Kings and Emigrants.
Extremely rheumatic Constitutions have been known to march, and
keep on their feet, though in a staggering sprawling manner, for
long periods, in virtue of one thing only: that the _Head_ were
healthy. But this Head of the French Constitution! What King
Louis is and cannot help being, Readers already know. A King who
cannot take the Constitution, nor reject the Constitution: nor do
anything at all, but miserably ask, What shall I do? A King
environed with endless confusions; in whose own mind is no germ
of order. Haughty implacable remnants of Noblesse struggling with
humiliated repentant Barnave-Lameths: struggling in that obscure
element of fetchers and carriers, of Half-pay braggarts from the
Café Valois, of Chambermaids, whisperers, and subaltern officious
persons; fierce Patriotism looking on all the while, more and
more suspicious, from without: what, in such struggle, can they
do? At best, _cancel_ one another, and produce _zero_. Poor King!
Barnave and your Senatorial Jaucourts speak earnestly into this
ear; Bertrand-Moleville, and Messengers from Coblentz, speak
earnestly into that: the poor Royal head turns to the one side
and to the other side; can turn itself fixedly to no side. Let
Decency drop a veil over it: sorrier misery was seldom enacted in
the world. This one small fact, does it not throw the saddest
light on much? The Queen is lamenting to Madam Campan: ‘What am I
to do? When they, these Barnaves, get us advised to any step
which the Noblesse do not like, then I am pouted at; nobody comes
to my card table; the King’s Couchée is solitary.’[428] In such a
case of dubiety, what _is_ one to do? Go inevitably to the
ground!
The King has accepted this Constitution, knowing beforehand that
it will not serve: he studies it, and executes it in the hope
mainly that it will be found inexecutable. King’s Ships lie
rotting in harbour, their officers gone; the Armies disorganised;
robbers scour the highways, which wear down unrepaired; all
Public Service lies slack and waste: the Executive makes no
effort, or an effort only to throw the blame on the Constitution.
Shamming death, “_faisant le mort!_” What Constitution, use it in
this manner, can march? “Grow to disgust the Nation” it will
truly,[429]—unless _you_ first grow to disgust the Nation! It is
Bertrand de Moleville’s plan, and his Majesty’s; the best they
can form.
Or if, after all, this best-plan proved too slow; proved a
failure? Provident of that too, the Queen, shrouded in deepest
mystery, “writes all day, in cipher, day after day, to Coblentz;”
Engineer Goguelat, he of the _Night of Spurs_, whom the Lafayette
Amnesty has delivered from Prison, rides and runs. Now and then,
on fit occasion, a Royal familiar visit can be paid to that Salle
de Manége, an affecting encouraging Royal Speech (sincere, doubt
it not, for the moment) can be delivered there, and the Senators
all cheer and almost weep;—at the same time Mallet du Pan has
visibly ceased editing, and invisibly bears abroad a King’s
Autograph, soliciting help from the Foreign Potentates.[430]
Unhappy Louis, _do_ this thing or else that other,—if thou
couldst!
The thing which the King’s Government did do was to stagger
distractedly from contradiction to contradiction; and wedding
Fire to Water, envelope itself in hissing, and ashy steam! Danton
and needy corruptible Patriots are sopped with presents of cash:
they accept the sop: they rise refreshed by it, and travel their
own way.[431] Nay, the King’s Government did likewise hire
Hand-clappers, or _claqueurs_, persons to applaud. Subterranean
Rivarol has Fifteen Hundred men in King’s pay, at the rate of
some ten thousand pounds sterling per month; what he calls “a
staff of genius:” Paragraph-writers, Placard-Journalists; “two
hundred and eighty Applauders, at three shillings a day:” one of
the strangest Staffs ever commanded by man. The muster-rolls and
account-books of which still exist.[432] Bertrand-Moleville
himself, in a way he thinks very dexterous, contrives to pack the
Galleries of the Legislative; gets Sansculottes hired to go
thither, and applaud at a signal given, they fancying it was
Pétion that bid them: a device which was not detected for almost
a week. Dexterous enough; as if a man finding the Day fast
decline should determine on altering the Clockhands: _that_ is a
thing possible for him.
