Thirteen years had rolled by since King Louis XV. had descended to a
dishonored grave, and on the mighty current which was bearing France
towards reform, whilst dragging her into the Revolution, King Louis XVI.,
honest and sincere, was still blindly seeking to clutch the helm which
was slipping from his feeble hands. Every day his efforts were becoming
weaker and more inconsistent, every day the pilot placed at the tiller
was less and less deserving of public confidence. From M. Turgot to M.
Necker, from Calonne to Lomenie de Brienne, the fall had been rapid and
deep. Amongst the two parties which unequally divided the nation,
between those who defended the past in its entirety, its abuses as well
as its grandeurs, and those who were marching on bewildered towards a
reform of which they did not foresee the scope, the struggle underwent
certain moments of stoppage and of abrupt reaction towards the old state
of things. In 1781, the day after M. Necker’s fall, an ordinance of the
minister of war, published against the will of that minister himself, had
restored to the verified and qualified noblesse (who could show four
quarterings) the exclusive privilege of military grades. Without any
ordinance, the same regulation had been applied to the clergy. In 1787,
the Assembly of notables and its opposition to the king’s projects
presented by M. de Calonne were the last triumph of the enthusiastic
partisans of the past. The privileged classes had still too much
influence to be attacked with success by M. de Calonne, who appeared to
be in himself an assemblage of all the abuses whereof he desired to be
the reformer. A plan so vast, however ably conceived, was sure to go to
pieces in the hands of a man who did not enjoy public esteem and
confidence; but the triumph of the notables in their own cause was a
fresh warning to the people that they would have to defend theirs with
more vigor.” [_Memoires de Malouet,_ t. i. p. 253]. We have seen how
monarchy, in concert with the nation, fought feudality, to reign
thenceforth as sovereign mistress over the great lords and over the
nation; we have seen how it slowly fell in public respect and veneration,
and how it attempted unsuccessfully to respond to the confused wishes of
a people that did not yet know its own desires or its own strength; we
shall henceforth see it, panting and without sure guidance, painfully
striving to govern and then to live. “I saw,” says M. Malouet in his
_Memoires,_ “under the ministry of the archbishop (of Toulouse, and
afterwards of Sens), all the _avant-couriers_ of a revolution in the
government. Three parties were already pronounced: the first wanted to
take to itself all the influence of which it despoiled the king, whilst
withstanding the pretensions of the third estate; the second proclaimed
open war against the two upper orders, and already laid down the bases of
a democratic government; the third, which was at that time the most
numerous, although it was that of the wisest men, dreaded the ebullience
of the other two, wanted compromises, reforms, and not revolution.” By
their conflicts the two extreme parties were to stifle for a while the
party of the wise men, the true exponent of the national aspirations and
hopes, which was destined, through a course of cruel vicissitudes and
long trials, to yet save and govern the country.
The Assembly of notables had abdicated; contenting itself with a negative
triumph, it had left to the royal wisdom and responsibility the burden of
decisions which Louis XVI. had hoped to get sanctioned by an old and
respected authority. The public were expecting to see all the edicts,
successively presented to the notables as integral portions of a vast
system, forthwith assume force of law by simultaneous registration of
Parliament. The feebleness and inconsistency of governors often stultify
the most sensible foresight. M. de Brienne had come into office as a
support to the king’s desires and intentions, for the purpose of
obtaining from the notables what was refused through their aversion for
M. de Calonne; as soon as he was free of the notables as well as of M. de
Calonne, he hesitated, drew back, waited, leaving time for a fresh
opposition to form and take its measures. “He had nothing but bad moves
to make,” says M. Mignet. Three edicts touching the trade in grain,
forced labor, and the provincial assemblies, were first sent up to the
Parliament and enregistered without any difficulty; the two edicts
touching the stamp-tax and equal assessment of the impost were to meet
with more hinderance; the latter at any rate united the sympathies of all
the partisans of genuine reforms; the edict touching the stamp-tax was by
itself and first submitted for the approval of the magistrates: they
rejected it, asking, like the notables, for a communication as to the
state of finance. “It is not states of finance we want,” exclaimed a
councillor, Sabatier de Cabre, “it is States-general.” This bold sally
became a theme for deliberation in the Parliament. “The nation
represented by the States-general,” the court declared, “is alone
entitled to grant the king subsidies of which the need is clearly
demonstrated.” At the same time the Parliament demanded the impeachment
of M. de Calonne; he took fright and sought refuge in England. The mob
rose in Paris, imputing to the court the prodigalities with which the
Parliament reproached the late comptroller-general. Sad symptom of the
fatal progress of public opinion! The cries heretofore raised against
the queen under the name of Austrian were now uttered against Madame
Deficit, pending the time when the fearful title of Madame Veto would
give place in its turn to the sad name of the woman Capet given to the
victim of October 16, 1793.
