BOOK V.

I.

Whilst an instant's breathing time was permitted to France between two

convulsive efforts, and the Revolution as yet knew not whether it should

maintain the constitution it had gained, or employ it as a weapon to

obtain a republic, Europe began to arouse itself; egotistical and

improvident, she merely beheld in the first movement in France a comedy

played at Paris on the stage of the States General and the constituent

Assembly--between popular genius, represented by Mirabeau, and the

vanquished genius of the aristocracy, personified in Louis XVI. and the

clergy. This grand spectacle had been in the eyes of the sovereigns and

their ministers merely the continuation of the struggle (in which they

had taken so much interest, and showed so much secret favour) between

Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau on one side, and the old

aristocratical and religious system on the other. To them the Revolution

was the philosophy of the eighteenth century, which had migrated from

the _salons_ into the public streets, and from books to speeches. This

earthquake in the moral world, and these shocks at Paris, the presages

of some unknown change in European destinies, attracted far more than

they affrighted them. They had not as yet learned that institutions are

but ideas, and that those ideas, when overthrown, involve in their fall

thrones and nations. Whatsoever the spirit of God wills, that also do

all mankind will, and are to accomplish, unperceived even by themselves.

Europe bestowed attention, time, and astonishment on the commencement of

the French Revolution, and that was all it needed to bring it to

maturity. The spark not having been extinguished at its outbreak was

fated to kindle and consume every thing before it. The moral and

political state of Europe was eminently favourable to the contagion of

new ideas. Time, men, and things, all lay at the mercy of France.

II.

A long period of peace had softened the minds, and deadened those

hereditary hatreds that oppose the communication of feelings and the

similarity of ideas between different nations. Europe, since the treaty

of Westphalia, had become a republic of perfectly balanced powers, where

the general equilibrium of power resulting from each formed a

counterpoise to the other. One glance sufficed to show the solidity and

unity of this European _building_, every beam of which, opposing an

equal resistance to the others, afforded an equal support by the

pressure of all the states.

Germany was a confederation presided over by Austria, the emperors were

the chiefs only of this ancient feudalism of kings, dukes, and electors.

The house of Austria was more powerful through itself and its vast

possessions than through the imperial dignity. The two crowns of Hungary

and Bohemia, the Tyrol, Italy, and the Low Countries, gave it an

ascendency, which the genius of Richelieu had been able to fetter, but

not to destroy. Powerful to resist, but not to impel, Austria was more

fitted to _sustain_ than to _act_; her force lies in her situation and

immobility, for she is like a block in the middle of Germany,--her power

is in her _weight_; she is the pivot of the balance of European power.

But the federative diet weakened and enervated its designs by those

secret influences all federations naturally possess. Two new states,

unperceived until the time of Louis XIV., had recently risen, out of

reach of the power, and the long rivalry of the houses of Bourbon and

Austria: the one in the north of Germany, Prussia; the other in the

east, Russia. The policy of England had encouraged the rise of these two

infant powers, in order to form the elements of political combinations

that would admit of her interests obtaining a firm footing.

III.

A hundred years had hardly elapsed since an emperor of Austria had

conferred the title of king on a margrave of Prussia, a subordinate

sovereign of two millions of men, and yet Prussia already balanced in

Germany the influence of the house of Austria. The Machiavelian genius

of Frederic the Great had become the genius of Prussia. His monarchy,

composed of territories acquired by victory, required war to strengthen

itself, still more of agitation and intrigue to legitimise itself.

Prussia was in a ferment of dissolution amidst the German states.

Scarcely had it risen into existence than it abdicated all German

feeling by leaguing with England and Russia; and England, always on the

watch to widen these breaches, had used Prussia as her lever in Germany.

Russia, whose two-fold ambition already had designs on Asia on the one

hand, on Europe on the other, had made it an advanced guard on the west,

and used it as an advanced camp on the borders of the Rhine. Thus

Prussia was the point of the Russian sword in the very heart of France.

Military power was every thing; its government was only discipline, its

people only an army. As for its ideas, its policy was to place itself

at the head of the Protestant states, and offer protection, assistance,

and revenge to all those whose interest or whose ambition was threatened

by the house of Austria. Thus by its nature Prussia was a revolutionary

power.

Russia, to whom nature had assigned a sterile yet immense place on the

globe, the ninth part of the habitable world, and a population of forty

millions of men, all compelled by the savage genius of Peter the Great

to unite themselves into one nation, seemed yet to waver between two

roads, one of which led to Germany, the other to the Ottoman empire.

Catherine II. governed it: a woman endowed with wondrous beauty,

passion, genius, and crime,--such are necessary in the ruler of a

barbarous nation, in order to add the _prestige_ of adoration to the

terror inspired by the sceptre. Each step she took in Asia awakened an

echo of surprise and admiration in Europe, and for her was revived the

name of Semiramis. Russia, Prussia, and France, intimidated by her fame,

applauded her victories over the Turks, and her conquests in the Black

Sea, without apparently comprehending that she weighed down the European

power, and that once mistress of Poland and Constantinople, nothing then

would prevent her from carrying out her designs on Germany, and

extending her arm over all the West.

IV.

England, humiliated in her maritime pride by the brilliant rivalry of

the French fleet in the Indian Seas, irritated by the assistance given

by France to aid America in her struggle for independence, had secretly

allied herself in 1788 with Prussia and Holland, to counterbalance the

effect of the alliance of France with Austria, and to intimidate Russia

in her invasion of Turkey. England at this moment relied on the genius

of one man, Mr. Pitt, the greatest statesman of the age, son of Lord

Chatham, the only political orator of modern ages who equalled (if he

did not surpass) Demosthenes. Mr. Pitt, in a manner born in the council

of kings, and brought up at the tribune of his country, at the age of

twenty-three was launched in political life. At this age, when other men

have scarcely emerged from childhood, he was already the most eminent of

all that aristocracy that confided their cause to him as the most

worthy to uphold it, and when almost a boy he acquired the government of

his country from the admiration excited by his talents, and held it

almost without interruption up to his death by his enlightened views of

policy, and the energy of his resolution. He showed the House of Commons

what a great statesman, supported by the opinion of the nation, can dare

to attempt and accomplish, with the consent (and sometimes against it)

of a parliament. He was the despot of the constitution, if we may link

together those two words that can alone express his lawful omnipotence.

The struggle against the French Revolution was the continual act of his

twenty-five years of ministerial life; he became the antagonist of

France, and died vanquished.

And yet it was not the Revolution that he hated, it was France, and in

France it was not liberty he hated, for at heart he loved freedom; it

was the destruction of this balance of Europe that, once destroyed, left

England isolated in its ocean. At this moment, England, hostile towards

America, at war with India, a coolness existing between itself and

Spain, secretly hating Russia, had on the Continent nothing but Prussia

and the Stadtholder; and observation and temporisation became a

necessary part of its policy.

V.

Spain, enervated by the reign of Philip III. and Ferdinand VI., had

recovered some degree of internal vitality and external dignity during

the long reign of Charles III.; Campomanes, Florida Blanca, the Comte

d'Aranda, his ministers, had struggled against superstition, that second

nature of the Spaniards. A _coup d'état_, meditated in silence, and

executed like a conspiracy by the court, had driven out of the kingdom

the Jesuits, who reigned under the name of the kings. The family

agreement between Louis XV. and Charles III., in 1761, had guaranteed

the thrones, and all the possessions of the different branches of the

house of Bourbon. But this political compact had been unable to

guarantee this many-branched dynasty against the decay of its root, and

that degeneracy that gives effeminate and weak princes as successors to

mighty kings. The Bourbons became satraps at Naples, and in Spain

crowned monks, and the very palace of the Escurial had assumed the

appearance and the gloom of a monastery.

The _monacal_ system devoured Spain, and yet this unfortunate country

adored the evil that destroyed it. After having been subject to the

caliphs, Spain became the conquest of the popes; and their authority

reigned paramount there under every costume; whilst theocracy made its

last efforts there. Never had the sacerdotal system more completely

swayed a nation, and never had a nation been reduced to a more abject

state of degradation. The Inquisition was its government,--the

_auto-da-fés_ its triumphs,--bull-fights and processions its only

diversions. Had the inquisitorial reign lasted a few years more, this

people would have been no longer reckoned amongst the civilised

inhabitants of Europe.

