Executive that does not act.
How could your paralytic National Executive be put “in action,”
in any measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this? Quite
contrariwise: a large sympathy for Majesty so insulted arises
every where; expresses itself in Addresses, Petitions, “Petition
of the Twenty Thousand inhabitants of Paris,” and such like,
among all Constitutional persons; a decided rallying round the
Throne.
Of which rallying it was thought King Louis might have made
something. However, he does make nothing of it, or attempt to
make; for indeed his views are lifted beyond domestic sympathy
and rallying, over to Coblentz mainly: neither in itself is the
same sympathy worth much. It is sympathy of men who believe still
that the Constitution can march. Wherefore the old discord and
ferment, of Feuillant sympathy for Royalty, and Jacobin sympathy
for Fatherland, acting against each other from within; with
terror of Coblentz and Brunswick acting from without:—this
discord and ferment must hold on its course, till a catastrophe
do ripen and come. One would think, especially as Brunswick is
near marching, such catastrophe cannot now be distant. Busy, ye
Twenty-five French Millions; ye foreign Potentates, minatory
Emigrants, German drill-serjeants; each do what his hand findeth!
Thou, O Reader, at such safe distance, wilt see what they make of
it among them.
Consider therefore this pitiable Twentieth of June as a futility;
no catastrophe, rather a _catastasis_, or heightening. Do not its
Black Breeches wave there, in the Historical Imagination, like a
melancholy flag of distress; soliciting help, which no mortal can
give? Soliciting pity, which thou wert hard-hearted not to give
freely, to one and all! Other such flags, or what are called
Occurrences, and black or bright symbolic Phenomena; will flit
through the Historical Imagination: these, one after one, let us
note, with extreme brevity.
The first phenomenon is that of Lafayette at the Bar of the
Assembly; after a week and day. Promptly, on hearing of this
scandalous Twentieth of June, Lafayette has quitted his Command
on the North Frontier, in better or worse order; and got hither,
on the 28th, to repress the Jacobins: not by Letter now; but by
oral Petition, and weight of character, face to face. The august
Assembly finds the step questionable; invites him meanwhile to
the honours of the sitting.[474] Other honour, or advantage,
there unhappily came almost none; the Galleries all growling;
fiery Isnard glooming; sharp Guadet not wanting in sarcasms.
And out of doors, when the sitting is over, Sieur Resson, keeper
of the Patriot _Café_ in these regions, hears in the street a
hurly-burly; steps forth to look, he and his Patriot customers:
it is Lafayette’s carriage, with a tumultuous escort of blue
Grenadiers, Cannoneers, even Officers of the Line, hurrahing and
capering round it. They make a pause opposite Sieur Resson’s
door; wag their plumes at him; nay shake their fists, bellowing
_À bas les Jacobins!_ but happily pass on without onslaught. They
pass on, to plant a _Mai_ before the General’s door, and bully
considerably. All which the Sieur Resson cannot but report with
sorrow, that night, in the Mother Society.[475] But what no Sieur
Resson nor Mother Society can do more than guess is this, That a
council of rank Feuillants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard
and who else has status and weight, is in these very moments
privily deliberating at the General’s: Can we not put down the
Jacobins by force? Next day, a Review shall be held, in the
Tuileries Garden, of such as will turn out, and try. Alas, says
Toulongeon, hardly a hundred turned out. Put it off till
tomorrow, then, to give better warning. On the morrow, which is
Saturday, there turn out “some thirty;” and depart shrugging
their shoulders![476] Lafayette promptly takes carriage again;
returns musing on many things.
The dust of Paris is hardly off his wheels, the summer Sunday is
still young, when Cordeliers in deputation pluck up that _Mai_ of
his: before sunset, Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder
doubt and louder rises, in Section, in National Assembly, as to
the legality of such unbidden Anti-jacobin visit on the part of a
General: doubt swelling and spreading all over France, for six
weeks or so: with endless talk about usurping soldiers, about
English Monk, nay about Cromwell: O thou pour
_Grandison_-Cromwell!—What boots it? King Louis himself looked
coldly on the enterprize: colossal Hero of two Worlds, having
weighed himself in the balance, finds that he is become a
gossamer Colossus, only some thirty turning out.
In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our
Department-Directory here at Paris; who, on the 6th of July, take
upon them to suspend Mayor Pétion and Procureur Manuel from all
civic functions, for their conduct, replete, as is alleged, with
omissions and commissions, on that delicate Twentieth of June.
