BOOK I.

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[Illustration: Portrait of Robespierre]

HISTORY

OF

THE GIRONDISTS;

OR

_Personal Memoirs of the Patriots_

OF

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

FROM UNPUBLISHED SOURCES.

BY

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE,

Author of "Travels in the Holy Land," &c.

* * * * *

IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I.

* * * * *

TRANSLATED BY H. T. RYDE.

LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1856.

LONDON PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE

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|Transcriber's Note: You may notice some inconsistencies in |

|accentation. These have been left as they are in the original.|

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ADVERTISEMENT.

We have not thought it necessary to preface this recital by any

introduction of the preceding epochs of the Revolution.

We have not re-produced, with the minute elaboration of an annalist, the

numerous parliamentary and military details of all the events of these

forty months. Two or three times we have, in order to group men and

circumstances in masses, made unimportant anachronisms.

We have written after having scrupulously investigated facts and

characters: we do not ask to be credited on our mere word only. Although

we have not encumbered our work with notes, quotations, and documentary

testimony, we have not made one assertion unauthorised by authentic

memoirs, by unpublished manuscripts, by autograph letters, which the

families of the most conspicuous persons have confided to our care, or

by oral and well confirmed statements gathered from the lips of the last

survivors of this great epoch.

If some errors in fact or judgment have, notwithstanding, escaped us, we

shall be ready to acknowledge them, and repair them in sequent editions,

when the proofs have been transmitted to us. We shall not reply one by

one to such denials and contradictions as this book may give rise to; it

might be a tedious and unprofitable paper-war in the newspapers. But we

will make notes of every observation, and reply _en masse_, by our

proofs and tests, after a certain lapse of time. We seek the truth only,

and should blush to make our work a calumny of the dead.

As to the title of this book, we have only assumed it, as being unable

to find any other which can so well define this recital, which has none

of the pretensions of history, and therefore should not affect its

gravity. It is an intermediate labour between history and memoirs.

Events do not herein occupy so much space as men and ideas. It is full

of private details, and details are the physiognomy of characters, and

by them they engrave themselves on the imagination.

Great writers have already written the records of this memorable epoch,

and others still to follow will write them also. It would be an

injustice to compare us with them. They have produced, or will produce,

the history of an age. We have produced nothing more than a "study" of a

group of men and a few months of the Revolution.

A. L.

Paris, March 1. 1847.

CONTENTS.

BOOK I.

Introduction. Mirabeau. Marries. Enters the National Assembly. His

Master Mind. His Death and Character. Glance at the Revolution. The

New Idea. Revolution defined. Revolutions the Results of Printing.

Bossuet's Warnings. Rousseau. Fénélon. Voltaire. The Philosophers

of France. Louis XVI. The King's Ministers. The Queen. Her Conduct

and Plans. The National Assembly. Maury. Cazalès. Barnave and the

Lameths. Rival Champions. Robespierre. His Personal Appearance.

Revolutionary Leaders. State of the Kingdom. Jacobin Club. Effects

of the Clubs. Club of the Cordeliers. La Fayette. His Popularity.

Characters of the Leaders. What the Revolution might have been 1

BOOK II.

State of the Assembly. Discussions. The Periodical Press. The King

and his Brothers. He meditates Escape. Various Plans of Flight. The

King's embarrassed Position. Marquis de Bouillé. The King and

Mirabeau. Preparations for the King's Escape. Fatal Alterations.

Anxiety. Rumours. Count de Fersen. A Faithless Servant suspicious.

Mode of Escape. Dangers of the Route. The Passport. Hopes of

Success. Drouet recognises the King. Narrowly saves his own Life.

Varennes. Capture of the Royal Family. Entreaties of the King and

Queen. Refusal of the Syndic and his Wife. Conduct of the Soldiers

and People. Effect on the Queen. Conduct of the Parisians. Their

Rage. La Fayette attacked. Defended by Barnave. Power assumed by La

Fayette. La Fayette's Proceedings. The King's Parting Address.

Manifesto. Proceedings of the Cordeliers and Jacobins.

Robespierre's Address. Its Effect. Danton's Oration. His Audacity

and Venality. Address of the Assembly. The King's Arrest known. His

Hopes. The Queen's Despair. The Royal Family depart for Paris. De

Bouillé's unavailing Efforts. Indignation of the Populace.

Barnave's noble Interference. Barnave gained over. Drouet's

Declaration. The Entrance into Paris. Arrival at the Tuileries.

Barnave and Pétion's report to the Assembly. La Fayette and the

Royal Family. The Queen's Courage. Effects of the Flight. The King

should have abdicated 42

BOOK III.

The Interregnum. Barnave's Conversion. His Devotion. His Meetings

with the Queen. The King's Reply. Fatal Resolution of the "Right."

A Party that protests, abdicates. Address of the Cordeliers to the

National Assembly. Barnave's great Speech. Irresistible Advance of

the Revolution. The Press. Camille Desmoulins. Marat. Brissot.

Clamours for a Republic. Desmoulin's Attack on La Fayette.

Petitions of the People. Robespierre's Popularity. Popular Meeting

in the Champ de Mars. Absence of the Ringleaders. "The Altar of

the Country." The Remarkable Signatures. Advance of the National

Guard, preceded by the Red Flag. Fearful Massacre. The Day after.

The Jacobins take Courage. Schisms in the Clubs. Attempts of

Desmoulins and Pétion to restore Unity. Malouet's Plan for amending

the Constitution. Power of the Assembly. The New Men. Condorcet.

Danton. Brissot disowned by Robespierre. Charges made against him.

Defended by Manuel. Girondist Leaders 100

BOOK IV.

Revolutionary Press. High State of Excitement. Removal of

Voltaire's Remains to the Pantheon. The Procession. Voltaire's

Character. His War against Christianity. His Tact and Courage in

opposing the Priesthood. His Devotion. His Deficiencies. Barnave's

weakened Position. His momentary Success while addressing the

Assembly. Sillery's Defence of the Duc d'Orleans. Robespierre's

Alarm. Malouet's Speech in Defence of the Monarchy. Robespierre's

Remarks. Constitution presented to the King. His Reply and

Acceptance. Rejoicings. Universal Satisfaction. The King in Person

dissolves the Assembly 145

BOOK V.

Opinions of the Revolution in Europe.

Austria--Prussia--Russia--England--Spain. State of

Italy--Venice--Genoa--Florence--Piedmont--Savoy--Sweden. Gustavus

III. Feelings of the People. Poets and Philosophers. England and

its Liberty. America. Holland. Germany. Freemasonry. German School.

French Emigration. Female Influence. Louis XIV.'s Letter. Conduct

of the Emigrant Princes unsatisfactory to the King. Attempts of the

Emigrés. The German Sovereigns. Their Conference. The Revolt. The

Declaration. The Courts of Europe, The Princes disobey the King.

Desire for War in the Assembly. Madame de Stäel. Count Louis de

Narbonne. His Ambition. The Hero of Madame de Stäel. M. de Segur's

Mission. The Mission frustrated. The Duke of Brunswick 172

BOOK VI.

The New Assembly. Juvenile Members. First Audience with the King.

Decrees of the Assembly. Vergniaud's Policy. Offensive Decree

repealed. Rage of the Clubs. Indifference of the People. The King's

Address to the Assembly. Momentary Calm. The Girondists. The

Clergy. The King's Religious Alarms. State of Religious Worship.

Fauchet's Speech. The Abbé Tourné's Reply. Advantages of

Toleration. Dacos. Gensonné. Isnard. Isnard's eloquent Address to

the Assembly. His severe Measures. Decree against the Priests. New

Policy of Louis XVI. Question of Emigration. Brissot advocates War.

His Arguments. Condorcet. Vergniaud. His Character and his Speech

against the Emigrants. Isnard's violent Harangue. Decision of the

Assembly. André Chénier. Camille Desmoulins. State of Parties.

Hopes of the Aristocracy. La Fayette's Letter. La Fayette in

Retirement. Candidates for Mayor of Paris. Pétion and La Fayette.

La Fayette's Popularity. Pétion elected Mayor 211

BOOK VII

Character of Parties. France worked for the Universe. Mechanism of

the Constitution. The King's Veto. Defence of the Constitution. No

Balance of Power. All Odium falls upon the King. Order, the Life of

Monarchy. When a Republic is needful. The Will of the People.

Mistake of the Assembly. The King's Position. The Assembly

hesitates. Third Course open. The Republicans 257

BOOK VIII.

Madame Roland. Her Infancy. Her Personal Appearance. Early

Abilities. Habits. Her Father's House. Future Héloïse. Influence of

Birth in Society. Her Impression of the Court. Has many Suitors. M.

Roland. His Career. Their Marriage. Mode of Life. La Platière.

Country Life. Madame Roland's Love for Mankind. The Rolands in

Paris. Interview with Brissot. Reunion at Roland's. Madame Roland

and Robespierre. Her Opinion of him. Her Anxiety for his Safety 272

BOOK IX.

New Assembly. Roland's Position. De Molleville. M. de Narbonne.

Treachery of the Girondists. Narbonne's Policy and Success. His

Popularity. Robespierre his sole Opponent. Robespierre's Desire for

Peace. His Views. His Rupture with the Girondists. His Speech

against War. Louvet's Reply. Brissot's Efforts 296

BOOK X.

Committee of the Girondists. Its Report. Gensonné. His Reply.

Guadet. Vergniaud's Proclamation. Constitutionalists for War.

Narbonne's Report. The Pamphleteers. Unpopularity of the Veto.

Outbreak at Avignon. Jourdan. San Domingo. Negro Slavery. Men of

Colour. Ogé. His Execution. Insurrection of the Blacks at San

Domingo. Increase of Disorder. The Abbé Fauchet. His Career.

Charges against him. Riot in Caen Cathedral. Insurrection at Mende.

National Guard drives out the Troops. Insubordination. Universal

Bloodshed. The Swiss Soldiers. Their Revolt pardoned. Chénier's

Remonstrance. Dupont de Nemours. Pétion's Weakness. Robespierre's

Interference. Gouvion. Couthon. Triumph of the Swiss Soldiers 312

BOOK XI

Increasing Disturbances. Murder of Simoneau. Duc d'Orleans. His

peculiar Position. The Duchesse d'Orleans. Duc disliked at Court.

Forms the Palais Royal. Madame de Genlis. Her Talents. The Duke

Citizen. Mirabeau's Estimate of the Duke. La Fayette's Interference

with the Duc d'Orleans. Plans of the Girondists. Duc d'Orleans made

Admiral. His Declaration. Details. Avoided by the King's Friends.

Becomes a Jacobin. Vergniaud's great Eloquence. His powerful

Appeal. Its Effects 352

BOOK XII.

The Emperor Leopold. De Lessart's Despatch. His Impeachment. De

Narbonne's Dismissal. Death of Leopold. Supposed to be poisoned.