The king summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and on the 6th of August,
1787, the edicts touching the stamp-tax and territorial subvention were
enregistered in bed of justice. The Parliament had protested in advance
against this act of royal authority, which it called “a phantom of
deliberation.” On the 13th of August, the court declared “the
registration of the edicts null and without effect, incompetent to
authorize the collection of imposts, opposed to all principles;” this
resolution was sent to all the seneschalties and bailiwicks in the
district. It was in the name of the privilege of the two upper orders
that the Parliament of Paris contested the royal edicts and made appeal
to the supreme jurisdiction of the States-general; the people did not see
it, they took out the horses of M. d’Espremesnil, whose fiery eloquence
had won over a great number of his colleagues, and he was carried in
triumph. On the 15th of August the Parliament was sent away to Troyes.
Banishment far away from the capital, from the ferment of spirits, and
from the noisy centre of their admirers, had more than once brought down
the pride of the members of Parliament; they were now sustained by the
sympathy ardently manifested by nearly all the sovereign courts.
“Incessantly repeated stretches of authority,” said the Parliament of
Besanccon, “forced registrations, banishments, constraint and severity
instead of justice, are astounding in an enlightened age, wound a nation
that idolizes its kings, but is free and proud, freeze the heart and
might break the ties which unite sovereign to subjects and subjects to
sovereign.” The Parliament of Paris declared that it needed no authority
for its sittings, considering that it rendered justice wherever it
happened to be assembled. “The monarchy would be transfigured into a
despotic form,” said the decree, “if ministers could dispose of persons
by sealed letters (_lettres de cachet_), property by beds of justice,
criminal matters by change of venue (_evocation_) or cassation, and
suspend the course of justice by special banishments or arbitrary
removals.”
Negotiations were going on, however; the government agreed to withdraw
the new imposts which it had declared to be indispensable; the
Parliament, which had declared itself incompetent as to the establishment
of taxes, prorogued for two years the second twentieth. “We left Paris
with glory upon us, we shall return with mud,” protested M. d’Espremesnil
in vain; more moderate, but not less resolute, Duport, Robert de St.
Vincent, and Freteau sought to sustain by their speeches the wavering
resolution of their colleagues. The Parliament was recalled to Paris on
the 19th of September, 1787.
The state of Europe inclined men’s minds to reciprocal concessions; a
disquieting good understanding appeared to be growing up between Russia
and Austria. The Emperor Joseph II. had just paid a visit to the Crimea
with the czarina. “I fancy I am still dreaming,” wrote the Prince of
Ligne, who had the honor of being in the trip, “when in a carriage with
six places, which is a real triumphal car adorned with ciphers in
precious stones, I find myself seated between two persons on whose
shoulders the heat often sets me dozing, and I hear, as I wake up, one of
my comrades say to the other ‘I have thirty’ millions of subjects, they
say, counting males only.’ ‘And I twenty-two,’ replies the other, ‘all
included.’ ‘I require,’ adds the former, ‘an army of at least six
hundred thousand men between Kamtchatka and Riga.’ ‘With half that,’
replies the other, ‘I have just what I require.’ God knows how we settle
all the states and great personages. ‘Rather than sign the separation of
thirteen provinces, like my brother George,’ says Catherine II. sweetly,
‘I would have put a bullet through my head.’ ‘And rather than give in my
resignation like my brother and brother-in-law, by convoking and
assembling the nation to talk over abuses, I don’t know what I wouldn’t
have done,’ says Joseph II.” Before the two allies could carry out their
designs against Turkey, that ancient power, enfeebled as it was, had
taken the offensive at the instigation of England; the King of Sweden,
on his side, invaded Russia; war burst out in all directions. The
traditional influence of France remained powerless in the East to
maintain peace; the long weakness of the government was everywhere
bearing fruit.
