THE FRANCE OF 1789
France was sick. A great change and fever had fallen upon her, and there
was no physician near skilled enough to cure her. Now and then one of
her sons would look upon the pale, wasted features and note the rapidly
throbbing pulse, the wild ravings of the disordered brain, and,
frightened and despondent, would hurry away to consult with his brothers
what should be done. But never to any good. Medicines were tried which
had been potent with others in like sickness, but they seemed only to
increase her delirium or lessen her vitality--never to bring her
strength and reason. Day by day she grew worse. 'Twas as if some quick
poison were working in her veins, until at last the poor body was one
mass of swollen disfigurements, of putrid sores, that only a miracle
from Heaven could heal. As miracles could not be looked for, everyone
who had any skill in such desperate cases was called, and a thousand
different opinions were given, a thousand different cures tried. And
when all was seen to have been in vain, her tortured children, in their
despair, left her and turned upon the false physicians, putting them to
death and with ferocious joy avenging her agonies. And in the quiet
which thus fell upon her, when all had left her to die, the fever and
pain vanished; from her opened veins the poisoned blood dropped away; to
the blinded eyes sight returned; in the distracted brain reason once
more held sway. Slowly and faintly she arose and went about her
business.
It was of that fast-sickening France, of that blighted land of France,
that Mr. Jefferson spoke so earnestly in the gathering darkness of that
winter's day in the year 1789. The storm which had just swept over the
American colonies had passed, leaving wrecks strewn from shore to shore,
'tis true, but a land fairer and greater than ever, a people tried by
adversity and made strong. The tempest, which had been so gallantly
withstood by our ably manned ship of state, had blown across the
Atlantic and was beating upon the unprotected shores of France. The
storm was gathering fast in that most famous year of 1789--the _alpha_
and _omega_ of French history, the ending of all things old, the
beginning of all things new, for France. Two years before the bewildered
Assemblée des Notables had met and had been dismissed to spread their
agitation and disaffection throughout all France by the still more
bewildered Loménie de Brienne, who was trying his hand at the impossible
finances of France after the fall of that magnificent spendthrift,
Monsieur Colonne. He, in turn, had been swept from his office and
replaced by the pompous and incompetent Necker. Lafayette, the _deus ex
machina_ of the times, had asked for his States-General, and now in this
never-sufficiently-to-be-remembered year of 1789 they were to be
convoked.
All France was disquieted by the elections--nay, more, agitated and
agitating. Men who had never thought before were thinking now, and, as
was inevitable to such unused intellects, were thinking badly. For the
first time the common people were permitted to think. For the first time
they were allowed, even urged, to look into their wretched hearts and
tell their lord and king what grievances they found there. What wonder
that when the ashes were raked from the long-smouldering fires of envy,
of injustice, of oppression, of extortion, of misrule of every
conceivable sort, they sprang into fierce flame? What wonder that when
the bonds of silence were loosed from their miserable mouths, such a
wild clamor went up to Heaven as made the king tremble upon his throne
and his ministers shake with fear? Who could tell at what moment this
unlooked-for, unprecedented clemency might be withdrawn and silence once
more be sealed upon them? What wonder, then, that they made the most of
their opportunity? What wonder that, suddenly finding themselves strong,
who had been weak, they _did_ make the most of it?
The world seemed topsy-turvy. Strange ideas and theories were being
written and talked about. Physical science had been revolutionized.
People suddenly discovered that what they had held all their lives to be
facts were entire misconceptions of the truth. And, if they had been so
mistaken about the facts of physical science, might they not be equally
mistaken about theology, about law, about politics? Everywhere was
doubt and questioning. Revolution was in the air. It was the fashion,
and the young French officers returned from the War of Independence in
the American colonies found themselves alike the heroes of the common
people and of the fashionable world.
True to its nature, the nobility played with revolution as it had played
with everything from the beginning of time. It played with reform, with
suggestions to abandon its privileges, its titles, with the freedom of
the newly born press, with the prerogatives of the crown, with the tiers
état, with life, liberty, and happiness. It was a dangerous game, and in
the danger lay its fascination. Society felt its foundations shake, and
the more insecure it felt itself to be the more feverish seemed its
desire to enjoy life to the dregs, to seize upon that fleet-footed
Pleasure who ever kept ahead of her pursuers. There was a constant
succession of balls, dramatic fêtes, dinner-parties, of official
entertainments by the members of the diplomatic corps in this volcanic
year of 1789. The ministers of Louis's court, being at their wits' end
to know what was to be done to allay the disturbances, were of the mind
that they could and would, at least, enjoy themselves. The King having
always been at his wits' end was not conscious of being in any unusual
or dangerous position. As short-sighted mentally as he was physically,
he saw in the popular excitement of the times nothing to dread.
Conscious of his own good intentions toward his people, he saw nothing
in their ever-increasing demands but evidences of a spirit of progress
which he was the first to applaud. Unmindful of the fact that "the most
dangerous moment for a bad government is the moment when it meddles with
reform," he yielded everything. The nobles, noting with bitterness his
concessions to the tiers état, told themselves that the King had
abandoned them; the common people, suspicious and bewildered, told
themselves that their King was but deceiving them. The King, informed of
the hostile attitude of the nobility and the ingratitude of the masses,
vacillated between his own generous impulses and the despotic demands of
the court party. By the King's weakness, more than by all else, were
loosened the foundations of that throne of France, already tottering
under its long-accumulated weight of injustice, of mad extravagance, of
dissoluteness, of bloody crime.
Nature herself seemed to be in league with the discontent of the times.
A long drouth in the summer, which had made the poor harvests poorer
still, was followed by that famous winter of 1789--that winter of
merciless, of unexampled, cold for France. And in the heat of that long
summer and in the cold of that still longer winter, the storm gathered
fast which was to rise higher and higher until it should beat upon the
very throne itself, and all that was left of honor and justice in France
should perish therein.