His Vices and Virtues. Conspiracy. Assassination. Ankastroem. Death

of Gustavus. Joy of the Jacobins. Brissot's Policy. Accusation of

M. de Lessart. Roland and the Girondist Ministry 377

BOOK XIII.

Dumouriez's Talent and Aptitude. Education and Acquirements.

Favier. Corsica. Paoli. Dumouriez sent to Poland. Stanislaus

Policy. Dumouriez at Cherbourg. His Tact; Appearance. Dumouriez and

Madame Roland. Roland's Vanity. His Opinion of the King. His Wife's

Sagacity. Dumouriez in favour with the King. His Interview with the

Queen. His Advice. Bonnet Rouge. Dumouriez and Robespierre. Pétion

and the Bonnet Rouge. The King's Letter. Treachery of the

Girondists. Roland's Letter to the King. Letter of the Girondist

Chiefs. Dumouriez's Policy. Danton. Hatred of Robespierre and

Brissot. Camille Desmoulins. Brissot's Attack on Robespierre.

Guadet. Robespierre's Defence 396

BOOK XIV.

Quarrel between Girondists and Jacobins. Violence of the Journals.

Marat's atrocious Writings. Duke of Brunswick. Mirabeau's Opinion

of him. Dumouriez's Plan. The King himself proposes War. Slight

Opposition. Condorcet's Manifesto. War declared. State of Belgium.

Revolt. German Confederation. French Nobility and Emigrés. Comte de

Provence. Comte d'Artois. Mallet-Dupan, the King's Confidant 436

BOOK XV.

Dumouriez's Tactics. Servan's Proposition. Change of Ministry.

Dumouriez's Infidelity. Another Change of Ministers. Dumouriez

quits Paris. Barbaroux. Madame Roland's Plans for a Republic.

Increase of the Girondists. Buzot. Danton: his Origin and Life.

Progress. Hostilities in Belgium. Duc de Lauzun. Luckner. State of

France 459

BOOK XVI.

King Pétion. His Policy. Murder of De Brissac. Another Phase of the

Revolution. Santerre, Legendre, Instigators of 20th June.

Preparation. Disposition of Lower Orders. The Mobs excited. The

Alarm of the King. The Assembling of the People. St. Huruge.

Théroigne de Méricourt. Her Fate. The Procession. Roederer's

Courage. Huguenin's Declaration. The Mob admitted. Defence at the

Tuileries. Movement of the Populace. The Troops faithless. Fury of

the Mob. The King's Defenders. Madame Elizabeth. Legendre's

Insolence. The Bonnet Rouge. "Vive le Roi." The Dangers of the

Queen. Princesse de Lamballe. Queen and Royal Children. Santerre.

Deputation to the King. Pétion's Duplicity. Retirement of the

Rebels. Merlin's brutal Remark. The Marseillaise. Its Origin and

Popularity: universally adopted 478

HISTORY

OF

THE GIRONDISTS.

BOOK I.

I.

INTRODUCTION.

I now undertake to write the history of a small party of men who, cast

by Providence into the very centre of the greatest drama of modern

times, comprise in themselves the ideas, the passions, the faults, the

virtues of their epoch, and whose life and political acts forming, as we

may say, the nucleus of the French Revolution, perished by the same blow

which crushed the destinies of their country.

This history, full of blood and tears, is full also of instruction for

the people. Never, perhaps, were so many tragical events crowded into so

short a space of time, never was the mysterious connexion which exists

between deeds and their consequences developed with greater rapidity.

Never did weaknesses more quickly engender faults,--faults

crimes,--crimes punishment. That retributive justice which God has

implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the

fatalism of the ancients[1], never manifested itself more unequivocally;

never was the law of morality illustrated by a more ample testimony, or

avenged more mercilessly. Thus the simple recital of these two years is

the most luminous commentary of the whole Revolution; and blood, spilled

like water, not only shrieks in accents of terror and pity, but gives,

indeed, a lesson and an example to mankind. It is in this spirit I would

indite this work. The impartiality of history is not that of a mirror,

which merely reflects objects, it should be that of a judge who sees,

listens, and decides. Annals are not history; in order to deserve that

appellation it requires a conviction; for it becomes, in after times,

_that_ of the human race.

Recital animated by the imagination, weighed and judged by wisdom,--such

is history as the ancients understood it; and of history conceived and

produced in such a spirit, I would, under the Divine guidance, leave a

fragment to my country.

II.

HISTORY OF THE GIRONDISTS.

Mirabeau had just died. The instinct of the people led them to press

around the house of his tribune, as if to demand inspiration even from

his coffin; but had Mirabeau been still living, he could no longer have

given it; his star had paled its fires before that of the Revolution;

hurried to the verge of an unavoidable precipice by the very chariot he

himself had set in motion, it was in vain that he clung to the tribune.

The last memorial he addressed to the king, which the Iron Chest has

surrendered to us, together with the secret of his venality, testify the

failure and dejection of his mind. His counsels are versatile,

incoherent, and almost childish:--now he will arrest the Revolution with

a grain of sand--now he places the salvation of the Monarchy in a

proclamation of the crown and a regal ceremony which shall revive the

popularity of the king,--.and now he is desirous of buying the

acclamations of the tribune, and believes the nation, like him, to be

purchasable at a price. The pettiness of his means of safety are in

contrast with the vast increase of perils; there is a vagueness in every

idea; we see that he is impelled by the very passions he has excited,

and that unable any longer to guide or control them, he betrays, whilst

he is yet unable to crush, them. The prime agitator is now but the

alarmed courtier seeking shelter beneath the throne, and though still

stuttering out terrible words in behalf of the nation and liberty, which

are in the part set down for him, has already in his soul all the

paltriness and the thoughts of vanity which are proper to a court. We

pity genius when we behold it struggling with impossibility. Mirabeau

was the most potent man of his time; but the greatest individual

contending with an enraged element appears but a madman. A fall is only

majestic when accompanied by virtue.

Poets say that clouds assume the form of the countries over which they

have passed, and moulding themselves upon the valleys, plains, or

mountains, acquire their shapes and move with them over the skies. This

resembles certain men, whose genius being as it were acquisitive, models

itself upon the epoch in which it lives, and assumes all the

individuality of the nation to which it belongs. Mirabeau was a man of

this class: he did not invent the Revolution, but was its manifestation.

But for him it might perhaps have remained in a state of idea and

tendency. He was born, and it took in him the form, the passion, the

language which make a multitude say when they see a thing--There it is.

He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugee and established

in Provence, but of Italian origin: the progenitors were Tuscan. The

family was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in the

stormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches his

country in such bitter strains for her exiles and persecutions. The

blood of Machiavel and the earthquake genius of the Italian republics

were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The

proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices,

passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or

perverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is as

emphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiar

correspondence the colour and tone of the heroic tongues of Italy.

The ancestors of Mirabeau speak of their domestic affairs as Plutarch of

the quarrels of Marius and Sylla, of Cæsar and Pompey. We perceive the

great men descending to trifling matters. Mirabeau inspired this

domestic majesty and virility in his very cradle. I dwell on these

details, which may seem foreign to this history, but explain it. The

source of genius is often in ancestry, and the blood of descent is

sometimes the prophecy of destiny.

III.

Mirabeau's education was as rough and rude as the hand of his father,

who was styled the _friend of man_, but whose restless spirit and

selfish vanity rendered him the persecutor of his wife and the tyrant of

all his family. The only virtue he was taught was honour, for by that

name in those days they dignified that ceremonious demeanour which was

too frequently but the show of probity and the elegance of vice.

Entering the army at an early age, he acquired nothing of military

habits except a love of licentiousness and play. The hand of his father

was constantly extended not to aid him in rising, but to depress him

still lower under the consequences of his errors: his youth was passed

in the prisons of the state; his passions, becoming envenomed by

solitude, and his intellect being rendered more acute by contact with

the irons of his dungeon, where his mind lost that modesty which rarely

survives the infamy of precocious punishments.

Released from gaol, in order, by his father's command, to attempt to

form a marriage beset with difficulties with Mademoiselle De Marignan, a

rich heiress of one of the greatest families of Provence, he displayed,

like a wrestler, all kinds of stratagems and daring schemes of policy in

the small theatre of Aix. Cunning, seduction, courage, he used every

resource of his nature to succeed, and he succeeded; but he was hardly

married, before fresh persecutions beset him, and the stronghold of

Pontarlier gaped to enclose him. A love, which his _Lettres à Sophie_

has rendered immortal, opened its gates and freed him. He carried off

Madame de Monier from her aged husband. The lovers, happy for some

months, took refuge in Holland; they were seized there, separated and

shut up, the one in a convent and the other in the dungeon of Vincennes.

Love, which, like fire in the veins of the earth, is always detected in

some crevice of man's destiny, lighted up in a single and ardent blaze

all Mirabeau's passions. In his vengeance it was outraged love that he

appeased; in liberty, it was love which he sought and which delivered

him; in study, it was love which still illustrated his path. Entering

obscure into his cell, he quitted it a writer, orator, statesman, but

perverted--ripe for any thing, even to sell himself, in order to buy

fortune and celebrity. The drama of life was conceived in his head, he

wanted but the stage, and that time was preparing for him. During the

few short years which elapsed for him between his leaving the keep of

Vincennes and the tribune of the National Assembly, he employed himself

with polemic labours, which would have weighed down another man, but

which only kept him in health. The Bank of Saint Charles, the

Institutions of Holland, the books on Prussia, the skirmish with

Beaumarchais, his style and character, his lengthened pleadings on

questions of warfare, the balance of European power, finance, those

biting invectives, that war of words with the ministers or men of the

hour, resembled the Roman forum in the days of Clodius and Cicero. We

discern the men of antiquity in even his most modern controversies. We

may fancy that we hear the first roarings of those popular tumults which

were so soon to burst forth, and which his voice was destined to

control. At the first election of Aix, rejected with contempt by the

_noblesse_, he cast himself into the arms of the people, certain of

making the balance incline to the side on which he should cast the

weight of his daring and his genius. Marseilles contended with Aix for

the great plebeian; his two elections, the discourses he then delivered,

the addresses he drew up, the energy he employed, commanded the

attention of all France. His sonorous phrases became the proverbs of the

Revolution; comparing himself, in his lofty language, to the men of

antiquity, he placed himself already in the public estimation in the

elevated position he aspired to reach. Men became accustomed to identify

him with the names he cited; he made a loud noise in order to prepare

minds for great commotions; he announced himself proudly to the nation

in that sublime apostrophe in his address to the Marseillais: "When the

last of the Gracchi expired, he flung dust towards heaven, and from this

dust sprung Marius! Marius, less great for having exterminated the

Cimbri than for having prostrated in Rome the aristocracy of the

nobility."

