I.
There is for a people, as for individuals, an instinct of conservation
which warns and "gives them pause," even under the impulses of the most
blind passions, before the dangers into which they are about to fling
themselves headlong. They seem suddenly to recede at the aspect of this
abyss, into which but now they were hastening precipitately. The
intermissions of human passions are short and fugitive, but they give
time to events, returns to wisdom, and opportunities to statesmen. These
are moments in which they seize the hesitating and intimidated spirit of
the people, in order to make them create a reaction against their own
excesses, and to lead them back by the very revulsion of the passions
that have already urged them too far. The day after the 25th of June,
1791, France experienced one of those throes of repentance which save a
people. There was only the statesman wanting.
Never had the National Assembly presented a spectacle so imposing and so
calm as during the five days which had succeeded the king's departure.
It would appear as though it felt the weight of the whole empire resting
on it, and it sustained its attitude in order to bear it with dignity.
It accepted the power without desiring either to usurp or to retain it.
It covered with a respectful fiction the king's desertion--called the
flight a carrying off, and sought for the guilty around the
throne--regarding the throne itself as inviolable. The man disappeared,
for it, in Louis XVI.:--in the irresponsible chief of the state. These
three months may be considered as an interregnum, during which public
reason was her sole constitution. There was no longer a king, for he was
a captive, and his sanction was taken from him: there was no longer law,
for the constitution was incomplete: there was no longer a minister, for
the executive power was suspended; and yet the kingdom was standing
erect, was acting, organising, defending itself, preserving itself--and
what is still more marvellous, controlled itself. It held in reserve in
a palace the principal machinery of the constitution,--Royalty; and the
day when the work is accomplished, it puts the king in his place, and
says to him, "Be free and reign."
II.
One thing only dishonours this majestic interregnum of the nation--the
temporary captivity of the king and his family. But we must remember
that the nation had the right to say to its chief; "If thou wilt reign
over us, thou shalt not quit the kingdom, thou shalt not convey the
royalty of France amongst our enemies." And as to the forms of that
captivity in the Tuileries, we must remember too that the National
Assembly had not prescribed them,--that in fact it had risen with
indignation at the word imprisonment,--that it had commanded a political
resistance and nothing more, and that the severity and odium of the
precautionary measures used were occasioned by the zealous
responsibility of the national guard, more than to the irreverence of
the Assembly. La Fayette guarded, in the person of the king, the
dynasty, its proper head, and the constitution--a hostage against the
republic and royalty at the same time. _Maire du palais_, he intimidated
by the presence of a weak and degraded monarch, the discouraged
royalists and the restrained republicans. Louis XVI. was his pledge.
Barnave and the Lameths had within the Assembly the attitude of La
Fayette without. They required the king, in order to defend themselves
from their enemies. So long as there was a man (Mirabeau) between the
throne and themselves, they had played with the republic and sapped the
throne in order to crush a rival. But Mirabeau dead and the throne
shaken, they felt themselves weak against the very impulse they had
given. They sustained, therefore, this wreck of monarchy in order to be
sustained in their turn. Founders of the Jacobins, they trembled before
their own handiwork:--they took refuge in the constitution which they
themselves had dilapidated, and passed from the character of
destructives to that of statesmen. But for the first part there is only
violence needed; for the second genius is required. Barnave had talent
only. He had something more, however--he had a heart, and he was a good
man. The first excesses of his language were in him but the excitements
of the tribune; he was desirous of tasting the popular applause, and it
was showered upon him beyond his real merit. Hereafter it was not with
Mirabeau he was about to measure his strength; it was with the
Revolution in all its force. Jealousy took from him the pedestal which
it had lent, and he was about to appear as he really was.
III.
But a sentiment more noble than that of his personal safety impelled
Barnave to side with the monarchical party. His heart had passed before
his ambition to the side of weakness, beauty, and misfortune. Nothing is
more dangerous than for a sensitive man to know those against whom he
contends. Hatred against the cause shrinks before the feeling for the
persons. We become partial unwittingly. Sensibility disarms the
understanding, and we soften instead of reasoning, whilst the
sensitiveness of a commiserating man soon usurps the place of his
opinion.
It was thus that Barnave's mind was worked upon, after the return from
Varennes. The interest he had conceived for the queen had converted this
young republican into a royalist. Barnave had only previously known this
princess through a cloud of prejudice, amid which parties enshroud those
whom they wish to have detested. A sudden communication caused this
conventional atmosphere to dissipate, and he adored, when close, what he
had calumniated at a distance. The very character which fortune had cast
for him in the destiny of this woman had something unexpected and
romantic, capable of dazzling his lofty imagination, and deeply
affecting his generous disposition. Young, obscure, unknown but a few
months before, and now celebrated, popular, and powerful--thrown in the
name of a sovereign assembly between the people and the king--he became
the protector of those whose enemy he had been. Royal and suppliant
hands met his plebeian touch! He who opposed the popular royalty of
talent and eloquence to the royalty of the blood of the Bourbons! He
covered with his body the life of those who had been his masters. His
very devotion was a triumph; the object of that devotion was in his
queen. That queen was young, handsome, majestic; but brought to the
level of ordinary humanity by her alarm for her husband and his
children. Her tearful eyes besought their safety from Barnave's eyes. He
was the leading orator in that Assembly which held the fate of the
monarch in his house. He was the favourite of that people whom he
controlled by a gesture, and whose fury he averted during the long
journey between the throne and death. The queen had placed her son, the
young dauphin, between his knees. Barnave's fingers had played with the
fair hair of the child. The king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, had
distinguished, with tact, Barnave from the inflexible and brutal Pétion.
They had conversed with him as to their situation: they complained of
having been deceived as to the nature of the public mind in France. They
unveiled their repentance and constitutional inclinations. These
conversations, marred in the carriage by the presence of the other
commissioner and the eyes of the people, had been stealthily and more
intimately renewed in the meetings which the royal family nightly held.
Mysterious political correspondences and secret interviews in the
Tuileries were contrived. Barnave, the inflexible partisan, reached
Paris a devoted man. The nocturnal conference of Mirabeau with the
queen, in the park of Saint Cloud, was ambitioned by his rival; but
Mirabeau sold, Barnave gave, himself. Heaps of gold bought the man of
genius; a glance seduced the man of sentiment.
IV.
Barnave had found Duport and the Lameths, his friends, in the most
monarchical moods, but from other motives than his own. This triumvirate
was in terms of good understanding at the Tuileries. Lameths and Duport
saw the king. Barnave, who at first dared not venture to visit the
chateau, subsequently went there secretly. The utmost precaution and
concealment attended these interviews. The king and queen sometimes
awaited the youthful orator in a small apartment on the _entre sol_ of
the palace, with a key in their hand, so as to open the door the moment
his footsteps were heard. When these meetings were utterly impossible,
Barnave wrote to the queen. He reckoned greatly on the strength of his
party in the Assembly, because he measured the power of their opinions
by the talent with which they expressed them. The queen did not feel a
similar confidence. "Take courage, madame," wrote Barnave; "it is true
our banner is torn, but the word _Constitution_ is still legible
thereon. This word will recover all its pristine force and _prestige_,
if the king will rally to it sincerely. The friends of this
constitution, retrieving past errors, may still raise and maintain it
firmly. The Jacobins alarm public reason; the emigrants threaten our
nationality. Do not fear the Jacobins--put no trust in the emigrants.
Throw yourself into the national party which now exists. Did not Henry
IV. ascend the throne of a Catholic nation at the head of a Protestant
party?"
The queen with all sincerity adopted this tardy counsel, and arranged
with Barnave all her measures, and all her foreign correspondence. She
neither said nor did any thing which could thwart the plans he had
conceived for the restoration of royal authority. "A feeling of
legitimate pride," said the queen when speaking of him, "a feeling which
I am far from blaming in a young man of talent born in the obscure ranks
of the third estate, has made him desire a revolution which should
smooth the way to fame and influence. But his heart is loyal, and if
ever power is again in our hands, Barnave's pardon is already written on
our hearts." Madame Elizabeth partook of this regard of the king and
queen for Barnave. Defeated at all points, they had ended by believing
that the only persons capable of restoring the monarchy were those who
had destroyed it. This was a fatal superstition. They were induced to
adore that power of the Revolution which they could not bend.
V.
The first acts of the king were too much imbued with the inspirations of
Barnave and the Lameths for the royal dignity. He addressed to the
commissioners of the Assembly charged with interrogating him as to the
circumstances of the 21st of June, a reply, the bad faith of which
called for the smile rather than the indulgence of his enemies.
"Introduced into the king's chamber and alone with him," said the
commissioners of the Assembly, "the king made to us the following
declaration:--The motives of my departure were the insults and outrages
I underwent on the 18th of April, when I wished to go to St. Cloud.
These insults remained unpunished, and I thereupon believed that there
was neither safety nor decorum in my staying any longer in Paris. Unable
to quit publicly, I resolved to depart in the night, and without
attendants; my intention was never to leave the kingdom. I had no
concert with foreign powers, nor with the princes of my family who have
emigrated. My residence would have been at Montmédy, a place I had
chosen because it is fortified, and that being close to the frontier, I
was more ready to oppose every kind of invasion. I have learnt during my
journey that public opinion was decided in favour of the constitution,
and so soon as I learnt the general wish I have not hesitated, as I
never have hesitated, to make the sacrifice of what concerns myself for
the public good."
"The king," added the queen, in her declaration, "desiring to depart
with his children, I declare that nothing in nature could prevent my
following him. I have sufficiently proved, during two years, and under
the most painful circumstances, that I will never separate from him."
Not content with this inquiry into the motives and circumstances of the
king's flight, public opinion, much irritated, demanded that the hand of
the nation should be extended even to the paternal authority, and that
the Assembly should appoint a governor for the dauphin. Eighty names,
for the most part of obscure persons, were found in the division which
was openly taken. They were hailed with shouts of general derision. This
outrage to the king and father was spared him. The governor subsequently
named by Louis XVI., M. de Fleurieu, never entered upon his duties. The
governor of the heir to an empire was the gaoler of a prison of
malefactors.