Charles III. had trembled at each new effort he made to emancipate his

government; his good intentions had all been frustrated and checked, and

he had been forced to sacrifice his ministers to the vengeance of

superstition. Florida Blanca and d'Aranda died in exile, to which they

had been condemned for the crime of having served their country. The

weak Charles IV. had mounted the throne and reigned for several years,

guided by a faithless wife, a confessor, and a favourite. The loves of

Godoy and the queen formed the whole of the Spanish policy, and to the

fortune of the favourite all the rest of the empire was sacrificed. What

mattered it that the fleet rotted in the unfinished ports of Charles

III.--that Spanish America asserted its independence--that Italy bent

beneath the yoke of Austria--that the house of Bourbon combated in vain

in France the progress of a new system--that the Inquisition and the

monks cast a gloom over and devoured the whole of the peninsula,--all

this was nothing to the court, provided the queen were but loved and

Godoy great. The palace of Aranjuez was like the walled tomb of Spain,

into which the active spirit that now agitated Europe could no longer

penetrate.

VI.

The state of Italy was yet worse; for it was severed into pieces that,

unlike the snake, were unable to reunite. Naples was under the severe

sway of Spain, and the yoke of Austria pressed on Milan and Lombardy.

Rome was nought but the capital of an idea--her people had disappeared,

and she had now become the modern Ephesus, at which each cabinet sought

an oracle favourable to its own cause, and paid for this purpose the

members of the sacred college. Although the centre of all diplomatic

intrigue, and the spot where all worldly ambition humbled itself but to

increase its power,--although this court could shake Europe to its

foundations, it was yet unable to govern it. The elective aristocracy,

cardinals chosen by powers at variance with each other; the elective

monarchy, a pope whose qualifications were old age and feebleness, and

who was only crowned on condition of a speedy decease: such was the

_temporal_ government of the Roman States. This government combined in

itself all the weakness of anarchy, and all the vices of despotism. It

had produced its inevitable result, the servitude of the state, the

poverty of the government and the misery of the population; Rome was no

longer anything but the great Catholic municipality, and her government

nought save a republic of diplomatists. Rome possessed a temple enriched

with the offerings of the Christian world, a sovereign and ambassadors,

but neither population, treasure, nor army. It was the venerated shadow

of that universal monarchy to which the popes had pretended in the

golden age of Catholicism, and of which they had only preserved the

capital and the court.

VII.

Venice drew near its fall, but the silence and mystery of its government

concealed even from the Venetians the decrepitude of the state. The

government was an aristocratic sovereignty, founded on the corruption of

the people and treachery, for the master sinew of the government was

_espionage_; its _prestige_, mystery; its power, the torture. It lived

on terror and voluptuousness; its police was a system of secret

confession, of each against the other. Its cells, termed the _Piombi_

or _Leads_, and which were entered at night by the _Bridge of Sighs_,

were a hell that closed on the captive never to re-open. The wealth of

the East flowed in on Venice from the fall of the Lower Empire. She

became the refuge of Greek civilisation, and the Constantinople of the

Adriatic; and the arts had emigrated thither from Byzance, with

commerce. Its marvellous palaces, washed by the waves, were crowded

together on a narrow spot of ground, so that the city was like a vessel

at anchor, on board which a people driven from the land have taken

refuge with all their treasures. She was thus impregnable, but could not

exercise the least influence over Italy.

VIII.

Genoa, a more popular and more turbulent republic, subsisted only by her

fleet and her commerce. Hemmed in between barren mountains and a gulf

without a shore, it was only a port peopled by sailors. The marble

palaces, built one above the other on the rocky banks, looked down on

the sea, their sole territory. The portraits of the doges and the statue

of Andreà Doria constantly reminded the Genoese that from the waves had

proceeded their riches and their renown, and that _there_ alone they

could hope to look for them. Its ramparts were impregnable, its arsenals

full; and thus Genoa formed the stronghold of armed commerce.

The immense country of Tuscany, governed and rendered illustrious by the

_Médici_, those Pericles of Italy, was learned, agricultural,

industrious, but unwarlike. The house of Austria ruled it by its

archdukes, and these princes of the north, transported to the palaces of

the Pitti or the Cômo, contracted the mild and elegant manners of the

Tuscans; and the climate and serenity of the hills of Florence softened

there even tyranny, and these princes became voluptuaries or sages.

Florence, the city of Leo X., of philosophy, and the arts, had

transformed even religion. Catholicism, so ascetic in Spain, so gloomy

in the north, so austere and literal in France, so popular at Rome, had

become at Florence, under the _Médici_ and the Grecian philosophers, a

species of luminous and Platonic theory, whose dogmata were only sacred

symbols, and whose pomps were only pleasures that overpowered the mind

and the senses. The churches at Florence were more museums of Christ

than his sanctuaries; the colonies of all the arts and trades of Greece

had emigrated, on the entry of Mahomet II. into Constantinople, to

Florence, and there they had prospered; and a new Athens, enriched like

the ancient with temples, porticoes, and statues, beautified the banks

of the Arno.

Leopold, the philosopher prince, awaited there, busied in learning the

art of governing men and putting in practice new theories of political

economy, the moment to mount the imperial throne of Austria, where his

destiny was not to leave him long. He was the Germanicus of Germany, and

philosophy could alone display him to the world, after having lent him

for a few years to Italy.

Piedmont, whose frontiers reached to the heart of France by the Alpine

valleys, and on the other side the walls of Genoa and the Austrian

possessions on the Po, was governed by the house of Savoy, one of the

most ancient of the royal lines in Europe. This military monarchy had

its intrenched camp, rather than its capital, in Turin. The plains it

occupied in Italy had been, and were destined to be, the field of battle

for Austria and France; and her positions were the keys of Italy.

This population, accustomed to war, was necessarily constantly under

arms to defend itself, or to unite with that one of the two powers whose

rivalry could alone assure its independence. Thus, military disposition

was its strength; its weakness lay in having half its possessions in

Italy, half in France. The whole of Savoy is French in language,

descent, and manners; and at any great commotion Savoy must detach

itself from Italy, and fall on this side of its own accord. The Alps are

too essential a frontier to two people to belong to only one; for if

their south side looks to Italy, their north looks to France. The snow,

the sun, and the torrents have thus willed this division of the Alps

between two nations. Policy does not long prevail against nature, and

the house of Savoy was not sufficiently powerful to preserve the

neutrality of the valleys of the Alps and the roads of Italy; and though

it increase in power in Italy, yet it must be worsted in a struggle

against France. The court of Turin was doubly allied to the house of

France by the marriage of the Comte d'Artois and the Comte de Provence,

brothers of Louis XVI., with two princesses of the house of Savoy. The

clergy had more influence at this court than at any other in Italy; and

hated instinctively all revolutions, because they threatened its

political influence. From religious feeling--from family feeling--from

political feeling, Savoy was destined to become the first scene of

conspiracy against the French Revolution.

IX.

There was yet another in the north, and that was Sweden; but there it

was neither a superstitious attachment to Catholicism, nor family

feeling, nor even national interest, that excited the hostility of a

king against the Revolution; it was a more noble sentiment--the

disinterested glory of combating for the cause of kings; and, above all,

for a queen whose beauty and whose misfortunes had won the heart of

Gustavus III., in which blazed the last spark of that chivalrous feeling

that vowed to avenge the cause of ladies, to assist the oppressed, and

succour the right. Extinguished in the south, it burnt, for the last

time, in the north, and in the breast of a king. Gustavus III. had in

his policy something of the adventurous genius of Charles XII., for the

Sweden of the race of Wasa is the land of heroes. Heroism, when

disproportioned to genius and its resources, resembles folly: there was

a mixture of heroism and folly in the projects of Gustavus against

France; and yet this folly was noble, as its cause--and great, as his

own courage. Fortune had accustomed Gustavus to desperate and bold

enterprises; and success had taught him to believe nothing impossible.

Twice he had made a revolution in his kingdom, twice he had striven

single-handed against the gigantic power of Russia, and had he been

seconded by Prussia, Austria, and Turkey, Russia would have found a

rampart against her in the north. The first time, abandoned by his

troops, in his tent by his revolted generals, he had escaped, and alone,

made an appeal to his brave Dalecarlians. His eloquence, and his

magnanimous bearing had caused a new army to spring from the earth. He

had punished traitors, rallied cowards, concluded the war, and returned

triumphant to Stockholm, borne on the shoulders of his people, wrought

up to a pitch of enthusiasm. The second time, seeing his country torn by

the anarchical predominance of the nobility, he had resolved, in the

depths of his own palace, on the overthrow of the constitution. United

in feeling with the _bourgeoisie_ and the people, he had led on his

troops, sword in hand; imprisoned the senate in its chamber; dethroned

the nobility, and acquired for royalty the prerogatives it required in

order to defend and govern the country. In three days, and before one

drop of blood had been shed, Sweden under his sword had become a

monarchy. Gustavus's confidence in his own boldness was confirmed. The

monarchical feeling in him was strengthened by all the hatred which he

bore to the privileges of the orders he had overturned. The cause of the

king was identified with his own.

