BOOK X.

I.

Whilst this was passing at the Jacobins, and the journals--those echoes

of the clubs--excited in the people the same anxiety and the same

hesitation, the underhand diplomacy of the cabinet of the Tuileries, and

the emperor Leopold, who sought in vain to postpone the termination,

were about to behold all their schemes thwarted by the impatience of the

Gironde and the death of Leopold. This philosophic prince was destined

to bear away with him all desire of reconciliation and every hope of

peace, for he alone restrained Germany. M. de Narbonne, thwarted by

public demonstrations the secret negotiations of his colleague M. de

Lessart, who strove to temporise, and to refer all the differences of

France and Europe to a congress.

The diplomatic committee of the Assembly, urged by Narbonne, and

composed of Girondists, proposed decisive resolutions. This committee,

established by the Assembly, and influenced by the ideas of Mirabeau,

called the ministers to account for every thing that occurred: out of

the kingdom diplomacy was thus unmasked--the negotiations broken

off--all combination rendered impossible, for the cabinets of Europe

were continually cited before the tribune of Paris. The Girondists, the

actual leaders of this committee, possessed neither the skill nor the

prudence necessary to handle without breaking the fine threads of

diplomacy. A speech was in their eyes far more meritorious than a

negotiation; and they cared not that their words should re-echo in

foreign cabinets, provided they sounded well in the chamber or the

tribune. Moreover, they were desirous of war, and looked on themselves

as statesmen, because at one stroke they had disturbed the peace of

Europe. Ignorant of politics, they yet deemed themselves masters of it,

because they were unscrupulous; and because they affected the

indifference of Machiavel, they deemed they possessed his depth.

The emperor Leopold, by a proclamation, on the 21st of December,

furnished the Assembly with a pretext for an outbreak. "The sovereigns

united," said the emperor, "for the maintenance of public tranquillity

and the honour and safety of the crowns." These words excited the minds

of all to know what could be their meaning; they asked each other how

the emperor, the brother-in-law, and ally of Louis XVI., could speak to

him for the first time of the sovereigns acting in concert? and against

what, if not against the Revolution? And how could the ministers and

ambassadors of the Revolution have been ignorant of its existence? Why

had they concealed from the nation their knowledge, if they had known

it? There was, then, a double diplomacy, each striving to outwit the

other. The Austrian Alliance was, then, no dream of faction; there was

either incompetence or treason in official diplomacy, perhaps both. A

projected congress was spoken of--could it have any other object than

that of imposing modifications on the constitution of France?--And all

felt indignant at the idea of ceding even one tittle of the constitution

to the demand of monarchical Europe.

II.

It was whilst the public mind was thus agitated that the diplomatic

committee presented, through the Girondist Gensonné, its report on the

existing state of affairs with the emperor. Gensonné, an advocate of

Bordeaux, elected to the Legislative Assembly on the same day as Guadet

and Vergniaud, his friends and countrymen, composed, with these

deputies, that triumvirate of talent, opinion, and eloquence, afterwards

termed the Gironde. An obstinate and dialectic style of oratory, bitter

and keen irony, were the characteristics of the talents of the Gironde;

it did not carry away by its eloquence, it constrained; and its

revolutionary passions were strong, yet under the control of reason.

Before entering the Assembly, he had been sent as a commissioner with

Dumouriez, afterwards so celebrated, to study the state of the popular

feeling in the department of the west, and to propose measures likely to

tend to the pacification of these countries, then distracted by

religious differences. His clear and enlightened report had been in

favour of tolerance and liberty--those two topics of all consciences. He

was then, in common with the other Girondists, resolved to carry out the

Revolution to its extreme and definite form--a republic, without,

however, too soon destroying the constitutional throne, provided the

constitution was in the hands of his party.

The intimate friend of the minister Narbonne, his calumniators accused

him of having sold himself to him. Nothing, however, bears out this

suspicion; for if the soul of the Girondists was not free from ambition

and intrigue, their hands at least were pure from corruption.

Gensonné, in his report in the name of the diplomatic committee, asked

two questions; first, what was our political situation with regard to

the emperor; secondly, should his last _office_ be regarded as an act of

hostility; and in this case was it advisable to accelerate this

inevitable rupture by commencing the attack.

"Our situation with regard to the emperor," replied he to himself, "is,

that the French interests are sacrificed to the house of Austria; our

finances and our armies wasted in her service--our alliances broken, and

what mark of reciprocity do we receive? The Revolution insulted; our

cockade profaned; the emigrés permitted to congregate in the states

dependent on Austria; and, lastly, the avowal of the coalition of the

powers against us. When from the heart of Luxembourg our princes

threaten us with an invasion, and boast of the support of the other

powers, Austria remains silent, and thus tacitly sanctions the threats

of our enemies. It is true she affects from time to time to blame the

hostile demonstrations against France, but this was but an hypocritical

peace. The white cockade and the counter-revolutionary uniform are

openly worn in her states, whilst our national colours are proscribed.

When the king threatened the elector of Trèves that he would march into

his territories and disperse the emigrés by force, the emperor ordered

general Bender to advance to the assistance of the elector of Trèves.

This is but a slight matter: in the report drawn up at Pilnitz, the

emperor declares, in concert with the king of Prussia, that the two

powers would consider the steps to be taken, with regard to France, by

the other European courts; and that should war ensue, they would

mutually assist each other. Thus it is manifest that the emperor had

violated the treaty of 1756, by contracting alliances without the

knowledge of France; and that he has made himself the promoter and pivot

of an anti-French system. What can be his aim but to intimidate and

subdue us, in order to bring us to accept a congress, and the

introduction of shameful modifications in our new institutions?

"Perhaps," added Gensonné, "this idea has germinated in France? Perhaps

secret information induces the emperor to hope that peace may be

maintained on such conditions. He is deceived: it is not at the moment

when the flame of liberty is first kindled in a nation of twenty-four

millions, that Frenchmen would consent to a capitulation, to which they

would prefer death. Such is our situation, that war, which in other

times would be a scourge to the human race, would now be useful to the

public welfare. This salutary crisis would elevate the people to the

level of their destiny; it would restore to them their pristine

energy--it would re-establish our finances, and stifle the germ of

intestine dissension. In a similar situation Frederic the Great broke

the league formed against him by the court of Vienna, by forestalling

it. Your committee propose that the preparations for war be accelerated.

A congress would be a disgrace--war is necessary--public opinion wishes

for it--and public safety demands it."

The committee concluded, by demanding clear and satisfactory

explanations from the emperor; and that in case these explanations

should not be given before the 10th of February, this refusal to reply

should be considered as an act of hostility.

III.

Scarcely was the report terminated than Guadet, who presided that day at

the Assembly, mounted the tribune, and began to comment on the report of

his friend and colleague. Guadet, born at Saint Emelion, near Bordeaux,

already celebrated as an advocate before the age at which men have

generally made themselves a reputation, impatiently expected by the

political tribunes, had at last arrived at the Legislative Assembly. A

disciple of Brissot, less profound, but equally courageous and more

eloquent than his master, he was intimately connected with Gensonné,

Vergniaud, to whom he was bound by being of the same age, the same

passions, and the same country; endowed with an undaunted and energetic

mind and winning powers of oratory, equally fitted to resist the

movement of a popular assembly, or to precipitate them to a termination;

all these natural advantages were heightened by one of those southern

casts of face and feature that serve so well to illustrate the working

of the mind within.

"A congress has just been spoken of," said he; "what, then, is this

conspiracy formed against us? How long shall we suffer ourselves to be

fatigued by these manoeuvres--to be outraged by these hopes? Have

those who have planned them, well weighed this? The bare idea of the

possibility of a capitulation of liberty might hurry into crime those

malcontents who cherish the hope; and these are the crimes we should

crush in the bud. Let us teach these princes that the nation is resolved

to preserve its constitution pure and unchanged, or to perish with it.

In one word, let us mark out the place for these traitors, and let that

place be the scaffold. I propose that the decree pass at this instant;

That the nation regards as infamous, as traitors to their country, and

as guilty of _leze-majesté_, every agent of the executive power, every

Frenchman (several voices, 'every _legislator_') who shall take part,

directly or indirectly, at this congress, whose object is to obtain

modifications in the constitution, or a mediation between France and the

rebels."

At these words the Assembly rose as if by common consent. Every hand was

raised in the attitude of men ready to take a solemn oath; the tribunes

and the chamber confounded their applause, and the decree was passed.

M. de Lessart, whom the gesture and the allusion of Guadet seemed to

have already designated as the victim to the suspicions of the people,

could not remain silent under the weight of these terrible allusions.

"Mention has been made," said he, "of the political agents of the

executive power: I declare that I know nothing which can authorise us to

suspect their fidelity. For my own part, I will repeat the declaration

of my colleagues in the ministry, and adopt it for my own--the

constitution or death."

Whilst Gensonné and Guadet aroused the Assembly by this preconcerted

scene, Vergniaud aroused the crowd by the copy of an address to the

French people, which had been spread abroad for the last few days

amongst the masses. The Girondists remembered the effect produced two

years previously by the proposed address to the king to dismiss the

troops.