The Marquis de Bouillé addressed from Luxembourg a threatening letter to
the Assembly, in order to turn from the king all popular indignation,
and to assume to himself the projection and execution of the king's
departure. "If," he added, "one hair of the head of Louis XVI. fall to
the ground, not one stone of Paris shall remain upon another. I know the
roads, and will guide the foreign armies thither." A laugh followed
these words. The Assembly was sufficiently wise not to require the
advice of M. de Bouillé, and strong enough to despise the threats of a
proscribed man.
M. de Cazalès sent in his resignation, in order to _go and fight (aller
combattre)_. The most prominent members of the right side, amongst whom
were Maury, Montlozier, the abbé Montesquieu, the abbé de Pradt, Virieu,
&c. &c., to the number of two hundred and ninety, took a pernicious
resolution, which, by removing all counterpoise from the extreme party
of the Revolution, precipitated the fall of, and destroyed, the king,
under pretext of a sacred respect for royalty. They remained in the
Assembly, but they annulled their power, and would only be considered as
a living protest against the violation of the royal liberty and
authority. The Assembly refused to hear the reading of their protest,
which was itself a violation of their elective power; and they then
published it and circulated it profusely all over the kingdom. "The
decrees of the Assembly," they said, "have wholly absorbed the royal
power. The seal of state is on the president's table; the king's
sanction is annihilated. The king's name is erased from the oath which
is taken from the law. The commissioners convey the orders of the
committees direct to the armies. The king is a captive; a provisional
republic occupies the interregnum. Far be it from us to concur in such
acts; we would not even consent to be witnesses of it, if we had not
still the duty of watching over the preservation of the king. Excepting
this sole interest, we shall impose on ourselves the most absolute
silence. This silence will be the only expression of our constant
opposition to all your acts."
These words were the abdication of an entire party, for any party that
protests abdicates. On this day there was emigration in the Assembly.
This mistaken fidelity, which deplored instead of combating, obtained
the applause of the nobility and clergy; it merited the utmost contempt
of politicians. Abandoning, in their struggle against the Jacobins,
Barnave and the monarchical constitutionalists, it gave the victory to
Robespierre, and by assuring the majority to his proposition for the non
re-election of the members of the National Assembly to the Legislative
Assembly, it sanctioned the convention. The royalists took away the
weight of one great opinion from the balance, which consequently then
leaned towards the disorders that ensued, and which in their progress
carried off the head of the king and their own heads. A great opinion
never lays down its arms with impunity for its country.
VI.
The Jacobins perceived this great error, and rejoiced at it. On seeing
so large a body of the supporters of the constitutional monarchy
withdraw from the contest voluntarily, they at once foresaw what they
might dare, and they dared it. Their sittings became more significant in
proportion as those of the Assembly grew more dull and impotent. The
words of "forfeiture" and "republic" were heard there for the first
time. Retracted at first, they were afterwards again pronounced: uttered
at first like blasphemies, they were not long in being familiar as
principles. Parties did not at first know what they themselves
desired--they learnt it from success. The daring broached distempered
ideas; if repulsed, the sagacious disavowed them--if caught up, the
leaders resumed them. In conflicts of opinions _reconnaissances_ are
employed, as they are in the campaigns of armies. The Jacobins were the
advanced guard of the Revolution, who measured the opposing obstacles of
the monarchical feeling.
The club of Cordeliers sent to the Jacobins a copy of a proposed address
to the National Assembly, in which the annihilation of royalty was
openly demanded.
"We are _free and without a king,_" said the Cordeliers, "as the day
after the taking of the Bastille; it is only for us to decide whether or
no we shall name another. We are of opinion that the nation should do
every thing by itself or by agents removable by her. We think, that the
more important an employ, the more temporary should be its tenure. We
think that royalty, and especially hereditary royalty, is incompatible
with liberty; we anticipate the crowd of opponents such a declaration
will create, but has not the declaration of rights produced as many? In
leaving his post the king virtually abdicated,--let us profit by the
occasion and our right--let us swear that France is a republic."
This address, read to the club of Jacobins on the 22d, at first excited
universal indignation. On the 23d, Danton mounted the tribune, demanded
the positive forfeiture of the throne (_la déchéance_), and the
nomination of a council of regency. "Your king," he said, "is an idiot,
or a criminal. It would be a horrid spectacle to present to the world,
if, having the option of declaring a king criminal or idiotic, you did
not prefer the latter alternative."
On the 27th, Girey Dupré, a young writer who awaited the Gironde,
mooted the judgment of Louis XVI. "We can punish a perjured king, and we
ought;" such was the text of his discourse. Brissot opened the question
as Pétion had done at the preceding sitting, "_Can a perjured king be
brought to trial_ (_jugé_)?
"Why," asked Brissot "should we divide ourselves into dangerous
denominations? we are all of one opinion. What do they want who are here
hostile to the republicans? They detest the turbulent assemblies of
Athens and Rome; they fear the division of France into isolated
federations. They only want the representative constitution, and they
are right. What do they want who boast of the name of republicans? They
fear, they abhor equally, the turbulent assemblies of Rome and Athens,
and equally dread a federated republic. They desire a representative
constitution--nothing more, nothing less--and thus, we all concur. The
head of the executive power has betrayed his oath,--must we bring him to
judgment? This is the only point on which we differ. Inviolability will
else be impunity to all crimes, an encouragement for all treason--common
sense demands that the punishment should follow the offence. I do not
see an inviolable man governing the people, but a _God_ and 25,000,000
of _brutes!_ If the king had on his return entered France at the head of
foreign forces, if he had ravaged our fairest provinces, and if, checked
in his career, you had made him prisoner, what would you then have done
with him? Would you have allowed his inviolability to have saved him?
Foreign powers are held up before you as a threat; do not fear them:
Europe in arms is impotent against a people who will be free."
In the National Assembly Muguer, in the name of the joint committees,
brought up the report on the king's flight; he maintained the
inviolability of Louis XVI. and the accusation of his accomplices.
ROBESPIERRE opposed the inviolability; he avoided all show of
anger in his language; and was careful to veil all his conclusions
beneath the cover of mildness and humanity. "I will not pause to
inquire," he said, "whether the king fled voluntarily, of his own act,
or if from the extremity of the frontiers a citizen carried him off by
his advice: I will not inquire either, whether this flight is a
conspiracy against the public liberty. I shall speak of the king as of
an imaginary sovereign, and of inviolability as a principle." After
having combated the principle of inviolability by the same arguments
which Girey Dupré and Brissot had applied, Robespierre thus concluded.
"The measures you propose cannot but dishonour you; if you adopt them, I
demand to declare myself the advocate of all the accused. I will be the
defender of the three _gardes du corps_, the dauphine's governess, even
of Monsieur de Bouillé. By the principles of your committees, there is
no crime; yet, invariably, where there is no crime there can be no
accomplices. Gentlemen, if it be a weakness to spare a culprit,
to visit the weaker culprit when the greater one escapes, is
cowardice--injustice. You must pass sentence on all the guilty alike, or
pronounce a general pardon."
Grégoire supported the accusation party. Salles defended the
recommendation of the committee.
Barnave at length spoke, and in support of Salles' opinion. He said:
"The French nation has just undergone a violent shock; but if we are to
believe all the auguries which are delivered, this recent event, like
all others which have preceded it, will only serve to advance the
period, to confirm the solidity of the revolution we have effected. I
will not dilate on the advantages of monarchical government: you have
proved your conviction by establishing it in your country: I will only
say that every government, to be good, should comprise within itself the
principles of its stability: for otherwise, instead of prosperity there
would be before us only the perspective of a series of changes. Some
men, whose motives I shall not impugn, seeking for examples to adduce,
have found, in America, a people occupying a vast territory with a
scanty population, nowhere surrounded by very powerful neighbours,
having forests for their boundaries, and having for customs the feelings
of a new race, and who are wholly ignorant of those factitious passions
and impulses which effect revolutions of government. They have seen a
republican government established in that land, and have thence drawn
the conclusion that a similar government was suitable for us. These men
are the same who at this moment are contesting the inviolability of the
king. But, if it be true that in our territory there is a vast
population spread,--if it be true that there are amongst them a
multitude of men exclusively given up to those intellectual speculations
which excite ambition and the love of fame,--if it be true that around
us powerful neighbours compel us to form but one compact body in order
to resist them,--if it be true that all these circumstances are
irresistible, and are wholly independent of ourselves, it is undeniable
that the sole existing remedy lies in a monarchical government. When a
country is populous and extensive, there are--and political experience
proves it--but two modes of assuring to it a solid and permanent
existence. Either you must organise those parts separately;--you must
place in each section of the empire a portion of the government, and
thus you will maintain security at the expense of unity, strength, and
all the advantages which result from a great and homogeneous
association:--or else you will be forced to centralise an unchangeable
power, which, never renewed by the law, presenting incessantly obstacles
to ambition, resists with advantage the shocks, rivalries, and rapid
vibrations of an immense population, agitated by all the passions
engendered by long established society. These facts decide our position.
We can only be strong through a federative government, which no one here
has the madness to propose, or by a monarchical government, such as you
have established; that is to say, by confiding the reins of the
executive power to a family having the right of hereditary succession.