Nowhere was this grievous impotence more painfully striking than in
Holland. Supported by England, whose slavish instrument he had been for
so long, the stadtholder William V. was struggling, with the help of the
mob, against the patriotic, independent, and proud patricians. For the
last sixty years the position of Holland had been constantly declining in
Europe. “She is afraid of everything,” said Count de Broglie in 1773;
“she puts up with everything, grumbles at everything, and secures herself
against nothing.” “Holland might pay all the armies of Europe,” people
said in 1787, “she couldn’t manage to hold her own against any one of
them.” The civil war imminent in her midst and fomented by England had
aroused the solicitude of M. de Calonne; he had prepared the resources
necessary for forming a camp near Givet; his successor diverted the funds
to another object. When the Prussians entered Dutch territory, being
summoned to the stadtholder’s aid by his wife, sister of the young King
Frederick William II., the French government afforded no assistance to
its ally; it confined itself to offering an asylum to the Dutch patriots,
long encouraged by its diplomatists, and now vanquished in their own
country, which was henceforth under the yoke of England. “France has
fallen, I doubt whether she will get up again,” said the Emperor Joseph
II. “We have been caught napping,” wrote M. de La Fayette to Washington;
“the King of Prussia has been ill advised, the Dutch are ruined, and
England finds herself the only power which has gained in the bargain.”
The echo of humiliations abroad came to swell the dull murmur of public
discontent. Disturbance was arising everywhere. “From stagnant chaos
France has passed to tumultuous chaos,” wrote Mirabeau, already an
influential publicist, despite the irregularity of his morals and the
small esteem excited by his life; “there may, there should come a
creation out of it.” The Parliament had soon resumed its defiant
attitude; like M. de La Fayette at the Assembly of notables, it demanded
the convocation of the States-general at a fixed epoch, in 1792; it was
the date fixed by M. de Brienne in a vast financial scheme which he had
boldly proposed for registration by the court. By means of a series of
loans which were to reach the enormous total of four hundred and twenty
millions, the States-general, assembled on the conclusion of this vast
operation, and relieved from all pecuniary embarrassment, would be able
to concentrate their thoughts on the important interests of the future.
At the same time with the loan-edict, Brienne presented to the Parliament
the law-scheme, for so long a time under discussion, on behalf of
Protestants.
The king had repaired in person to the palace in royal session; the
keeper of the seals, Lamoignon, expounded the necessity of the edicts.
“To the monarch alone,” he repeated, “belongs the legislative power,
without dependence and without partition.” This was throwing down the
gauntlet to the whole assembly as well as to public opinion. Abbe
Sabatier and Councillor Freteau had already spoken, when Robert de St.
Vincent rose, an old Jansenist and an old member of Parliament,
accustomed to express his thoughts roughly. “Who, without dismay, can
hear loans still talked of?” he exclaimed “and for what sum? four hundred
and twenty millions! A plan is being formed for five years? But, since
your Majesty’s reign began, have the same views ever directed the
administration of finance for five years in succession? Can you be
ignorant, sir (here he addressed himself to the comptroller-general),
that each minister, as he steps into his place, rejects the system of his
predecessor in order to substitute that which he has devised? Within
only eight months, you are the fourth minister of finance, and yet you
are forming a plan which cannot be accomplished in less than five years!
The remedy, sir, for the wounds of the state has been pointed out by your
Parliament: it is the convocation of the Statesgeneral. Their
convocation, to be salutary, must be prompt. Your ministers would like
to avoid this assembly whose surveillance they dread. Their hope is
vain. Before two years are over, the necessities of the state will force
you to convoke the States-general.”
M. d’Espremesnil was overcome; less violent than usual, he had, appealed
to the king’s heart; for a moment Louis XVI. appeared to be moved, and so
was the assembly with him; the edicts were about to be enregistered
despite the efforts of the opposition; already the premier president was
collecting the votes; the keeper of the seals would not, at this grave
moment, renounce any kingly prerogative. “When the king is at the
Parliament, there is no deliberation; his will makes law,” said the legal
rule and the custom of the magistracy. Lamoignon went up to the throne;
he said a few words in a low voice. “Mr. Keeper of the seals, have the
edicts enregistered,” said Louis XVI. The minister immediately repeated
the formula used at beds of justice. A murmur ran through the assembly;
the Duke of Orleans rose; he had recently become the head of his house
through his father’s death, and found himself more than ever involved in
intrigues hostile to the court. “Sir,” said he in a broken voice, “this
registration appears to me illegal. . . . It should be distinctly
stated that the registration is done by the express command of your
Majesty.” The king was as much moved as the prince. “It is all the same
to me,” he replied. “You are master, of course.” “Yes,--it is legal,
because I so will.” The edict relative to non-Catholics was read, and
Louis XVI. withdrew.