"Frenchmen," said Vergniaud, "war threatens your frontiers; conspiracies

against liberty are rife. Your armies are assembling: mighty movements

agitate the empire. Seditious priests prepare in the confessional, and

even in the pulpit, a rising against the constitution; martial law

becomes essential. Thus it appeared to us just. But we only succeeded in

brandishing the thunderbolts for a moment before the eyes of the

rebels--the king has refused to sanction our decrees; the German princes

make their territories a stronghold for the conspirators against us.

They favour the plots of the emigrés, and furnish them with an asylum,

arms, horses, and provisions. Can patience endure this without becoming

guilty of suicide? Doubtless you have renounced the desire of conquest;

but you have not promised to suffer insolent provocation. You have

shaken off the yoke of tyrants; surely, then, you will not bow the knee

to foreign despots? Beware! you are surrounded by snares; traitors seek

to reduce you through disgust or fatigue to a state of languor that

enervates your courage; and soon perhaps they will strive to lead it

astray. They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of

calumny against the National Assembly to criminate the Revolution in

your eyes. Oh, beware of these excessive terrors! Repulse indignantly

these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the

constitution, yet unceasingly speak of the _monarchy_. The _monarchy_ is

to them the counter-revolution. The _monarchy_ is the _nobility_; the

counter-revolution--that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille,

chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty.

Foreign satellites in the interior of the state--bankruptcy, engulphing

with your _assignats_ your private fortunes and the national wealth--the

fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration,

despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the

heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country. Nobility; that

is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one

for tyranny, the other for slavery. Nobility; ah! the very word is an

insult to the human race.

"And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that

all Europe is in arms.--You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a

solemn declaration. Yes, the representatives of France, free, and deeply

attached to the constitution, will be buried beneath her ruins, rather

than suffer a capitulation unworthy of them to be wrung from them. Rally

yourselves, take courage! In vain do they strive to excite the nations

against you, they will only excite the princes, for the hearts of the

people are with you, and you embrace their cause by defending your own.

Hate war: it is the greatest crime of mankind, and the most fearful

scourge of humanity; but since it is forced on you, follow the course of

your destiny. Who can foresee how far will extend the punishment of

those tyrants who have forced you to take arms?" Thus, these three

statesmen joined their voices to impel the nation to war.

IV.

The last words of Vergniaud gave the people a tolerably clear prospect

of an universal republic. Nor were the constitutionalists less eager in

directing the ideas of the nation towards war. M. de Narbonne, on his

return from his hasty journey, presented a most encouraging report to

the Assembly, of the state of the fortified towns.--He praised every

one. He presented to the country the young Mathieu de Montmorency, one

of the most illustrious names of France, and whose character was even

more noble than his name, as the representative of the aristocracy

devoting itself to liberty. He declared that the army, in its attachment

to its country did not separate the King from the Assembly. He praised

the commanders of the troops, nominated Rochambeau general-in-chief of

the army of the north, Berthier at Metz, Biron at Lisle, Luckner and La

Fayette on the Rhine. He spoke of plans for the campaign, concerted

between the king and these officers; he enumerated the national guards,

ready to serve as a second line to the active army, and solicited that

they should be promptly armed; he described these volunteers, as giving

the army the most imposing of all characters--that of national feeling;

he vouched for the officers, who had sworn fidelity to the constitution,

and exonerated from the charge of treason those who had not done so; he

encouraged the Assembly to mistrust those that hesitated. "Mistrust,"

said he, "is, in these stormy times, the most natural, but the most

dangerous feeling; confidence wins men's hearts, and it is important

that the people should show they have friends only." He ended by

announcing that the active force of the army was 110,000 foot, and

20,000 cavalry, ready to take the field.

This report, praised by Brissot in his journal, and by the Girondists in

the Assembly, afforded no longer any pretext for delaying the war.

France felt that her strength was equal to her indignation, and she

could be restrained no longer. The increasing unpopularity of the king

augmented the popular excitement. Twice had he already arrested, by his

royal _veto_, the energetic measures of the Assembly--the decree against

the emigrés, and the decree against the priests who had not taken the

oath. These two _vetos_, the one dictated by his honour, the other by

his conscience, were two terrible weapons, placed in his hand by the

constitution, yet which he could not wield without wounding himself. The

Girondists revenged themselves for this resistance by compelling him to

make war on the princes, who were his brothers, and the emperor, whom

they believed to be his accomplice.

The pamphleteers and the Jacobin journalists constantly spoke of these

two _vetos_ as acts of treason. The disturbances in Vendeé were

attributed to a secret understanding between the king and the rebellious

clergy. In vain did the department of Paris, composed of men who

respected the conscience of others, such as M. de Talleyrand, M. de la

Rochefoucauld, and M. de Beaumetz, present to the king a petition in

which the true principles of liberty protested against the revolutionary

inquisition: counter-petitions poured in from the departments.

V.

Camille Desmoulins, the Voltaire of the clubs, lent to the petition of

the citizens of Paris that insolent raillery, which made the success of

his talent.

"Worthy representatives," ran the petition[13], "applauses are the civil

list of the people, therefore do not reject ours. To collect the homages

of good citizens, and the insults of the bad, is, to a National

Assembly, to have combined all suffrages. The king has put his _veto_ to

your decree against the emigrants, a decree equally worthy of the

majesty of the Roman people and the clemency of the French people. We do

not complain of this act of the king, because we remember the maxim of

the great politician Machiavel, which we beg of you to meditate upon

profoundly--_It is against nature to fall voluntarily from such a

height_. Penetrated with this truth, we do not then require from the

king an impossible love for the constitution, nor do we find fault that

he is opposed to your best decisions. But let public functionaries

foresee the royal veto, and declare their rebellion against your decree,

against the priests; let them carry off public opinion; let these men be

precisely the same who caused to be shot in the Champ-de-Mars the

citizens who were signing a petition against a decree which was not yet

decided upon; let them inundate the empire with copies of this

petition, which is nothing more than the first leaf of a great

counter-revolutionary register and a subscription for civil war sent for

signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all permanent slaves.

Fathers of the country! there is here such complicated ingratitude and

abuse of confidence, of contradiction and chicanery, of prevarication

and treason, that profoundly indignant at so much wickedness concealed

beneath the cloak of philosophy and hypocritical civism, we say to

you--Your decree has saved the country, and if they are obstinate in

refusing you permission to save the country, well, the nation will save

itself, for, after all, the power of a _veto_ has a termination--a veto

does not prevent the taking of the Bastille.

"You are told that the salary of the priests was a national debt. But

when you only request the priests to declare that they will not be

seditious--are not they who refuse this declaration already seditious in

their hearts? And these seditious priests, who have never lent anything

to the state--who are only creditors of the state in the name of

benevolence--have they not a thousand times forfeited the donation

through their ingratitude? Away, then, with these miserable sophisms,

fathers of the country, and have no more doubt of the omnipotence of a

free people. If liberty slumbers, how can the arm act? Do not raise this

arm again, do not again lift the national club to crush insects. Did

Cato and Cicero proceed against Cethegus or Catiline? It is the chiefs

we should assail: strike at the head."

A scornful laugh echoed from the tribunes of the Assembly to the

populace. The _procès-verbal_ of this sitting was ordered to be sent to

the eighty-three departments. Next day the Assembly reconsidered this,

and negatived its vote of the previous evening; but publicity was still

given to it, and it echoed through the provinces, carrying with it the

disquietude, derision, and hatred attached to the _Royal Veto_. The

constitution, handed over to ridicule and hooted in full assembly, had

now become the plaything of the populace.

For many months the state of the kingdom resembled the state of Paris.

All was uproar, confusion, denunciation, disturbance in the departments.

Each courier brought his riots, seditions, petitions, outbreaks, and

assassinations. The clubs established as many points of resistance to

the constitution as there were communes in the empire. The civil war

hatching in La Vendée burst out by massacres at Avignon.

VI.

This city and comtal, united to France by the recent decree of the

Constituent Assembly, had remained from this period in an intermediary

state between two dominations, so favourable to anarchy. The partisans

of the papal government, and the partisans of the reunion with France,

struggled there in alternations of hope and fear, which prolonged and

envenomed their hate. The king, from a religious scruple, had for too

long suspended the execution of the decree of reunion. Trembling to

infringe upon the domain of the church, he deferred his decision, and

his impolitic delays gave time for crimes.

France was represented in Avignon by mediators. The provisional

authority of these mediators was supported by a detachment of troops of

the line. The power, entirely municipal, was confided to the

dictatorship of the municipality. The populace, excited and agitated,

was divided into the French or revolutionary party, and the party

opposed to the reunion by France and the Revolution. The fanaticism of

religion with one, the fanaticism of liberty with the other, impelled

the two parties even to crimes. The warmth of blood, the thirst of

private vengeance, the heat of the climate, all added to civil passions.

