I.
Whilst a war to the death impended over the people, and menaced the
king, discord continued to reign in the councils of the ministers. The
minister of war, Servan, was accused by Dumouriez with obeying with
servility, which resembled love rather than complaisance, the influence
of Madame Roland, and of having wholly defeated the plans for the
invasion of Belgium. The friends of Madame Roland, on their side,
threatened Dumouriez that they would make the Assembly demand of him an
account of the six millions of secret expenses, whose destination they
suspected. Already Guadet and Vergniaud had prepared discourses and a
project of a decree to demand a public reckoning for these sums.
Dumouriez, who had bought friends and accomplices with this gold amongst
the Jacobins and the Feuillants, revolted against the suspicion,
refused, in the name of his outraged honour, to make any return of this
expenditure, and boldly offered his resignation. Upon this a great
number of members of the Assembly, Feuillants and Jacobins, Pétion
himself, called at the residence of the insulted minister, and conjured
him to return to his post. He consented, on condition that they would
leave the disposal of these funds to his conscience alone. The
Girondists themselves, intimidated by his retirement, and feeling that a
man of his character was indispensable to their weakness, withdrew their
motion, and passed a vote of public confidence in him. The people
applauded him as he quitted the Assembly. These applauses sounded
gloomily in the council-chamber of Madame Roland. The popularity of
Dumouriez renders her jealous. It was not in her eyes the popularity of
virtue, and she coveted it all for her husband and her party. Roland and
his Girondist colleagues, Servan, Clavière, redoubled their efforts to
influence the mind of the king, and used threats in order to acquire it.
To flatter the Assembly, court the people; irritate the Jacobins against
the court; beset the king by the imperious demand of sacrifices which
they knew were impossible; to injure him silently in opinion as the
cause of all evil, or the obstacle to all good; to compel him, in fact,
by insolence and outrage, to dismiss them that they might afterwards
accuse him of betraying in them the Revolution: such were their tactics,
resulting from their weakness rather than from their ambition.
This feeling of backing the king, whose ministers they were, was the
basis of a conspiracy of which Madame Roland was the origin. At Roland's
there was nothing but ill humour; amongst his colleagues it was a
rivalry of patriotism with Robespierre. At Madame Roland's it was that
passion for a republic which was impatient of any remnant of a throne,
and which smiled complacently at the factions ready to overturn the
monarchy. When factions had arms no longer, Madame Roland and her
friends hastened to lead them.
II.
We see a fatal example in the step of the minister of war, Servan. He,
entirely controlled by Madame Roland, proposed to the National Assembly,
without authority from the king, or the consent of the council, to
assemble round Paris a camp of 20,000 troops. This army, composed of
_fédérés_ chosen from amongst the most enthusiastic persons of the
provinces, would be, as the Girondists believed, a kind of central army
of opinions devoted to the Assembly, counter-balancing the king's guard,
repressing the national guard, and recalling to mind that army of the
parliament which, under the orders of Cromwell, had conducted Charles I.
to the scaffold.
The Assembly, with the exception of the constitutional party, seized on
this idea as hatred seizes the arm which is offered to it. The king felt
the blow; Dumouriez saw through the perfidy, and could not repress his
choler against Servan in the council-chamber. His reproaches were those
of a loyal defender of his king. The replies of Servan were evasive, but
full of provocation. The two ministers laid their hands upon their
swords, and but for the presence of the king, and the intervention of
their colleagues, blood would have flowed in the council-chamber.
The king was desirous of refusing his sanction to the decree for the
20,000 men. "It is too late," said Dumouriez: "your refusal would
display fears too well founded, but which we must take care not to
betray to our enemies. Sanction the decree, I will undertake to
neutralise the danger of the concentration." The king requested time for
consideration.
Next day the Girondists called upon the king to sanction the decree
against the nonjuring priests. They came into direct contact with the
religious conscience of Louis XVI. Supported by that, this prince
declared that he would rather die than sign the persecution of the
church. Dumouriez insisted as much as the Girondists in obtaining this
sanction. The king was inflexible. In vain did Dumouriez represent to
him that by refusing legal measures against the nonjuring priests he
exposed the priests to massacre, and thus made himself responsible for
all the blood that might be shed. In vain did they represent to him that
this refusal would render the ministry unpopular, and thus deprive them
of all hope of saving the monarchy. In vain did they appeal to the
queen, and implore her, by her feelings as a mother, to bend the king to
their wishes. The queen herself was for a long time powerless. At last
the king seemed to hesitate, and gave Dumouriez a private meeting in the
evening. In this conversation he ordered Dumouriez to present to him
three ministers, to succeed Roland, Clavière, and Servan. Dumouriez at
once named Vergennes for finance, Naillac for foreign affairs, Mourgues
for the interior. He reserved the war department for himself:
dictatorial minister at the moment when France was becoming an army.