Virtuous Pétion sees himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo-martyr,
threatened with several things; drawls out due heroical
lamentation; to which Patriot Paris and Patriot Legislative duly
respond. King Louis and Mayor Pétion have already had an
interview on that business of the Twentieth; an interview and
dialogue, distinguished by frankness on both sides; ending on
King Louis’s side with the words, ‘_Taisez-vous_, Hold your
peace.’
For the rest, this of suspending our Mayor does seem a mistimed
measure. By ill chance, it came out precisely on the day of that
famous _Baiser de l’amourette_, or miraculous reconciliatory
Delilah-Kiss, which we spoke of long ago. Which Delilah-Kiss was
thereby quite hindered of effect. For now his Majesty has to
write, almost that same night, asking a reconciled Assembly for
advice! The reconciled Assembly will not advise; will not
interfere. The King confirms the suspension; then perhaps, but
not till then will the Assembly interfere, the noise of Patriot
Paris getting loud. Whereby your Delilah-Kiss, such was the
destiny of Parliament First, becomes a Philistine Battle!
Nay there goes a word that as many as Thirty of our chief Patriot
Senators are to be clapped in prison, by mittimus and indictment
of Feuillant Justices, _Juges de Paix;_ who here in Paris were
well capable of such a thing. It was but in May last that _Juge
de Paix Larivière_, on complaint of Bertrand-Moleville touching
that _Austrian Committee_, made bold to launch his mittimus
against three heads of the Mountain, Deputies Bazire, Chabot,
Merlin, the Cordelier Trio; summoning them to appear before
_him_, and shew where that Austrian Committee was, or else suffer
the consequences. Which mittimus the Trio, on their side, made
bold to fling in the fire: and valiantly pleaded privilege of
Parliament. So that, for his zeal without knowledge, poor Justice
Larivière now sits in the prison of Orléans, waiting trial from
the _Haute Cour_ there. Whose example, may it not deter other
rash Justices; and so this word of the Thirty arrestments
continue a word merely?
But on the whole, though Lafayette weighed so light, and has had
his _Mai_ plucked up, Official Feuillantism falters not a whit;
but carries its head high, strong in the letter of the Law.
Feuillants all of these men: a Feuillant Directory; founding on
high character, and such like; with Duke de la Rochefoucault for
President,—a thing which may prove dangerous for him! Dim now is
the once bright Anglomania of these admired Noblemen. Duke de
Liancourt offers, out of Normandy where he is Lord-Lieutenant,
not only to receive his Majesty, thinking of flight thither, but
to lend him money to enormous amounts. Sire, it is not a Revolt,
it is a Revolution; and truly no rose-water one! Worthier
Noblemen were not in France nor in Europe than those two: but the
Time is crooked, quick-shifting, perverse; what straightest
course will lead to any goal, in _it?_
Another phasis which we note, in these early July days, is that
of certain thin streaks of Federate National Volunteers wending
from various points towards Paris, to hold a new
Federation-Festival, or Feast of Pikes, on the Fourteenth there.
So has the National Assembly wished it, so has the Nation willed
it. In this way, perhaps, may we still have our Patriot Camp in
spite of _Veto_. For cannot these Fédérés, having celebrated
their Feast of Pikes, march on to Soissons; and, there being
drilled and regimented, rush to the Frontiers, or whither we
like? Thus were the one _Veto_ cunningly eluded!
As indeed the other _Veto_, about Priests, is also like to be
eluded; and without much cunning. For Provincial Assemblies, in
Calvados as one instance, are proceeding on their own strength to
judge and banish Antinational Priests. Or still worse without
Provincial Assembly, a desperate People, as at Bourdeaux, can
“hang two of them on the Lanterne,” on the way towards
judgment.[477] Pity for the spoken _Veto_, when it cannot become
an acted one!
It is true, some ghost of a War-minister, or Home-minister, for
the time being, ghost whom we do not name, does write to
Municipalities and King’s Commanders, that they shall, by all
conceivable methods, obstruct this Federation, and even turn back
the Fédérés by force of arms: a message which scatters mere
doubt, paralysis and confusion; irritates the poor Legislature;
reduces the Fédérés as we see, to thin streaks. But being
questioned, this ghost and the other ghosts, What it is then that
they propose to do for saving the country?—they answer, That they
cannot tell; that indeed they for their part have, this morning,
resigned in a body; and do now merely respectfully take leave of
the helm altogether. With which words they rapidly walk out of
the Hall, _sortent brusquement de la salle_, the “Galleries
cheering loudly,” the poor Legislature sitting “for a good while
in silence!”[478] Thus do Cabinet-ministers themselves, in
extreme cases, strike work; one of the strangest omens. Other
complete Cabinet-ministry there will not be; only fragments, and
these changeful, which never get completed; spectral Apparitions
that cannot so much as appear! King Louis writes that he now
views this Federation Feast with approval; and will himself have
the pleasure to take part in the same.