From the moment of his entry into the National Assembly he filled it: he

was the whole people. His gestures were commands; his movements _coups

d'état_. He placed himself on a level with the throne, and the nobility

felt itself subdued by a power emanating from its own body. The clergy,

which is the people, and desires to reconcile the democracy with the

church, lends him its influence, in order to destroy the double

aristocracy of the nobility and bishops.

All that had been built by antiquity and cemented by ages fell in a few

months. Mirabeau alone preserved his presence of mind in the midst of

this ruin. His character of tribune ceases, that of the statesman

begins, and in this he is even greater than in the other. There, when

all else creep and crawl, he acts with firmness, advancing boldly. The

Revolution in his brain is no longer a momentary idea--it is a settled

plan. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, moderated by the

prudence of policy, flows easily, and modelled from his lips. His

eloquence, imperative as the law, is now the talent of giving force to

reason. His language lights and inspires every thing; and though almost

alone at this moment, he has the courage to remain alone. He braves

envy, hatred, murmurs, supported by the strong feeling of his

superiority. He dismisses with disdain the passions which have hitherto

beset him. He will no longer serve them when his cause no longer needs

them. He speaks to men now only in the name of his genius. This title is

enough to cause obedience to him. His power is based on the assent which

truth finds in all minds, and his strength again reverts to him. He

contests with all parties, and rises superior to one and all. All hate

him because he commands; and all seek him because he can serve or

destroy them. He does not give himself up to any one, but negotiates

with each: he lays down calmly on the tumultuous element of this

assembly, the basis of the reformed constitution: legislation, finance,

diplomacy, war, religion, political economy, balances of power, every

question he approaches and solves, not as an Utopian, but as a

politician. The solution he gives is always the precise mean between the

theoretical and the practical. He places reason on a level with manners,

and the institutions of the land in consonance with its habits. He

desires a throne to support the democracy, liberty in the chambers, and

in the will of the nation, one and irresistible in the government. The

characteristic of his genius, so well defined, so ill understood, was

less audacity than justness. Beneath the grandeur of his expression is

always to be found unfailing good sense. His very vices could not

repress the clearness, the sincerity of his understanding. At the foot

of the tribune he was a man devoid of shame or virtue: in the tribune he

was an honest man. Abandoned to private debauchery, bought over by

foreign powers, sold to the court in order to satisfy his lavish

expenditure, he preserved, amidst all this infamous traffic of his

powers, the incorruptibility of his genius. Of all the qualities of a

great man of his age, he was only wanting in honesty. The people were

not his devotees, but his instruments,--his own glory was the god of his

idolatry; his faith was posterity; his conscience existed but in his

thought; the fanaticism of his idea was quite human; the chilling

materialism of his age had crushed in his heart the expansion, force,

and craving for imperishable things. His dying words were "sprinkle me

with perfumes, crown me with flowers, that I may thus enter upon eternal

sleep." He was especially of his time, and his course bears no impress

of infinity. Neither his character, his acts, nor his thoughts have the

brand of immortality. If he had believed in God, he might have died a

martyr, but he would have left behind him the religion of reason and the

reign of democracy. Mirabeau, in a word, was the reason of the people;

and that is not yet the faith of humanity!

IV.

Grand displays cast a veil of universal mourning over the secret

sentiments which his death inspired to all parties. Whilst the various

belfries tolled his knell, and minute guns were fired; whilst, in a

ceremony that had assembled two hundred thousand spectators, they

awarded to a citizen the funeral obsequies of a monarch; whilst the

Pantheon, to which they conveyed his remains, seemed scarcely a monument

worthy of such ashes,--what was passing in the depths of men's hearts?

The king, who held Mirabeau's eloquence in pay, the queen, with whom he

had nocturnal conferences, regretted him, perhaps, as the last means of

safety: yet still he inspired them with more terror than confidence; and

the humiliation of a crowned head demanding succour from a subject must

have felt comforted at the removal of that destroying power which itself

fell before the throne did. The court was avenged by death for the

affronts which it had undergone. He was to the nobility merely an

apostate from his order. The climax of its shame must have been to be

one day raised by him who had abased it. The National Assembly had

grown weary of his superiority; the Duc d'Orleans felt that a word from

this man would unfold and crush his premature aspirations; M. de La

Fayette, the hero of the _bourgeoisie_, must have been in dread of the

orator of the people. Between the dictator of the city and the dictator

of the tribune there must have been a secret jealousy. Mirabeau, who had

never assailed M. de La Fayette in his discourses, had often in

conversation allowed words to escape with respect to his rival which

print themselves as they fall on a man. Mirabeau the less, and then M.

de La Fayette appeared the greater, and it was the same with all the

orators of the Assembly. There was no longer any rival, but there were

many envious. His eloquence, though popular in its style, was that of a

patrician. His democracy was delivered from a lofty position, and

comprised none of that covetousness and hate which excite the vilest

passions of the human heart, and which see in the good done for the

people nothing but an insult to the nobility. His popular sentiments

were in some sort but the liberality of his genius. The vast

expansiveness of his mighty soul had no resemblance with the paltry

impulses of demagogues. In acquiring rights for the people he seemed as

though he bestowed them. He was a volunteer of democracy. He recalled by

his part, and his bearing, to those democrats behind him, that from the

time of the Gracchi to his own, the tribunes who most served the people

had sprung from the ranks of the patricians. His talent, unequalled for

philosophy of thought, for depth of reflection, and loftiness of

expression, was another kind of aristocracy, which could never be

pardoned him. Nature placed him in the foremost rank; and death only

created a space around him for secondary minds. They all endeavoured to

acquire his position, and all endeavoured in vain. The tears they shed

upon his coffin were hypocritical. The people only wept in all

sincerity, because the people were too strong to be jealous, and they,

far from reproaching Mirabeau with his birth, loved in him that nobility

as though it were a spoil they had carried off from the aristocracy.

Moreover, the nation, disturbed at seeing its institutions crumbling

away one by one, and dreading a total destruction, felt instinctively

that the genius of a great man was the last stronghold left to them.

This genius quenched, it saw only darkness and precipices before the

monarchy. The Jacobins alone rejoiced loudly, for it was only he who

could outweigh them.

It was on the 6th of April, 1791, that the National Assembly resumed its

sittings. Mirabeau's place, left vacant, reminded each gazer of the

impossibility of again filling it; consternation was impressed on every

countenance in the tribunes, and a profound silence pervaded the

meeting. M. de Talleyrand announced to the Assembly a posthumous address

of Mirabeau. They would hear him though dead. The weakened echo of his

voice seemed to return to his country from the depths of the vaults of

the Pantheon. The reading was mournful. Parties were burning to measure

their strength free from any counterpoise. Impatience and anxiety were

paramount, and the struggle was imminent. The arbitrator who controlled

them was no more.

V.

Before we depict the state of these parties, let us throw a rapid glance

over the commencement of the Revolution, the progress it had made, and

the principal leaders who were about to attempt directing it in the way

they desired to see it advance.

It was hardly two years since opinion had opened the breaches against

the monarchy, yet it had already accomplished immense results. The weak

and vacillating spirit of the government had convoked the Assembly of

Notables, whilst public spirit had placed its grasp on power and

convoked the States General. The States General being established, the

nation had felt its omnipotence, and from this feeling to a legal

insurrection there was but a word; that word Mirabeau had uttered. The

National Assembly had constituted itself in front of, and higher than,

the throne itself. The prodigious popularity of M. Necker was exhausted

by concessions, and utterly vanished when he no longer had any of the

spoils of monarchy to cast before the people. Minister of a monarch in

retirement, his own had been utter defeat. His last step conducted him

out of the kingdom. The disarmed king had remained the hostage of the

ancient _régime_ in the hands of the nation. The declaration of the

rights of man and citizen, the sole metaphysical act of the Revolution

to this time, had given it a social and universal signification. This

declaration had been much jeered; it certainly contained some errors,

and confused in terms the state of nature and the state of society; but

it was, notwithstanding, the very essence of the new dogma.

VI

There are objects in nature, the forms of which can only be accurately

ascertained when contemplated afar off. Too near, as well as too far

off, prevents a correct view. Thus it is with great events. The hand of

God is visible in human things, but this hand itself has a shadow which

conceals what it accomplishes. All that could then be seen of the French

Revolution announced all that was great in this world, the advent of a

new idea in human kind, the democratic idea, and afterwards the

democratic government.

This idea was an emanation of Christianity. Christianity finding men in

serfage and degraded all over the earth, had arisen on the fall of the

Roman Empire, like a mighty vengeance, though under the aspect of a

resignation. It had proclaimed the three words which 2000 years

afterwards was re-echoed by French philosophy--liberty, equality,

fraternity--amongst mankind. But it had for a time hidden this idea in

the recesses of the Christian heart. As yet too weak to attack civil

laws, it had said to the powers--"I leave you still for a short space of

time possession of the political world, confining myself to the moral

world. Continue if you can to enchain, class, keep in bondage, degrade

the people, I am engaged in the emancipation of souls. I shall occupy

2000 years, perchance, in renewing men's minds before I become apparent

in human institutions. But the day will come when my doctrines will

escape from the temple, and will enter into the councils of the people;

on that day the social world will be renewed."

This day had now arrived; it had been prepared by an age of philosophy,

sceptical in appearance but in reality replete with belief. The

scepticism of the 18th century only affected exterior forms, and the

supernatural dogmata of Christianity, whilst it adopted with enthusiasm,

morality and the social sense. What Christianity called revelation,

philosophy called reason. The words were different, the meaning

identical. The emancipation of individuals, of castes, of people, were

alike derived from it. Only the ancient world had been enfranchised in

the name of Christ, whilst the modern world was freed in the name of the

rights which every human creature has received from the hand of God; and

from both flowed the enfranchisement of God or nature. The political

philosophy of the Revolution could not have invented a word more true,

more complete, more divine than Christianity, to reveal itself to

Europe, and it had adopted the dogma and the word of _fraternity_. Only

the French Revolution attacked the form of this ruling religion; because

it was incrusted in the forms of government, monarchical, theocratic, or

aristocratic, which they sought to destroy. It is the explanation of

that apparent contradiction of the mind of the 18th century, which

borrowed all from Christianity in policy, and denied, whilst it

despoiled, it. There was at one and the same time a violent attraction

and a violent repulsion in the two doctrines. They recognised whilst

they struggled against each other, and yearned to recognise each other

even more completely when the contest was terminated by the triumph of

liberty.

Three things were then evident to reflecting minds from and after the

month of April, 1791; the one, that the march of the revolutionary

movement advanced from step to step to the complete restoration of all

the rights of suffering humanity--from those of the people by their

government, to those of citizens by castes, and of the workman by the

citizen; thus it assailed tyranny, privilege, inequality, selfishness,

not only on the throne, but in the civil law; in the administration, in

the legal distribution of property, in the conditions of industry,

labour, family, and in all the relations of man with man, and man with

woman: the second,--that this philosophic and social movement of

democracy would seek its natural form in a form of government analogous

to its principle, and its nature; that is to say, representing the

sovereignty of the people; republic with one or two heads: and, finally,

that the social and political emancipation would involve in it the

intellectual and religious emancipation of the human mind; that the

liberty of thought, of speaking and acting, should not pause before the

liberty of belief; that the idea of God confined in the sanctuaries,

should shine forth pouring into each free conscience the right of

liberty itself; that this light, a revelation for some, and reason for

others, would spread more and more with truth and justice, which emanate

from God to overspread the earth.