You have intrusted to an inviolable king the exclusive function of
naming the agents of his power, but you have made those agents
responsible. To be independent the king must be inviolable: do not let
us set aside this axiom. We have never failed to observe this as regards
individuals, let us regard it as respects the monarch. Our principles,
the constitution, the law, declare that he has not forfeited (_qu'il
n'est pas déchu_): thus, then, we have to choose between our attachment
to the constitution and our resentment against an individual. Yes, I
demand at this moment from him amongst you all, who may have conceived
against the head of the executive power prejudices however strong, and
resentment however deep; I ask at his hands whether he is more irritated
against the king than he is attached to the laws of his country? I would
say to those who rage so furiously against an individual who has done
wrong,--I would say, Then you would be at his feet if you were content
with him? (Loud and lengthened applause.) Those who would thus sacrifice
the constitution to their anger against one man, seem to me too much
inclined to sacrifice liberty from their enthusiasm for some other man;
and since they love a republic, it is, indeed, the moment to say to
them, What, would you wish a republic in such a nation? How is it you do
not fear that the same variableness of the people, which to-day
manifests itself by hatred, may on another day be displayed by
enthusiasm in favour of some great man? Enthusiasm even more dangerous
than hatred: for the French nation, you know, understands better how to
love than to hate. I neither fear the attacks of foreign nations nor of
emigrants: I have already said so; but I now repeat it with the more
truth, as I fear the continuation of uneasiness and agitation, which
will not cease to exist and affect us until the Revolution be wholly and
pacifically concluded. We need fear no mischief from without; but vast
injury is done to us from within, when we are disturbed by painful
ideas--when chimerical dangers, excited around us, create with the
people some consistency and some credit for the men who use them as a
means of unceasing agitation. Immense damage is done to us when that
revolutionary impetus, which has destroyed every thing there was to
destroy, and which has urged us to the point where we must at last
pause, is perpetuated. If the Revolution advance one step further it
cannot do so without danger. In the line of liberty, the first act which
can follow is the annihilation of royalty; in the line of equality, the
first act which must follow is an attempt on all property. Revolutions
are not effected with metaphysical maxims--there must be an actual
tangible prey to offer to the multitude that is led astray. It is time,
therefore, to end the Revolution. It ought to stop at the moment when
the nation is free, and when all Frenchmen are equal. If it continue in
trouble, it is dishonoured, and we with it; yes, all the world ought to
agree that the common interest is involved in the close of the
Revolution. Those who have lost ought to perceive that it is impossible
to make it retrograde. Those who fashioned it must see that it is at its
consummation. Kings themselves--if from, time to time profound truths
can penetrate to the councils of kings--if occasionally the prejudices
which surround them will permit the sound views of a great and
philosophical policy to reach them--kings themselves must learn that
there is for them a wide difference between the example of a great
reform in the government and that of the abolition of royalty: that if
we pause here, where we are, they are still kings! but be their conduct
what it may, let the fault come from them and not from us. Regenerators
of the empire! follow straightly your undeviating line; you have been
courageous and potent--be to-day wise and moderate. In this will consist
the glorious termination of your efforts. Then, again returning to your
domestic hearths, you will obtain from all, if not blessings, at least
the silence of calumny." This address, the most eloquent ever delivered
by Barnave, carried the report in the affirmative; and for several days
checked all attempts at republic and forfeiture in the clubs of the
Cordeliers and Jacobins. The king's inviolability was consecrated in
fact as well as in principle. M. de Bouillé, his accomplices and
adherents, were sent for trial to the high national court of Orleans.
VII.
Whilst these men, exclusively political, each measuring the advance of
the Revolution, step by step, with their eyes, desired courageously to
stop it, or checked their own views, the Revolution was continually
progressing. Its own thought was too vast for any head of public man,
orator, or statesman to contain. Its breath was too powerful for any one
breast to respire it solely. Its end was too comprehensive to be
included in any of the successive views that the ambition of certain
factions, or the theories of certain statesmen could propound. Barnave,
the Lameths, and La Fayette, like Mirabeau and Necker, endeavoured, in
vain, to oppose to it the power and influence they had derived from it.
It was destined, before it was appeased or relaxed in its onward career,
to frustrate many other systems, make many other breasts pant in vain,
and outstrip a multitude of other aims.
Independent of the national assemblies it had given to itself as a
government, and in which were, for the most part, concentrated the
political instruments of its impulse, it had also given birth to two
levers, still more potent and terrible to move and sweep away these
political bodies when they attempted to check her when she chose to
advance. These two levers were the press and the clubs. The clubs and
the press were, to the legal assemblies, what free air is to confined
air. Whilst the air of these assemblies became vitiated, and exhausted
itself in the circle of the established government, the air of
journalism and popular societies was impregnated and incessantly stirred
by an inexhaustible principle of vitality and movement. The stagnation
within was fully credited, but the current was without.
The press, in the half century which had preceded the Revolution, had
been the echo, well organised and calm, of the thoughts of sages and
reformers. From the time when the Revolution burst forth, it had become
the turbulent and frequently cynical echo of the popular excitement.
It had itself transformed the modes of communicating ideas; it no longer
produced books--it had not the time: at first it expended itself in
pamphlets, and subsequently in a multitude of flying and diurnal sheets,
which, published at a low price amongst the people, or gratuitously
placarded in the public thoroughfares, incited the multitude to read and
discuss them. The treasury of the national thought, whose pieces of gold
were too pure, or too bulky, for the use of the populace, it was, if we
may be allowed the expression, converted into a multitude of smaller
coins, struck with the impress of the passions of the hour, and often
tarnished with the foulest oxides. Journalism, like an irresistible
element of the life of a people in revolution, had made its own place,
without listening to the law which had been made to restrain it.
Mirabeau, who required that his speeches should echo throughout the
departments, had given birth to this speaking trumpet of the Revolution,
(despite the orders in council) in his _Letters to my Constituents_, and
in the _Courrier de Provence_. At the opening of the States General, and
at the taking of the Bastille, other journals had appeared. At each new
insurrection there was a fresh inundation of newspapers. The leading
organs of public agitation were then the _Revolution of Paris_, edited
by Loustalot; a weekly paper, with a circulation of 200,000 copies; the
feeling of the man may be seen in the motto of his paper: "The great
appear great to us only because we are on our knees--let us rise!" The
_Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens_, subsequently called the
_Revolutions de France et de Brabant_, was the production of Camille
Desmoulins. This young student, who became suddenly a political
character on a chair in the garden of the Palais Royal, on the first
outbreak of the month of July, 1789, preserved in his style, which was
frequently very brilliant, something of his early character. It was the
sarcastic genius of Voltaire descended from the saloon to the pavement.
No man in himself ever personified the people better than did Camille
Desmoulins. He was the mob with his turbulent and unexpected movements,
his variableness, his unconnectedness, his rages interrupted by
laughter, or suddenly sinking into sympathy and sorrow for the very
victims he immolated. A man, at the same time so ardent and so trifling,
so trivial and so inspired, so indecisive between blood and tears, so
ready to crush what he had just deified with enthusiasm, must have the
more empire over a people in revolt, in proportion as he resembled them.
His character was his nature. He not only aped the people, he was the
people himself. His newspapers cried in the public streets, and their
sarcasm, bandied from mouth to mouth, has not been swept away with the
other impurities of the day. He remains, and will remain, a Menippus,
the satirist stained with blood. It was the popular chorus which led the
people to their most important movements, and which was frequently
stifled by the whistling of the cord of the street lamp, or in the
hatchet-stroke of the guillotine. Camille Desmoulins was the remorseless
offspring of the Revolution,--Marat was its fury; he had the clumsy
tumblings of the brute in his thought, and its gnashing of teeth in his
style. His journal (_L'Ami du Peuple_), the People's Friend, smelt of
blood in every line.
VIII.
Marat was born in Switzerland. A writer without talent, a _savant_
without reputation, with a desire for fame without having received from
society or nature the means of acquiring either, he revenged himself on
all that was great not only in society but in nature. Genius was as
hateful to him as aristocracy. Wherever he saw any thing elevated or
striking he hunted it down as though it were a deadly enemy. He would
have levelled creation. Equality was his mania, because superiority was
his martyrdom; he loved the Revolution because it brought down all to
his level; he loved it even to blood, because blood washed out the stain
of his long-during obscurity; he made himself a public denouncer by the
popular title; he knew that denouncement is flattery to all who tremble,
and the people are always trembling. A real prophet of demagogueism,
inspired by insanity, he gave his nightly dreams to daily conspiracies.
The Seid of the people, he interested it by his self-devotion to its
interests. He affected mystery like all oracles. He lived in obscurity,
and only went out at night; he only communicated with his fellows with
the most sinistrous precautions. A subterranean cell was his residence,
and there he took refuge safe from poignard and poison. His journal
affected the imagination like something supernatural. Marat was wrapped
in real fanaticism. The confidence reposed in him nearly amounted to
worship. The fumes of the blood he incessantly demanded had mounted to
his brain. He was the delirium of the Revolution, himself a living
delirium!
IX.
Brissot, as yet obscure, wrote _Le Patriote Français_. A politician, and
aspiring to leading parts, he only excited revolutionary passions in
proportion as he hoped one day to govern by them. At first a
constitutionalist and friend of Necker and Mirabeau, a hireling before
he became a _doctrinaire_, he saw in the people only a sovereign more
suitable to his own ambition. The republic was his rising sun; he
approached it as to his own fortune, but with prudence, and frequently
looking behind him to see if opinion followed his traces.
Condorcet, an aristocrat by genius, although an aristocrat by birth,
became a democrat from philosophy. His passion was the transformation of
human reason. He wrote _La Chronique de Paris_.
Carra, an obscure demagogue, had created for himself a name of fear in
the _Annales Patriotiques_. Fréron, in the _Orateur du Peuple_, rivalled
Marat. Fauchet, in the _Bouche de Fer_, elevated democracy to a level
with religious philosophy. The "last not least," Laclos, an officer of
artillery, author of an obscene novel, and the confidant of the Duc
d'Orleans, edited the _Journal des Jacobins_, and stirred up through
France the flame of ideas and words of which the focus was in the clubs.
All these men used their utmost efforts to impel the people beyond the
limits which Barnave had prescribed to the event of the 21st June. They
desired to avail themselves of the instant when the throne was left
empty to obliterate it from the constitution. They overwhelmed the king
with insults and objurgations, in order that the Assembly might not dare
to replace at the head of their institutions a prince whom they had
vilified. They clamoured for interrogatory, sentence, forfeiture,
abdication, imprisonment, and hoped to degrade royalty for ever by
degrading the king. The republic saw its hour for the first moment, and
trembled to allow it to escape. All these hands at once urged men's
minds towards a decisive movement. Articles in the journals provoked
motions, motions petitions, and petitions riots. The altar of the
country in the Champ-de-Mars, which remained erected for a new
federation, was the place which was already pointed out for the
assemblies of the people. It was the _Mons Aventinus_, whither it was to
retire, and whence it was to dictate to a timid and corrupt senate.
"No more king,--let us be republicans," wrote Brissot in the _Patriote_.
