I.
The echo of these triumphs of insubordination and murder was felt every
where in the mutinous conduct of the troops, the disobedience of the
national guard, and the risings of the populace; whilst at Paris they
_fêted_ the Swiss of Châteauvieux, the mob of Marseilles demanded with
much violence that the Swiss regiment of _Ernst_ should be expelled from
the garrison at Aix, under pretext that they favoured the aristocracy,
and that the security of Provence was thereby menaced. On the refusal of
this regiment to quit the city, the Marseillaise marched upon Aix as the
Parisians had marched upon Versailles in the days of October. They by
violence compelled the national guard to accompany them, who had been
destined to repress them; they surrounded the regiment of Ernst with
cannon, made them lay down their arms, and shamefully drove them before
sedition. The national guard, a force essentially revolutionary, because
it participates, like the people, in the opinions, feelings, and
passions, which, as a civic guard, it ought to repress, followed in
every direction, from weakness or example, the fickle impressions of the
mob. How could men, just leaving clubs, where they had been listening
to, applauding, and frequently exciting sedition in patriotic
discourses,--how could they, changing their feelings and part at the
door of popular societies, take arms against the seditious? Thus they
remained spectators, when they were not accomplices, of insurrections.
The scarcity of colonial produce, the dearness of grain, the rigour of a
hard winter, all contributed to disturb the people: the agitators turned
all these misfortunes of the times into accusations and grounds of
hatred against royalty.
II.
The government, powerless and disarmed, was rendered responsible for the
severities of nature. Secret emissaries, armed bands, went amongst the
towns and cities where markets were held, and there disseminated the
most alarming reports, provoking the people to tax grain and flour,
stigmatising the corn-dealers as monopolists--the perfidious charge of
monopoly being a sure sentence of death. The fear of being accused of
starving the people checked every speculation of business, and tended
much more than actual want to the dearth of the markets. Nothing is so
scarce as a commodity which is concealed. The corn-stores were crimes in
the eyes of consumers of bread. The Maire of Etampes, Simoneau, an
honest man, and an intrepid magistrate, was one victim sacrificed to the
people's suspicions. Etampes was one of the great markets that supplied
Paris. It was therefore necessary for it to preserve the liberty of
commerce and the supply of flour. A mob, composed of men and women of
the adjacent villages, assembling at the sound of the tocsin, marched
upon the city one market-day, preceded by drums, armed with guns and
pitchforks, in order to carry off the grain by force from the
proprietors, divide it amongst themselves, and to exterminate, as they
declared, the monopolists, amongst whom sinister voices mingled in low
tones the name of Simoneau. The national guard disappeared, a detachment
of one hundred men of the eighteenth regiment of cavalry were at
Etampes, and the sole force at the Maire's disposal.
The officer answered for these soldiers _as for himself_. After long
conversations with the seditious, to bring them back to reason and the
law, Simoneau returned to the _maison commune_, ordered the red flag to
be unfurled, proclaimed martial law, and then advanced upon the rebels,
surrounded by the municipal body, and in the centre of the armed force;
on reaching the square of the town, the crowd surrounded and cut off the
detachment. The troopers left the Maire exposed--not one drew his sword
in his defence. In vain did he summon them, in the name of the law, and
by the weapons they wore, to render aid to the magistrate against
assassins--in vain did he seize the bridle of one of the horsemen near
him, crying, "_Help, my friends_."
Struck by blows of pitchforks and guns, at the moment when he appealed
to the soldiery, he fell, shot, grasping in his hands the bridle of the
cowardly trooper whom he was entreating: the fellow, in order to
disengage himself, struck with the back of his sabre the arm of the
Maire already dead, and left his body to the insults of the people. The
miscreants, remaining in possession of the carcase, brutally mangled the
palpitating limbs, and deliberated together as to cutting off the head.
The leaders made their followers defile passing over the body of the
Maire, and trampling in his blood. Then they went away beating their
drums, and went to get drunk in the suburbs; and the taking away the
grain, the apparent motive of the riot, was neglected in the moment of
triumph. There was no pillage--either the blood made the people forget
their hunger, or their hunger was but the pretext for assassination.
III.
At the moment when all was thus crumbling to pieces round the throne, a
man, celebrated by the vast part attributed to him in the common ruin,
sought to reconcile himself with the king: this was Louis-Philippe
Joseph, Duc d'Orléans, first prince of the blood. I pause for this man,
before whom history has hitherto paused, without being able to discover
the real place which should be assigned to him amongst the passing
events. An enigma to himself, he remains an enigma for posterity. Was
the real solution of this enigma ambition or patriotism, weakness or
conspiracy? Let facts reply.
Public opinion has its prejudices. Struck by the immensity of the work
it accomplishes; giddy, as it were, by the rapidity of the movement
which urges things on, it cannot believe that a series of natural
causes, combined by Providence with the rise of certain ideas in the
human mind, and aided by the coincidence of the times, can of itself
produce such vast commotions. It seeks, then, the supernatural--the
wonderful--fatality. It takes pleasure in imagining latent causes acting
with mystery, and compelling with hidden hand men and events. It takes,
in a word, every revolution for a conspiracy; and if it meets at
starting, in the middle, or at the end of such crises some leading man,
to whose interest these events may tend, it supposes itself the author,
attributes to itself all the action of these revolutions, and all the
scope of idea that accomplishes them; and, fortunate or unfortunate,
innocent or guilty, claims for itself all the glory or demerit of the
result. It renders its name divine, or its memory accursed. Such, for
fifty years, was the destiny of the Duc d'Orleans.
IV.
It is a historic tradition amongst people from the highest antiquity,
that the throne wears out royal races, and that whilst the reigning
branches grow enervated by the possession of empire, younger branches
become stronger and greater, by nourishing the ambition of becoming more
powerful, and inspiring more closely to the people an air less corrupt
than that which pervades courts. Thus, whilst primogeniture gives power
to the elder, the people confer popularity on the juniors.