VII.

Human thought, like God, makes the world in its own image.

Thought was revived by a philosophical age.

It had to transform the social world.

The French Revolution was therefore in its essence a sublime and

impassioned spirituality. It had a divine and universal ideal. This is

the reason why its passion spread beyond the frontiers of France. Those

who limit, mutilate it. It was the accession of three moral

sovereignties:--

The sovereignty of right over force;

The sovereignty of intelligence over prejudices;

The sovereignty of people over governments.

Revolution in rights; equality.

Revolution in ideas; reasoning substituted for authority.

Revolution in facts; the reign of the people.

A Gospel of social rights.

A Gospel of duties, a charter of humanity.

France declared itself the apostle of this creed. In this war of ideas

France had allies every where, and even on thrones themselves.

VIII.

There are epochs in the history of the human race, when the decayed

branches fall from the tree of humanity; and when institutions grown old

and exhausted, sink and leave space for fresh institutions full of sap,

which renew the youth and recast the ideas of a people. Antiquity is

replete with this transformation, of which we only catch a glimpse in

the relics of history. Each decadence of effete ideas carries with it an

old world, and gives its name to a new order of civilisation. The East.

China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, have seen these ruins and these renewals.

The West experienced them when the Druidical theocracy gave way to the

gods and government of the Romans. Byzantium, Rome, and the Empire

effected them rapidly, and as it were instinctively by themselves when,

wearied with, and blushing at, polytheism, they rose at the voice of

Constantine against their gods, and swept away, like an angry tempest,

those temples, those ideas and forms of worship, to which the people

still clung, but which the superior portion of human thought had already

abandoned. The Civilisation of Constantine and Charlemagne grew old in

its turn, and the beliefs which for eighteen centuries had supported

altars and thrones, menaced the religious world, as well as the

political world, with a catastrophe which rarely leaves power standing

when faith is staggered. Monarchical Europe was the handiwork of

catholicism; politics were fashioned after the image of the Church;

authority was founded on a mystery. Rights came to it from on high, and

power, like faith, was reputed divine. The obedience of the people was

consecrated to it, and from that very reason inquiry was a blasphemy,

and servitude a virtue. The spirit of philosophy, which had silently

revolted against this for three centuries, as a doctrine which the

scandals, tyrannies, and crimes of the two powers belied daily, refused

any longer to recognise a divine title in those authorities which deny

reason and subjugate a people. So long as catholicism had been the sole

legal doctrine in Europe, these murmuring revolts of mind had not

overset empires. They had been punished by the hands of rulers.

Dungeons, punishments, inquisitions, fire, and faggot, had intimidated

reason, and preserved erect the two-fold dogma on which the two

governments reposed.

But printing, that unceasing outpouring of the human mind, was to the

people a second revelation. Employed at first exclusively for the

Church, for the propagation of ruling ideas, it had begun to sap them.

The dogmata of temporal power, and spiritual power, incessantly assailed

by these floods of light, could not be long without being shaken, first

in the human mind and afterwards in things, to the very foundations.

_Guttemberg_; without knowing it, was the mechanist of the New World. In

creating the communication of ideas, he had assured the independence of

reason. Every letter of this alphabet which left his fingers, contained

in it, more power than the armies of kings, and the thunders of

pontiffs. It was mind which he furnished with language. These two powers

were the mistresses of man, as they were hereafter of mankind. The

intellectual world was born of a material invention, and it had grown

rapidly. The reformed religion was one of its early offspring.

The empire of catholic Christianity had undergone extensive

dismemberments. Switzerland, a part of Germany, Holland, England, whole

provinces of France, had been drawn away from the centre of religious

authority, and passed over to the doctrine of free examination. Divine

authority attacked and contested in catholicism, the authority of the

throne remained at the mercy of the people. Philosophy, more potent than

sedition, approached it more and more near, with less respect, less

fear. History had actually written of the weaknesses and crimes of

kings. Public writers had dared to comment upon it, and the people to

draw conclusions. Social institutions had been weighed by their real

value for humanity. Minds the most devoted to power had spoken to

sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights. The holy boldness of

Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the

presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient

synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV. with some of

those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement.

Fénélon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law, had written

his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the palace of the

king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne. The political

philosophy of Christianity, that insurrection of justice in favour of

the weak, had glided from the lips of Louis XIV. into the ear of his

grandson. Fénélon educated another revolution in the Duke of Burgundy.

This the king perceived when too late, and expelled the divine seduction

from his palace. But the revolutionary policy was born there; there the

people read the pages of the holy archbishop: Versailles was destined to

be, thanks to Louis XIV. and Fénélon, at once the palace of despotism

and the cradle of the Revolution. Montesquieu had sounded the

institutions, and analysed the laws of all people. By classing

governments, he had compared them, by comparing he passed judgment on

them; and this judgment brought out, in its bold relief, and contrast,

on every page, right and force, privilege and equality, tyranny and

liberty.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, less ingenious, but more eloquent, had studied

politics, not in the laws, but in nature. A free but oppressed and

suffering mind, the palpitation of his noble heart had made every heart

beat that had been ulcerated by the odious inequality of social

conditions. It was the revolt of the ideal against the real. He had been

the tribune of nature, the Gracchus of philosophy--he had not produced

the history of institutions, only its vision--but that vision descended

from heaven and returned thither. There was to be seen the design of God

and the excess of his love--but there was not enough seen of the

infirmity of men. It was the Utopia of government; but by this Rousseau

led further astray. To impel the people to passion there must be some

slight illusion mingled with the truth; reality alone was too chilling

to fanaticise the human mind; it is only roused to enthusiasm by things

something out of nature. What is termed the ideal is the attraction and

force of religions, which always aspire higher than they mount; this is

how fanaticism is produced, that delirium of virtue. Rousseau was the

ideal of politics, as Fénélon was the ideal of Christianity.

Voltaire had the genius of criticism, that power of raillery which

withers all it overthrows. He had made human nature laugh at itself, had

felled it low in order to raise it, had laid bare before it all errors,

prejudices, iniquities, and crimes of ignorance; he had urged it to

rebellion against consecrated ideas, not by the ideal but by sheer

contempt. Destiny gave him eighty years of existence, that he might

slowly decompose the decayed age; he had the time to combat against

time, and when he fell he was the conqueror. His disciples filled

courts, academies, and saloons; those of Rousseau grew splenetic and

visionary amongst the lower orders of society. The one had been the

fortunate and elegant advocate of the aristocracy, the other was the

secret consoler and beloved avenger of the democracy. His book was the

book of all oppressed and tender souls. Unhappy and devotee himself, he

had placed God by the side of the people; his doctrines sanctified the

mind, whilst they led the heart to rebellion. There was vengeance in his

very accent, but there was piety also. Voltaire's followers would have

overturned altars, those of Rousseau would have raised them. The one

could have done without virtues, and made arrangements with thrones; the

other had absolute need of a God, and could only have founded republics.

Their numerous disciples progressed with their missions, and possessed

all the organs of public thought. From the seat of geometry to the

consecrated pulpit, the philosophy of the 18th century invaded or

altered every thing. D'Alembert, Diderot, Raynal, Buffon, Condorcet,

Bernardin Saint Pierre, Helvetius, Saint Lambert, La Harpe, were the

church of the new era. One sole thought animated these diverse

minds--the renovation of human ideas. Arithmetic, science, history,

economy, politics, the stage, morals, poetry, all served as the vehicle

of modern philosophy; it ran in all the veins of the times; it had

enlisted every genius, it spoke every language. Chance or Providence had

decided that this period, which elsewhere was almost barren, should be

the age of France. From the end of the reign of Louis XIV. to the

commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., nature had been prodigal of men

to France. This brilliancy continued by so many geniuses of the first

order, from Corneille to Voltaire, from Bossuet to Rousseau, from

Fénélon to Bernardin Saint Pierre, had accustomed the people to look on

this side. The focus of the ideas of the world shed thence its

brilliancy. The moral authority of the human mind was no longer at Rome.

The stir, light, direction, were from Paris; the European mind was

French. There was, and there always will be, in the French genius

something more potent than its potency, more luminous than its

splendour; and that is its warmth, its penetrating power of

communicating the attraction which it has, and which it inspires to

Europe.

The genius of the Spain of Charles V. is high and adventurous, that of

Germany is profound and severe, that of England skilful and proud, that

of France is attractive,--it is in that it has its force. Easily seduced

itself, it easily seduces other people. The other great individualities

of the world of have only their genius. France for a second genius has

its heart, and is prodigal in its thoughts, in its writings, as well as

in its national acts. When Providence wills that one desire shall fire

the world, it is first kindled in a Frenchman's soul. This communicative

quality of the character of this race--this French attraction, as yet

unaltered by the ambition of conquest,--was then the precursory mark of

the age. It seems that a providential instinct turned all the attraction

of Europe towards this point, as if motion and light could only emanate

thence. The only real echoing point of the Continent was Paris. There

the smallest things made great noise, literature was the vehicle of

French influence; there intellectual monarchy had its books, its

theatre, its writings even before it had its heroes.

Conquering by its intelligence, its printing-presses were its army.

IX.

The parties who divided the country after the death of Mirabeau were

thus distributed; out of the Assembly, the Court, and the Jacobins; in

the Assembly the right side and the left side, and between these two

extreme parties--the one fanatic by its innovations, the other fanatic

from its resistance,--there was an intermediate party, consisting of the

men of substance and peace belonging to both these parties. Their views

moderate, and wavering between revolution and conservatism, desired that

the one should conquer without violence, and the other concede without

vindictiveness. These were the philosophers of the Revolution,--but it

was not the hour for philosophy, it was the hour of victory; the two

ideas required champions, not judges; they crushed men in their

encounter. Let us enumerate the principal chiefs of the contending

parties, and make them known before we bring them into action.

