats. The populace naturally preferred the latter rule.
And now France rose, as a nation never rose before. At the motion of Danton it
was decreed on the 23rd of August,
"From this moment until when the enemy shall be driven from the territory of
the French Republic, all the French shall be in permanent requisition for the
service of the armies. The young men shall go forth to fight. The married men
shall forge the arms and transport the supplies. The women shall make tents and
clothes, and attend on the hospitals. The children shall make lint out of rags; the
old men shall cause themselves to be carried to the public places, to excite the
courage of the warriors, to preach hatred of kings and love of the Republic."
pic
MARCH OF VOLUNTEERS.
All unmarried men or widowers without children, between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-five, were to assemble at appointed rendezvous and march
immediately. This act raised an army of one million two hundred thousand men.
The men between twenty-five and thirty were to hold themselves in readiness to
follow. And those between thirty and sixty were to be prepared to obey orders
whenever they should be summoned to the field. There is sublimity, at least, in
such energy.
All France was instantly converted into a camp, resounding with preparations for
war. In La Vendée the friends of the Bourbons had rallied. The Convention
decreed its utter destruction, the death of every man, conflagration of the
dwellings, destruction of the crops, and the removal of the women and children
to some other province, where they should be supported at the expense of the
government. It was sternly resolved that no mercy whatever should be shown to
Frenchmen who were co-operating with foreigners to rivet anew upon France the
chains of Bourbon despotism. These decrees were executed with merciless
fidelity. The illustrious Carnot, who, to use his own words, "had the ambition of
the three hundred Spartans, going to defend Thermopylæ," organized and
disciplined fourteen armies, and selected for them able leaders.
pic
EXECUTION IN LA VENDÉE.
While matters were in this condition, the inhabitants of Marseilles, Lyons, and
Toulon rose, overpowered the Jacobins, and, raising the banner of the Bourbons,
invited the approach of the Allies. Toulon was the naval arsenal of France, a
large French fleet crowded its port, and its warehouses were filled with naval
stores. Lord Hood, with an English squadron, was cruising off the coast. The
Royalists, Admiral Troyoff at their head, gave the signal to the English, and
basely surrendered to them the forts, shipping, and stores. It was a fearful loss to
the Revolutionists. Lord Hood, the British admiral, immediately entered with his
fleet, took possession, and issued a proclamation in which he said,
"Considering that the sections of Toulon have, by the commissioners whom they
have sent to me, made a solemn declaration in favor of Louis XVII. and a
monarchical government, and that they will use their utmost efforts to break the
chains which fetter their country, and re-establish the Constitution as it was
accepted by their defunct sovereign in 1789, I repeat by this present declaration
that I take possession of Toulon, and shall keep it solely as a deposit for Louis
XVII., and that only till peace is re-established in France."[399]
An army of sixty thousand men was sent against rebellious Lyons. The city, after
a prolonged siege and the endurance of innumerable woes, was captured. The
Convention decreed that it should be utterly destroyed, and that over its ruins
should be reared a monument with the inscription, "Lyons made war upon
Liberty: Lyons is no more!" The cruelties inflicted upon the Royalists of this
unhappy city are too painful to contemplate. The imagination can hardly
exaggerate them. Fouché and Collot d'Herbois, the prominent agents in this
bloody vengeance, were atheists. In contempt of Christianity, they ordered the
Bible and the Cross to be borne through the streets on an ass; the ass was
compelled to drink of the consecrated wine from the communion-cup. Six
thousand of the citizens of Lyons perished in these sanguinary persecutions, and
twelve thousand were driven into exile. The Revolutionary Tribunal was active
night and day condemning to death. One morning a young girl rushed into the
hall, exclaiming,
"There remain to me, of all our family, only my brothers. Mother, father, sisters,
uncles—you have butchered all. And now you are going to condemn my
brothers. In mercy ordain that I may ascend the scaffold with them."
Her prayer of anguish was refused, and the poor child threw herself into the
Rhone.
The Royalist insurrection in La Vendée, after a long and terrible conflict, was
crushed out. No language can describe the horrors of vengeance which ensued.
The tale of brutality is too awful to be told. Demons could not have been more
infernal in mercilessness.
"Death by fire and the sword," writes Lamartine, "made a noise, scattered blood,
and left bodies to be buried and be counted. The silent waters of the Loire were
dumb and would render no account. The bottom of the sea alone would know the
number of the victims. Carrier caused mariners to be brought as pitiless as
himself. He ordered them, without much mystery, to pierce plug-holes in a
certain number of decked vessels, so as to sink them with their living cargoes in
parts of the river.
"These orders were first executed secretly and under the color of accidents of
navigation. But soon these naval executions, of which the waves of the Loire
bore witness even to its mouth, became a spectacle for Carrier and for his
courtiers. He furnished a galley of pleasure, of which he made a present to his
accomplice Lambertye, under pretext of watching the banks of the river. This
vessel, adorned with all the delicacies of furniture, provided with all the wines
and all the necessaries of feasting, became the most general theatre of these
executions. Carrier embarked therein sometimes himself, with his executioners
and his courtesans, to make trips upon the water. While he yielded himself up to
the joys of love and wine on deck, his victims, inclosed in the hold, saw, at a
given signal, the valves open, and the waves of the Loire swallow them up. A
stifled groaning announced to the crew that hundreds of lives had just breathed
their last under their feet. They continued their orgies upon this floating
sepulchre.
pic
MASSACRES IN LYONS.
"Sometimes Carrier, Lambertye, and their accomplices rejoiced in the cruel
pleasure of this spectacle of agony. They caused victims of either sex, in couples,
to mount upon the deck. Stripped of their garments, they bound them face to
face, one to the other—a priest with a nun, a young man with a young girl. They
suspended them, thus naked and interlaced, by a cord passed under the shoulders
through a block of the vessel. They sported with horrible sarcasms on this
parody of marriage in death, and then flung the victims into the river. This
cannibal sport was termed 'Republican Marriages.'"
pic
DROWNING VICTIMS IN THE LOIRE.
Robespierre, informed of these demoniac deeds, recalled Carrier, but he did not
dare to bring an act of accusation against the wretch, lest he should peril his own
head by being charged with sympathy with the Royalists. It is grateful to record
that Carrier himself was eventually conducted, amid the execrations of the
community, to the scaffold.[400]
The prisons of Paris were now filled with victims. Municipal instructions, issued
by Chaumette, catalogued as follows those who should be arrested as suspected
persons: 1. Those who, by crafty addresses, check the energy of the people. 2.
Those who mysteriously deplore the lot of the people, and propagate bad news
with affected grief. 3. Those who, silent respecting the faults of the Royalists,
declaim against the faults of the Patriots. 4. Those who pity those against whom
the law is obliged to take measures. 5. Those who associate with aristocrats,
priests, and moderates, and take an interest in their fate. 6. Those who have not
taken an active part in the Revolution. 7. Those who have received the
Constitution with indifference and have expressed fears respecting its duration.
8. Those who, though they have done nothing against liberty, have done nothing
for it. 9. Those who do not attend the sections. 10. Those who speak
contemptuously of the constituted authorities. 11. Those who have signed
counter-revolutionary petitions. 12. The partisans of La Fayette, and those who
marched to the charge in the Champ de Mars.
There were but few persons in Paris who were not liable to be arrested, by the
machinations of any enemy, upon some one of these charges. Many thousands
were soon incarcerated. The prisons of the Maire, La Force, the Conciergerie,
the Abbaye, St. Pelagie, and the Madelonettes were crowded to their utmost
capacity. Then large private mansions, the College of Duplessis, and finally the
spacious Palace of the Luxembourg were converted into prisons, and were filled
to suffocation with the suspected. In these abodes, surrendered to filth and
misery, with nothing but straw to lie upon, the most brilliant men and women of
Paris were huddled together with the vilest outcasts. After a time, however, those
who had property were permitted to surround themselves with such comforts as
their means would command. From these various prisons those who were to be
tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal were taken to the Conciergerie, which
adjoined the Palace of Justice, where the tribunal held its session. A trial was
almost certain condemnation, and the guillotine knew no rest. Miserable France
was now surrendered to the Reign of Terror. The mob had become the sovereign.
FOOTNOTES:
[389] Mignet, p. 192.
[390] "The Convention, finding England already leagued with the coalition, and consequently all its
promises of neutrality vain and illusive, on the 1st of February, 1793, declared war against the King of
Great Britain and the Stadtholder of Holland, who had been entirely guided by the cabinet of St. James's
since 1788."—Mignet, vol. i., p. 195.
[391] Lamartine, History of the Girondists, vol. ii., p. 395.
[392] "It was in Spain, more particularly, that Pitt set intrigues at work to urge her to the greatest blunder
she ever committed—that of joining England against France, her only maritime ally."—Thiers, vol. ii., p.
82.
[393] In reference to the terrific conflict between the privileged classes and the enslaved people, Prof.
Smyth writes, "My conclusion is that neither the high party nor the low have the slightest right to felicitate
themselves on their conduct during this memorable revolution. No historian, no commentator on these
times can proceed a moment, but on the supposition that, while he is censuring the faults of the one, he is
perfectly aware of the antagonistic faults of the other; that each party is to take its turn; and that the whole
is a dreadful lesson of instruction both to the one and the other. I have dwelt with more earnestness on the
faults of the popular leaders, because their faults are more natural and more important; because the friends
of freedom (hot and opinionated though they be) are still more within the reach of instruction than are men
of arbitrary temperament, than courts and privileged orders, who are systematically otherwise."—Prof
Smyth, Fr. Rev., vol. iii., p. 245.
The story of the French Revolution has too often been told in this spirit, veiling the atrocities of the
oppressors and magnifying the inhumanity of the oppressed. While truth demands that all the violence of an
enslaved people, in despair bursting their bonds, should be faithfully delineated, truth no less imperiously
demands that the mercilessness of proud oppressors, crushing millions for ages, and goading a whole nation
to the madness of despair, should be also impartially described.
[394] In the Convention, each one who addressed the body ascended to a desk on the platform, called the
tribune.
[395] Thiers, vol. ii., p. 194.
[396] The Allies acted without union, and, under disguise of a holy war, concealed the most selfish views.
The Austrians wanted Valenciennes; the King of Prussia, Mayence; the English, Dunkirk; the Piedmontese
aspired to recover Chambéry and Nice; the Spaniards, the least interested of all, had nevertheless some
thoughts of Roussillon.—Thiers, vol. ii., p. 217.
[397] "As the Constitution thus made over the government to the multitude, as it placed the power in a
disorganized body, it would have been at all times impracticable, but at a period of general warfare it was
peculiarly so. Accordingly, it was no sooner made than suspended."—Mignet.
[398] Procès de Charlotte Corday (Hist. Parl., vol. xxviii., p. 311, 338).
[399] After the death of Louis XVI. the Royalists considered the young Dauphin, then imprisoned in the
tower, as the legitimate king, with the title of Louis XVII.
[400] Carrier was heard to say one day, while breakfasting in a restaurant, that France was too densely
populated for a republic, and that it was necessary to kill off at least one third of the inhabitants before they
could have a good government. It is estimated that fifteen thousand were massacred in La Vendée at his
command.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
EXECUTION OF MARIE ANTOINETTE AND MADAME ELIZABETH.
Marie Antoinette in the Temple.—Conspiracies for the Rescue of the Royal
Family.—The young Dauphin torn from his Mother.—Phrensy of the
Queen.—She is removed to the Conciergerie.—Indignities and Woes.—The
Queen led to Trial.—Letter to her Sister.—The Execution of the Queen.—
Madame Elizabeth led to Trial and Execution.—Fate of the Princess and the
Dauphin.
THE populace now demanded the head of Marie Antoinette, whom they had
long been taught implacably to hate.[401] We left her on the 21st of January in the
Temple, overwhelmed with agony. Swoon succeeded swoon as she listened to
the clamor in the streets which accompanied her husband to the guillotine. The
rumbling of the cannon, on their return, and the shouts of Vive la République
beneath her windows announced that the tragedy was terminated. The Commune
cruelly refused to allow her any details of the last hours of the king, and even
Clery, his faithful servant, was imprisoned, so that he could not even place in her
hands the lock of hair and the marriage ring which the king had intrusted to him.
Many conspiracies were formed for the rescue of the royal family, which led to a
constant increase of the rigors of their captivity. The queen refused to resume her
walks in the garden as she could not endure to pass the door of the king's
apartment. But, after long seclusion, for the sake of the health of her children she
consented to walk with them each day, for a few moments, on the platform of the
tower. The Commune immediately ordered the platform to be surrounded with
high boards, so that the captives might not receive any tokens of recognition
from their friends.
For four months Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, and the children had the
consolation of condoling with each other in their misery. But on the night of the
4th of July the clatter of an armed band was heard ascending the tower, and some
commissioners tumultuously entered her chamber. They read to her a decree
announcing that her son, the dauphin, was to be taken from her and imprisoned
by himself. The poor child, as he listened to the reading of this cruel edict, was
frantic with terror. He threw himself into his mother's arms and shrieked out,
"Oh! mother, mother, do not abandon me to those men. They will kill me as they
did papa."
The queen, in a delirium of agony, grasped her child and placing him upon the
bed behind her, with eyes glaring like a tigress, bade defiance to the officers,
declaring that they should tear her in pieces before they should take her boy.
Even the officers were overcome by her heart-rending grief, and for two hours
refrained from taking the child by violence. The exhausted mother at length fell
in a swoon, and the child was taken, shrieking with terror, from the room. She
never saw her son again.
A few weeks of woe passed slowly away, when, early in August, she was
awakened from her sleep just after midnight by a band of armed men who came
to convey her to the prison of the Conciergerie, where she was to await her trial.
The queen had already drained the cup of misery to the dregs, and nothing could
add to her woe. She rose, in the stupor of despair, and began to dress herself in
the presence of the officers. Her daughter and Madame Elizabeth threw
themselves at the feet of the men, and implored them not to take the queen from
them. They might as well have plead with the granite blocks of their prison.
Pressing her daughter for a moment convulsively to her heart, she covered her
with kisses, spoke a few words of impassioned tenderness to her sister, and then,
as if fearing to cast a last look upon these objects of her affection, hurried from
the room. In leaving she struck her forehead against the beam of the low door.
"Did you hurt yourself?" inquired one of the men.
"Oh no!" was her reply, "nothing now can farther harm me."
A carriage was waiting for her at the door. Escorted by gens d'armes she was
conducted, through the gloom of midnight, to the dungeon where she was to
await her condemnation.
pic
MARIE ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE.
The world-renowned prison of the Conciergerie consists of a series of
subterranean dungeons beneath the floor of the Palais de Justice. More gloomy
tombs the imagination can hardly conceive. Down the dripping and slimy steps
the queen was led, by the light of a tallow candle, until, through a labyrinth of
corridors, she approached the iron door of her dungeon. The rusty hinges grated
as the door was opened, and she was thrust in. Two soldiers accompanied her,
with drawn swords, and who were commanded, in defiance of all the instincts of
delicacy, not to allow her to be one moment absent from their sight. The one
candle gave just light enough to reveal the horrors of her cell. The floor was
covered with mud, and streams of water trickled down the stone walls. A
miserable pallet, with a dirty covering of coarse and tattered cloth, a small pine
table, and a chair constituted the only furniture. So deep was the fall from the
saloons of Versailles.
Here the queen remained for two months, her misery being slightly alleviated by
the kind-heartedness of Madame Richard, the wife of the jailer, who did every
thing the rigorous rules would admit to mitigate her woes. With her own hand
she prepared food for the queen, obtained for her a few articles of furniture, and
communicated to her daily such intelligence as she could obtain of her sister and
her children. The friends of the queen were untiring in their endeavors, by some
conspiracy, to effect her release. A gentleman obtained admittance to the queen's
cell, and presented her with a rose, containing a note hidden among its petals.
One of the gens d'armes detected the attempt; and the jailer and his wife, for
their suspected connivance, were both arrested and thrown into the dungeons.
Other jailers were provided for the prison, M. and Madame Bault; but they also
had humane hearts, and wept over the woes of Marie Antoinette. The queen's
wardrobe consisted only of two robes, one white, one black, and three chemises.
From the humidity of her cell these rapidly decayed, with her shoes and
stockings, and fell into tatters. Madame Bault was permitted to assist the queen
in mending these, but was not allowed to furnish any new apparel. Books and
writing materials were also prohibited. With the point of her needle she kept a
brief memorandum of events on the stucco of her walls, and also inscribed brief
lines of poetry and sentences from Scripture.
On the 14th of October the queen was conducted from her dungeon to the halls
above for trial. Surrounded by a strong escort, she was led to the bench of the
accused. Her accusation was that she abhorred the Revolution which had
beheaded her husband and plunged her whole family into unutterable woe.
The queen was dressed in the garb of extreme poverty. Grief had whitened her
hair, and it was fast falling from her head. Her eyes were sunken, and her
features wan and wasted with woe.
"What is your name?" inquired one of the judges.
"I am called Marie Antoinette of Lorraine, in Austria," answered the queen.
"What is your condition?" was the next question.
"I am widow of Louis, formerly King of the French," was the reply.
"What is your age?"
"Thirty-seven."
The long act of accusation was then read. Among other charges was the
atrocious one of attempting, by depravity and debauchery, to corrupt her own
son, "with the intention of enervating the soul and body of that child, and of
reigning, in his name, over the ruin of his understanding."
The queen recoiled from this charge with a gesture of horror, and, when asked
why she did not reply to the accusation, she said,
"I have not answered it because there are accusations to which nature refuses to
reply. I appeal to all mothers if such a crime be possible."
The trial continued for two days. When all the accusations had been heard, the
queen was asked if she had any thing to say. She replied,
"I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my
husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone
remains. Take it; but do not make me suffer long."
pic
TRIAL OF MARIE ANTOINETTE.
At four o'clock on the morning of the 16th she listened to her sentence
condemning her to die. In the dignity of silence, and without the tremor of a
muscle, she accepted her doom. As she was led from the court-room to her
dungeon, to prepare for her execution, the brutal populace, with stampings and
clappings, applauded the sentence. Being indulged with pen and paper in these
last hours, she wrote as follows to her sister:
"October 16th, half past four in the morning.
"I write you, my sister, for the last time. I have been condemned, not to an
ignominious death—that only awaits criminals—but to go and rejoin your
brother. Innocent as he, I hope to show the same firmness as he did in these
last moments. I grieve bitterly at leaving my poor children; you know that I
existed but for them and you—you who have, by your friendship, sacrificed
all to be with us. In what a position do I leave you. I have learned, by the
pleadings on my trial, that my daughter was separated from you. Alas! my
poor child. I dare not write to her. She could not receive my letter. I know
not even if this may reach you. Receive my blessing for both.
"I hope one day, when they are older, they may rejoin you and rejoice in
liberty at your tender care. May their friendship and mutual confidence
form their happiness. May my daughter feel that, at her age, she ought
always to aid her brother with that advice with which the greater experience
she possesses and her friendship should inspire her. May my son, on his
part, render to his sister every care and service which affection can dictate.
Let my son never forget the last words of his father. I repeat them to him
expressly. Let him never attempt to avenge our death."
Having finished the letter, which was long, she folded it and kissed it repeatedly,
"as if she could thus transmit the warmth of her lips and the moisture of her tears
to her children." She then threw herself upon the pallet and slept quietly for two
or three hours. A few rays of morning light were now struggling in through the
grated bars of the window. The daughter of Madame Bault came in to dress her
for the guillotine. She put on her white robe. A white handkerchief covered her
shoulders, and a white cap, bound around her temples by a black ribbon, covered
her hair.
It was a cold autumnal morning, and a chill fog filled the streets of Paris. At
eleven o'clock the executioners led her from her cell. She cordially embraced the
kind-hearted daughter of the concierge, and, having with her own hands cut off
her hair, allowed herself to be bound, without a murmur, and issued from the
steps of the Conciergerie. Instead of a carriage, the coarse car of the condemned
awaited her at the gateway of the prison. For a moment she recoiled from this
unanticipated humiliation, but immediately recovering herself she ascended the
cart. There was no seat in the car, and, as her hands were bound behind her, she
was unable to support herself from the jolting over the pavement. As she was
jostled rudely to and fro, in the vain attempt to preserve her equilibrium, the
multitudes thronging the streets shouted in derision. They had been taught to
hate her, to regard her not only as the implacable foe of popular liberty, which
she was, but as the most infamous of women, which she was not. "These," they
cried, "are not your cushions of Trianon."
It was a long ride to the scaffold, during which the queen suffered all that insult,
derision, and contumely can inflict. The procession crossed the Seine by the
Pont au Change, and traversed the Rue St. Honoré. Upon reaching the Place of
the Revolution the cart stopped for a moment near the entrance of the garden of
the Tuileries. Marie Antoinette for a few moments contemplated in silence those
scenes of former happiness and grandeur. A few more revolutions of the wheels
placed her at the foot of the guillotine. She mounted to the scaffold, and
inadvertently trod upon the foot of the executioner.
"Pardon me," said the queen, with as much courtesy as if she had been in one of
the saloons of Versailles. Kneeling, she uttered a brief prayer, and then, turning
her eyes to the distant towers of the Temple, she said,
"Adieu, once again, my children; I go to rejoin your father."
She was bound to the plank, and as it sank to its place the gleaming axe slid
through the groove, and the head of the queen fell into the basket. The
executioner seized the gory trophy by the hair, and, walking around the scaffold,
exhibited it to the crowd. One long cry of Vive la République! arose, and the
crowd dispersed.
While these fearful scenes were passing, Madame Elizabeth and the princess
remained in the tower of the Temple. Their jailers were commanded to give them
no information whatever. The young dauphin was imprisoned by himself.
Six months of gloom and anguish which no pen can describe passed away, when,
on the night of the 9th of May, 1794, as Madame Elizabeth and the young
princess, Maria Theresa, were retiring to bed, a band of armed men, with
lanterns, broke into their room, and said to Madame Elizabeth,
"You must immediately go with us."
"And my niece?" anxiously inquired the meek and pious aunt, ever forgetful of
self in her solicitude for others. "Can she go too?"
"We want you only now. We will take care of her by-and-by," was the unfeeling
answer.
The saint-like Madame Elizabeth saw that the long-dreaded hour of separation
had come, and that her tender niece was to be left, unprotected and alone,
exposed to the brutality of her jailers. She pressed Maria Theresa to her bosom,
and wept in uncontrollable grief. But still, endeavoring to comfort the heartstricken
child, she said,
"I shall probably soon return again, my dear Maria."
"No, you won't, citoyenne," rudely interrupted one of the officers. "You will
never ascend these stairs again. So take your bonnet, and come down."
The soldiers seized her, led her down the stairs, and thrust her into a carriage. It
was midnight. Driving violently through the streets, they soon reached the
gateway of the Conciergerie. The Revolutionary Tribunal was, even at that hour,
in session. The princess was dragged immediately to their bar. With twenty-four
others of all ages and both sexes, she was condemned to die. Her crime was that
she was sister of the king, and in heart hostile to the Revolution. She was led to
one of the dungeons to be dressed for the scaffold. In this hour Christian faith
was triumphant. Trusting in God, all her sorrows vanished, and her soul was in
perfect peace.
With her twenty-two companions, all of noble birth, she was placed in the cart of
the condemned, her hands bound behind her, and conducted to the guillotine.
Madame Elizabeth was reserved to the last. One by one her companions were led
up the scaffold before her, and she saw their heads drop into the basket. She then
peacefully placed her head upon the pillow of death, and passed away, one of the
purest and yet most suffering of earthly spirits, to the bosom of her God.
The young dauphin lingered for eighteen months in his cell, suffering
inconceivable cruelties from his jailer, a wretch by the name of Simon, until he
died on the 9th of June, 1795, in the tenth year of his age. Maria Theresa now
alone remained of the family of Louis XVI. She had now been in prison more
than two years. At length, so much sympathy was excited in behalf of this
suffering child, that the Assembly consented to exchange her with the Austrian
government for four French officers.
pic
LOUIS XVII. IN PRISON.
On the 19th of December, 1795, she was led from the Temple, and, ample
arrangements having been made for her journey, she was conducted, with every
mark of respect and sympathy, to the frontiers. In the Austrian court, love and
admiration encircled her. But this stricken child of grief had received wounds
which time could never entirely heal. A full year passed before a smile could
ever be won to visit her cheek. She subsequently married her cousin, the Duke of
Angoulême, son of Charles X. With the return of the Bourbons she returned to
her ancestral halls of the Tuileries and Versailles. But upon the second expulsion
of the Bourbons she fled with them, and died, a few years ago, at an advanced
age, universally respected. Such was the wreck of the royal family of France by
the storm of revolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[401] Thomas Jefferson, during his residence in Paris, formed a very unfavorable opinion of Marie
Antoinette. Speaking of the good intentions of Louis XVI., he says, "But he had a queen of absolute sway
over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as
gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke with some smartness of fancy but no sound sense, was proud,
disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to
hold to her desires or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gamblings and dissipations, with those of the
Count d'Artois and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which
called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness and
dauntless spirit led herself to the guillotine, drew the king on with her, and plunged the world into crimes
and calamities which will for ever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever believed that had there
been no queen there would have been no revolution. The king would have gone hand in hand with the
wisdom of his sounder counselors, who, guided by the increased lights of the age, wished only, with the
same pace, to advance the principles of their social Constitution. The deed which closed the mortal course
of these sovereigns I shall neither approve nor condemn."—Life of Jefferson, by Randall, vol i., p. 533.
As Jefferson was intimate with La Fayette and other prominent popular leaders, it is evident that these
views were those which were generally entertained of the queen at that time. It is deeply to be regretted that
no subsequent developments can lead one to doubt that they were essentially correct. While we weep over
the woes of the queen we must not forget that she was endeavoring with all her energy to rivet the chains of
unlimited despotism upon twenty-five millions of people.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE JACOBINS TRIUMPHANT.
Views of the Girondists.—Anecdote of Vergniaud.—The Girondists
brought to Trial.—Suicide of Valazé.—Anguish of Desmoulins.—Fonfrede
and Ducos.—Last Supper of the Girondists.—Their Execution.—The Duke
of Orleans; his Execution.—Activity of the Guillotine.—Humane
Legislation.—Testimony of Desodoards.—Anacharsis Cloots.—The New
Era.
THE Jacobins now resolved to free themselves from all internal foes, that they
might more vigorously cope with all Europe in arms against them. Marie
Antoinette was executed the 16th of October. On the 22d, the Girondists, twentytwo
in number, were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. They were the
most illustrious men of the most noble party to which the Revolution had given
birth. They had demolished a despotic throne that they might establish a
constitutional monarchy upon the model of that of England.[402] With great
generosity they had placed Louis XVI. on that throne, and he had feigned to
accept the Constitution. But with hypocrisy which even his subsequent woes can
not obliterate, he secretly rallied his nobles around him, or rather allowed them
to use him as their leader, and appealed to the armies of foreign despotisms to
overthrow the free Constitution and re-establish the old feudal tyranny.
"The question thenceforth was, whether their sons should, as in times past (as in
Mr. Burke's splendid Age of Chivalry), be sent to manure Europe with their
bodies, in wars undertaken at the nod of a courtesan—whether their wives and
daughters, cursed with beauty enough to excite a transient emotion of sensuality,
should be lured and torn from them and debauched—whether every man who
dared to utter a manly political thought or to assert his rights against rank should
be imprisoned at pleasure without a hearing—whether the toiling masses, for the
purpose of supporting lascivious splendor, of building Parcs aux Cerfs, of
pensioning discarded mistresses, of swiftly enriching corrupt favorites and
minions of every stamp, should be so taxed that the light and air of heaven
hardly came to them untaxed, and that they should be so sunk by exactions of
every kind in the dregs of indigence that a short crop compelled them to live on
food that the hounds, if not the swine, of their task-masters would reject; and,
finally, whether, when, in the bloody sweat of their agony, they asked some
mitigation of their hard fate, they should be answered by the bayonets of foreign
mercenaries; and a people—stout manhood, gentle womanhood, gray-haired age,
and tender infancy, turned their pale faces upward and shrieked for food, fierce,
licentious nobles should scornfully bid them eat grass."[403]
In this terrible dilemma, the Girondists felt compelled to abandon the newlyestablished
Constitutional monarchy, which had proved treacherous to its trust,
and to fall back upon a republic, as their only asylum from destruction, and as
the only possible refuge for French liberty. But the populace of France, ignorant
and irreligious, were unfitted for a republic. Universal suffrage threw the power
into the hands of millions of newly-emancipated slaves. Violence and blood
commenced their reign. The Girondists in vain endeavored to stem the flood.
They were overwhelmed. Such is their brief history.
The Girondists had been for some time confined in the dungeons of the
Conciergerie. They were in a state of extreme misery. Vergniaud, one of the most
noble and eloquent of men, was their recognized leader. His brother-in-law, M.
Alluaud, came to the prison to bring him some money. A child of M. Alluaud,
ten years of age, accompanied his father. Seeing his uncle with sunken eyes and
haggard cheeks and disordered hair, and with his garments falling in tatters
around him, the child was terrified, and, bursting into tears, clung to his father's
knees.
"My child," said Vergniaud, taking him in his lap, "look well at me. When you
are a man you can say that you saw Vergniaud, the founder of the Republic, at
the most glorious period, and in the most splendid costume he ever wore—that
in which he suffered the persecution of wretches, and in which he prepared to die
for liberty."