This singularity of a handsomer and more popular family than the
reigning family, increasing near the throne, and having a dangerous
rivalry with the throne in the mind of the nation, had always existed in
the house of Orleans, since the time of Louis XIV. If this equivocal
situation gave to the princes of this family some virtues, it gave them
also corresponding vices. More intelligent and more ambitious than the
king's sons, they were also more restless. The very restraint in which
the policy of the reigning house kept them, condemned their idea or
their courage to inaction, and forced them to misapply, in
irregularities or indolence, the faculties with which nature had endowed
them, and the immense fortune for which they had no other occupation:
too great for citizens, too dangerous at the head of armies or in
affairs, they had no place either amongst the people or at court; and
thus they assumed it in opinion.
The Regent, a very superior man, long kept down by the inferiority of
his part, had been the most brilliant example of all the virtues and all
the vices of the blood of Orleans. Since the Regent, the princes
endowed, like himself, with natural wit and courage, had felt the glory
of great actions in their early youth. They had then again fallen back
into obscurity, pleasures or devotion, by the jealousy of the reigning
house. At the first show of brilliancy attached to their name, it had
been darkened. Guilty by their very merit, their name urged them on to
glory; and as soon as they proved themselves deserving, it was
forbidden to them. These princes were destined to transmit with their
family honours that impatience of a change of government which allows
them to be men.
Louis-Philippe Joseph, Duc d'Orleans, was born at the precise epoch,
when his rank, fortune, and character were to throw him into a current
of new ideas, which his family passions called on him to favour, and
into which, once drawn, it would be impossible for him to pause except
at the throne or the scaffold. He was twenty when the first symptoms of
the Revolution manifested themselves.
He was handsome, like all his race. Slender figure, firm step, smiling
countenance, piercing glance, limbs made supple by all bodily exercises,
with a heart disposed to love, and a splendid horseman, that great
accomplishment of princes; a condescension void of familiarity, a ready
eloquence, unquestionable courage, liberal to the arts, even to
extravagance; those faults which are only due to the luxuries of the
age, all marked him out as a popular favourite. He took every advantage
of it; and, perhaps, his early intoxication with it somewhat affected
his natural good sense. The love of the people appeared to him a means
of avenging himself for the contempt in which the court neglected him.
In his mind he braved the king of Versailles, feeling himself king of
Paris.
He had married a princess of a race as beloved by the people; the only
daughter of the Duc de Penthièvre. Lovely, amiable, and virtuous, she
brought to her husband as dowry, with the vast fortune of the Duc de
Penthièvre, that amount of consideration and public esteem which
belonged to her house. The first political act of the Duc d'Orleans was
a bold resistance to the wishes of the court, at the period of the
exile of the parliaments. Exiled himself in his chateau of
_Villars-Cotterêts_, the esteem and interest of the people followed him.
The applauses of France sweetened the disgrace of the court. He believed
that he comprehended the part of a great citizen in a free country; he
desired to do so. He forgot too easily, in the atmosphere of adulation
which surrounded him, that a man is not a great citizen only to please
the people, but to defend--serve--and frequently to resist them.
Returned to Paris, he was desirous of joining the _prestige_ of glory of
arms to the civic crowns, with which his name was already decorated. He
solicited of the court the dignity of _grand-admiral_ of France, the
survivorship of which belonged to him, after the Duc de Penthièvre, his
father-in-law. He was refused. He embarked as a volunteer on board the
fleet, commanded by the Comte d'Orvilliers, and was at the battle of
Ouessant on the 17th of July, 1778. The results of this fight, when
victory remained without conquest, in consequence of a false
manoeuvre, were imputed to the weakness of Duc d'Orleans, who wished
to check the pursuit of the enemy. This dishonouring report, invented
and disseminated by court hatred, soured the resentments of the young
prince, but could not hide the brilliancy of his courage, which he
displayed in caprices unworthy of his rank. At St. Cloud he sprang into
the first balloon that carried aerial navigators into space. Calumny
followed him even there, and a report was spread that he had burst the
balloon with a thrust of his sword, in order to compel his companions to
descend. Then arose between the court and himself a continual struggle
of boldness on the one hand and slander on the other. The king treated
him, however, with the indulgence which virtue testifies for youth's
follies. The Comte d'Artois took him as the constant companion of his
pleasures. The queen, who liked the Comte d'Artois, feared for him the
contagion of the disorders and amours of the Duc d'Orleans. She hated
equally in this young prince the favourite of the people of Paris and
the corrupter of the Comte d'Artois. She made the king purchase the
almost royal palace of St. Cloud, the favourite seat of the Duc
d'Orleans. Infamous insinuations against him were incessantly
transpiring from the half confidences of courtiers. He was accused of
having induced courtezans to poison the blood of the Prince de Lamballe,
his brother-in-law, and of having enervated him in debauches, in order
that he might be the sole heir of the immense property of the house of
Penthièvre. This crime was the pure invention of malice.
Thus persecuted by the animosity of the court, the Duc d'Orleans was
more and more driven to retirement. In his frequent visits to England he
formed a close intimacy with the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne,
who took for his friends all the enemies of his father; playing with
sedition, dishonoured by debts, of scandalous life, prolonging beyond
the usual term those excesses of princes--horses, pleasure of the table,
gaming, women; abetting the intrigues of Fox, Sheridan and Burke, and
prefacing his advent to royal power by all the audacity of a refractory
son and a factious citizen.
The Duc d'Orleans thus tasted of the joys of liberty in a London life.
He brought back to France habits of insolence against the court, a taste
for popular disturbances, contempt for his own rank, familiarity with
the multitude, a citizen's life in a palace, and that simple style of
dress, which by abandoning the uniform of the French nobility, and
blending attire generally, soon destroyed all inequalities of costume
amongst citizens.