There was violent commotion in the assembly; the protest of the Duke of
Orleans was drawn up in a more explicit form. “The difference between a
bed of justice and a royal session is, that one exhibits the frankness of
despotism and the other its duplicity,” cried d’Espremesnil.
Notwithstanding the efforts of M. de Malesherbes and the Duke of
Nivernais, the Parliament inscribed on the registers that it was not to
be understood to take any part in the transcription here ordered of
gradual and progressive loans for the years 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, and
1792. In reply, the Duke of Orleans was banished to Villers-Cotterets,
whilst Councillors Freteau and Sabatier were arrested and taken to a
state-prison.
By the scandalousness of his life, as well as by his obstructive
buildings in the Palais-Royal, the Duke of Orleans had lost favor with
the public; his protest and his banishment restored him at once to his
popularity. The Parliament piled remonstrance upon remonstrance, every
day more and more haughty in form as well as in substance. Dipping into
the archives in search of antiquated laws, the magistrates appealed to
the liberties of olden France, mingling therewith the novel principles of
the modern philosophy. “Several pretty well-known facts,” they said,
“prove that the nation, more enlightened as to its true interests, even
in the least elevated classes, is disposed to accept from the hands of
your Majesty the greatest blessing a king can bestow upon his subjects
--liberty. It is this blessing, Sir, which your Parliament come to ask
you to restore, in the name of a generous and faithful people. It is no
longer a prince of your blood, it is no longer two magistrates whom your
Parliament ask you to restore in the name of the laws and of reason, but
three Frenchmen, three men.”
To peremptory demands were added perfidious insinuations.
“Such ways, Sir,” said one of these remonstrances, “have no place in your
heart, such samples of proceeding are not the principles of your Majesty,
they come from another source.” For the first time the queen was thus
held up to public odium by the Parliament which had dealt her a fatal
blow by acquitting Cardinal Rohan; she was often present at the king’s
conferences with his ministers, reluctantly and by the advice of M. de
Brienne, for and in whom Louis XVI. never felt any liking or confidence.
“There is no more happiness for me since they have made me an intriguer,”
she said sadly to Madame Campan. And when the latter objected: “Yes,”
replied the queen, “it is the proper word: every woman who meddles in
matters above her lights and beyond the limits of her duty, is nothing
but an intriguer; you will remember, however, that I do not spare myself,
and that it is with regret I give myself such a title. The other day,
as I was crossing the Bull’s Eye (_Eil de Boeuf_), to go to a private
committee at the king’s, I heard one of the chapel-band say out loud,
‘A queen who does her duty remains in her rooms at her needlework.’
I said to myself: ‘Thou’rt quite right, wretch; but thou know’st not my
position; I yield to necessity and my evil destiny.’” A true daughter of
Maria Theresa in her imprisonment and on the scaffold, Marie Antoinette
had neither the indomitable perseverance nor the simple grandeur in
political views which had restored the imperial throne in the case of her
illustrious mother. She weakened beneath a burden too heavy for a mind
so long accustomed to the facile pleasures of youth. “The queen
certainly has wits and firmness which might suffice for great things,”
wrote her friend, the Count of La Marck, to M. de Mercy Argenteau, her
mother’s faithful agent in France; “but it must be confessed that,
whether in business or in mere conversation, she does not always exhibit
that degree of attention and that persistence which are indispensable for
getting at the bottom of what one ought to know, in order to prevent
errors and to insure success.”
The same want of purpose and persistence of which the Count of La Marck
complained was strikingly apparent everywhere and in all matters; the
Duke of Orleans was soon tired of banishment; he wrote to the queen, who
obtained his recall. The ministers were making mysterious preparations
for a grand stroke. The Parliament, still agitated and anxious, had at
last enregistered the edict relating to non-Catholics. Public opinion,
like the government, supported it eagerly; the principles of tolerance
which had prompted it were henceforth accepted by all; certain bishops
and certain bigots were still trying to hinder this first step towards a
legal status for a long while refused to Protestants. M. d’Espremesnil,
an earnest disciple of the _philosophe inconnu,_ the mystic St. Martin,
just as he had been the dupe of Mesmer and of Cagliostro, was almost
single-handed in the Parliament in his opposition to the registration of
the edict. Extending his hand towards the crucifix, he exclaimed with
violence: “Would you crucify him a second time?” The court was a better
judge of Christian principles, and Protestants were permitted to be born,
to marry, and to die on French territory. The edict did not as yet
concede to them any other right.