The child remembered these words, and repeated them fifty years after to
Lamartine. At ten o'clock in the morning of the 26th of October the accused
were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Two files of gens d'armes
conducted them into the hall of audience and placed them on the prisoners'
bench.[404] The act of accusation, drawn up by Robespierre and St. Just,[405]
from an exceedingly envenomed pamphlet written by Camille Desmoulins,
entitled History of the Faction of the Gironde, was long and bitter. The trial
lasted several days.
On the 30th of October, at eight o'clock in the evening, the debate was closed. At
midnight they were summoned to the bar to hear the verdict of the jury. It
declared them all guilty of treason, and condemned them to die in the morning.
One of the condemned, Valazé, immediately plunged a concealed poniard into
his heart, and fell dead upon the floor. Camille Desmoulins, on hearing the
verdict, was overwhelmed with remorse, and cried out,
"It is my pamphlet which has killed them. Wretch that I am, I can not bear the
sight of my work. I feel their blood fall on the hand that has denounced them."
There were two brothers, Fonfrede and Ducos, among the condemned, sitting
side by side, both under twenty-eight years of age. Fonfrede threw his arms
around the neck of Ducos, and bursting into tears said,
"My dear brother, I cause your death; but we shall die together."
Vergniaud sat in silence, with an expression of proud defiance and contempt.
Lasource repeated the sententious saying of one of the ancients, "I die on the day
when the people have lost their reason. You will die when they have recovered
it." As they left the court to return to their cells, there to prepare for the
guillotine, they spontaneously struck up together the hymn of the Marseillais:
"Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé;
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé."[406]
As they passed along the corridors of the prison, their sublime requiem echoed
along the gloomy vaults, and awoke the sleepers in the deepest dungeons. They
were all placed in one large room opening into several cells. The lifeless body of
Valazé was deposited in one of the corners; for, by a decree of the Tribunal, his
remains were to be taken in the cart of the condemned to be beheaded with the
rest. A sumptuous banquet was sent in to them by their friends as their last
repast. The table was richly spread, decorated with flowers, and supplied with all
the delicacies which Paris could furnish. A Constitutional priest, the Abbé
Lambert, a friend of the Girondists, had obtained admission to the prison, to
administer to them the last supports of religion and to accompany them to the
guillotine. To him we are indebted for the record of these last scenes.
Vergniaud, thirty-five years of age, presided. He had but little to bind him to life,
having neither father nor mother, wife nor child. In quietness and with subdued
tones they partook of their repast. When the cloth was removed, and the flowers
and the wine alone remained, the conversation became more animated. The
young men attempted with songs and affected gayety to disarm death of its
terror; but Vergniaud, rallying to his aid his marvelous eloquence, endeavored to
recall them to more worthy thoughts.
"My friends," said he, sorrowing more over the misfortunes of the Republic than
over his own, "we have killed the tree by pruning it. It was too aged. The soil is
too weak to nourish the roots of civic, liberty. This people is too childish to wield
its laws without hurting itself. It will return to its kings as babes return to their
toys. We were deceived as to the age in which we were born and in which we die
for the freedom of the world."
"What shall we be doing to-morrow at this time?" asked Ducos. Each answered
according to his skepticism or his faith. Vergniaud again spake. "Never," says the
Abbé Lambert, "had his look, his gesture, his language, and his voice more
profoundly affected his hearers." His discourse was of the immortality of the
soul, to which all listened deeply moved, and many wept.
pic
THE GIRONDISTS ON THEIR WAY TO EXECUTION.
A few rays of morning light now began to struggle in at their dungeon windows.
The executioners soon entered to cut off their hair and robe them for the
scaffold. At ten o'clock they were marched in a column to the gate of the prison,
where carts, surrounded by an immense crowd, awaited them. As they entered
the carts they all commenced singing in chorus the Marseilles Hymn, and
continued the impassioned strains until they reached the scaffold. One after
another they ascended the scaffold. Sillery was the first who ascended. He was
bound to the plank, but continued in a full, strong voice to join in the song, till
the glittering axe glided down the groove and his head dropped into the basket.
Each one followed his example. The song grew fainter as head after head fell, till
at last one voice only remained. It was that of Vergniaud. As he was bound to the
plank he commenced anew the strain,
"Allons, enfans de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé."
The axe fell, and the lips of Vergniaud were silent in death. In thirty-one minutes
the executioner had beheaded them all. Their bodies were thrown into one cart,
and were cast into a grave by the side of that of Louis XVI.[407]
On the 6th of November the Duke of Orleans was taken from prison and led
before the Tribunal. As there was no serious charge to be brought against him, he
had not apprehended condemnation. But he was promptly doomed to die. As he
was conducted back to his cell to prepare for immediate death, he exclaimed, in
the utmost excitement of indignation,
"The wretches! I have given them all—rank, fortune, ambition, honor, the future
reputation of my house—and this is the recompense they reserve for me!"
At three o'clock he was placed in the cart with three other condemned prisoners.
The prince was elegantly attired and all eyes were riveted upon him. With an air
of indifference he gazed upon the crowd, saying nothing which could reveal the
character of his thoughts. On mounting the scaffold the executioner wished to
draw off his boots.
"No, no," said the duke, "you will do it more easily afterward."
He looked intently for a moment at the keen-edged axe, and, without a word,
submitted to his fate. Madame Roland and others of the most illustrious of the
friends of freedom and of France soon followed to the scaffold. And now every
day the guillotine was active as the efficient agent of government, extinguishing
all opposition and silencing every murmur. The prisons were full, new arrests
were every day made, and dismay paralyzed all hearts. Four thousand six
hundred in the prisons of Paris alone were awaiting that trial which almost surely
led to condemnation.
The Jacobin leaders, trembling before Europe in arms, felt that there was no
safety for France but in the annihilation of all internal foes. Danton, Marat,
Robespierre, were not men who loved blood and cruelty; they were resolute
fanatics who believed it to be well to cut off the heads of many thousand reputed
aristocrats, that a nation of thirty millions might enjoy popular liberty. While the
Revolutionary Tribunal was thus mercilessly plying the axe of the executioner,
the National Convention, where these Jacobins reigned supreme, were enacting
many laws which breathed the spirit of liberty and humanity. The taxes were
equally distributed in proportion to property. Provision was made for the poor
and infirm. All orphans were adopted by the Republic. Liberty of conscience
was proclaimed. Slavery and the slave-trade were indignantly abolished.
Measures were adopted for a general system of popular instruction, and decisive
efforts were made to unite the rich and the poor in bonds of sympathy and
alliance.[408]
We can not give a better account of the state of Paris at this time than in the
words of Desodoards, a calm philosophic writer, who had ardently espoused the
cause of the Revolution, and who consequently will not be suspected of
exaggeration.
"What then," says he, "was this Revolutionary government? Every right, civil
and political, was destroyed. Liberty of the press and of thought was at an end.
The whole people were divided into two classes, the privileged and the
proscribed. Property was wantonly violated, lettres de cachet re-established, the
asylum of dwellings exposed to the most tyrannical inquisition, and justice
stripped of every appearance of humanity and honor. France was covered with
prisons; all the excesses of anarchy and despotism struggling amid a confused
multitude of committees; terror in every heart; the scaffold devouring a hundred
every day, and threatening to devour a still greater number; in every house
melancholy and mourning, and in every street the silence of the tomb.
"War was waged against the tenderest emotions of nature. Was a tear shed over
the tomb of father, wife, or friend, it was, according to these Jacobins, a robbery
of the Republic. Not to rejoice when the Jacobins rejoiced was treason to
freedom. All the mob of low officers of justice, some of whom could scarcely
read, sported with the lives of men without the slightest shame or remorse. Often
an act of accusation was served upon one person which was intended for another.
The officer only changed the name on perceiving his error, and often did not
change it. Mistakes of the most inconceivable nature were made with impunity.
The Duchess of Biron was judged by an act drawn up against her agent. A young
man of twenty was guillotined for having, as it was alleged, a son bearing arms
against France. A lad of sixteen, by the name of Mallet, was arrested under an
indictment for a man of forty, named Bellay.
"'What is your age?' inquired the president, looking at him with some surprise.
"'Sixteen,' replied the youth.
"'Well, you are quite forty in crime,' said the magistrate; 'take him to the
guillotine.'
"From every corner of France victims were brought in carts to the Conciergerie.
This prison was emptied every day by the guillotine, and refilled from other
prisons. These removals were made in the dark, lest public sympathy should be
excited. Fifty or sixty poor creatures, strait bound, conducted by men of
ferocious aspect, a drawn sabre in one hand and a lighted torch in the other,
passed in this manner through the silence of night. The passenger who chanced
to meet them had to smother his pity. A sigh would have united him to the
funeral train.
pic
READING THE LIST OF THE VICTIMS IN THE PRISONS OF PARIS.
"The prisons were the abode of every species of suffering. The despair which
reigned in these sepulchres was terrific: one finished his existence by poison;
another dispatched himself by a nail; another dashed his head against the walls
of his cell; some lost their reason. Those who had sufficient fortitude waited
patiently for the executioner. Every house of arrest was required to furnish a
certain number of victims. The turnkeys went with these mandates of accusation
from chamber to chamber in the dead of night. The prisoners, starting from their
sleep at the voice of their Cerberuses, supposed their end had arrived. Thus
warrants of death for thirty threw hundreds into consternation.[409]
"At first the sheriffs ranged fifteen at a time in their carts, then thirty, and about
the time of the fall of Robespierre preparations had been made for the execution
of one hundred and fifty at a time. An aqueduct had been contrived to carry off
the blood. In these batches, as they were called, were often united people of the
most opposite systems and habits. Sometimes whole generations were destroyed
in a day. Malesherbes, at the age of eighty, perished with his sister, his daughter,
his son-in-law, his grandson, and his granddaughter. Forty young women were
brought to the guillotine for having danced at a ball given by the King of Prussia
at Verdun. Twenty-two peasant women, whose husbands had been executed in
La Vendée, were beheaded."
Such was the thraldom from which, at last, the empire of Napoleon rescued
France. Nothing less than the strength of his powerful arm could have wrought
out the achievement.
In the midst of such scenes it is not strange that all respect should have been
renounced for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Jacobins of Paris crowded the
Convention, demanding the abjuration of all forms of religion and all modes of
worship. They governed the Convention with despotic sway. The Commune of
Paris, invested with the local police of the city, passed laws prohibiting the
clergy from exercising religious worship outside the churches. None but friends
and relatives were to be allowed to follow the remains of the dead to the grave.
All religious symbols were ordered to be effaced from the cemeteries, and to be
replaced by a statue of Sleep. The following ravings of Anacharsis Cloots, a
wealthy Prussian baron, who styled himself the orator of the human race, and
who was one of the most conspicuous of the Jacobin agitators, forcibly exhibits
the spirit of the times:[410]
"Paris, the metropolis of the globe, is the proper post for the orator of the human
race. I have not left Paris since 1789. It was then that I redoubled my zeal against
the pretended sovereigns of earth and heaven. I boldly preached that there is no
other god but Nature, no other sovereign but the human race—the people-god.
The people is sufficient for itself. Nature kneels not before herself. Religion is
the only obstacle to universal happiness. It is high time to destroy it."
The popular current in Paris now set very strongly against all religion. Infidel
and atheistic principles were loudly proclaimed. The unlettered populace, whose
faith was but superstition, were easily swept along by the current. The
Convention made a feeble resistance, but soon yielded to the general impulse. In
the different sections of Paris, gatherings of the populace abjured all religion.
The fanaticism spread like wild-fire to the distant departments. The churches
were stripped of their baptismal plate and other treasures, and the plunder was
sent to the Convention. Processions paraded the streets, singing, derisively,
Hallelujahs, and profaning with sacrilegious caricature all the ceremonies of
religion. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered to an ass.
The Convention had appointed a committee of twelve men, called the
Committee of Public Safety, and invested them with dictatorial power. The
whole revolutionary power was now lodged in their hands. They appointed such
sub-committees as they pleased, and governed France with terrific energy. The
Revolutionary Tribunal was but one of their committees. In all the departments
they established their agencies. The Convention itself became powerless before
this appalling despotism. This dictatorship was energetically supported by the
mob of Paris; and the city government of Paris was composed of the most
violent Jacobins, who were in perfect fraternity with the Committee of Public
Safety. St. Just, who proposed in the Convention the establishment of this
dictatorship, said,
"You must no longer show any lenity to the enemies of the new order of things.
Liberty must triumph at any cost. In the present circumstances of the Republic
the Constitution can not be established; it would guarantee impunity to attacks
on our liberty, because it would be deficient in the violence necessary to restrain
them."
This Committee, overawing the Convention, constrained the establishment of a
new era. To obliterate the Sabbath, they divided the year into twelve months of
thirty days each, each month to consist of three weeks of ten days each. The
tenth day was devoted to festivals. The five surplus days were placed at the end
of the year, and were consecrated to games and rejoicing. Thus energetically
were measures adopted to obliterate entirely all traces of the Sabbath. There
were thousands in France who looked upon these measures with unutterable
disgust, but they were overwhelmed by the powers of anarchy. Anxiously they
waited for a deliverer. In Napoleon they found one, who was alike the foe of the
despotism of the Bourbons and the despotism of the mob.
FOOTNOTES:
[402] La Fayette was an illustrious member of this party. Even Jefferson advised to make the English
Constitution the model for France. He was present at the opening of the Assembly of Notables, and soon
after wrote to La Fayette, "Keeping the good model of your neighboring country before your eyes, you may
get on step by step toward a good Constitution. Though that model is not perfect, yet, as it would unite
more suffrages than any new one which could be proposed, it is better to make that the object."—Life of
Thomas Jefferson, by Henry S. Randall, vol. i., p. 406.
[403] Henry S. Randall, Life of Jefferson, vol. i., p. 529.
[404] "Never since the Knights Templar had a party appeared more numerous, more illustrious, or more
eloquent. The renown of the accused, their long possession of power, their present danger, and that love of
vengeance which arises in men's hearts at the spectacle of mighty reverses of fortune, had collected a crowd
in the precincts of the Revolutionary Tribunal. A strong armed force surrounded the gates of the
Conciergerie and the Palais de Justice. The cannon, the uniforms, the sentinels, the gens d'armes, the naked
sabres, all announced one of those political crises in which a trial is a battle and justice an
execution."—Hist. Gir., Lamartine, vol. ii., p. 169.
[405] Such is the statement of Lamartine. Thiers, however, says that the act was drawn up by Amar, a
barrister of Grenoble.
[406]
"Come, children of your country, come,
The day of glory dawns on high,
And tyranny has wide unfurl'd
Her blood-stained banner in the sky."
[407] Edmund Burke has most unpardonably calumniated these noble men. Even Prof. Smyth, who
espouses his opinions, says, "Burke was a man who, from the ardor of his temperament and the vehemence
of his eloquence, might be almost said to have ruined every cause and every party that he espoused. No
mind, however great, that will not bow to the superiority of his genius; yet no mind, however inferior, that
will not occasionally feel itself entitled to look down upon him, from the total want which he sometimes
shows of all calmness and candor, and even, at particular moments, of all reasonableness and propriety of
thought."—Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. iii., p. 4.
[408] History of the Girondists, Lamartine, vol. iii., p. 291.
[409] "There were in the prisons of Paris on the 1st of September, 1793, 597; October 1, 2400; November
1, 3203; December 1, 4130; and in six months after, 11,400."—Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de France, par Ant.
Fantin Desodoards.
[410] Cloots declared himself "the personal enemy of Jesus Christ." France adopted the atheistic principles
of Cloots, and sent him to the guillotine. See article Cloots, Enc. Am.
CHAPTER XXXV.
FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS AND OF THE DANTONISTS.
Continued Persecution of the Girondists.—Robespierre opposes the
Atheists.—Danton, Souberbielle, and Camille Desmoulins.—The Vieux
Cordelier.—The Hebertists executed.—Danton assailed.—Interview
between Danton and Robespierre.—Danton warned of his Peril.—Camille
Desmoulins and others arrested.—Lucile, the Wife of Desmoulins.—
Letters.—Execution of the Dantonists.—Arrest and Execution of Lucile.—
Toulon recovered by Bonaparte.
THE leaders of the Girondists were now destroyed, and the remnants of the party
were prosecuted with unsparing ferocity. On the 11th of November, Bailly, the
former mayor, the friend of La Fayette, the philanthropist and the scholar, was
dragged to the scaffold. The day was cold and rainy. His crime was having
unfurled the red flag in the Field of Mars, to quell the riot there, on the 17th of
July, 1791. He was condemned to be executed on the field which was the theatre
of his alleged crime. Behind the cart which carried him they affixed the flag
which he had spread. A crowd followed, heaping upon him the most cruel
imprecations. On reaching the scaffold, some one cried out that the field of the
federation ought not to be polluted with his blood. Immediately the mob rushed
upon the guillotine, tore it down, and erected it again upon a dunghill on the
banks of the Seine. They dragged Bailly from the tumbril, and compelled him to
make the tour of the Field of Mars on foot. Bareheaded, with his hands bound
behind him, and with no other garment than a shirt, the sleet glued his hair and
froze upon his breast. They pelted him with mud, spat in his face, and whipped
him with the flag, which they dipped in the gutters. The old man fell exhausted.
They lifted him up again, and goaded him on. Blood, mingled with mire,
streamed down his face, depriving him of human aspect. Shouts of derision
greeted these horrors. The freezing wind and exhaustion caused an involuntary
shivering. Some one cried out, "You tremble, Bailly." "Yes, my friend," replied
the heroic old man, "but it is with cold."[411] After five hours of such a
martyrdom, the axe released him from his sufferings.
Pétion and Buzot wandered many days and nights in the forest. At length their
remains were found, half devoured by wolves. Whether they perished of cold
and starvation, or sought relief from their misery in voluntary death, is not
known.
The illustrious Condorcet, alike renowned for his philosophical genius and his
eloquent advocacy of popular rights, had been declared an outlaw. For several
months he had been concealed in the house of Madame Verney, a noble woman,
who periled her own life that she might save that of her friend. At last
Condorcet, learning from the papers that death was denounced against all who
concealed a proscribed individual, resolved, at every hazard, to leave the roof of
his benefactress. For some time he wandered through the fields in disguise, until
he was arrested and thrown into prison. On the following morning, March 28,
1794, he was found dead on the floor of his room, having swallowed poison,
which for some time he carried about with him.
"It would be difficult in that or any other age to find two men of more active or,
indeed, enthusiastic benevolence than Condorcet and La Fayette. Besides this,
Condorcet was one of the most profound thinkers of his time, and will be
remembered as long as genius is honored among us. La Fayette was no doubt
inferior to Condorcet in point of ability, but he was the intimate friend of
Washington, on whose conduct he modeled his own, and by whose side he had
fought for the liberties of America; his integrity was, and still is, unsullied, and
his character had a chivalrous and noble turn which Burke, in his better days,
would have been the first to admire. Both, however, were natives of that hated
country whose liberties they vainly attempted to achieve. On this account Burke
declared Condorcet to be guilty of 'impious sophistry,' to be a 'fanatic atheist and
furious democratic republican,' and to be capable of the 'lowest as well as the
highest and most determined villainies.' As to La Fayette, when an attempt was
made to mitigate the cruel treatment he was receiving from the Prussian
government, Burke not only opposed the motion made for that purpose in the
House of Commons, but took the opportunity of grossly insulting the unfortunate
captive, who was then languishing in a dungeon. So dead had he become on this
subject, even to the common instincts of our nature, that in his place in
parliament he could find no better way of speaking of this injured and highsouled
man than by calling him a ruffian. 'I would not,' says Burke, 'debase[412]
my humanity by supporting an application in behalf of so horrid a ruffian.'"[413]
pic
DEATH OF CONDORCET.
Madame Roland was led to the guillotine, evincing heroism which the world has
never seen surpassed. Her husband, in anguish, unable to survive her, and hunted
by those thirsting for his blood, anticipated the guillotine by plunging a stiletto
into his own heart.
Danton and Robespierre were both opposed to such cruel executions, and
especially to the establishment in France of that system of atheism which
degraded man into merely the reptile of an hour. When Robespierre was
informed of the atrocities which attended the execution of Bailly, in shame and
grief he shut himself up in his room, saying, with prophetic foresight, to his host
Duplay, "It is thus that they will martyrize ourselves."
Hebert[414] and the atheists were now dominant in the Commune of Paris, and
Danton and Robespierre organized a party to crush them. Hebert soon saw
indications of this movement, and began to tremble. He complained in the
Jacobin Club that Robespierre and Danton were plotting against him.
Robespierre was present on the occasion, and, with his accustomed audacity,
immediately ascended the tribune and hurled his anathemas upon the heads of
these blood-crimsoned fanatics.
"There are men," said he, "who, under the pretext of destroying superstition,
would fain make a sort of religion of atheism itself. Every man has a right to
think as he pleases; whoever would make a crime of this is a madman. But the
legislator who should adopt the system of atheism would be a hundred times
more insane. The National Convention abhors such a system. It is a political
body, not a maker of creeds. Atheism is aristocratic. The idea of a great Being
who watches over oppressed innocence and who punishes triumphant guilt is
quite popular. The people, the unfortunate, applaud me. If God did not exist, it
would behoove man to invent him."
One of the last evenings in the month of January, Danton, Souberbielle, one of
the members of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Camille Desmoulins came from
the Palace of Justice together. It was a cold gloomy winter's night. It had been a
day of blood. Fifteen heads had fallen upon the guillotine and twenty-seven were
condemned to die on the morrow. These three men were all appalled by the
progress of events, and for some time walked along in silence. On reaching Pont
Neuf, Danton turned suddenly round to Souberbielle and said,
"Do you know that, at the pace we are now going, there will speedily be no
safety for any person? The best patriots are confounded with traitors. Generals
who have shed their blood for the Republic perish on the scaffold. I am weary of
living. Look there; the very river seems to flow with blood."
"True," replied Souberbielle, "the sky is red, and there are many showers of
blood behind those clouds. Those who were to be judges have become but
executioners. When I refuse an innocent head to their knife I am accused of
sympathy with traitors. What can I do? I am but an obscure patriot. Ah, if I were
Danton!"
"All this," replied Danton, "excites horror in me. But be silent. Danton sleeps; he
will awake at the right moment. I am a man of revolution, but not a man of
slaughter. But you," he added, addressing Camille Desmoulins, "why do you
keep silence?"
"I am weary of silence," was Desmoulins's reply. "My hand weighs heavily, and
I have sometimes the impulse to sharpen my pen into a dagger and stab these
scoundrels. Let them beware. My ink is more indelible than their blood. It stains
for immortality."
"Bravo!" cried Danton. "Begin to-morrow. You began the Revolution; be it you
who shall now most thoroughly urge it. Be assured this hand shall aid you. You
know whether or not it be strong."
The three friends separated at Danton's door. The doom of the miserable Hebert
and his party was now sealed. Robespierre, Danton, and Camille Desmoulins
were against him. They could wield resistless influences. The next day Camille
Desmoulins commenced a series of papers called the Vieux Cordelier. He took
the first number to Danton and then to Robespierre. They both approved, and the
warfare against Hebert and his party was commenced. The conflict was short
and desperate; each party knew that the guillotine was the doom of the
vanquished.[415] Robespierre and Danton were victors. Hebert, Cloots, and their
friends, nineteen in number, were arrested and condemned to death. On the 24th
of March, 1794, five carts laden with the Hebertists proceeded from the
Conciergerie to the guillotine. Cloots died firmly. Hebert was in a paroxysm of
terror, which excited the contempt and derision of the mob.
The bold invectives against the Reign of Terror in the Vieux Cordelier, written
by Desmoulins, began to alarm the Committee of Public Safety. Danton and
Robespierre were implicated. They were accused of favoring moderate
measures, and of being opposed to those acts of bloody rigor which were
deemed necessary to crush the aristocrats. Danton and Desmoulins were in favor
of a return to mercy. Robespierre, though opposed to cruelty and to needless
carnage, was sternly for death as the doom of every one not warmly co-operating
with the Revolution. To save himself from suspicion he became the accuser of
his two friends. And now it came the turn of Danton and Desmoulins to tremble.
For five years Danton and Robespierre had fought together to overthrow royalty
and found the Republic. But Danton was disgusted with carnage, and had
withdrawn from the Committee of Public Safety.
"Danton, do you know," said Eglantine to him one day, "of what you are
accused? They say that you have only launched the car of the Revolution to
enrich yourself, while Robespierre has remained poor in the midst of the
monarchical treasures thrown at his feet."
"Well," replied Danton, "do you know what that proves? that I love gold, and
that Robespierre loves blood. Robespierre is afraid of money lest it should stain
his hands."
Robespierre earnestly wished to associate Danton with him in all the rigor of the
Revolutionary government, for he respected the power of this bold, indomitable
man. They met at a dinner-party, through the agency of a mutual friend, when
matters were brought to a crisis. They engaged in a dispute, Danton denouncing
and reviling the acts of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Robespierre defending
them, until they separated in anger. The friends of Danton urged him either to
escape by flight or to take advantage of his popularity and throw himself upon
the army.
"My life is not worth the trouble," said Danton. "Besides, I am weary of blood. I
had rather be guillotined than be a guillotiner. They dare not attack me. I am
stronger than they."
A secret meeting of the Committee of Public Safety was convened by night, and
Danton was accused of the "treason of clemency." A subaltern door-keeper heard
the accusation, and ran to Danton's house to warn him of his peril and to offer
him an asylum. The young and beautiful wife of Danton, with tears in her eyes,
threw herself at his feet, and implored him, for her sake and for that of their
children, to accept the proffered shelter. Danton proudly refused, saying,
"They will deliberate long before they will dare to strike a man like me. While
they deliberate I will surprise them."
He dismissed the door-keeper and retired to bed. At six o'clock gens d'armes
entered his room with the order for his arrest.
"They dare, then," said Danton, crushing the paper in his hand. "They are bolder
than I had thought them to be."
He dressed, embraced his wife convulsively, and was conducted to prison. At the
same hour Camille Desmoulins and fourteen others, the supposed partisans of
Danton, were also arrested. It was the 31st of March. Danton was taken to the
Luxembourg. Here he found Desmoulins and his other friends already
incarcerated. As Danton entered the gloomy portals of the prison he said,
"At length I perceive that, in revolutions, the supreme power ultimately rests
with the most abandoned."[416]
A crowd of the detained immediately gathered around him, amazed at that freak
of fortune which had cast the most distinguished leader of the Jacobins into the
dungeons of the accused. Danton was humiliated and annoyed by the gaze, and
endeavored to veil his embarrassment under the guise of derision.
"Yes," said he, raising his head and forcing loud laughter, "it is Danton. Look at
him well. The trick is well played. We must know how to praise our enemies
when they conduct adroitly. I would never have believed that Robespierre could
have juggled me thus." Then softening, and growing more sincere, he said,
"Gentlemen, I hoped to have been the means of delivering you all from this
place; but here I am among you, and no one can tell where this will end."
The accused Dantonists—accused of advocating moderate measures in the
treatment of the enemies of the Revolution—were soon shut up in separate cells.
The report of the arrest of men of such acknowledged power, and who had been
so popular as patriots, spread anxiety and gloom through Paris. The warmest
friends of the arrested dared not plead their cause; it would only have imperiled
their own lives.
Even in the Assembly great excitement was produced by these important arrests.
The members gathered in groups and spoke to each other in whispers, inquiring
what all this meant and where it was to end. At last, Légendre ventured to ascend
the tribune, and said,
"Citizens, four members of this Assembly have been arrested during the night.
Danton is one. I know not the others. Citizens, I declare that I believe Danton to
be as pure as myself; yet he is in a dungeon. They feared, no doubt, that his
replies would overturn the accusations brought against him. I move, therefore,
that, before you listen to any report, you send for the prisoners and hear them."
Robespierre immediately ascended the tribune and replied,
"By the unusual agitation which pervades this Assembly—by the sensation the
words of the speaker you have just heard have produced, it is manifest that a
question of great interest is before us—a question whether two or three
individuals shall be preferred to the country. The question to-day is whether the
interests of certain ambitious hypocrites shall prevail over the interests of the
French nation. Légendre appears not to know the names of those who have been
arrested. All the Convention knows them. His friend Lacroix is among the
prisoners. Why does he pretend to be ignorant of it? Because he knows that he
can not defend Lacroix without shame. He has spoken of Danton, doubtless
because he thinks that a privilege is attached to this name. No! we will have no
privilege. No! we will have no idols. We shall see to-day whether the
Convention will break a false idol, long since decayed, or whether in its fall it
will crush the Convention and the French people.
"I say, whoever now trembles is guilty, for never does innocence dread public
surveillance. Me, too, have they tried to alarm. It has been attempted to make me
believe that the danger which threatens Danton might reach me. I have been
written to. The friends of Danton have sent me their letters; have besieged me
with their importunities. They have thought that the remembrance of a former
acquaintance, that a past belief in false virtues, might determine me to relax in
my zeal and my passion for liberty. Well, then, I declare that none of these
motives have touched my soul with the slightest impression; my life is for my
country, my heart is exempt from fear.
"I have seen in the flattery which has been addressed to me, in the concern of
those who surrounded Danton, only signs of the terror which they felt, even
before they were threatened. And I, too, have been the friend of Pétion; as soon
as he was unmasked I abandoned him. I have also been acquainted with Roland;
he became a traitor and I denounced him. Danton would take their place, and in
my eyes he is but an enemy to his country."