The violences of Italian republics were all to be seen in the manners of

this Italian colony, of this branch establishment of Rome on the banks

of the Rhone. The smaller states are, the more atrocious are their civil

wars. There opposite opinions become personal hatreds; contests are but

assassinations. Avignon commenced these wholesale assassinations by

private murders.

On the 16th of October a gloomy agitation betrayed itself by the mobs of

people collecting on various points, particularly consisting of persons

enemies of the Revolution. The walls of the church were covered with

placards, calling on the people to revolt against the provisional

authority of the municipality. There were bruited about rumours of

absurd miracles, which demanded in the name of Heaven vengeance for the

assaults made against religion. A statue of the Virgin worshipped by the

people in the church of the Cordeliers had blushed at the profanations

of her temple. She had been seen to shed tears of indignation and grief.

The people, educated under the papal government in such superstitious

credulities, had gone in a body to the Cordeliers to avenge the cause of

their protectress. Animated by fanatical exhortations, confiding in the

divine interposition, the mob, on quitting the Cordeliers, and

increasing as it went, hurried to the ramparts, closed the doors, turned

the cannon on the city, and then spread themselves through the streets,

demanding with loud clamours the overthrow of the government. The

unfortunate Lescuyer, notary of Avignon, secretary (_greffier_) of the

municipality, more particularly pointed out to the fury of the mob, was

dragged violently from his residence, and along the pavement to the

altar of the Cordeliers, where he was murdered by sabre-strokes and

blows from bludgeons, trampled under foot, his dead body outraged and

cast as an expiatory victim at the feet of the offended statue. The

national guard, having despatched a detachment with two pieces of cannon

from the fort, drove back the infuriated populace, and picked from the

pavement the naked and lifeless carcase of Lescuyer. The prisons of the

city had been broken open, and the miscreants they contained came to

offer their assistance for other murders. Horrible reprisals were

feared, and yet the mediators, absent from the city, were asleep, or

closed their eyes upon the actual danger. The understanding between the

leaders of the Paris clubs and the rioters of Avignon became more

fearfully intimate.

VII.

One of those sinister persons who seem to smell blood and presage crime,

reached Avignon from Versailles: his name was Jourdan. He is not to be

confounded with another revolutionist of the same name, born at Avignon.

Sprung from the arid and calcined mountains of the south, where the very

brutes are more ferocious; by turns butcher, farrier, and smuggler, in

the gorges which separate Savoy from France; a soldier, deserter,

horse-jobber, and then a keeper of a low wine shop in the suburbs of

Paris; he had wallowed in all the lowest vices of the dregs of a

metropolis. The first murders committed by the people in the streets of

Paris had disclosed his real character. It was not that of contest but

of murder. He appeared after the carnage to mangle the victims, and

render the assassination fouler. He was a butcher of men, and he boasted

of it. It was he who had thrust his hands into the open breasts and

plucked forth the hearts of Foulon and Berthier.[14] It was he who had

cut off the head of the two _gardes-du-corps_, de Varicourt and des

Huttes, at Versailles, on the 6th of October. It was he who, entering

Paris, bearing the two heads at the end of a pike, reproached the people

with being content with so little, and having made him go so far to cut

off only two heads! He hoped for better things at Avignon, and went

thither.

There was at Avignon a body of volunteers called the army of Vaucluse,

formed of the dregs of that country, and commanded by one Patrix. This

Patrix having been assassinated by his troop, whose excesses he desired

to moderate, Jourdan was elevated to the command by the claims of

sedition and wickedness. The soldiers, when reproached with their

robberies and murders, similar to those of the _Gueux_ of Belgium, and

the _sans-culottes_ of Paris, received the reproach as an honour, and

called themselves the _brave brigands_ of Avignon. Jourdan at the head

of this band, ravaged and fired le Comtal, laid siege to Carpentras, was

repulsed, lost five hundred men, and fell back upon Avignon, still

shuddering at the murder of Lescuyer. He resolved on lending his arm and

his troop to the vengeance of the French party. On the 30th of August

Jourdan and his myrmidons closed the city-gates, dispersed through the

streets, going to the houses noted as containing enemies to the

Revolution, dragging out the inhabitants--men, women, aged persons, and

children,--all, without distinction of age, sex or innocence, and shut

them up in the palace. When night came, the assassins broke down the

doors and murdered with iron crow-bars these disarmed and supplicating

victims. In vain did they shriek to the national guard for aid: the city

hears the massacre without daring to give any signs of animation. The

daring of the crime chilled and paralysed every citizen. The murderers

preluded the death of the females by derision and insults which added

shame to terror, and the agonies of modesty to the pangs of murder. When

there were no more to be slain they mutilated the carcases, and swept

the blood into the sewer of the palace. They dragged the mutilated

corpses to La Glacière, walled them up, and the vengeance of the people

was stamped upon them. Jourdan and his satellites offered the homage of

this night to the French mediators and the National Assembly. The

scoundrels of Paris admired--the Assembly shook with indignation, and

considered this crime as an outrage; whilst the president fainted on

reading the recital of this night at Avignon. The arrest of Jourdan and

his accomplices was commanded. Jourdan fled from Avignon, pursued by the

French; he dashed his horse in to the river of the Sargue: caught in the

middle of the river, by a soldier, he fired at him and missed. He was

seized and bound, and punishment awarded him, but the Jacobins compelled

the Girondists to agree to an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon. Jourdan

making sure of impunity, and proud of his iniquities, went thither to be

revenged on his denouncers.

The Assembly shuddered for a moment at the sight of this blood, and then

hastily turned its eyes away. In its impatience to reign alone, it had

not the time to display pity. There was, besides, between the Girondists

and the Jacobins a contest for leadership, and a rivalry in going a-head

of the Revolution, which made each of the two factions afraid that the

other should be in advance. Dead bodies did not make them pause, and

tears shed for too long a time might have been taken for weakness.

VIII.

However, victims multiplied daily, and disasters followed disasters. The

whole empire seemed ready to fall and crush its founders. San Domingo,

the richest of the French colonies, was swimming in blood. France was

punished for its egotism. The Constituent Assembly had proclaimed, in

principle, the liberty of the blacks, but, in fact, slavery still

existed. Two hundred thousand slaves served as human cattle to some

thousands of colonists. They were bought and sold, and cut and maimed,

as if they were inanimate objects. They were kept by speculation out of

the civil law, and out of the religious law. Property, family, marriage,

all was forbidden to them. Care was taken to degrade them below men, to

preserve the right of treating them as brutes. If some unions furtive,

or favoured by cupidity, were formed amongst them, the wife and children

belonged to the master. They were sold separately, without any regard to

the ties of nature, all the attachments with which God has formed the

chain of human sympathies were rent asunder without commiseration.

This crime _en masse_, this systematic brutality, had its theorists and

apologists; human faculties were denied to the blacks. They were classed

as a race between the flesh and the spirit. Thus the infamous abuse of

power, which was exercised over this inert and servile race, was called

necessary guardianship. Tyrants have never wanted sophists: on the other

hand, men of right feeling towards their fellows, who had, like

Grégoire, Raynal, Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, La Fayette, embraced the

cause of humanity, and formed the "_Society of the Friends of the

Blacks_" had circulated their principles in the colonies, like a

vengeance rather than as justice. These principles had burst forth

without preparation, and unanticipated in colonial society, where truth

had no organ but insurrection. Philosophy proclaims principles; politics

administer them; the friends of the blacks were contented with

proclaiming them. France had not had courage to dispossess and indemnify

her colonists: she had acquired liberty for herself alone: she

adjourned, as she still adjourns at the moment I write these lines, the

reparation for the crime of slavery in her colonies: could she be

astonished that slavery should seek to avenge herself, and that liberty,

warmly proclaimed in Paris, should not become an insurrection at San

Domingo? Every iniquity that a free society allows to subsist for the

profit of the oppressor, is a sword with which she herself arms the

oppressed. Right is the most dangerous of weapons; woe to him who leaves

it to his enemies!

IX.

San Domingo proved this. Fifty thousand black slaves rose in one night

at the instigation, and under the command, of the mulattoes, or men of

colour. The men of colour, the intermediary race, springing from white

colonists and black slaves, were not slaves, neither were they citizens.

They were a kind of freedmen, with the defects and virtues of the two

races; the pride of the whites, the degradation of the blacks: a

fluctuating race who, by turning sometimes to the side of the slaves,

sometimes to that of the masters, inevitably produced those terrible

oscillations which inevitably superinduce the overthrow of society.

The mulattoes, who themselves possessed slaves, had begun by making

common cause with the colonists, and by opposing the emancipation of the

blacks more obstinately than even the whites themselves. The nearer they

were to slavery, the more doggedly did they defend their share in

tyranny. Man is thus made: none is more ready to abuse his right than he

who, with difficulty, has acquired it; there are no tyrants worse than

slaves, and no men prouder than _parvenus_.