King Louis XVI. was then only thirty-seven years of age; his features

resembled those of his race, rendered somewhat heavy by the German blood

of his mother, a princess of the house of Saxony. Fine blue eyes, very

wide open, and clear rather than dazzling, a round and retreating

forehead, a Roman nose, the nostrils flaccid and large, and somewhat

destroying the energy of the aquiline profile, a mouth smiling and

gracious in expression, lips thick, but well shaped, a fine skin, fresh

and high-coloured in tint, though rather loose; of short stature, stout

frame, timid carriage, irregular walk, and, when not moving, a

restlessness of body in shifting first one foot and then the other

without advancing--a habit contracted either from that impatience common

to princes compelled to undergo long audiences, or else the outward

token of the constant wavering of an undecided mind. In his person there

was an expression of _bonhommie_ more vulgar than royal, which at the

first glance inspired as much derision as veneration, and on which his

enemies seized with contemptuous perversity, in order to show to the

people in the features of their ruler the visible and personal sign of

those vices they sought to destroy in royalty; in the _tout ensemble_

some resemblance to the imperial physiognomy of the later Cæsars at the

period of the fall of things and races,--the mildness of Antoninus, with

the vast obesity of Vitellius;--this was precisely the man.

X.

This young prince had been educated in complete solitude at the court of

Louis XV. The atmosphere which had infected the age had not touched his

heir. Whilst Louis XV. had changed his court into a place of ill-fame,

his grandson, educated in a corner of the palace of Meudon by pious and

enlightened masters, grew up in respect for his rank, in awe of the

throne, and in a real love for the people whom he was one day to be

called upon to govern. The soul of Fénélon seemed to have traversed two

generations of kings in the palace where he had brought up the Duke of

Burgundy, in order to inspire the education of his descendant. What was

nearest the crowned vice upon the throne was perhaps the most pure of

any thing in France. If the age had not been as dissolute as the king,

it would have directed his love in that direction. He had reached that

point of corruption in which purity appears ridiculous, and modesty was

treated with contempt.

Married at twenty years of age to a daughter of Maria Theresa of

Austria, the young prince had continued until his accession to the

throne in his life of domestic retirement, study, and isolation. Europe

was slumbering in a disgraceful peace. War, that exercise of princes,

could not thus form him by contact with men and the custom of command.

Fields of battle, which are the theatre of great actors of his stamp,

had not brought him under the observation of his people. No _prestige_,

except the circumstance of birth, clung to him. His sole popularity was

derived from the disgust inspired by his grandfather. He occasionally

had the esteem of his people, but never their favour. Upright and

well-informed, he called to him sterling honesty and clear intelligence

in the person of Turgot. But with the philosophic sentiment of the

necessity of reforms, the prince had not the feeling of a reformer; he

had neither the genius nor the boldness; nor had his ministers more than

himself. They raised all questions without settling any, accumulated

storms, without giving them any impulse, and the tempests were doomed to

be eventually directed against themselves. From M. de Maurepas to M.

Turgot, from M. Turgot to M. de Calonne, from M. de Calonne to M.

Necker, from M. Necker to M. de Malesherbes, he floated from an honest

man to an _intriguant_, from a philosopher to a banker, whilst the

spirit of system and charlatanism ill supplied the spirit of government.

God, who had given many men of notoriety during this reign, had refused

it a statesman; all was promise and deception. The court clamoured,

impatience seized on the nation, and violent convulsions followed. The

Assembly of Notables, States General, National Assembly, had all burst

in the hands of royalty; a revolution emanated from his good intentions

more fierce and more irritable than if it had been the consequence of

his vices. At the time when the king had this revolution before him in

the National Assembly, he had not in his councils one man, not only

capable of resisting but even of comprehending it. Men really strong

prefer in such moments to be rather the popular ministers of the nation

than the bucklers of the king.

XI.

M. de Montmorin was devoted to the king, but had no credit with the

nation. The ministry had neither the initiative nor opposition; the

initiative was in the hands of the Jacobins, and the executive power

with the mob. The king, without an organ, without privilege, without

force, had merely the odious responsibility of anarchy. He was the butt

against which all parties directed the hate or rage of the people. He

had the privilege of every accusation; whilst from the tribune Mirabeau,

Barnave, Pétion, Lameth, and Robespierre, eloquently threatened the

throne; infamous pamphlets, factious journals painted the king in the

colours of a tyrant who was brutalised by wine, who lent himself to

every caprice of an abandoned woman, and who conspired in the recesses

of his palace with the enemies of the nation. In the sinister feeling of

his coming fall, the stoical virtue of this prince sufficed for the

calming of his conscience, but was not adequate to his resolutions. On

leaving the council of his ministers, where he loyally accomplished the

constitutional conditions of his character, he sought, sometimes in the

friendship of his devoted servants, sometimes from the very persons of

his enemies, admitted by stealth to his confidence, the most important

inspirations. Counsels succeeded to counsels, and contradicted one

another in the royal ear, as their results contradicted each other in

their operations. His enemies suggested concessions, promising him a

popularity, which escaped their hands just as they were about to ensure

it to him. The court counselled the resistance which it had only in its

dreams; the queen the courage she felt in her soul; intriguants,

corruption, the timid, flight; and in turns, and almost at the same

time, he tried all these expedients: not one was efficacious; the time

for useful resolutions had passed,--the crisis was without remedy. It

was necessary to choose between life and the throne. In endeavouring to

preserve the two, it was written that he should lose both.

When we place ourselves in imagination in the position of Louis XVI.,

and ask what could have saved him? we reply disheartened--nothing. There

are circumstances which enfold all a man's movements in such a snare,

that, whatever direction he may take, he falls into the fatality of his

faults or his virtues. This was the dilemma of Louis XVI. All the

unpopularity of royalty in France, all the faults of preceding

administrations, all the vices of kings, all the shame of courts, all

the griefs of the people, were as it were accumulated on his head, and

marked his innocent brow for the expiation of many ages. Epochs have

their sacrifices as well as their religions. When they desire to recast

an institution which no longer suits them, they pile upon the individual

who personifies this institution all the odium and all the condemnation

of the institution itself,--they make of this man a victim whom they

sacrifice to the time. Louis XVI. was this innocent sacrifice,

overwhelmed with all the iniquities of thrones, and destined to be

immolated as a chastisement for royalty. Such was the king.

XII.

The queen seemed to be created by nature to contrast with the king, and

to attract for ever the interest and pity of ages to one of those state

dramas, which are incomplete unless the miseries and misfortunes of a

woman mingle in them. Daughter of Maria Theresa, she had commenced her

life in the storms of the Austrian monarchy. She was one of the children

whom the Empress held by the hand when she presented herself as a

supplicant before her faithful Hungarians, and the troops exclaimed, "We

will die for our king, Maria Theresa." Her daughter, too, had the heart

of a king. On her arrival in France, her beauty had dazzled the whole

kingdom,--a beauty then in all its splendour. The two children whom she

had given to the throne, far from impairing her good looks, added to the

attractions of her person that character of maternal majesty which so

well becomes the mother of a nation. The presentiment of her

misfortunes, the recollection of the tragic scenes of Versailles, the

uneasiness of each day somewhat diminished her youthful freshness. She

was tall, slim, and graceful,--a real daughter of Tyrol. Her naturally

majestic carriage in no way impaired the grace of her movements; her

neck rising elegantly and distinctly from her shoulders gave expression

to every attitude. The woman was perceptible beneath the queen, the

tenderness of heart was not lost in the elevation of her destiny. Her

light brown hair was long and silky, her forehead, high and rather

projecting, was united to her temples by those fine curves which give so

much delicacy and expression to that seat of thought or the soul in

women; her eyes of that clear blue which recall the skies of the North

or the waters of the Danube; an aquiline nose, with nostrils open and

slightly projecting, where emotions palpitate and courage is evidenced;

a large mouth, brilliant teeth, Austrian lips, that is, projecting and

well defined; an oval countenance, animated, varying, impassioned, and

the _ensemble_ of these features replete with that expression impossible

to describe which emanates from the look, the shades, the reflections of

the face, which encompasses it with an iris like that of the warm and

tinted vapour which bathes objects in full sunlight--the extreme

loveliness which the ideal conveys, and which by giving it life

increases its attraction. With all these charms, a soul yearning to

attach itself, a heart easily moved, but yet earnest in desire to fix

itself; a pensive and intelligent smile, with nothing of vacuity in it,

nothing of preference or mere acquaintanceship in it, because it felt

itself worthy of friendships. Such was Marie-Antoinette as a woman.

XIII.

It was enough to form the happiness of a man and the ornament of a

court: to inspire a wavering monarch, and be the safeguard of a state

under trying circumstances, something more is requisite. The genius of

government is required, and the queen had it not. Nothing could have

prepared her for the regulation of the disordered elements which were

about her; misfortune had given her no time for reflection. Hailed with

enthusiasm by a perverse court and an ardent nation, she must have

believed in the eternity of such sentiments. She was lulled to sleep in

the dissipations of the Trianon. She had heard the first threatenings of

the tempest without believing in its dangers: she had trusted in the

love she inspired, and which she felt in her own heart. The court had

become exacting, the nation hostile. The instrument of the intrigues of

the court on the heart of the king, she had at first favoured and then

opposed all reforms which prevented or delayed the crises that arose.

Her policy was but infatuation; her system but the perpetual abandonment

of herself to every partisan who promised her the king's safety. The

Comte D'Artois, a youthful prince, chivalrous in etiquette, had much

influence with her. He relied greatly on the noblesse; made frequent

references to his sword. He laughed at the crises: he disdained this war

of words, caballed against ministers, and treated passing events with

levity. The queen, intoxicated with the adulation of those around her,

urged the king to recall the next day what he had conceded on the

previous evening. Her hand was felt in all the transactions of the

government: her apartments were the focus of a perpetual conspiracy

against the government; the nation detected it, and ultimately detested

her.

Her name became for the people the phantom of all counter-revolution. We

are apt to calumniate what we fear. She was depicted under the features

of a Messalina. The most infamous pamphlets were in circulation; the

most scandalous anecdotes were credited. She may be accused of

tenderness, but never of depravity. Lovely, young, and adored, if her

heart did not remain insensible, her innermost feelings, innocent

perhaps, never gave just ground for open scandal. History has its

modesty, and we will not violate it.

XIV.

On the days of the 5th and 6th of October the queen perceived (too late)

the enmity of the people; her heart must have been full of vengeance.

Emigration commenced, and she viewed it favourably. All her friends were

at Coblentz; she was believed to be in close connection with them, and

this belief was true. Stories of an Austrian committee were busily

spread amongst the people. The queen was accused of conspiring for the

destruction of the nation, who at every moment demanded her head. A

people in revolt must have some one to hate, and they handed over to her

the queen. Her name was the theme of their songs of rage. One woman was

the enemy of a whole nation, and her pride disdained to undeceive them.

She inclosed herself in her resentment and her terror. Imprisoned in the

palace of the Tuileries, she could not put her head out of window

without provoking an outrage and hearing insult. Every noise in the city

made her apprehensive of an insurrection. Her days were melancholy, her

nights disturbed: she underwent hourly agony for two years, and that

anguish was magnified in her heart by her love for her two children, and

her disquietude for the king. Her court was forsaken; she saw none but

the shadows of authority; the ministers forced on her by M. de La

Fayette, before whom she was compelled to mask her countenance in

smiles. Her apartments were watched by spies in the guise of servants.