Roland, Clavière, and Servan, stung to the quick at a dismissal they had
provoked the more because they had not anticipated it, hastened to carry
their complaints and accusations to the Assembly. They were received
there as martyrs to their patriotism; they had filled the tribunes with
their partisans.
III.
Roland, Clavière, and Servan were present, under pretence of rendering
an account of the grounds of their dismissal. Roland laid before the
Assembly the celebrated confidential letter dictated by his wife, and
which he had read to the king in his cabinet. He affected to believe
that the dismissal of ministers was the punishment of his own courage.
The advice he gave to the king in this letter thus turned into
accusations of this unfortunate prince. Louis XVI. had never received
from the malcontents a more terrible blow than that now given by his
minister. Passions trouble the conscience of the people, and there are
days when treachery passes current for heroism. The Girondists made a
hero of Roland. They had his letter printed, and circulated it in the
eighty-three departments.
Roland left the chamber amidst loud applauses. Dumouriez entered it in
the midst of uproar. He displayed in the tribune the same calmness as in
the field of battle. He began by announcing to the Assembly the death of
General Gouvion. "He is happy," he said, with sadness, "to have died
fighting against the enemy, and not to have been the witness of the
discords which rend us to pieces. I envy his death." The deep serenity
of a powerful mind was felt in his every tone--a mind resolute to
contend against factions unto death. He then read a memorial relating to
the ministry of war. His exordium was an attack upon the Jacobins, and a
claim for the respect due to the ministers of the executive power. "Do
you hear Cromwell!" exclaimed Guadet, in a voice of thunder. "He thinks
himself already so sure of empire, that he dares to inflict his commands
upon us." "And why not?" retorted Dumouriez, proudly, and turning
towards the Mountain. His daring imposed on the Assembly. The Feuillant
deputies went out with him to the Tuileries. The king announced to him
his intention to give his sanction to the decree for the 20,000 men. As
to the decree of the priests, he repeated to the ministers that he had
resolved, and begged them to take to the president of the Assembly a
letter in his own writing, which contained the motives for his _veto_.
The ministers bowed, and separated in consternation.
IV.
When Dumouriez reached his house, he learnt that there had been
gatherings of the populace in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and he informed
the king, who believing that he intended to alarm him, lost his
confidence in Dumouriez, who instantly offered his resignation, which
the king accepted. The portfolio of the ministry of foreign affairs was
confided to Chambonas; that of war to Lajard, a soldier of La Fayette's
party; that of the interior to M. de Monciel, a constitutional Feuillant
and friend of the king. This was on the 17th of June. The Jacobins, the
people incited by the Girondists, were already disturbing the capital:
all announced a coming insurrection. These ministers, without any armed
force, without popularity, without party, thus accepted the
responsibility of the perils accumulated by their predecessors. The king
saw Dumouriez once again--it was the last time. The farewell between the
monarch and his minister was affecting.
"You are going to the army?" said the king. "Yes, sire," replied
Dumouriez, "and I should leave with joy this fearful city, if I had not
a feeling of the dangers impending over your majesty. Deign to listen to
me, sire; I am never destined to see you again. I am fifty-three years
of age, and have much experience. They abuse your conscience with
respect to the decree against the priests, and are pushing you on to
civil war. You are without strength, defenceless, and you will sink
under it, whilst History, though full of commiseration for you, will
accuse you of the misfortunes of your people."
The king was seated near a table where he had just signed the general's
accounts. Dumouriez was standing beside him with clasped hands. The king
took his hands in his own, and said to him, in a voice sorrowful but
resigned, "God is my witness, that I only think of the happiness of
France." "I never doubted it, sire," responded Dumouriez, deeply
affected. "You owe an account to God, not only for the purity, but also
for the enlightened use, of your intentions. You think to save religion:
you destroy it. The priests will be massacred: your crown will be taken
from you; perhaps even your queen and children--." He did not finish,
but pressed his lips to the king's hand, who shed tears.