The men of colour had all the vices of _parvenus_ of liberty. But when

they perceived that the whites despised them as a mingled race, that the

Revolution had not effaced the tinge of their skin, and the injurious

prejudices which were attached to their colour; when they in vain

claimed for themselves the exercise of civil rights, which the colonists

opposed, they passed with the impetuosity and levity of their conduct

from one passion to another, from one party to the other, and made

common cause with the oppressed race. Their habits of command, fortune,

intelligence, energy, boldness, naturally pointed them out as the

leaders of the blacks. They fraternised with them, they became popular

amongst the blacks, from the very tinge of skin for which they had

recently blushed, when in company with the whites. They secretly

fomented the germs of insurrection at the nightly meetings of the

slaves. They kept up a clandestine correspondence with the friends of

the blacks in Paris. They spread widely in the huts, speeches and papers

from Paris, which instructed the colonists in their duties and informed

the slaves of their indefeasible rights. The rights of man, commented

upon by vengeance, became the catechism of all dwellings.

The whites trembled; terror urged them to violence. The blood of the

mulatto Ogé and his accomplices, shed by M. de Blanchelande, governor of

San Domingo and the colonial council, sowed every where despair and

conspiracy.

X.

Ogé, deputed to Paris by the men of colour to assert their rights in the

Constituent Assembly, had become known to Brissot, Raynal, Grégoire, and

was affiliated with them to the Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

Passing thence into England, he became known to the admirable

philanthropist, Clarkson. Clarkson and his friend at this time were

pleading the cause of the emancipation of the negroes: they were the

first apostles of that religion of humanity who believed that they could

not raise their hands purely towards God, so long as those hands

retained a link of that chain which holds a race of human beings in

degradation and in slavery. The association with these men of worth

expanded Ogé's mind. He had come to Europe only to defend the interest

of the mulattoes; he now took up with warmth the more liberal and holy

cause of all the blacks; he devoted himself to the liberty of all his

brethren. He returned to France, and became very intimate with Barnave;

he entreated the Constituent Assembly to apply the principles of liberty

to the colonies, and not to make any exception to Divine law, by leaving

the slaves to their masters; excited and irritated by the hesitation of

the committee, who withdrew with one hand what it gave with the other,

he declared that if justice could not suffice for their cause, he would

appeal to force. Barnave had said, "_Perish the colonies rather than a

principle!_" The men of the 14th of July had no right to condemn, in the

heart of Ogé, that revolt which was their own title to independence. We

may believe that the secret wishes of the friends of the blacks followed

Ogé, who returned to San Domingo. He found there the rights of men of

colour and the principles of liberty of the blacks more denied and more

profaned than ever. He raised the standard of insurrection, but with the

forms and rights of legality. At the head of a body of two hundred men

of colour, he demanded the promulgation in the colonies of the decrees

of the National Assembly, despotically delayed until that time. He wrote

to the military commandant at the Cape, "We require the proclamation of

the law which makes us free citizens. If you oppose this, we will repair

to Leogane, we will nominate electors, and repel force by force. The

pride of the colonists revolts at sitting beside us: was the pride of

the nobility and clergy consulted when the equality of citizens was

proclaimed in France?"

The government replied to this eloquent demand for liberty by sending a

body of troops to disperse the persons assembled, and Ogé drove them

back.

XI.

A larger body of troops being despatched, they contrived, after a

desperate resistance, to disperse the mulattoes. Ogé escaped, and found

refuge in the Spanish part of the island. A price was set upon his head.

M. de Blanchelande in his proclamations imputed it as a crime to him

that he had claimed the rights of nature in the name of the Assembly,

which had so loudly proclaimed the rights of the citizen. They applied

to the Spanish authorities to surrender this Spartacus, equally

dangerous to the safety of the whites in both countries. Ogé was

delivered up to the French by the Spaniards, and sent for trial to the

Cape. His trial was protracted for two months, in order to afford time

to cut asunder all the threads of the plot of independence, and

intimidate his accomplices. The whites, in great excitement, complained

of these delays, and demanded his head with loud vociferations. The

judges condemned him to death for a crime which in the mother-country

had constituted the glory of La Fayette and Mirabeau.

He underwent torture in his dungeon. The rights of his race, centred and

persecuted in him, raised his soul above the torments of his

executioners. "Give up all hope," he exclaimed, with unflinching daring;

"give up all hope of extracting from me the name of even one of my

accomplices. My accomplices are everywhere where the heart of a man is

raised against the oppressors of men." From that moment he pronounced

but two words, which sounded like a remorse in the ears of his

persecutors--_Liberty! Equality_! He walked composedly to his death;

listened with indignation to the sentence which condemned him to the

lingering and infamous death of the vilest criminals. "What!" he

exclaimed; "do you confound me with criminals because I have desired to

restore to my fellow-creatures the rights and titles of men which I feel

in myself! Well! you have my blood, but an avenger will arise from it!"

He died on the wheel, and his mutilated carcase was left on the highway.

This heroic death reached even to the National Assembly, and gave rise

to various opinions. "He deserved it," said Malouet; "Ogé was a criminal

and an assassin." "If Ogé be guilty," replied Grégoire, "so are we all;

if he who claimed liberty for his brothers perished justly on the

scaffold, then all Frenchmen who resemble us should mount there also."

XII.

Ogé's blood bubbled silently in the hearts of all the mulatto race. They

swore to avenge him. The blacks were an army all ready for the massacre;

the signal was given to them by the men of colour. In one night 60,000

slaves, armed with torches and their working tools, burnt down all their

masters' houses in a circuit of six leagues round the Cape. The whites

were murdered; women, children, old men--nothing escaped the

long-repressed fury of the blacks. It was the annihilation of one race

by the other. The bleeding heads of the whites, carried on the tops of

sugar canes, were the standards which guided these hordes, not to

combat, but to carnage. The outrages of so many centuries, committed by

the whites on the blacks, were avenged in one night. A rivalry of

cruelty seemed to arise between the two colours. The negroes imitated

the tortures so long used upon them, and invented new ones. If certain

noble and faithful slaves placed themselves between their old masters

and death, they were sacrificed together. Gratitude and pity are virtues

which civil war never recognises. Colour was a sentence of death without

exception of persons; the war was between the races, and no longer

between men. The one must perish for the other to live! Since justice

could not make itself understood by them, there was nothing but death

left for them. Every gift of life to a white was a treason which would

cost a black man's life. The negroes had no longer any pity: they were

men no longer, they were no longer a people, but a destroying element

which spread over the land, annihilating every thing.

In a few hours eight hundred habitations, sugar and coffee stores,

representing an immense capital, were destroyed. The mills, magazines,

utensils, and even the very plant which reminded them of their servitude

and their compulsory labour, were cast into the flames. The whole plain,

as far as eye could reach, was covered with nothing but the smoke and

the ashes of conflagration. The dead bodies of whites, piled in hideous

trophies of heads and limbs, of men, women, and infants assassinated,

alone marked the spot of the rich residences, where they were supreme on

the previous night. It was the revenge of slavery: all tyranny has such

fearful reverses.

Some whites, warned in time of the insurrection by the generous

indiscretion of the blacks, or protected in their flight by the forests

and the darkness, had taken refuge at the Cape Town; others, concealed

with their wives and children in caves, were fed and attended to by

attached slaves, at the peril of their lives. The army of blacks

increased without the walls of the Cape Town, where they formed and

disciplined a fortified camp. Guns and cannons arrived by the aid of

invisible auxiliaries. Some accused the English, others the Spaniards;

others, the "friends of the blacks," with being accomplices of this

insurrection. The Spaniards, however, were at peace with France; the

revolt of the blacks menaced them equally with ourselves. The English

themselves possessed three times as many slaves as the French: the

principle of the insurrection, excited by success, and spreading with

them, would have ruined their establishments, and compromised the lives

of their colonists. These suspicions were absurd; there was no one

culpable but liberty itself, which is not to be repressed with impunity

in a portion of the human race. It had accomplices in the very heart of

the French themselves.

The weakness of the resolutions of the Assembly on the reception of this

news proved this. M. Bertrand de Molleville, minister of marine,

ordered the immediate departure of 6000 men as reinforcement for the

isle of San Domingo.

Brissot attacked these repressive measures in a discourse in which he

did not hesitate to cast the odium of the crime on the victims, and to

accuse the government of complicity with the aristocracy of the

colonists.

"By what fatality does this news coincide with a moment when emigrations

are redoubled? when the rebels assembled on our frontiers warn us of an

approaching outbreak? when, in fact, the colonies threaten us, through

an illegal deputation, with withdrawing from the rule of the

mother-country? Has not this the appearance of a vast plan combined by

treason?"

The repugnance of the friends of the blacks, numerous in the Assembly,

to take energetic measures in favour of the colonists, the distance from

the scene of action, which weakens pity, and then the interior movement

which attracted into its sphere minds and things, soon effaced these

impressions, and allowed the spirit of independence amongst the blacks

to form and expand at San Domingo, which showed itself in the distance

in the form of a poor old slave--Toussaint-Louverture.

XIII.