It was necessary to mislead them, in order to have interviews with the

few friends who remained to her. Private staircases, dark corridors,

were the means by which at night her secret counsellors obtained access

to her. These meetings resembled conspiracies; she left them every time

with a different train of ideas, which she communicated to the king,

whose behaviour thus acquired the incoherence of a woman persecuted and

distressed. Measures of resistance, bribing the Assembly, an entire

surrender of the constitution, attempts by force, an assumption of royal

dignity, repentance, weakness, terror, and flight,--all were discussed,

planned, decided on, prepared and abandoned, on the same day. Women, so

sublime in their devotion, are seldom capable of the continuous firmness

of mind--the imperturbability requisite for a political plan. Their

politics are in their heart, their passions trench so closely on their

reason. Of all the virtues which a throne requires they have but

courage; often heroes, they are never statesmen. The queen was another

example of this: she did the king incredible mischief. With a mind

infinitely superior, with more soul, more character than he, her

superiority only served to inspire him with mischievous counsels. She

was at once the charm of his misfortunes and the genius of his

destruction; she conducted him step by step to the scaffold, but she

ascended it with him.

XV.

The right side in the National Assembly consisted of men, the natural

opponents of the movement, the nobility and higher clergy. All, however,

were not of the same rank nor the same title. Seditions are found

amongst the lower rank, revolutions in the higher. Seditions are but the

angry workings of the people--revolutions are the ideas of the epoch.

Ideas begin in the head of the nation. The French Revolution was a

generous thought of the aristocracy. This thought fell into the hands of

the people, who framed of it a weapon against the _noblesse_, the

throne, and religion. The philosophy of the saloons became revolt in the

streets: nevertheless all the great houses of the kingdom had given

apostles to the first dogmata of the Revolution: the States General, the

ancient theatre of the importance and triumphs of the higher nobility,

had tempted the ambition of their heirs, and they had marched in the van

of the reformers. _Esprit de corps_ could not restrain them when the

question of uniting with the Tiers Etat had been invoked. The

Montmorencies, Noailles, La Rochefoucaulds, Clermont Tonnerres, Lally

Tollendals, Virieux, d'Aiguillons, Lauzans, Montesquieus, Lameths,

Mirabeaus, the Duc d'Orleans, first prince of the blood, the Count de

Provence, brother of the king, king himself afterwards as Louis XVIII.,

had given an impulse to the boldest innovations. They had each borrowed

their momentary popularity from principles easier to enunciate than

restrain, and that popularity had nearly forsaken them all. So soon as

these theorists of speculative revolution saw that they were carried

away in the torrent, they attempted to ascend the stream from whose

source they had started; some again surrounded the throne, others had

emigrated after the days of the 5th and 6th of October. Others, more

firm, remained in their places in the National Assembly; they fought

without a hope, but still defended a fallen cause, gloriously resolute

to maintain at least a monarchical power, and abandoning to the people,

without a struggle, the spoils of the nobility and the church. Amongst

these are Cazalès, the Abbé Maury, Malouet, and Clermont Tonnerre: they

were the distinguished orators of this expiring party.

Clermont Tonnerre and Malouet were rather statesmen than orators; their

cautious and reflective language weighed only on the reason; they sought

for the mean between liberty and monarchy, and believed they had found

it in the system of the Two Houses of English Legislature. The _modérés_

of the two parties listened to them respectfully; like all half parties

and half talents, they excited neither hatred nor anger; but events did

not listen to them, but thrusting them aside, advanced towards results

that were utterly absolute. Maury and Cazalès, less philosophic, were

the two champions of the right side; different in character, their

oratorical powers were much on a par. Maury represented the clergy, of

which body he was a member; Cazalès, the _noblesse_, to whom he

belonged. The one, Maury, early trained to struggles of polemical

theology, had sharpened and polished in the pulpit the eloquence he was

to bring into the tribune. Sprung from the lowest ranks of the people,

he only belonged to the _ancien régime_ by his garb, and defended

religion and the monarchy as two texts, imposed upon him as themes for

discourses. His conviction was the part he played; any other appointed

character would have suited equally well; yet he sustained with

unflinching courage and admirable consistency that which had been "set

down for him."

Devoted from his youth to serious studies, endowed with abundant flow of

words, striking and vivid in his language, his harangues were perfect

treatises on the subjects he discussed. The only rival of Mirabeau, he

needed but a cause more natural and more sterling to have become his

equal: but sophistry could not deck abuses in colours more specious than

those with which Maury invested the _ancien régime_.

Historical erudition and sacred learning supplied him with ample sources

of argument. The boldness of his character and language inspired words

which even avenge a defeat, and his fine countenance, his sonorous

voice, his commanding gesture, the defiance and good temper with which

he braved the tribunes, frequently drew down the applauses of his

enemies. The people, who recognised his invincible strength, were amused

at his impotent opposition. Maury was to them as one of those gladiators

whom they like to see fight, although well knowing that they must perish

in the strife. One thing was wanting to the Abbé Maury,--weight to his

eloquence; neither his birth, his faith, nor his life inspired respect

in those who listened. The actor was visible in the man, the advocate in

the cause, the orator and his language were not identified. Strip the

Abbé Maury of the habit of his order, and he might have changed sides

without a struggle, and have taken his seat amongst the innovators. Such

orators grace a party, they never save it.

XVI.

Cazalès was one of those men who are themselves ignorant of their own

powers until the hour arrives when circumstances call forth their

genius, and assign to them a duty. An obscure officer in the ranks of

the army, chance, which cast him into the tribune, revealed the orator.

He did not inquire which side he should defend; noble, the _noblesse_;

royalist, the king; a subject, the throne. His position made his creed;

he bore in the Assembly the character and qualities of his uniform.

Language to him was only another sword, and in all the spirit of

chivalry, he devoted it to the cause of Monarchy. Indolent and

ill-educated, his natural good sense supplied the place of study. His

monarchical faith was by no means fanaticism of the past: it admitted

the modifications conceded by the king himself, and which were

compatible with the inviolability of the throne and the working of the

executive power. From Mirabeau to him the difference of the first

principle was not wide apart, only one decried it as an aristocrat, and

the other as a democrat. The one flung himself headlong into the midst

of the people, the other attached himself to the steps of the throne.

The characteristic of Cazalès' eloquence was that of a desperate cause.

He protested more than he discussed, and opposed to the triumphs of

violence on the _côté gauche_, his ironic defiance, his bursts of bitter

indignation, which for the moment acquired admiration, but never led to

victory. To him the _noblesse_ owed that it fell with glory; the throne,

with majesty: and his eloquence attained something that was heroic.

Behind these two men there was only a party, soured by ill-fortune,

discouraged by its isolation from the nation, odious to the people,

useless to the throne, feeding on vain illusions, and only preserving of

its fallen power the resentment of injuries, and that insolence which

was perpetually provoking fresh humiliations. The hopes of this party

were entirely sustained by their reliance on the armed intervention of

foreign powers. Louis XVI. was in their eyes a prisoner king, whom

Europe would come and deliver from his thraldom. With them, patriotism

and honour were at Coblentz. Overcome by numbers, without skilful

leaders who understood how to gain immortal names by timely retreats;

with no strength to contend against the spirit of the age and refusing

to move with it, the _côté droit_ could only call for vengeance, its

political power was now confined to an imprecation.

The left side lost at one blow its leader and controller; in Mirabeau

the national man had ceased to exist, and only the men of party

remained, and they were Barnave and the two Lameths. These men humbled,

rebuked, before the ascendency of Mirabeau, had attempted, long before

his death, to balance the sovereignty of his genius by the exaggeration

of their doctrines and harangues. Mirabeau was but the apostle--they

would fain have been the faction-leaders of the time. Jealous of his

influence, they would have crushed his talents beneath the superiority

of their popularity. Mediocrity thinks to equal genius by outraging

reason. A diminution of thirty or forty votes had taken place in the

left side. This was the work of Barnave and the Lameths. The club of the

friends of the constitution become the Jacobin Club, responded to them

from without. The popular agitation excited by them was restrained by

Mirabeau, who rallied against them the left, the centre, and the

intelligent members of the right side. They conspired, they caballed,

they fomented divisions in opinion all the more that they had not

control in the Assembly.

Mirabeau was dead, and now the field was open to them. The

Lameths--courtiers, educated by the kindness of the royal family,

overwhelmed by the favours and pensions of the king, had the conspicuous

defection of Mirabeau without having the excuse of his wrongs against

the monarchy: this defection was one of their titles to popular favour.

Clever men, they carried with them into the national cause the conduct

of Courts in which they had been brought up: still their love of the

Revolution was disinterested and sincere. Their eminent talents did not

equal their ambition. Crushed by Mirabeau, they stirred up against him

all those whom the shadow of that great man eclipsed in common with

themselves. They sought for a rival to oppose to him, and found only men

who envied him. Barnave presented himself, and they surrounded him,

applauded him, intoxicated him with his self-importance. They persuaded

him for a moment that phrases were politics, and that a rhetorician was

a statesman.

Mirabeau was great enough not to fear, and just enough not to despise

him. Barnave, a young barrister of Dauphiné, had made his _début_ with

much effect in the struggles between the parliament and the throne which

had agitated his province, and displayed on small theatres the eloquence

of men of the bar. Sent at thirty years of age to the States General,

with Mounier his patron and master, he had soon quitted Mounier and the

monarchical party, and made himself conspicuous amongst the democratic

division. A word of sinister import which escaped not from his heart,

but from his lips, weighed on his conscience with remorse. "Is then the

blood that flows so pure?" he exclaimed at the first murder of the

Revolution. This phrase had branded him on the brow with the mark of a

ringleader of faction. Barnave was not this, or only as much so as was

necessary for the success of his discourses; nothing in him was extreme

but the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel.

Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his

intellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart in

the right place. His talent, which they affected to compare with

Mirabeau's, was nothing more than a power of skilfully rivetting public

attention. His habit of pleading gave him, with its power of extempore

speaking, an apparent superiority which vanished before reflection,

Mirabeau's enemies had created him a pedestal on their hatred, and

magnified his importance to make the comparison closer. When reduced to

his actual stature, it was easy to recognise the distance that existed

between the man of the nation, and the man of the bar.

Barnave had the misfortune to be the great man of a mediocre party, and

the hero of an envious faction: he deserved a better destiny, which he

subsequently acquired.

XVII.

Still deeper in the shade, and behind the chief of the National

Assembly, a man almost unknown began to move, agitated by uneasy

thoughts which seemed to forbid him to be silent and unmoved; he spoke

on all occasions, and attacked all speakers indifferently, including

Mirabeau himself. Driven from the tribune, he ascended it next day:

overwhelmed with sarcasm, coughed down, disowned by all parties, lost

amongst the eminent champions who fixed public attention, he was

incessantly beaten, but never dispirited. It might have been said, that

an inward and prophetic genius revealed to him the vanity of all talent,

and the omnipotence of a firm will and unwearied patience, and that an

inward voice said to him, "These men who despise thee are thine: all the

changes of this Revolution which now will not deign to look upon thee,

will eventually terminate in thee, for thou hast placed thyself in the

way like the inevitable excess, in which all impulse ends."