Here too let us note an unexpected apparition of Philippe
d’Orléans at Court: his last at the Levee of any King. D’Orléans,
sometime in the winter months seemingly, has been appointed to
that old first-coveted rank of Admiral,—though only over ships
rotting in port. The wished-for comes too late! However, he waits
on Bertrand-Moleville to give thanks: nay to state that he would
willingly thank his Majesty in person; that, in spite of all the
horrible things men have said and sung, he is far from being his
Majesty’s enemy; at bottom, how far! Bertrand delivers the
message, brings about the royal Interview, which does pass to the
satisfaction of his Majesty; d’Orléans seeming clearly repentant,
determined to turn over a new leaf. And yet, next Sunday, what do
we see? “Next Sunday,” says Bertrand, “he came to the King’s
Levee; but the Courtiers ignorant of what had passed, the crowd
of Royalists who were accustomed to resort thither on that day
specially to pay their court, gave him the most humiliating
reception. They came pressing round him; managing, as if by
mistake, to tread on his toes, to elbow him towards the door, and
not let him enter again. He went downstairs to her Majesty’s
Apartments, where cover was laid; so soon as he shewed face,
sounds rose on all sides, ‘_Messieurs, take care of the dishes_,’
as if he had carried poison in his pockets. The insults which his
presence every where excited forced him to retire without having
seen the Royal Family: the crowd followed him to the Queen’s
Staircase; in descending, he received a spitting (_crachat_) on
the head, and some others, on his clothes. Rage and spite were
seen visibly painted on his face:”[433] as indeed how could they
miss to be? He imputes it all to the King and Queen, who know
nothing of it, who are even much grieved at it; and so descends,
to his Chaos again. Bertrand was there at the Château that day
himself, and an eye-witness to these things.
For the rest, Non-jurant Priests, and the repression of them,
will distract the King’s conscience; Emigrant Princes and
Noblesse will force him to double-dealing: there must be _veto_
on _veto;_ amid the ever-waxing indignation of men. For
Patriotism, as we said, looks on from without, more and more
suspicious. Waxing tempest, blast after blast, of Patriot
indignation, from without; dim inorganic whirl of Intrigues,
Fatuities, within! Inorganic, fatuous; from which the eye turns
away. De Staël intrigues for her so gallant Narbonne, to get him
made War-Minister; and ceases not, having got him made. The King
shall fly to Rouen; shall there, with the gallant Narbonne,
properly “modify the Constitution.” This is the same brisk
Narbonne, who, last year, cut out from their entanglement, by
force of dragoons, those poor fugitive Royal Aunts: men say he is
at bottom their Brother, or even _more_, so scandalous is
scandal. He drives now, with his de Staël, rapidly to the Armies,
to the Frontier Towns; produces rose-coloured Reports, not too
credible; perorates, gesticulates; wavers poising himself on the
top, for a moment, seen of men; then tumbles, dismissed, washed
away by the Time-flood.
Also the fair Princess de Lamballe intrigues, bosom friend of her
Majesty: to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate,
why did she ever return from England? Her small silver-voice,
what can it profit in that piping of the black World-tornado?
Which will whirl _her_, poor fragile Bird of Paradise, against
grim rocks. Lamballe and de Staël intrigue visibly, apart or
together: but who shall reckon how many others, and in what
infinite ways, invisibly! Is there not what one may call an
“Austrian Committee,” sitting invisible in the Tuileries; centre
of an invisible Anti-National Spiderweb, which, for we sleep
among mysteries, stretches its threads to the ends of the Earth?
Journalist Carra has now the clearest certainty of it: to
Brissotin Patriotism, and France generally, it is growing more
and more probable.