The contest extended as it grew hotter; everywhere the parliaments took
up the quarrel of the court of Paris; the formation of the provincial
assemblies furnished new centres of opposition; the petty noblesse made
alliance with the magistracy; the antagonism of principles became every
day more evident; after the five months elapsed since the royal session,
the Parliament was still protesting against the violence done to it.
“I had no need to take or count the votes,” said the king’s reply; “being
present at the deliberation, I judged for myself without taking any
account of plurality. If plurality in my courts were to force my will,
the monarchy would be nothing but an aristocracy of magistrates.” “No,
sir, no aristocracy in France, but no despotism either,” replied the
members of parliament.
The indiscretion of a printer made M. d’Espremesnil acquainted with
the great designs which were in preparation; at his instigation the
Parliament issued a declaration as to the reciprocal rights and duties
of the monarch and the nation. “France,” said the resolution, “is a
monarchy hereditary from male to male, governed by the king following the
laws; it has for fundamental laws the nation’s right to freely grant
subsidies by means of the States-general convoked and composed according
to regulation, the customs and capitulations of the provinces, the
irremovability of the magistrates, the right of the courts to enregister
edicts, and that of each citizen to be judged only by his natural judges,
without liability ever to be arrested arbitrarily.” “The magistrates
must cease to exist before the nation ceases to be free,” said a second
protest.
Bold and defiant in its grotesque mixture of the ancient principles of
the magistracy with the novel theories of philosophy, the resolution of
the Parliament was quashed by the king. Orders were given to arrest
M. d’Espremesnil and a young councillor, Goislard de Montsabert, who had
proposed an inquiry into the conduct of the comptrollers commissioned to
collect the second twentieth. The police of the Parliament was perfect
and vigilant; the two magistrates were warned and took refuge in the
Palace of Justice; all the chambers were assembled and the peers
convoked. Ten or a dozen appeared, notwithstanding the king’s express
prohibition.
The Parliament had placed the two threatened members “under the
protection of the king and of the law;” the premier president, at the
head of a deputation, had set out for Versailles to demand immunity for
the accused; the court was in session awaiting his return.
The mob thronged the precincts of the Palace, some persons had even
penetrated into the grand chamber; no deliberations went on. Towards
midnight, several companies of the French guards entered the hall of the
Pas-Perdus; all the exits were guarded. The court was in commotion, the
young councillors demanded that the deliberations should go on publicly.
“Gentlemen,” said President de Gourgues, “would you derogate from the
ancient forms?” The spectators withdrew. The Marquis d’Agoult,
aide-major of the French guards, demanded admission; he had orders from
the king. The ushers opened the doors; at sight of the magistrates in
scarlet robes, motionless upon their seats, the officer was for a moment
abashed; he cast his eye from bench to bench, his voice faltered when he
read the order signed by the king to arrest “MM. d’Espremesnil and De
Montsabert, in the grand chamber or elsewhere.” “The court will proceed
to deliberate thereon, sir,” replied the president. “Your forms are to
deliberate,” hotly replied M. d’Agoult, who had recovered himself; “I
know nothing of those forms, the king’s orders must be executed without
delay; point out to me those whom I have to arrest.” Silence reigned
throughout the hall; not a word, not a gesture indicated the accused.
Only the dukes and peers made merry aloud over the nobleman charged with
so disagreeable a mission: he repeated his demand: “We are all
d’Espremesnil and Montsabert,” exclaimed the magistrates. M. d’Agoult
left the room.
He soon returned, accompanied by an exon of the short robe, named
Larchier. “Show me whom I have to arrest,” was the officer’s order.
The exon looked all round the room; he knew every one of the magistrates;
the accused were sitting right in front of him. “I do not see
MM. d’Espremesnil and Montsabert anywhere,” he at last said, tremulously.
M. d’Agoult’s threats could not get any other answer out of him.
The officer had gone to ask for fresh orders; the deputation sent to
Versailles had returned, without having been received by Louis XVI., of
whom an audience had not been requested. The court wanted to send some
of the king’s people at once to notify a fresh request; the troops
guarded all the doors, nobody could leave the Palace.
“Gentlemen,” said d’Espr4mesnil at last, “it would be contrary to our
honor as well as to the dignity of the Parliament to prolong this scene
any further; and, besides, we cannot be the ruin of Larchier; let
M. d’Agoult be shown in again.” The officer was recalled, the
magistrates were seated and covered. “Sir,” said M. d’Espremesnil,
“I am one of those you are in search of. The law forbids me to obey
orders irregularly obtained (_surpris_) of the sovereign, and it is to
be faithful to him that I have not mentioned who I am until this moment.