"I await--expect death," replied the king, sorrowfully; "and I pardon my
enemies already. I am grateful to you for your sensibility. You have
served me well, and I esteem you. Adieu--be more happy than I am!" And
on saying these words Louis XVI. went to a recess in a window at the end
of the chamber, in order to conceal the trouble he felt. Dumouriez never
saw him again. He shut himself up for several days in retirement, in a
lonely quarter of Paris. Looking upon the army as the only refuge for a
citizen still capable of serving his country, he set out for Douai, the
head quarters of Luckner.
V.
The Girondists remained a moment overwhelmed by the humiliation of their
fall and the joy of their coming vengeance. "Here I am dismissed," was
Roland's exclamation to his wife, on his return home. "I have but one
regret, and that is, that our delays have prevented us from taking the
initiative." Madame Roland retired to a humble apartment, without losing
any of her influence and without regretting power, since she carried
with her into her retreat, her genius, her patriotism, and her friends.
With her the conspiracy only changed place; from the ministry of the
interior she passed at once into the small council which she gathered
about her, and inspired with her own earnest enthusiasm.
This circle daily increased. The admiration for the woman mingled in the
hearts of her friends with the attraction of liberty. They adored in her
the future Republic. The love which these young men did not avow for her
made, unknown to her, a portion of their politics. Ideas only become
active and powerful when vivified by sentiment. She was the sentiment of
her party.
This party was joined about this time by a man unconnected with the
Gironde; but his youth, his remarkable beauty, and his energy naturally
threw him into this faction of illusion and love, controlled by a woman.
This young man was Barbaroux.
At this time he was only twenty-six years of age. Born at Marseilles, of
a sea-faring family, who preserved in their manners and features
something of the boldness of their life and the agitation of their
element. The elegance of his stature, the poetic grace of his
countenance, recalled the accomplished forms which antiquity adored in
the statues of Antinous. The blood of that Asiatic Greece of which
Marseilles is a colony revealed itself in the purity of the young
Phocian's profile.[21] As richly endowed with the gifts of the mind as
those of the body, Barbaroux early used himself to public oratory, that
gift of the men of the south. He became a barrister, and pleaded several
causes with success; but the power and honesty of his mind revolted from
that exercise of eloquence, so often mercenary, which simulates
earnestness. He required a national cause, to which a man should give
with language his soul and blood. The Revolution with which he was born
offered this to him. He awaited with impatience the occasion and the
hour to make use of it.
His youth still kept him away from the scene into which he ardently
longed to cast himself. He passed his time near the village of
Ollioules, on a small family estate, concealed beneath tall cork-trees,
which threw their slight shade over the calcined declivities of this
valley. He there attended to the cultivated patches which the aridity of
the soil and the burning sun dispute with the rocks. In his leisure he
studied natural sciences, and kept up a correspondence with two Swiss,
whose systems of physics then occupied the learned world--M. de Saussure
and Marat. But science was not sufficient for his mind, which overflowed
with sensitiveness, and which Barbaroux poured forth in elegiac poetry
as burning as the noonday, and vague as the horizon of the sea beneath
his view. There is felt that southern melancholy whose languor, is
closer allied to pleasure than weakness, and which resembles the songs
of man seated in the broad sunshine, before or after labour. Mirabeau
had thus begun his life. The most energetic lives frequently open in
gloom, as if they had in their very germ presentiments of their contrary
destiny. It would seem as though we read in the verses of this young man
that through his tears he contemplated his faults, his expiation, and
his scaffold.
VI.
After Mirabeau's election, and the agitations which followed, Barbaroux
was named secretary of the municipality of Marseilles. At the troubles
of Aries he took arms, and marched at the head of the young Marseillais
against the rulers of the Comtal. His martial figure, his gestures, his
ardour, his voice, made him conspicuous everywhere: he fascinated all.