"Such is the cry at the Palais Royal, and it does not gain ground fast
enough; it would seem as though it were blasphemy. This repugnance for
assuming the name of the condition in which the state _actually is_ is
very extraordinary in the eyes of philosophy." "No king! no protector!
no regent! Let us have done with man-eaters of every sort and kind,"
re-echoed the _Bouche de Fer_. "Let the eighty-three departments enter
into a federation, and declare that they will no longer endure tyrants,
monarchs, or protectors. Their shade is as fatal to the people as that
of the Bohonupas is deadly to all that lives. If we nominate a regent we
shall soon fight for the choice of a master. Let us only contend for
liberty."
Provoked by this reference to the regency, which appeared to point to
him, the Duc d'Orleans wrote to the journals that he was ready to serve
his country by land or by sea; but in respect to any question of
regency, he from that moment renounced, and for ever, any pretensions to
that title which the constitution might give him. "After having made so
many sacrifices to the cause of the people," he said, "I am no longer in
a condition to quit my position as a simple citizen. Ambition in me
would be an inexcusable inconsistency."
Already discredited by all parties, this prince, henceforth incapable of
serving the throne, was equally incapable of serving the republic.
Odious to the royalists, put aside by the demagogues, suspected by the
constitutionalists, there only remained to him the stoical attitude in
which he took refuge. He had abdicated his rank, abdicated his own
faction; he had abdicated the favour of the people. His life was all
that remained to him.
At the same moment Camille Desmoulins was thus satirically
apostrophising La Fayette, the first idol of the Revolution:--"Liberator
of two worlds, flower of Janissaries, phoenix of Alguazils-major, Don
Quixotte of Capet and the two chambers, constellation of the white
horse[2], my voice is too weak to raise itself above the clamour of your
thirty thousand spies, and as many more your satellites, above the noise
of your four hundred drums, and your cannons loaded with grape. I had
until now misrepresented your--more than--royal highness through the
allusions of Barnave, Lameth, and Duport. It was after them that I
denounced you to the eighty-three departments as an ambitious man who
only cared for parade, a slave of the court similar to those marshals of
the league to whom revolt had given the _bâton_, and who, looking upon
themselves as bastards, were desirous of becoming legitimate; but all of
a sudden you embrace each other, and proclaim yourselves mutually
fathers of your country! You say to the nation, 'Confide in us; we are
the Cincinnati, the Washingtons, the Aristides.' Which of these two
testimonies are we to believe? Foolish people! The Parisians are like
those Athenians to whom Demosthenes said, 'Shall you always resemble
those athletes who struck in one place cover it with their hand,--struck
in another place they place their hand there, and thus always occupied
with the blows they receive, do not know either how to strike or defend
themselves!' They are beginning to doubt whether Louis XVI. could be
perjured since he is at Varennes. I think I see the same great eyes open
when they shall see La Fayette open the gates of the capital to
despotism and aristocracy. May I be deceived in my conjectures, for I am
going from Paris, as Camillus my patron departed from an ungrateful
country, wishing it every kind of prosperity. I have no occasion to have
been an emperor like Diocletian to know that the fine lettuces of
Salernum, which are far superior to the empire of the East, are quite
equal to the gay scarf which a municipal authority wears, and the
uneasiness with which a Jacobin journalist returns to his home in the
evening, fearing always lest he should fall into an ambuscade of the
cut-throats of the general. For me it was not to establish two chambers
that I first mounted the tricolour cockade!"
X.
Such was the general tone of the press, such the exhaustless laughter
which this young man diffused, like the Aristophanes of an irritated
people. He accustomed it to revile men, majesty, misfortune, and worth.
The day came when he required for himself and for the young and lovely
woman whom he adored, that pity which he had destroyed in the people. He
found, in his turn, only the brutal derision of the multitude, and he
himself then became sad and sorry for the first and last time.
The people, all whose political idea is from the senses, could not at
all comprehend why the statesmen of the Assembly should impose upon them
a fugitive king, out of respect for abstract royalty. The moderation of
Barnave and Lameth seemed to them full of suspicion; and cries of
treason were uttered at all their meetings. The decree of the Assembly
was the signal for increased ferment, which developed from and after the
13th of July, in zealous meetings, imprecations, and threats. Large
bodies of workmen, leaving their work, congregated in the public places,
and demanded bread of the municipal authorities. The commune, in order
to appease them, voted for distributions and supplies. Bailly, the mayor
of Paris, harangued them, and gave them extraordinary work. They went to
it for a moment, and then quitted it, being speedily attracted by the
mob becoming dense and uttering cries of hunger.
The crowd betook itself from the Hôtel-de-Ville to the Jacobins, from
the Jacobins to the National Assembly, clamorous for the forfeiture of
the crown and the republic. This popular gathering had no other leader
than the uneasiness that excited it. A spontaneous and unanimous
instinct assured it that the Assembly would be found wanting at the hour
of great resolutions. This mob desired to compel it again to seize the
opportunity. Its will was the more potent as it was wholly impossible to
trace it to its source--no chief gave it any visible impetus. It
advanced of itself, spake of itself, and wrote with its own hand in the
streets--on the corner stone--its threatening petitions.
The first that the people presented to the Assembly, on the 14th, and
which was escorted by 4000 petitioners, was signed "_The People_." The
14th of July and the 6th of October had taught it its name. The
Assembly, firm and unmoved, passed to the order of the day.
On quitting the Assembly, the crowd went to the Champ-de-Mars, where it
signed, in greater numbers, a second petition in still more imperative
terms. "Entrusted with the representation of a free people, will you
destroy the work we have perfected? Will you replace liberty by a reign
of tyranny? If, indeed, it were so, learn that the French people, which
has acquired its rights, will not again lose them."
On quitting the Champ-de-Mars, the people thronged round the Tuileries,
the Assembly, and the Palais Royal. Of their own accord they shut up the
theatres, and proclaimed the suspension of all public entertainments,
until justice should be done to them. That evening 4000 persons went to
the Jacobins, as though to identify in the agitators who met there the
real assembly of the people. The chiefs in whom they reposed confidence
were there: the tribune was occupied by a member who was denouncing to
the meeting a citizen for having made a remark injurious to Robespierre;
the accused was justifying himself, and they drove him tumultuously from
the chamber. At this moment Robespierre appeared, and begged them to
pardon the citizen who had insulted him. His generous intercession was
hailed with applause, and enthusiasm for Robespierre was at its height.
"Sacred vaults of the Jacobins," were the words of an address from the
departments; "you guarantee to us Robespierre and Danton, these two
oracles of patriotism." Laclos proposed a petition to be sent into the
departments, and covered with ten millions of signatures. A member
opposes this proposition, from love of order and peace. Danton
rises,--"And I, too, love peace, but not the peace of slavery. If we
have energy, let us show it. Let those who do not feel courage to rise
and beard tyranny refrain from signing our petition: we want no better
proof by which to understand each other. Here it is to our hand."
Robespierre next spoke, and demonstrated to the people that Barnave and
the Lameths were playing the same game as Mirabeau. "They concert with
our enemies, and then they call us factious!" More timid than Laclos and
Danton, he did not give any opinion as to the petition. A man of
calculation rather than of passion, he foresaw that the disorderly
movement would split against the organised resistance of the
_bourgeoisie_. He reserved to himself the power of falling back upon the
legality of the question, and kept on terms with the Assembly. Laclos
pressed his motion, and the people carried it. At midnight they
separated, after having agreed to meet the next day in the
Champ-de-Mars, there to sign the petition.
The day following was lost to sedition, by disputes between the clubs as
to the terms of the petition. The Republicans negotiated with La
Fayette, to whom they offered the presidency of an American government.
Robespierre and Danton, who detested La Fayette--Laclos, who urged on
the Duc d'Orleans, concerted together, and impeded the impulse given by
the Cordeliers subservient to Danton. The Assembly watchful, Bailly on
his guard, La Fayette resolute, watched in unison for the repression of
all outbreak. On the 16th the Assembly summoned to its bar the
municipality and its officers, to make it responsible for the public
peace. It drew up an address to the French people, in order to rally
them around the constitution. Bailly, the same evening, issued a
proclamation against the agitators. The fluctuating Jacobins themselves
declared their submission to the decrees of the Assembly. At the moment
when the struggle was expected, the leaders of the projected movement
were invisible. The night was spent in military preparations against the
meeting on the morrow.
XI.
On the 17th, very early in the morning, the people, without leaders,
began to collect in the Champ-de-Mars, and surround the altar of the
country, raised in the centre of the large square of the confederation.
A strange and melancholy chance opened the scenes of murder on this day.
When the multitude is excited, every thing becomes the occasion of
crime. A young painter, who, before the hour of meeting, was copying the
patriotic inscriptions engraved in front of the altar, heard a slight
noise at his feet; astonished, he looked around him and saw the point of
a gimlet, with which some men, concealed under the steps of the altar,
were piercing the planks of the pedestal. He hastened to the nearest
guard-house, and returned with some soldiers. They lifted up one of the
steps and found beneath two invalids, who had got under the altar in the
night, with no other design, as they declared, than a childish and
obscene curiosity. The report instantly spread that the altar of the
country was undermined, in order to blow up the people; that a barrel of
gunpowder had been discovered beside the conspirators; that the
invalids, surprised in the preliminaries to their criminal design, were
well known satellites of the aristocracy; that they had confessed their
deadly design, and the amount of reward promised on the success of their
wickedness. The mob mustered, and raging with fury, surrounded the
guard-house of the Gros-Caillou. The two invalids underwent an
interrogatory. The moment when they left the guard-house, to be conveyed
to the Hôtel-de-Ville, the populace rushed upon them, tore them from the
soldiers who were escorting them, rent them in pieces, and their heads,
placed on the tops of pikes, were carried by a band of ferocious
children to the environs of the Palais Royal.
XII.
The news of these murders, confusedly spread and variously interpreted
in the city, in the Assembly, among various groups, excited various
feelings, according as it was viewed as a crime of the people or a crime
of its enemies. The truth was only made apparent long after. The
agitation increased from the indignation of some and the suspicions of
others. Bailly, duly informed, sent three commissaries and a battalion.