This man was Robespierre.

There are abysses that we dare not sound, and characters we desire not

to fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too much

horror; but history, which has the unflinching eye of time, must not be

chilled by these terrors, she must understand whilst she undertakes to

recount. Maximilien Robespierre was born at Arras, of a poor family,

honest and respectable; his father, who died in Germany, was of English

origin. This may explain the shade of Puritanism in his character. The

bishop of Arras had defrayed the cost of his education. Young Maximilien

had distinguished himself on leaving college by a studious life, and

austere manners. Literature and the bar shared his time. The philosophy

of Jean Jacques Rousseau had made a profound impression on his

understanding; the philosophy, falling upon an active imagination, had

not remained a dead letter; it had become in him a leading principle, a

faith, a fanaticism. In the strong mind of a sectarian, all conviction

becomes a thing apart. Robespierre was the Luther of politics: and in

obscurity he brooded over the confused thoughts of a renovation of the

social world, and the religious world, as a dream which unavailingly

beset his youth, when the Revolution came to offer him what destiny

always offers to those who watch her progress, opportunity. He seized on

it. He was named deputy of the third estate in the States General. Alone

perhaps among all these men who opened at Versailles the first scene of

this vast drama, he foresaw the termination; like the soul, whose seat

in the human frame philosophers have not discovered, the thought of an

entire people sometimes concentrates itself in the individual, the least

known in the great mass. We should not despise any, for the finger of

Destiny marks in the soul and not upon the brow. Robespierre had

nothing: neither birth, nor genius nor exterior which should point him

out to men's notice. There was nothing conspicuous about him; his

limited talent had only shone at the bar or in provincial academies; a

few verbal harangues filled with a tame and almost rustic philosophy,

some bits of cold and affected poetry, had vainly displayed his name in

the insignificance of the literary productions of the day: he was more

than unknown, he was mediocre and contemned. His features presented

nothing which could attract attention, when gazing round in a large

assembly: there was no sign in visible characters of this power which

was all within; he was the last word of the Revolution, but no one could

read him.

Robespierre's figure was small, his limbs feeble and angular, his step

irresolute, his attitudes affected, his gestures destitute of harmony or

grace; his voice, rather shrill, aimed at oratorical inflexions, but

only produced fatigue and monotony; his forehead was good, but small and

extremely projecting above the temples, as if the mass and embarrassed

movement of his thoughts had enlarged it by their efforts; his eyes,

much covered by their lids and very sharp at the extremities, were

deeply buried in the cavities of their orbits; they gave out a soft blue

hue, but it was vague and unfixed, like a steel reflector on which a

light glances; his nose straight and small was very wide at the

nostrils, which were high and too expanded; his mouth was large, his

lips thin and disagreeably contracted at each corner; his chin small and

pointed, his complexion yellow and livid, like that of an invalid or a

man worn out by vigils and meditations. The habitual expression of this

visage was that of superficial serenity on a serious mind, and a smile

wavering betwixt sarcasm and condescension. There was softness, but of a

sinister character. The prevailing characteristic of this countenance

was the prodigious and continual tension of brow, eyes, mouth, and all

the facial muscles; in regarding him it was perceptible that the whole

of his features, like the labour of his mind, converged incessantly on a

single point with such power that there was no waste of will in his

temperament, and he appeared to foresee all he desired to accomplish, as

though he had already the reality before his eyes. Such then was the man

destined to absorb in himself all those men, and make them his victims

after he had used them as his instruments. He was of no party, but of

all parties which in their turn served his ideal of the Revolution. In

this his power consisted, for parties paused but he never did. He placed

this ideal as an end to reach in every revolutionary movement, and

advanced towards it with those who sought to attain it; then, this goal

reached, he placed it still further off, and again marched forward with

other men, continually advancing without ever deviating, ever pausing,

ever retreating. The Revolution, decimated in its progress, must one day

or other inevitably arrive at a last stage, and he desired it

should end in himself. He was the entire incorporation of the

Revolution,--principles, thoughts, passions, impulses. Thus

incorporating himself wholly with it, he compelled it one day to

incorporate itself in him--that day was a distant one.

XVIII.

Robespierre, who had often struggled against Mirabeau with Duport, the

Lameths, and Barnave, began to separate himself from them as soon as

they appeared to predominate in the Assembly. He formed, with Pétion and

some others of small note, a small band of opposition, radically

democratic, who encouraged the Jacobins without, and menaced Barnave and

the Lameths whenever they ventured to pause. Pétion and Robespierre in

the Assembly, Brissot and Danton at the Jacobin Club, formed the nucleus

of the new party which was destined to accelerate the movement and

speedily to convert it into convulsions and catastrophes.

Pétion was a popular Lafayette: popularity was his aim, and he acquired

it earlier than Robespierre. A barrister without talent but upright, he

had imbibed no more of philosophy than the Social Contract; young, good

looking and a patriot, he was destined to become one of those

complaisant idols of whom the people make what they please except a man;

his credit in the streets and amongst the Jacobins gave him a certain

amount of authority in the Assembly, where he was listened to as the

significant echo of the will out of doors. Robespierre affected to

respect him.

XIX.

The constitution was completed, the regal power was but a mere name, the

king was but the executive of the orders of the national representation,

his ministers only responsible hostages in the hands of the Assembly.

The vices of this constitution were evident before it was entirely

finished. Voted in the rage of parties, it was not a constitution, it

was a vengeance of the people against the monarchy, the throne only

existing as the substitute of a unique power which was every where

instituted, but which no one yet dared to name. The people, parties,

trembled lest on removing the throne they should behold an abyss in

which the nation would be engulphed: it was thus tacitly agreed to

respect its forms, though they daily despoiled and insulted the

unfortunate monarch whom they kept chained to it.

Things were at that point where they have no possible termination except

in a catastrophe. The army, without discipline, added but another

element to the popular ferment: forsaken by its officers, who emigrated

in masses, the subalterns seized upon democracy and propagated it in

their ranks. Affiliated in every garrison with the Jacobin Club, they

received from it their orders, and made of their troops soldiers of

anarchy, accomplices of faction. The people to whom they had cast as a

prey the feudal rights of the nobility and the tithes of the clergy,

feared to have wrested from it what it held with disquietude, and saw in

every direction plots which it anticipated by crimes. The sudden burst

of liberty, for which it was not prepared, agitated without

strengthening it: it evinced all the vices of enfranchised men without

having got the virtues of the free man. The whole of France was but one

vast sedition: anarchy swayed the state, and in order that it might be,

as it were, self-governed, it had created its government in as many

clubs as there were large municipalities in the kingdom. The dominant

club was that of the Jacobins: this club was the centralisation of

anarchy. So soon as a powerful and high passioned will moves a nation,

their common impulse brings men together; individuality ceases, and the

legal or illegal association organises the public prejudice. Popular

societies thus have birth. At the first menaces of the court against the

States General, certain Breton deputies had a meeting at Versailles, and

formed a society to detect the plots of the court and assure the

triumphs of liberty: its founders were Siéyès, Chapelier, Barnave, and

Lameth. After the 5th and 6th of October, the Breton Club, transported

to Paris in the train of the National Assembly, had there assumed the

more forcible name of "Society of the Friends of the Constitution." It

held its sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins Saint Honoré, not

far from the Manège, where the National Assembly sat. The deputies, who

had founded it at the beginning for themselves, now opened their doors

to journalists, revolutionary writers, and finally to all citizens. The

presentation by two of its members, and an open scrutiny as to the moral

character of the person proposed, were the sole conditions of admission:

the public was admitted to the sittings by inspectors, who examined the

admission card. A set of rules, an office, a president, a corresponding

committee, secretaries, an order of the day, a tribune, and orators,

gave to these meetings all the forms of deliberative assemblies: they

were assemblies of the people only without elections and responsibility;

feeling alone gave them authority: instead of framing laws they formed

opinion.

The sittings took place in the evening, so that the people should not be

prevented from attending in consequence of their daily labour: the acts

of the National Assembly, the events of the moment, the examination of

social questions, frequently accusations against the king, ministers,

the _côté droit_; were the texts of the debates. Of all the passions of

the people, there hatred was the most flattered; they made it suspicious

in order to subject it. Convinced that all was conspiring against

it,--king, queen, court, ministers, authorities, foreign powers,--it

threw itself headlong into the arms of its defenders. The most eloquent

in its eyes was he who inspired it with most dread--it had a parching

thirst for denunciations, and they were lavished on it with prodigal

hand. It was thus that Barnave, the Lameths, then Danton, Marat,

Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, Pétion, Robespierre, had acquired their

authority over the people. These names had increased in reputation as

the anger of the people grew hotter; they cherished their wrath in order

to retain their greatness. The nightly sittings of the Jacobins and the

Cordeliers frequently stifled the echo of the sittings of the National

Assembly: the minority, beaten at the Manège, came to protest, accuse,

threaten at the Jacobins.

Mirabeau himself, accused by Lameth on the subject of the law of

emigration, came a few days before his death to listen face to face to

the invectives of his denouncer, and had not disdained to justify

himself. The clubs were the exterior strength, where the factious of the

assembly gave the support of their names in order to intimidate the

national representation. The national representation had only the laws;

the club had the people, sedition, and even the army.

XX.

This expression of public opinion, thus organised into a permanent

association at every point in the empire, gave an electric shock which

nothing could resist. A motion made in Paris was echoed from club to

club to the extremest provinces. The same spark lighted at once the same

passion in millions of souls. All the societies corresponded with one

another and with the mother society. The impulse was communicated and

the response was felt every day. It was the government of factions

enfolding in their nets the government of the law; but the law was mute

and invisible, whilst faction was erect and eloquent. Let us imagine one

of these sittings, at which the citizens, already agitated by the stormy

air of the period, took their places at the close of day in one of those

naves recently devoted to another worship. Some candles, brought by the

affiliated, scarcely lighted up the gloomy place; naked walls, wooden

benches, a tribune instead of an altar. Around this tribune some

favoured orators pressed in order to speak. A crowd of citizens of all

classes, of all costumes, rich, poor, soldiers, workpeople; women, to

create excitement, enthusiasm, tenderness, tears whenever they enter;

children, whom they raise in their arms as if to make them inspire, with

their earliest breath, the feelings of an irritated people: a gloomy

silence interrupted by shouts, applause, or hisses, just as the speaker

is loved or hated: then inflammatory discourses shaking to the very

centre by phrases of magical effect, the passions of this mob new to all

the effects of eloquence. The enthusiasm real in some, feigned in

others; stirring propositions, patriotic gifts, civic crowns, busts of

leading republicans paraded round, symbols of superstition, and

aristocracy burnt, songs loudly vociferated by demagogues in chorus at

the opening of each sitting. What people, even in a time of

tranquillity, could have resisted the pulsations of this fever, whose

throbbings were daily renewed from the end of 1790 in every city in the

kingdom? It was the rule of fanaticism preceding the reign of terror.