Légendre, appalled, immediately retracted, and trembling for his life, like a
whipped spaniel, crouched before the terrible dictator. At that moment St. Just
came in, and read a long report against the members under arrest. The substance
of the vague and rambling charges was that they had been bought up by the
aristocrats and were enemies to their country. The Assembly listened without a
murmur, and then unanimously, and even with applause, voted the impeachment
of Danton and his friends. "Every one sought to gain time with tyranny, and gave
up others' heads to save his own."[417]
The Dantonists were men of mark, and they now drank deeply of that bitter
chalice which they had presented to so many lips. Camille Desmoulins, young,
brilliant, enthusiastic, was one of the most fascinating of men. His youthful and
beautiful wife, Lucile, he loved to adoration. They had one infant child, Horace,
their pride and joy. Camille was asleep in the arms of his wife when the noise of
the butt end of a musket on the threshold of his door aroused him. As the
soldiers presented the order for his arrest, he exclaimed, in anguish, "This, then,
is the recompense of the first voice of the Revolution."
Embracing his wife for the last time, and imprinting a kiss upon the cheek of his
child asleep in the cradle, he was hurried to prison. Lucile, frantic with grief, ran
through the streets of Paris to plead with Robespierre and others for her husband;
but her lamentations were as unavailing as the moaning wind. In the following
tender strain Camille wrote his wife:
"My prison recalls to my mind the garden where I spent eight years in
beholding you. A glimpse of the garden of the Luxembourg brings back to
me a crowd of remembrances of our loves. I am alone, but never have I
been in thought, imagination, feeling nearer to you, your mother, and to my
little Horace. I am going to pass all my time in prison in writing to you. I
cast myself at your knees; I stretch out my arms to embrace you; I find you
no more. Send me the glass on which are our two names; a book, which I
bought some days ago, on the immortality of the soul. I have need of
persuading myself that there is a God more just than man, and that I can not
fail to see you again. Do not grieve too much over my thoughts, dearest; I
do not yet despair of men. Yes! my beloved, we will see ourselves again in
the garden of the Luxembourg. Adieu, Lucile! Adieu, Horace! I can not
embrace you; but in the tears which I shed it appears that I press you again
to my bosom.
THY CAMILLE."
Lucile, frantic with grief, made the most desperate efforts to gain access to
Robespierre, but she was sternly repulsed. She then thus imploringly wrote to
him,
"Can you accuse us of treason, you who have profited so much by the
efforts we have made for our country? Camille has seen the birth of your
pride, the path you desired to tread, but he has recalled your ancient
friendship and shrunk from the idea of accusing a friend, a companion of
his labors. That hand which has pressed yours has too soon abandoned the
pen, since it could no longer trace your praise; and you, you send him to
death. But, Robespierre, will you really accomplish the deadly projects
which doubtless the vile souls which surround you have inspired you with?
Have you forgotten those bonds which Camille never recalls without grief?
you who prayed for our union, who joined our hands in yours, who have
smiled upon my son whose infantile hands have so often caressed you? Can
you, then, reject my prayers, despise my tears, and trample justice under
foot? For you know it yourself, we do not merit the fate they are preparing
for us, and you can avert it. If it strike us, it is you who will have ordered it.
But what is, then, the crime of my Camille?
"I have not his pen to defend him. But the voice of good citizens, and your
heart, if it is sensible, will plead for me. Do you believe that people will
gain confidence in you by seeing you immolate your best friends? Do you
think that they will bless him who regards neither the tears of the widow
nor the death of the orphan? Poor Camille! in the simplicity of his heart,
how far was he from suspecting the fate which awaits him to-day! He
thought to labor for your glory in pointing out to you what was still wanting
to our republic. He has, no doubt, been calumniated to you, Robespierre, for
you can not believe him guilty. Consider that he has never required the
death of any one—that he has never desired to injure by your power, and
that you were his oldest and his best friend. And you are about to kill us
both! For to strike him is to kill me—"
The unfinished letter she intrusted to her mother, but it never reached the hands
of Robespierre. The prisoners were soon taken to the Conciergerie and plunged
into the same dungeon into which they had thrown the Girondists. The day of
trial was appointed without delay. It was the 3d of April. As the prisoners,
fourteen in number, were arrayed before the Tribunal, the president, Hermann,
inquired of Danton, in formal phrase, his name, age, and residence.
"My name," was the proud and defiant reply, "is Danton, well enough known in
the Revolution. I am thirty-five years old. My residence will soon be void, and
my name will exist in the Pantheon of history."
To the same question Camille Desmoulins replied, "I am thirty-three, a fatal age
to revolutionists,—the age of the sans culotte Jesus when he died."
The trial lasted three days. Danton, in his defense, struggled like a lion in the
toils. An immense crowd filled the court and crowded the surrounding streets.
The windows were open, and the thunders of his voice were frequently heard
even to the other side of the Seine. The people in the streets, whom he doubtless
meant to influence, caught up his words and transmitted them from one to
another. Some indications of popular sympathy alarmed the Tribunal, and it was
voted that the accused were wanting in respect to the court, and should no longer
be heard in their defense. They were immediately condemned to die.
They were reconducted to their dungeon to prepare for the guillotine. The
fortitude of Camille Desmoulins was weakened by the strength of his domestic
attachments. "Oh, my dear Lucile! Oh, my Horace! what will become of them!"
he incessantly cried, while tears flooded his eyes. Seizing a pen, he hastily wrote
a few last words to Lucile, which remain one of the most touching memorials of
grief.
pic
DANTON'S DEFENSE.
"I have dreamed," he wrote, "of a republic which all the world would have
adored. I could not have believed that men were so cruel and unjust. I do not
dissimulate that I die a victim to my friendship for Danton. I thank my assassins
for allowing me to die with Philippeaux. Pardon, my dear friend, my true life
which I lost from the moment they separated us. I occupy myself with my
memory. I ought much rather to cause you to forget it, my Lucile. I conjure you
do not call to me by your cries. They would rend my heart in the depths of the
tomb. Live for our child; talk to him of me; you may tell him what he can not
understand, that I should have loved him much. Despite my execution, I believe
there is a God. My blood will wash out my sins, the weakness of my humanity;
and whatever I have possessed of good, my virtues and my love of liberty, God
will recompense it. I shall see you again one day.
"O my Lucile, sensitive as I was, the death which delivers me from the sight of
so much crime, is it so great a misfortune? Adieu, my life, my soul, my divinity
upon earth! Adieu, Lucile! my Lucile! my dear Lucile! Adieu, Horace! Annette!
Adèle! Adieu, my father! I feel the shore of life fly before me. I still see Lucile! I
see her, my best beloved! my Lucile! My bound hands embrace you, and my
severed head rests still upon you its dying eyes."
As Danton re-entered the gloomy corridor of the prison he said, "It was just a
year ago that I was instrumental in instituting the Revolutionary Tribunal. I beg
pardon of God and men. I intended it as a measure of humanity, to prevent the
renewal of the September massacres, and that no man should suffer without trial.
I did not mean that it should prove the scourge of humanity."
Then, pressing his capacious brow between his hands, he said, "They think that
they can do without me. They deceive themselves. I was the statesman of
Europe. They do not suspect the void which this head leaves."
"As to me," he continued, in cynical terms, "I have enjoyed my moments of
existence well. I have made plenty of noise upon earth. I have tasted well of life.
Let us go to sleep," and he made a gesture with head and arms as if about to
repose his head upon a pillow.
After a short pause he resumed, "We are sacrificed to the ambition of a few
dastardly brigands. But they will not long enjoy the fruit of their villainy. I drag
Robespierre after me. Robespierre follows me to the grave." At four o'clock the
executioners entered the Conciergerie to bind their hands and cut off their hair.
"It will be very amusing," said Danton, "to the fools who will gape at us in the
streets, but we shall appear otherwise in the eyes of posterity."
When the executioners laid hold of Camille Desmoulins, he struggled in the
most desperate resistance. But he was speedily thrown upon the floor and bound,
while the prison resounded with his shrieks and imprecations. The whole
fourteen Dantonists were placed in one cart. Desmoulins seemed frantic with
terror. He looked imploringly upon the crowd, and incessantly cried,
"Save me, generous people! I am Camille Desmoulins. It was I who called you
to arms on the 14th of July. It was I who gave you the national cockade."
He so writhed and twisted in the convulsions of his agony that his clothes were
nearly torn from his back. Danton stood in moody silence, occasionally
endeavoring to appease the turbulence of Desmoulins.
Herault de Séchelles first ascended the scaffold. As he alighted from the cart he
endeavored to embrace Danton. The brutal executioner interposed.
"Wretch," said Danton, "you will not, at least, prevent our heads from kissing
presently in the basket."
Desmoulins followed next. In his hand he held a lock of his wife's hair. For an
instant he gazed upon the blade, streaming with the blood of his friend, and then
said, turning to the populace,
"Look at the end of the first apostle of liberty. The monsters who murder me will
not survive me long."
The axe fell, and his head dropped into the basket. Danton looked proudly,
imperturbably on as, one after another, the heads of his thirteen companions fell.
He was the last to ascend the scaffold. For a moment he was softened as he
thought of his wife.
"Oh my wife, my dear wife," said he, "shall I never see you again?" Then
checking himself, he said, "But, Danton, no weakness." Turning to the
executioner, he proudly remarked, "You will show my head to the people; it will
be well worth the display."
His head fell. The executioner, seizing it by the hair, walked around the platform,
holding it up to the gaze of the populace. A shout of applause rose from the
infatuated people. "Thus," says Mignet, "perished the last defenders of humanity
and moderation, the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of
the Revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time after them no voice
was raised against the dictatorship of terror, and from one end of France to the
other it struck silent and redoubled blows. The Girondists had sought to prevent
this violent reign, the Dantonists to stop it. All perished, and the conquerors had
the more victims to strike, the more the foes arose around them."
The Robespierrians, having thus struck down the leaders of the moderate party,
pursued their victory, by crushing all of the advocates of moderation from whom
they apprehended the slightest danger. Day after day the guillotine ran red with
blood. Even the devoted wife of Camille Desmoulins, but twenty-three years of
age, was not spared. It was her crime that she loved her husband, and that she
might excite sympathy for his fate. Resplendent with grace and beauty, she was
dragged before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Little Horace was left an orphan, to
cry in his cradle. Lucile displayed heroism upon the scaffold unsurpassed by that
of Charlotte Corday or Madame Roland. When condemned to death she said
calmly to her judges,
"I shall, then, in a few hours, again meet my husband. In departing from this
world, in which nothing now remains to engage my affections, I am far less the
object of pity than are you."
Robespierre had been the intimate friend of Desmoulins and Lucile. He had
often eat of their bread and drunk of their cup in social converse. He was a guest
at their wedding. Madame Duplessis, the mother of Lucile, was one of the most
beautiful and accomplished women of France. In vain she addressed herself to
Robespierre and all his friends, in almost frantic endeavors to save her daughter.
pic
INTERIOR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.
"Robespierre," she wrote to him, "is it not enough to have assassinated your best
friend; do you desire also the blood of his wife, of my daughter? Your master,
Fouquier Tinville, has just ordered her to be led to the scaffold. Two hours more
and she will not be in existence. Robespierre, if you are not a tiger in human
shape, if the blood of Camille has not inebriated you to the point of losing your
reason entirely, if you recall still our evenings of intimacy, if you recall to
yourself the caresses you lavished upon the little Horace, and how you delighted
to hold him upon your knees, and if you remember that you were to have been
my son-in-law, spare an innocent victim! But, if thy fury is that of a lion, come
and take us also, myself, Adèle [her other daughter], and Horace. Come and tear
us away with thy hands still reeking in the blood of Camille. Come, come, and
let one single tomb reunite us."
To this appeal Robespierre returned no reply. Lucile was left to her fate. In the
same car of the condemned with Madame Hebert she was conducted to the
guillotine. She had dressed herself for the occasion with remarkable grace. A
white gauze veil, partially covering her luxuriant hair, embellished her
marvelous beauty. With alacrity and apparent cheerfulness she ascended the
steps, placed her head upon the fatal plank, and a smile was upon her lips as the
keen-edged knife, with the rapidity of the lightning's stroke, severed her head
from her body.
While these cruel scenes were transpiring in Paris, and similar scenes in all parts
of France, the republican armies on the frontiers were struggling to repel the
invading armies of allied Europe. It was the fear that internal enemies would rise
and combine with the foreign foe which goaded the Revolutionists to such
measures of desperation. They knew that the triumph of the Bourbons was their
certain death. The English were now in possession of Toulon, the arsenal of the
French navy, which had been treasonably surrendered to an English fleet by the
friends of the Bourbons. A republican army had for some months been besieging
the city, but had made no progress toward the expulsion of the invaders.
Napoleon Bonaparte, then a young man about twenty-five years of age and a
lieutenant in the army, was sent to aid the besiegers. His genius soon placed him
in command of the artillery. With almost superhuman energy, and skill never
before surpassed, he pressed the siege, and, in one of the most terrific midnight
attacks which ever has been witnessed, drove the British from the soil of France.
This is the first time that Napoleon appears as an actor in the drama of the
Revolution. The achievement gave him great renown in the army. On this
occasion the humanity of Napoleon was as conspicuous as his energy. He
abhorred alike the tyrannic sway of the Bourbons and the sanguinary rule of the
Jacobins. One of the deputies of the Convention wrote to Carnot, then Minister
of War, "I send you a young man who distinguished himself very much during
the siege, and earnestly recommend you to advance him speedily. If you do not,
he will most assuredly advance himself."
At St. Helena Napoleon said, "I was a very warm and sincere Republican at the
commencement of the Revolution. I cooled by degrees, in proportion as I
acquired more just and solid ideas. My patriotism sank under the political
absurdities and monstrous domestic excesses of our legislatures."[418]
FOOTNOTES:
[411] "Few victims ever met with viler executioners; few executioners with so exulted a victim. Shame at
the foot of the scaffold, glory above, and pity every where. One blushes to be a man in contemplating this
people. One glories in this title in contemplating Bailly."—Lamartine, Hist. Gir., vol. iii., p. 282.
[412] In Parl. Hist., "I would not debauch my humanity."
[413] History of Civilization in England, by Henry Thomas Buckle, vol. i., p. 338.
[414] Hebert was a low fellow, impudent, ignorant, and corrupt, and connected with one of the theatres in
Paris. He was an ardent Jacobin, and established a paper called "Father Duchesne," which, from its ribaldry,
was eagerly sought for by the populace. He was one of the leaders of the prison massacres on the 10th of
August. His paper was the zealous advocate of atheism. He it was who brought the disgusting charge
against the queen that she had endeavored to pollute her own son, and had committed incest with him, a
child of eight years. Robespierre even was indignant at the foul accusation, and exclaimed, "Madman! was
it not enough for him to have asserted that she was a Messalina, without also making an Agrippina of
her?"—Biographie Moderne.
[415] In this celebrated pamphlet, the "Old Cordelier," Desmoulins thus powerfully describes France, while
pretending to describe Rome under the emperors: "Every thing, under that terrible government, was made
the groundwork of suspicion. Does a citizen avoid society and live retired by his fireside? That is to
ruminate in private on sinister designs. Is he rich? That renders the danger greater that he will corrupt the
citizens by his largesses. Is he poor? None so dangerous as those who have nothing to lose. Is he thoughtful
and melancholy? He is revolving what he calls the calamities of his country. Is he gay and dissipated? He is
concealing, like Cæsar, ambition under the mask of pleasure. The natural death of a celebrated man has
become so rare that historians transmit it, as a matter worthy of record, to future ages. The tribunals, once
the protectors of life and property, have become the mere organs of butchery."
Speaking of Hebert, he said, "Hebert, the head of this turbulent and atrocious faction, is a miserable
intriguer, a caterer for the guillotine, a traitor paid by Pitt, a thief expelled for theft from his office of checktaker
at a theatre."—Le Vieux Cordelier.
[416] Rioufle, p. 67.
[417] Mignet, p. 245.
[418] Napoleon at St. Helena, p. 125.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
FALL OF ROBESPIERRE.
Inexplicable Character of Robespierre.—Cécile Regnault.—Fête in honor
of the Supreme Being.—Increase of Victims.—The Triumvirate.—
Suspicions of Robespierre.—Struggle between Robespierre and the
Committee of Public Safety.—Conspiracy against Robespierre.—Session of
the 27th of July.—Robespierre and his Friends arrested.—Efforts to save
Robespierre.—Peril of the Convention.—Execution of Robespierre and his
Confederates.
ROBESPIERRE, who was now apparently at the height of his power, is one of the
most inexplicable of men. His moral character was irreproachable; no bribes
could corrupt him; he sincerely endeavored to establish a republic founded upon
the basis of popular liberty and virtue; and self-aggrandizement seems never to
have entered into his aims. He was not a blood-thirsty man; but was ready, with
frigid mercilessness, to crush any party which stood in the way of his plans. His
soul appears to have been almost as insensible to any generous emotion as was
the blade of the guillotine.[419] He seems to have mourned the apparent necessity
of beheading Danton. Repeatedly he was heard to say, perhaps hypocritically,
"Oh, if Danton were but honest! If he were but a true Republican! What would I
not give for the lantern of Diogenes to read the heart of Danton, and learn if he
be the friend or the enemy of the Republic?"
Robespierre would gladly have received the aid of Danton's powerful arm, but,
finding his old friend hostile to his measures, he pitilessly sent him to the
guillotine. And yet there is evidence that he at times was very weary of that work
of death which he deemed it necessary to prosecute.[420]
"Death," said he, "always death; and the scoundrels throw all the responsibility
upon me. What a memory shall I leave behind me if this lasts! Life is a burden to
me."
On the 7th of May, 1794, Robespierre made a very eloquent speech in the
Convention advocating the doctrines of a Supreme Being and the immortality of
the soul. He presented the following decrees, which were adopted by
acclamation:
"Art. 1. The French people recognize the existence of the Supreme Being and the
immortality of the soul.
"Art. 2. They acknowledge that the worship worthy of the Supreme Being is one
of the duties of man."
There were some unavailing attempts now made to assassinate Robespierre; one,
very singular in its character, by a beautiful girl, Cécile Regnault, but seventeen
years of age. She called at Robespierre's house and asked to see him. Her
appearance attracted suspicion, and she was arrested. In her basket a change of
clothes was found and two knives. She was led before the Tribunal.
pic
CÉCILE REGNAULT ARRESTED.
"What was the object of your visit to Robespierre?" the president inquired.
"I wished," she replied, "to see what a tyrant was like."
"Why did you provide yourself with the change of clothes?"
"Because," she calmly replied, "I expected to be sent to prison and then to the
guillotine."
"Did you intend to stab Robespierre?"
"No," she answered, "I never wished to hurt any one in my life."
"Why are you a Royalist?" the president continued.
"Because," she replied, "I prefer one king to sixty tyrants."
She was sent to the guillotine with all her family relations. The conduct of this
girl is quite inexplicable, and it is doubted whether she seriously contemplated
any crime. When she called to see Robespierre she left her knife in her room in a
basket! Eight carts were filled with victims to avenge this crime.[421]
Robespierre was now so popular with the multitude that all Paris rallied around
him with congratulations.
The 8th of May was appointed as a festival in honor of the Supreme Being.
Robespierre, the originator of the movement, was chosen President of the
Convention, that he might take the most conspicuous part on the occasion. The
morning dawned with unusual splendor. For that one day the guillotine was
ordered to rest. An amphitheatre was erected in the centre of the garden of the
Tuileries, and the spacious grounds were crowded with a rejoicing concourse.
The celebrated painter David had arranged the fête with the highest
embellishments of art. At twelve o'clock Robespierre ascended a pavilion and
delivered a discourse.
"Republican Frenchmen," said he, "the ever fortunate day which the French
people dedicated to the Supreme Being has at length arrived. Never did the
world which he created exhibit a spectacle so worthy of his attention. He has
beheld tyranny, crime, and imposture reigning on earth. He beholds at this
moment a whole nation, assailed by all the oppressors of mankind, suspending
the course of its heroic labors to lift its thoughts and its prayers toward the
Supreme Being who gave it the mission to undertake and the courage to execute
them."
Having finished his brief address, he descended and set fire to a colossal group
of figures representing Atheism, Discord, and Selfishness, which the idea of a
God was to reduce to ashes. As they were consumed, there appeared in their
place, emerging from the flames, the statue of Wisdom. After music, songs, and
sundry symbolic ceremonies, an immense procession was formed, headed by
Robespierre, which proceeded from the Tuileries to the Champ de Mars. Here,
after the performance of pageants as imposing as Parisian genius could invent
and Parisian opulence execute, the procession returned to the Tuileries, where
the festival was concluded with public diversions.[422]
The pre-eminence which Robespierre assumed on this occasion excited great
displeasure, and many murmurs reached his ears. Robespierre, the next day,
entered complaints against those who had murmured, accused them of being
Dantonists and enemies of the Revolution, and wished to send them to the
guillotine. Each member of the Convention began to feel that his head was
entirely at the disposal of Robespierre, and gradually became emboldened to
opposition.
The legal process by which victims were arrested and sent to the guillotine had
now become simple and energetic in the extreme. Any man complained to the
Committee of Public Safety of whom he would, as suspected of being unfriendly
to the Revolution. The committee immediately ordered the arrest of the accused.
The eighteen prisons of Paris were thus choked with victims. Each evening
Fouquier Tinville, the public accuser, received from the Committee of Public
Safety a list of those whom he was to take the next day to the Revolutionary
Tribunal. If the committee, for any reason, had not prepared a list, Fouquier
Tinville was allowed to select whom he pleased. To be suspected was almost
certain death. From the commencement of this year (1794) the executions had
increased with frightful rapidity. In January eighty-three were executed; in
February, seventy-five; in March, one hundred and twenty-three; in April, two
hundred and sixty-three; in May, three hundred and twenty-four; in June, six
hundred and seventy-two; in July, eight hundred and thirty-five.[423]
Carts were continually passing from the gates of the Conciergerie loaded with
prisoners, who were promptly condemned and sent immediately to the scaffold.
Malesherbes, the intrepid and venerable defender of Louis XVI., living in
retirement in the country, was dragged, with all his family, to the scaffold. If a
man were rich, he was suspected of aristocracy and was sent to the guillotine. If
he were learned, his celebrity exposed him to suspicion, and his doom was death.
If he were virtuous, he was accused of sympathy for the victims of the guillotine,
and was condemned to the scaffold. There was no longer safety but in vice and
degradation. The little girls who had been led by their fathers to attend a ball
given by the King of Prussia at Verdun were all arrested, brought to Paris, and
condemned and executed. "The eldest," says Lamartine, "was eighteen. They
were all clothed in white robes. The cart which carried them resembled a basket
of lilies whose heads waved to the motion of the arm. The affected executioners
wept with them." Josephine Beauharnais, afterward the bride of Napoleon, was
at this time in one of the dungeons of Paris, sleeping upon a wretched pallet of
straw, and expecting daily to be led to execution.
Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon were the three leading men in the Committee
of Public Safety, and were hence called the Triumvirate. All began now to be
weary of blood, and yet no one knew how to stem the torrent or when the
carnage would cease. The Reign of Terror had become almost as intolerable as
the tyranny of the old kings, but not fully so; the Reign of Terror crushed
thousands who could make their woes heard; despotism crushed millions who
were dumb. There was no hope for France but in some energetic arm which,
assuming the dictatorship, should rescue liberty from the encroachments of kings
and from being degraded by the mob. Robespierre was now the most prominent
man in France and the most popular with the multitude. His friends urged him to
assume the dictatorship.
Jealousy of Robespierre's ambition now began to arise, and his enemies rapidly
increased. Whispers that he had become a traitor to the Republic and was
seeking kingly power began to circulate. Popular applause is proverbially fickle.
Robespierre soon found that he could not carry his measures in the Committee of
Public Safety, and, disgusted and humiliated, he absented himself from the
sittings. He attempted to check the effusion of blood, but was overruled by those
even more pitiless than himself. He now determined to crush the committee.
Political defeat was death. He must either send the committee to the scaffold or
bow his own head beneath the knife. It was a death-struggle short and decisive.
Pretended lists were circulated of the heads Robespierre demanded. Many in the
Convention were appalled. Secret nightly councils were held to array a force
against him. The mob of Paris he could command. Henriot, the chief of the
military force, was entirely subservient to his will. He reigned supreme and
without a rival in the Jacobin Club. His power was apparently resistless. But
despair nerved his foes.
Three very able men, accustomed to command—Tallien, Barras, and Fréron—
headed the conspiracy against Robespierre. The party thus organized was called
the Thermidorien, because it was in the month of Thermidor (July) that they
achieved their signal victory, and, trampling upon the corpse of Robespierre and
of his adherents, ascended to power. But nearly all these men, of all these parties,
seem to have had no sense whatever of responsibility to God, or of Christianity
as the rule of life. They had one and all rejected the Gospel of our Savior, and
had accepted human philosophy alone as their guide. They were men, many of
them, great in ability, illustrious in many virtues, sincerely loving their country,
and too proud to allow themselves to be degraded by bribes or plunder. As the
general on the battle-field will order movements which will cut down thousands
of men, thus did these Revolutionists, without any scruples of conscience, send
hundreds daily to the guillotine, not from love of blood, but because they
believed that the public welfare demanded the sacrifice. And yet there was a
cowardly spirit impelling these massacres. No one dared speak a word in behalf
of mercy, lest he should be deemed in sympathy with aristocrats. He alone was
safe from suspicion who was merciless in denunciation of the suspected. It is,
however, remarkable that nearly all the actors in these scenes of blood, even in
the hour of death, protested their conscientiousness and their integrity.
Robespierre was now involved in inextricable toils. He was weary of blood. The
nation was becoming disgusted with such carnage.[424] He was universally
recognized as the leading mind in the government, and every act was deemed his
act. His enemies in the Committee of Public Safety plied the guillotine with new
vigor, knowing that the public responsibility would rest on Robespierre.
Robespierre was strongly opposed to that reckless massacre, and yet dared not
interfere to save the condemned. His own dearest friends were arrested and
dragged to the guillotine, and yet Robespierre was compelled to be silent.
Earnestly he was entreated to assume the dictatorship, and rescue France from its
measureless woe. Apparently he could have done it with ease. He refused;
persistently and reiteratedly refused. What were his motives none now can tell.
Some say cowardice prevented him; others affirm that true devotion to the
Republic forbade him. The fact alone remains; he refused the dictatorship,
saying again and again, "No! no Cromwell; not even I myself."
Robespierre retired for some weeks from the Committee of Public Safety, while
blood was flowing in torrents, and prepared a very elaborate discourse, to be
delivered in the Convention, defending himself and assailing his foes.
On the morning of the 26th of July Robespierre appeared in the Convention,
prepared to speak. His Jacobin friends, forewarned, crowded around him, and his
partisans thronged the galleries. His foes were appalled, and trembled; but they
rallied all their friends. It was a decisive hour, and life or death was suspended
on its issues. The speech, which he read from a carefully-prepared manuscript,
was long and exceedingly eloquent. His foes felt that they were crushed, and a
silence as of death for a moment followed its delivery. The printing of the speech
was then voted, apparently by acclamation, and the order for its transmission to
all the Communes of the Republic.
The foes of Robespierre were now emboldened by despair. Their fate seemed
sealed, and consequently there was nothing to be lost by any violent struggle in
self-defense. Cambon ventured an attack, boldly declaring, "One single man
paralyzes the National Convention, and that man is Robespierre." Others
followed with more and more vigorous blows. Robespierre was amazed at the
audacity. The charm of his invincibility was gone. It soon appeared that there
was a strong party opposed to Robespierre, and by a large majority it was voted
to revoke the resolution to print the speech.
Robespierre, mute with alarm, left the Convention, and hastened to his friends in
the Club of Jacobins. He read to them the speech which the Convention had
repudiated. They received it with thunders of applause and with vows of
vengeance. Robespierre, fainting with exhaustion, said, in conclusion,
"Brothers, you have heard my last will and testament. I have seen to-day that the
league of villains is so strong that I can not hope to escape them. I yield without
a murmur! I leave to you my memory; it will be dear to you, and you will defend
it."
Many were affected even to tears, and, crowding around him, conjured him to
rally his friends in an insurrection. Henriot declared his readiness to march his
troops against the Convention. Robespierre, knowing that death was the
inevitable doom of the defeated party, consented, saying,
"Well, then, let us separate the wicked from the weak. Free the Convention from
those who oppress it. Advance, and save the country. If in these generous efforts
we fail, then, my friends, you shall see me drink hemlock calmly."
David, grasping his hand, enthusiastically exclaimed, "Robespierre, if you drink
hemlock, I will drink it with you." "Yes," interrupted a multitude of voices, "all!
we all will perish with you. To die with you is to die with the people."
One or two of Robespierre's opponents had followed him from the Convention to
the Hall of the Jacobins. Couthon pointed them out and denounced them. The
Jacobins fell upon them and drove them out of the house wounded and with rent
garments. With difficulty they escaped with their lives. Robespierre witnessed
this violence, and dreading the effects of a general insurrection, withdrew his
consent to adopt means so lawless and desperate. He probably felt that, strongly
supported as he was, he would be able the next day to triumph in the
Convention.