He had embraced with enthusiasm that of Louis XVI. Peace, which he had

concluded with Russia, allowed him to direct his attention and his

forces towards France. His military genius dreamed of a triumphant

expedition to the banks of the Seine. It was there that he desired to

acquire glory. He had visited Paris in his youth; under the name of the

Count de Haga he had partaken of the hospitalities of Versailles. Marie

Antoinette, then in the brilliancy of her youth and beauty, now appeared

humiliated, and a captive in the hands of a pitiless people. To deliver

this woman, restore the throne, to make himself at once feared and

blessed by this capital, seemed to him one of those adventures formerly

sought by crowned chevaliers. His finances alone opposed the execution

of this bold design. He negotiated a loan with the court of Spain,

attached to him the French emigrants renowned for their military

talents, requested plans from the Marquis de Bouillé, solicited the

courts of St. Petersburg and Berlin to unite with him in this crusade of

kings. He asked of England nothing but neutrality. Russia encouraged

him; Austria temporised; Spain trembled; England looked on. Each new

shock of the Revolution at Paris found Europe undecided and always

behind-hand in counsels and resolutions. Monarchical Europe, hesitating

and divided, did not know what it had to fear, nor what it ought to do.

Such was the political situation of cabinets with respect to France.

But as to ideas, the feelings of the people were different.

The movement of intelligence and philosophy at Paris was responded to by

the agitation of the rest of Europe, and especially in America. Spain,

under M. d'Aranda, was become alive to the general feeling; the Jesuits

had disappeared; the Inquisition had extinguished its fires; the Spanish

nobility blushed for the sacred theocracy of its monks. Voltaire had

correspondents at Cadiz and at Madrid. The forbidden produce of our

ideas was favoured even by those whose charge was to exclude it. Our

books crossed the snows of the Pyrenees. Fanaticism, tracked by the

light to its last den, felt Spain escaping from it. The excess of a

tyranny long undergone, prepared ardent minds for the excess of liberty.

In Italy, and even at Rome, the sombre Catholicism of the middle age was

lighted up by the reflections of time. It played even with the dangerous

arms which philosophy was about to turn against it. It seemed to

consider itself as a weakened institution, which ought to have its long

duration pardoned in consequence of its complaisance towards princes and

the age. Benedict XIV. (Lambertini) received from Voltaire the

dedication of "Mahomet." The Cardinals _Passionei_ and _Quirini_, in

their correspondence with Ferney[6],--Rome, in its bulls, preached

tolerance for dissenters, and obedience to princes. The pope disavowed

and reformed the company of Jesus: he soothed the spirit of the age.

Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) shortly after secularised the Jesuits,

confiscated their possessions, and imprisoned their superior, Ricci, in

the castle of Saint Angelo, the Bastille of papacy. Severe only towards

exaggerated zealots, he enchanted the Christian world by the evangelical

sweetness, the grace of his understanding, and the poignancy of his wit;

but pleasantry is the first step to the profanation of dogmata. The

crowd of strangers and English whom his affability attracted to Italy

and retained at Rome, caused, with the circulation of gold and science,

the inflowing of scepticism and indifference, which destroy creeds

before they sap institutions.

Naples, under a corrupt court, left fanaticism to the populace.

Florence, under a philosophical prince, was an experimental colony of

modern doctrines. The poet Alfieri, that Tyrtæus of Italian liberty,

produced there his revolutionary dramas, and there sowed his maxims

against the two-fold tyranny of popes and kings in every theatre in

Italy.

Milan, beneath the Austrian flag, had within its walls a republic of

poets and philosophers. Beccaria wrote there more daringly than

Montesquieu. His work on "Crimes and Punishments" was a bill of

accusation of all the laws of his native country. _Parini Monte,

Cesarotti, Pindemonte, Ugo Foscolo_ gay, serious, and heroic poets, then

satirised the absurdities of their tyrants, the baseness of their

fellow-countrymen, or sang, in patriotic odes, the virtues of their

ancestors, and the approaching deliverance of their country.

Turin alone, attached to the house of Saxony, was silent, and proscribed

Alfieri.

In England, the mind, a long time free, had produced sound morals. The

aristocracy felt itself sufficiently strong never to become persecuting.

Worship was there as independent as conscience. The dominant religion

was a political institution, which, whilst it bound the citizen, left

the believer to his free will. The government itself was popular, only

the people consisted of none but its leading citizens. The House of

Commons more resembled a senate of nobles than a democratic forum; but

this parliament was an open and resounding chamber, where they discussed

openly in face of the throne, as in the face of all Europe, the most

comprehensive measures of the government. Royalty, honoured in form,

whilst in fact it is excluded and powerless, merely presides over these

debates, and adds order to victory; it was, in reality, nothing more

than a perpetual consulate of this Britannic senate. The voices of the

leading orators, who contested the rule of the nation, echoed thence,

through and out of Europe. Liberty finds its level in the social world,

like the waves in the common bed of the ocean. One nation is not free

with impunity--one people is not in bondage with impunity--all finally

compares and equalises itself.

X.

England had been intellectually the model of nations, and the envy of

the reflecting universe. Nature and its institutions had conferred upon

it men worthy of its laws. Lord Chatham, sometimes leading the

opposition, sometimes at the head of the government, had expanded the

space of parliament to the proportions of his own character and his own

language. Never did the manly liberty of a citizen before a

throne--never did the legal authority of a prime minister before a

people display themselves in such a voice to assembled citizens. He was

a public man in all the greatness of the phrase--the soul of a nation

personified in an individual--the inspiration of the nation in the heart

of a patrician. His oratory had something as grand as action--it was the

heroic in language. The echo of Lord Chatham's discourses were

heard--felt on the Continent. The stormy scenes of the Westminster

elections[7] shook to the very depths the feelings of the people, and

that love of turbulence which slumbers in every multitude, and which it

so often mistakes for the symptoms of true liberty. These words of

counterpoise to royal power, to ministerial responsibility, to laws in

operation, to the power of the people, explained at the present by a

constitution--explained in the past by the accusation of Strafford, the

tomb of Sidney, on the scaffold of a king, had resounded like old

recollections and strange novelties.

The English drama had the whole world for audience. The great actors for

the moment were Pitt, the controller of these storms, the intrepid organ

of the throne, of order, and the laws of his country; Fox, the

precursory tribune of the French Revolution, who propagated the

doctrines by connecting them with the revolutions of England, in order

to sanctify them in the eyes of the English; Burke, the philosophical

orator, every one of whose orations was a treatise; then the Cicero of

the opposition party, and who was so speedily to turn against the

excesses of the French Revolution, and curse the new faith in the first

victim immolated by the people; and lastly, Sheridan, an eloquent

debauchee, liked by the populace for his levity and his vices, seducing

his country, instead of elevating it. The warmth of the debates on the

American war, and the Indian war, gave a more powerful interest to the

storms of the English parliament.

The independence of America, effected by a newly-born people, the

republican maxims on which this new continent founded its government,

the reputation attached to the fresh names, which distance increased

more than their victories,--Washington, Franklin, La Fayette, the heroes

of public imagination; those dreams of ancient simplicity, of primitive

manners, of liberty at once heroic and pastoral, which the fashion and

illusion of the moment had transported from the other side of the

Atlantic,--all contributed to fascinate the spirit of the Continent, and

nourish in the mind of the people contempt for their own institutions,

and fanaticism for a social renovation.

Holland was the workshop of innovators; it was there that, sheltered by

a complete toleration of religious dogmata, by an almost republican

liberty, and by an authorised system of contraband, all that could not

be uttered in Paris, in Italy, in Spain, in Germany, was printed. Since

Descartes, independent philosophy had selected Holland for its asylum:

Boyle had there rendered scepticism popular: it was the land sacred to

insurrection against all the abuses of power, and had subsequently

become the seat of conspiracy against kings. Every one who had a

suspicious idea to promulgate, an attack to make, a name to conceal,

went to borrow the presses of Holland. Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau,

Diderot, Helvetius, Mirabeau himself--had gone there to naturalise their

writings in this land of publicity. The mask of concealment which these

writers assumed in Amsterdam deceived no one, but it effected their

security. All the crimes of thought were there inviolable; it was at the

same time the asylum and the arsenal of new ideas. An active and vast

trade in books made a speculation of the overthrow of religion and

thrones. The prodigious demand for prohibited works which were thus

circulated in the world, proved sufficiently the increasing alteration

of ancient beliefs in the mind of the people.

XI.

In Germany, the country of phlegm and patience, minds apparently so slow

shared with serious and concentrated ardour in the general movement of

mind in Europe. Free thought there assumed the form of an universal

conspiracy. It was enveloped in mystery. Learned and formal Germany

liked to give even to its insurrection the appearances of science and

tradition. The Egyptian initiations, mystic ceremonies of the middle

age, were imitated by the adepts of new ideas. Men thought as they

conspired. Philosophy moved veiled in symbols; and that veil was torn

away only in secret societies, from which the profane were excluded. The

_prestiges_ of the imagination, so powerful in the ideal and dreamy

nature of Germany, served as a bait to the newly arisen truths.