Then given up entirely to the exclusive care of repairing his impaired
fortune, the Duc d'Orleans constructed the _Palais Royal_. He changed
the noble and spacious gardens of his palace into a market of luxury,
devoted by day to traffic, and by night to play and debauchery--a
complete sink of iniquities, built in the heart of the capital--a work
of cupidity which antique manners never could forgive this prince; and
which, being gradually adopted like the forum by the indolence of the
Parisian population, was destined to become the cradle of the
Revolution. This Revolution was striding onwards. The prince awaited it
in supineness, as if liberty of the world had been but one more
mistress.
His well-known hatred against the court had naturally drawn into his
acquaintance all who desired a change. The Palais Royal was the elegant
centre of a conspiracy with open doors, for the reform of government:
the philosophy of the age there encountered politics and literature: it
was the palace of opinion. Buffon came there constantly to pass the
latter evenings of his life. Rousseau there received at a distance the
only worship which his proud sensitiveness would accept even from
princes. Franklin and the American republicans; Gibbon and the orators
of the English opposition, Grimm and the German philosophers, Diderot,
Siéyès, Sillery, Laclos, Suard, Florian, Raynal, La Harpe, and all the
thinkers or writers who anticipated the new mind, met there with
celebrated artists and _savans_. Voltaire himself, proscribed from
Versailles by the human respect of a court, which admired his genius,
had arrived thither on his last journey. The prince presented to him his
children, one of whom reigns to-day over France. The dying philosopher
blessed them, as he did those of Franklin, in the name of reason and
liberty.
V.
If the prince himself had not a love of literature and a highly refined
mind, he had sufficiently cultivated his mind to appreciate perfectly
the pleasures of the understanding; but the revolutionary feeling
instinctively counselled him to surround himself with all the strength
that might one day serve liberty. Early tired of the beauty and virtue
of the Duchesse d'Orleans, he had conceived for a lovely, witty,
insinuating woman a sentiment which did not enchain the caprices of his
heart, but which controlled his inconsistency and directed his mind.
This woman, then seducing and since celebrated, was the Comtesse de
Sillery-Genlis, daughter of the Marquis Ducret de Saint Aubin, a
gentleman of Charolais, without fortune. Her mother, who was still young
and handsome, had brought her to Paris, to the house of M. de la
Popelinière, a celebrated financier, whose old age she had taken
captive. She educated her daughter for that doubtful destiny which
awaits women on whom nature has lavished beauty and mind, and to whom
society has refused their right position--adventuresses in society,
sometimes raised, sometimes degraded.
The first masters formed this child by all the arts of mind and
hand--her mother directed her to ambition. The second-rate position of
this mother at the house of her opulent protector, formed the child to
the plasticity and adulation which her mother's domestic condition
required and illustrated. At sixteen years of age her precocious beauty
and musical talent caused her to be already sought in the _salons_. Her
mother produced her there in the dubious publicity between the theatre
and the world. An _artiste_ for some, she was, with others, a well
educated girl; all were attracted by her: old men forgot their age.
Buffon called her "_ma fille_." Her relationship with Madame de
Montesson, widow of the Duc d'Orleans, gave her a footing in the house
of the young prince. The Comte de Sillery-Genlis fell in love with her,
and married her in spite of his family's opposition. Friend and
confidant of the Duc d'Orleans, the Comte de Sillery obtained for his
wife a place at the court of the Duchesse d'Orleans. Time and her
ability did the rest.
The duke attached himself to her with the twofold power of admiration
for her beauty and admiration of her superior understanding--the one
empire confirmed the other. The complaints of the insulted duchess only
made the duke more obstinate in his liking. He was governed, and
desirous of having his feelings honoured, he announced it openly, merely
seeking to colour it under the pretext of the education of his children.
The Comtesse de Genlis followed at the same time the ambition of courts
and the reputation of literature. She wrote with elegance those light
works which amuse a woman's idle hours, whilst they lead their hearts
astray into imaginary amours. Romances, which are to the west what opium
is to the Orientals, waking day-dreams, had become necessities and
events for the _salons_. Madame de Genlis wrote in a graceful style, and
clothed her characters and ideas with a certain affectation of austerity
which gave a becomingness to love: she moreover affected an universal
acquaintance with the sciences, which made her sex disappear before the
pretensions of her mind, and which recalled in her person those women of
Italy who profess philosophy with a veil over their countenances.
The Duc d'Orleans, an innovator in every thing, believed he had found in
a woman the Mentor for his sons. He nominated her governor of his
children. The duchess, greatly annoyed, protested against this; the
court laughed, and the people were amazed. Opinion, which yields to all
who brave it, murmured, and then was silent. The future proved that the
father was right: the pupils of this lady were not princes but men. She
attracted to the Palais Royal all the dictators of public opinion. The
first club in France was thus held in the very apartments of a prince of
the blood. Literature, concealed from without these meetings as the
madness of the first Brutus concealed his vengeance. The duke was not,
perhaps, a conspirator, but henceforth there was an Orleans party.
Siéyès, the mystic oracle of the Revolution, who seemed to carry it on
his pensive front, and brood over it in silence; the Duc de Lauzun,
passing from the confidence of Trianon to the consultations of the
Palais Royal; Laclos, a young officer of artillery, author of an obscene
romance, capable at need of elevating romantic intrigue to a political
conspiracy; Sillery, soured against his order, at enmity with the court,
an ambitious malcontent, awaiting nothing but what the future might
bring forth; and others more obscure, but not less active, and serving
as unknown guides for descending from the _salons_ of a prince into the
depths of the people: some the head, others the arms, of the duke's
ambition, attended these meetings. Perhaps they might be ignorant of the
aim, but they placed themselves on the declivity, and allowed Fortune to
do as she pleased. Fortune was a revolution. The wonderful, that marvel
of the masses, which is to the imagination what calculation is to
reason, was not wanting to the Orleans party. Prophecies, those popular
presentiments of destiny, domestic prodigies, admitted by the interested
credulity of numerous clients of this house, announced the throne
shortly to one of these princes. These rumours were rife amongst the
people, from themselves, or the skilful insinuations of the partisans of
the house of Orleans. In the convocation of States-General, the duke had
not hesitated to pronounce in favour of the most popular reforms. The
instructions which he had drawn up for the electors of his dominions
were the work of the abbé Siéyès. The prince himself intrigued for the
name and style of _Citoyen_. Elected deputy of the noblesse of Paris at
Crespy and at Villars-Cotterêts, he selected Crespy, because the
electors of this bailiwick were the more patriotic. At the procession of
the States-General he left his own place vacant amongst the princes, and
walked in the midst of the deputies. This abdication of his dignity near
the throne to assume the dignity of a citizen, procured him the
applauses of the nation.