O Reader, hast thou no pity for this Constitution? Rheumatic
shooting pains in its members; pressure of hydrocephale and
hysteric vapours on its Brain: a Constitution divided against
itself; which will never march, hardly even stagger? Why were not
Drouet and Procureur Sausse in their beds, that unblessed
Varennes Night! Why did they not, in the name of Heaven, let the
Korff Berline go whither it listed! Nameless incoherency,
incompatibility, perhaps prodigies at which the world still
shudders, had been spared.
But now comes the third thing that bodes ill for the marching of
this French Constitution: besides the French People, and the
French King, there is thirdly—the assembled European world? it
has become necessary now to look at that also. Fair France is so
luminous: and round and round it, is troublous Cimmerian Night.
Calonnes, Bréteuils hover dim, far-flown; overnetting Europe with
intrigues. From Turin to Vienna; to Berlin, and utmost Petersburg
in the frozen North! Great Burke has raised his great voice long
ago; eloquently demonstrating that the end of an Epoch is come,
to all appearance the end of Civilised Time. Him many answer:
Camille Desmoulins, Clootz Speaker of Mankind, Paine the
rebellious Needleman, and honourable Gallic Vindicators in that
country and in this: but the great Burke remains unanswerable;
“The Age of Chivalry _is_ gone,” and could not but go, having now
produced the still more indomitable Age of Hunger. Altars enough,
of the Dubois-Rohan sort, changing to the Gobel-and-Talleyrand
sort, are faring by rapid transmutation to, shall we say, the
right Proprietor of them? French Game and French Game-Preservers
did alight on the Cliffs of Dover, with cries of distress. Who
will say that the end of much is not come? A set of mortals has
risen, who believe that Truth is not a printed Speculation, but a
practical Fact; that Freedom and Brotherhood are possible in this
Earth, supposed always to be Belial’s, which “the Supreme Quack”
was to inherit! Who will say that Church, State, Throne, Altar
are not in danger; that the sacred Strong-box itself, last
Palladium of effete Humanity, may not be blasphemously blown
upon, and its padlocks undone?
The poor Constituent Assembly might act with what delicacy and
diplomacy it would; declare that it abjured meddling with its
neighbours, foreign conquest, and so forth; but from the first
this thing was to be predicted: that old Europe and new France
could not subsist _together_. A Glorious Revolution, oversetting
State-Prisons and Feudalism; publishing, with outburst of
Federative Cannon, in face of all the Earth, that Appearance is
not Reality, how shall it subsist amid Governments which, if
Appearance is _not_ Reality, are—one knows not what? In death
feud, and internecine wrestle and battle, it shall subsist with
them; not otherwise.
Rights of Man, printed on Cotton Handkerchiefs, in various
dialects of human speech, pass over to the Frankfort Fair.[434]
What say we, Frankfort Fair? They have crossed Euphrates and the
fabulous Hydaspes; wafted themselves beyond the Ural, Altai,
Himmalayah: struck off from wood stereotypes, in angular
Picture-writing, they are jabbered and jingled of in China and
Japan. Where will it stop? Kien-Lung smells mischief; not the
remotest Dalai-Lama shall now knead his dough-pills in
peace.—Hateful to us; as is the Night! Bestir yourselves, ye
Defenders of Order! They do bestir themselves: all Kings and
Kinglets, with their spiritual temporal array, are astir; their
brows clouded with menace. Diplomatic emissaries fly swift;
Conventions, privy Conclaves assemble; and wise wigs wag, taking
what counsel they can.
Also, as we said, the Pamphleteer draws pen, on this side and
that: zealous fists beat the Pulpit-drum. Not without issue! Did
not iron Birmingham, shouting “Church and King,” itself knew not
why, burst out, last July, into rage, drunkenness, and fire; and
your Priestleys, and the like, dining there on that Bastille day,
get the maddest singeing: scandalous to consider! In which same
days, as we can remark, high Potentates, Austrian and Prussian,
with Emigrants, were faring towards Pilnitz in Saxony; there, on
the 27th of August, they, keeping to themselves what further
“secret Treaty” there might or might not be, did publish their
hopes and their threatenings, their Declaration that it was “the
common cause of Kings.”