The great Frederic had made his court the centre of religious

incredulity. Sheltered by his power altogether military, contempt for

Christianity and of monarchical institutions was freely propagated.

Moral force was nothing to this materialist prince. Bayonets were in his

eyes the right of princes; insurrection the right of the people;

victories or defeats the public right. His constant run of good fortune

was the accomplice of his immorality. He had received the recompence of

every one of his vices, because his vices were great. Dying he had

bequeathed his perverse genius to Berlin. It was the corrupting city of

Germany. Military men educated in the school of Frederic, academies

modelled after the genius of Voltaire, colonies of Jews enriched by war,

and the French refugees, peopled Berlin and formed the public mind. This

mind, full of levity, sceptic, impertinent and sneering, intimidated the

rest of Germany. The weakened spirit of that land may be dated from the

period of Frederic II. He was the corrupter of the empire--he conquered

Germany in the French spirit--he was a hero of a falling destiny.

Berlin continued it after his death; great men always bequeath the

impulse of their spirit to their country. The reign of Frederic had at

least one happy result: religious tolerance arose in Germany from the

very contempt in which Frederic had held religious creeds. Under the

wing of this toleration the spirit of philosophy had organised occult

associations, after the image of freemasonry. The German princes were

initiated. It was thought an act of superior mind to penetrate into

those shadows, which, in reality, included nothing beyond some general

principles of humanity and virtue, with no direct application to civil

institutions. Frederic in his youth had been initiated himself, at

Brunswick, by Major Bielfeld; the emperor Joseph II., the most bold

innovator of his time, had also desired to undergo these proofs at

Vienna, under the tutelage of the baron de Born, the chief of the

freemasons in Austria. These societies, which had no religious tendency

in England, because there liberty conspired openly in parliament and in

the press, had a wholly different sense on the Continent. They were the

secret council-chambers of independent thought: the thought, escaping

from books, passed into action. Between the initiated and established

institutions, the war was concealed, but the more deadly.

The hidden agents of these societies had evidently for aim the creation

of a government of the opinion of the human race, in opposition to the

governments of prejudice. They desired to reform religious, political,

and civil society, beginning by the most refined classes. These lodges

were the catacombs of a new worship. The sect of _illuminés_, founded

and guided by Weishaupt, was spreading in Germany in conjunction with

the _freemasons_ and the _rosicrucians_. The _theosophists_ in their turn

produced the symbols of supernatural perfection, and enrolled all

susceptible minds and ardent imaginations around dogmata full of love

and infinity. The theosophists, the Swedenborgians, disciples of the

sublime but obscure Swedenborg, the Saint Martin of Germany, pretended

to complete the Gospel, and to transform humanity by overcoming death

and the senses. All these dogmata were mingled in an equal contempt for

existing institutions in one same aspiration for the renewal of the mind

and things. All were democratic in their last conclusion, for all were

inspired by a love of mankind without distinction of classes.

Affiliations were multiplied _ad infinitum_. Prejudice, as it always

occurs when zeal is ardent, was added fraudulently to truth, as if error

or falsehood were the inevitable alloy of truth, and even the virtues of

the human mind: they called up past ages, summoned spectres, and the

dead were heard to speak. They played upon the plastic imagination of

princes, by rapid transition from terror to enthusiasm. The knowledge of

the phantasmagoria, then but little known, served as an auxiliary in

these deceptions. On the death of Frederic II., his successor submitted

to such tests, and was worked upon by wonders. Kings conspired against

thrones. The princes of Gotha gave Weishaupt an asylum. Augustus of

Saxony, prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, the prince of Neuvied, even the

coadjutor of the ecclesiastical principalities on the banks of the

Rhine, those of Mayence, Worms, and Constance, signalised themselves by

their ardour for the mystic doctrines of freemasonry or the illuminati.

Cagliostro was astounding Strasburgh--Cardinal de Rohan ruined himself,

and bent before his voice. Like at the fall of great empires--like at

the cradle of great things--these signs appeared every where. The most

infallible was the general convulsion of human ideas. When a creed is

crumbling to atoms, all mankind trembles.

The lofty geniuses of Germany and Italy were already singing the new era

to their offspring; Göethe the sceptic poet, Schiller the republican

poet, Klopstock the sacred poet, intoxicated with their strophes the

universities and theatres; each shock of the events of Paris had its

_contre coup_ and sonorous echo, multiplied by these writers on the

borders of the Rhine. Poetry is the remembrance and anticipation of

things: what it celebrates is not yet dead, and what it sings already

hath existence. Poetry sang everywhere the unformed but impassioned

hopes of the people. It is a sure augury--it is full of enthusiasm, for

its voice is heard on all sides; science, poetry, history, philosophy,

the stage, mysticism, the arts, the genius of Europe under every form,

had passed over to the Revolution: not one name of a man of reputation

in all Europe could be cited who remained attached to the party of the

past. The past was overcome, because the mind of the human race had

withdrawn from it--when the spirit hath flown life is extinct. None but

mediocrities remain under the shelter of old forms and institutions:

There was a general mirage in the horizon of the future; and, whether

the small saw therein their safety, or the great an abyss, all went

headlong towards the novelty.

XII.

Such was the tendency of minds in Europe, when the princes, brothers of

Louis XVI., and the emigrant gentlemen, spread themselves over Savoy,

Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, to demand succour and vengeance from

powers and principalities against the Revolution. Never, from the first

great emigrations of ancient people, fleeing from the Roman invasions,

had been seen such a movement of terror and perturbation as this, which

cast forth from the territory all the clergy and all the aristocracy of

a nation. An immense vacuum was created in France: first, in the steps

of the throne itself; next, in the court, in châteaux, in ecclesiastical

dignities; and finally in the ranks of the army. Officers, all noble,

emigrated in masses; the navy followed somewhat later, the example of

the army, which also abandoned the flag. It was not that the clergy, the

nobility, the land and sea officers were more pressed upon by the stir

of revolutionary ideas which had agitated the nation in 1789; on the

contrary, the movement commenced by them. Philosophy had in the first

place enlightened the apex of the nation. The thought of the age was

especially in the higher classes; but those classes who sought a reform

by no means desired a disorganisation. When they had seen the moral

agitation of ideas transform itself into an insurrection of the people,

they had trembled. The reins of government violently snatched from the

king by Mirabeau and La Fayette, at the Tennis court; the attempts of

the 5th and 6th of October; privileges suppressed without compensation,

titles abolished, the aristocracy handed over to execration, to pillage,

to fire, and even to murder, in the provinces; religion deposed, and

compelled to nationalise itself by a constitutional oath; and; finally

the king's flight, his imprisonment in his palace, the threats of death

vomited forth by the patriotic press, or the tribunes of popular clubs,

against all aristocracy, the triumphant riots in the provinces, the

defection of the French guards in Paris, the revolt of the Swiss of

Châteauvieux at Nancy, the excesses of the soldiery, mutinous and

unpunished, at Caen, Brest, and everywhere, had changed into horror and

hatred the favourable feeling of the noblesse for the progress of

opinion. It saw that the first act of the people was to degrade superior

authority. The _esprit de caste_ impelled the nobility to emigrate, the

_esprit de corps_ similarly influenced the officers, and the _esprit de

cour_ made it shameful to remain on a soil stained with so many outrages

to royalty. The women, who then formed public opinion in France, and

whose tender and easily excited imagination is soon transferred to the

side of their victims, all sided with the throne and the aristocracy.

They despised those who would not go and seek their avengers in foreign

lands. Young men departed at their desire; those who did not, dared not

show themselves. They sent them distaffs, as a token of their cowardice!