Being deputed to Paris in order to give an account of the events of the
south to the National Assembly, the Girondists, Vergniaud and Guadet,
who were desirous of obtaining an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon, did
all in their power to attach this young man to their party. Barbaroux,
impetuous as he was, did not justify the butchers of Avignon; but
detested the victims. He was a man requisite to the Girondists. Struck
by his eloquence and his enthusiasm, they presented him to Madame
Roland: no woman was more formed to seduce, no man more formed to be
seduced. Madame Roland--in all the freshness of her youth, in all the
brilliancy of her beauty, and also in all the fulness of sensibility,
which all the purity of her life could not stifle in her unoccupied
heart--speaks thus tenderly of Barbaroux: "I had read," she says, "in
the cabinet of my husband, the letters of Barbaroux, full of sense and
premature wisdom. When I saw him I was astonished at his youth. He
attached himself to my husband. We saw more of him after we left the
ministry; and it was then, that reasoning on the miserable state of
things, and the fear of a triumph of despotism in the north of France,
we formed the plan of a republic in the south. This will be our _pis
aller_, said Barbaroux, with a smile; but the Marseillais army here will
dispense with our attempting it."
VII.
Roland then lived in a gloomy house of the Rue St. Jaques, almost in the
garrets: it was a philosopher's retreat, and his wife illumined it.
Present at all the conversations of Roland, she witnessed the
conferences between her husband and the young Marseillais. Barbaroux
thus relates the interview in which the first idea of a republic was
mooted: "That astonishing woman was there," said he. "Roland asked me
what I thought the best means of saving France. I opened my heart to
him: my confidence called for his. 'Liberty is gone,' he replied, 'if we
do not speedily disconcert the plots of the court. La Fayette is
meditating treason in the north: the army of the centre is
systematically disorganised: in six weeks the Austrians will be at
Paris. Have we then laboured at the most glorious of revolutions for so
many years to see it overthrown in a single day? If Liberty dies in
France, it is lost for ever to the rest of the world!--all the hopes of
philosophy are deceived--prejudices and tyranny will again grasp the
world. Let us prevent this misfortune, and if the north is subjected,
let us take Liberty with us into the south, and there form a colony of
free men.' His wife wept as she listened to him, and I myself wept as I
looked at her. Oh! how much the outpourings of confidence console and
fortify minds that are in desolation. I drew a rapid sketch of the
resources and hopes of Liberty in the south. A serene expression of joy
spread over Roland's brow: he squeezed my hand, and we traced on a map
of France the limits of this empire of Liberty, which extended from the
Doubs, the Ain, and the Rhone to La Dordogne, and from the inaccessible
mountains of Auvergne to Durance and the sea. I wrote, by dictation of
Roland, to request from Marseilles a battalion and two pieces of cannon.
These preliminaries agreed upon, I left Roland with feelings of deep
respect for himself and his wife. I have seen them subsequently, during
their second ministry, as simple minded as in their humble retreat. Of
all the men of modern times, Roland seems to me most to resemble Cato;
but it must be owned that it is to his wife that his courage and talents
are due."
Thus did the original idea of a federative republic arise in the first
interview between Barbaroux and Madame Roland. What they dreamed of as a
desperate measure of Liberty, was afterwards made a reproach to them for
having conspired as a plot. This first sigh of patriotism of two young
minds who met and understood each other, was their attraction and their
crime.
VIII.
From this day the Girondists, disengaged from every obligation with the
king and ministers, conspired secretly with Madame Roland, and publicly
in the tribune, for the suppression of the monarchy. They appeared to
envy the Jacobins the honour of giving the throne the most deadly blows.
Robespierre as yet spoke only of the constitution, limiting himself
within the law, and not going a-head of the people. The Girondists
already spoke in the name of the republic, and motioned with gesture and
eye the republican _coup d'état_, which every day drew nearer. The
meetings at Roland's multiplied and enlarged: new men joined their
ranks. Roland, Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Condorcet, Pétion,
Lanthenas, who in the hour of danger betrayed them; Valazé, Pache, who
persecuted and decimated his friends; Grangeneuve, Louvet, who beneath
levity of manners and gaiety of mind veiled undaunted courage; Chamfort,
the intimate of the great, a vivid intellect, heart full of venom,
discouraged by the people before he had served it; Carra, the popular
journalist, enthusiastic for a republic, mad with desire for liberty;
Chénier[22], the poet of the revolution, destined to survive it, and
preserving his worship of it until death, even under the tyranny of the
empire; Dusaulx, who had beneath his gray hairs the enthusiasm of youth
for philosophy--the Nestor of all the young men, whom he moderated by
his sage exhortations; Mercier, who took all as a jest, even in the
dungeon and death.