"At this refusal," says Lamartine, "honest, perhaps, but impolitic, Coffinhal,
taking Payan by the arm and leading him out of the room, said,
"'You see plainly that his virtue could not consent to insurrection. Well! since he
will not be saved, let us prepare to defend ourselves and to avenge him.'"
The night was passed by both parties in preparing for the decisive strife of the
next day. The friends of Robespierre were active in concerting, in all the quarters
of Paris, a rising of the people to storm the Convention. Tallien, Barras, Fréron,
Fouché, slept not. They were informed of all that had passed at the Jacobins, and
their emissaries brought them hourly intelligence through the night of the
increasing tumult of the people. They made vigorous preparations for the debate
within the walls and for the defense of the doors against the forest of pikes with
which it was about to be assailed. Barras was intrusted with the military defense.
It was resolved that Robespierre should be cried down and denounced by
internal tumult and not permitted to speak. Each party, not knowing the strength
of its opponents, was sanguine of success.
The morning of the 27th of July dawned, and as Robespierre entered the
Convention, attired with unusual care, and with a smile of triumph upon his lips,
silence and stillness reigned through the house. St. Just, in behalf of Robespierre,
commenced the onset. A scene of tumult immediately ensued of which no
adequate description can be given. Robespierre immediately saw that his friends
were far outnumbered by his foes, and was in despair. Pale and excited, he
attempted to ascend the tribune. Tallien seized by the coat and dragged him
away, while cries of Down with the tyrant filled the house.[425]
"Just now," shouted Tallien, taking the tribune from which he had ejected
Robespierre, "I demanded that the curtain should be withdrawn; it is so; the
conspirators are unmasked and liberty will triumph. Up to this moment I had
preserved utter silence because I was aware that the tyrant had made a list of
proscriptions. But I was present at the sitting of the Jacobins. I beheld the
formation of the army of this second Cromwell, and I armed myself with this
poniard, with which to pierce his heart if the National Convention had not the
courage to order his arrest."
pic
ROBESPIERRE ATTEMPTING HIS DEFENSE.
With these words he drew a dagger and pointed it menacingly at the breast of
Robespierre. At the same time he moved the arrest of Henriot and others of the
leading men of that party. The motion was tumultuously carried. In vain
Robespierre attempted to gain a hearing. Cries of "Down with the tyrant" filled
the house, and menaces, reproaches, and insults were heaped upon him without
measure. The wretched man, overwhelmed by the clamor, turned pale with
indignation, and shouted "President of assassins, will you hear me?" "No! no!
no!" seemed to be the unanimous response. In the midst of the uproar Louchet
moved the arrest of Robespierre. The proposition was received with thunders of
applause.[426] The brother of Robespierre, a young man of gentle, affectionate
nature and many virtues, who was universally esteemed, now rose, and said,
"I am as guilty as my brother. I have shared his virtues, I wish to share his fate."
Robespierre instantly interposed, saying, "I accept my condemnation. I have
deserved your hatred. But, crime or virtue, my brother is not guilty of that which
you strike in me."
Shouts and stamping drowned his voice. As cries of Vive la République rose on
all sides, Robespierre quietly folded his arms, and, with a contemptuous smile,
exclaimed, "The Republic! it is destroyed; for scoundrels triumph." It was now
three o'clock in the afternoon. The two Robespierres, Couthon, St. Just, and
Lebus were led by gens d'armes from the Convention across the Place du
Carrousel to the Hôtel de Brionne, where the Committee of General Safety were
in session. A crowd followed the prisoners with derision and maledictions. As
they entered the Carrousel a procession of carts, containing forty-five victims on
their way to the guillotine, met them.
After a very brief examination Robespierre was sent to the Luxembourg. His
confederates were distributed among the other prisons of Paris. The Mayor of
Paris and Henriot were in the mean time active in endeavors to excite an
insurrection to rescue the prisoners. The following proclamation was issued from
the Hôtel de Ville:
"Brothers and friends! the country is in imminent danger! The wicked have
mastered the Convention, where they hold in chains the virtuous Robespierre. To
arms! to arms! Let us not lose the fruits of the 18th of August and the 2d of
June."
Henriot, waving his sword, swore that he would drag the scoundrels who voted
the arrest of Robespierre through the streets tied to the tail of his horse. This
brutal man was now in such a state of intoxication as to be incapable of decisive
action. Flourishing a pistol, he mounted his horse, and, with a small detachment
of troops, galloped to the Luxembourg to rescue his friend. He was met on the
way by the troops of the Convention, who had been ordered to arrest him. They
seized him, dragged him from his horse, bound him with their belts, and threw
him into a guard-house, almost dead-drunk. In the mean time the populace
rescued all the prisoners, and carried them in triumph to the mayor's room at the
Hôtel de Ville. Robespierre, however, notwithstanding the most earnest
entreaties of the Jacobins and the municipal government, refused to encourage or
to accept the insurrection, or to make escape from arrest. "Made prisoner," writes
Lamartine, "by command of his enemies, he resolved either to triumph or fall
submissive to the law only; added to which, he firmly believed the
Revolutionary Tribunal would acquit him of all laid to his charge; or, if not, and
if even condemned to death, 'the death of one just man,' said he, 'is less hurtful to
the Republic than the example of a revolt against the national representation.'"
News was brought to the Hôtel de Ville of the arrest of Henriot. Coffinhal, Vicepresident
of the Revolutionary Tribunal, immediately rallied the mob, rushed to
the Tuileries, released Henriot, who was by this time somewhat sobered, and
brought him back to the Hôtel de Ville. Henriot, exasperated by his arrest, placed
himself at the head of his troops and marched with a battery against the
Convention. At this stage of the affair no one could judge which party would be
victorious. The city government, with the populace at its disposal, was on one
side; the Convention, with its friends, on the other.[427]
It was now seven o'clock in the evening, and the deputies of the Convention,
fully conscious of their peril, seemed almost speechless with terror. Robespierre
and his confederates were rescued and protected by the city government; the
mob was aroused, and the National Guard, under their leader, Henriot, were
marching against the Convention. The Revolutionary Tribunal, which alone
could condemn Robespierre, it was feared would acquit him by acclamation. He
would then be led back in triumph to the Convention, and his foes would be
speedily dragged to the guillotine. The dismal tolling of the tocsin now was
heard; in the Jacobin Club the oath was taken to live or die with Robespierre; the
rallying masses were crowding in from the faubourgs; cannon were pointed
against the Convention; and three thousand young students seized their arms and
rendezvoused as a body-guard for Robespierre.
In this critical hour the Convention, nerved by despair, adopted those measures
of boldness and energy which could alone save them from destruction. As they
were deliberating, Henriot placed his artillery before their doors and ordered
them to be blown open. The deputies remained firmly in their seats, saying,
"Here is our post, and here we will die." The friends of the Convention, who
crowded the galleries, rushed out and spread themselves through the streets to
rally defenders for the laws. Several of the deputies also left the hall, threw
themselves among the soldiers, and, remonstrating with them, pointed to
Henriot, and said,
"Soldiers! look at that drunken man! who but a drunkard would ever point his
arms against his country or its representatives? Will you, who have ever
deserved so much from your country, cast shame and dishonor on her now?"
pic
DEMONSTRATION AGAINST THE CONVENTION, HEADED BY HENRIOT.
The Convention had outlawed Henriot and appointed Barras to the command of
the National Guard in his place. The soldiers began to waver. Henriot, affrighted,
put spurs to his horse and fled. Barras, an energetic man, was now in command,
and the tide had thus suddenly and strongly turned in favor of the Convention. It
was now night, and the gleam of ten thousand torches was reflected from the
multitudes surging through the streets. Barras, on horseback, with a strong
retinue, traversed the central quarters of Paris, rallying the citizens to the defense
of the Convention. Eighteen hundred bold, well-armed men were soon
marshaled before the doors. With two other bands he marched along parallel
streets to the Place de Grève, where he drove off the disorderly crowd and
secured all the approaches to the Hôtel de Ville. Robespierre was still in one of
the rooms of the Hôtel de Ville, surrounded by his confederates and by the
members of the city government. They implored him to authorize an
insurrection, assuring him that his name would rally the populace and rescue
them all from inevitable death. But Robespierre persistently refused, declaring
that he would rather die than violate the laws established by the people.
A detachment of soldiers, sent by Barras, cautiously ascended the steps, and
entered the Salle de l'Egalité to rearrest the rescued prisoners. As they were
ascending the stairs Lebas discharged a pistol into his heart and fell dead. The
younger Robespierre leaped from the window into the court-yard, breaking his
leg by his fall. Coffinhal, enraged in contemplating the ruin into which the
drunken imbecility of Henriot had involved them, seized him and threw him out
of a window of the second story upon a pile of rubbish, exclaiming,
"Lie there, wretched drunkard! You are not worthy to die on a scaffold!"
Robespierre sat calmly at a table, awaiting his fate. One of the gens d'armes
discharged a pistol at him. The ball entered his left cheek, fracturing his jaw and
carrying away several of his teeth. His head dropped upon the table, deluging
with blood the papers which were before him. The troops of the Convention now
filled the Hôtel de Ville, arresting all its inmates. The day was just beginning to
dawn as the long file of prisoners were led out into the Place de Grève to be
conducted to the hall of the Convention.[428]
First came Robespierre, borne by four men on a litter. His fractured jaw was
bound up by a handkerchief, which was steeped in blood. Couthon was paralytic
in his limbs. Unable to walk, he was also carried in the arms of several men.
They had carelessly let him fall, and his clothes were torn, disarranged, and
covered with mud. Robespierre the younger, stunned by his fall and with his
broken limb hanging helplessly down, was conveyed insensible in the arms of
two men. The corpse of Lebas was borne next in this sad train, covered with a
table-cloth spotted with his blood. Then followed St. Just, bareheaded, with
dejected countenance, his hands bound behind him. Upward of eighty members
of the city government, bound two and two, completed the melancholy
procession.
It was five o'clock in the morning when the captives were led to the Tuileries. In
the mean time Légendre had marched to the assembly-room of the Jacobins,
dispersed them, locked their doors, and brought the keys to the President of the
Convention.[429]
Robespierre was laid upon a table in an anteroom, while an interminable crowd
pressed in and around to catch a sight of the fallen dictator. The unhappy man
was overwhelmed with reproaches and insults, and feigned death to escape this
moral torture. The blood was freely flowing from his wound, coagulating in his
mouth, and choking him as it trickled down his throat. The morning was
intensely hot; not a breath of pure air could the wounded man inhale; insatiable
thirst and a burning fever consumed him; and thus he remained for more than an
hour, enduring the intensest pangs of bodily and mental anguish. By order of the
Convention, he and his confederates were then removed to the Committee of
General Safety for examination; from which tribunal they were sent to the
Conciergerie, where they were all thrown into the same dungeon to await their
trial, which was immediately to take place before the Revolutionary Tribunal.
pic
ROBESPIERRE LYING WOUNDED ON THE TABLE OF THE CITY HALL.
A few hours of pain, anguish, and despair passed away, when at three o'clock in
the afternoon the whole party were conveyed to that merciless court which was
but the last stepping-stone to death. The trial lasted but a few moments. They
were already condemned, and it was only necessary to prove their identity. The
Convention was victorious, and no man of the Revolutionary Tribunal dared to
resist its will. Had the Commune of Paris conquered in this strife, the obsequious
Tribunal, with equal alacrity, would have consigned the Deputies to the
guillotine.
At five o'clock the carts of the condemned received the prisoners.[430] The long
procession advanced through the Rue St. Honoré to the Place de la Révolution.
The fickle crowd thronged the streets, heaping imprecations upon the man to
whom they would have shouted hosanna had he been a victor. Robespierre, his
brother, Couthon, Henriot, all mangled, bleeding, and with broken bones, were
thrown into the first cart with the corpse of Lebas. As the cart jolted over the
pavement shrieks of anguish were extorted from the victims. At six o'clock they
reached the steps of the guillotine. Robespierre ascended the scaffold with a firm
step; but, as the executioner brutally tore the bandage from his inflamed wound,
he uttered a shriek of torture which pierced every ear. The dull sullen sound of
the falling axe was heard, and the head of Robespierre fell ghastly into the
basket. For a moment there was silence, and then the crowd raised a shout as if a
great victory had been achieved and the long-sought blessings of the Revolution
attained.[431]
pic
ROBESPIERRE AND HIS COMPANIONS LED TO EXECUTION.
Thus died Robespierre, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. His character will
probably ever remain a mystery. "His death was the date and not the cause of the
cessation of terror. Deaths would have ceased by his triumphs, as they did by his
death. Thus did Divine justice dishonor his repentance, and cast misfortune on
his good intentions, making of his tomb a gulf filled up. It has made of his
memory an enigma of which history trembles to pronounce the solution, fearing
to do him injustice if she brand it as a crime, or to create horror if she should
term it a virtue. This man was, and must ever remain, shadowy and undefined."
[432]
Twenty-two were beheaded with Robespierre. The next day seventy who were
arrested at the Hôtel de Ville were sent to the guillotine. The following day
twelve more bled upon the scaffold. In three days one hundred and fourteen
perished, untried, by that tyranny which had supplanted the tyranny of
Robespierre.[433]
FOOTNOTES:
[419] "Mr. Alison gives currency to an atrocious slander against Robespierre, for which he has adduced no
authority, and which is contradicted by the whole evidence of Robespierre's life. 'He (Philippe Egalité) was
detained,' says Alison, 'above a quarter of an hour in front of the Palais Royal, by order of Robespierre, who
had asked in vain for the hand of his daughter in marriage, and had promised, if he would relent in that
extremity, to excite a tumult which would save his life.'"—Life of Robespierre, by G.H. Lewes, p. 265.
[420] "Danton regarded the austere principles of Robespierre as folly. He thought that the Republicans
could not maintain their power but by surrounding themselves with the consideration which wealth confers,
and he consequently thought it necessary to close their eyes against the sudden acquisition of wealth of
certain Revolutionists. Robespierre, on the contrary, flattered himself that he could establish a republic in
France based on virtue, and when he was thoroughly persuaded that Danton was an obstacle to that system
he abandoned him."—Biographie Universelle.
[421] Du Broca.
[422] "Robespierre had a prodigious force at his disposal. The lowest orders, who saw the Revolution in his
person, supported him as the best representative of its doctrines and interests; the armed force of Paris,
commanded by Henriot, was at his command. He had entire sway over the Jacobins, whom he admitted and
ejected at pleasure; all important posts were occupied by his creatures; he had formed the Revolutionary
Tribunal and the new committee himself."—Mignet, p. 256.
[423] Thiers, vol. iii., p. 68, note from Quarterly Review.
[424] Prudhomme, a Republican, who wrote during this period of excitement, has left six volumes of the
details of the Reign of Terror. Two of these contain an alphabetical list of all the persons put to death by the
Revolutionary Tribunals. He gives the following appalling statement of the victims:
Nobles 1,278
Noble women 750
Wives of laborers and
artisans 1,467
Nuns 350
Priests 1,135
Men not noble 13,623
———
Total sent to the guillotine 18,603 18,603
Women who died of
premature delivery 3,400
Women who died in
childbirth from grief
348
Women killed in La Vendée 15,000
Children killed in La
Vendée 22,000
Men slain in La Vendée 900,000
Victims under Carrier at
Nantes 32,000
Victims at Lyons 31,000
————
Total 1,022,351
This list, appalling as it is, does not include those massacred in the prisons, or those shot at Toulon or
Marseilles.
[425] The full report of this terrible scene, as contained in the Moniteur of the 11th Thermidor, is one of the
most exciting narratives in history. In the conflict Robespierre appears immeasurably superior to his
opponents in dignity and argument. But he is overwhelmed and crushed by the general clamor. He struggles
valiantly, and falls like a strong man armed.
[426] "In the height of the terrible conflict, when Robespierre seemed deprived by rage of the power of
articulation, a voice cried out, 'It is Danton's blood that is choking you.' Robespierre, indignant, recovered
his voice and courage to exclaim, 'Danton! Is it, then, Danton you regret? Cowards! why did you not defend
him?' There was spirit, truth, and even dignity in this bitter retort—the last words that Robespierre ever
spoke in public."—Quarterly Review.
[427] The state of the times is illustrated by the fact that Barrere is reported to have gone to the Convention
with two speeches in his pocket, one assailing Robespierre and the other defending him. He knew not
which party would triumph, and he was prepared to join the strongest.
[428] Though it has generally been represented that Robespierre attempted to commit suicide, the evidence
now seems to be conclusive that he did not. See Lamartine's History of the Girondists, vol. iii., p. 527.
[429] Légendre, the butcher, was a deputy of the Convention. He was a man of extraordinary nerve, and
had been one of the most furious members of the society of Jacobins.—Biog. Universelle.
[430] There is some confusion respecting the dates of these events; but we follow the dates as given by
Lamartine.
[431] "Robespierre," said Napoleon, "was by no means the worst character who figured in the Revolution.
He opposed trying the queen. He was not an atheist; on the contrary, he had publicly maintained the
existence of a Supreme Being in opposition to many of his colleagues. Neither was he of opinion that it was
necessary to exterminate all priests and nobles, like many others. Marat, for example, maintained that it was
necessary that six hundred thousand heads should fall. Robespierre wanted to proclaim the king an outlaw,
and not to go through the ridiculous mockery of trying him. Robespierre was a fanatic, a monster, but he
was incorruptible, and incapable of robbing or causing the deaths of others either from personal enmity or a
desire of enriching himself. He was an enthusiast, but one who really believed that he was acting right, and
died not worth a sou. In some respects Robespierre may be said to have been an honest man."—Napoleon
at St. Helena, p. 590.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE THERMIDORIANS AND THE JACOBINS.
The Reign of Committees.—The Jeunesse Dorée.—The Reaction.—Motion
against Fouquier Tinville.—Apotheosis of Rousseau.—Battle of Fleurus.—
Brutal Order of the Committee of Public Welfare.—Composition of the two
Parties.—Speech of Billaud Varennes.—Speech of Légendre.—The Clubhouse
of the Jacobins closed.—Victories of Pichegru.—Alliance between
Holland and France.—Advance of Kleber.—Peace with Prussia.—
Quiberon.—Riot in Lyons.
THE fall of Robespierre was hailed with general enthusiasm, for he was believed
to be the chief instigator of that carnage which, in reality, at the time of his fall,
he was struggling to repress. There were now in the Convention the headless
remains of four parties, the Girondists, Hebertists, Dantonists, and
Robespierrians. The able leaders of all these parties had, each in their turn,
perished upon the scaffold. There now arose from these ruins a party, which was
called, as we have before remarked, Thermidorians, from the month Thermidor
(July), in which its supremacy commenced. A new government was immediately
and noiselessly evolved, the result of necessity. The extreme concentration of
power in the Committee of Public Safety, over which Robespierre had been
supposed to rule as a dictator, was now succeeded by a dissemination of power,
wide and ineffective. Sixteen committees became the executive of France; one
Assembly its legislative power. These committees were composed of members
numbering from twelve to fifty. The Committee of Public Welfare contained
twelve, and superintended military and diplomatic operations; that of General
Safety sixteen, and had the direction of the police; that of Finance forty-eight.
Such was the new government, under which, after the fall of Robespierre, the
Republic struggled along.
The horrors of the Reign of Terror were now producing a decided reaction.
Many of the young men of Paris, who abhorred the past scenes of violence,
organized themselves into a band called the Jeunesse Dorée, or Gilded Youth,
and commenced vigorous opposition to the Jacobins. They wore a distinctive
dress, and armed themselves with a short club loaded with lead. Frequent
conflicts took place in the streets between the two parties, in which the Jeunesse
Dorée were generally victorious. The Terrorists having become unpopular, and
being in the decided minority, the guillotine was soon allowed to rest. Mercy
rapidly succeeded cruelty. The captives who crowded the prisons of Paris were
gradually liberated, and even the Revolutionary Tribunal was first modified and
then abolished.
pic
APOTHEOSIS OF ROUSSEAU, OCTOBER 11, 1794.
The reaction was so strong, annulling past decrees, liberating suspected
Loyalists, and punishing violent Revolutionists, that even many of the true
friends of popular rights were alarmed lest the nation should drift back again
under the sway of old feudal despotism. M. Fréron, in the following terms,
moved, in the Convention, an act of accusation against the execrable Fouquier
Tinville, who had been public accuser:
"I demand that the earth be at length delivered from that monster, and that
Fouquier be sent to hell, there to wallow in the blood he has shed."
The decree was passed by acclamation. In the space of eight or ten days after the
fall of Robespierre, out of ten thousand suspected persons not one remained in
the prisons of Paris.[434] For many weeks nothing of moment occurred in the
Convention but the petty strife of factions. On the 11th of October the remains of
Rousseau were transferred to the Pantheon with all the accompaniments of
funeral pageantry. They were deposited by the side of the remains of Voltaire.
Upon his tomb were inscribed the words, "Here reposes the man of nature and of
truth."
pic
BATTLE OF FLEURUS.
About a month before the fall of Robespierre, on the 26th of June, the celebrated
battle of Fleurus was fought. The sanguinary engagement extended along a
semicircle nearly thirty miles in extent. The French had brought up about eighty
thousand troops, to oppose an equal number of the Allies. The French, under
Pichegru, were victorious at every point, and the Allies were compelled to
retreat. They rallied for a short time in the vicinity of Brussels, but were soon
again compelled to retire, and all Belgium fell into the hands of the Republicans.
About the middle of July two armies of the French, amounting to one hundred
and fifty thousand, effected a junction in the city of Brussels. The Committee of
Public Safety had passed an inhuman decree that no quarter should be given to
the English. The soldiers refused obedience to this decree. A sergeant, having
taken some English prisoners, brought them to an officer.
"Why did you spare their lives?" the officer inquired.
"Because," the sergeant replied, "it was saving so many shots."
"True," rejoined the officer, "but the Representatives will oblige us to shoot
them."
"It is not we," retorted the sergeant, "who will shoot them. Send them to the
Representatives. If they are barbarous enough, why, let them kill and eat them if
they like."[435]
While the French armies were gaining these signal victories all along the Rhine,
war was raging with almost equal ferocity in the ravines of the Alps and at the
base of the Pyrenees, as the Republicans struggled to repel the invading hosts of
Austria, England, and Spain.
The Thermidorians and the Jacobins were now the two great parties struggling
for power all over France. The Thermidorians were the moderate conservative
party, and the Jacobins called them Aristocrats. The Jacobins were the radical,
progressive, revolutionary party, and the Thermidorians called them Terrorists.
The more intelligent and reputable portion of the community were with the
Thermidorians; the women, weary of turmoil and blood, were very generally
with them; and the very efficient military band of young men called the Jeunesse
Dorée (gilded youth), who belonged to the rich and middle classes, were very
efficient supporters of this party, hurling defiance upon the Jacobins, and ever
ready for a street fray with their clubs. The Jacobins were composed of the mob,
generally headed by those vigorous, reckless, determined men who usually form
what Thiers calls "the ferocious democracy." Fréron's journal, The Orator of the
People, was the eloquent advocate of the Thermidorians, now rising rapidly to
power, and it launched incessant and merciless anathemas against the
revolutionary canaille. The females who advocated Jacobinism were called the
furies of the guillotine, because they had frequently formed circles around the
scaffold, assailing the victims with ribald abuse. These two parties were so
equally divided, and the strife was so fierce between them, that scenes of fearful
uproar frequently took place not only in the Convention but throughout all
France. The spirit of the Jacobins at this time may be seen in the following brief
extract from a speech of Billaud Varennes:
"People talk," said he, "of shootings and drownings, but they do not recollect
that the individuals for whom they feel pity had furnished succors to the banditti.
They do not recollect the cruelties perpetrated on our volunteers, who were
hanged upon trees and shot in files. If vengeance is demanded for the banditti, let
the families of two hundred thousand Republicans, mercilessly slaughtered,
come also to demand vengeance. The course of counter-revolutionists is known.
When, in the time of the Constituent Assembly, they wanted to bring the
Revolution to trial, they called the Jacobins disorganizers and shot them in the
Field of Mars. After the 2d of September, when they wanted to prevent the
establishment of the Republic, they called them quaffers of blood and loaded
them with atrocious calumnies. They are now recommencing the same
machinations; but let them not expect to triumph. The Patriots have been able to
keep silence for a moment, but the lion is not dead when he slumbers, and when
he awakes he exterminates all his enemies. The trenches are open, the Patriots
are about to rouse themselves and to resume all their energy. We have already
risked our lives a thousand times. If the scaffold awaits us, let us recollect that it
was the scaffold which covered the immortal Sidney with glory."
This speech, reported in the journal of the Jacobins, called the Journal de la
Montagne, created great excitement, and gave rise to one of the stormiest
debates in the Convention. The Jacobins were accused of wishing to direct the
mob against the Convention. They, on the other hand, accused the Thermidorians
of releasing well-known Royalists from prison, and of thus encouraging a
counter-revolution. Légendre, speaking in behalf of the Thermidorians, in reply
to the Jacobins, said,
"What have you to complain of, you who are constantly accusing us? Is it
because citizens are no longer sent to prison by hundreds? because the guillotine
no longer dispatches fifty, sixty, or eighty persons per day? Ah! I must confess
that in this point our pleasure differs from yours, and that our manner of
sweeping the prisons is not the same. We have visited them ourselves; we have
made, as far as it was possible to do so, a distinction between the Aristocrats and
the Patriots; if we have done wrong, here are our heads to answer for it. But
while we make reparation for crimes, while we are striving to make you forget
that those crimes are your own, why do you go to a notorious society to
denounce us, and to mislead the people who attend there, fortunately in no great
numbers? I move that the Convention take measures to prevent its members
from going and preaching up rebellion at the Jacobins'."
The conflict extended from the Convention into the streets, and for several days
there were serious riots. Angry groups in hostile bands paraded the gardens of
the Tuileries and the Palais Royal—the partisans of the Thermidorians shouting
"Down with the Terrorists and Robespierre's tail." Their opponents shouted "The
Jacobins forever! Down with the Aristocrats!"
On the 9th of November there was a battle between the two parties in the Rue St.
Honoré, in and around the hall of the Jacobins, which lasted for several hours. A
number of the women, called Furies of the Guillotine, who mingled in the fray,
were caught by the Jeunesse Dorée, and, in defiance of all the rules of chivalry,
had their clothes stripped from their backs and were ignominiously whipped. It
was midnight before the disturbance was quelled. A stormy debate ensued next
day in the Convention.
"Where has tyranny," said Rewbel, "been organized? At the Jacobins'. Where has
it found its supporters and satellites? At the Jacobins'. Who have covered France
with mourning, carried despair into families, filled the country with prisons, and
rendered the Republic so odious that a slave, pressed down by the weight of his
irons, would refuse to live under it? The Jacobins. Who regret the frightful
government under which we have lived? The Jacobins. If you have not now the
courage to declare yourselves, you have no longer a Republic, because you have
Jacobins."
Influenced by such sentiments, the Convention passed a decree "to close the
door of places where factions arise and where civil war is preached."
pic
THE CLUB-HOUSE OF THE JACOBINS CLOSED.
Thus terminated the long reign of the Jacobin Club. The act was greeted with
acclaim by the general voice of France.[436]
The French, who had twelve hundred thousand men under arms, were now in
possession of all the important points on the Rhine, and every where held their
assailants at bay.[437] The latter part of December, Pichegru, driving the allied
Dutch, English, and Austrians before him, crossed the Meuse on the ice and
entered Holland. The Republican party in Holland was numerous and detested
their rulers. They immediately prepared to rise and welcome their friends, the
French. In this desperate situation the Stadtholder implored a truce, offering as a
condition of peace neutrality and indemnification for the expenses of the war.
[438] Pichegru refused the truce; but sent the terms of peace for the consideration
of the government in Paris. The proffered terms were refused, and Pichegru was
ordered to press on and restore the Dutch Republic. At the head of two hundred
thousand troops he spread, like a torrent, over all Holland. He was every where
received with open arms and as a deliverer. The Allies, with the emigrants, fled
in all directions, some by land and some by sea. A portion of the Dutch fleet, at
anchor near the Texel, was frozen in by the unparalleled severity of the winter. A
squadron of horse-artillery galloped across the ice and summoned it to surrender.
The fleet was compelled to strike its flags to these novel assailants. On the 20th
of January, 1795, Pichegru entered Amsterdam in triumph. The inhabitants
crowded from the walls to meet him, shouting "The French Republic forever!
Liberty forever!"
pic
THE FRENCH ENTERING AMSTERDAM ON THE ICE.
Holland, organizing as the Republic of the United Provinces, on the 16th of May
entered into an alliance offensive and defensive with the French Republic, to be
perpetual during the continuance of the war. The two infant republics needed
mutual support to resist the combined monarchies of England and the Continent.
[439]
While Pichegru was gaining such victories on the Lower Rhine and in Holland,
Kleber was also, on the Upper Rhine, driving the Austrians before him. He
boldly crossed the river in the impetuous pursuit, and carried the horrors of war
into the enemies' country. Soon, however, he was crowded with such numbers of
antagonists that he was compelled, in his turn, to commence a retreat. Again, reenforcements
arriving, he assumed the offensive. Thus the tide of war ebbed and
flowed.
Prussia, alarmed by these signal victories of the Republican troops, and
threatened with invasion, was anxious to withdraw from the coalition. The king
sent a commissioner to Pichegru's head-quarters to propose peace. The
commissioners from the two countries met at Basle, and on the 5th of April a
treaty of peace was signed. The French agreed to evacuate the Prussian
provinces they had occupied on the right bank of the Rhine, and the Prussian
monarchy agreed that there should be peace, amity, and a good understanding
between the King of Prussia and the French Republic.
pic
THE FRENCH CROSSING THE RHINE UNDER KLEBER.