But it was not shame alone that led the officers and the nobles to join

the ranks of the army, it was also the appearance of a duty; for the

last virtue that was left to the French nobility was a religious

fidelity to the throne: their honour, their second and almost only

religion, was to die for their king; and any design against the throne,

in their belief, was a design against heaven. Chivalry, that code of

aristocratic feeling, had preserved and disseminated this noble

prejudice throughout Europe; and, to the nobility, the king represented

their country. This feeling, eclipsed for a while by the debaucheries of

the regency, the scandalous vices of Louis XV., and the bold maxims of

Rousseau's philosophy, was awakened in the heart of the gentlemen at the

spectacle of the degradation and danger of the king and queen. In their

eyes, the Assembly was nothing but a band of revolutionary subjects, who

detained their sovereign a prisoner. The most voluntary acts of the king

were suspected by them, and beneath his constitutional speeches, they

imagined they discovered another and a contrary meaning; and the very

ministers of Louis XVI. were believed to be nothing but his gaolers. A

secret understanding existed between these gentlemen and the king, and

counsels were held in secluded apartments of the Tuileries, at which the

king alternately encouraged and forbade his friends to emigrate. And his

orders, varied at each day and each fresh occurrence, were sometimes

constitutional and patriotic when he hoped to re-establish and moderate

the constitution at home; at other times, despairing and blameable when

it seemed to him that the security of the queen and his children could

only proceed from another country. Whilst he addressed official letters

through his minister for foreign affairs to his brothers, and the Prince

de Condé, to recall them, and point out to them their duty as citizens,

the Baron de Breteuil, his confidential agent to the Foreign Powers,

transmitted to the king of Prussia letters that revealed the secret

thoughts of the king. The following letter to the king of Prussia, found

in the archives of the chancellorship of Berlin, dated December 3rd,

1790, leaves no doubt of this double diplomacy of the unfortunate

monarch. Louis XVI. wrote:--

"Monsieur mon Frère,

"I have learnt from M. de Moustier how great an interest your

majesty has displayed, not only for my person but for the welfare

of my kingdom, and your majesty's determination to prove this

interest, whenever it can be for the good of my people, has deeply

touched me; and I confidently claim the fulfilment of it, at this

moment, when, in spite of my having accepted the new constitution,

the factious portion of my subjects openly manifest their intention

of destroying the remainder of the monarchy. I have addressed the

emperor, the empress of Russia, and the kings of Spain and Sweden,

and I have suggested to them the idea of a congress of the

principal powers of Europe, _supported by an armed force_, as the

best measure to check the progress of faction here, to afford the

means of establishing a better order of things, and preventing the

evil that devours this country from seizing on the other states of

Europe. I trust that your majesty will approve my ideas, _and

maintain the strictest secrecy respecting the step I have taken in

this matter_, as you will feel that the critical position in which

I am placed at present compels me to use the greatest

circumspection. It is for this reason that the Baron de Breteuil is

alone acquainted with my secret, and through him your majesty can

transmit me whatever you may think fit."

XIII.

This letter, added to that addressed by Louis XVI. to M. de Bouillé,

informing him that his brother-in-law the emperor Leopold was about to

march a body of troops on Longwi, in order to afford a pretext for the

concentration of the French troops on that frontier, and thus favour his

flight from Paris, are irrefragable proofs of the counter-revolutionary

understanding existing between the king and the foreign powers, no less

than between the king and the leaders of the emigrés. The memoirs of the

emigrés are full of proofs of this fact; and nature even attests them,

for the cause of the king, the aristocracy, and the religious

institutions was identical. The emperor Leopold was the brother of the

queen of France; the dangers of the king were the dangers of all the

other princes; for the example of the triumph of one people was

contagious to all nations. The emigrés were the friends of the monarchy,

and the defenders of kings; had they not exchanged a word more on the

subject, they would have been united by the same feelings, the same

interests. But in addition to this, they had preconcerted communication

with each other, and the suspicions of the people were no empty

chimeras, but the presentiment of the plots of their enemies.

The conspiracy of the court with all the courts and aristocracies

abroad, with all the aristocracies of the emigrés, with their relations,

of the king with his brothers, had no need of being carried on in

writing. Louis XVI. himself, the most really revolutionary of all the

monarchs who have occupied the throne, had no thought of treachery to

the people or to the revolution, when he implored the armed succour of

the other powers. This idea of an appeal to foreign forces, or even the

emigrated forces, was not his real desire; for he dreaded the

intervention of the enemies of France, he disapproved of emigration, and

he was not without a feeling of offence at his brothers intriguing

abroad, sometimes in his name, but often against his wishes. He shrank

from the idea of passing in the eyes of Europe for a prince in

leading-strings, whose ambitious brothers seized upon his rights in

adopting his cause, and stipulated for his interests without his

intervention. At Coblentz a regency was openly spoken of, and bestowed

on the Comte de Provence, the brother of Louis XVI.; and this regency,

that had devolved on a prince of the blood by emigration, whilst the

king maintained a struggle at Paris, greatly humiliated Louis XVI. and

the queen. This usurpation of their rights, although clothed in the

dress of devotion and tenderness, was even more bitter to them than the

outrages of the Assembly and the people. We always dread most that which

is nearest to us, and the triumph of the emigration only promised them a

throne, disputed by the regent who had restored it. This gratitude

appeared to them a disgrace, and they knew not whether they had most to

hope or to apprehend from the emigrés.

The queen, in her conversations with her friends, spoke of them with

more bitterness than confidence. The king loudly complained of the

disobedience of his brothers, and dissuaded from flight all those who

demanded his advice; but his advice was as changeable as events; like

all men balancing between hope and fear, he alternately bent and stood

erect beneath the pressure of circumstances. His acts were culpable, but

not his intentions; it was not the king who conspired, but the man, the

husband, the father, who sought by foreign aid to ensure the safety of

his wife and children; and he alone became criminal when all seemed

desperate. The "tangled thread" of negotiation was incessantly broken

off and renewed: that which was resolved yesterday was to-morrow

disavowed; and the secret negotiators of these plots, armed with

credentials and powers which had been recalled, yet continued to employ

them, in spite of the king's orders, to carry on in his name those plans

of which he disapproved. The prince de Condé, the Comte de Provence, and

the Comte d'Artois had each his separate line of policy and court, and

abused the king's name in order to increase his own credit and interest.

Hence arises the difficulty, to those who write the history of that

period, of tracing the hand of the king in all these conspiracies,

carried on in his name, and to pronounce either his entire innocence or

his palpable treachery. He did not betray his country, or sell his

subjects; but he did not observe his oaths to the constitution or his

country. An upright man, but a persecuted king, he believed that oaths,

extorted by violence and eluded through fear, were no perjuries; and he

broke each day some of those to which he had bound himself, under the

belief, doubtless, that the excesses of the people freed him from his

oath. Educated with all the prejudices of personal sovereignty, he

sought with sincerity amidst this chaos of parties, who disputed with

each other the empire, to find the nation; and failing to discover the

object of his search, he fancied he had the right to find it in his own

person. His crime, if there be any in his actions, was less the crime of

his heart than the crime of his birth, his situation, and his

misfortunes.

XIV.

The Baron de Breteuil, an old minister and ambassador, a man incapable

of making the least concession, and ever counselling strong and forcible

measures, had quitted France at the commencement of the year 1790, the

king's secret plenipotentiary to all the other powers. He alone was, to

all intents, and for all purposes, the sole minister of Louis XVI. He

was, moreover, absolute minister; for once invested with the confidence

and unlimited power of the king, who could not revoke, without betraying

the existence of his occult diplomacy, he was in a position to make any

use of it, and to interpret at will the intentions of Louis XVI. to his

own views. The Baron de Breteuil did abuse it; not, as it is said, from

personal ambition, but from excess of zeal for the welfare and dignity

of his master. His negotiations with Catherine, Gustavus, Frederic, and

Leopold were a constant incitement to a crusade against the Revolution

of France.

The Count de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII.), and the Count d'Artois

(afterwards Charles X.), after several visits to the different courts of

the South and North, had met at Coblentz, where Louis Venceslas, elector

of Trèves, their maternal uncle, received them with a more kind than

politic welcome. Coblentz became the _Paris_ of Germany, the focus of

the counter-revolutionary conspiracy, the head quarters of all the

French nobles assembled round their natural leaders, the two brothers of

the captive king. Whilst they held there their wandering court, and

formed the first links of the coalition of Pilnitz, the Prince de Condé,

who, from inclination and descent, was of a more military disposition,

formed the army of the Princes, consisting of eight or ten thousand

officers, and no soldiers, and thus it was the head of the army severed

from the trunk. Names renowned in history's annals, fervent devotion,

youthful ardour, heroic bravery, fidelity, the conviction of

success,--nothing was wanting to this army at Coblentz save an

understanding with their country and time. Had the French _noblesse_ but

employed one half of the virtues and efforts they made to subdue the

Revolution, in regulating it, the Revolution, although it changed the

laws, would not have changed the monarchy. But it is useless to expect

that institutions can comprehend the means that transform them. The

king, the nobility, and the priests could not understand a revolution

that threatened to destroy the noblesse, the clergy, and the throne. A

contest became unavoidable; they had not space for the struggle in

France, and they took their stand on a foreign soil.

XV.