IX.
But of the men whom enthusiasm for the Revolution brought around her, he
whom Madame Roland preferred to all was Buzot. More attached to this
young female than to his party, Buzot was to her a friend, whilst the
others were but tools or accomplices. She had quickly passed her
judgment on Barbaroux, and this judgment, impressed with a certain
bitterness, was like a repentance for the secret impression which the
favourable exterior of this young man had at first inspired. She accuses
herself with finding him so handsome, and seems to fortify her heart
against the fascination of his looks. "Barbaroux is volatile," she said;
"the adoration he receives from worthless women destroys the seriousness
of his feelings. When I see such fine young men too conceited at the
impression they make, like Barbaroux and Hérault de Séchelles, I cannot
help thinking that they adore themselves too much to have a great deal
of adoration left for their country."
If we may lift the veil from the heart of this virtuous woman, who does
not raise it herself for fear of developing a sentiment contrary to her
duties, we must be convinced that her instinctive inclination had been
one moment for Barbaroux, but her reflecting tenderness was for Buzot.
It is neither given to duty nor liberty to fill completely the soul of a
woman as lovely and impassioned as she: duty chills, politics deceive,
virtue retains, love fills the heart. Madame Roland loved Buzot. He
adored in her his inspiration and his idol. Perchance they never
disclosed to each other in words a sentiment which would have been the
less sacred to them from the hour in which it had become guilty. But
what they concealed from one another they have involuntarily revealed at
their death. There are in the last days and last hours of this man and
this woman, sighs, gestures, and words, which allow the secret preserved
during life to escape in the presence of death; but the secret thus
disclosed keeps its mystery. Posterity may have the right to detect,
but none to accuse, this sentiment.
Roland, an estimable but morose old man, had the exactions of weakness
without having its gratitude or indulgence towards his partner. She
remained faithful to him, more from respect to herself than from
affection to him. They loved the same cause--Liberty; but Roland's
fanaticism was as cold as pride, whilst his wife's was as glowing as
love. She sacrificed herself daily at the shrine of her husband's
reputation, and scarcely perceived her own self-devotion. He read in her
heart that she bore the yoke with pride, and yet the yoke galled her.
She paints Buzot with complacency, and as the ideal of domestic
happiness. "Sensible, ardent, melancholy," she writes, "a passionate
admirer of nature, he seems born to give and share happiness. This man
would forget the universe in the sweetness of private virtues. Capable
of sublime impulses and unvarying affections, the vulgar, who like to
depreciate what it cannot equal, accuse him of being a dreamer. Of sweet
countenance, elegant figure, there is always in his attire that care,
neatness, and propriety, which announce respect of self as well as of
others. Whilst the dregs of the nation elevate the flatterers and
corrupters of the people to station--whilst cut-throats swear, drink,
and clothe themselves in rags, in order to fraternise with the populace,
Buzot possesses the morality of Socrates, and maintains the decorum of
Scipio: so they pull down his house and banish him, as they did
Aristides. I am astonished they have not issued a decree that his name
should be forgotten." The man of whom she speaks in such terms from the
depths of her dungeon, on the evening before her death, exiled,
wandering, concealed in the caves of St. Emilion, fell as though struck
by lightning, and remained several days in a state of phrenzy, on
learning the death of Madame Roland.
Danton, whose name began to rise above the crowd, when his fame was but
slight until now, sought at this period Madame Roland's acquaintance.
All inquired what was the secret of the growing ascendency of this man?
Where he came from? Who he was? Whither he was advancing? They sought
his origin; his first appearance on the stage of the people; his first
connection with the celebrated personages of his time. They sought in
mysteries the cause of his prodigious popularity. It was pre-eminently
in his nature.
X.
Danton was not merely one of those adventurers of demagogism who rise,
like _Masaniello_, or like Hébert,[23] from the boiling scum of the
masses. He was one of the middle classes, the heart of the nation. His
family, pure, honest, of property, and industrious, ancient in name,
honourable in manners, was established at Arcis-sur-Aube, and possessed
a rural domain in the environs of that small town. It was of the number
of those modest but well-esteemed families, who have the soil for their
basis, and agriculture as their main occupation, but who give their sons
the most complete moral and literary education, and who thus prepare
them for the liberal professions of society. Danton's father died young.