VI.
Public favour towards him was such that had he been a Duc de Guise, and
Louis XVI. a Henry III., the States-General would have finished, as did
those of Blois, by an assassination or usurpation. Uniting with the
_tiers état_, to obtain equality and the friendship of the nation
against the nobility, he took the oath of the Tennis Court. He took his
place behind Mirabeau, to disobey the king. Nominated president by the
National Assembly, he refused this honour in order to remain a citizen.
The day on which the dismissal of Necker betrayed the hostile projects
of the court, and when the people of Paris named its leaders and
defenders by acclamation, the name of the Duc d'Orleans was the first
uttered. France took in the gardens of the palace the colours of his
livery for a cockade. At the voice of Camille Desmoulins, who uttered
the cry of alarm in the Palais Royal, the populace gathered, Legendre
and Fréron led them; they placed the bust of the Duc d'Orleans beside
that of Necker, covered them with black crape, and promenaded them,
bareheaded themselves, in the presence of the silent citizens. Blood
flowed; the dead body of one of the citizens who carried the busts,
killed by the mob, serving as a standard to the people. The Duc
d'Orleans was thus mixed up from his palace--his name and his
image--with the first struggle and first murder of liberty. This was
enough to make it believed that his hand moved all the threads of
events. Whether from lack of boldness or ambition, he never assumed the
appearance of the part which public opinion assigned to him. He did not
then appear to push things beyond the conquest of a constitution for his
country, and the character of a great patriot for himself. He respected
or despised the throne. One or other of these feelings gave him
importance in the eyes of history. All the world was of his party except
himself.
Impartial men did honour to his moderation, the revolutionists imputed
shame to his character. Mirabeau, who was seeking a pretender to
personify the revolt, had had secret interviews with the Duc d'Orleans;
had tested his ambition, to judge if it aspired to the throne. He had
left him dissatisfied; he had even betrayed his dissatisfaction by angry
phrases. Mirabeau required a conspirator; he had only found a patriot.
What he despised in the Duc d'Orleans was not the meditation of a crime,
but the refusal to be his accomplice. He had not anticipated such
scruples; he revenged himself by terming this carelessness about the
throne the cowardice of an ambitious man.
La Fayette instinctively hated in the Duc d'Orleans an influential
rival. He accused the prince of fomenting troubles which he felt himself
powerless to repress. It was asserted that the Duc d'Orleans and
Mirabeau had been seen mingled with groups of men and women, and
pointing to the château. Mirabeau defended himself by a smile of
contempt. The Duc d'Orleans proved his innocence in a more serious
manner. An assassination which should kill the king or queen would still
leave the monarchy, the laws of the kingdom, and the princes inheritors
of the throne. He could not mount to it except over the dead bodies of
five persons placed by nature between himself and his ambition. These
steps of crime could only have incurred the execrations of the nation,
and must have even wearied the assassins themselves. Besides, he proved
by numerous and undeniable witnesses that he had not gone to Versailles
either on the 4th or 5th of October. Quitting Versailles on the 3rd,
after the sitting of the National Assembly, he had returned to Paris. He
had passed the day of the 4th in his palace and gardens at Mousseaux. On
the 5th, he again was at Mousseaux; his cabriolet having broken down on
the boulevard, he had gone on foot by the Champs Elysées. He had passed
the day at Passy with his children and Madame de Genlis. He had supped
at Mousseaux with some intimate friends, and slept again in Paris. It
was not until the 6th, in the morning, that, informed of the events of
the previous evening, he had gone to Versailles, and that his carriage
had been stopped at the bridge of Sèvres, by the mob carrying the
bleeding heads of the king's guard.[17] If this was not the conduct of a
prince of the blood, who flies to the succour of his king and places
himself at the foot of the throne, between the threatened sovereign and
the people, neither was it that of an audacious usurper who tempts
revolt by occasion, and at least presents to the people a completed
crime.
The conduct of this prince was but that of one who looks to a contingent
reversion: either that he would not receive the crown except by a
fatality of events, and without thrusting forth his hand to fortune, or
that he had more indifference than ambition for supreme power, or that
he would not place his royalty as a check upon the way of liberty; that
he sincerely desired a republic, and that the title of first citizen of
a free nation appeared to him greater than that of king.
VII.
However, a short time after the days of the 5th and 6th October, La
Fayette desired to break off the intimacy between the Duc d'Orleans and
Mirabeau. He resolved at all risks to compel the prince to remove from
the scene, and by an exercise of moral restraint or the fear of a state
prosecution, to absent himself and go to London. He made the king and
queen enter into his plans, by alarming them as to the prince's
intrigues, and designating him as a competitor for the throne. La
Fayette said one day to the queen, that this prince was the only man
upon whom the suspicion of so lofty an ambition could fall. "Sir,"
replied the queen, with a look of incredulity, "is it necessary then to
be a prince in order to pretend to the throne?" "At least, madam,"
replied the general, "I only know the Duc d'Orleans who aspires to it."
La Fayette presumed too much on the prince's ambition.
VIII.