Other commissaries traversed the quarters of the capital, reading to the
people the proclamation of the magistrates and the address of the
National Assembly.
The ground of the Bastille was occupied by the national guard and the
patriotic societies, which were to go thence to the field of the
Federation. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Brissot, and the
principal ringleaders of the people had disappeared; some said in order
to concert insurrectional measures, at Legendre's house in the country;
others, in order to escape the responsibility of the day. The former
version was the more generally accredited, from Robespierre's known
hatred to Danton, to whom Saint Just said, in his accusation--"Mirabeau,
who meditated a change of dynasty, appreciated the force of thy
audacity, and laid hands upon it. Thou didst startle him from the laws
of stern principle; we heard nothing more of thee until the massacres of
the Champ-de-Mars. Thou didst support that false measure of the people,
and the proposition of the law, which had no other object than to serve
for a pretext for unfolding the red banner, and an attempt at tyranny.
The patriots, not initiated in this treachery, had opposed thy
perfidious advice. Thou wast named in conjunction with Brissot to draw
up this petition. You both escaped the prey of La Fayette, who caused
the slaughter of ten thousand patriots. Brissot remained calmly in
Paris, and thou didst hasten to Arcis-sur-Aube, to pass some agreeable
days. Can one fancy thy tranquil joys--thou being one of the drawers up
of this petition, whilst those who signed the document were loaded with
irons, or weltering in their blood? You were then--thou and
Brissot--objects for the gratitude of tyranny; because, assuredly, you
could not be the objects of its detestation!"
Camille Desmoulins thus justifies the absence of Danton, himself, and
Fréron, by asserting that Danton had fled from proscription and
assassination to the house of his father-in-law, at Fontenay, on the
previous night, and was tracked thither by a band of La Fayette's spies;
and that Fréron, whilst crossing the Pont Neuf, had been assailed,
trampled under foot, and wounded by fourteen hired ruffians; whilst
Camille himself, marked for the dagger, only escaped by a mistake in his
description. History has not put any faith in these pretended
assassinations of La Fayette.
Camille, invisible all day, repaired in the evening to the Jacobins.
XIII.
In the mean while the crowd began to congregate in vast masses in the
Champ-de-Mars--agitated, but inoffensive--the national guard, every
battalion of whom La Fayette had ordered out, were under arms. One of
the detachments which had arrived that morning in the Champ-de-Mars,
with a train of artillery, withdrew by the quays, in order that the
appearance of an armed force might not irritate the people. At twelve
o'clock the crowd assembled round the "altar of the country" (_autel de
la patrie_), not seeing the commissioners of the Jacobin club, who had
promised to bring the petition to be signed, of their own accord chose
four commissioners of their number to draw up one. One of the
commissioners took the pen, the citizens crowded round him, and he wrote
as follows:--
"On the altar of the country, July 13th, in the year III.
Representatives of the people, your labours are drawing to a close. A
great crime has been committed; Louis flies, and has unworthily
abandoned his post--the empire is on the verge of ruin--he has been
arrested, and has been brought back to Paris, where the people demand
that he be tried. You declare he shall be king. This is not the wish of
the people, and the decree is therefore annulled. He has been carried
off by the two hundred and ninety-two _aristocrates_, who have
themselves declared that they have no longer a voice in the National
Assembly. It is annulled because it is in opposition to the voice of the
people, your sovereign. Repeal your decree: the king has abdicated by
his crime: receive his abdication; convoke a fresh constitutive power;
point out the criminal, and organise a new executive power."
This petition was laid on the altar of the country, and quires of paper,
placed at the four corners of the altar, received six thousand
autographs.
This petition is still preserved in the archives of the Municipality,
and bears on it the indelible imprint of the hand of the people. It is
the medal of the Revolution struck on the spot in the fused metal of
popular agitation. Here and there on it are to be traced those sinister
names that for the first time emerged from obscurity. These names are
like the hieroglyphics of the ancient monuments. The acts of men now
famous, who signed names then unknown and obscure, give to these
signatures a retrospective signification, and the eye dwells with
curiosity on these characters that seem to contain in a few marks the
mystery of a long life--the whole horror of an epoch. Here is the name
of _Chaumette, then a medical student, Rue Mazarine, No. 9_. There
_Maillard_, the president of the fearful massacres of September. Further
on, _Hébert_; underneath it, _Hanriot_, Inspector Warden of the
condemned prisoners (_Général des Suppliciés_) during the reign of
terror. The small and scrawled signature of Hébert, who was afterwards
the "_Père_ Duchesne," or le Peuple en colère, is like a spider that
extends its arms to seize its prey. Santerre has signed lower down: this
is the last name of note, the rest are alone those of the populace. It
is easy to discern how many a hasty and tremulous hand has traced the
witness of its fury or ignorance on this document. Many were even unable
to write. A circle of ink with a cross in the centre marks their
anonymous adhesion to the petition. Some female names are to be seen,
and numerous names of children are discernible, from the inaccuracy of
their hand, guided by another: poor babes, who professed the opinions of
their parents, without comprehending them; and who signed the
attestation of the passions of the people, ere their infant tongues
could utter a manly sound.
XIV.
The municipal body had been informed at two o'clock of the murders
committed at the Champ-de-Mars, and of the insults offered to the body
of national guards sent to disperse the mob. M. de La Fayette himself,
who headed this detachment, had been struck by several stones hurled at
him by the populace. It was even reported that a man in the uniform of
the national guard had fired a pistol at him, and that he had generously
pardoned and released this man, who had been seized by the escort. This
popular report cast a halo of heroism around M. de La Fayette, and
animated anew the national guard, who were devoted to him. At this
recital Bailly did not hesitate to proclaim martial law, and to unfurl
the red flag, the last resource against sedition. On their side, the
mob, alarmed at the aspect of the red flag floating from the windows of
the Hôtel-de-Ville, despatched twelve of their number as a deputation to
the municipality. These commissioners with difficulty made their way to
the audience-hall, through a forest of bayonets, and demanded that three
citizens who had been arrested should be given up to them. No attention
was paid to them, however, and the resolution of employing force was
adopted. The mayor and authorities descended the steps of the
Hôtel-de-Ville, uttering threats of their intentions. At the sight of
Bailly preceded by the red flag a cry of enthusiasm burst from the
ranks, and the national guards clashed the butts of their muskets loudly
against the stones. The public force, indignant with the clubs, was in a
state of that nervous excitement that occasionally takes possession of
large bodies as well as individuals.
La Fayette, Bailly, and the municipal authorities commenced their march
preceded by the red flag, and followed by 10,000 national guards, the
paid battalions of grenadiers of this army of citizens formed the
advanced guard. An immense concourse of people followed by a natural
impulse this mass of bayonets that slowly descended the quays and the
rue du Gros-Caillou, towards the Champ-de-Mars. During this march, the
people congregated around the altar of the country since the morning
continued to sign the petition in peace. They were aware that the troops
were called out, but did not believe any violence was intended; their
calm and lawful method of proceeding, and the impunity of their sedition
for two years, made them believe in a perpetual impunity, and they
looked on the red flag merely as a fresh law to be despised.
On his arrival at the glacis of the Champ-de-Mars, La Fayette divided
his forces into three columns; the first debouched by the avenue of the
Ecole Militaire, the second and third by the two successive openings
that intersect the glacis between the Ecole Militaire and the Seine.
Bailly, La Fayette, and the municipal body with the red flag, marched at
the head of the first column. The _pas de charge_ beaten by 400 drums,
and the rolling of the cannon over the stones, announced the arrival of
the national army. These sounds drowned for an instant the hollow
murmurs and the shrill cries of 50,000 men, women, and children, who
filled the centre of the Champ-de-Mars, or crowded on the glacis. At the
moment when Bailly debouched between the glacis, the populace, who from
the top of the bank looked down on the mayor, the bayonets, and the
artillery, burst into threatening shouts and furious outcries against
the national guard. "_Down with the red flag! Shame to Bailly! Death to
La Fayette!_" The people in the Champ-de-Mars responded to these cries
with unanimous imprecations. Lumps of wet mud, the only arms at hand,
were cast at the national guard, and struck La Fayette's horse, the red
flag, and Bailly himself; and it is even said that several pistol shots
were fired from a distance; this however was by no means proved,--the
people had no intention of resisting, they wished only to intimidate.
Bailly summoned them to disperse legally, to which they replied by
shouts of derision; and he then, with the grave dignity of his office,
and the mute sorrow that formed part of his character, ordered them to
be dispersed by force. La Fayette first ordered the guard to fire in the
air; but the people, encouraged by this vain demonstration, formed into
line before the national guard, who then fired a discharge that killed
and wounded 600 persons, the republicans say 10,000. At the same moment
the ranks opened, the cavalry charged, and the artillerymen prepared to
open their fire; which, on this dense mass of people, would have taken
fearful effect. La Fayette, unable to restrain his soldiers by his
voice, placed himself before the cannon's mouth, and by this heroic act
saved the lives of thousands. In an instant the Champ-de-Mars was
cleared, and nought remained on it save the dead bodies of women,
children, trampled under foot, or flying before the cavalry; and a few
intrepid men on the steps of the altar of their country, who, amidst a
murderous fire and at the cannon's mouth, collected, in order to
preserve them, the sheets of the petition, as proofs of the wishes, or
bloody pledges of the future vengeance, of the people, and they only
retired when they had obtained them.
The columns of the national guard, and particularly the cavalry, pursued
the fugitives into the neighbouring fields, and made two hundred
prisoners. Not a man was killed on the side of the national guard; the
loss of the people is unknown. The one side diminished it, in order to
extenuate the odium of an execution without resistance; the others
augmented it, in order to rouse the people's resentment. At night, which
was already fast approaching, the bodies were cast into the Seine.
Opinions were divided as to the nature and details of this execution,
some terming it a crime, and others a painful duty; but this day of
unresisting butchery still retains the name given it by the people, _The
Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars_.
XV.