His mother had married again to a manufacturer of Arcis-sur-Aube, who
had (and himself managed), a small cotton mill. There is still to be
seen near the river, without the city, in a pleasant spot, the house,
half rustic half town built, and the garden on the banks of the Aube,
where Danton's infancy was passed.
His step-father, M. Ricordin, attended to his education as he would have
done that of his own child. He was of an open communicative disposition,
and was beloved in spite of his ugliness and turbulence; for his
ugliness was radiant with intellect, and his turbulence was calmed and
repented of at the least caress of his mother. He pursued his studies at
Troyes, the capital of Champagne. Rebellious against discipline, idle at
study, beloved by his masters and fellow pupils, his rapid comprehension
kept him on an equality with the most assiduous. His instinct sufficed
without reflection. He learned nothing; he acquired all. His companions
called him Catiline--he accepted the name, and sometimes played with
them at getting up rebellions and riots, which he excited or calmed by
his harangues--as if he were repeating at school the characters of his
after life.
XI.
M. and Madame Ricordin, already advanced in years, gave him, after his
education was finished, the small fortune of his father. He came to
finish his studies in law at Paris, and bought a place in parliament as
a barrister, where he practised little and without any notoriety. He
despised chicanery; his mind and language had the proportions of the
great causes of the people and the throne. The Constituent Assembly
began to stir them. Danton, watchful and impassioned, was anxious to
mingle with them: he sought the leading men, whose eloquence resounded
throughout France. He attached himself to Mirabeau; became connected
with Camille Desmoulins, Marat, Robespierre, Pétion, Brune (afterwards
the marshal), Fabre d'Eglantine, the Duc d'Orleans, Laclos, Lacroix, and
all the illustrious and second class orators who then "fulmined over"
Paris. He passed his whole time in the tribunes of the Assembly, in the
walks, and the coffee-houses, and his nights in the clubs. A few
well-seasoned words, some brief harangues, some bursts of mysterious
lightning: and above all, his hair like a horse's mane, his gigantic
stature, and his powerful voice, made him universally remarked. Yet
beneath the purely physical qualities of the orator men of intelligence
remarked great good sense and an instinctive knowledge of the human
heart. Beneath the agitator they discerned the statesman. Danton in
truth read history, studied the ancient orators, practised himself in
real eloquence, that which enlightens in its passion, and beneath his
actual part was preparing another much superior. He only asked the
movement to raise him so high that he might subsequently control it.
He married Mademoiselle Charpentier, daughter of a lemonade-seller on
the Quai de l'Ecole. This young lady controlled him by her affection,
and insensibly reformed him from the disorders of his youth to more
regular domestic habits. She extinguished the violence of his passions,
but without being able to quench that which survived all
others--ambition of a great destiny.
Danton lived in a small apartment in the Cour de Commerce, near his
father-in-law, in rigid economy, receiving but a very few friends, who
admired his talent and attached themselves to his fortunes. The most
constant were Camille Desmoulins, Pétion, and Brune. From these meetings
went forth signals of extensive sedition. The secret subsidies of the
court came there to tempt the cupidity of the head of the young
revolutionists. He did not reject them, but used them sometimes to
excite and sometimes to control the agitations of opinion.
He had by this marriage two sons, whom his death left orphans in their
cradle, and who succeeded to his small inheritance at Arcis-sur-Aube.
These two sons of Danton, alarmed at the effects of their name, retired
to their family domain, and cultivated it with their own hands, and in
an honest and industrious obscurity limited to themselves all their
father's notoriety. Like the son of Cromwell, they preferred the shade
and silence the more, as their name had a too sinister reputation, and
too wide an extension in the world. They remained unmarried, that the
name might die with them.
At this moment Danton, whose ambitious instincts revealed the close
return to fortune of the Girondists, sought to attach himself to this
rising party, and give them the weight of his worth and importance.
Madame Roland flattered him, but with fear and repugnance, as a woman
would pat a lion.
XII.
Whilst the Girondists were exciting the anger of the people against the
king, hostilities were beginning in Belgium, in consequence of reverses,
which were attributed to treasons of the court: these were produced by
three causes; the hesitation of the generals, who did not understand how
to impart to their troops that ardour which impels the masses, and bears
down resistance; the disorganisation of the armies, which emigration had
deprived of their ancient officers, and who had no confidence in the
new; and finally, the want of discipline, that element of revolutions,
which clubs and Jacobinism had spread amongst the troops. An army that
discusses is like a hand which would think.