Spain, also, trembling in view of the triumphant march of Dugommier through
the defiles of the Pyrenees, made proposals of accommodation, promising to
acknowledge the Republic and to pay indemnities for the war. Peace with the
Peninsula was signed at Basle on the 12th of July. This peace, which detached a
Bourbon from the coalition, was hailed throughout France with transports of joy.
[440]
pic
VICTORY OF QUIBERON.
pic
MASSACRE IN LYONS LED BY THE PRIESTS.
England, Austria, and Naples still remained firm in their determination to crush
the Republic. William Pitt led the ministry with his warlike measures, and
triumphed over the peaceful policy of Sheridan and Fox. He thus, for a quarter of
a century, converted all Europe into a field of blood. Roused by the energies of
Pitt, the English government organized a very formidable expedition, to be
landed in La Vendée, to rouse and rally the Royalists all over France, and thus to
reinvigorate the energies of civil war. A squadron was fitted out, consisting of
three 74-gun ships, two frigates of 44 guns, four frigates of 30 to 36 guns, and
several gun-boats and transports. This was the first division, which, as soon as it
was established in France, was to be followed by another. The fleet came to
anchor in the Bay of Quiberon on the 25th of June. A motley mass of about
seven thousand men were speedily landed; the Royalists soon joined them,
making an army of some thirteen thousand. General Hoche, who had for some
time been valiantly and most humanely struggling for the pacification of La
Vendée, marched to repel them. A few bloody battles ensued, in which the
unhappy invaders were driven into a narrow peninsula, where, by a midnight
assault, they most miserably perished. A few only escaped to the ships; many
were drowned, and a large number were mercilessly put to the sword. The
Convention had decreed the penalty of death to any Frenchman who should enter
France with arms in his hands.
At Lyons there was a general rising of the Royalists and the reactionary party
against the Revolutionists. The Royalists proved themselves not one whit behind
the Jacobins in the energy with which they could push their Reign of Terror. Led
by the priests, the Royalist mob broke into the prisons and murdered seventy or
eighty prisoners who were accused of revolutionary violence. One prison was set
on fire, and all its inmates perished miserably in the flames.
The disturbances in Lyons were soon quelled, and Hoche, having annihilated the
force which the English had landed in the Bay of Quiberon, gradually succeeded
in introducing tranquillity into La Vendée. Many of the Royalists came to his
camp to seek terms of reconciliation with the Republic.
FOOTNOTES:
[432] History of the Girondists, by Lamartine, vol. iii., p. 535.
[433] "Mirabeau, Marat, Brissot, Danton, Robespierre were all heads cut off in succession; and all
succeeding heads were saved only by having recourse to one head and one arm in the Emperor
Napoleon."—Life and Works of John Adams, vol. vi., p. 547.
Though Mirabeau died a natural death, he would unquestionably have been guillotined had he lived a few
months longer.
Meda, the officer of the Convention who arrested Robespierre and his associates at the Hôtel de Ville, thus
describes the event: "The head of my column moved forward; a terrible noise ensued; my ten pieces of
artillery were brought forward and ready; those opposed to me in like manner. I threw myself between the
two lines. I flew to the cannoneers of the enemy. I spoke to them of their country; of the respect due to the
national representation; in short, I do not well remember what I said, but the result was that they all came
over to us. I instantly dismounted, seized my pistols, addressed myself to my grenadiers, and made for the
staircase of the Hôtel de Ville." He describes the manner in which he forced his way up the stairs, broke
open the door, and found about fifty people assembled in the room in great confusion. Robespierre was
sitting at a table, his head leaning upon his hand. "I rushed upon him," he continues, in his narrative,
"presented my sabre to his breast, 'Yield, traitor,' I cried. 'It is thou art the traitor,' he replied, 'and I will have
thee shot.' I instantly drew out one of my pistols, and fired at him. I aimed at his breast, but the ball hit him
about the chin, and shattered all his left jaw. He fell from his chair. At the sound of the explosion his
brother threw himself through the window. The uproar was immense. I cried 'Vive la République!'"
[434] Lacretelle.
[435] Thiers, vol. iii., p. 84.
[436] "This popular body had powerfully served the Revolution when, in order to repel Europe, it was
necessary to place the government in the multitude, and to give the Republic all the energy of defense; but
now it only obstructed the new order of things."—Mignet, 282.
[437] "At one time France had seventeen hundred thousand fighters on foot."—Toulongeon, vol. iii., p. 194.
[438] Thiers, vol. iii., p. 186.
[439] "The first act of the Representatives was to publish a proclamation, in which they declared that they
would respect all private property, excepting, however, that of the Stadtholder; that the latter, being the only
foe of the French Republic, his property belonged to the conquerors as an indemnification for the expenses
of the war; that the French entered as friends of the Batavian nation, not to impose upon it any religion or
any form of government whatever, but to deliver it from its oppressors, and to confer upon it the means of
expressing its wishes. This proclamation, followed up by corresponding acts, produced a most favorable
impression."—Thiers, vol. iii., p. 184.
[440] "Tuscany, forced, in spite of herself, to give up her neutrality by the English ambassador, who,
threatening her with an English squadron, had allowed her but twelve hours to decide, was impatient to
resume her part, especially since the French were at the gates of Genoa. Good understanding and friendship
were re-established between the two states."—Thiers, vol. iii., p. 230.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DISSOLUTION OF THE CONVENTION.
Famine in Paris.—Strife between the Jeunesse Dorée and the Jacobins.—
Riots.—Scene in the Convention.—War with the Allies.—A new
Constitution.—Insurrection of the Sections.—Energy of General Bonaparte.
—Discomfiture of the Sections.—Narrative of the Duchess of Abrantes.—
Clemency of the Convention.—Its final Acts and Dissolution, and
Establishment of the Directory.
LET us return to Paris. The unprecedented severity of the winter had caused
fearful suffering among the populace of Paris. The troubled times had broken up
all the ordinary employments of peace. The war, which had enrolled a million
and a half of men under arms, had left the fields uncultivated and deserted. A
cruel famine wasted both city and country. The Jacobins, who, though their clubs
were closed, still met at the corners of the streets and in the coffee-houses, took
advantage of this public misery to turn popular indignation against the victorious
Thermidorians. Tumults were again renewed, and hostile partisans met in angry
conflicts. The young men of the two parties had frequent encounters in the pits
of the theatres, bidding each other defiance, and often proceeding to blows.
At the Théâtre Feydean, as in many other places, there was a bust of Marat, who
was still idolized by the Jacobins. The young men of the Jeunesse Dorée, in
expression of their detestation of Marat, and as an insult to the Jacobins, climbed
the balcony, threw down the bust, and with shouts of execration dragged it
through the mire of the streets.
pic
THE JEUNESSE DOREÉ THROWING THE BUST OF MARAT INTO THE GUTTER.
The Jacobins, exasperated, swore to avenge the insult. Strongly armed, they
paraded the streets, carrying a bust of Marat in triumph, and swearing bloody
vengeance upon any who might attempt to disturb their march. The firmness of
the Convention alone averted a sanguinary conflict. The public distress, intense
and almost universal, embarrassed and overwhelmed the Convention with the
most difficult questions in the endeavor to afford relief. On the 15th of March
the supply of food in Paris was so small that it was deemed necessary to put the
inhabitants upon rations, each individual being allowed but one pound of bread
per day. Agitation and tumults were now rapidly increasing, and there were daily
riots. The Convention was continually besieged and insulted by haggard
multitudes with petitions which assumed the tone of fiercest threats. Scenes of
confusion ensued which bade defiance to all law, and which there was no
authority to repress.
On the 20th of May there was one of the most fearful tumults which the
Revolution had yet witnessed. At five in the morning the générale was beating in
the public squares and the tocsin ringing in the faubourgs. The populace were
rapidly mustering for any deeds of violence to which their leaders might conduct
them. At eleven o'clock the Convention commenced its sitting. One of the
members brought in a plan, which he had secretly obtained, of a very efficientlyorganized
insurrection. A crowd, mostly of women, filled the galleries. As the
plan was read, which appalled the deputies, the galleries vociferously applauded.
The Convention passed a few harmless decrees, such as, 1st, that the city
government was responsible for any attack upon the Convention; 2d, that all the
citizens were bound to receive orders from the Convention; and 3d, that there
should be no insurrection. These decrees but provoked the derision of the
galleries. The tumult now became so great, the women shouting "Bread!" and
shaking their fists at the president and the deputies, that all business was at a
stand, and not a word of debate could be heard.
At length, some soldiers were sent into the galleries with bayonets, and the
women were driven into the streets. They soon, however, returned, aided by their
friends. They battered down all the doors and broke in and filled the hall with an
armed, shouting, brutal mob. Some of the citizens rallied for the defense of the
Convention, and a fierce battle raged within the hall and around the doors.
Pistols and muskets were discharged, swords clashed, bayonet crossed bayonet,
while yells and shrieks and imprecations deafened the ear. Drunken women
strode over the benches and clambered to the president's chair. A young deputy,
Feraud, was stabbed, then shot; his head was cut off, and, pierced by a pike, was
thrust into the face of the president, Boissy d'Anglas, who most heroically
maintained his post and his composure through all these perilous scenes. For six
hours the tumult raged unabated. It was now seven o'clock in the evening, and
the mob drove all the deputies, like a flock of sheep, into the centre of the hall,
surrounded them with bristling bayonets and pikes, and ordered them to issue
decrees for the relief of the people. At length, near midnight, a detachment of the
National Guard arrived, dispersed the crowd around the palace, and, entering the
hall with fixed bayonets, scattered the rioters. Tranquillity being restored, one of
the members rose and said,
"It is then true that this Assembly, the cradle of the Republic, has once more well
nigh been its tomb. Fortunately, the crime of the conspirators is prevented. But,
Representatives, you would not be worthy of the nation if you were not to
avenge it in a signal manner."
pic
SCENE IN THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.
The rest of the night was passed in devising schemes to crush the Jacobin power
which had organized this insurrection. The Duchess of Abrantes, who was then
in Paris, thus alludes to these events: "While the most frightful scenes," she
writes, "were passing in the Convention, the respectable inhabitants of Paris shut
themselves up in their houses, concealed their valuables, and awaited, with
fearful anxiety, the result. Toward evening my brother, whom we had not seen
during the day, came home to get something to eat; he was almost famished, not
having tasted food since the morning. Disorder still raged, and we heard the
most frightful noise in the streets, mingled with the beating of drums. My
brother had scarcely finished his hasty repast when General Bonaparte arrived to
make a similar claim upon our hospitality. He also had tasted nothing since the
morning, for all the restaurateurs were closed. He soon dispatched what my
brother had left, and as he was eating he told us the news of the day. It was most
appalling; my brother had informed us but of part. He did not know of the
assassination of the unfortunate Feraud, whose body had been cut almost
piecemeal. 'They took his head,' said Bonaparte, 'and presented it to poor Boissy
d'Anglas, and the shock of this fiend-like act was almost death to the president in
his chair. Truly,' added he, 'if we continue thus to sully our Revolution, it will be
a disgrace to be a Frenchman.'"[441]
Alarmed by the advance of anarchy, the Convention immediately instituted
proceedings against several prominent Jacobin members, who were known to be
ringleaders of the insurrection. They were arrested and consigned to
imprisonment in the Castle of Ham. Paris was declared to be in a state of siege,
and Pichegru, then in the full lustre of his glory, was appointed commander of
the armed force. The carriages which conveyed the arrested deputies to the
Castle of Ham had to pass through the Elysian Fields. The Jacobins assembled in
strong numbers and endeavored to rescue them. The energy of Pichegru repelled
the attempt. A fight ensued, with cannon and small arms, in which several lives
were lost.
While these melancholy scenes were transpiring in Paris, the combined fleets
and armies of England, Austria, and Naples were fiercely assailing the Republic
at every vulnerable point. England, being undisputed mistress of the sea, had
nothing to fear from the conflagration which she was kindling all over Europe.
To stimulate impoverished Austria to the war, the British government loaned her
$23,000,000 (£4,600,000). She augmented her own naval force to a hundred
thousand seamen, put into commission one hundred and eight ships of the line,
and raised her land forces to one hundred and fifty thousand men.[442]
The question to be decided was, whether France had a right to abolish monarchy
and establish a republic. It is in vain for the Allies to say that they were
contending against the outrages which existed in France, for their hostile
movements preceded these scenes of carnage, and were the efficient cause of
nearly all the calamities that ensued. And, deplorable as was the condition of
France during the Reign of Terror, even that reign was far more endurable by the
masses of the people than the domination of the old feudal despotism.
Carlyle makes the following appalling statement, the truth of which will not be
denied by any careful student of the Old Régime:
"History, looking back over this France through long times—back to Turgot's
time, for instance, when dumb Drudgery staggered up to its king's palace, and, in
wide expanse of sallow faces, squalor, and winged raggedness, presented
hieroglyphically its petition of grievances, and, for answer, got hanged on a new
gallows forty feet high—confesses mournfully that there is no period in which
the general twenty-five millions of France suffered less than in this period which
they named the Reign of Terror!
"But it was not the dumb millions that suffered here; it was the speaking
thousands, and hundreds, and units, who shrieked and published, and made the
world ring with their wail, as they could and should; that is the grand peculiarity.
The frightfulest births of time are never the loud-speaking ones, for these soon
die; they are the silent ones, which live from century to century."[443]
The Royalist emigrants, taking advantage of the clemency of the Thermidorians,
began now to return to France in great numbers, and were very active every
where in trying to promote a counter-revolution, and in forming conspiracies to
overthrow the Republic and re-establish the Bourbons. They were supplied with
immense sums of money to expend as bribes.
A new Constitution was formed to meet the new emergencies of the country.
Instead of one General Assembly, they had two legislative bodies. The Senate,
called the Council of the Ancients, consisted of two hundred and fifty members,
of at least forty years of age, and all were to be either widowers or married; one
third to be renewed every year. The lower house, called the Council of the Five
Hundred, was to be composed of members of at least thirty years of age, to be
renewed also annually by one third. Instead of an executive of sixteen
committees, five Directors were intrusted with the executive power, to be
renewed annually by one fifth. Thus organized, the ship of state was again
launched upon its stormy voyage, to encounter tempests without and mutiny
within. This Constitution was the work of the moderate Republican party, and
restored the ascendency of the middle class. As such it was obnoxious to the
Jacobins.[444] France was now so rent by hostile parties that no Constitution
could long stand.
The old Constituent Assembly had, by a decree which was intended to be very
patriotic and self-denying, excluded itself from the Legislative Assembly which
was to succeed it. This act, however, proved to be injudicious and disastrous.
The Legislative Assembly, wishing to secure a majority friendly to moderate
Republicanism in the two bodies to be elected under the new Constitution,
decreed that two thirds of their own members should be elected to the two new
legislative bodies. This decree, which was accepted with great unanimity by
France as a whole, was exceedingly obnoxious to the Royalists and to the
Jacobins of Paris, both of whom hoped to obtain a majority under the new
Constitution. These two extremes now joined hands, and, as usual, appealed for
support to insurrection and the terrors of the mob. There was no excuse for this
violence, for the Constitution was accepted almost unanimously by France, and
the decrees by an immense majority. It was in Paris alone that there was any
opposition, and even there the opposition was only to the decrees. Still, Royalists
and Jacobins united to crush the will of the nation by a Parisian mob.
Paris was divided in forty-eight electoral sections or wards. The section of
Lepelletier was the focus of the gathering storm. The tocsin was rung, drums
beat, and armed bands collected. The Convention sent General Menou, a kindhearted
man, to surround this section and disarm it. Overawed by the high rank
of the leaders, Menou parleyed with them, and, at length, alarmed by their
numbers, their strength, and their determination, by a sort of capitulation
disgracefully retreated.
Napoleon Bonaparte was then in Paris, out of employment, and was that evening
at the Théâtre Feydeau. Some friends came and informed him of the scenes
which were transpiring. He immediately left the theatre and hastened to the
gallery of the Assembly, to witness the effect which would be produced upon
that body by the tidings of the retreat of Menou.[445]
He found the Assembly in great commotion. Some one had moved the arrest of
Menou, and his trial for treason. It was a scene of tumult and alarm, many
speaking at once. Barras, who had acquired some reputation for intrepidity and
energy, was appointed as chief of the forces in the place of Menou. Barras, who
was well acquainted with the energetic character of Napoleon, and who probably
saw him in the gallery, immediately requested that General Bonaparte should be
appointed as his second in command. Barras knew his man, and was willing to
surrender to the young brigadier-general the entire superintendence of the
military arrangements to quell the revolt.
The Convention had five thousand troops at its command. The sections now,
with clamor and tumult, were marching upon them with forty-five thousand.
Barras was a man of commanding stature and of powerful frame. Napoleon,
though he had acquired at Toulon a high reputation in the army, was but little
known in Paris. When Barras introduced to the Convention the young general, a
small, slender, pale-faced, smooth-cheeked youth, who seemed to be not more
than eighteen years of age, all were surprised.
pic
NAPOLEON BEFORE THE CONVENTION.
"Are you willing," inquired the president, "to undertake the defense of the
Convention?"
"Yes," was the laconic reply.
The president hesitated, and then continued, "But are you aware of the
magnitude of the undertaking?"
Napoleon fixed that eagle eye upon him which few could meet without quailing,
and replied, "Perfectly; and I am in the habit of accomplishing that which I
undertake. But one condition is indispensable. I must have the unlimited
command, entirely untrammeled by any orders from the Convention."
There was no time for debate; and even the most stupid could see that in such an
hour the public safety could only be secured by the prompt, concentrated action
of a single mind, sufficiently powerful to meet the emergency. The characteristic
traits of Napoleon's character were perhaps never more conspicuously displayed
than on this occasion—his self-reliance, his skill in the choice of agents, his
careful preparation against the possibility of defeat, and his fortitude in doing
whatever might be necessary for the accomplishment of his plans.
Not a moment was lost. At Sablons, a few miles from Paris, there was a park of
forty pieces of artillery. Napoleon dispatched a young soldier, whom he well
knew, of most chivalrous daring and impetuosity, Joachim Murat, to secure the
guns. At the head of three hundred horse he was almost instantly on the gallop,
and arrived at Sablons just in time to rescue the artillery from a smaller band of
the insurrectionists, who had also been dispatched to secure it. The guns were
brought to the Tuileries. They were promptly ranged to sweep all the avenues
leading to the Tuileries. The cavalry and a part of the infantry were placed in
reserve in the garden of the palace and in the Carrousel. The Convention awoke
fully to a sense of its danger and to the energy of its commander when soldiers
brought eight hundred muskets into the hall, with which the deputies were to arm
themselves and advance to battle if necessary. Detachments of troops were
dispatched to seize by surprise all the provisions and ammunition in Paris, and
convey them to a safe dépôt in the Tuileries. A hospital for the wounded was
established in the palace, provided with necessaries for every emergency. The
troops of all kinds at Napoleon's disposal, variously estimated at from five to
eight thousand, were strongly posted in the leading streets, at the bridges, in the
Place Vendôme, and in the Place de la Révolution. A strong detachment was sent
to occupy the heights of Meudon, Napoleon intending to retreat there, with the
Convention, in case of defeat. One section in Paris had voted with the immense
majority of the nation for the decrees. Chests of arms were sent to that section to
arm the voters in defense of the laws. A detachment was sent to the road to St.
Germain, to intercept any cannon from being brought from that direction.
All this was accomplished in one short night, the 4th of October, Napoleon
seeming to infuse his own energy into every one around him. In the mean time
the sections, though by no means aware of the spirit they were doomed to
encounter, were not idle. They had organized a kind of insurrectionary
government, outlawed the committees of the Convention, and had established a
tribunal to punish those who should resist its sovereignty. Several energetic
generals, Jacobins, and also Royalists, creeping from their retreats, offered their
services to lead the attack upon the Convention. General Danican, a Royalist,
who had been a general of brigade in the civil war which had desolated La
Vendée, was appointed commander-in-chief of the forces of the insurrection. He
had the National Guard, forty thousand strong, well armed, officered, and
disciplined, under his command. The morning of the 5th dawned.
The alarm-bells were now ringing and the générale beating. The armed hosts of
the sections were mustering at their appointed rendezvous and preparing to
march upon the Convention. The members, in their seats, in silence and awe
awaited the assault, upon the issue of which their lives were suspended.
Napoleon, pale, solemn, and perfectly calm, was waiting, resolved that the
responsibility of the first blow should fall upon his assailants, and that he would
take the responsibility of the second.
Soon the enemy were seen advancing from every direction, in masses which
filled the narrow streets of the city. With music and banners they marched to
attack the besieged on every side, confident, from their numbers, of an easy
victory. They did not believe that the few and feeble troops of the Convention
would dare to resist the populace of Paris, but cherished the delusion that a few
shots from their own side would put all opposition to flight. Thus unhesitatingly
they came within sweep of the grapeshot with which Napoleon had charged his
guns. The troops of the Convention stood firm. The insurgents opened a volley
of bullets upon them. It was the signal for an instantaneous discharge, direct,
sanguinary, merciless, from every battery. A storm of grape swept the streets.
The columns of the assailants wavered, turned, fled, and still the storm pursued
them. One of the strongest battalions of the insurgents had posted itself on the
steps of the Church of Saint Roche, where it occupied a commanding position
for firing upon the gunners of the Convention. Napoleon directed his artillery to
advance upon them by the cul de sac Dauphin, and immediately threw into their
crowded ranks a storm of grapeshot. The insurgents fought manfully for a time,
but were soon compelled to retreat, leaving the steps of the church covered with
the slain. As they fled, Napoleon pushed his artillery up the street, and, wheeling
to the right and the left, swept the whole length of the Rue St. Honoré. In two
hours the victory was achieved, forty thousand men were vanquished by five
thousand, the streets were cleared, and Napoleon returned in calm triumph to the
Tuileries.[446]
It is interesting to catch a glimpse of Napoleon in his domestic life at this time.
The Duchess of Abrantes writes, "My parents arrived in Paris on the 4th of
September. Two days after my father was very ill. Bonaparte, apprised by my
brother, came immediately to see us. He appeared to be affected by the state of
my father, who, though in great pain, insisted on seeing him. He came every day,
and in the morning he sent or called himself to inquire how he had passed the
night. I can not recollect his conduct at that period without sincere gratitude.
pic
THE SECTIONS AT SAINT ROCHE.
"He informed us that Paris was in such a state as must necessarily lead to a
convulsion. The sections were in, if not open, at least almost avowed
insurrection. The section Lepelletier, which was ours, was the most turbulent,
and, in fact, the most to be dreaded. Its orators did not scruple to deliver the most
incendiary speeches. They asserted that the power of the assembled people was
above the laws. 'Matters are getting from bad to worse,' said Bonaparte; 'the
counter-revolution will shortly break forth, and it will, at the same time, become
the source of disasters.'
"As I have said, he came every day; he dined with us and passed the evening in
the drawing-room, talking in a low tone beside the easy-chair of my mother,
who, worn out with fatigue, dozed for a few moments to recruit her strength, for
she never quitted my father's pillow. I recollect that, one evening, my father
being very ill, my mother was weeping and in great tribulation. It was ten
o'clock. At that time it was impossible to induce any of the servants of the hotel
to go out after nine. Bonaparte said nothing. He ran down stairs and posted away
to Duchannais, whom he brought back with him in spite of his objections. The
weather was dreadful; the rain poured in torrents. Bonaparte had not been able to
meet with a hackney coach to go to M. Duchannais; he was wet through. Yes,
indeed, at that period Bonaparte had a heart susceptible of attachment.
"Meanwhile we became more and more alarmed every day by the dangers which
manifested themselves around us. Paris rung with the tumult of the factions, each
of which drew the sword and hoisted its standard. Against the Convention, then
the only real authority, were arrayed the sections, which for some days past again
declared war against it. Paris resembled a garrison town. At night we heard the
sentries calling to and answering one another, as in a besieged town. The strictest
search was made for arms and ammunition.
"For some years my mother had been subject to nervous paroxysms. At such
times she disliked to have any body about her. On reaching the drawing-room I
found her all in tears and in one of the most violent spasms. General Bonaparte
was with her, endeavoring to soothe her. He told me that on his arrival he found
her on the point of attacking the adjunct of the section to prevent his entering my
father's chamber. 'I should be glad to spare your mother such scenes,' said he; 'I
have not much influence, nevertheless I will go myself to the section. I will see
the president if possible and settle the business at once. Paris is all on fire,
especially since this morning. It is necessary to be very cautious in every thing
one does and in all one says. Your brother must not go out any more. Attend to
all this, for your mother is in a sad state.'
"This was a dreadful night for my father. The next morning the générale was
beat. The streets were already very unsafe, though people were still passing to
and fro in Paris, as though they were not going to cut one another's throats a few
hours afterward. The tumult became very great at dusk; the theatres were
nevertheless open. Indeed, we are a nation of lunatics!
"On the morning of the 12th Vendémiaire (October 4) Bonaparte, who had called
according to custom, appeared to be lost in thought. He went out, came back,
went out again, and again returned when we were at our dessert. 'I breakfasted
very late,' said he, 'at Bourrienne's. They talked politics there till I was quite tired
of the subject. I will try to learn the news, and if I have any thing interesting I
will come and tell you.'
"We did not see him again. The night was tumultuous, especially in our section.
The whole Rue de la Loi was bristling with bayonets. Barricades were already
set up in our streets. On the morning of the 13th (October 5) my father was very
ill. For some hours we flattered ourselves that matters would be adjusted
between the Convention and the rebels; but about half past four the firing of the
cannon began. The effect on my poor father was terrible. He gave a piercing
shriek, calling for assistance, and was seized with the most violent delirium. All
the scenes of the Revolution passed in review before him, and every discharge
that he heard was a blow struck at him personally. What a day! what an evening!
what a night! Every pane of glass was broken in pieces. Toward evening the
section fell back upon us. The fighting was continued almost under our window,
but when it had come to St. Roche we imagined that the house was tumbling
about our ears.
"My father was in the agonies of death; he shouted, he wept. Never, no, never,
shall I suffer what I did during that terrible night. Next day tranquillity was
restored, we were told, in Paris. I can scarcely give any account of the 14th.
Toward evening Bonaparte came for a moment; he found me dissolved in tears.
When he learned the cause his cheerful and open countenance suddenly changed.
My mother entered at that moment. She knew no more than I how important a
part Bonaparte had played on that great day. 'Oh!' said my mother, 'they have
killed my husband. You, Napoleon, can feel for my distress. Do you recollect
that on the first Prairial, when you came to sup with me, you told me that you
had just prevented Barras from bombarding Paris? Do you recollect it? For my
part I have not forgotten it.'
"Many persons have alleged that Napoleon always regretted that day. Be that as
it may, he was always exceedingly kind to my mother in these moments of
affliction, though himself in circumstances that could not but outweigh all other
interests. He was like a son—like a brother."[447]
The Convention treated the insurrectionists, who had thus been so severely
punished, with the utmost clemency.[448] Napoleon received the thanks of the
Convention and a brilliant reception. The Convention united Belgium with
France; decreed that the punishment of death should be abolished as soon as a
general peace with Europe could be effected; changed the name of the Place of
the Revolution to the Place of Concord; pronounced an amnesty for all acts
connected with the Revolution, excepting one person implicated in the last
revolt; and then, on the 26th of October, 1795, the President of the Convention
pronounced these words,
"The National Convention declares that its mission is accomplished, and its
session is closed."
With one united shout—The Republic forever!—the deputies left the hall and
dispersed to their homes.
To the States-General fell the task, after a terrific struggle with king and nobles,
to create the Constituent Assembly, a great national congress, whose function it
was to moderate the despotism of the throne by conferring upon a nation of
twenty-five millions of people, after ages of oppression, constitutional liberty.
The Constituent Assembly, which succeeded the States-General, abolished those
old institutions of feudal servitude which had become utterly unendurable, and
established a constitutional monarchy, taking as a model, in the main, the British
Constitution. The Legislative Assembly then took the place of the Constituent, to
enact laws in harmony with this Constitution. It soon, however, found that the
king was in league with despotic Europe to overthrow constitutional liberty and
restore the old despotism. It consequently suspended the king, and the
Constitution with which his power was inseparably interwoven, and dissolved
itself.[449] The National Convention, which succeeded, commenced its
deliberations on the 21st of September, 1792.
"The Convention," says Thiers, "found a dethroned king, an annulled
Constitution, an administration entirely destroyed, a paper money discredited,
old skeletons of regiments worn out and empty. Thus it was not liberty that it had
to proclaim in presence of an enfeebled and despised throne, it was liberty that it
had to defend against all Europe—a very difficult task. Without being for a
moment daunted, it proclaimed the Republic in the face of the hostile armies; it
then sacrificed the king, to cut off all retreat from itself; it subsequently took all
the powers into its own hands, and constituted itself a dictatorship. Voices were
raised in its bosom which talked of humanity, when it wished to hear of nothing
but energy; it stifled them. This dictatorship, which the necessity of the general
preservation had obliged it to arrogate to itself over all France, twelve of its
members soon arrogated to themselves over it, for the same reason, and on
account of the same necessity. From the Alps to the sea, from the Pyrenees to the
Rhine, these twelve dictators seized upon all, both men and things, and
commenced the greatest and the most awful struggle with the nations of Europe
ever recorded in history. They spilt torrents of blood, till, having become useless
from victory, and odious by the abuse of strength, they fell.