The internal disorder multiplied at every point of the empire. Religious

liberty, which was desire of the Constituent Assembly, and the most

important conquest of the Revolution, could not be established without

this struggle in face of a displaced worship, and a schism which spread

far and wide amongst the people. The counter-revolutionary party was

allied every where with the clergy. They had the same enemies, and

conspired against the same cause. The nonjuring priests had assumed the

character of victims, and the interest of a portion of the people,

especially in the country, attached to them. Persecution is so odious to

the public feeling that its very appearance raises generous indignation

against it. The human mind has an inclination to believe that justice is

on the side of the proscribed. The priests were not as yet persecuted,

but from the moment that they were no longer paramount they believed

themselves humiliated. The ill-repressed irritation of the clergy has

been more injurious to the Revolution than all the conspiracies of the

emigrated aristocracy. Conscience is man's most sensitive point. A

superstition attacked, or a faith disturbed in the mind of a people, is

the fellest of conspiracies. It was by the hand of God, invisible in the

hand of the priesthood, that the aristocracy roused La Vendée. Frequent

and bloody symptoms already betrayed themselves in the west, and in

Normandy, that concealed focus of religious war.

The most fearful of these symptoms burst out at Caen. The Abbé Fauchet

was constitutional bishop of Calvados. The celebrity of his name, the

elevated patriotism of his opinions, the _éclat_ of his revolutionary

renown, his eloquence, and his writings, disseminated widely in his

diocese, were the causes of greater excitement throughout Calvados than

elsewhere.

Fauchet, whose conformity of opinions, honesty of feelings for

renovation, and even whose somewhat fanciful imagination, which were

subsequently destined to associate him in acts, and even on the

scaffold, with the Girondists, was born at Domes, in the ancient

province of Nivernais. He embraced the Catholic faith, entered into the

free community of the priests of Saint Roch, at Paris, and was for some

time preceptor to the children of the marquis de Choiseul, brother of

the famous duke de Choiseul, the last minister of the school of

Richelieu and Mazarin. A remarkable talent for speaking gave him a

distinguished reputation in the pulpit. He was appointed preacher to the

king, abbé of Montfort, and grand-vicaire of Bourges. He advanced

rapidly towards the first dignities of the church; but his mind had

imbibed the spirit of the times. He was not a destructive, but a

reformer of the church, in whose bosom he was born. His work, entitled

_De l'Eglise Nationale_, proves in him as much respect for the

principles of the Christian faith as boldness of desire to change its

discipline. This philosophic faith, which so closely resembles the

Christian Platonism which was paramount in Italy under the Medici, and

even in the palace of the popes themselves under Leo X., breathed

throughout his sacred discourses. The clergy was alarmed at these lights

of the age shining in the very sanctuary. The Abbé Fauchet was

interdicted, and, struck off the list of the king's preachers.

But the Revolution already opened other tribunes to him. It burst forth,

and he rushed headlong into it, as imagination rushes towards hope. He

fought for it from the day of its birth, and with every kind of weapon.

He shook the people in the primary assemblies, and in the sections; he

urged with voice and gesture the insurgent masses under the cannon of

the Bastille. He was seen, sword in hand, to lead on the assailants.

Thrice did he advance, under fire of the cannon, at the head of the

deputation which summoned the governor to spare the lives of the

citizens, and to surrender.[15] He did not soil his revolutionary zeal

with any blood or crime. He inflamed the mind of the people for liberty;

but with him liberty was virtue; nature had endowed him with this

twofold character. There were in his features the high-priest and the

hero. His exterior pleased and attracted the populace. He was tall and

slender, with a wide chest, oval countenance, black eyes, and his dark

brown hair set off the paleness of his brow. His imposing but modest

appearance inspired at the first glance favour and respect. His voice

clear, impressive, and full-toned; his majestic carriage, his somewhat

mystical style, commanded the reflection, as well as the admiration, of

his auditors. Equally adapted to the popular tribune or the pulpit,

electoral assemblies or cathedral were alike too circumscribed in limits

for the crowds who flocked to hear him. It seemed as though he were a

revolutionary saint--Bernard preaching political charity, or the crusade

of reason.

His manners were neither severe nor hypocritical. He; himself confessed

that he loved with legitimate and pure; affection Madame Carron, who

followed him every where, even to churches and clubs. "They calumniated

me with respect to her," he said, "and I attached myself the more

strongly to her, and yet I am pure. You have seen her, even more lovely

in mind than face, and who for the ten years I have known her seems to

me daily more worthy of being loved. She would lay down her life for me;

I would resign my life for her; but I would never sacrifice my duty to

her. In spite of the malignant libels of the aristocrats, I shall go

every day at breakfast-time to taste the charms of the purest friendship

in her society. She comes to hear me preach! Yes, no doubt of it; no one

knows better than herself the sincerity with which I believe in the

truths I profess. She comes to the assemblies of the Hôtel-de-Ville!

Yes, no doubt of it: it is because she is convinced that patriotism is a

second religion, that no hypocrisy is in my soul, and that my life is

really devoted to God, to my country, and friendship."

"And you dare to assert that you are chaste," retorted the faithful and

indignant priests, by the Abbé de Valmeron. "How absurd! Chaste, at the

moment when you confess the most unpardonable inclinations; when you

attract a woman from the bed of her husband--her duties as a

mother--when you take about every where this infatuated female, attached

to your footsteps, in order to display her ostentatiously to the public

gaze! And who follow, sir! A troop of ruffians and abandoned women.

Worthy pastor of this foul populace, which celebrates your pastoral

visit by the only rejoicings that can give you pleasure--your progress

is marked by every excess of rapine and debauchery." These bitter

reproaches resounded in the provinces, and caused great excitement. The

conforming and nonconforming priests were disputing the altars. A letter

from the minister of the interior came to authorise the nonjuring

priests to celebrate the holy sacrifice in the churches where they had

previously done duty. Obedient to the law, the constitutional priests

opened to them their chapels, supplied them with the ornaments necessary

for divine worship; but the multitude, faithful to their ancient

pastors, threatened and insulted the new clergy. Bloody struggles took

place between the two creeds on the very threshold of God's house. On

Friday, November the 4th, the former _curé_ of the parish of Saint Jean,

at Caen, came to perform the mass. The church was full of Catholics.

This meeting offended the constitutionalists and excited the other

party. The _Te Deum_, as a thanksgiving, was demanded and sung by the

adherents of the ancient _curé_, who, encouraged by this success,

announced to the faithful that he should come again the next day at the

same hour to celebrate the sacrament. "Patience!" he added; "let us be

prudent, and all will be well."

The municipality, informed of these circumstances, entreated the _curé_

to abstain from celebrating the mass the next day, as he had announced;

and he complied with their wishes. The multitude, not informed of this,

filled the church, and clamoured for the priest and the promised _Te

Deum_. The gentry of the neighbourhood, the aristocracy of Caen, the

clients and numerous domestics of the leading families in the

neighbourhood, had arms under their clothes. They insulted the

grenadiers; an officer of the national guard reprimanded them. "You come

to seek what you shall get," replied the aristocrats: "we are the

stronger, and will drive you from the church." At these words some young

men rushed on the national guards to disarm them: a struggle ensued,

bayonets glittered, pistol shots resounded in the cathedral, and they

made a charge, sword in hand. Companies of chasseurs and grenadiers

entered the church, cleared it, and followed the crowd, step by step,

who fired again upon them when in the street. Some killed and others

wounded, were the sad results of the day. Tranquillity seemed restored.

Eighty-two persons were arrested, and on one of them was found a

pretended plan of counter-revolution, the signal for which was to be

given on the following Monday. These documents were forwarded to Paris.

The nonjuring priests were suspended from the celebration of the holy

mysteries in the churches of Caen until the decision of the National

Assembly. The Assembly heard with indignation the recital of these

troubles, occasioned by the enemies of the constitution, and the

adherents of fanaticism and the aristocracy. "The only part we have to

take," said Cambon, "is to convoke the high national court, and send the

accused before it." They deferred pronouncing on this proposition until

the moment when they should be in possession of all the papers relative

to the troubles in Caen.

Gensonné detailed the particulars of similar disturbances in La Vendée:

the mountains of the south, La Lozère, l'Herault, l'Ardèche, which were

but ill repressed by the recent dispersion of the camp of Jalès, the

first act of the counter-revolutionary army, were now greatly agitated

by the two-fold impulse of their priests and gentry. The plains,

furnished with streams, roads, towns, and easily kept down by the

central force, submitted without resistance to the _contre-coups_ of

Paris. The mountains preserve their customs longer, and resist the

influence of new ideas as to a conquest by armed strangers. It seems as

though the appearance of these natural ramparts gave their inhabitants

confidence in their strength, and a solid conviction of the

unchangeableness of things, which prevents them from being so easily

carried away by the rapid currents of alteration.

The mountaineers of these countries felt for their nobles that voluntary

and traditional devotion which the Arabs have for their sheiks, and the

Scots for the chieftains of their clans. This respect and this

attachment form part of the national honour in these rural districts.