Thus was the Jacobin Club organised.

XXI.

The club of the Cordeliers, which is sometimes confounded with that of

the Jacobins, even surpassed it in turbulence and demagogism. Marat and

Danton ruled there.

The moderate constitutional party had also attempted its clubs, but

passion is wanting to defensive societies; it is only the offensive that

groups in factions; and thus the former expired of themselves until the

establishment of the Club of Feuillants. The people drove away with a

shower of stones the first meeting of the deputies, at M. De Clermont

Tonnerres. Barnave reproached his colleagues in the tribune, and

devoted them to public execration with the same voice which had raised

and rallied the _Friends of the Constitution_. Liberty was as yet but a

partial arm, which was unblushingly broken in the hands of an opponent.

What remained to the king thus pressed between an assembly, which had

usurped all the executive functions, and those factious clubs, which

usurped to themselves all the rights of representation? Placed without

adequate strength between two rival powers, he was only there to receive

the blows of each in the struggle, and to be cast as a daily sacrifice

to popularity by the National Assembly; one power alone still maintained

the shadow of the throne and exterior order, the national guard of

Paris. But the national guard, which as a neutral force, whose only law

was in public opinion, and was wavering itself between factions and the

monarchy, might very well maintain safety in a public place, was unable

to serve as a strong and independent support to political power. It was

itself of the people; every serious intervention against the will of the

people, appeared to it as sacrilege. It was a body of municipal police;

it could never again be the army of the throne or the constitution; it

was born of itself on the day after the 14th of July on the steps of the

Hôtel de Ville, and it received no orders but from the municipality. The

municipality had assigned M. de La Fayette as its head--nor could it

have chosen better: an honest people, directed by its instinct, could

not have selected a man who would represent it more faithfully.

XXII.

The marquis de La Fayette was a patrician, possessor of an immense

fortune, and allied, through his wife, daughter of the Duc d'Ayen, with

the greatest families of the court. Born at Chavaignac in Auvergne on

the 6th of September, 1757, married at sixteen years of age, a

precocious instinct of renown drove him in 1777 from his own country. It

was at the period of the war of Independence in America; the name of

Washington resounded throughout the two continents. A youth dreamed the

same destiny for himself in the delights of the effeminate court of

Louis XV.; that youth was La Fayette. He privately fitted out two

vessels with arms and provisions, and arrived at Boston. Washington

hailed him as he would have hailed the open succour of France. It was

France without its flag. La Fayette and the young officers who followed

him assured him of the secret wishes of a great people for the

independence of the new world. The American general employed M. de La

Fayette in this long war, the least of whose skirmishes assumed in

traversing the seas the importance of a great battle. The American war,

more remarkable for its results than its campaigns, was more fitted to

form republicans than warriors. M. de La Fayette joined in it with

heroism and devotion: he acquired the friendship of Washington. A French

name was written by him on the baptismal register of a transatlantic

nation. This name came back to France like the echo of liberty and

glory. That popularity which seizes on all that is brilliant, was

accorded to La Fayette on his return to his native land, and quite

intoxicated the young hero. Opinion adopted him, the opera applauded

him, actresses crowned him; the queen smiled upon him, the king created

him a general; Franklin, made him a citizen, and national enthusiasm

elevated him into its idol. This excess of public estimation decided his

life. La Fayette found this popularity so sweet that he could not

consent to lose it. Applause, however, is by no means glory, and

subsequently he deserved that which he acquired. He gave to democracy

that of which it was worthy, honesty.

On the 14th of July M. de La Fayette was ready for elevation on the

shields of the _bourgeoisie_ of Paris. A _frondeur_ of the court, a

revolutionist of high family, an aristocrat by birth, a democrat in

principles, radiant with military renown acquired beyond seas, he united

in his own person many qualities for rallying around him a civic

militia, and for becoming the natural chief of an army of citizens. His

American glory shone forth brilliantly in Paris. Distance increases

every reputation--his was immense; it comprised and eclipsed all;

Necker, Mirabeau, the Duc d'Orleans, the three most popular men in

Paris,--all

Paled their ineffectual fires

before La Fayette, whose name was the nation's for three years. Supreme

arbiter, he carried into the Assembly his authority as commandant of the

national guard; his authority, as an influential member of the Assembly.

Of these two conjoined titles be made a real dictatorship of opinion. As

an orator he was but of slight consideration; his gentle style, though

witty and keen, had nothing of that firm and electric manner which

strikes the senses, makes the heart vibrate and communicates its vigour

and effects to all who listen. Elegant as the language of a drawing room

and overwhelmed in the mazes of diplomatic intrigues, he spoke of

liberty in court phrases. The only parliamentary act of M. La Fayette

was a proclamation of the _rights of man_, which was adopted by the

National Assembly. This decalogue of free men, formed in the forests of

America, contained more metaphysical phrases than sound policy. It

applied as ill to an old society as the nudity of the savage to the

complicated wants of civilised man: but it had the merit of placing man

bare for the moment, and, by showing him what he was and what he was

not, of setting him on the discovery of the real value of his duties and

his rights. It was the cry of the revolt of nature against all

tyrannies. This cry was destined to crumble into dust an old world used

up in servitude, and to produce another new and breathing. It was to La

Fayette's honour that he first proposed it.

The federation of 1790 was the apogee of M. de La Fayette: on that day

he surpassed both king and assembly. The nation armed and reflective was

there in person, and he commanded it; he could have done every thing and

attempted nothing: the misfortune of that man was in his situation. A

man of transition, his life passed between two ideas; if he had had but

one he could have been master of the destinies of his country. The

monarchy or the republic were alike in his hand; he had but to open it

wide, he only half opened it, and it was only a semi-liberty that issued

from it. In inspiring his country with a desire for a republic, he

defended a constitution and a throne. His principles and his conduct

were in opposition; he was honest, and yet seemed to betray; whilst he

struggled with regret from duty to the monarchy, his heart was in the

republic. Protector of the throne, he was at the same time its bugbear.

One life can only be devoted to one cause. Monarchy and republicanism

had the same esteem, the same wrongs in his mind, and he served for and

against both. He died without having seen either of them triumphant, but

he died virtuous and popular. He had, beside his private virtues, a

public virtue, which will ever be a pardon to his faults, and

immortality to his name; he had before all, more than all, and after

all, the feeling, constancy, and moderation of the Revolution.

Such was the man and such the army on which reposed the executive power,

the safety of Paris, the constitutional throne, and the life of the

king.

XXIII.

Thus on the 1st of June, 1791, were parties situated, such the men and

things in the midst of which the irresistible spirit of a vast social

renovation advanced with occult and continuous impulse. What but

contention, anarchy, crime, and death, could emanate from such elements!

No party had the reason, no mind had the genius, no soul had the

virtue, no arm had the energy, to control this chaos, and extract from

it justice, truth, and strength. Things will only produce what they

contain. Louis XVI. was upright and devoted to well doing, but he had

not understood, from the very first symptoms of the Revolution, that

there was only one part for the leader of a people, and that was to

place himself in the van of the newly born idea, to forbear any struggle

for the past, and thus to combine in his own person the twofold power of

chief of the nation, and chief of a party. The character of moderation

is only possible on the condition of having already acquired the

unreserved confidence of the party whom it is desired to control. Henri

IV. assumed this character, but it was _after_ victory; had he attempted

it _before_ Ivry, he would have lost, not only the kingdom of France,

but also of Navarre.

The court was venal, selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's

person the sources of its vanities,--profitable exactions. The clergy,

with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state,

its life was apart from the life of the nation, its ecclesiastical

establishment seemed to be wholly independent of the monarchical

establishment. It had only rallied round the monarchy, on the day it had

beheld its own fortune compromised; and then it had appealed to the

faith of the people, in order to preserve its wealth; but the people now

only saw in the monks mendicants, and in the bishops extortioners. The

nobility, effeminate by lengthened peace, emigrated in masses,

abandoning their king to his besetting perils, and fully trusting in the

prompt and decisive intervention of foreign powers. The third estate,

jealous and envious, fiercely demanded their place and their rights

amongst the privileged castes; its justice appeared hatred. The Assembly

comprised in its bosom all these weaknesses, all this egotism, all these

vices. Mirabeau was venal, Barnave jealous, Robespierre fanatic, the

Jacobin Club blood-thirsty, the National Guard selfish, La Fayette a

waverer, the government a nullity. No one desired the Revolution but for

his own purpose, and according to his own scheme; and it must have been

wrecked on these shoals a hundred times, if there were not in human

crises something even stronger than the men who appear to guide

them--the will of the event itself.

The Revolution in all its comprehensive bearings was not understood at

that period by any one except, perchance, Robespierre and the thorough

going democrats. The King viewed it only as a vast reform, the Duc

d'Orleans as a great faction, Mirabeau but in its political point of

view, La Fayette only in its constitutional aspect, the Jacobins as a

vengeance, the mob as the abasing of the higher orders, the nation as a

display of patriotism. None ventured as yet to contemplate its ultimate

consummation.

All was thus blind, except the Revolution itself. The virtue of the

Revolution was in the idea which forced these men on to accomplish it,

and not in those who actually accomplished it; all its instruments were

vitiated, corrupt, or personal; but the idea was pure, incorruptible,

divine. The vices, passions, selfishness of men were inevitably doomed

to produce in the coming crises those shocks, those violences, those

perversities, and those crimes which are to human passions what

consequences are to principles.

If each of the parties or men, mixed up from the first day with these

great events had taken their virtue, instead of their impulses as the

rule of their actions, all these disasters which eventually crushed

them, would have been saved to them and to their country. If the king

had been firm and sagacious, if the clergy had been free from a longing

for things temporal, and if the aristocracy had been good; if the people

had been moderate, if Mirabeau had been honest, if La Fayette had been

decided, if Robespierre had been humane, the Revolution would have

progressed, majestic and calm as a heavenly thought, through France, and

thence through Europe; it would have been installed like a philosophy in

facts, in laws, and in creeds. But it was otherwise decreed. The holiest

most just and virtuous thought, when it passes through the medium of

imperfect humanity, comes out in rags and in blood. Those very persons

who conceived it, no longer recognise, disavow it. Yet it is not

permitted, even to crime, to degrade the truth, that survives all, even

its victims. The blood which sullies men does not stain its idea; and

despite the selfishness which debases it, the infamies which trammel it,

the crimes which pollute it, the blood-stained Revolution purifies

itself, feels its own worth, triumphs, and will triumph.