Whilst the army of the princes thus increased in strength at Coblentz,

the counter-revolutionary diplomacy was on the eve of the first great

result it had been enabled to obtain in the actual state of Europe. The

conferences of Pilnitz had opened, and the Count de Provence had sent

the baron Roll from Coblentz to the king of Prussia, to demand in the

name of Louis XVI. the assistance of his troops to aid in the

re-establishment of order in France. The king of Prussia, before

deciding, wished to learn the state of France from a man whose military

talents and devoted attachment to the monarchy had gained him the

confidence of the foreign courts,--the Marquis de Bouillé. He fixed the

Château de Pilnitz as the meeting place, and requested him to bring a

plan of operation for the foreign armies on the different French

frontiers; and on the 24th of August Frederic Willam, accompanied by his

son, his principal generals, and his ministers, arrived at the Château

de Pilnitz, the summer residence of the court of Saxony, where he had

been preceded by the emperor.

The Archduke Francis, afterwards the emperor Francis II., the Maréchal

de Lascy, the Baron de Spielman, and a numerous train of courtiers,

attended the emperor. The two sovereigns, the rivals of Germany, seemed

for a time to have laid aside their rivalry to occupy themselves solely

with the safety of the thrones of Europe; this fraternity of the great

family of monarchs prevailed over every other feeling, and they treated

each other more like brothers than sovereigns, whilst the elector of

Saxony, their entertainer, enlivened the conference by a succession of

splendid fêtes.

In the midst of a banquet the unexpected arrival of the Count d'Artois

at Dresden was announced, and the king of Prussia requested permission

from the emperor for the French prince to appear. The emperor consented,

but previous to admitting him to their official conferences the two

monarchs had a secret interview, at which two of their most confidential

agents only were present. The emperor inclined to peace, the inertness

of the Germanic body weighed down his resolve, for he felt the

difficulty of communicating to this vassal federation of the empire the

unity and energy necessary to attack France in the full enthusiasm of

her Revolution. The generals, and even the Maréchal de Lascy himself,

hesitated before frontiers reputed to be impregnable, whilst the emperor

was apprehensive for the Low Countries and Italy. The French maxims had

passed the Rhine, and might explode in the German states at the moment

when the princes and people were called upon to take arms against

France, and the diet of the people might prove more powerful than the

diet of the kings. Dilatory measures would have the same intimidating

effect on the revolutionary genius, without presenting the same dangers

to Germany; and would it not be more prudent to form a general league of

all the European powers to surround France with a circle of bayonets,

and summon the triumphant party to restore liberty to the king, dignity

to the throne, and security to the Continent? "Should the French nation

refuse," added the emperor, "_then_ we will threaten her in a manifesto,

with a general invasion, and should it become necessary, we will crush

her beneath the irresistible weight of the united forces of all Europe."

Such were the counsels of that temporising genius of empires that awaits

necessity without ever forestalling, and would fain be assured of every

thing without the least risk.

XVI.

The king of Prussia, more impatient and more threatening, confessed to

the emperor that he had no faith in the effect of these threats.

"Prudence," said he, "is a feeble defence against audacity, and the

defensive is but a timid position to assume in the face of the

Revolution. We must attack it in its infancy; for to give time to the

French principles, is to give them strength. To treat with the popular

insurrection, is to prove to them that we fear, and are disposed to form

a compact with them. We must surprise France in the very act of anarchy,

and publish a manifesto to Europe when the armies have crossed the

frontiers and success has given authority to our declaration."

The emperor appeared moved; he, however, insisted on the dangers to

which a sudden invasion would inevitably expose Louis XVI., he showed

the letters of this prince, and intimated that the Marquis de Noailles

and M. de Montmorin--the one French ambassador at Vienna, the other

minister for Foreign Affairs at Paris, who were both devoted to the

king--held out hopes to the court of Vienna of the speedy

re-establishment of order and monarchical modifications of the

constitution in France; and he demanded the right of suspending his

decision until the month of September, although in the mean while

military preparations should be made by both powers. The scene was

changed the next morning by the Count d'Artois. This young prince had

received from the hand of nature all the exterior qualifications of a

chevalier: he spoke to the sovereigns in the name of the thrones; to the

emperor in the name of an outraged and dethroned sister. The whole

emigration, with its misfortunes, its nobility, its valour, its

illusions, seemed personified in him. The Marquis de Bouillé and M. de

Calonne, the genius of war and the genius of intrigue, had followed him

to these conferences. He obtained several audiences of the two

sovereigns, he inveighed with respect and energy against the temporising

system of the emperor, and violently roused the Germanic sluggishness.

The emperor and the king of Prussia authorised the Baron de Spielman for

Austria, the Baron de Bischofswerden for Prussia, and M. de Calonne for

France, to meet the same evening, and draw up a declaration for the

signature of the monarchs.

The Baron de Spielman, under the immediate dictation of the emperor,

drew up the document. M. de Calonne in vain combated, in the name of the

Count d'Artois, the hesitation that disconcerted the impatience of the

emigrés. The next day, on their return from a visit to Dresden, the two

sovereigns, the Count d'Artois, M. de Calonne, the Maréchal de Lascy,

and the two negotiators, met in the emperor's apartment, where the

declaration was read and discussed, every sentence weighed, and some

expressions modified; and at the proposal of M. de Calonne, and the

entreaties of the Count d'Artois, the emperor and the king of Prussia

consented to the insertion of the last phrase, that threatened the

Revolution with war.

Subjoined is the document that was the date of a war of twenty-two

years' duration.

"The emperor and the king of Prussia, having listened to the wishes and

representations of _Monsieur_ and _Monsieur le Comte d'Artois_, declare

conjointly that they look upon the present position of the king of

France as an object of common interest to all the sovereigns of Europe.

They trust that this interest cannot fail to be acknowledged by all the

powers whose assistance is claimed; and that, in consequence, they will

not refuse to employ, conjointly with the emperor and the king of

Prussia, the most efficacious means, proportioned to their forces, for

enabling the king of France to strengthen with the most perfect liberty

the bases of a monarchical government, equally conformable to the rights

of sovereigns and the welfare of the French nation. Then, and in that

case, their aforesaid majesties are resolved to act promptly and in

concert with the forces requisite to attain the end proposed and agreed

on. In the mean time they will issue all needful orders to their troops

to hold themselves in a state of readiness."

This declaration, at once timid and threatening, was evidently too much

for peace, too little for war; for such words encourage the revolution,

without crushing it. They at once showed the impatience of the emigrés,

the resolution of the king of Prussia, the hesitation of the powers, the

temporising policy of the emperor. It was a concession to force and

weakness, to peace and war; the whole state of Europe was there

unveiled, for it was the declaration of the uncertainty and anarchy of

its councils.

XVII.

After this imprudent and useless act, the two sovereigns separated.

Leopold to go and be crowned at Prague, and the king of Prussia,

returning to Berlin, began to put his army on a war footing. The

emigrants, triumphing in the engagement they had entered into, increased

in numbers. The courts of Europe, with the exception of England, sent in

equivocal adhesions to the courts of Berlin and Vienna. The noise of the

declaration of Pilnitz burst forth, and died away in Paris in the midst

of the fêtes in honour of the acceptance of the constitution.

However, Leopold, after the conferences at Pilnitz, was more earnest

than ever in his attempts to find excuses for peace. The Prince de

Kaunitz, his minister, feared all violent shocks, which might derange

the old diplomatic mechanism, whose workings he so well knew. Louis XVI.

sent the Count de Fersen secretly to him, in order to disclose his real

motives in accepting the constitution, and to entreat him not to

provoke, by any preparation of arms, the bad feelings of the Revolution,

which seemed to be quieted by its triumph.

The emigrant princes, on the contrary, filled all courts with the words

uttered in favour of their cause in the declaration of Pilnitz. They

wrote a letter to Louis XVI., in which they protested against the oath

of the king to the constitution, forced, as they declared, from his

weakness and his captivity. The king of Prussia, on receiving the

circular of the French cabinet, in which the acceptance of the

constitution was notified, exclaimed, "I see the peace of Europe

assured!" The courts of Vienna and Berlin feigned to believe that all

was concluded in France by the mutual concessions of the king and the

Assembly. They made up their minds to see the throne of Louis XVI.

abased, provided that the Revolution would consent to allow itself to be

controlled by the throne.

Russia, Sweden, Spain, and Sardinia were not so easily appeased.

Catherine II. and Gustavus III., the one from a proud feeling of her

power, and the other from a generous devotion to the cause of kings,

arranged together, to send 40,000 Russians and Swedes to the aid of the

monarchy. This army, paid by a subsidy of 15,000,000f. of Spain, and

commanded by Gustavus in person, was to land upon the coast of France,

and march upon Paris, whilst the forces of the empire crossed the Rhine.