Religion, more fervent in the south, was in the eyes of these people a

sacred liberty, on which revolution made attempts in the name of

political liberty. They preferred the liberty of conscience to the

liberty as citizens. Under all these titles the new institutions were

odious: faithful priests nourished this hatred, and sanctified it in the

hearts of the peasantry, whilst the nobility kept up a royalism, which

pity for the king's misfortunes and the royal family made more full of

sympathy at the daily recital of fresh outrages.

Mende, a small village hidden at the bottom of deep valleys, half way

between the plains of the south and those of the Lyonnais, was the

centre of counter-revolutionary spirit. The _bourgeoisie_ and the

nobility, mingled together from the smallness of their fortunes, the

familiarity of their manners, and the frequent unions of their families,

did not entertain towards each other that intestine envy, hatred, and

malice, which was favourable to the Revolution. There was neither pride

in the one nor jealousy in the other: it was as it is in Spain, one

single people, where nobility is only, if we may say so, but a right of

first birth of the same blood. These people had, it is true, laid down

their arms after the insurrection of the preceding year in the camp of

Jalès: but hearts were far from being disarmed. These provinces watched

with an attentive eye for the favourable moment in which they might rise

_en masse_ against Paris. The insults to the dignity of the king, and

the violence done to religion by the Legislative Assembly, excited

their minds even to fanaticism. They burst out again, as though

involuntarily, on the occasion of a movement of troops across their

valleys. The tricoloured cockade, emblem of infidelity to God and the

king, had entirely disappeared for several months in the town of Mende,

and they put up the white cockade, as a _souvenir_ and a hope of that

order of things to which they were secretly devoted.

The directory of the department, consisting of men strangers to the

country, resolved on having the emblem of the constitution respected,

and applied for some troops of the line. This the municipality opposed,

in a resolution addressed to the directory, and made an insurrectional

appeal to the neighbouring municipalities, and a kind of federation with

them to resist together the sending of any troops into their districts.

However, the troops sent from Lyons at the request of the directory

approached; on their appearance, the municipality dissolved the ancient

national guard, composed of a few friends of liberty, and formed a fresh

national guard, of which the officers were chosen by itself from amongst

the gentry and most devoted royalists of the neighbourhood. Armed with

this force, the municipality compelled the directory of the department

to supply them with arms and ammunition.

Such were the movements of the town of Mende, when the troops entered

the place. The national guard, under arms, replied to the cry of _Vive

la nation_, uttered by the troops, by the cry of _Vive le roi_. Then

they followed the soldiers to the principal square in the city, and

there took, in presence of the defenders of the constitution, an oath to

obey the king only, and to recognise no one but the king. After this

audacious display, the national guard, in parties, paraded the town,

insulting, braving the soldiers: swords were drawn, and blood flowed.

The troops pursued made a stand, and took to their weapons. The

municipality, having the directory in check, and holding it as hostage,

compelled it to send the troops orders to withdraw to their quarters.

The commandant of the forces obeyed. This victory emboldened the

national guard; and during the night it compelled the directory to send

the troops an order to leave the city and evacuate the department. The

national guard, drawn up in a line of battle in the square of Mende,

saw hourly its ranks increase by detachments of the neighbouring

municipalities, who came down from the mountains, armed with fowling

pieces, scythes, and ploughshares. The troops would have been massacred

if they had not retired under cover of the night. They retreated from

the city amidst victorious cries from the royalists. The following day

was a series of fêtes, in which the royalists of the town and those of

the city celebrated their common triumph, and fraternised together. They

insulted all the emblems of the Revolution; hooted the constitution;

plundered the hall of the Jacobins; burnt down the houses of the

principal members of this hateful club--put some in prison. But their

vengeance confined itself to outrage. The people, controlled by the

gentlemen and the _curés_, spared the blood of their enemies.

XIV.

Whilst humiliated liberty was threatened by fanaticism in the south, it,

in its turn, carried on the work of assassination in the north. Brest

was the very focus of Jacobinism--the close proximity of La Vendeé gave

this city reason to apprehend the counter-revolution that constantly

threatened them--the presence of the fleet, commanded by officers

suspected of favouring the aristocratic part--a population greatly

composed of strangers and sailors, accessible to corruption, and capable

of being readily excited to crime--rendered this city more turbulent and

more agitated than any other port in the kingdom. The clubs constantly

strove to work on the sailors to mutiny against their officers, whilst

the revolutionists mistrusted the navy, as that was far more independent

of the people than the army, for the court could at a moment change the

station of the fleet, and turn their cannon against the constitution,

and the feeling of discipline, of aristocracy, and of the colonies, were

all contrary to the new school of ideas; and for this reason the

Jacobins had for some time striven to disorganise the fleet. The

appointment of M. de Lajaille to the command of one of the vessels

destined to carry assistance to San Domingo, caused an outbreak of the

suspicions infused into the minds of the inhabitants of Brest, and of

the officers of the navy. M. de Lajaille was designated by the clubs as

a traitor to the nation, who was about to introduce the

counter-revolutionary feeling in the colonies. Attacked at the moment he

was about to embark, by a crowd of nearly three thousand persons, he was

covered with wounds, stretched senseless on the ground, and would have

been killed, but for the heroic devotion of a workman, who shielded him

with his own body, and defended him until the arrival of the civic

guard. M. de Lajaille was, however, to appease popular feeling,

imprisoned: in vain did the king order the municipal authorities of

Brest to set this innocent and valuable officer free; in vain did the

minister of justice demand chastisement for this attempted murder,

committed in broad daylight, in the presence of the whole town; in vain

was a sabre and a gold medal voted to the courageous LANVERGENT, who had

saved de Lajaille; the dread of a more formidable outbreak assured the

guilty of impunity, and detained the innocent in prison. On the eve of

war the naval officers, threatened with mutiny on board their vessels,

and assassination on shore, had as much to apprehend from their crews as

from the enemy.

XV.

The same discords were fomented in all the garrisons between the

soldiers and the officers, and the insubordination of the troops was, in

the eyes of the clubs, the chief virtue of the army. The people every

where sided with the soldiers, and the officers were constantly

disturbed by conspiracies and revolts in the regiments. The fortified

towns were the theatres of military outbreaks, which invariably

terminated in the impunity of the soldier, and the imprisonment or the

forced emigration of the officers. The Assembly, the supreme and partial

judge, always decided in favour of insubordination: unable to restrain

the people, it flattered their excesses. Perpignan was a new proof of

this.

In the night of the 6th of December, the officers of the regiment of

Cambrésis, in garrison in this town, went in a body to M. de Chollet,

the general who commanded the division, and urged him to retire into the

citadel, as they had learnt that a conspiracy was formed in the

regiment, which threatened alike his and their lives. M. de Chollet

complied with their earnest request, whilst they went to the barracks,

and ordered the men to follow them to the citadel. The soldiers replied

that they would only obey M. Desbordes, their lieutenant-colonel, in

whose patriotism they had the greatest confidence. M. Desbordes came,

and read to the soldiers the order of the general; but the inflexion of

his voice, the expression of his face, his glance, alike seemed to

protest against the order which his duty as a soldier compelled him to

communicate to them. The troops understood this mute appeal, and

declared that they would not quit their quarters, because the municipal

authorities had forbidden them: the national guard joined them and

patrolled the streets: the officers shut themselves up in the citadel,

and shots were fired from the ramparts. Lieutenant-Colonel Desbordes,

the national guard, the _gendarmerie_, and the regiments, stormed the

citadel. The officers of the regiment of Cambrésis were imprisoned by

their soldiers; one, however, escaped, and committed suicide on the

frontiers of Spain. The unfortunate general, Chollet, victim of the

violence of the officers and soldiers, was impeached with fifty

officers, or inhabitants of Perpignan. They were ordered before the high

national court of Orleans; and thus were fifty victims predestined to

perish in the massacre at Versailles.

XVI.

Blood flowed every where. The clubs seduced the regiments; patriotic

motions, denunciations against the generals, perfidious insinuations

against the fidelity of the officers, were constantly instilled into the

minds of the army by the people. The officer was a prey to terror, the

soldier to mistrust. The premeditated plan of the Jacobins and

Girondists was to destroy in concert this body that was yet attached to

the king, deprive the nobility of their command, substitute plebeians

for nobles as officers, and thus give the army to the nation. In the

meantime they surrendered it to anarchy and sedition; but these two

parties finding that the disorganisation was not sufficiently rapid,

wished to sum up in one act the systematic corruption of the army, the

ruin of all military discipline, and the legal triumph of the

insurrection.

We have already mentioned how prominent a part the Swiss regiment of

Châteauvieux had taken in the famous insurrection of Nancy during the

latter period of the existence of the Constituent Assembly. An army

under M. de Bouillé had been necessary to repress the armed revolt of

several regiments that threatened all France with the rule of the

tyrannical soldiery. M. de Bouillé, at the head of a body of troops from

Metz, and the battalions of the national guard, had surrounded Nancy,

and after a desperate contest at the gates, and in the streets of the

town, forced the rebels to lay down their arms. These vigorous measures

for the restoration of order were applauded by all parties, and

reflected equal glory on M. de Bouillé and disgrace on the soldiers.