Where a will to quarrel is, there is a way. Our readers remember
that Pentecost-Night, Fourth of August 1789, when Feudalism fell
in a few hours? The National Assembly, in abolishing Feudalism,
promised that “compensation” should be given; and did endeavour
to give it. Nevertheless the Austrian Kaiser answers that his
German Princes, for their part, cannot be unfeudalised; that they
have Possessions in French Alsace, and Feudal Rights secured to
them, for which no conceivable compensation will suffice. So this
of the Possessioned Princes, “_Princes Possessionés_” is bandied
from Court to Court; covers acres of diplomatic paper at this
day: a weariness to the world. Kaunitz argues from Vienna;
Delessart responds from Paris, though perhaps not sharply enough.
The Kaiser and his Possessioned Princes will too evidently come
and _take_ compensation—so much as they can get. Nay might one
not _partition_ France, as we have done Poland, and are doing;
and so pacify it with a vengeance?
From South to North! For actually it is “the common cause of
Kings.” Swedish Gustav, sworn Knight of the Queen of France, will
lead Coalised Armies;—had not Ankarstrom treasonously shot him;
for, indeed, there were griefs nearer home.[435] Austria and
Prussia speak at Pilnitz; all men intensely listening: Imperial
Rescripts have gone out from Turin; there will be secret
Convention at Vienna. Catherine of Russia beckons approvingly;
will help, were she ready. Spanish Bourbon stirs amid his
pillows; from him too, even from him, shall there come help. Lean
Pitt, “the Minister of Preparatives,” looks out from his
watch-tower in Saint-James’s, in a suspicious manner. Councillors
plotting, Calonnes dim-hovering;—alas, Serjeants rub-a-dubbing
openly through all manner of German market-towns, collecting
ragged valour![436] Look where you will, immeasurable
Obscurantism is girdling this fair France; which, again, will not
be girdled by it. Europe is in travail; pang after pang; what a
shriek was that of Pilnitz! The birth will be: WAR.
Nay the worst feature of the business is this last, still to be
named; the Emigrants at Coblentz, so many thousands ranking
there, in bitter hate and menace: King’s Brothers, all Princes of
the Blood except wicked d’Orléans; your duelling de Castries,
your eloquent Cazalès; bull-headed Malseignes, a wargod Broglie;
Distaff Seigneurs, insulted Officers, all that have ridden across
the Rhine-stream;—d’Artois welcoming Abbé Maury with a kiss, and
clasping him publicly to his own royal heart! Emigration, flowing
over the Frontiers, now in drops, now in streams, in various
humours of fear, of petulance, rage and hope, ever since those
first Bastille days when d’Artois went, “to shame the citizens of
Paris,”—has swollen to the size of a Phenomenon of the world.
Coblentz is become a small extra-national Versailles; a
Versailles _in partibus:_ briguing, intriguing, favouritism,
strumpetocracy itself, they say, goes on there; all the old
activities, on a small scale, quickened by hungry Revenge.
Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high
pitch; as, in any Coblentz tavern, you may hear, in speech, and
in singing. Maury assists in the interior Council; much is
decided on; for one thing, they keep lists of the dates of your
emigrating; a month sooner, or a month later determines your
greater or your less right to the coming Division of the Spoil.