The national guard, headed by La Fayette, marched victorious, but
mournful, again into Paris: it was visible by their demeanour that they
hesitated between self-congratulation and shame, as though undecided on
the justice of what they had done. Amidst a few approving acclamations
that saluted them on their passage, they heard smothered imprecations;
and the words _murderers_ and _vengeance_ were substituted for
_patriotism_ and _obedience to the law_. They passed with a gloomy air
beneath the windows of that Assembly they had so lately protected;
still more sadly and more silently beneath the windows of the palace of
that monarchy, whose cause rather than whose king, they had just
defended. Bailly, calm and glacial as the law--La Fayette, resolute and
stern as a system, knew not how to awake any feeling beyond that of
imperious duty. They furled the red flag, stained with the first drops
of blood; and dispersed, battalion after battalion, in the dark streets
of Paris, more like gendarmes after an execution, than an army returning
from a victory.
Such was this "_Day of the Champ-de-Mars_," which gave a reign of three
months to the Assembly, by which they did not profit; which intimidated
the clubs for a few days, but which did not restore to the monarchy or
to the public tranquillity the blood it had cost. La Fayette had on this
day the destiny of the monarchy and the republic in his hands: he merely
re-established order.
XVI.
The next morning Bailly appeared before the Assembly to report to them
the triumph of the law. He displayed the heartfelt sorrow of his mind,
and the masculine energy that formed part of his duty.
"The conspiracy had been formed," said he; "it was necessary to employ
force, and severe punishment has overtaken the crime." The president
approved, in the name of the Assembly, of the mayor's conduct, and
Barnave thanked the national guard in cold and weak language, whilst his
praises seemed near akin to excuses. The enthusiasm of the victors had
already subsided, and Pétion perceiving this, rose and said a few words
concerning a _projet de décret_ that had just been proposed, against
those who should assemble the people in numbers. These words, in the
mouth of Pétion, who was well known to be the friend of Brissot and the
conspirators, were at first received with sarcastic cries by the _côté
droit_, and then with loud applause from the _côté gauche_ and the
tribunes. The victory of the Champ-de-Mars was already contested in the
Assembly, and the clubs re-opened that evening. Robespierre, Brissot,
Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Marat, who had for some days past
disappeared, now took fresh courage, for the hesitation of their enemies
reassured them,--by constantly attacking a power that was contented to
remain on the defensive, they could not fail to weary it out, and thus,
from accused they transformed themselves into accusers. Their papers
abandoned for a short time, became more malignant from their temporary
panic, and heaped ridicule and odium on Bailly and La Fayette. They
aroused the people to vengeance by displaying unceasingly before their
eyes the blood of the Champ-de-Mars. The red flag became the emblem of
the government and the winding-sheet of liberty. The conspirators
figured as victims, and constantly kept popular excitement on the rack,
by imaginary stories of the most odious persecutions.
XVII.
"See," wrote Desmoulins, "see how the furious satellites of La Fayette
rush from their barracks, or rather from their taverns,--see, they
assemble and load their arms with ball, in the presence of the people,
whilst the battalions of _aristocrates_ mutually excite each other to
the massacre. It is chiefly in the eyes of the cavalry that you behold
the love of blood aroused by the double influence of wine and vengeance.
It was against women and babes that this army of butchers chiefly
directed their fury. The altar of the country is strewn with dead
bodies,--it is thus that La Fayette has dyed his hands in the gore of
citizens: those hands which, in my eyes, will ever appear to reek with
this innocent blood--this very spot where he had raised them to heaven
to swear to defend them. From this moment, the most worthy citizens are
proscribed; they are arrested in their beds, their papers are seized,
their presses broken, and lists of the names of those proscribed are
signed; the _modérés_ sign these lists, and then display them. 'Society
must be purged,' is their cry, 'of such men as _Brissot_, _Carra_,
_Pétion_, _Bonneville_, _Fréron_, _Danton_, and _Camille_.' Danton and I
found safety in flight alone from our assassins. The patriots are timid
factions." "And," added _Fréron_, "there are men to be found, who
venture to justify these cowardly murders--these informations--these
_lettres de cachet_--these seizures of papers--these confiscations of
presses. The red flag floats for a week from the balcony of the
Hôtel-de-Ville, like as in times of old, the banners torn from the grasp
of the dying foeman floated from the arched roof of our temples." In
another part he says, "Marat's presses have been seized--the name of the
author should have sufficed to protect the typographer. The press is
sacred, as sacred as the cradle of the first-born, which even the
officers of the law have orders to respect. The silence of the tomb
reigns in the city, the public places are deserted, and the theatres
re-echo alone with servile applause of royalism, that triumphs alike on
the stage and in our streets. You were impatient, Bailly, and you
treacherous, La Fayette, to employ that terrible weapon, martial law, so
dangerous, so difficult to be wielded. No, no, nought can ever efface
the indelible stain of the blood of your brethren, that has spurted over
your scarfs and your uniforms. It has sunk even to your heart--it is a
slow poison that will consume ye all."
Whilst the revolutionary press thus infused the spirit of resentment
into the people, the clubs, reassured by the indolence of the Assembly,
and by the scrupulous legality of La Fayette, suffered but slightly the
effects of this body blow of the victory of the Champ-de-Mars. A schism
took place in the assembly of the Jacobins between the intolerant
members and its first founders, Barnave, Duport, and the two
Lameths. This schism took its rise in the great question of the
non-re-eligibility of the members of the National Assembly for the
Legislative Assembly which was so soon to succeed. The pure Jacobins,
together with Robespierre, wished that the National Assembly should
abdicate, _en masse_, and voluntarily sentence themselves to a political
ostracism, in order to make room for men of newer ideas and more imbued
with the spirit of the time. The moderate and constitutional Jacobins
looked upon this abdication as equally fatal to the monarch, as it dealt
a mortal blow to their ambition, for they wished to seize on the
direction of the power they had just created; they deemed themselves
alone competent to control the movement that they had excited, and they
sought to rule in the name of those laws of which they were the framers.
Robespierre, on the contrary, who felt his own weakness in an assembly
composed of the same elements, wished these elements to be excluded
from the new assembly: he himself suffered by the law that he laid down
for his colleagues; but with scarcely a rival to dispute his authority
at the Jacobins, they formed his assembly. His instinct or calculation
told him that the Jacobins must have supreme sway in a newly formed
assembly composed of men whose very names were unknown to the nation.
One of the faction himself, it was enough for him that the factions
reigned; and the tool he possessed in the Jacobins, and his immense
popularity, gave him the positive assurance that he should rule the
factions.
This question, at the time of the events of the Champ-de-Mars, agitated,
and already tended to dissolve the Jacobins. The rival club of the
Feuillants, composed almost entirely of constitutionalists and members
of the National Assembly, had a more legal and monarchical appearance.
The irritation caused by the popular excesses, and their hatred for
Robespierre and Brissot, induced the ancient founders of the club to
join the Feuillants. The Jacobins trembled lest the empire of the
factions should escape them, and that division would weaken them. "It is
the court," said Camille Desmoulins, the friend of Robespierre, "it is
the court that foments this schism amongst us, and has invented this
perfidious stratagem to destroy the popular party. It knows the two
Lameths, La Fayette, Barnave, Duport, and the others who first figured
in the Jacobin assembly. 'What,' the court asked itself, 'is the aim of
all these men? their aim was to be elevated to rank and station, by the
voice of the people, and by the gales of popularity, of command of the
ministers, of gold: what they needed was court favour to serve as the
sails of their ambition; and, wanting these sails, they use the oars of
the people. Let us prove to Lameth and Barnave that they will not be
re-elected, that they cannot fill any important place before four years
have passed away. They will be indignant, and return to our party. I saw
Alexandre and Theodore Lameth the evening of the day on which
Robespierre's motion of the non-re-eligibility was carried. The Lameths
were then patriots, but the next day they were no longer the same. 'It
is impossible to submit to this,' said they,--'in concert with
Duport--we must quit France.' What! shall those who have been the
architects of the constitution undergo the mortification of witnessing
the downfall of the edifice they have reared, by this approaching system
of legislation? We shall be condemned to hear from the galleries of the
Assembly, some fool in the tribune attack our wisest enactments, which
we are denied the power of defending. Would to Heaven! that they would
quit France. Is it not enough to cause us to despise both the Assembly
and the people of Paris, when we see that the clue of this is, that the
supreme control was on the point of eluding the grasp of Lameth and La
Fayette, and that Duport and Barnave would not be again elected."
Pétion, alarmed at these symptoms of discord, addressed the tribune of
the Jacobins in conciliatory terms--"You are lost" said he, "should the
members of the Assembly quit your party, and betake themselves _en
masse_ to the Feuillants. The empire of public opinion is deserting you;
and these countless affiliated societies, imbued with your spirit, will
sever the bonds of fraternity, and unite them to you. Forestall the
designs of your enemies. Publish an address to the affiliated societies,
and reassure them of your constitutional intentions; tell them that you
have been belied to them, and that you are no promoters of faction. Tell
them that far from wishing to disturb public tranquillity, your sole
design is to avert those troubles entailed on you by the king's
departure. Tell them that we submit to the rapid and imposing influence
of opinion, and that respect for the Assembly, fidelity to the
constitution, devotion to the cause of your country and of liberty, form
your principles." This address, dictated by the hypocrisy of fear, was
adopted and sent to all the societies in the kingdom. This measure was
followed by a remodelling of the Jacobins; the primitive nucleus alone
was suffered to remain, which re-organised the rest by the ballot over
which Pétion presided.
On their side the Feuillants wrote to the patriotic societies of the
provinces, and for a brief space there was an interregnum of the
factions; but the societies of the provinces speedily declared _en
masse_, and with an almost unanimous and revolutionary enthusiasm, in
favour of the Jacobins.
"Free and sincere union with our brothers in Paris:" such was the
rallying cry of the clubs. Six hundred clubs sent in their adherence to
the Jacobins; eighteen alone declared for the Feuillants. The factions
felt the importance of unity as fully as the nation, and the schism of
opinion was stifled by the enthusiasm for the grandeur of their work,
Pétion, in a letter to his constituents which made a great sensation,
spoke of these fruitless attempts at dissension amongst the patriots,
and denounced those who dissented from it. "I tremble for my country,"
said he; "the _modérés_ are meditating the reform of the constitution
already; and to place again in the king's hands the power the people
have scarcely acquired. My mind is overwhelmed by these gloomy
reflections, and I despond. I am ready to quit the post you have
confided to me. Oh, my country, be but thou saved, and I shall breathe
my last sigh in peace!"