These bold plans of the two northern courts were displeasing to Leopold

and the king of Prussia. They reproached Catherine with not keeping her

promises, and making peace with the Turks. Could the emperor march his

troops on the Rhine whilst the battles of the Russians and Ottomans

continued on the Danube and threatened the remoter provinces of his

empire? Catherine and Gustavus nevertheless did not abate in their open

protection to the emigration party. These two sovereigns accredited

ministers plenipotentiary to the French princes at Coblentz. This was

declaring the forfeiture of Louis XVI., and even the forfeiture of

France. It was recognising that the government of the kingdom was no

longer at Paris, but at Coblentz. Moreover, they contracted a treaty of

alliance, offensive and defensive, between Sweden and Russia in the

common interest of the re-establishment of the monarchy.

Louis XVI. then earnestly desiring the disarming, sent to Coblentz the

Baron Vioménil and the Chevalier de Coigny to command his brothers and

the Prince de Condé to disarm and disperse the emigrants. They received

his orders as coming from a captive, and disobeyed without even sending

him a reply. Prussia and the empire showed more deference to the king's

intentions. These two courts disbanded the army collected by the

princes, and ordered to be punished in their states all insults offered

to the tricolour cockade; but at the very moment when the emperor thus

gave evidence of his desire to maintain peace, war was about to involve

him in spite of himself. What human wisdom sometimes refuses to the

greatest causes, it sees itself compelled to accord to the smallest.

Such was Leopold's situation. He had refused war to the great interests

of the monarchy, and the strong feelings of the family which asked it

from him, and yet was about to grant it to the insignificant interests

of certain princes of the empire, whose possessions were in Alsace and

Lorraine, and whose personal rights were violated by the new French

constitution. He had refused succour to his sister, and was about to

accord it to his vassals. The influence of the diet, and his duties as

head of the empire, led him on to steps to which his personal feelings

would never have urged him. By his letter of 3d December, 1791, he

announced to the cabinet of the Tuileries the formal resolution on his

part "of giving aid to the princes holding lands in France, if he did

not obtain their perfect restoration to all the rights which belonged to

them by treaty."

XVIII.

This threatening letter, secretly communicated in Paris, (before it was

officially sent,) by the French ambassador in Vienna, was received by

the king with much alarm, and with joy by certain of his ministers, and

the political party of the Assembly. War cuts through every thing. They

hailed it as a solution to the difficulties which they felt were

crushing them. When there is no longer any hope in the regular order of

events, there is in what is unknown. War appeared to these adventurous

spirits a necessary diversion to the universal ferment; a career to the

Revolution; a means for the king again to seize on power by acquiring

the support of the army. They hoped to change the fanaticism of liberty

into the fanaticism of glory, and to deceive the spirit of the age by

intoxicating it with conquests instead of satisfying it with

institutions.

The Girondist deputies were of this party. Brissot was their

inspiration. Flattered by the title of statesmen, which they already

assumed from vanity, and which was used towards them with irony, they

were desirous to justify their pretensions by a bold stroke, which would

change the scene, and disconcert, at the same time, the king, the

people, and Europe. They had studied Machiavel, and considered the

disdain of the just as a proof of genius. They little heeded the blood

of the people, provided that it cemented their ambition.

The Jacobin party, with the exception of Robespierre, clamoured loudly

for war: his fanaticism deceived him as to his weakness. War was to

these men an armed apostleship, which was about to propagate their

social philosophy over the universe. The first cannon shot fired in the

name of the rights of man would shake thrones to their centre. Then

there was finally a third party which hoped for war, that of the

constitutional _modérés_, which flattered itself that it would restore

sound energy to the executive power, by the necessity of concentrating

the military authority in the hands of the king at the moment when the

nationality should be menaced. All extremity of war places the

dictatorship in the hands of the party which makes it, and they hoped,

on behalf of the king, and of themselves, for this dictatorship of

necessity.

XIX.

A young, but already influential, female had lent to this latter party

the _prestige_ of her youth, her genius, and her enthusiasm--it was

Madame de Stäel. Necker's daughter, she had inspired politics from her

birth. Her mother's _salon_ had been the _coenaculum_ of the

philosophy of the 18th century. Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, D'Alembert,

Diderot, Raynal, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Condorcet had played with

this child, and fostered her earliest ideas. Her cradle was that of the

Revolution. Her father's popularity had played about her lips, and left

there an inextinguishable thirst for fame. She sought it in the storms

of the populace, in calumny, and death. Her genius was great, her soul

pure, her heart deeply impassioned. A man in her energy, a woman in her

tenderness, that the ideal of her ambition should be satisfied, it was

necessary for her to associate in the same character genius, glory, and

love.

Nature, education, and fortune rendered possible this triple dream of a

woman, a philosopher, and a hero. Born in a republic, educated in a

court, daughter of a minister, wife of an ambassador, belonging by birth

to the people, to the literary world by talent, to the aristocracy by

rank, the three elements of the Revolution mingled or contended in her.

Her genius was like the antique chorus, in which all the great voices of

the drama unite in one tumultuous concord. A deep thinker by

inspiration, a tribune by eloquence, a woman in attraction, her beauty,

unseen by the million, required intellect to be admired, and admiration

to be felt. Hers was not the beauty of form and features, but visible

inspiration and the manifestation of passionate impulse. Attitude,

gesture, tone of voice, look--all obeyed her mind, and created her

brilliancy. Her black eyes, flashing with fire, gave out from beneath

their long lids as much tenderness as pride. Her look, so often lost in

space, was followed by those who knew her, as if it were possible to

find with her the inspiration she sought. That gaze, open, yet profound

as her understanding, had as much serenity as penetration. We felt that

the light of her genius was only the reverberation of a mine of

tenderness of heart. Thus there was a secret love in all the admiration

she excited; and she, in admiration, cared only for love. Love with her

was but enlightened admiration.

Events rapidly ripened; ideas and things were crowded into her life: she

had no infancy. At twenty-two years of age she had maturity of thought

with the grace and softness of youth. She wrote like Rousseau, and spoke

like Mirabeau. Capable of bold conceptions and complicated designs, she

could contain in her bosom at the same time a lofty idea and a deep

feeling. Like the women of old Rome who agitated the republic by the

impulses of their hearts, or who exalted or depressed the empire with

their love, she sought to mingle her feelings with her politics, and

desired that the elevation of her genius should elevate him she loved.

Her sex precluded her from that open action which public position, the

tribune, or the army only accord to men in public governments; and thus

she compulsorily remained unseen in the events she guided. To be the

hidden destiny of some great man, to act through and by him, to grow

with his greatness, be eminent in his name, was the sole ambition

permitted to her--an ambition tender and devoted, which seduces a woman

whilst it suffices to her disinterested genius. She could only be the

mind and inspiration of some political man; she sought such a one, and

in her delusion believed she had found him.

XX.

There was then in Paris a young general officer of illustrious race,

excessively handsome, and with a mind full of attraction, varied in its

powers and brilliant in its display. Although he bore the name of one of

the most distinguished families at court, there was a cloud over his

birth. Royal blood ran in his veins, and his features recalled those of

Louis XV. The affection of Mesdames the aunts of Louis XVI. for this

youth, educated under their eyes, attached to their persons, and who

rose by their influence to the highest employments in the court and

army, gave credit to many mysterious rumours.

This young man was the count Louis de Narbonne. Sprung from this origin,

brought up in this court, a courtier by birth; spoiled by the hands of

these females, only remarkable for his good looks, his levities, and his

hasty wit; it was not to be expected that such a person was imbued with

that ardent faith which casts a man headlong into the centre of

revolutions, or the stoical energy which produces and controls them. He

saw in the people only a sovereign, more exacting and more capricious

than any others, towards whom it was necessary to display more skill to

seduce, more policy to manage them. He believed himself sufficiently

plastic for the task, and resolved to attempt it. Without a lofty

imagination, he yet had ambition and courage, and he viewed the position

of affairs as a drama, similar to the Fronde[8], in which skilful actors

could enlarge their hopes in proportion to the facts, and direct the

catastrophe. He had not sufficient penetration to see, that in a

revolution there is but one serious actor--enthusiasm; and he had none.

He stammered out the words of a revolutionary tongue--he assumed the

costume, but had not the spirit of the times.

The contrast of this nature and of this part, this court favourite

casting himself into the crowd to serve the nation, this aristocratic

elegance, masked in patriotism of the tribune, pleased public opinion

for the moment. They applauded this transformation as a difficulty

overcome. The people was flattered by having great lords with it. It was

a testimony of its power. It felt itself king, by seeing courtiers

bowing to it, and excused their rank by reason of their complaisance.

Madame de Stäel was seduced as much by the heart as the intellect of M.

de Narbonne. Her masculine and sensitive imagination invested the young

soldier with all she desired to find in him. He was but a brilliant,

active, high-couraged man; she pictured him a politician and a hero. She

magnified him with all the endowments of her dreams, in order to bring

him up to her ideal standard. She found patrons for him; surrounded him

with a _prestige_; created a name for him, marked him out a course. She

made him the living type of her politics. To disdain the court, gain

over the people, command the army, intimidate Europe, carry away the

Assembly by his eloquence, to struggle for liberty, to save the nation,

and become, by his popularity alone, the arbiter between the throne and

the people, to reconcile them by a constitution, at once liberal and

monarchical; such was the perspective that she opened for herself and M.

de Narbonne.