Switzerland, by virtue of her treaties with France, preserved her right

of federal justice over the regiments of her nation, and this

essentially military country had tried by court-martial the regiment of

Châteauvieux. Twenty-four of the ringleaders had been condemned and

executed in expiation of the blood they had shed, and the fidelity they

had violated, the remainder had been decimated, and forty-one soldiers

now were undergoing their sentence on board the galleys at Brest. The

amnesty proclaimed by the king for the crimes committed during the civil

troubles, when he accepted the constitution, could not be applied to

these foreign soldiers, for the right to pardon belongs alone to those

who have the right to punish.

Sentenced by the judgment of the Helvetian jurisdiction, neither the

king nor the Assembly could invalidate the judgment, or annul its

effects. The king had, at the entreaty of the Constituent Assembly, in

vain attempted to obtain the pardon of these soldiers from the Swiss

confederation.

These fruitless negotiations served the Jacobins and the National

Assembly as food for accusation against M. de Montmorin. In vain did he

justify himself by alleging the impossibility of obtaining such an

amnesty from Switzerland, at a moment when this country, who had

suffered from civil commotions, sought to restore order by the laws of

Draco. "We shall be then the compulsory gaolers of this ferocious

people," cried Guadet and Collot d'Herbois. "France must then degrade

herself so far as to punish in her very ports those heroes who have

gained the people a triumph over the aristocratic officers, and shed

their blood for the nation instead of pouring it out in the cause of

despotism."

Pastoret, an influential member of the moderate party, and who was said

to concert all his measures with the king, supported Guadet's motion, in

order to give the king popularity by an act agreeable to the nation; and

the freedom of the soldiers of Châteauvieux was voted by the Assembly.

The king, having delayed his sanction for some time, in order not to

wound the cantons by this violent usurpation of their rights over their

own countrymen, afforded the Jacobins fresh ground for imprecation and

invective against the court and the ministers. "The moment is come when

one man must perish for the safety of all," cried Manuel, "and this man

must be a minister; they all appear to me so guilty, that I firmly

believe the Assembly would be free from crime did it cause them to draw

lots for who should perish on the scaffold," "All, all," vociferated the

tribunes. But at this very moment Collot d'Herbois mounted the tribune,

and announced, amidst loud applause, that the royal assent to the decree

for their liberation had been given the previous evening, and that in a

few days he should present to his brother deputies these victims of

discipline.

The soldiers of Châteauvieux were in reality advancing to Paris, having

been liberated from the galleys at Brest, and their march was one

continued triumph, but Paris prepared for them a still more brilliant

one through the exertions of the Jacobins. In vain did the Feuillants

and the Constitutionalists energetically protest, through the mouth of

André Chénier, the Tyrtæus of moderation and good sense, of Dupont de

Nemours, and the poet Roucher, against the insolent oration of the

assassins of the generous Désilles. Collot d'Herbois, Robespierre, the

Jacobins, the Cordeliers, and the very commune of Paris, clung to the

idea of this triumph, which, according to them, would cover with

opprobium the court and La Fayette. The feeble interposition of Pétion,

who appeared as though he wished to moderate the scandal, served only to

encourage it, for he of all men was most fitted to plunge the people

into the last degree of excess. His affected virtue served only to cloak

violence, and to cover with an hypocritical appearance of legality the

outbreaks he dared not punish; and had a representative of anarchy been

sought to be placed at the head of the commune of Paris, it could have

found no fitter type than Pétion. His paternal reprimands to the people

were but promises of impunity. The public force always arrived too late

to punish; excuse was always to be found for sedition, amnesty for

crime. The people felt that their magistrate was their accomplice and

their slave, and yet whilst they despised they loved him.

XVII.

"This _fête_ that is preparing for these soldiers," wrote Chénier, "is

attributed to enthusiasm. For my part, I confess I do not perceive this

enthusiasm. I see a few men who create a degree of agitation, but the

rest are alarmed or indifferent. We are told that the national honour is

interested in this reparation,--I can scarcely comprehend this; for,

either the national guards of Metz, who put down the revolt of Nancy,

are enemies of the public weal, or the soldiers of Châteauvieux are

assassins: there is no medium. How, then, is the honour of Paris

interested in _fêting_ the murderers of our brothers? Other profound

politicians say, this _fête_ will humiliate those who have sought to

fetter the nation. What! in order to humiliate, according to their

judgment, a bad government, it is necessary to invent extravagances

capable of destroying every species of government--recompense rebellion

against the laws--crown foreign satellites for having shot French

citizens in an _émeute_. It is said, that in every place where this

procession passes, the statues will be veiled:--Ah! they will do well to

veil the whole city, if this hideous orgy takes place; but it is not

alone the statues of despots that should be veiled, but the face of

every good citizen. It will be the duty of every youth in the kingdom,

of every national guard in the kingdom to assume mourning on the day

when the murder of their brothers confers a title of glory on foreign

and seditious soldiers; it is the eyes of the army that should be

veiled, that they may not behold the reward of insubordination and

revolt; it is the National Assembly--the king--the administrators--the

country--that should veil their faces, in order that they may not

become complaisant or silent witnesses of the outrages offered to the

authorities and the country. The book of the law must be covered, when

those who have torn and stained its pages by musket-balls and sabre-cuts

receive the civic honours. Citizens of Paris, honest yet weak men, there

is not one of you who, when he interrogates his own heart, does not feel

how much the country--how much he its child--are insulted by these

outrages offered to the laws,--to those who execute them, and those who

are for them. Do you not blush that a handful of turbulent men, who

appear numerous because they are united and make a noise, should

constrain you to do their pleasure, by telling you it is your own, and

by amusing your puerile curiosity by unworthy spectacles? In a city that

respected itself, such a _fête_ would find before it silence and

solitude, the streets and public places abandoned, the houses shut up,

the windows deserted, and the flight and scorn of the passers-by would

tell history what share honest and well-disposed men took in this

scandalous and bacchanalian procession."

XVIII.

Collot d'Herbois insulted André Chénier and Roucher in his reply.

Roucher replied by a letter full of sarcasm, in which he reminded Collot

d'Herbois of his falls on the stage and his misadventures as an actor.

"This personage of comic romance," said he, "who has leapt from the

trestles of Punch to the tribune of the Jacobins, rushes at me, as

though to strike me with the oar the Swiss have brought him from the

galleys."

Placards for or against the _fête_ covered the walls of the Palais

Royal, and were alternately torn down by groups of young men or

Jacobins.

Dupont de Nemours, the friend and master of Mirabeau, laid aside his

philosophical calm, to address a letter on the same subject to Pétion,

in which his conscience, as an honest man, braved the popularity of the

tribune. "When the danger is imminent, it is the duty of all honest men

to warn the magistrates of it. More particularly, when the magistrates

themselves create it. You told a falsehood when you asserted that these

soldiers had aided the Revolution on the 14th of July, and that they had

refused to combat against the people of Paris. It is untrue that the

Swiss refused to combat against the people of Paris, and it is true that

they assassinated the national guards of Nancy. You have the audacity to

term those men patriots who dare command the legislative body to send a

deputation to the _fête_ prepared for these rebels; these are the men

whom you adopt as your friends; it is with them that you dine at _la

Rapée_, so that the general of the national guard is obliged to gallop

about for two hours to receive your orders before he can find you, and

you seek in vain to conceal your embarrassment by high-flown phrases.

You seek in vain to conceal this banquet given to assassins beneath the

pretext of a banquet in honour of liberty. But these subterfuges are no

longer available; the moment is urgent, and you will no longer deceive

the sections, the army, or the eighty-three departments. Those who rule

you, as they would a child, have agreed to surrender Paris to ten

thousand pikes, to whom the bar of the Assembly will be thrown open the

day the national guard is disarmed; the men destined to bear them arrive

every day, and Paris receives an accession of twelve or fifteen hundred

bandits every twenty-four hours, and beg, until the day of pillage

arrives, which they await as ravens await their prey.--I have not told

all;--generals are prepared for this hideous army. The friends of

Jourdan, impatient to behold the man whom the amnesty had not delivered

sufficiently soon, have broken open his prison at Avignon. Already, he

has been received in triumph in several cities of the south, like the

Swiss of the Châteauvieux, and will arrive at Paris to-morrow; Sunday he

will be present at the _fête_ with his companions--with the two

Mainvielle--with Pegtavin;--with all those cold-blooded scoundrels who

have killed in one night sixty-eight defenceless persons, and violated

females before they murdered them. Catiline!--Cethegus!--march forward,

the soldiers of Sylla are in the city, and the consul himself undertakes

to disarm the Romans. The measure is full,--it overflows!"