"The Convention then took the dictatorship again into its own hands, and began,
by degrees, to relax the springs of that terrible administration. Rendered
confident by victory, it listened to humanity, and indulged its spirit of
regeneration. It aimed at every thing good and great, and pursued this purpose
for a year; but the parties crushed under its pitiless authority revived under its
clemency. Two factions, in which were blended, under infinite variety of shades,
the friends and the foes of the Revolution, attacked it by turns. It vanquished the
one and the other, and, till the last day, showed itself heroic amid dangers.
Lastly, it framed a Republican Constitution, and, after a struggle of three years
with Europe, with the factions, with itself, mutilated and bleeding, it dissolved
itself, and transmitted the government of France to the Directory."[450]
FOOTNOTES:
[441] Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, p. 90.
[442] Thiers, vol. iii., p. 242. New Annual Register.
[443] Carlyle's History of the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 460.
[444] "This Constitution was the best, the wisest, the most liberal, and the most provident that had as yet
been established or projected; it contained the result of six years' revolutionary and legislative
experience."—Mignet, p. 301.
[445] Las Casas.
[446] There is no exaggeration in the following account of the condition of France at this time: "Since
France had become Republican every species of evil had accumulated upon its devoted head. Famine, a
total cessation of commerce, civil war, attended by its usual accompaniments—conflagration, robbery,
pillage, and murder. Justice was interrupted; the sword of the law wielded by iniquity; property spoliated;
confiscation rendered the order of the day; the scaffold permanently erected; calumnious denunciations held
in the highest estimation. Nothing was wanting to the general desolation."—Hist. de la Conv., vol. ii., p.
215, 216.
[447] Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes, p. 118.
[448] "After this memorable conflict, when Bonaparte had been publicly received with enthusiasm by the
Convention, who declared that he and Barras deserved well of their country, a great change took place in
him, and the change in regard to attention to his person was not the least remarkable. He now never went
out but in a handsome carriage, and he lived in a very respectable house, Rue des Capucines. In short, he
had become an important, a necessary personage, and all without noise, as if by magic."—Duchess of
Abrantes.
[449] The States-General held its session from May 6, 1789.
[450] Thiers, Fr. Rev., vol. iii., p. 333.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE DIRECTORY.
Constitution of the Directory.—Distracted State of Public Affairs.—New
Expedition to La Vendée.—Death of the Dauphin.—Release of the
Princess.—Pacification of La Vendée.—Riots in London.—Execution of
Charette.—Napoleon takes command of the Army of Italy.—The first
Proclamation.—Triumphs in Italy.—Letter of General Hoche.—Peace with
Spain.—Establishment of the Cispadane Republic.—Negotiations with
England.—Contemplated Invasion of Ireland.—Memorials of Wolfe Tone.
—Deplorable State of Public Affairs.—Description of Napoleon.—
Composition of the Directory.
THE government of the Directory went into operation on the 27th of October,
1795. The two legislative bodies, the Council of the Ancients and the Council of
the Five Hundred, met and chose for the five directors Lareveillère Lepeaux, Le
Tourneur, Rewbel, Carnot, and Barras. "Among these," says Thiers, "there was
not a man of genius, nor even any man of high reputation, excepting Carnot. But
what was to be done at the end of a sanguinary revolution which, in a few years,
had devoured several generations of men of genius of every description? In the
Assemblies there was not left one extraordinary orator; in diplomacy there
remained not one celebrated negotiator."[451] The state of public affairs at this
time was deplorable in the extreme. Innumerable factions disturbed the state. A
very sanguinary war was raging around the frontiers. The embers of civil war
were still smoldering and frequently bursting out into flame. Three powerful
parties were struggling almost with the energies of despair for the supremacy—
the old Royalists, the Thermidorians or moderate Republicans, and the Jacobins,
who wielded, as the great instrument of terror, the energies of the Parisian mob.
Many of the most intelligent men already foresaw that there was no hope for
distracted France but in the action of some mighty mind which could mould the
tumultuous elements and evolve order from the confusion.[452]
The British government, undismayed by the disaster of Quiberon, now sent
another expedition to the shores of La Vendée to rouse the Royalists to
insurrection. The expedition consisted of two thousand English infantry, five
hundred horse, several regiments of French emigrants, a great number of officers
to take command of the marshaled peasantry, and arms, ammunition, provisions,
clothing, and gold in abundance. Should this expedition successfully land and
rally around it the Royalist insurgents in promising numbers, it was immediately
to be followed by another still more powerful. The Count d'Artois (Charles X.)
was placed in command of this force. Charette, a very intrepid Royalist
chieftain, had raised some ten thousand peasants, and was in command of the
coast to welcome the invaders. But General Hoche fell upon the insurgent
Vendeeans and scattered them; and the English fleet, after hovering for some
time along the coast, being unable to effect a landing, and disappointed in the
support they hoped to have met, abandoned the enterprise and returned to
England.[453]
While the coast of France was thus threatened the Allies on the Rhine gained
some very decisive victories, and drove the routed Republicans before them.
There was no money in the treasury of the Directory. The paper money, which
had been freely issued, had become almost worthless, and the armies were now
in destitution and rags. Such were the difficulties with which the new
government had to grapple.[454]
On the 8th of June the dauphin died in the Temple. While he lived he was
considered by the Royalists the legitimate King of France, under the title of
Louis XVII. Upon his death the emigrants declared the Count of Provence king,
and he assumed the title of Louis XVIII. It will be remembered that the
Convention sent some deputies to arrest Dumouriez, and that he seized these
commissioners and handed them over to the Austrians as hostages. The
Directory now exchanged the young princess, who still survived in woeful
captivity, for these commissioners and a few other distinguished prisoners held
by the Austrians. It was the 19th of December when this unhappy child left her
cell, where she had endured agonies such as few on earth had known, to be
conveyed back to the palaces of her maternal ancestors.
The guns of Napoleon, quelling the insurgent sections, had established the
government of the Directory. To secure Paris and France from similar scenes of
violence, an imposing force was organized, called the Army of the Interior, and
Napoleon was placed in command. As by magic, under his efficient command,
this body was organized into the highest discipline and efficiency, and,
overawing the discontented, maintained public order. A formidable camp of
these troops was established at Grenelle. But for Napoleon the Directory could
not have come into being. But for Napoleon it could not have lived a year,
struggling against the conspiracies which ever crowded it.[455] General Hoche,
operating with singular wisdom and humanity, succeeded in the pacification of
the inhabitants of La Vendée. They surrendered their arms, and peace was
restored to that distracted region. Still William Pitt clamored for war against the
French Republic. The English people were indignant at these unjust assaults
against a neighboring nation struggling to throw off the chains of intolerable
servitude, and demanded peace with France. The liberty-loving Englishmen met
in immense gatherings in the open air, and denounced the war system in the most
bold and decisive resolves. As the king rode to Parliament the populace pursued
him, pelted his carriage with stones, broke the windows, and it was asserted that
an air-gun was fired at him. Pitt, riding on horseback, was recognized by the
populace, and with difficulty escaped from their hands covered with mud. Fox
and Sheridan in Parliament were loud and eloquent in the denunciation of the
war measures of the ministry.[456] Pitt endeavored to defend himself against the
assaults of the opposition by saying that English blood had not been shed.
"True," replied Sheridan, "English blood has not been shed, but English honor
has oozed from every pore."
The Allies, exhilarated by their successes on the Rhine, prepared to press the war
with new vigor. Pitt obtained from Parliament a new loan of thirty-five millions
of dollars. General Bonaparte was promoted from the command of the Army of
the Interior to that of the Army of Italy. He immediately entered upon that Italian
campaign which gave him renown throughout the world.
Though the Vendeeans had surrendered their arms and were rejoicing in the
enjoyment of peace, Charette wandered about the country, refusing all overtures
at reconciliation, and striving, with great energy, to rouse new forces of
insurrection. The entire pacification of La Vendée now depended upon the
capture of Charette. With almost unparalleled energy and bravery he succeeded
for several months in eluding his foes. At last, on the 24th of March, 1796, he
fell into an ambuscade. He was armed to the teeth, and fought with the ferocity
of a tiger at bay. He received several sabre-blows before he fell and was secured.
At his examination he with dignity averred his detestation of republicanism and
his devotion to royalty. He had deluged the land with the blood of civil war, and,
as a traitor, was doomed to die. On the 30th of March he was led out to
execution. A platoon of soldiers was drawn up but a few paces before him. He
stood erect, with his eyes unbandaged, and, apparently without the tremor of a
nerve, gave the command to fire. He fell dead, pierced by many bullets. He had
displayed marvelous heroism in a bad cause. Refusing to submit to laws
established by the overwhelming majority of his countrymen, he was deluging
the land in blood in the endeavor to rivet again upon France the chains of the
most intolerable despotism. The Royalists all over Europe mourned his death.
But France rejoiced, for the fall of Charette terminated the civil war.
One hundred thousand men had been under the command of General
Hoche in the strife of La Vendée. These were now at liberty to march to repel the
foreign invader. Two powerful armies, of eighty thousand each, were collected
on the Rhine. But they could not hold their ground against the outnumbering
Austrians. In one of these engagements the distinguished young general Marceau
was killed. He was struck by a ball fired by a Tyrolean marksman, and fell from
his horse mortally wounded. His soldiers, on the rapid retreat, were unable to
rescue him, and he was left in his blood to the humanity of the victors. The
Austrians generously did every thing in their power for his relief, but he died,
three days after, in the twenty-seventh year of his age.
pic
LA CHARETTE TAKEN PRISONER.
About thirty thousand French soldiers, in rags, destitute of the munitions of war,
and almost famished, were ineffectually struggling against their foes on the
southern slopes of the Apennines. Napoleon was placed in command of these
starving troops, but the government was unable to supply him with any funds for
the prosecution of the war. On the 27th of March he placed himself at the head
of these enfeebled and discouraged battalions. Young generals, who
subsequently obtained great renown—Angereau, Massena, Laharpe, Serrurier,
and Berthier—composed the officers of his staff. The levy en masse had filled
the ranks with young men from good families, well informed, distinctly
understanding the nature of the conflict, detesting the old feudal despotism
which allied Europe was striving to impose upon them anew, and
enthusiastically devoted to the principles of liberty and equal rights which the
Revolution was endeavoring to implant. Though most of them were young, they
had many of them spent years in the field, had seen many bloody battles, and,
inured to the hardships of war, were veteran soldiers. Sixty thousand
Piedmontese and Austrians, under Colli and Beaulieu, crowded the northern
slopes and the crest of the mountains, endeavoring to force their way through the
defiles upon France. Napoleon's first words to his troops roused them as with
electric fire.
pic
DEATH OF GENERAL MARCEAU.
"Soldiers," said he, "you are ill fed, almost naked. The government owes you
much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage, do you honor,
but procure you neither glory nor advantage. I am about to lead you into the
most fertile plains in the world. You will there find large cities, rich provinces;
you will there find honor, glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy, will your courage
fail you?"
On the 12th of April his troops were in motion. A series of desperate battles and
of resplendent victories ensued. At the close of two weeks Napoleon issued the
following proclamation:
"Soldiers, in a fortnight you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one pairs of
colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, several fortresses, and conquered the richest
part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen thousand prisoners, and killed or
wounded more than ten thousand men. You had hitherto been fighting for barren
rocks, rendered glorious by your courage, but useless to the country. You now
rival, by your services, the army of Holland and the Rhine. Destitute of every
thing, you have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannon,
crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches without shoes, bivouacked
without brandy and often without bread. The Republican phalanxes, the soldiers
of liberty alone, could have endured what you have endured. Thanks be to you
for it, soldiers. Your grateful country will owe to you its prosperity; and if your
conquest at Toulon foreboded the glorious campaign of 1793, your present
victories forbode one still more glorious. The two armies which so lately
attacked you boldly, are fleeing affrighted before you. The perverse men who
laughed at your distress, and rejoiced in thought at the triumph of your enemies,
are confounded and trembling.
"But, soldiers, you have done nothing, since more remains to be done. Neither
Turin nor Milan is yours. The ashes of the conquerors of Tarquin are still
trampled upon by the murderers of Basseville."[457]
Napoleon now summoned all his energies to drive the Austrians out of Italy. In
two months the work was done; and Paris, France, Europe was electrified by the
narrative of deeds of daring and success, such as war had never recorded before.
In all the towns and cities of Italy the French armies were received as deliverers,
for the subjugated Italians were eager to throw off the hateful yoke of Austrian
despotism. Napoleon, having unbounded confidence in himself, and but very
little respect for the weak men who composed the Directory, took all matters of
diplomacy, as well as war, into his own hands, and, sustained by the enthusiasm
of his soldiers, settled the affairs of Italy according to his own views of
expediency.
The Royalists, hoping for the overthrow of the Republic and for the return of
Louis XVIII., were exceedingly chagrined by these victories. They left no means
of calumny untried to sully the name of Napoleon. Europe was filled with
falsehoods respecting him, and reports were circulated that General Hoche was
to be sent from Paris to arrest him in the midst of his army. These rumors
assumed such importance that the government wrote a letter to Napoleon
contradicting them; and General Hoche, with the magnanimity of a man
incapable of jealousy, over his own name published a letter expressing his
admiration of the commander of the Army of Italy.
"Men," he wrote, "who, concealed or unknown during the first years of the
foundation of the Republic, now think only of seeking the means of destroying
it, and speak of it merely to slander its firmest supporters, have, for some days
past, been spreading reports most injurious to the armies, and to one of the
general officers who commanded them. Can they, then, no longer attain their
object by corresponding openly with the horde of conspirators resident at
Hamburg? Must they, in order to gain the patronage of the masters whom they
are desirous of giving to France, vilify the leaders of the armies? Why is
Bonaparte, then, the object of the wrath of these gentry? Is it because he beat
themselves and their friends in Vendémiaire?[458] Is it because he is dissolving
the armies of kings, and furnishing the Republic with the means of bringing this
honorable war to a glorious conclusion? Ah! brave young man, where is the
Republican soldier whose heart does not burn with the desire to imitate thee?
Courage, Bonaparte! lead our victorious armies to Naples, to Vienna; reply to
thy personal enemies by humbling kings, by shedding fresh lustre over our
armies, and leave to us the task of upholding thy glory."
Still the Royalists were busy with incessant plots and intrigues for the overthrow
of the government. The treasury was utterly bankrupt, paper money, almost
utterly worthless, flooded the land, and the finances were in a state of
inextricable embarrassment. The Jacobins and the Royalists were equally eager
to demolish the Directory by any conceivable measures of treason and violence.
Never was a nation in a more deplorable state, harassed by a foreign war which
demanded all its energies, and torn by domestic dissensions which no human
wisdom seemed capable of healing.
The Jacobins adopted even the desperate measure to feign a Royalist
insurrection; to scatter white cockades, the emblem of Bourbon power; to shout
Vive le Roi! and to discharge musketry and throw petards into the streets, that the
people, alarmed by the peril of Bourbon restoration, might throw themselves into
the arms of the Jacobins for protection.[459] A mob of nearly a thousand most
determined men marched, in the night of the 10th of September, upon the camp
at Grenelle, hoping to fraternize with the soldiers in this treasonable endeavor to
overthrow the government. Several hundreds fell dead or wounded in this frantic
attempt.
pic
NIGHT OF SEPTEMBER 10, 1796.
The Directory now attempted to enter into peaceful relations with other powers,
and effected a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Spain. Envoys
were also sent to the Ottoman Porte and to Venice for the same purpose.
Piedmont had sued for peace and obtained it. The Italians of Upper Italy,
exulting in their emancipation from the Austrians, under the protection of
Napoleon established the Cispadane Republic. Without the support of his strong
arm they could not for a day resist the encroachments of the surrounding
despotisms. The first National Assembly of this infant republic met at Modena,
October 16, 1796. The people were electrified with delight at this unexpected
achievement of freedom. The Assembly sent an address to Napoleon, informing
him of the principles of their new government.
"Never forget," said Napoleon, in his reply, "that laws are mere nullities without
the force necessary to support them. Attend to your military organization, which
you have the means of placing on a respectable footing. You will then be more
fortunate than the people of France, for you will arrive at liberty without passing
through the ordeal of revolution."
The Directory had for some time been attempting to effect peace with England.
On the 18th of December the British government stated on what terms it would
consent to sheathe the sword. M. Thiers expresses the feelings of France in
reference to this offer in the following terms:
"Thus France, having been iniquitously forced into war, after she had expended
enormous sums, and from which she had come off victorious—France was not to
gain a single province, while the northern powers had just divided a kingdom
between them (Poland), and England had recently made immense acquisitions in
India. France, who still occupied the line of the Rhine, and who was mistress of
Italy, was to evacuate the Rhine and Italy at the bare summons of England! Such
conditions were absurd and inadmissible. The very proposal of them was an
insult, and they could not be listened to."[460]
To conquer a peace, the Directory now meditated a direct attack upon England.
The Catholic Irish, over three millions in number, hating implacably their
English conquerors, were ardent to rise, under the guarantee of France, and
establish a republican government. They had sent secret agents to Paris to confer
with the Directory. Wolfe Tone, one of the leaders of the Irish revolutionists,
addressed memorials to the French Directory soliciting aid.
"The Catholics of Ireland," said he, "are 3,150,000, all trained from their infancy
in an hereditary hatred and abhorrence of the English name. For these five years
they have fixed their eyes most earnestly on France, whom they look upon, with
great justice, as fighting their battles, as well as that of all mankind who are
oppressed. Of this class I will stake my head there are 500,000 who would fly to
the standard of the Republic if they saw it once displayed in the cause of liberty
and their country.
"The Republic may also rely with confidence on the support of the Dissenters,
actuated by reason and reflection, as well as the Catholics impelled by misery
and inflamed by detestation of the English name. In the year 1791 the Dissenters
of Belfast first formed the Club of United Irishmen, so called because in that
club, for the first time, Dissenters and Catholics were seen together in harmony
and union. Corresponding clubs were rapidly formed, the object of which was to
subvert the tyranny of England, establish the independence of Ireland, and frame
a free republic on the broad basis of liberty and equality.
"The Catholics also have an organization, commencing about the same time with
the clubs last mentioned, but composed of Catholics only. In June last it
embraced the whole peasantry of the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and
Connaught, three fourths of the nation, and I have little doubt that it has since
extended into Munster, the remaining province. The eyes of this whole body,
which may be said, almost without a figure, to be the people of Ireland, are
turned with the most anxious expectation to France for assistance and support.
The oath of their union recites that they will be faithful to the united nations of
France and Ireland."[461]
An expedition to Ireland was secretly resolved upon. A fleet of fifteen sail of the
line, twenty frigates, six luggers, and fifty transports, containing sixteen
thousand troops, sailed on the 16th of December to land in Bantry Bay, on the
coast of Ireland. But the very night after the squadron left port a heavy storm
arose, in which one ship foundered and the fleet was widely dispersed. A
singular series of casualties ensued. Some of the ships entered the bay, but not
finding their companions, after waiting a short time, returned to France. Other
ships of the expedition soon after entered, but, finding the bay deserted, they also
returned. The expedition thus proved a total failure.[462]
The inefficient Directory was quite unable to rectify the disorders into which the
internal affairs of the state were plunged. They uttered loud complaints, which
did but increase discontent and disgust. The press, being entirely free, indulged
in the utmost violence; Royalists and Jacobins assailing the feeble government
without mercy and thwarting its operations in every possible way. The army of
Italy was triumphant—almost miraculously so. Every where else the Republic
was in disgrace. The Directory endeavored to throw the blame of the public
calamities upon the two Councils, and published the following message, which
was as true as it was ill-advised:
"All departments are distressed. The pay of the troops is in arrear; the defenders
of the country, in rags and enervated by want, in disgust are led to desertion. The
hospitals are destitute of furniture, fire, and drugs. The charitable institutions,
utterly impoverished, repel the poor and infirm. The creditors of the state, the
contractors who supply the armies, with difficulty obtain but a small portion of
the sums that are their due. Distress keeps aloof men who could perform the
same services better and cheaper. The roads are cut up; the communications
interrupted. The public functionaries are without salary; from one end of the
Republic to the other judges and administrators may be seen reduced to the
horrible alternative either of dragging on, with their families, a miserable
existence, or of being dishonored by selling themselves to intrigue. The evildisposed
are every where busy. In many places murder is being organized, and
the police, without activity, without energy, because it is without pecuniary
means, can not put a stop to these disorders."
All eyes were directed to the achievements of Napoleon, who, with superhuman
energy, was destroying army after army of the Allies, astounding Europe by his
exploits, and exciting the admiration of his countrymen. Thiers thus describes
the position he then occupied in the public mind:
"Sickness, together with the excessive fatigues of the campaign, had weakened
him extremely. He could scarcely sit on horseback; his cheeks were hollow and
livid. His whole appearance was deplorable. His eyes alone, still bright and
piercing as ever, indicated that the fire of his soul was not extinguished. His
physical proportions formed a singular contrast with his genius and his renown,
a contrast amusing to soldiers at once jovial and enthusiastic. Notwithstanding
the decline of his strength, his extraordinary energy supported him and imparted
an activity which was applied to all objects at once.
"He had begun what he called the war against robbers. Intriguers of all kinds
had thronged to Italy for the purpose of introducing themselves into the
administration of the armies and profiting by the wealth of that fine country.
While simplicity and indigence pervaded the armies of the Rhine, luxury
pervaded that of Italy—luxury as great as its glory. The soldiers, well clothed
and well fed, were every where cordially received, and lived in pleasure and
abundance. The officers, the generals, participated in the general opulence, and
laid the foundations of their fortunes.
"Bonaparte, who had within him all the passions, but who, at that moment, was
engrossed by one passion, that of glory, lived in a simple and austere manner,
seeking relaxation only in the society of his wife, to whom he was tenderly
attached, and who had come, at his desire, to his head-quarters. Indignant at the
disorders of the administration, he strictly scrutinized the minutest details,
verified by personal inspection the accounts of the companies, denounced the
dishonest administrators without mercy, and caused them to be prosecuted."
Among the Directors, Carnot was one of the noblest of men. The purity of his
character slander has never attempted to taint. Barras was a fearless soldier and a
shameless debauchee. He boasted of the profligacies in which he openly
indulged, and he rioted in boundless extravagance, which he supported through
corruption and bribes. Rewbel was a lawyer, a man of ability and integrity.[463]
These three men had belonged to different political parties during the
Revolution, and each detested the others. Lareveillère was an honest man, but
destitute of those commanding qualities so essential to the post he occupied. Le
Tourneur was a vain, good-natured man who merely echoed the voice of Carnot.
All the Directors but Barras occupied, with their families, apartments in the
Palace of the Luxembourg. In the public mind this discordant Directory
consisted of two parties, Barras, Rewbel, and Lareveillère in the majority, and
Carnot and Le Tourneur in the opposition.
FOOTNOTES:
[451] Thiers, History of the French Revolution, vol. iii., p. 338.
[452] "France, exhausted by every species of suffering, had lost even the power of uttering a complaint; and
we had all arrived at such a point of depression that death, if unattended by pain, would have been wished
for even by the youngest human being, because it offered the prospect of repose, and every one panted for
that blessing at any price. But it was ordained that many days, months, and years should still continue in
that state of horrible agitation, the true foretaste of the torments of hell."—Memoirs of the Duchess of
Abrantes, p. 296.
[453] A Republican does not view this endeavor on the part of the British government to foment civil war
in France as a Royalist views it. "It is painful," says Mr. Alison, "to reflect how different might have been
the issue of the campaign had Great Britain really put forth its strength in the contest, and, instead of
landing a few thousand men on a coast bristling with bayonets, sent thirty thousand men to make head
against the Republicans till the Royalist forces were so organized as to be able to take the field with regular
troops." It was this persistent determination, on the part of the British government and allied Europe, that
France should not enjoy free institutions, which led to nearly all the sanguinary scenes of the French
Revolution, and which, for nearly a quarter of a century, made Europe red with blood.
[454] "All these forces [of the Republic] were in a state of extreme penury, and totally destitute of the
equipments necessary for the carrying on of a campaign. They had neither caissons, nor horses, nor
magazines. The soldiers were almost naked and the generals, even, frequently in want of the necessaries of
life. Multitudes had taken advantage of the relaxation of authority following the fall of Robespierre to
desert and return to their homes, and the government, so far from being able to bring them back to their
colors, were not even able to levy conscripts in the interior to supply their place."—Alison, vol. i., p. 369.
Paper money had been issued to the almost incredible amount of 2,000,000,000 dollars, or 10,000,000,000
francs. This paper money had so depreciated that a pound of sugar cost eighty dollars in paper money.
[455] Thiers, Hist. French Rev., vol. iii., p. 353.
[456] Ibid., vol. iii., p. 364.
[457] M. Basseville, an envoy of the French Republic at Rome, was attacked by a mob and cruelly
murdered.
[458] Quelling the insurgent sections.
[459] Thiers's French Revolution, vol. iv., p. 10.
[460] Thiers's French Revolution, vol. iv., p. 66.
[461] Wolfe Tone's First Memorial to the French Directory, vol. ii., p. 187.
[462] "It is a curious subject for speculation what might have been the result had Hoche succeeded in
landing with sixteen thousand of his best troops on the Irish shores. To those who consider, indeed, the
patriotic spirit, indomitable valor, and persevering character of the English people, and the complete
command they had of the sea, the final issue of such a contest can not appear doubtful; but it is equally
evident that the addition of such a force and so able a commander to the numerous bodies of Irish
malcontents would have engendered a dreadful domestic war, and that the whole energies of the empire
might for a very long period have been employed in saving itself from dismemberment."—Alison's History
of Europe, vol. i., p. 444.
[463] "Carnot, Barras, Rewbel, and Lareveillère had been members of the Convention; and, although none
of them had been famous during the Reign of Terror for any atrocious act, still the three first had voted the
death of the king—a vote which, notwithstanding the fatal though powerful considerations that may be
presented in alleviation, placed them among the most furious Jacobins, and was prejudicial to the respect
with which they ought to have been invested."—Memoirs of Lavalette.
CHAPTER XL.
THE OVERTHROW OF THE DIRECTORY AND THE ESTABLISHMENT
OF THE CONSULATE.
Proclamation of Napoleon.—March into Austria.—Letter to the Archduke
Charles.—Preliminaries of Peace.—Union of Parties against the Directory.
—Triumph of the Directory.—Agency of Napoleon.—Severe Measures of
the Directory.—Indignation of Napoleon.—Dictatorship of the Directory.—
Dismay of the Royalists.—Treaty of Campo Formio.—Napoleon's Address
to the Cispadane Republic.—Remarks of Napoleon.—Plan for the Invasion
of India.—Expedition to Egypt.—New Coalition.—Rastadt.
IT was now the month of March, 1797, and Napoleon, having driven the
Austrians out of Italy, issued the following proclamation, an unexaggerated
statement of facts which amazed and appalled hostile Europe:
"Soldiers! the capture of Mantua has put an end to the war of Italy. You have
been victorious in fourteen pitched battles and seventy actions. You have taken
100,000 prisoners, 500 field-pieces, 2000 heavy cannon, and four pontoon trains.
The contributions laid on the countries you have conquered have fed,
maintained, and paid the army; besides which, you have sent thirty millions
($6,000,000) to the Minister of Finance for the use of the public treasury. You
have enriched the Museum of Paris with three hundred master-pieces of ancient
and modern Italy, which it had required thirty centuries to produce. You have
conquered for the Republic the finest countries in Europe. The kings of Sardinia
and Naples, the Pope, and the Duke of Parma are separated from the coalition.
You have expelled the English from Leghorn, Genoa, and Corsica. Still higher
destinies await you. You will prove yourselves worthy of them. Of all the foes
who combined to stifle our Republic in its birth the emperor alone remains."
On the 16th of March the little army of Bonaparte crossed the Tagliamento to
march upon Vienna, there to compel Austria to cease the iniquitous war which
now for six years had desolated Europe. Battle after battle ensued, and the
Austrians met the French only to be vanquished. On the 31st of March Napoleon
wrote to the Archduke Charles, who was brother of the emperor and
commander-in-chief of the Austrian forces, as follows:
"General-in-Chief: brave soldiers make war and desire peace. Has not this war
lasted six years? Have we not slain men enough and inflicted calamities enough
on suffering humanity? It cries out on all sides. Europe, which had taken up arms
against the French Republic, has laid them down. Your nation alone is left, and
yet blood is about to be spilled more abundantly than ever.
"The Executive Directory of the French Republic communicated to his majesty
the emperor its desire to put an end to the war which afflicts both nations. The
intervention of the Court of London has opposed this wish. Is there, then, no
hope of arrangement? And must we continue to slaughter one another for the
interests and the passions of a nation which knows nothing of the calamities of
war? You, general, who are by birth so near to the throne, and above all the petty
passions which so frequently actuate ministers and governments, are you
determined to merit the title of benefactor of the whole human race and the real
savior of Germany?