La Fayette, instead of advancing at once on Namur according to
Dumouriez's plan, lost a good deal of precious time in assembling and
organising at Givet, and the camp of Ransenne. Instead of giving the
other generals in line with him, the example and the signal of invasion
and victory, by at once occupying Namur, he moved about the country with
10,000 men, leaving the remainder of his forces encamped in France, and
fell back at the first news of the checks sustained by the detachments
of Biron and Théobald Dillon. These checks, though partial and slight,
were disgraceful for our troops. It was the astonishment of an army
unaccustomed to war, and fearful of entering the lists, but which, like
a soldier at his first campaign, would soon grow used to battles.
The Duc de Lauzun commanded under La Fayette, and was called general
Biron. He was a man of the court, who had gone over in all sincerity to
the side of the people. Young, handsome, chivalrous, with that intrepid
gaiety which plays with death, he carried aristocratic honour into
republican ranks. Loved by the soldiers, adored by the women, at his
ease in camps, a roué in courts, he was of that school of sparkling
vices of which the Marshal de Richelieu had been the type in France. It
was said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being
able to fix his inconstancy. Friend of the Duc d'Orleans, companion of
his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him. All treachery
was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost
indignation. He adopted the Revolution as a noble idea, of which he was
always ready to be the soldier, but never the accomplice. He did not
betray the king, and always preserved a deep feeling of pity and
sympathy for the queen; with an intense love for philosophy and liberty,
instead of fomenting them by sedition, he defended them by war. He
changed devotion to kings into devotion to his country. This noble
cause, and the sorrows of the Revolution gave to his character a more
manly stamp, and made him fight and die with the conscience of a hero.
He was encamped at Quievrain with 10,000 men, and advanced against the
Austrian general Beaulieu, who occupied the heights of Mons, with a very
weak army. Two regiments of dragoons, who formed Biron's advanced guard,
were seized with a sudden panic on beholding Beaulieu's troops. The
soldiers cried out treachery, and in vain did their officers attempt to
rally them; they turned bridle and scattered disorder and fear
throughout the ranks. The army gave way and mechanically followed the
current of flight. Biron and his aides-de-camp threw themselves into the
centre of the troops to stay and to rally them. They struck at them with
their swords, and fired at them. The camp of Quievrain, the military
chest, the carriage of Biron himself, were plundered by the fugitives.
Whilst this defeat, without a battle, humiliated the French army, in its
first step, at Quievrain, bloody assassinations stained our flag at
Lille. General Dillon had left that city, the enemy showed itself on the
plain to the number of nine hundred men. At its appearance only, the
French cavalry uttered treacherous cries, and passing by the infantry,
fled to Lille, without being followed, abandoning its artillery,
carriages, and baggage. Dillon, hurried along by his squadrons to Lille,
was there massacred by his own soldiers. His colonel of engineers,
Berthois, fell beside his general, beneath the bayonets of the cowards
who abandoned him. The dead bodies of these two victims of fear were
hung up in the _Place d'Armes_, and then delivered up by the malcontents
to the insults of the populace of Lille, who dragged their mutilated
carcases along the streets. Thus commenced in shame and crime those wars
of the Revolution which were destined to produce, during twenty years,
so much heroism, and so much military virtue. Anarchy had penetrated to
the camps, honour was there no longer: order and honour are the two
necessities of an army. In anarchy there is still a nation--without
discipline there is no longer an army.
XIII.
Paris was in consternation at this news; the Assembly greatly troubled,
the Girondists trembled, the Jacobins were vociferous in their
imprecations against the traitors. Foreign courts and the emigrants had
no doubt of an easy triumph in a few marches over a revolution which was
afraid of its very shadow. La Fayette, without having been attacked,
fell back, very prudently, on Givet. Rochambeau sent in his resignation
as commandant of the army of the north. Marshal Luckner was nominated
in his place. La Fayette, much dissatisfied, kept the command of the
central army.