Cazalès himself, because he had occasionally spoken with a
Constitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first: so pure are
our principles.[437] And arms are a-hammering at Liège; “three
thousand horses” ambling hitherward from the Fairs of Germany:
Cavalry enrolling; likewise Foot-soldiers, “in blue coat, red
waistcoat, and nankeen trousers!”[438] They have their secret
domestic correspondences, as their open foreign: with disaffected
Crypto-Aristocrats, with contumacious Priests, with Austrian
Committee in the Tuileries. Deserters are spirited over by
assiduous crimps; Royal-Allemand is gone almost wholly. Their
route of march, towards France and the Division of the Spoil, is
marked out, were the Kaiser once ready. ‘It is said, they mean to
poison the sources; but,’ adds Patriotism making Report of it,
‘they will not poison the source of Liberty,’ whereat “_on
applaudit_,” we cannot but applaud. Also they have manufactories
of False Assignats; and men that circulate in the interior
distributing and disbursing the same; one of these we denounce
now to Legislative Patriotism: “A man Lebrun by name; about
thirty years of age, with blonde hair and in quantity; has,” only
for the time being surely, “a black-eye, _œil poché;_ goes in a
_wiski_ with a black horse,”[439]—always keeping his Gig!
Unhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of France! They
are ignorant of much that they should know: of themselves, of
what is around them. A Political Party that knows not _when it is
beaten_, may become one of the fatallist of things, to itself,
and to all. Nothing will convince these men that they cannot
scatter the French Revolution at the first blast of their
war-trumpet; that the French Revolution is other than a
blustering Effervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which, at the
flash of chivalrous broadswords, at the rustle of gallows-ropes,
will burrow itself, in dens the deeper the welcomer. But, alas,
what man does know and measure himself, and the things that are
round him;—else where were the need of physical fighting at all?
Never, till they are cleft asunder, can these heads believe that
a Sansculottic arm has any vigour in it: cleft asunder, it will
be too late to believe.
One may say, without spleen against his poor erring brothers of
any side, that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant
Nobles acted fatally on France. Could they have known, could they
have understood! In the beginning of 1789, a splendour and a
terror still surrounded them: the Conflagration of their
Châteaus, kindled by months of obstinacy, went out after the
Fourth of August; and might have continued out, had they at all
known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefensible. They
were still a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the
accredited Similitude of such: they sat there, uniting King with
Commonalty; transmitting and translating _gradually_, from degree
to degree, the command of the one into the obedience of the
other; rendering command and obedience still possible. Had they
understood their place, and what to do in it, this French
Revolution, which went forth explosively in years and in months,
might have spread itself over generations; and not a
torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many
things.
But they were proud and high, these men; they were not wise to
consider. They spurned all from them; in disdainful hate, they
drew the sword and flung away the scabbard. France has not only
no Hierarchy of Authorities, to translate command into obedience;
its Hierarchy of Authorities has fled to the enemies of France;
calls loudly on the enemies of France to interfere armed, who
want but a pretext to do that. Jealous Kings and Kaisers might
have looked on long, meditating interference, yet afraid and
ashamed to interfere: but now do not the King’s Brothers, and all
French Nobles, Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to
speak, which the King himself is not,—passionately invite us, in
the name of Right and of Might? Ranked at Coblentz, from Fifteen
to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing their weapons, with the
cry: On, on! Yes, Messieurs, you shall on;—and divide the spoil
according to your dates of emigrating.
Of all which things a poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot
France, is informed: by denunciant friend, by triumphant foe.
Sulleau’s Pamphlets, of the Rivarol Staff of Genius, circulate;
heralding supreme hope. Durosoy’s Placards tapestry the walls;
_Chant du Coq_ crows day, pecked at by Tallien’s _Ami des
Citoyens_. King’s-Friend, Royou, _Ami du Roi_, can name, in exact
arithmetical ciphers, the contingents of the various Invading
Potentates; in all, Four hundred and nineteen thousand Foreign
fighting men, with Fifteen thousand Emigrants. Not to reckon
these your daily and hourly desertions, which an Editor must
daily record, of whole Companies, and even Regiments, crying
_Vive le Roi, Vive la Reine_, and marching over with banners
spread:[440]—lies all, and wind; yet to Patriotism not wind; nor,
alas, one day, to Royou! Patriotism, therefore, may brawl and
babble yet a little while: but its hours are numbered: Europe is
coming with Four hundred and nineteen thousand and the Chivalry
of France; the gallows, one may hope, will get its own.