And so these thin streaks of Fédérés wend Parisward through a
paralytic France. Thin grim streaks; not thick joyful ranks, as
of old to the first Feast of Pikes! No: these poor Federates
march now towards Austria and Austrian Committee, towards
jeopardy and forlorn hope; men of hard fortune and temper, not
rich in the world’s goods. Municipalities, paralyzed by
War-ministers, are shy of affording cash: it may be, your poor
Federates cannot arm themselves, cannot march, till the
Daughter-Society of the place open her pocket, and subscribe.
There will not have arrived, at the set day, Three thousand of
them in all. And yet, thin and feeble as these streaks of
Federates seem, they are the only thing one discerns moving with
any clearness of aim, in this strange scene. Angry buzz and
simmer; uneasy tossing and moaning of a huge France, all
enchanted, spell-bound by unmarching Constitution, into frightful
conscious and unconscious Magnetic-sleep; which frightful
Magnetic-sleep must now issue soon in one of two things: Death or
Madness! The Fédérés carry mostly in their pocket some earnest
cry and Petition, to have the “National Executive put in action;”
or as a step towards that, to have the King’s _Déchéance_, King’s
Forfeiture, or at least his Suspension, pronounced. They shall be
welcome to the Legislative, to the Mother of Patriotism; and
Paris will provide for their lodging.
_Déchéance_, indeed: and, what next? A France spell-free, a
Revolution saved; and any thing, and all things next! so answer
grimly Danton and the unlimited Patriots, down deep in their
subterranean region of Plot, whither they have now dived.
_Déchéance_, answers Brissot with the limited: And if next the
little Prince Royal were crowned, and some Regency of Girondins
and recalled Patriot Ministry set over him? Alas, poor Brissot;
looking, as indeed poor man does always, on the nearest morrow as
his peaceable promised land; deciding what must reach to the
world’s end, yet with an insight that reaches not beyond his own
nose! Wiser are the unlimited subterranean Patriots, who with
light for the hour itself, leave the rest to the gods.
Or were it not, as we now stand, the probablest issue of all,
that Brunswick, in Coblentz, just gathering his huge limbs
towards him to rise, might arrive first; and stop both
_Déchéance_, and theorizing on it? Brunswick is on the eve of
marching; with Eighty Thousand, they say; fell Prussians,
Hessians, feller Emigrants: a General of the Great Frederick,
with such an Army. And our Armies? And our Generals? As for
Lafayette, on whose late visit a Committee is sitting and all
France is jarring and censuring, he seems readier to fight _us_
than fight Brunswick. Lückner and Lafayette pretend to be
interchanging corps, and are making movements; which Patriotism
cannot understand. This only is very clear, that their corps go
marching and shuttling, in the interior of the country; much
nearer Paris than formerly! Lückner has ordered Dumouriez down to
him, down from Maulde, and the Fortified Camp there. Which order
the many-counselled Dumouriez, with the Austrians hanging close
on him, he busy meanwhile training a few thousands to stand fire
and be soldiers, declares that, come of it what will, he cannot
obey.[479] Will a poor Legislative, therefore, sanction
Dumouriez; who applies to it, “not knowing whether there is any
War-ministry?” Or sanction Lückner and these Lafayette movements?
The poor Legislative knows not what to do. It decrees, however,
that the Staff of the Paris Guard, and indeed all such Staffs,
for they are Feuillants mostly, shall be broken and replaced. It
decrees earnestly in what manner one can declare that the
_Country is in Danger_. And finally, on the 11th of July, the
morrow of that day when the Ministry struck work, it decrees that
_the Country be_, with all despatch, _declared in Danger_.
Whereupon let the King sanction; let the Municipality take
measures: if such Declaration will do service, _it_ need not
fail.
In Danger, truly, if ever Country was! Arise, O Country; or be
trodden down to ignominious ruin! Nay, are not the chances a
hundred to one that no rising of the Country will save it;
Brunswick, the Emigrants, and Feudal Europe drawing nigh?