Mirabeau, discouraged at the hesitations and scruples of the Duc
d'Orleans, and finding him above or below crime, cast him off like a
despised accomplice of ambition, and tried to ally himself with La
Fayette, who, possessed of the armed force, and who saw in Mirabeau the
whole of the moral force, smiled at the idea of a duumvirate, which
could assume to themselves empire. There were secret interviews at Paris
and at Passy between these two rivals. La Fayette rejecting every idea
of an usurpation profitable to the prince, declared to Mirabeau that he
must renounce every conceived plot against the queen if he would come
to an understanding with him. "Well, general," replied Mirabeau, "since
you will have it so, let her live! A humbled queen may be fit for
something, but a queen with her throat cut is only good as the subject
of a bad tragedy!" This atrocious remark, which treated the bloodshed of
a woman as a jest, was subsequently known by the queen, who however
forgave Mirabeau, and did not allow it to interfere with her _liaisons_
with the great orator. But the cold-blooded infamy must have found its
way to her heart as an ominous warning of what she might fear hereafter.
La Fayette, sure of the consent of the king and queen, supported by the
feelings of the national guard, who were growing weary of factions and
the factious, ventured to assume quietly towards the prince the tone of
a dictator, and to pronounce against him an arbitrary exile under the
appearance of a mission freely accepted. He sent to request of the Duc
d'Orleans a meeting at the Marquise de Coigny's, a noble intelligent
lady attached to La Fayette, and in whose _salon_ the Duc d'Orleans
occasionally met him. After a conversation, heard by the walls alone,
but the result of which showed its tenor, and which Mirabeau, to whom it
was communicated, termed _very imperious on the one side, and very
resigned on the other_, it was agreed that the Duc d'Orleans should
forthwith set out for London. The friends of the prince induced him to
change his resolution that same night, and he sent La Fayette a note to
this effect. La Fayette requested another interview, in which he called
upon him to keep his word, enjoined him to depart in twenty-four hours,
and then conducted him to the king. There the prince accepted the
feigned mission, and promised to leave nothing neglected to expose in
England the plots of the conspirators of the kingdom. "You are more
interested than any one," said La Fayette in the king's presence, "for
no one is more compromised than yourself." Mirabeau, cognisant of this
oppression of La Fayette and the court over the mind of the Duc
d'Orleans, offered his services to the duke, and tempted him with the
last offers of supreme power. The subject of his address to the Assembly
was already prepared: he intended to denounce, as a conspiracy of
despotism, this _coup d'état_ against one citizen, in which the liberty
of all citizens was attempted. "This violation of the inviolability of
the representatives of the nation in the palpable exile of a prince of
the blood; he was to point out La Fayette, making use of the royal hand
to strike the rivals of his popularity, and to cover his own insolent
dictatorship under the venerated sanction of the chief of the nation and
the head of the family." Mirabeau had no doubt of the resentment of the
Assembly against so odious an attempt, and promised the friends of the
Duc d'Orleans one of those returns of opinion which raise a man to a
higher elevation than that from which he has fallen. This language,
backed by the entreaties of Laclos, Sillery, Lauzun, a second time shook
the prince's resolution. He saw now disgrace in this voluntary exile,
where at first he had only seen magnanimity. At the break of day he
wrote that he declined the mission. La Fayette then sent for him to the
minister for foreign affairs. There the prince, again overcome, wrote to
the Assembly a letter, which destroyed beforehand all the denunciation
of Mirabeau. "My enemies pretend," said the duke to La Fayette, "that
you boast of having against me proofs of my share in the attempts of the
5th of October." "They are rather my enemies who say so," replied La
Fayette: "if I had proofs against you I should already have arrested
you. I have none, but I am seeking for them." The Duc d'Orleans went.
Nine months had passed away since his return. The Constituent Assembly
had left, without any other defence than anarchy, the constitution it
had so lately voted. Disorder prevailed throughout the kingdom: the
first acts of the Legislative Assembly announced the hesitation of a
people which halts on a declivity, but is doomed to descend to the very
bottom.
IX.
The Girondists, at the first step going a-head of the Barnaves and
Lameths, showed a disposition to push France, all unprepared, into a
republic. The Duc d'Orleans, whose long residence in England had allowed
him to reflect at a distance from the attractions of events and
factions, felt his Bourbon blood rise within him. He did not cease to be
a patriot, but he understood that the safety of the country on the brink
of a war was not in the destruction of the executive power.
Unquestionably pity for the king and queen awakened in a heart in which
hatred had not stifled every generous feeling. He felt himself too much
avenged by the days of 5th and 6th October, by the humiliation of the
king before the Assembly, by the daily insults of the populace under the
windows of Marie Antoinette, and by the fearful nights of this family,
whose palace was but a prison; and perhaps also he feared for himself
the ingratitude of revolutions.
He had gone to England on compulsion, and had remained there under the
idea, which was perfectly just, that his name might be used as a pretext
for agitation in Paris. Laclos had gone to him in London from time to
time to try again to tempt the exile's ambition, and make him ashamed of
a deference for La Fayette, which France took to be cowardice. The
prince's pride was roused at this, and he threatened to return; but the
representations of M. de la Luzerne, minister of France in England,
those of M. de Boinville, one of La Fayette's aides-de-camp, and his own
reflections, had prevailed over the incitements of Laclos. Proof of this
is found in a note of M. de la Luzerne's, found in an iron chest amongst
the king's secret papers. "I attest," says M. de la Luzerne, "that I
have presented to M. the Duc d'Orleans, M. de Boinville, aide-de-camp of
M. de La Fayette, that M. de Boinville declared to the Duc d'Orleans
that they were very uneasy as to the troubles which might at this moment
be excited in Paris by malcontents, who would not scruple to make use of
his name to disturb the capital, and perhaps the kingdom; and he was
urged on these grounds to protract the time of his departure. The Duc
d'Orleans, unwilling in any way to afford plea or pretext for any
disturbance of public tranquillity, consented to delay his return."
X.
He at last left England, and on his return made several fruitless
attempts to be again employed in the navy. Whilst his mind was thus
wavering, he received the intelligence, through M. Bertrand de
Molleville, that the king had nominated him to the rank of admiral. The
Duc d'Orleans went to thank the minister, and added that, "He was
rejoiced at the honour the king conferred on him, as it would give him
an opportunity of communicating to the king his real sentiments, which
had been odiously calumniated. I am very unfortunate," continued he; "my
name has been involved in all the crimes imputed to me, and I have been
deemed guilty, because I disdained to justify myself; but time will show
whether my conduct belies my words."