She but awakened his ambition, yet he believed himself capable of the

destinies which she dreamed of for him. The drama of the constitution

was concentrated in these two minds, and their conspiracy was for some

time the entire policy of Europe.

Madame de Stäel, M. de Narbonne, and the constitutional party were for

war; but theirs was to be a partial and not a desperate war which,

shaking nationality to its foundations, would carry away the throne and

throw France into a Republic. They contrived by their influence to renew

all the personal staff of the diplomacy, exclusively devoted to the

emigrants or the king. They filled foreign courts with their adherents,

M. de Marbois was sent to the Diet of Ratisbon, M. Barthélemy to

Switzerland, M. de Talleyrand to London, M. de Ségur to Berlin. The

mission of M. de Talleyrand was to endeavour to fraternise the

aristocratic principle of the English constitution with the democratic

principle of the French constitution, which they believed they could

effect and control by an Upper Chamber. They hoped to interest the

statesmen of Great Britain in a Revolution, imitated from their own,

which, after having convulsed the people, was now becoming moulded in

the hands of an intelligent aristocracy. This mission would be easy, if

the Revolution were in regular train for some months in Paris. French

ideas were popular in London. The opposition was revolutionary. Fox and

Burke, then friends, were most earnest in their desire for the liberty

of the Continent[9]. We must render this justice to England, that the

moral and popular principle concealed in the foundation of its

constitution, has never stultified itself by combating the efforts of

other nations to acquire a free government. It has everywhere accorded

the liberty similar to its own.

XXI.

The mission of M. de Ségur at Berlin was more delicate. Its object was

to detach the king of Prussia from his alliance with the emperor

Leopold, whose coronation was not yet known, and to persuade the cabinet

of Berlin into an alliance with revolutionary France. This alliance held

out to Prussia with its security on the Rhine the ascendency of the

new-sprung ideas in Germany: it was a Machiavelian idea, which would

smile at the agitating spirit of the great Frederic, who had made of

Prussia the corrosive influence (_la puissance corrosive_) of the

empire.

These two words--seduce and corrupt--were all M. de Ségur's

instructions. The king of Prussia had favourites and mistresses.

Mirabeau had written in 1786, "There can be at Berlin no secrets for the

ambassador of France, unless money and skill be wanting; the country is

poor and avaricious, and there is no state secret which may not be

purchased with three thousand louis." M. de Ségur, imbued with these

ideas, made it his first object to buy over the two favourites. The one

was daughter of Elie Enka, who was a musician in the chapel of the late

king. Handsome and witty, she had at twelve years of age attracted the

notice of the king, then prince royal, and he had, at that early age, as

in anticipation of his amour, bestowed on her all the care and all the

cost of a royal education. She had travelled in France and in England,

and knew all the European languages; she had polished her natural genius

by contact with the lettered men and artists of Germany. A feigned

marriage with Rietz, valet de chambre of the king, was the pretext for

her residence at court, and gave her the opportunity for surrounding

herself with the leading men in politics and literature in the city of

Berlin. Spoiled by the precocity of her fortune, yet careless as to its

retention, she had allowed two rivals to dispute the king's heart. One,

the young Countess d'Ingenheim, had just died in the flower of her

youth; the other, the Countess d'Ashkof, had borne the king two

children, and flattered herself, in vain, with having extricated him

from the empire of Madame Rietz.

The Baron de Roll, in the name of the Count d'Artois, and the Viscount

de Caraman, in the name of Louis XVI., had possessed themselves of all

the avenues to this cabinet. The Count de Goltz, ambassador from Prussia

to Paris, had informed his court of the object of M. de Ségur's mission.

The report ran amongst well-informed persons that this envoy carried

with him several millions (francs), destined to pay the weakness or the

treason of the Berlin cabinet.

A copy of the secret instructions of M. de Ségur reached Berlin two

hours before him, which revealed to the king the whole plan of seduction

and venality that the agent of France was to practice on his favourites

and mistresses, whose character, ambition, rivalries, weaknesses, true

or feigned, the means of acting by them on the mind of the king, were

all and severally noted down with the security of confidence. There was

a tariff for all consciences,--a price for every treachery. The

favourite aide-de-camp of the king, Rischofwerder, then very powerful,

was to be assailed by irresistible offers, and in case his connivance

should be revealed, a splendid establishment in France was to guarantee

him against any eventuality.

These instructions fell into the very hands of those whose fidelity was

thus priced, and they gave them to the king with all the innocence of

individuals shamefully calumniated. The king blushed for himself at the

empire over his politics thus ascribed to love and intrigue. He was

indignant at the fidelity of his subjects being thus assailed: all

negotiation was nipped in the bud before the arrival of the negotiator.

M. de Ségur was received with coldness and all the irony of contempt.

Frederic Willam affected never to mention him in his circle, and asked

aloud before him, of the envoy of the elector of Mayence, news of the

Prince de Condé: the envoy replied that this prince was approaching the

frontiers of France with his army. "He is right," said the king, "for he

is on the point of entering there." M. de Ségur, accustomed, from his

long residence and his familiar footing at the court of Catherine, to

take love for the intermediary of his affairs, induced, it is said, the

countess d'Ashkof and prince Henry of Prussia to join the peace party.

This success was but a snare for his negotiation. The king, arranging

with the emperor, affected for some time to lean towards France, to

complain of the exactions of emigration, and to make much of the

ambassador; who, thus cajoled, sent the warmest assurances to the French

cabinet as to the intentions of Prussia. But the sudden disgrace of the

countess d'Ashkof and the offer of alliance with France insultingly

repulsed, threw at once light and confusion into the plots of M. de

Ségur: he demanded his recall. The humiliation of seeing his talents

played with, the hopes of his party annihilated, the prospect of his

country's misfortunes, and Europe in flames, had, it was reported, urged

his sadness to despair. The report ran that he had attempted his life.

This imputed suicide was but a brain fever occasioned by the anguish of

a proud mind deeply wounded.

XXII.

The same party attempted, and at nearly the same time, to acquire for

France a sovereign whose renown weighed as heavily as a throne in the

opinion of Europe. This was the duke of Brunswick, a pupil of the great

Frederic, the presumed heir of his military fame and inspiration, and

proclaimed, by anticipation, by the public voice, generalissimo, in the

coming war against France. To carry off from the emperor and the king of

Prussia the chief of their armies, was to deprive Germany of confidence

and of victory.

The name of the duke of Brunswick was a prestige which invested Germany

with a feeling of terror and inviolability. Madame de Stäel and her

party attempted it. This secret negotiation was concerted amongst Madame

de Stäel, M. de Narbonne, M. de La Fayette, and M. de Talleyrand. M. de

Custine, son of the general of that name, was chosen to convey to the

duke of Brunswick the wishes of the constitutional party. The young

negotiator was well prepared for his mission: witty, attractive, clever,

an intense admirer of Prussian tactics and the duke of Brunswick, from

whom he had had lessons in Berlin, he inspired confidence into this

prince beforehand. He offered to him the rank of generalissimo of the

French armies, an allowance of three millions of francs, and an

establishment in France equivalent to his possessions and rank in the

empire. The letter bearing these offers was signed by the minister of

war and Louis XVI. himself.

M. de Custine set out from France in the month of January; on his

arrival he handed his letter to the duke. Four days elapsed before an

interview was accorded to him. On the fifth day, the duke admitted him

to a personal and private interview. He expressed to M. de Custine with

military frankness his pride and gratitude that the price attached to

his merits by France must inspire in him: "But," he added, "my blood is

German and my honour Prussia's; my ambition is satisfied with being the

second person in this monarchy, which has adopted me. I would not

exchange for an adventurous glory on the shifting stage of revolutions,

the high and firm position which my birth, my duty, and some reputation

already acquired have secured for me in my native land."

After this conversation, M. de Custine, finding the prince immoveable,

disclosed his ultimatum, and held before his eyes the dazzling chance of

the crown of France, if it fell from the brow of Louis XVI. into the

hands of a conquering general. The duke appeared overwhelmed, and

dismissed M. de Custine without depriving him of all hope of his

accepting such an offer. But shortly afterwards, the duke, from

duplicity, repentance, or prudence, replied by a formal refusal to both

these propositions. He addressed his reply to Louis XVI., and not to his

minister; and this unhappy king thus learnt the last word of the

constitutional party, and how frail was the tenure on his brow of a

crown which was already offered perspectively to the ambition of a foe!