Pétion strove miserably to justify himself in a letter in which his

weakness and connivance revealed themselves beneath the multiplicity of

excuses. At the same time Robespierre, mounting the tribune of the

Jacobins, exclaimed, "You do not trace to their source the obstacles

that oppose the expansion of the sentiments of the people. Against whom

think you that you have to strive? against the aristocracy?--No. Against

the court?--No. Against a general who has long entertained great designs

against the people. It is not the national guard that views these

preparations with alarm; it is the genius of La Fayette that conspires

in the staff; it is the genius of La Fayette that conspires in the

directory of the department; it is the genius of La Fayette that

perverts the minds of so many good citizens in the capital who would but

for him be with us.

"La Fayette is the most dangerous of the enemies of liberty, because he

wears the mask of patriotism; it is he who, after having wrought all the

evil in his power in the Constituent Assembly, has affected to withdraw

to his estates, and then comes to strive for this post of mayor of

Paris, not to obtain it, but to refuse it, in order to affect

disinterestedness; it is he who has been appointed to the command of the

French armies, in order to turn them against the Revolution. The

national guards of Metz were as innocent as those of Paris, they can be

nothing but patriots; it is La Fayette who, through the medium of

Bouillé his relation and accomplice, has deceived them. How can we

inscribe on the banners of this fête, _Bouillé is alone guilty_? Who

sought to stifle the revolt at Nancy, and cover it with an impenetrable

veil? Who demands crowns for the assassins of the soldiers of

Châteauvieux? La Fayette. Who prevented me from speaking? La Fayette.

Who are those who now dart such threatening glances at me? La Fayette

and his accomplices." (Loud applause.)

XIX.

The preparations for this ceremony gave rise to a still more exciting

drama at the National Assembly. At the opening of the sitting, a member

demanded that the forty soldiers of Châteauvieux should be admitted to

pay their respects to the legislative body. M. de Jaucourt opposed it:

"If these soldiers," said he, "are only admitted to express their

gratitude, I consent to their being admitted to the bar; but I demand

that afterwards they be not allowed to remain during the debate." The

speaker was interrupted by loud murmurs, and cries of _à bas! à bas!_

from the tribunes. "An amnesty is neither a triumph nor a civic crown,"

continued he; "you cannot dishonour the names of the brave Désilles, or

of those generous citizens who perished defending the laws against them;

you cannot lacerate by this triumph the hearts of those among you who

took part in the expedition of Nancy. Allow a soldier, who was ordered

on this expedition with his regiment, to point out to you the effects

this decision would have on the army. (The murmurs redouble.) The army

will see in your conduct only an encouragement to insurrection; and

these honours will lead the soldiers to believe that you look on these

men, whom an amnesty has freed, not as men whose punishment was too

severe, but as innocent victims." The tumult here became so great that

M. de Jaucourt was forced to descend. But one of the members, who, it is

evident to all, was almost overpowered by emotion, took his place. It

was M. de Gouvion, a young officer, whose name was already gloriously

inscribed in the early pages of the annals of our wars. He was clothed

in deep black, and every feature of his face wore an expression of

intense grief, which inspired the Assembly with involuntary interest,

and the tumult was instantly changed into attention. His voice was

tremulous and scarcely audible at first; it was evident that indignation

as much as sorrow choked his utterance.

"Gentlemen," said he, "I had a brother, a good patriot, who, through the

estimation in which he was held by his fellow citizens, had been

successively elected commandant of the national guard, and member for

the department. Ever ready to sacrifice himself for the revolution and

the law, it was in the name of the revolution and the law that he was

called upon to march to Nancy at the head of the brave national guards,

and there he fell pierced by five bayonet-wounds, and by the hand of

those who, ... I demand, if I am condemned to behold here the assassins

of my brother." "Well, then, leave the chamber," cried a stern voice.

The tribunes applauded this speech, more cruel and poignant than the

thrust of a dagger. Indignation enabled M. de Gouvion to overcome his

contempt. "Who is the dastard who himself in order to insult the grief

of a brother?" cried he, glancing around to discover the speaker. "I

will tell my name--'tis I," replied the deputy Choudieu, rising from his

seat. Loud applause from the tribunes followed this insult of

Choudieu's; it would seem as though this crowd had no longer any

feeling, and that passion triumphed over nature. But M. de Gouvion was

sustained by a sentiment stronger than popular fury--that of generous

despair; he continued: "As a man, I applauded the clemency of the

National Assembly when it burst the fetters of these unhappy soldiers

who were misled." He was again interrupted, but continued: "the decrees

of the Constituent Assembly, the orders of the king, the voice of their

officers, the cries of their country, all were unavailing; without

provocation on the part of the national guards of the two departments,

they fired on Frenchmen, and my brother fell a victim to his obedience

to the laws. No, I cannot remain silent, so long as the memory of the

national guards is disgraced by the honours decreed to these men who

murdered them."

Couthon, a young Jacobin, seated not far from Robespierre, from whose

eyes he seemed to gain his secret inspirations, rose and replied to

Gouvion, without insulting him. "Who is the slave of prejudices that

would venture to dishonour men whom the law has absolved; who would not

repress his personal grief in the interest and the triumph of liberty?"

But Gouvion's voice touched that chord of justice and natural emotion

that always vibrates beneath the insensibility of opinion. Twice did the

Assembly, summoned by the president to vote for or against their

admission to the debate, rise in an even number for and against this

motion. And the secretaries, the judges of these decisions, hesitated to

pronounce on which side the majority was; they at length, after two

attempts, declared that the majority was in favour of the admission of

the Swiss; but the minority protested, and the _appel nominal_ was

demanded. This pronounced a feeble majority that the Swiss should be

admitted; and they instantly entered, amidst the applause of the

tribunes, whilst the unfortunate Gouvion left the chamber by the

opposite door, his forehead scarlet with indignation, and vowing never

to set foot in that Assembly, where he was forced to behold and welcome

the murderers of his brother. He instantly applied to the minister of

war to join the army of the north, and fell there.

XX.

The soldiers were introduced, and Collot d'Herbois presented them to the

admiring tribunes. The national guard of Versailles, who had followed

them to the Assembly, defiled in the hall amidst the sound of drums, and

cries of "_Vive la Nation!_" Groups of citizens and females of Paris,

with tricoloured flags and pikes brandished over their heads, followed

them; then the members of the popular societies of Paris presented to

the president flags of honour given to the Swiss by the departments

which these conquerors had just traversed. The men of the 14th of July,

with Gouchon, the agitator of the faubourg St. Antoine, as their

spokesman, announced that this faubourg had fabricated 10,000 pikes to

defend their liberties and their country. This legitimate ovation,

offered by the Girondists and Jacobins to undisciplined soldiers,

authorised the people of Paris to decree to them the triumph of such an

infamous proceeding (_le triomphe du scandale_).

It was no longer the people of liberty, but the people of anarchy; the

day of the 15th of April combined all its emblems. Revolt armed against

the laws, for instance, mutinous soldiers as conquerors; a colossal

galley, an instrument of punishment and shame, crowned with flowers as

an emblem; abandoned women and girls, collected from the lowest haunts

of infamy, carrying and kissing the broken fetters of these

galley-slaves; forty trophies, bearing the forty names of these Swiss;

civic crowns on the names of these murderers of citizens; busts of

Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Sidney, the greatest philosophers and most

virtuous patriots, mingled with the ignoble busts of these malefactors,

and sullied by the contact; these soldiers themselves, astonished if not

ashamed of their glory, advancing in the midst of a group of rebellious

French-guard, in all the glorification of the forsaking of flags and

want of discipline; the march closed by a car imitating in its form the

prow of a galley, in this car the statue of Liberty armed in

anticipation with the bludgeon of September, and wearing the _bonnet

rouge_, an emblem borrowed from Phrygia by some, from the galleys by

others; the book of the constitution carried processionally in this

fête, as if to be present at the homage decreed to those who were armed

against the laws; bands of male and female citizens, the pikes of the

faubourg, the absence of the civic bayonets, fierce threats, theatrical

music, demagogic hymns, derisive halts at the Bastille, the

Hôtel-de-Ville, the Champ-de-Mars; at the altar of the country the vast

and tumultuous rounds danced several times by chains of men and women

round the triumphal galley, amidst the foul chorus of the air of the

_Carmagnole_; embraces, more obscene than patriotic, between these women

and the soldiers, who threw themselves into each others' arms; and in

order to put the cope-stone on this debasement of the laws, Pétion the

Maire of Paris, the magistrates of the people assisting personally at

this fête, and sanctioning this insolent triumph over the laws by their

weakness or their complicity. Such was this fête: an humiliating copy of

the 14th of July, an infamous parody of an insurrection, which parodied

a revolution!

France blushed; good citizens were alarmed; the national guard began to

be afraid of pikes; the city to fear the faubourgs, and the army herein

received the signal of the most entire disorganisation.

The indignation of the constitutional party burst forth in ironical

strophes in a hymn of André Chénier, in which that young poet avenged

the laws, and marked himself out for the scaffold.

"Salut divin triomphe! Entre dans nos murailles!

Rends nous ces soldats, illustrés

Par le sang de Désilles et par les funérailles

De nos citoyens massacrés!"[16]