"Imagine not, general, that I mean by this that it is not possible to save her by the
force of arms. But, even supposing that the chances of war turn in your favor,
Germany will not, on that account, be the less ravaged. As for me, general, if the
overture which I have the honor to make to you can save the life of a single man,
I shall be prouder of the civic crown which I shall feel that I have deserved than
of the melancholy glory which can result from military successes."[464]
The archduke replied that he was commanded to prosecute the war, and had no
authority to enter into conference upon terms of peace.[465] The war was now
prosecuted with renewed vigor, as the French drove the Austrians through the
defiles of the Tyrol, and entered the plains of Germany. But a few days passed
ere Napoleon arrived within sight of the steeples of Vienna. The capital was in
consternation; the people demanded peace; the archduke urged it, declaring
himself quite unable to protect the city. The Austrian court now implored the
clemency of the conqueror, and sent commissioners to Napoleon, at his headquarters
at Leoben, with full powers to settle the basis of peace. The
preliminaries were signed at Leoben on the 18th of April, which put a stop to the
effusion of blood.
By the election in May of one third of the two legislative bodies, the counterrevolutionists
had obtained a majority in both chambers. This exceedingly elated
the Royalists. The two Councils now commenced a furious war against the
Republican Directory, seeking to overthrow it, and to re-establish, not the old
Bourbon despotism, but the constitutional monarchy of 1791. There were now
four parties in the field. The old Bourbon party, the friends of constitutional
monarchy, the Republicans, and the Jacobins. Three of these parties united
against the Directory, each hoping, in the overthrow of the Directors, to establish
its own principles. One of the Directors was to leave. The Royalists succeeded in
placing Barthélemy, a counter-revolutionist, in his place. The conflict which now
arose was whether the Republican Directory should be abolished or maintained.
A stern conflict was evidently rising. The Directory headed one party, the two
Councils the other. In accordance with the disastrous temper of the times, both
parties began to count bayonets instead of votes, that the question might be
settled on a field of blood. The emigrants and the priests returned in great
numbers, forged passports being transmitted to them from Paris.
The Councils had a legislative guard of fifteen hundred men, and hoped to avail
itself of the National Guard, not then fully reorganized. They also placed great
reliance on Pichegru, who was treasonably plotting the restoration of the
Bourbons. The Constitution did not allow any of the standing army to approach
within thirty-six miles of Paris. In defiance of this provision, the Directory, under
pretense of sending a fresh expedition to Ireland, assembled twelve thousand
veteran troops under the walls of the metropolis. General Bonaparte, aware of
the peril of the Directory, and of the danger of the restoration of royalty, had sent
the intrepid Augereau to Paris to assist the Directory in any emergency. The
Directory was the established government of the nation, and, imbecile as it was,
its overthrow by violence at that time could only lead to anarchy and blood.[466]
pic
AUGEREAU AT THE PONT TOURNANT.
At midnight on the 17th Fructidor (September 3d), twelve thousand men, with
forty pieces of cannon, were silently marched into the city, and surrounded the
Tuileries. A body of the Legislative Guard was stationed at the Pont Tournant,
the entrance-passage to the garden. Augereau approached them at the head of a
numerous staff. "Are you Republicans?" said he. The soldiers immediately
lowered their arms, and shouted "Vive Augereau! Vive le Directoire!" They
fraternized at once with the troops of the Directory. The victory was gained; no
blood was shed. At six o'clock in the morning, when the citizens awoke, they
were surprised to find that a revolution had taken place during the night.
The three victorious directors condemned to banishment their two colleagues,
Carnot and Barthélemy, forty-two members of the Council of Five Hundred,
eleven of the Council of Ancients, several Royalist agents, and forty-two editors,
publishers, and proprietors of counter-revolutionary journals. It is but a wretched
extenuation for these deeds of violence, to assert that, had the Councils gained
the victory, they would have treated the Directory in the same way. The
Directory thus assumed the dictatorship over unhappy, distracted France; but
even that was better than anarchy, and almost any thing was better than a return
to the old Bourbon despotism.[467] This signal defeat crushed the hopes of the
Royalists. The minority of the Councils, who were in the interests of the
Directory, were reassembled in the Odeon and the School of Medicine, and with
this organization the government attempted to carry on the distracted affairs of
the nation.[468]
On the 12th of August Augereau had written to General Bonaparte,
"Nothing is more certain than that, if the public mind is not essentially changed
before the approaching elections, every thing is lost, and a civil war remains as
our last resource."
On the 23d of September Napoleon wrote to Augereau, "The whole army
applauds the wisdom and energy which you have displayed in this crisis, and has
rejoiced sincerely at the success of the patriots. It is only to be hoped, now, that
moderation and wisdom will guide your steps. That is the most ardent wish of
my heart."[469]
But Napoleon was indignant when he heard of the excessive severity adopted by
the Directory. "It might have been right," he wrote, "to deprive Carnot,
Barthélemy, and the fifty deputies of their appointments, and put them under
surveillance in some cities in the interior. Pichegru, Willot, Imbert, Colonne, and
one or two others might justly have expiated their treason on the scaffold.[470]
But to see men of great talent, such as Portalis, Ducoudray, Fontanes; tried
patriots, such as Boissy d'Anglas, Dumolard, Murinais; supreme magistrates,
such as Carnot and Barthélemy, condemned without either trial or accusation, is
frightful. What! to punish with transportation a number of writers of pamphlets,
who deserved only contempt and a trifling correction, was to renew the
proscriptions of the Roman triumvirs. It was to act more cruelly than Fouquier
Tinville; since he, at least, put the accused on their trial, and condemned them
only to death. All the armies, all the people were for a Republic. State necessity
could not be alleged in favor of so revolting an injustice, so flagrant a violation
of the laws and the rights of the citizens."[471]
The Royalists were dismayed by this sudden disaster. The priests and emigrants,
who had returned in great numbers, fled again to the frontiers. Those who were
advancing toward France retreated back to Switzerland and Germany. M. Merlin
and M. François—the one a lawyer, the other a man of letters, and both upright
Republicans—were chosen in the place of Carnot and Barthélemy. The guilt of
Pichegru was fully established. Moreau, in crossing the Rhine, had taken the
papers of General Klinglin, in which he had found the whole treasonable
correspondence of Pichegru with the Prince of Condé.
The Directors now pushed the measures of government with Revolutionary
energy. The British government, finding themselves deprived of every ally, sent
Lord Malmesbury to Paris to negotiate for peace. The British ministry were
willing to give up the colonies which they had wrested from France, but would
not give up the colonies they had wrested from the allies of France, Spain and
Holland. It is difficult to see how the Directory, with any sense of honor
whatever, could, under such circumstances, have abandoned its allies. Upon this
point there was a rupture, and war with England continued to rage.[472]
On the 28th of October the treaty of Campo Formio was signed, which secured
peace with the Emperor of Germany. The Directors had sent to Napoleon an
ultimatum which would have prevented the possibility of peace. Napoleon
boldly rejected their demands, and made peace on his own terms. The nation
hailed the peace with such joy, and Napoleon was now so boundlessly popular,
that the Directors did not dare to refuse their ratification. Napoleon was now
prepared to return to France. He had established the Cisalpine Republic, and
compelled its recognition by the only powers which could endanger its
existence. Before leaving Italy he thus addressed this state in the infancy of its
freedom:
"You are the first people in history who have become free without factions,
without revolutions, without convulsions. We have given you freedom; take care
to preserve it. To be worthy of your destiny, make only discreet and moderate
laws; cause them to be executed with energy; favor the diffusion of knowledge,
and respect religion. Compose your army, not of disreputable men, but of
citizens imbued with the principles of the Republic and closely linked to its
prosperity. You have, in general, need to impress yourselves with the feeling of
your strength, and with the dignity which befits the freeman. Divided, and
bowed down for ages by tyranny, you would not, unaided, have conquered your
liberty. In a few years, if left to yourselves, no power on earth will be strong
enough to wrest it from you. Till then France will protect you against the attacks
of your neighbors; its political system will be united with yours."[473]
The blessings of the Italians were showered upon Napoleon as he departed. As
he entered France he was every where greeted with love, admiration, and
enthusiasm. His progress through the departments was a triumphal march. In
Paris he was received with salvos of artillery, ringing of bells, illuminations, and
the huzzas of the multitude. In the laconic address of Napoleon to the authorities
of government in their grand reception, he uttered sentiments in perfect
accordance with his whole precedent and subsequent career.
"The French people," said he, "in order to be free had kings to combat. To obtain
a Constitution founded on reason it had the prejudices of eighteen centuries to
overcome. The Constitution of the year III. and you have triumphed over all
obstacles. Religion, feudality, royalty, have successively, for twenty centuries
past, governed Europe. But from the peace which you have just concluded dates
the era of representative governments. You have succeeded in organizing the
great nation whose vast territory is circumscribed only because Nature herself
has fixed its limits. You have done more. The two finest countries in Europe,
formerly so renowned for the arts, the sciences, and the great men whose cradle
they were, see with the greatest hopes genius and freedom issuing from the tomb
of their ancestors. These are two pedestals on which destiny is about to place
two powerful nations. I have the honor to deliver to you the treaty signed at
Campo Formio, and ratified by his majesty the emperor. Peace secures the
liberty, the prosperity, and the glory of the Republic. When the happiness of the
French people shall be seated on better organic laws, all Europe will become
free."
Napoleon, having returned to Paris, sought seclusion, laid aside his military
dress, and devoted himself with great assiduity to studies of natural and political
science. He was chosen a member of the Institute, and took his seat between the
distinguished philosophers Lagrange and Laplace. He wrote the following note
in acceptance of his election:
"The suffrage of the distinguished men who compose the Institute honors me. I
feel sensibly that before I can become their equal I must long be their pupil. The
only true conquests, those which awaken no regret, are those we obtain over
ignorance. The most honorable, as the most useful pursuit of nations, is that
which contributes to the extension of the human intellect. The real greatness of
the French Republic ought henceforth to consist in not permitting the existence
of one new idea which has not been added to the national stock."
When subsequently speaking of this period of his life he remarked, "Mankind
are, in the end, always governed by superiority of intellectual qualities, and none
are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return to
Paris from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute and associated with men of
science, I knew what I was doing. I was sure of not being misunderstood by the
lowest drummer of the army."
He was frequently consulted by the Directory on important questions. He had no
confidence in the government of the Directory, and only lent it his support so far
as to prevent the restoration of royalty. The Directory wished him to take
command of a new army, to try to conquer, on the shores of England, a peace
with that government which now alone continued the war. With that object in
view he visited the coast and carefully scrutinized the resources at command for
the invasion of England. He, however, pronounced the project too hazardous,
and convinced the Directory that the only vulnerable point which England
presented was in India. In accordance with this suggestion a secret expedition
was fitted out to invade India by the way of Egypt.
On the 19th of May, 1798, the Egyptian expedition sailed from Toulon. To settle
innumerable minor affairs in reference to the Germanic States, a Congress of
Embassadors, from Austria, France, and Germany had now for some months
been in session at Rastadt. The British government in the mean time vigorously
commenced endeavors to ally the monarchies of Europe in a new war against
France. It appealed to the fears of all the sovereigns by showing them that the
toleration of any republican institutions in Europe endangered all their thrones.
"England," says Thiers, "with a view to foment this fear had filled all the courts
with her emissaries. She urged the new king of Prussia to relinquish his
neutrality, and to preserve Germany from the inundation. She endeavored to
work upon the wrong-headed and violent emperor Paul. She strove to alarm
Austria, and offered her subsidies if she would renew the war. She excited the
silly passions of the Queen of Naples."[474]
All over Europe war began again to menace France. While the commissioners
were negotiating at Rastadt, the armies of the new coalition commenced their
march. There was no alternative before them. Principles of liberty were
spreading rapidly through Europe; and the despotic monarchs could only
maintain their thrones by quenching that spirit in blood. They were compelled
either to fight or to surrender. "The monarchs did right to defend their thrones,"
say the Royalists. "The people did right to defend their liberties," say the
Republicans. So long as there are in the world advocates of aristocratic
assumption and advocates of popular rights so long will these points be
controverted. The Queen of Naples commenced hostilities, without any
declaration of war, by sending an army of fifty thousand men to drive the French
out of Italy, in November, 1798. The French armies now crossed the Rhine and
entered Germany. The Russian and the Austrian armies were immediately on the
move. The French embassadors at Rastadt received orders to leave in twentyfour
hours. At nine o'clock in the evening of the 28th of April the three
ministers, Debry, Bonnier, and Roberjeot, set out with their families. They
occupied three carriages. They had hardly left the town, when, in the darkness, a
troop of Austrian hussars rushed upon them, and, dragging the helpless
embassadors from their coaches, cut them down in the presence of their wives
and children. The ruffians plundered the carriages and carried off all the papers.
Debry, though left senseless and supposed to be dead, revived, and, covered with
wounds and blood, crawled back to Rastadt. This execrable violation of the law
of nations, so unheard of among civilized people, excited the detestation of
Europe. War, ferocious and implacable, was again renewed in all its horrors.[475]
pic
ASSASSINATION OF THE EMBASSADORS AT RASTADT.
Every thing was now in confusion, and universal discontent rose up around the
Directory. France was distracted by hostile parties, while triumphant armies were
crowding her frontiers. All social ties were dissolved. Unprincipled rapacity
characterized the measures of government. Religion was abolished and the
administration of justice seemed a farce. The laws were disregarded; violence
reigned unchecked; intriguing factions succeeded each other, while Jacobins,
Royalists, and Republicans were struggling for the supremacy. The people,
disgusted with this state of anarchy, were longing for a deliverer who would
rescue the government from disgrace and at the same time save France from
falling back under the despotism of the Bourbons.
Napoleon, in Egypt, informed of this state of affairs, decided immediately to
return to France. He landed at Frejus on the 9th of October, 1799, and traversed
France, from the Mediterranean to Paris, through a constant scene of rejoicing.
Such universal enthusiasm awaited him, that without the shedding of a drop of
blood he overthrew the imbecile government of the Directory and established the
Consulate. The nation received this change with almost universal applause. For
the narrative of these events and the subsequent career of the Revolution the
reader must be referred to the History of Napoleon Bonaparte.
FOOTNOTES:
[464] Mémoires de Napoléon, dict. au Montholon et Gourgaud, vol. iv., p. 96, 97.
[465] "Unquestionably, sir," replied the duke, "I desire as much as you the attainment of peace for the
happiness of the people and of humanity. Considering, however, that in the situation which I hold, it is no
part of my business to inquire into and determine the quarrel of the belligerent powers, and that I am not
furnished, on the part of the emperor, with any plenipotentiary powers for treating, you will excuse me,
general, if I do not enter into negotiation with you touching a matter of the highest importance, but which
does not lie within my department. Whatever shall happen, either respecting the future chances of war or
the prospects of peace, I request you to be equally convinced of my distinguished esteem."
[466] "The Directory became alarmed for their own existence. It had already been ascertained that 190 of
the deputies had been engaged to restore the exiled royal family, while the Directory could only reckon on
the support of 130; and the Ancients had resolved, by a large majority, to transfer the seat of the Legislature
to Rouen, on account of its proximity to the western provinces, whose Royalist principles had always been
so decided. The next election, it was expected, would nearly extinguish the Revolutionary party; and the
Directory were aware that the transition was easy, for regicides, as the greater part of them were, from the
Luxembourg to the scaffold."—Alison, vol. i., p. 491.
[467] "We may say that, on the 18th Fructidor of the year V., it was necessary that the Directory should
triumph over the counter-revolution, by decimating the Councils; or that the Councils should triumph over
the Republic, by overthrowing the Directory. The question thus stated, it remains to inquire, first, if the
Directory could have conquered by any other means than a coup d'état, and, secondly, whether it misused
its victory."—Mignet, p. 338.
[468] "Though France suffered extremely from the usurpation which overthrew its electoral government,
and substituted the empire of force for the chimeras of democracy, there seems no reason to believe that a
more just or equitable government could, at that period, have been substituted in its room."—Alison, vol. i.,
p. 496.
[469] Bourrienne, vol. i., p. 250.
[470] These men were in constant correspondence with the Bourbons, and were conspiring for their
restoration.
[471] Mémoires de Napoleon, dict. au Montholon et Gourgaud, vol. iv., p. 233.
"The 18th Fructidor is the true era of the commencement of military despotism in France. The subsequent
government of the country was but a succession of illegal usurpations on the part of the depositaries of
power, in which the people had no share, and by which their rights were equally invaded, until tranquillity
was restored by the vigorous hand of Napoleon."—Alison, vol. i., p. 496.
[472] Mignet says, "The offers of Pitt not being sincere, the Directory did not allow itself to be deceived by
diplomatic stratagems. The negotiations were twice broken off, and war continued between the two powers.
While England negotiated at Lille, she was preparing at St. Petersburg the triple alliance or second
coalition."—Mignet, p. 341.
[473] Mem. de Napoleon, dict. au Month, et Gourgaud, vol. iv., p. 271.
The English Tory historians, such as Scott and Alison, denounce France vehemently for refusing to
abandon her allies, Spain and Holland, for the sake of peace with England. At the same time they load
Napoleon with epithets of infamy for refusing to continue a bloody war with Austria for the sake of
protecting an aristocratic and perfidious enemy, Venice, from the rapacity of Austria, an ally with Venice in
the unjust war upon France. The remarks of Alison upon this subject are a melancholy exhibition of the
power of prejudice to prevent the sense of justice. "Austria," writes T.W. Redhead, "nefariously
appropriated the possessions of a faithful and attached ally, while France did but consent to the despoilment
of a hostile government, ready to assail her upon the least reverse."—The French Revolutions, vol. ii., p.
100.
[474] Thiers, vol. iv., p. 334.
[475] "Our plenipotentiaries were massacred at Rastadt, and notwithstanding the indignation expressed by
all France at that atrocity, vengeance was still very tardy in overtaking the assassins. The two Councils were
the first to render a melancholy tribute of honor to the victims. Who that saw that ceremony ever forgot its
solemnity? Who can recollect without emotion the religious silence which reigned throughout the hall and
galleries when the vote was put? The president then turned toward the curule chairs of the victims, on
which lay the official costume of the assassinated representatives, covered with black crape, bent over
them, pronounced the names of Roberjeot and Bonnier, and added, in a voice the tone of which was always
thrilling, ASSASSINATED AT THE CONGRESS OF RASTADT. Immediately all the representatives responded, 'May
their blood be upon the heads of their murderers.'"—Duchess of Abrantes, p. 206.
INDEX.
Abbaye, butchery at the, 302.
Abrantes (Duchess of), statement of, 400.
Allies, condition and force of the, 295;
vanquished at Valmy, 306.
American War, its influence upon France, 61.
Amnesty, a general, obtained by Necker, 139;
opposed by Mirabeau, 139.
Anecdote of Verginaud in the prison, 354.
Anne (of Austria), her regency, 27.
Anniversary of destruction of Bastille, preparation for the, 181.
Aristocracy, destroyed by universal education, 46;
of wealth warred against, 331.
Arms taken by the people, 119.
Army, desertion of the officers of the, 241;
(of the interior), formation of the, 412.
Arrangement between king and exiled Parliament, 69.
Arrest of the royal family in their flight, 202.
Assembly (of Notables) meet and overthrow Calonne, 67;
dissolution of the, 68;
National, the name chosen, 91;
hall of the, closed, 93;
shut out of tennis-court, 96;
ordered by the king to dissolve, 98;
good advice of, to the people, 105;
petition to the, for a removal of the foreign troops, 112;
declares itself permanent, 113;
reconciliation of, to the king, 125;
recognized government of France, 127;
three parties in the, 144;
Marat's opinion of the, 146;
members of the, threatened, 149;
change of name, 167;
(Constituent), vote themselves the Church treasures, 170;
resolve of, concerning the king's escape, 210;
preparations for defense by the, 211;
address of, to the French nation, 215;
threatened by Marquis Bouillé, 222;
decree of, declaring journey of the king faultless, 224;
influence of the, declining, 226;
denounced as traitors, 226;
receives the mandate of the Jacobins, 228;
Constitution completed by the, 230;
decree of, dissolving itself, 234;
dissolution of the, 235;
(Legislative), sends forces to the frontier, 247;
sends the king's troops to the frontier, 276;
unpopularity of, 280;
the king seeks refuge with the, 285;
the, stormed by the mob, 286;
decrees the suspension of the king, 289;
overawed by the Jacobins, 295;
decree of, that two thirds of their own number should be elected to the new
legislative bodies, 403.
See also CONVENTION.
Assignats, how secured, 170.
Augereau, bloodless victory of, 423.
Austria, reply of, to the French embassador, 245;
Francis II. ascends the throne of, 246;
demands of, that France should restore despotic power, 249.
Autun (Bishop of), answer of Napoleon to the, 231.
Bagatelle, pleasure-house of the Count d'Artois, 72.
Bailly (Mons.), attempt to eject him from Assembly, 101;
resigns presidency of the Assembly, 105;
testimony of, regarding the king, 111;
resigns his post as Mayor of Paris, 243;
execution of, 362.
Banishment of Parliament to Troyes, 69;
result of, in Paris, 69.
Bank, establishment of a, 36.
Bankruptcy in France, 36;
the national, described 63;
a partial, 76.
Barnave, character of, 216;
influence of conversation of, on queen, 217;
speech of, on governments, 225;
his last interview with the queen, 252.
Baronial times, France during the, 22.
Barras, assumes the command of the National Guard, 384;
nominates Napoleon as commander of the army, 404.
Barry (Madam du), character of, 43.
Bastille, storming of the, decided upon, 118;
attack on the, 120;
surrendered by its garrison, 121;
garrisoned by the people, 123;
influence of the fall of, upon the court, 123;
the, ordered to be demolished, 130;
description of the, 53;
anniversary of destruction of, 182;
site of the, converted into a ball-room, 186.
Beaurepaire (General), suicide of, 299.
Bed of justice, the custom, 68.
Beggary now becoming universal, 169.
Bensenval exhorts De Launey to be firm, 120.
Berthier, character of, 135;
death of, 137.
Bertrand de Moleville, interview of, with the king, 236.
Bible, how used by the Papists, 48;
reason of its rejection by corrupt men, 49.
Bill of Rights and Constitution, 145.
Billaud Varennes, speech of, 392.
Birth, in the minds of the nobility, superior even to genius, 45.
Bohemia, war declared against, by France, 249.
Boissy d'Anglas, heroism of, 400.
Bonaparte (Napoleon), his boyhood, 76;
eloquence of, 230;
opinion of, touching discipline of troops, 231;
confers the cross of the Legion of Honor upon a tragedian, 178;
remarks of, upon the riot, 301;
his first action in the Revolution, 374;
intrusted with the defense of Paris, 405;
receives the thanks of the Convention, 409;
his support of the Directory, 413;
ill health of, 420;
letter of, to Archduke Charles, 421;
reply to the same, 422;
return of, to Paris, 426;
return of, from Egypt, 429.
Bouillé (Marquis de), plans and executes the escape of the royal family, 196;
attempt of, to rescue the king, 209;
letter of, to the Assembly, 222.
Bourrienne, statement of, in regard to the mob of 20th of June, 260.
Bread, scarcity of, 152.
Brézé, his attempt to enforce orders of the king, 99;
receives orders not to neglect the Assembly, 100.
Brienne (Archbishop), succeeds Calonne, 67;
his measure for the preservation of the national credit, 68;
dissolves the Assembly of Notables, 68;
his fall, 68;
his perplexity, 73;
determines to break down Parliament, 73;
his plan, 73;
desires Necker to take controllership of finances, 76;
resigns and goes to Italy, 77.
Brissot (Mons.), speech of, against the king, 270.
Broglie (Marshal) commands in Versailles, 103;
letter of, to Prince of Condé, 111.
Brunswick (Duke of), proclamation of the, 279.
Burke (Edmund), "Reflections" by, 187;
his speech on the imprisonment of La Fayette, 298.
Buzot, death of, 362.
Cæsar, subjugation of Gaul by, 17.
Calonne, his appointment as minister of finance, 65;
his measures, popularity, and success, 65;
recommends an assembly of notables, 66;
his banishment from office, 67.
Camille Desmoulins. See DESMOULINS.
Campan (Madame), her account of the queen's troubles, 72;
statement of, concerning the king, 238.
Capetian dynasty, extent of the, 24.
Carlovingian dynasty (the), 20;
end of the, 24.
Carlyle, statement of, 402.
Carmelites, butchery at the, 302.
Carnot, energy of, in organizing armies, 341;
purity of, 420;
banishment of, 424.
Carrier, horrible brutality of, 342.
Catalan (Monsieur), imprisonment of, in the Bastille, 56.
Catherine (of Russia), letter of, to Leopold, 245.
Catholics incited by the ecclesiastics against the Protestants, 174.
Cécile Regnault arrested on suspicion of being an assassin, 376.
Champagne (Count of), generosity of the, 23.
Champs de Mai, change of the name of Champs de Mars to, 20.
Champs de Mars, meetings on the, 19.
Charette, arrest and execution of, 413.
Charlemagne, policy of the government of, 20;
Christianity during the reign of, 21.
Charles X. See D'ARTOIS.
Charles Martel, power and death of, 20.
Charlotte Corday, character of, 337;
assassinates Marat, 338;
execution of, 339.
Chateauroux (Duchess of), death of, 39.
Chatelet, convicts of, driven into cells by the people, 115.
Choiseul (Duke de), boldness of, 205.
Christianity, corruptions of the Catholic Church imputed to, 47;
confounded with its corruptions, 47;
the corner-stone of democracy, 48;
two classes of assailants, 49;
decrees advocating the existence of the Supreme Being, 375;
state of, during Charlemagne's reign, 21;
renunciation of, 360.
See also SUPREME BEING.
Church, decrepitude of the, invites attack, 48;
its protection of vice in high places, 48;
the, deprived of its property by the vote of the Assembly, 170;
members of the, deprived of their position for refusing to take the oath, 191;
the, affected by the Constitution, 242.
Cispadane Republic, the first Assembly of the, 417.
Citizens of Paris placed under surveillance, 296.
Citizens' Guard organized, 116.
See also GUARD.
Clergy, their opposition to Calonne's measures, 67;
character of the, 23;
endeavor of the, to use religion against the Revolution, 173;
vast wealth of the, 170.
Clermont, danger of the king at, 200.
Clery, his faithful devotion to the royal family, 313;
shrewd expedient of, to ascertain news, 314.
Clovis, character of, illustrated, 18;
the reign of, 19.
Coblentz, preparations for war at, 241.
Cockade of the Revolution chosen, 117;
accepted by Louis XVI., 130;
the queen's idea of its meaning, 132;
the tricolor, the uniform of France, 138.
Committee of Public Safety, establishment of the, 361.
Commune of Paris, efforts of the, to break up the conspiracy of the Royalists,
295.
"Compte Rendu au Roi," effect of the publication of, 63.
Condorcet, death of, 362.
Conspiracy of nobles to overturn Assembly, 102.
Constitution, assent of the king to the, 232;
notice of the, by the European powers, 240;
accepted by the king, 175;
and Bill of Rights, 145;
a new Jacobin, enacted, 337;
proclamation of the, 233;
presentation of the, to the king, 231;
formation of, by the Assembly, 230.
Constitutional party, cause of the decline of the, 268.
Convention (National), the, declares war against England, 331;
liberal laws enacted by the, 358;
attack on the, by Henriot, 384;
stormy meeting at the, between the Jacobins and Thermidorians, 393;
decrees of, against the insurrection, 400;
session of the, 409;
remarks of Thiers on the, 410;
elections for the, 408;
spirit of the, 409.
Corn-dealers, attack upon the, 134.
Council (of the Ancients), formation of the, 403;
(of Five Hundred), the, 403.
Count d'Artois (Charles X.) placed in command of an army from England, 412;
letter of Napoleon to, 421;
his reply, 422.
Court, extravagance of the, 49;
haste of, to leave Versailles, 58;
more feared by the people than the Parliament, 71;
the, driven to the importation of Swiss troops, 104;
how affected by capture of the Bastille, 123;
employs emissaries to buy up and destroy the bread, 152;
its plans, 156;
exultation of, at the arrival of the Flanders regiment, 157;
the, prosecutes Mirabeau and the Duke of Orleans, 188.
Courtiers' reasons for unbelief, 49.
Credit, public, condition of, in France at this time, 65.
Crown, policy of the officers of the, in keeping the nobles poor, 46;
salary of the, fixed, 177.
Currency, recoining of the, 35.
D'Agoust (Captain) turns the Parliament of Paris into the street, 75.
D'Aguillon (Duke), services of the, 139.
D'Artois (Count), accused of adultery with the queen, 72.
D'Aumont (Duke), defense of, by La Fayette, 211.
D'Espréménil obtains the edict establishing the courts, 73;
discovers Brienne's plan to the Parliament, 74.
D'Estaing (Admiral), commander of the National Guards of Versailles, 156;
letter of, to Marie Antoinette, 157.
Danton appointed minister of justice, 290;
remarkable prediction of, to Louis Philippe, 307;
arrested and executed, 366.
Dauphin, imprisonment of the, 351;
death of the, 412.
De Launey, conduct of, at the storming of the Bastille, 119;
attempts to blow up the Bastille, 121;
death of, 122.
De Tocqueville, his reasons for the bad odor of Christianity, 48;
explanation of, concerning
the blindness of the ruling classes to their danger, 49.
Death, how regarded by revolutionary writers, 47.
Debts of France at the death of Louis XIV., 35.
Decisions (judicial), bought and sold, 49.
Declaration of Louis XVI. of the object of his leaving Paris, 221.