Such were Pétion's words, and from that hour he became the idol of the
people. He possessed neither the abilities nor the audacity of
Robespierre; but he had hypocrisy, that shameless veil of doubtful
positions. The people believed him to be sincere, and his speeches had
the same influence over them as his reputation.
XVIII.
The coalition which he denounced to the people was true. Barnave had an
understanding with the court. Malouet, an eloquent and able member of
the right, had an understanding with Barnave: a plan for modifying the
constitution had been concerted between these two men--yesterday foes,
to-day allies. The moment was come for uniting in one general measure
all these scattered laws valid during a revolution of thirty months. In
separating, on this review of the acts of the Assembly, what was
integral from that which was not, the occasion must arise for a revision
of every act of the constitution. It was, therefore, the moment to
profit (in order to amend them in a sense more monarchical), by the
reaction produced by La Fayette's victory. What impulse and anger had
too violently taken from the prerogatives of the crown, reason and
reflection could restore to it. The same men who had placed the
executive power in the hands of the Assembly, hoped to be able to
withdraw it from them. They believed they could effect every thing by
their eloquence and popularity. Like all who are descending the tide of
a revolution, they thought they were able to ascend the stream with
equal ease. They did not see that their strength, of which they were so
proud, was not in themselves, but in the current which bore them along.
Events were about to teach them that there is no opposing passions to
which concession has been once made. The strength of a statesman is his
power. One concession, how slight soever, to factions, is an irrevocable
engagement with them: when once we consent to become their instrument,
we may be made their idol and their victim, never their master. Barnave
was doomed to learn this when too late; and the Girondists were to learn
it after him. The plan was thus arranged:--Malouet was to ascend the
tribune, and in a vehement but well-reasoned discourse was to attack all
the errors of the constitution; he was to demonstrate that if these
vices were not amended by the Assembly before the constitution itself
should be presented to the king and the people to swear to, it would be
anarchy registered by an oath. The three hundred members of the _côté
droit_ were to support the charges of their spokesman by vehement
plaudits. Barnave was then to demand a reply, and in a discourse,
apparently much excited, was to have vindicated the constitution from
the invectives of Malouet, at the same time conceding that as this
constitution was suddenly produced by the enthusiastic ardour of the
Revolution, and under the impulse of desperately contending
circumstances, there might be some imperfections in a certain portion of
the construction; that the grave consideration and wisdom of the
Assembly might remedy these errors before it dissolved; and that,
amongst other ameliorations which might be applied to this work, they
might retouch two or three articles in which the power assigned to the
executive authority and the legislative authority had been ill defined,
so as to restore to the executive power the independence and scope
indispensable to their existence. The friends of Barnave, Lameth, and
Duport, as well as all the members of the left, would have clamorously
supported the speaker, except Robespierre, Pétion, Buzot, and the
republicans. A commission would have been instantly named for the
special revision of the articles alluded to. This commission would have
made its report before the end of the meeting of the chambers; and the
three hundred votes of Malouet, united to the constitutional votes of
Barnave, would have assured to the monarchical amendments the majority
which was to restore royalty.
XIX.
But the members of the right refused to give their unanimous concurrence
to this plan. "To amend the constitution was to sanction revolt. To
unite themselves with the factious, was to become factious themselves.
To restore royalty by the hands of a Barnave, was to degrade the king
even to gratitude towards a member of a faction. Their hopes had not
fallen so low that it was thus they had but the option of accepting a
character in a comedy of startled revolutionists. Their hopes were not
in any amelioration of present ill, but in its progress towards worse.
The very excess of disorder would punish disorder itself. The king was
at the Tuileries, but royalty was not there--it was at Coblentz, it was
on all the thrones of Europe. Monarchies were all in connection; they
knew very well how to restore the French monarchy without the fellowship
of those who had overturned it."
Thus reasoned the members of the right. Feelings and resentments closed
their ears to the counsels of moderation and wisdom, and the monarchy
was not less systematically pushed towards its catastrophe by the hand
of its friends than that of its enemies. The plan was abortive.
Whilst the captive king kept up a twofold understanding with his
emigrant brothers to learn the strength and inclination of foreign
powers, and with Barnave to attempt the conquest of the Assembly, the
Assembly itself lost its power; and the spirit of the Revolution,
quitting the place in which it had no longer any hopes, went to excite
the clubs and municipalities, and bestow its energies on the elections.
The Assembly had committed the fault of declaring its members not
re-eligible for the new legislature. This act of renunciation of itself,
which resembled the heroism of disinterestedness, was in reality the
sacrifice of the country; it was the ostracism of superior power, and an
assurance of triumph to mediocrity. A nation how rich soever in genius
and virtue, never possesses more than a definite number of great
citizens. Nature is chary of superiority. The social conditions
necessary to form a public man are rarely in combination. Intelligence,
clear-sightedness, virtue, character, independence, leisure, fortune,
consideration already acquired, and devotion,--all this is seldom united
in one individual. An entire society is not decapitated with impunity.
Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth,
we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive. The Constituent
Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed
the form of a vengeance. The royalist party had voted the
non-re-eligibility, in order that the Revolution, thus eluding Barnave's
grasp, should fall into the clutch of the demagogues. The republican
party had voted in order to annihilate the constitutionalists. The
constitutionalists voted in order to chastise the ingratitude of the
people, and to make themselves regretted by the unworthy spectacle which
they expected their successors would present. It was a vote of
contending passions, all evil, and which could only produce a loss to
all parties. The king alone was averse from this measure. He perceived
repentance in the National Assembly--he was in communication with its
leading members--he had the key to many consciences. A new nation,
unknown and impatient, was about to present it before him in a new
Assembly. The reports of the press, the clubs, and places of popular
bruit told him, but too plainly, on what men the excited people would
bestow their confidence. He preferred known, exhausted, opponents, men
partly gained over, to new and ardent enemies who would surpass in
exactions those they replaced. To them there only remained his throne to
overthrow,--to him there was left to yield but his life.
XX.
The principal names discussed in the public newspapers in Paris, were
those of Condorcet, Brissot, Danton;--in the departments, those of
Vergniaud, Guadet, Isnard, Louvet,--who were afterwards Girondists; and
those of Thuriot, Merlin, Carnot, Couthon, Danton, Saint Just, who,
subsequently united with Robespierre, were, by turns, his instruments or
his victims. Condorcet was a philosopher, as intrepid in his actions as
bold in his speculations. His political creed was a consequence of his
philosophy. He believed in the divinity of reason, and in the
omnipotence of the human understanding, with liberty as its handmaid.
Heaven, the abode of all ideal perfections, and in which man places his
most beautiful dreams, was limited by Condorcet to earth: his science
was his virtue; the human mind his deity. The intellect impregnated by
science, and multiplied by time, it appeared to him must triumph
necessarily over all the resistance of matter; must lay bare all the
creative powers of nature, and renew the face of creation. He had made
of this system a line of politics, whose first idea was to adore the
future and abhor the past. He had the cool fanaticism of logic, and the
reflective anger of conviction. A pupil of Voltaire, D'Alembert, and
Helvetius, he, like Bailly, was of that intermediate generation by which
philosophy was embodied with the Revolution. More ambitious than Bailly,
he had not his impassibility. Aristocrat by birth, he, like Mirabeau,
had passed over to the camp of the people. Hated by the court, he hated
it as do all renegades. He had become one of the people, in order to
convert the people into the army of philosophy. He wanted of the
republic no more than was sufficient to overturn its prejudices. Ideas
once become victorious,--he would willingly have confided it to the
control of a constitutional monarchy. He was rather a man for dispute
than a man of anarchy. Aristocrats always carry with them, into the
popular party, the desire of order and command. They would fain
"Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."
Real anarchists are those who are impatient of having always obeyed, and
feel themselves impotent to command. Condorcet had edited the _Chronique
de Paris_ from 1789. It was a journal of constitutional doctrines, but
in which the throbbings of anger were perceivable beneath the cool and
polished hand of the philosopher. Had Condorcet been endowed with warmth
and command of language, he might have been the Mirabeau of another
assembly. He had his earnestness and constancy, but had not the
resounding and energetic tone which made his own soul and feelings felt
by another. The club of electors of Paris, who met at La Sainte
Chapelle, elected Condorcet to the chamber. The same club returned
Danton.
XXI.
Danton, whom the Revolution had found an obscure barrister at the
Châtelet, had increased with it in influence. He had already that
celebrity which the multitude easily assigns to him whom it sees every
where, and always listens to. He was one of those men who seem born of
the stir of revolutions, and which float on its surface until it
swallows them up. All in him was like the mass--athletic, rude, coarse.
He pleased them because he resembled them. His eloquence was like the
loud clamour of the mob. His brief and decisive phrases had the martial
curtness of command. His irresistible gestures gave impulse to his
plebeian auditories. Ambition was his sole line of politics. Devoid of
honour, principles, or morality, he only loved democracy because it was
exciting. It was his element, and he plunged into it. He sought there
not so much command as that voluptuous sensuality which man finds in the
rapid movement which bears him away with it. He was intoxicated with the
revolutionary vertigo as a man becomes drunken with wine; yet he bore
his intoxication well. He had that superiority of calmness in the
confusion he created, which enabled him to control it: preserving
_sangfroid_ in his excitement and his temper, even in a moment of
passion, he jested with the clubs in their stormiest moods. A burst of
laughter interrupted bitterest imprecations; and he amused the people
even whilst he impelled them to the uttermost pitch of fury. Satisfied
with his two-fold ascendency, he did not care to respect it himself, and
neither spoke to it of principles nor of virtue, but solely of force.