The air of frankness and good faith, and the significant tone with which
the Duc d'Orleans uttered these words, struck the minister, who until
then had been greatly prejudiced against his innocence. He inquired if
his royal highness would consent to repeat these expressions to the
king, as they would rejoice his majesty, and he feared that they might
lose some of their force if repeated by himself. The duke eagerly
embraced the idea of seeing the king, if the king would receive him, and
expressed his intention of presenting himself at the chateau the next
day. The king, informed of this by his minister, awaited the prince, and
had a long and private conference with him.
A confidential document, written with the prince's own hand, and drawn
up in order to justify his memory in the eyes of his children and his
friends, informs us of what passed at this interview. "The
ultra-democrats," said the Duc d'Orleans, "deemed that I wished to make
France a republic; the ambitious, that I wished, by my popularity, to
force the king to resign the administration of the kingdom into my
hands; lastly, the virtuous and patriotic had the illusion of their own
virtue concerning me, for they deemed that I sacrificed myself entirely
to the public good. The one party deemed me worse than I was; the
others, better. I have merely followed my nature, and that impelled me,
above all, to liberty. I fancied I saw her image in the parliaments,
which at least possessed her tone and forms, and I embraced this phantom
of representative freedom. Thrice did I sacrifice myself for those
parliaments; twice from a conviction on my part; the third, not to belie
what I had previously done. I had been in England; I had there seen true
liberty, and I doubted not that the States-General, and France also,
wished to obtain freedom. Scarcely had I foreseen that France would
possess citizens, than I wished to be one of these citizens myself, and
I made unhesitatingly the sacrifice of all the rank and privileges that
separated me from the nation: they cost me nothing; I aspired to be a
deputy--I was one. I sided with the _tiers état_, not from factious
feeling, but from justice. In my opinion, it was impossible to prevent
the completion of the Revolution, although some persons around the king
thought otherwise. The troops were assembled, and surrounded the
National Assembly. Paris imagined it was threatened, and rose _en
masse_; the Gardes Françaises, who lived amongst the people, followed
the stream, and the report was circulated that I had bribed this
regiment with my gold. I will frankly declare my opinion: if the Gardes
Françaises had acted differently, I should in that case have deemed they
had been bought over; for their hostility against the people of Paris
would have been unnatural. My bust was earned with that of M. Necker on
the 14th of July. Why? because this minister, on whom every public hope
reposed, was the idol of the nation, and because my name was amongst the
list of those deputies of the Assembly, who, it was said, were to have
been arrested by the troops summoned to Versailles. Amidst all these
events, so favourable to a factious man, what was my behaviour? I
withdrew from the eyes of the people: I did not flatter their excesses,
but retired to my house at Mousseaux, where I passed the night; and the
next morning I went, unattended, to the National Assembly at Versailles.
At the fortunate moment when the king resolved to cast himself into the
arms of the Assembly, I refused to form one of the deputation of members
despatched to Paris to announce these tidings to the capital, for I
feared lest some of the homages which the city owed to the king alone
might be paid to me. And such was again my conduct on the days of
October; I again absented myself, not to add fresh fuel to the
excitement of the people; and I only reappeared when calm again
prevailed. I was met at Sèvres by the bands of straggling assassins, who
bore back the bleeding heads of the king's guards: these men stopped my
carriage, and fired on the postilion. Thus I, who was the pretended
leader of these men, narrowly escaped being their victim, and owed my
safety to a body of the national guard, who escorted me to Versailles;
and as I went to wait on the king I repressed the last murmurs of the
people in the Cour des Ministres I signed the decree which declared the
Assembly inseparable from the person of the king. It was at this time
that M. de La Fayette called on me, and informed me of the king's desire
that I should quit Paris, in order to afford no pretext for popular
tumult. Convinced now, that the Revolution was accomplished, and only
fearing the troubles with which attempts might be made to fetter its
onward progress, I unhesitatingly obeyed, only demanding the consent of
the National Assembly to my departure; this they granted, and I left
Paris. The inhabitants of Boulogne, who had been worked upon by an
intrigue which may be laid to my charge, but to which I was a stranger,
since I would not yield to it, wished forcibly to detain me, and opposed
my embarkation. I confess I was much touched, but I did not yield to
this violent manifestation of public favour, and I myself persuaded them
to return to their allegiance. Advantage has been taken of this voyage
and my absence to impute to me, without refutation on my part, the most
odious crimes. It was I who wished to force the king to fly with the
Dauphin from Versailles,--but Versailles is not France; the king would
have found his army and the nation when once he left this town, and the
only result of my ambition would be civil war, and, a military
dictatorship given to the king. But the Count de Provence was alive; he
was the natural heir to the throne thus abandoned. He was popular; he
had, like myself, joined the commons,--thus I should only have laboured
for him. But the Count d'Artois was in safety in another country, his
children were secure from my pretended murders, they were nearer the
throne than myself. What a series of follies, absurdities, or useless
crimes! The French nation, amidst the Revolution, have neither changed
their character nor their sentiments. I fully believe that the Count
d'Artois, whom I have myself loved, will prove this. I believe that by
drawing nearer to a monarch whom he loves, and by whom he is loved, and
to a people to whose love his brilliant qualities give him so great a
right, he will, when these troubles have ceased, enjoy this portion of
his inheritance, the love which the most sensible and affectionate of
nations has vowed to the descendants of HENRI IV."
XI.
These excuses, mingled doubtless with expressions of repentance and
tears, and heightened by those attitudes and gestures, more eloquent
than words, that add so much pathos to solemn explanations, convinced
the heart if not the mind of the king; and he forgave--he excused, and
he trusted. "I am of your opinion," said he to his minister, yet a prey
to the emotion of this scene, "that the Duc d'Orleans really regrets his
past errors, and that he will do all in his power to repair the evil he
has done, and in which perhaps he has not had so great a share as we
believed."