Luckner was upwards of seventy years of age, but retained all the fire
and activity of the warrior; he only required genius to have been a
great general. He had a reputation for complaisance, which sufficed for
every thing. It is a great advantage for a general to be a stranger in
the country in which he is serving. He has no one jealous of him: his
superiority is pardoned, and presumed if it do not exist, in order to
crush his rivals: such was old Luckner's position. He was a
German,--pupil of the great Frederic, with whom he had served with
_éclat_ during the seven years' war as commandant of the vanguard, at
the moment when Frederic changed the war, and commenced its tactics. The
Duc de Choiseul was desirous of depriving Prussia of a general of this
great school, to teach the modern art of battles to French generals. He
had attracted Luckner from his country by force of temptations, fortune,
and honours. The national Assembly, from respect to the memory of the
philosopher king, had preserved to Luckner the pension of 60,000 francs
which had been paid to him during the Revolution. Luckner, indifferent
to constitutions, believed himself a revolutionist from gratitude. He
was almost the only one amongst the ancient general officers who had not
emigrated. Surrounded by a brilliant staff of young officers of the
party of La Fayette, Charles Lameth, du Jarri, Mathieu de Montmorency,
he believed he had the opinions which they instilled into him. The king
caressed, the Assembly flattered, the army respected, him. The nation
saw in him the mysterious genius of the old war coming to give lessons
of victory to the untried patriotism of the Revolution, and concealing
its infinite resources under the bluntness of his exterior, and the
obscure Germanism of his language. They addressed to him, from all
sides, homage as though he were an unknown God. He did not deserve
either this adoration, or the outrages with which he was soon after
overwhelmed. He was a brave and coarse soldier, as misplaced in courts
as in clubs. For some days he was an idol, then the plaything of the
Jacobins, who, at last, threw him to the guillotine, without his being
able to comprehend either his popularity or his crime.
XIV.
Berthier, who afterwards became Napoleon's right hand, was then the head
of Luckner's staff. The old general seized, with warlike instinct, on
Dumouriez's bold plan. He had entered at the head of 22,000 men on the
Austrian territory at Courtray and Menin. Biron and Valence, his two
seconds in command, entreated him to remain there, and Dumouriez, in his
letters, urged him in similar manner. On arriving at Lille, Dumouriez
learnt that Luckner had suddenly retreated on Valenciennes, after having
burnt the suburbs of Courtray; thus giving, on our frontier, the signal
of hesitation and retreat.
The Belgian population, their impulses thus checked by the disasters or
timidity of France, lost all hope, and bent beneath the Austrian yoke.
General Montesquiou collected the army of the south with difficulty. The
king of the Sardinians concentrated a large force on the Var. The
advanced guard of La Fayette, posted at Gliswel, at a league from
Maubeuge, was beaten by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen, at the head of 12,000
men. The great invasion of the Duke of Brunswick, in Champagne, was
preparing. The emigration took off the officers, desertion diminished
our soldiery. The clubs disseminated distrust against the commanders of
our strong places.
The Girondists were urging on rebellion, the Jacobins were exciting the
army to anarchy, the volunteers did not rise, the ministry was null, the
Austrian committee of the Tuileries corresponded with various powers,
not to deceive the nation, but to save the lives of the king and his
family. A suspected government, hostile assembly, seditious clubs, a
national guard intimidated and deprived of its chief, incendiary
journalism, dark conspiracies, factious municipality, a
conspirator-mayor, people distrustful and starving, Robespierre and
Brissot, Vergniaud and Danton, Girondists and Jacobins, face to face,
having the same spoil to contend for--the monarchy, and struggling for
pre-eminence in demagogism in order to acquire the favour of the people;
such was the state of France, within and without, at the moment when
exterior war was pressing France on all sides, and causing it to burst
forth with disasters and crimes. The Girondists and Jacobins united for
a moment, suspended their personal animosity, as if to see which could
best destroy the powerless constitution which separated them. The
_bourgeoisie_ personified by the Feuillants, the National Guard, and La
Fayette, alone remained attached to the constitution. The Gironde, from
the tribune itself, made that appeal to the people against the king
which it was subsequently doomed to make in vain in favour of the king
against the Jacobins. In order to control the city, Brissot, Roland,
Pétion, excited the suburbs, those capitals of miseries and seditions.
Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and
ignorance is moved to its lowest depths, then appear monsters and
heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue; such were about to
appear under the conspiring hand of the Girondists and demagogues.