Himself, he adored force, and force only. His sole genius was contempt
for honesty; and he esteemed himself above all the world, because he had
trampled under foot all scruples. Every thing was to him a means. He was
a statesman of materialism, playing the popular game, with no end but
the terrible game itself, with no stake but his life, and with no
responsibility beyond nonentity. Such a man must be profoundly
indifferent either to despotism or to liberty. His contempt of the
people must incline him rather to the side of tyranny. When we can
detect nothing divine in men, the better part to play is to make use of
them. We can only serve well that which we respect. He was only with the
people because he was of the people, and thus the people ought to
triumph. He would have betrayed it, as he served it, unscrupulously. The
court well knew the tariff of his conscience. He threatened it in order
to make it desirous of buying him; he only opened his mouth in order to
have it stuffed with gold. His most revolutionary movements were but the
marked prices at which he was purchaseable. His hand was in every
intrigue, and his honesty was not checked by any offer of corruption. He
was bought daily, and next morning was again for sale. Mirabeau, La
Fayette, Montmorin, M. de Laporte, the intendant of the civil list, the
Duc d'Orleans, the king himself, all knew his price. Money had flowed
with him from all sources, even the most impure, without remaining with
him. Any other individual would have felt shame before men and parties
who had the secret of his dishonour; but he only was not ashamed, and
looked them in the face without a blush. His was the quietude of
vice.[3] He was the focus of all those men who seek in events nothing
but fortune and impunity. But others had only the baseness of
crime--Danton's vices partook of the heroic--his intellect was all but
genius. He had upon him the bright flash of circumstances, but it was as
sinister as his face. Immorality, which was the infirmity of his mind,
was in his eyes the essence of his ambition; he cultivated it in himself
as the element of future greatness. He pitied any body who respected any
thing. Such a man had of necessity a vast ascendency over the bad
passions of the multitude. He kept them in continual agitation, and
always boiling on the surface ready to flow into any torrent, even if it
were of blood.
XXII.
Brissot de Warville was another of these popular candidates for the
representation. As this individual was the root of the Girondist party,
the first apostle and first martyr of the republic, we ought to know
him. Brissot was the son of a pastrycook at Chartres, and had received
his education in that city with Pétion, his fellow countryman. An
adventurer in literature, he had begun by assuming the name of
_Warville_, which concealed his own. It is a plebeian nobility not to
blush at one's father's name. Brissot had not done so. He began by
furtively appropriating one of the titles of that aristocracy of races
against which he was about to raise equality. Like Rousseau in every
thing but his genius, he sought his fortune hither and thither, and
descended even lower than he into misery and intrigue, before he
acquired celebrity. Dispositions become weakened and stained by such a
struggle with the difficulties of life in the dregs of great corrupted
cities. Rousseau had paraded his indigence and his reveries in the bosom
of nature; and as its consideration calms and purifies everything he
quitted it a philosopher. Brissot had dragged his misery and vanity into
the heart of Paris and of London, and into those haunts of infamy in
which adventurers and pamphleteers drag on a filthy existence: he left
them an intriguer. Yet in the very midst of these vices which had
rendered his honesty dubious, and name bespotted, he nurtured in the
depths of his soul three virtues capable of again elevating him--an
unshaken love for a young girl, whom he married in spite of his family,
a love of occupation, and a courage against the difficulties of life,
which he had afterwards to display in the face of death. His philosophy
was identical with Rousseau's. He believed in God. He had faith in
liberty, truth, and virtue. He had in his soul that unqualified devotion
towards the human species which is the charity of philosophers. He
detested society, for in it there was no place awarded to him; but what
he hated with unmitigated hate was the state of society; its
prejudices--its falsehoods. He would have recast it, less for himself
than for the benefit of mankind. He would have consented to be crushed
beneath its ruins, provided those ruins were to give place to his ideal
plan of the government of reason. Brissot was one of those mercenary
scribes who write for those who pay best. He had written on all
subjects, for every minister; especially Turgot. Criminal laws,
political economy, diplomacy, literature, philosophy, even libels,--his
pen was at the hire of the first comer. Seeking the support of
celebrated and influential men, he had adulated all from Voltaire and
Franklin down to Marat. Known to Madame de Genlis, he had, through her,
some acquaintance with the Duc d'Orleans. Sent to London by the minister
on one of those missions which are nameless, he there became connected
with the editor of the _Courrier de l'Europe_, a French journal, printed
in London, and the boldness of whose style was offensive at the court of
the Tuileries. He engaged himself to Swinton, the proprietor of this
newspaper, and edited it in a manner favorable to the views of
Vergennes. He knew at Swinton's several writers, amongst others one
Morande. These libellers, outcasts of society, frequently then become
the refuse of the pen, and live at the same time on the disgraces of
vice and in the pay of spies. Their collision infected Brissot. He was
or appeared to be sometimes their accomplice. Hideous blotches thus
stain his life, and were cruelly revived by his enemies, when the time
came in which he was compelled to appeal to public esteem.
Returning to France at the first symptoms of the Revolution, he watched
its successive phases, with the ambition of an impatient man, and with
the indecision of one not knowing what part to take. He was frequently
wrong. He compromised himself by his devotion, too early displayed,
towards certain men who had seemed to him for a moment to be all
powerful, especially towards La Fayette. Editor of the _Patriote
Français_, he had occasionally put forth revolutionary feelers, and
flattered the future by going even faster than the factions themselves.
He had even been disowned by Robespierre. "Whilst I content myself,"
said Robespierre, referring to him, "with defending the principles of
liberty, without opening any other question, what are you doing, Brissot
and Condorcet? Known until now by your great moderation and your
connection with La Fayette, for a long time followers of the
aristocratic club of '89, you suddenly blazon forth the word Republic.
You issue a journal entitled the _Republican_! Then minds become in a
ferment. The mere word Republic throws division amongst patriots, and
affords to our enemies a pretext which they seek for announcing that
there exists in France a party which conspires against the monarchy and
the constitution. Under this title we are persecuted, and peaceable
citizens are sacrificed on the altars of their country! At this name we
are transformed into factions, and the Revolution is made to recede,
perhaps, half a century. It was at the same moment that Brissot came to
the Jacobins, where he had never before appeared, to propose a republic
of which the simplest rules of prudence had forbidden us to speak in the
National Assembly. By what fatality did Brissot find himself there? I
would fain discover no craft in his conduct; I would prefer detecting
only imprudence and folly. But now that his connection with La Fayette
and Narbonne are no longer a mystery--now that he no longer dissimulates
his schemes of dangerous innovations, let him clearly understand that
the nation will at once and effectually break through all the plots
framed during so many years by pitiful intriguers."
So spake Robespierre, jealous by anticipation, and yet just, on
Brissot's presenting himself as a candidate. The Revolution rejected
him, the Counter-revolution repudiated him no less. Brissot's old allies
in London, especially Morande, returned to Paris under cover of the
troublous times, revealed to the Parisians in the _Argus_, and in
placards, the secret intrigues and the disgraceful literary career of
their former associate. They quoted actual letters, in which Brissot had
lied unblushingly as to his name, the condition of his family, and his
father's fortune, in order to acquire Swinton's confidence, to gain
credit, and make dupes in England. The proofs were damning. A
considerable sum had been extorted from a man named Desforges, under
pretence of erecting an institution in London, and this sum had been
expended by Brissot on himself. This was but a trifle: Brissot, on
quitting England, had left in the hands of this Desforges twenty-four
letters, which but too plainly established his participation in the
infamous trade of libels carried on by his allies. It was proved to
demonstration that Brissot had connived at the sending into France, and
the propagation of, odious pamphlets by Morande. The journals hostile to
his election seized on these scandalous facts, and held them up to
public obloquy. He was, besides, accused of having extracted from the
funds of the district of the _Filles-Saint-Thomas_, of which he was
president, a sum for his own purse, long forgotten. His defence was
laboured and obscure; yet it was held by the club of the Rue de la
Michodière sufficient proof of his innocence and integrity. Some
journals, solely occupied with the political bearing of his life, took
up his defence, and made loud complaints against his calumny. Manuel,
his friend, who edited a vile journal, wrote thus, to console
him:--"These ordures of calumny, spread abroad at the moment of
scrutiny, always end by leaving a dirty stain on those who scatter them.
But it is allowing a triumph to the enemies of the people, to repulse
thus a man who fearlessly attacks them. They give me votes, in spite of
my drivellings, and my love of the bottle. Leave 'Père Duchesne'[4]
alone, and let us nominate Brissot; he is a better man than I am."
Marat, in his _Ami du Peuple_, wrote thus ambiguously of
Brissot:--"Brissot," says the Friend of the People, "was never, in my
eyes, a thorough-going patriot. Either from ambition or baseness, he has
up to this time betrayed the duties of a good citizen. Why has he been
so tardy in leaving a system of hypocrisy? Poor Brissot, thou art the
victim of a court valet, of a base hypocrite!--why lend thy paw to La
Fayette? Why, thou must expect to experience the fate of all men of
indecision. Thou hast displeased every body; thou canst never make thy
way. If thou hast one atom of proper feeling left, hasten, and scratch
out thy name from the list of candidates for the approaching general
election."
Thus appeared on the scene for the first time, in the midst of the
hootings of both parties, this man, who attempted in vain to escape from
the general contempt accumulated on his name from the faults of his
youth, in order to enter on the gravity of his political career--a
mingled character, half intrigue, half virtue. Brissot, destined to
serve as the centre of a rallying point to the party of the _Gironde_,
had, by anticipation in his character, all there was in after days, of
destiny in his party, of intrigue and patriotism, of faction and
martyrdom. The other marked candidates in Paris, were, Pastoret, a man
of the South, prudent and skilful as a Southron, steering ably betwixt
parties, giving sufficient guarantee to the Revolution to be accepted by
it, enough devotion to the court to retain its secret confidence; borne
hither and thither by the alternating favours of the two opinions, like
a man who seeks fortune for his talent in the Revolution, but never
looking for it beyond the limits of the just and honourable. Lacepede,
Cérutti, Héraut de Séchelles, and Gouvion, La Fayette's aide-de-camp.
The elections of the department occupied but little attention. The
National Assembly had exhausted the country of its characters and its
talents; the ostracism it had exercised had imposed on France but
secondary ability. There was but little enthusiasm for untried men: the
public eyes were only fixed on the names about to disappear. A country
cannot contain a twofold renown: that of France was departing with the
members of the dissolved Assembly--another France was about to rise.