The prince left the king's apartments reconciled with himself, and more
than ever resolved to withdraw himself from the factious party. It had
cost him but little to sacrifice his ambition, for he had none; and his
popularity of her own accord had quitted him for other men of inferior
rank and station than his own, and he could only hope to find security
and an honourable refuge at the foot of the throne, to which he was
alike guided by inclination and duty. Louis XVI. as a man had far more
influence over him than as a king, but the adulation and resentment of
the court ruined all.
The Sunday following this reconciliation, the Duc d'Orleans presented
himself at the Tuileries to pay his respects to the king and queen. It
was the day and hour of the _grandes receptions_, and crowds of
courtiers thronged the courts, the staircases, the corridors, some
hoping that fortune might yet be propitious; others, come from the
provinces to the court of their unfortunate master, drawn thither by the
double tie of misfortune and fidelity. At the sight of the Duc
d'Orleans, whose reconciliation with the king had not as yet transpired,
astonishment and horror appeared on every face, and an indignant murmur
followed the announcement of his name. The crowd opened and shrank from
him, as though his touch was odious to them. In vain did he seek one
glance of respect or welcome amongst all these gloomy visages. As be
approached the king's chamber, the courtiers and guards barred his
entrance by turning their backs, and crowding together as if by
accident, repulsed him: he entered the apartments of the queen, where
the royal family's dinner was prepared. "Look to the dishes," cried
voices, as though some public and well-known poisoner had been seen to
enter. The indignant prince turned alternately pale and red, and
imagined that these insults were offered him, at the instigation of the
queen, and the order of the king. As he descended the stairs to quit the
palace, fresh cries and outrages followed him; some even spat on his
coat and head. A poignard stab would have been far less painful to bear
than these withering marks of hatred and contempt. He had entered the
palace appeased, he quitted it implacable; he felt that his only refuge
against the court was in the last ranks of democracy, and he enrolled
himself resolutely in them to find safety or vengeance.
The king and queen, who were soon informed of these insults, of which,
however, they were utterly innocent, took no steps to make any
reparation for them; possibly they were secretly flattered by the wrath
of their adherents, and the humiliation of their enemy. The queen was
too prodigal of her favour, and too hasty in her displeasure; the king
did not want kindness, but grace; one word, such as Henri IV. knew so
well how to employ, would have punished these insulters, and have
brought the prince to his feet, yet he knew not how to say it;
resentment brooded over her wrongs in silence, and destiny took its
course.
XII.
The Duc d'Orleans severed himself on that day from the Girondists, to
whom he was alone held by Pétion and Brissot, and passed over to the
side of the Jacobins; he opened his palace to Danton and Barrère, and no
longer followed any but the extreme party, which he adopted without
hesitation in silence, even to the republic, to regicide, to death.
XIII.
However, the alarm with which the preparations of the emperor inspired
the people, and the mischief excited by the speeches of the Girondists
against the court and the ministers, agitated the capital more and more
every day. At each fresh communication from M. de Lessart, minister of
foreign affairs, the party of the Gironde raised a fresh cry of war and
treason. Fauchet denounced the minister. Brissot exclaimed, "The mask
has fallen,--our enemy is now known,--it is the emperor. The princes,
who hold possessions in Alsace, whose cause he affects to espouse, are
but the pretexts of his hate; and the _emigrés_ themselves are but his
instruments. Let us despise these _emigrés_: it is the duty of the high
national court to execute justice on these mendicant princes. The
electors of the empire are not worthy of your anger; fear causes them
beforehand to prostrate themselves at your feet--a free people does not
crush a fallen foe: strike at the head--this head is the emperor."
He communicated his own ardour to the Assembly; but Brissot, although a
skilful politician, and the able counsellor of his party, did not
possess that sonorous oratory that elevates an opinion to the level of
the voice of a nation. Vergniaud alone was gifted with a soul, in which
was combined all the passion and eloquence of a party: by meditating on
the annals of the past, he elevated his mind to scenes that passed then
analogous to those in which he was an actor, and communicated an
importance and solemnity to every word. "Our revolution," said he at the
same sitting, "has spread alarm amongst every throne, for it has given
an example of the destruction of the despotism that sustains them. Kings
hate our constitution because it renders men free, and because they
would reign over slaves. This hate has been manifested on the part of
the emperor by all the measures he has adopted, to disturb us or to
strengthen our enemies, and encourage those Frenchmen who have rebelled
against the laws of their country. We must not believe that this hate
has ceased to exist, but it must cease to work. The genius of Liberty
watches over our frontiers, which are less defended by our troops and
our national guards than by the enthusiasm of freedom. Liberty, since
its birth, has been the object of a shameful and secret war, waged
against it even in its very cradle. What is this war? Three armies of
reptiles and venomous insects breed and creep in your own breast: one is
composed of paid libellists and hired calumniators, who strive to arm
the two powers against each other by inspiring them with mutual
distrust; the other army, equally dangerous, is composed of seditious
priests, who feel that their God is forsaking them, and that their power
is crumbling away with their _prestige_, and who, to retain their
empire, term vengeance religion, and crime virtue. The third is composed
of greedy speculators and financiers, who can grow rich only on our
ruin: national prosperity would be destruction to their egotistical
speculations; and our death would be their life. They are like those
beasts of prey, who wait the issue of the battle that they may batten
and feast on the corpses of the slain. (Loud applause.)
"They know that the expenses of your preparations for defence are
numerous; and they reckon upon the failure of the credit of the
treasury, and the scarcity of specie; they reckon upon the weariness of
those citizens who have abandoned their wives, their babes, to hasten to
the frontiers, and who will abandon them, whilst millions, distributed
at home, will arouse insurrections, in which the people, armed by
madness, will themselves destroy their rights, whilst they imagine they
are defending them; then the emperor will advance at the head of a
powerful army to rivet your fetters. Such is the war that they make on
you, and that they seek to make. (Loud applause.)