Decree establishing the courts a perfect failure, 75, 76.
Deséze, appeal of, for the king, 324.
Desmoulins (Camille), incites to rebellion, 108;
his oratory, 149;
speech of, on the ten dollar decree, 172;
interview of, with La Fayette, 213;
remorse of, on the condemnation of the Girondists, 354;
letter of, to his wife, 368;
terror of, at the prospect of death, 371;
execution of, 372.
Desmoulins (Lucile), letter of, to Robespierre, 368;
heroism and condemnation of, 371;
execution of, 373.
Desodoards, his description of the state of Paris, 358.
Despotism of the Court more oppressive than that of the Parliament, 71.
Dessault, his "crime" and sufferings, 55;
years of, in prison, 56.
Diamond Necklace, the, 72.
Diderot, his connection with the "Encyclopedia," 48;
commences by attacking Christianity, 48;
imprisonment of, 48.
Directory, formation of the, 411;
Napoleon's agency in supporting the, 413;
message of the, 419;
the two parties in the, 420.
Drouet discovers the king, 200;
arrests the royal family at Varennes, 201.
Dubois, character of, 36.
Duke of Orleans regent, 34;
character of the regency, 35;
death of the, 36;
insult of, at the Tuileries, 240.
Dumont, description of affairs by, 114;
account of Mirabeau's influence, 149.
Dumouriez, interview of, with the queen, 247;
entreats the king to sanction the decree of the Assembly, 253;
his traitorous surrender of fortresses to the Austrians, 333;
retires to Switzerland, 334.
Ecclesiastics superseded in office for refusing the oath, 191.
Edgeworth (Monsieur), visits the king at the Temple, 325.
Edict of Nantes, proclamation of, by Henry IV., 31;
revocation of, by Louis XIV., 31.
Edicts issued against Protestants by Louis XIV., 29.
Education removes the superiority of the hereditary nobility, 46.
Electors of Paris solicit the organization of Citizens' Guard, 112;
deputation of, 115;
by their acts become a new government, 117.
Elizabeth (Madame, sister of the queen), execution of, 351.
England, war declared against, by the National Convention, 331;
determination of, to crush the Republic, 396;
energy of, in prosecuting the war against France, 402;
expedition from, to rouse the Royalists, 411;
her price for peace, 418.
Enthusiasm in France awakened by American Revolution, 60.
Equality, universal, origin of inquiry into, 47.
Etiquette, want of, on the part of the Assembly toward the king, 238.
Europe, reply of the powers of, to the French Constitution, 240.
Executions, rapid increase of, 377.
Extravagance of Court, effect of, on nation, 49.
Famine in Paris, 398.
Fanaticism excited by the ecclesiastics, 174.
Fauchet (Abbé), sermon of, 144.
Favorites of the king accustomed to obtain blank and sealed lettres de cachet,
53.
Favrus (Marquis of), accused of attempt to assassinate La Fayette and Bailly,
175; trial and sentence of, 179.
Fersen (Count), aids the royal family in their flight, 199.
Feudal system, rise of the, from the remains of Charlemagne's empire, 22;
period of the, 24;
state of society to which it is adapted, 46;
like darkness before light, is dispersed by popular intelligence, 46;
its decline, 46;
privileges of the, surrendered, 140.
Field of Mars, assemblage of the people at the, 301.
Flesselles (Mayor), cheats the people, 118;
death of, 122.
Fleurus, battle of, 391.
Food, want of, begins to be felt, 133.
Foulon, account of, 135;
death of, 136.
Fouquier Tinville, fall of, 391.
France, origin of the name of, 18;
condition of, during reign of Louis XIV., 34;
the sources of peril of, 264;
the three parties in, 267;
invaded by the Allies in 1792, 276;
utter confusion in, 428.
Francis II. ascends the throne of Austria, 246.
François, a baker, hung by the mob, 167.
Franklin (Benjamin), effect of his simplicity upon the French, 61.
Fraternity the watch-word of the masses, 47;
this principle the soul of the Revolution, 47.
Frederick II. of Prussia, friendship of, for Voltaire, 49.
Free institutions supported by education, 46.
French Academy established, 27.
Gamin, master blacksmith to the king, 65;
account by, of the king's character, 65.
Garde du Corps, conflict of, with the people, 161.
Gaul, its appearance in ancient times, 17;
subjugation of, by Cæsar, 17;
the home of war and tumult, 18.
Generosity of the king and others, 152.
Genius, inability of, to efface ignoble birth, 45.
Girondists, cause of the name of, 246;
joy of the, on the Republic being proclaimed, 309;
plot to assassinate the, 332;
the, arrested, 337;
brought before the Revolutionary tribunal, 353;
condemnation of the, 354;
last supper of the, 355;
execution of the, 356.
Goguelat (M. de), shot by the National Guard, 206.
"Golden age of kings," the, 29.
Government, its desire to keep the people poor, 50;
the, of the National Assembly established, 127.
Grenelle, attack on the camp at, 417.
Grenoble, Parliament at, refuses to surrender to the lettres de cachet, 75.
Guard, National, formed and placed under command, 126.
Guards, the French, protect the people, 110;
refuse to accept pardon, 128.
Guillotin (Dr.), proposes the use of his instrument, 173.
Gustavus III. (of Sweden), assassination of, 247.
Hebert, the leader in Paris, 364;
downfall and death of, 365.
Hebertists, execution of the, 365.
Henriot, arrest of, 383.
Henry (of Bourbon), death of, 27.
Henry III., the last of the Valois, death of, 27.
Henry IV. ascends the throne, 27;
character of his reign, 27;
death of, 27.
Holland, the Allies driven from, 394.
Hugh Capet seizes the French throne, 24.
Hungary, war declared against, by France, 249.
Imprisonment, horrors of, in the Bastille, 54.
Infidel writers during reign of Louis XV., 42.
Infidelity becomes the fashion, and why, 48.
Insult to the deputies of the people, 86.
Insurrection, cause of failure of the, 46;
reason for, 46;
planned against the National Convention, 400.
Intellect, if of the lower class, thought lightly of, 45.
Invasion, the fear of, arms France, 142.
Ireland, hatred of the people of, against England, 418;
expedition to, 419.
Iron chest, building of the, 252.
Isnard (Monsieur), speech of, on the Austrian war, 249.
Italian campaign, the victories of the, 421.
Italy, the campaign in, 415.
Jacobin Club, demand of, for the deposition of the king, 227;
present their mandate to the Assembly, 228;
their resolve to dethrone the king, 277;
become the dominant power in France, 295;
club-house of the, closed, 394.
Jacobins, origin of the, 75;
arrive at the summit of their power, 214;
the influence of the, 225.
Jacquerie, insurrection of the, 26.
Jefferson (Thomas), opinion of, on the condition of the French, 52;
letter of, to Mr. Jay, on the States-General, 81;
probably aided in composition of Bill of Rights, 107;
assists in preparing the Declaration of Rights, 147;
remarks of, upon the questions of the day, 154;
opinion of, concerning Louis XVI., 329.
Jemappes, battle of, 310.
Jeunesse Dorée, rise of the band of, 390.
Joseph II. of Austria, reply of, upon the subject of the American War of
Independence, 61.
Josephine Beauharnais imprisoned in Paris, 378.
Judges bought their offices and sold their decisions, 49.
King. See LOUIS XVI.
Kleber, victories of, on the Upper Rhine, 395.
Laclos, editor of the Jacobin Journal, 225.
La Fayette (Marquis de), advocates the American War of Independence, 61;
his boldness at the Assembly of Notables, 67;
joins the National Assembly, 101;
vice-president of National Assembly, 106;
presents the Assembly with the Bill of Rights, 107;
made commander of the National Guard, 126;
informs the Parisians of the king's speech, 126;
attempt of, to save Foulon, 136;
makes the Declaration of Rights, 147;
danger of, 150;
popularity of, declines, 155;
his knowledge of the royalist plots, 156;
saves the palace from destruction, 161;
presents and reconciles the queen to the people, 163;
ensures the safety of the queen's guard, 163;
confidence of, in the people, 183;
takes the oath of fidelity, 183;
accused by the people of treason, 210;
issues an order for arrest of the king, 210;
assumption of power by, 210;
boldness of, in rescuing d'Aumont, 211;
interview of, with Desmoulins, 213;
insult to, by the queen, 220;
unpopularity of, 226;
dispersion of the Jacobin mob by, 228;
aversion of the queen toward, 240;
resigns the command of the National Guard, 243;
his speech to the Assembly on the outrages of 20th of June, 263;
burned in effigy, 264;
his plan for saving the king, 271;
calumniated by orders of the queen, 273;
denounced as a traitor, 280;
arrested and imprisoned at Olmutz, 297.
La Force, prison of, broken open, 115.
La Pérouse, instructions for his voyage framed, 58.
La Vendée, rise of the Royalists in, 332;
insurrection at, crushed, 342;
horrible executions in, 343.
Lamballe (Princess), trial and execution of, 303.
Lamotte, Comtesse, 72.
Land, proportion owned by the tax-payers, 50;
difficulty of purchasing, 52.
Latude, his imprisonment, 56;
account of his captivity, 57.
Launey (M. de), character of, 118.
Lebrun appointed minister of foreign affairs, 290.
Lefebvre (Abbé), distributes powder to the people, 117.
Légendre, attempt of, to save Danton, 367.
Legislative Assembly, formation of the, 237;
measures of the, against the non-conforming priests, 243.
See also ASSEMBLY.
Legislature, how should it be constituted? 148.
Leopold, death of, 246.
See also AUSTRIA.
Lepelletier, assassination of, 330.
Letters, anonymous, to Louis XV., 41;
men of, regarded as curiosities, 46.
Lettres de cachet, blank, filled up by the king's favorites, 53;
number issued during the reign of Louis XV., 55;
ease with which they were obtained, 55;
abolished by the National Assembly, 236.
Liancourt (Duke of), midnight interview of, with the king, 123.
Libertines still infidels, but not openly, 47.
Literature and art, state of, during reign of Louis XIV., 33.
Loan, one hundred millions of dollars on people alone, 69.
Louis Capet. See LOUIS XVI.
Louis Philippe, poverty of, 334;
prediction of Danton to, 507.
Louis XIII., his reign, 27.
Louis XIV., death of, 33;
state of society during his reign, 25;
character of, 29.
Louis XV., marriage of, 38;
length of the reign of, 38;
political reasons of, for countenancing Voltaire, 49;
one hundred and fifty thousand lettres de cachet during the reign of, 55;
death of, 57.
Louis XVI., absolute power of, 53;
character of, 58;
commencement of, as king, 58;
appointment of his ministers, 59;
love of, for blacksmiths' work, 65;
orders Parliament to register decree taxing all lands alike, 68;
banishes Parliament to Troyes, 69;
banishes the Duke d'Orleans, 70;
decrees an equal representation in States-General, 79;
orders Brézé not to molest the National Assembly, 100;
character of, by M. Bailly, 111;
midnight interview of Duke of Liancourt with, 123;
visits and explains himself to the Assembly, 124;
conducted in triumph to the palace, 125;
his loss of power, 127;
recalls Necker, 128;
visits the Parisians, 129;
accepts the acts of the people, 130;
accepts the tricolored cockade, 130;
reception of, by the French people, 131;
gives money to the poor, 133;
decides to obey the people, 162;
walks alone among the people, 166;
rumors of attempts to carry off, 175;
visit of, to the Assembly, 175;
speech of, at the Assembly, 176;
takes the oath to the people, 184;
effect of the death of Mirabeau upon, 195;
intentions of, relating to flight, 196;
surrounded by the National Guards, 197;
flight of, 198;
discovered by Drouet, 200;
arrested at Varennes, 201;
appearance of, after arrest, 204;
influence of the appearance of, 207;
carried back to Paris, 208;
prophetical exclamation of, 208;
injudicious memorial of, 212;
return of, to Paris from Varennes, 215;
entrance of, into Paris, 218;
offers a declaration of the object of his leaving Paris, 221;
presentation of the Constitution to, 231;
cordial assent of, to the Constitution, 232;
takes the oath to support the Constitution, 232;
reception of, by the Assembly, 234;
experience of, in the variableness of the mob, 234;
remarks of, to Bertrand de Moleville, 236;
the Assembly addressed by, 238;
proclamation of, to the emigrants at Coblentz, 242;
letter of, to Louis Stanislas Xavier, 242;
his protection of the non-conforming priests, 243;
speech of, to the Assembly, 244;
declares war against Austria, 246;
speech of, to the Assembly on the demands of Austria, 249;
deplorable dejection of, 254;
character of, described by the queen, 267;
plans for the escape of, 271;
his silk breast-plate, 275;
petitions for his dethronement, 280;
insulted in the garden, 283;
takes refuge with the National Assembly, 285;
suspended by the National Assembly, 289;
a prisoner, 292;
taken to the Temple, 294;
insults of, at the Temple, 311;
summoned to appear before the Revolutionary Tribunal, 315;
trial of, 316;
anecdote concerning, 317;
informed of his condemnation, 324;
his last interview with his family, 325;
his bequests, 326;
his execution, 329.
Louis XVII. See DAUPHIN.
Louis XVIII. (Count of Provence), reply of, to the letter of the king to, 242.
Lourtalot (Monsieur), incites to the rescue of the soldiers, 104.
Lyons captured by the Revolutionists, 342;
rising of the Royalists at, 398.
Maillard, his judicial labors at the prison of Abbaye, 303.
Mailly (Madame de), favorite of Louis XV., 38.
Malesherbes, execution of, 360.
Marat (Jean Paul), his advice to the people, 105;
opinion of, concerning National Assembly, 146;
desires to abrogate the death penalty, 173;
speech of, to the Jacobin Club, 214;
trial and victory of, 335;
assassination of, 338;
bust of, thrown into the mud, 398.
Marceau, death of, 414.
Maria, wife of Louis XV., 38.
Maria Theresa a prisoner, 292;
taken to the Temple, 294;
liberation of, 351;
marriage and death of, 352.
Marie Antoinette, education of, 58;
her position, 71;
at Trianon, her troubles, 72;
accused of adultery with the Count d'Artois, 72;
involved with Comtesse Lamotte in the public estimation, 72;
intrusts her son to the nobility, 100;
effect of seeing the tricolor worn by the king, 132;
takes the oath of fidelity, 185;
plans the escape of the king, 197;
flight of, 198, 199;
arrested at Varennes, 201;
indignation of, at the disrespect shown to the king, 203;
pleads with the mayor's wife, 206;
insult of, to La Fayette, 220;
respect of, for popular rights, 234;
anguish of, at the disrespect shown the king, 238;
her hatred of La Fayette, 240;
attempt to assassinate, 266;
her opinion of the king's character, 267;
adventures of, in the mob of 20th of June, 287;
the dauphin ordered to be taken from, 346;
taken to the Conciergerie, 347;
trial of, 348;
condemnation and letter of, to her sister, 349;
execution of, 350.
Marly, palace of, 35.
Massat, imprisonment of, in the Bastille, 56.
Masses, wretchedness of the, 47;
their condition during the reign of Louis XV., 52.
Memorial of the king on leaving Paris, 212.
Mercenaries, foreign, collected in Paris, 104.
Merovingian dynasty, the, 18.
Mirabeau, his course to identify himself with the people, 80;
character of, 80;
his expulsion from the Parliament, 80;
his aspect at the States-General, 86;
his formal "Letters to my Constituents," 87;
speech of, upon the dissolution, 99;
compares American and English revolutions with that of France, 102;
speech of, concerning the movements of the army, 106;
his position in the Assembly, 107;
instruction to, of the deputy to the king, 124;
opposes the amnesty, 139;
how regarded by the Parisians, 149;
his motives explained, 152;
supports the confiscation of church property, 171;
defends the Convention from the charge of usurpation, 174;
physical condition of, 189;
interview of, with the queen, 189;
plans of, to overturn the Constitution, 190;
opposition of, to law against emigration, 191;
plot of, for the king's escape, 192;
death of, 193;
funeral of, 194.
Mob becomes fast and furious, 168;
actions of the, on the20th of June, 1792, 255.
Moleville (Bertrand de), remarks of, on the Assembly, 235.
Molière, his reception at the Courtiers' table, 45.
Monarchy supported by the Papacy, 48.
Monge appointed minister of the marine, 290.
Monopolists, hatred of the people against, 134.
Montesquieu explains the national policy to the people, 47.
Moors, incursions of the, into France, 20.
Napoleon. See BONAPARTE.
National bankruptcy described, 63.
National Guard formed, 126;
losing influence, 150;
dispersion of a mob by the, 229.
Necker, appointment of, as minister of finance, 60;
policy of, 60;
his position and struggles, 62;
his "Compte rendu au Roi" and its effect, 63;
recommends formation of provincial parliaments, 63;
his measures and their reception, 64;
recalled, 77;
effects upon the people of his recall, 77;
applauded by the people for refusing to attend the royal sitting, 100;
remarks of, on the conspiracy of the nobles against the National Assembly,
102;
his advice disregarded, 107;
dismissal of, 108;
recalled, 128;
return of, to Paris, 138;
resignation of, 189.
Nemours (Duke of), his accusation and punishment, 54.
Noailles (Viscount de), services of, 139;
arm of the, rejected by the queen, 220.
Nobility, their doctrine regarding the lower class, 45;
hereditary, state of society which abolishes, 46;
much dissatisfied with the decree of equality of representation, 79;
triumph of the, 96, 97;
ordered by the king to join the National Assembly, 101;
dissatisfaction of the, with the Assembly, 101;
conspiracy of the, to overturn Assembly, 102;
yield their feudal rights, 140;
plots of the, 156;
religion of the, 170;
plans of the, 191.
See also NOBLES.
Nobles obliged to unite with the king, and to promise to submit to all the taxes,
90;
abandonment of their chateaux for a metropolitan residence, 45;
income of, in province of Limousin, according to Turgot, 45;
position of the, in the days of feudal grandeur, 46;
now hated by the peasants, 46;
all taxation steadily opposed by the, 65-68;
every where resist the decree of Brienne, 75;
their plan for managing the States-General, 84;
exult in their supposed victory, 100;
forty-seven join the National Assembly, 101;
obstruct the action of the Assembly, 105;
plan of, to regain their ascendency, 141.
Normandy, revolt in, 24.
Notables (Assembly of), recommended by Calonne, 66;
the meeting, 67;
meeting of, called to settle questions about the States-General, 78.
Oath of fidelity taken, 184.
Orleans (Duke of), enters his protest in Parliament against the king's
commands, 70;
banished by the king, 70;
contemplates usurpation, 71;
joins the National Assembly, 101.
Orleans, massacre of the Royalists of, 308.
Oubliettes, description of, 55.
Paine (Thomas), one of the Jacobins, 224.
Papacy the right arm of monarchy, 48.
Parc aux Cerfs, institution of, 40.
Paris, from what it sprung, 19;
state of, on July 12, 1789, 111;
garrisoned by the people, 124;
municipal government of, arrogates supreme power, 145;
events at, on the king's escape, 209;
a new mayor of, chosen, 243;
mob in, on the 9th of August, 1792, 281;
arrest of the Royalists of, 300;
festival in, to celebrate the Jacobin Constitution, 339;
famine in, 398.
Parliament asserts that it has no power to register decrees, 68;
custom of, to register king's decrees, 68;
passes resolution concerning States-General, 69;
its desire to obtain feudal privileges, 73;
forced to surrender D'Espréménil and De Monsabert, 74;
meets and declares its session permanent, 74;
method of the, in receiving the king's commissioners, 76;
its condemnation of La Fayette, 298;
of the provinces abolished, 172.
Parties, number of, in France, 190.
Patronage of men of letters by nobility, nature of, 46.
Paupers, numbers of, 169.
Peasants, their hatred of the nobility and crowd, 46;
call them "vultures," 46;
their fear of tax-collectors, 50;
their difficulties, 52.
"Pensées Philosophiques" burned by execution, 48.
People side with the Parliament, 71;
support their enemies, the Parliaments, 73;
enjoined to send in account of grievances to the States-General, 79;
condition of the, 83;
send in requests to the Assembly, 105;
bear the busts of Necker and Orleans in triumph, 109;
sack the convents for wine and wheat, 115;
arm and garrison the Bastille, 123;
escort the king to the palace, 125;
of Paris desire the king to visit them, 129;
becoming soldiers from fear of invasion, 142;
demand of the, that the king shall go to Paris, 162;
influence of the king's appearance upon the, 207;
enthusiasm of the, at the reading of the Constitution, 234.
Pepin ascends the throne, 20.
Persecution of Protestants renewed, 37;
the argument of the Church, 48.
Pétion chosen Mayor of Paris, 244;
dilatory conduct of, in the mob of 20th of June, 259;
his dismissal from the Tuileries, 262;
petitions the Assembly for the dethronement of the king, 280;
found dead in the forest, 362.
Pharamond, chief of the Franks, 18;
obtains supremacy over Gaul, 18.
Philip (the Fair) establishes his Parliament in Paris, 24.
Philip VI. crowned at Rheims, 25;
luxury of the court of, 25.
Philosophy, of the writers on, 47;
of Revolutionary writers, results of, 47.
Pichegru appointed commander of the Parisian forces, 401.
Piety, its rarity forms an admirable foil to show up the corruption surrounding,
48.
Pitt (William), his approval of Burke's book, 187;
statement of, to the French envoy, 240;
his opinion of La Fayette, 298.
Political economy simplified for the masses, 47.
Politics superior in influence to religion over Louis XV., 49.
Pompadour (Madame de), character of, 39;
death of, 43.
Popular sovereignty, when legitimated in France, 62.
Poverty of nobles in every thing but pride, 45.
Power of France in the hands of nobility, 64;
aid of foreign, to the noblesse, 196.
Priests, attempts of, to rouse the populace, 177.
Prisons, for what purposes used by Jesuits, 55;
number of, in Paris, 55;
terrible suffering in the, 359.
Privileged class, number of, in France during the reign of Louis XV., 45;
dissatisfied with Turgot's measures, 60;
calculation of numerical strength of, 64.
Privileges (feudal). See FEUDAL.
Protestants, persecution of, by Louis XIV., 29;
number of, in France, 30;
"dragooned into Catholic faith," 30;
escape of, from France, 32;
persecution of, renewed, 37.
Province of Vendée, religious troubles in, 243.
See LA VENDÉE.
Provinces, France divided into, 171.
Provincial Parliaments, formation of, recommended by Necker, 63.
See also PARLIAMENT.
Prussia, desire of, to withdraw from the coalition, 396.
Public credit, condition of, in France now, 65.
Rastadt, assassination of the embassadors at, 428.
Rebellion, people incited to, by Camille Desmoulins, 108.
"Reflections," by Edmund Burke, 187.
Reform, few of the nobility in favor of, 79.
Reign of Terror, France surrendered to the, 345;
more endurable than the old dominion, 402.
Religion, how represented by Revolutionary writers, 47;
becomes the policy of the nobles, 170;
the aid of, brought to bear, by the clergy, 173.
See also CHRISTIANITY.
Renville (Constant de), confinement of, in the Bastille, 53.
Republicans, increase of the, 246.
Revolution, its outbreak and failure explained, 46;
list of the victims of the, 379.
Revolutionary Tribunal, origin of the, 296;
trial of the king before the, 322.
Richelieu (Cardinal), his character and influence as a politician, 27;
his death, 27;
cruelty of, to Dessault, 55;
iron-hearted firmness of, 56.
Riot, description of the first, 82;
fomented to prevent meeting of the States-General, 82.
Robespierre (Maximilian), first appearance of, 88;
desires to abolish the death penalty, 173;
demands an act of accusation against the Girondists, 336;
turns against Danton and Desmoulins, 365;
speech of, against Danton, 367;
inexplicable character of, 375;
decrees of, in favor of the existence of the Supreme Being, 375;
supposed attempt to assassinate, 396;
dawning opposition to, 377;
urged to assume the dictatorship, 378;
defeat of, in the Convention, 380;
arrest of, with his brother, 383;
assassination and rearrest of, 386;
condemnation of, 387;
execution of, 388.
Roederer (Monsieur), interview of, with the royal family, 284.
Rohan (Cardinal), involved with Comtesse Lamotte, 72.
Roland (Monsieur), dismissal of, from the office of minister of the interior,
254;
death of, 363.
Roland (Madame), her letter to the king, 254;
anecdote concerning, 309;
death of, 363.
Rollo, an incident related of, 23.
Roman empire, decline of the, 17.
Romeuf (M. de), arrest of the king by, 208.
Rousseau employs his eloquence for Revolution, 47.
Royal decree, customs regarding it, 68.
Royal family, flight of the, 198;
their mode of life in the Temple, 311.
See also LOUIS XVI. and MARIE ANTOINETTE.
Sabbath, attempts to obliterate the, 361.
Salt, duty on, abolished, 172.
Santerre appointed to the command of the National Guard, 296.
Sausse (Madame), answer of, to the applications of the queen, 206.
Schools established by Charlemagne, 21.
Sermon of the Bishop of Nancy, 86;
of Abbé Fauchet, 144.
Sheriff obliged to have a guard, 50.
Sièyes (Abbé), his pamphlet, 78;
his motion in the States-General, 89;
its success, 90;
second pamphlet of, 90.
Societies, the jealousy with which they were regarded, 46.
Society, state of, during the reign of Louis XIV., 28;
state of, at the death of Louis XIV., 33.
Soldiers, brutal conduct of, 30;
become discontented, 103;
coalesce with the people, 103;
arrested for their oath, 104;
scatter the first mob, 109;
a loyal regiment from Flanders ordered to Paris, 157.
Sombrueil, governor of Hôtel des Invalides, character of, 119.
Spain, treaty of France with, 396.
Speech of Marat to the Jacobin Club, 215.
St. Etienne, curate of, heads the people, 119.
St. Huruge, account of him, 150.
States-General convened for May, 76;
debates which arose upon the summoning of, 78;
representation in, how to be determined, 79;
equal representation in, decreed by the king, 79;
the people enjoined to send in account of their grievances to the, 79;
number of members of, 81;
convened, 83;
delegates to, received by the king, 83;
opening of the, 85, 86;
boldness of the third estate, 87;
Necker's reception at the, 87;
attempt of, to ensnare the third estate, 87;
the conflict in the, 88.
See also ASSEMBLY and CONVENTION.
Supreme Being, decrees in favor of the, 375;
festival in honor of the, 376.
Suspected persons, schedule of those liable to arrest, 344.
Suspensive veto, the, approved, 151.
Swiss, the, refuse to fire upon their comrades, 110.
Talleyrand, his remark concerning the diamond necklace, 72.
Tallien, speech of, against Robespierre, 381.
Talma, incident connected with the marriage of, 178.
Taxation so universal that the inventor of a new one was regarded as a man of
genius, 49;
the burden of, fell upon unprivileged classes solely, 49;
artifices used by the peasants to elude, 50;
proportion of land owned by the payers of, 50;
expedients of the collector of, to obtain the, 50;
burden of, computed, 51;
equality of, when nobles would permit it, 98.
Temple, description of the, 293.
Tennis-court, celebration of the meeting at, 255.
Texel, capture of the fleet at, 395.
Theatre, Jacobin riot in the, 239.
Thermidorians, origin of the, 379;
supremacy of the, 389.
Thiers, remarks of, on the National Convention, 410.
Third estate triumphant, 101.
Thouret (Monsieur), presents Constitution to the king, 231.
Thuriot (Monsieur), summons Bastille to surrender, 120.
Title-deeds destroyed by the peasantry, 143.
Titles of noble blood sold, 50.
Tollendal, Lally, speech of, 126.
Toulon surrendered to the Allies, 341.
Tree of feudalism, burning of the, 275.
Trials ordered to be public, 172.
Tribune, a military, advised by Marat, 215.
Tricolor worn by the king, 132.
Tuileries besieged, 286.
Turgot (Monsieur), his appointment and career as minister of finance, 59, 60;
his measures, how accepted, 60.
Unbelief among the courtiers, reasons for, 49.
United States, Revolution of, compared with that of France, 46.
Valmy, battle of, 306.
Valois, history of the house of, 26.
Varennes (the), king and royal family arrived at, 201;
municipality of, request the king to wait, 205.
Vaublanc (M. de), speech of, to the king, 244.
Vergniaud (Monsieur), charges of, against the king, 269;
prophetic solicitude of, 309;
sentences the king to death, 323;
spirit of the Girondists avowed by, 332;
remark of, in the prison to the son of M. Alluaud, 354.
Versailles, chateau of, commenced by Richelieu, 27;
palace of, 35.
Veto, struggle on the part of the nobility to make it absolute, 149.
Vice protected by the Church, 48.
Victims, list of the, of the Revolution, 379.
Vienne, Archbishop of, president of National Assembly, 106.
Vincennes, brilliant festivities and spectacles at, 25.
Voltaire applies his force to assailing the corruption of the Church, 47;
unfairness of his criticisms on Christianity, 47;
befriended by Frederick II. of Prussia, 49;
revisits Paris, 62;
his reception, 62;
his death, 62;
removed to the Pantheon in Paris, 222.
Voting for the deputies in Paris, 79.
Wars, why waged by princes, 51.
Women of Paris, their march to Versailles, 159;
deputation of, to the king, 160.
Writers, revolutionary, views of, on religion, 47;
their influence in brutalizing the people, 47;
the leading, were infidels, 47.
Xavier (Louis Stanislas), letter of the king to, 242.
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