"The people has sworn to maintain the constitution, because in that lies
its honour and its liberty; but if you suffer it to remain in a state of
troubled immobility, that weakens its force and exhausts all our
resources, will not the day of this exhaustion be the last of the
constitution? The state in which we are kept is one of annihilation that
may lead us to disgrace or to death. (Applause.) To arms, citizens! to
arms, freemen! defend your liberty! assure the hope of that liberty to
the whole human race, or you will not deserve even pity in your
misfortunes. (Applause.) We have no other allies than the eternal
justice, whose rights we defend: but is it forbidden us to seek others,
and to interest those powers who, like ourselves are threatened by the
rupture of the equilibrium in Europe? No, doubtless, let us declare to
the emperor, that from this moment all treaties are broken. (Vehement
applause.) The emperor has himself violated them; and if he does not
attack us, it is because he is not yet prepared; but he is unmasked;
felicitate yourselves upon this. The eyes of Europe are fixed upon you,
show them what is really the National Assembly of France. If you display
the dignity that befits the representatives of a great nation, you will
gain esteem, applause, and assistance. If you evince weakness, if you do
not avail yourselves of the occasion offered you by Providence, of
freeing yourselves from a situation that fetters you, dread the
degradation that is prepared for you by the hatred of Europe, of France,
of your own time and of posterity. (Applause.) Do more; demand that your
flag be respected beyond the Rhine; demand that the _emigrés_ be
dispersed. I might demand that they be given up to the country they
insult, and to punishment. But no. If they have been greedy for our
blood, let us not show ourselves greedy for theirs; their crime is
having wished to destroy their country; let them be vagrants and
wanderers on the face of the earth, and let their punishment be never to
find a country. (Applause.) If the emperor delays to answer your
demands, let all delay be deemed a refusal, and every refusal on his
part to explain, a declaration of war. Attack whilst you yet may. If, in
the Saxon wars, Frederic had temporised, the king of Prussia would at
this moment be marquis of Brandenbourg, instead of disputing with
Austria the balance of power in Germany which has escaped from your
grasp.
"Up to this period you have only adopted half measures and I may well
apply to you the language which Demosthenes addressed to the Athenians,
under similar circumstances: 'You act towards the Macedonians,' said he,
'like the barbarians, who combat in our games, towards their
adversaries; when they are struck on the arm they raise their hand to
their arm; if struck on the head, they raise their hand to their head;
they never dream of defending themselves when they are wounded, nor of
parrying the blows dealt them. Does Philip take up arms, you do the
same; does he lay them down, you also lay down yours. If he attack one
of your allies, you immediately despatch a numerous army to the
assistance of your ally. If he attack a city, you despatch a numerous
army to the relief of the city. Does he again lay down his arms, you do
the same, without thinking of any means of forestalling his ambition;
and placing yourself beyond the reach of his attacks. Thus you are at
the orders of your enemy, and he it is who commands your army.'
"And I, I tell you the same of the _emigrés_. Do you hear that they are
at Coblentz,--the citizens hasten to combat them; are they assembled on
the banks of the Rhine,--two _corps d'armée_ are despatched thither; do
foreign powers afford them shelter,--you propose to attack them; do you
learn, on the contrary, that they have withdrawn to the north of
Germany,--you lay down your arms; do they again offend you,--your
indignation is again aroused; do they make you specious promises,--you
are again appeased. Thus, it is the _emigrés_ and the cabinets that
support them--who are your leaders, and who dispose of your counsels,
your treasures, and your armies. (Applause.) It is for you to consider
whether this humiliating part be worthy of a great nation. A thought
flashes across my mind, and with that I will terminate. It appears to
me, that the manes of past generations arise, to conjure you, in the
name of all the evils that slavery has inflicted on them, to preserve
from it future generations, whose destinies are in your hands; fulfil
this prayer, and be for the future a second providence. Associate
yourself with the eternal justice that protects the people. By meriting
the title of benefactors of your country, you will also merit that of
benefactors of the human race."
Loud and prolonged applause succeeded the different emotions that had
been excited by this speech in every heart; for Vergniaud, following the
example of the ancient orators, instead of suffering his eloquence to
grow cold in political combinations, heated it at the flame of his
daring genius. The people comprehends only that which it feels; its sole
orators are those who excite it, and emotion is the conviction of the
populace. Vergniaud felt this, and knew how to communicate it. The
knowledge that they laboured for universal good, and the prospect of the
gratitude of future ages shed a halo--a noble pride around France, and
of sanctity around liberty. It was one of the characteristics of this
orator, that he almost invariably elevated the Revolution to the dignity
of an apostleship, that he extended his humanity to all mankind, and
that he only impassioned and worked upon the people by his virtues; such
words produced an effect over all the empire, against which neither the
king nor his ministers could strive.
XIV.
Moreover, as has been shown, Vergniaud and his party had friends in the
council. M. de Narbonne and the Girondists met and concerted their plans
at Madame de Stäel's, whose _salon_, in which some warlike measure was
always being discussed, was called the camp of the Revolution: the Abbé
Fauchet, the denouncer of M. de Lessart, here imbibed fresh ardour for
the overthrow of this minister. M. de Lessart, by weakening as much as
possible the threats of the court of Vienna and the anger of the
Assembly, sought to gain time for better and wiser resolutions. His
loyal attachment to Louis XVI., and his wise and prudent foresight,
showed him that war would not restore, but shake the throne; and in this
shock of Europe and France, the king would inevitably be crushed. The
attachment of M. de Lessart to his master supplied the place of genius;
he was the only obstacle in the path of the three parties who wished for
war; it was necessary, at all risks, to remove him. He might have
shielded himself by withdrawing from the contest, or by yielding to the
impatience of the Assembly. But, though fully aware of the terrible
responsibility that rested on him, and that this responsibility was
death, he braved all, to afford the king a few days more for
negotiation.--These days were numbered.