I call upon you to state whether, in case I should not go with you
voluntarily, you have orders to drag me from this building.” “Certainly,
sir.” D’Agoult was already striding towards the door to order in his
troops. “Enough,” said M. d’Espremesnil; “I yield to force;” and,
turning to his colleagues, “Gentlemen,” he said, “to you I protest
against the violence of which I am the object; forget me and think
henceforth of nothing but the common weal; I commend to you my family;
whatever may be my fate, I shall never cease to glory in professing to
the last hour the principles which do honor to this court.” He made a
deep obeisance, and followed the major, going out by the secret
staircases in order to avoid the crowd whose shouts could be heard even
within the palace buildings. Goislard de Montsabert followed his
colleague’s example: he was confined at Pierre-Encise; M. d’Espremesnil
had been taken to the Isle of St. Marguerite.
Useless and ill-judged violence, which excited the passions of the public
without intimidating opponents! The day after the scene of May 6th, at
the moment when the whole magistracy of France was growing hot over the
thrilling account of the arrest of the two councillors, the Parliament of
Paris was sent for to Versailles (May 8, 1788).
[Illustration: Arrest of the Members----502]
The magistrates knew beforehand what fate awaited them. The king uttered
a few severe words. After a pompous preamble, the keeper of the seals
read out six fresh edicts intended to ruin forever the power of the
sovereign courts.
Forty-seven great baillie-courts, as a necessary intermediary between the
parliaments and the inferior tribunals, were henceforth charged with all
civil cases not involving sums of more than twenty thousand livres, as
well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate). The
representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely
criticised the impropriety of this measure. “The ministers,” they said,
“have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and
property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts,
for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the
privileged.” The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was
reduced to sixty-nine. The registration of edicts, the only real
political power left in the hands of the magistrates, was transferred to
a plenary court, an old title without stability and without tradition,
composed, under the king’s presidency, of the great functionaries of
state, assisted by a small number of councillors. The absolute power was
thus preparing a rampart against encroachments of authority on the part
of the sovereign courts; it had fortified itself beforehand against the
pretensions of the States-general, “which cannot pretend to be anything
but a more extended council on behalf of the sovereign, the latter still
remaining supreme arbiter of their representations and their grievances.”
Certain useful ameliorations in the criminal legislation, amongst others
total abolition of torture, completed the sum of edicts. A decree of the
council declared all the parliarnents prorogued until the formation of
the great bailliecourts. The plenary court was to assemble forthwith at
Versailles. It only sat once; in presence of the opposition amongst the
majority of the men summoned to compose it, the ministers, unforeseeing
and fickle even with all their ability and their boldness, found
themselves obliged to adjourn the sittings indefinitely. All the members
of the Parliament of Paris had bound themselves by a solemn oath not to
take a place in any other assembly. “In case of dispersal of the
magistracy,” said the resolution entered upon the registers of the court,
“the Parliament places the present act as a deposit in the hands of the
king, of his august family, of the peers of the realm, of the States-
general, and of each of the orders, united or separate, representing the
nation.”
At sight of this limitation, less absolute and less cleverly calculated,
of the attempts made by Chancellor Maupeou, after seventeen years’ rapid
marching towards a state of things so novel and unheard of, the commotion
was great in Paris; the disturbance, however, did not reach to the
masses, and the disorder in the streets was owing less to the Parisian
populace than to mendicants, rascals of sinister mien, flocking in, none
knew why, from the four points of the compass. The provinces were more
seriously disturbed. All the sovereign courts rose up with one accord;
the Parliament of Rouen declared “traitors to the king, to the nation, to
the province, perjured and branded with infamy, all officers and judges”
who should proceed in virtue of the ordinances of May 8. “The authority
of the king is unlimited for doing good to his subjects,” said one of the
presidents, “but everybody should put limits to it when it turns towards
oppression.” It was the very commandant of the royal troops whom the
magistrates thus reproached with their passive obedience.
Normandy confined herself to declarations and speeches; other provinces
went beyond those bounds: Brittany claimed performance “of the marriage
contract between Louis XII. and the Duchess Anne.” Notwithstanding the
king’s prohibition, the Parliament met at Rennes. A detachment of
soldiers having been ordered to disperse the magistrates, a band of
gentlemen, supported by an armed mob, went to protect the deliberations
of the court. Fifteen officers fought duels with fifteen gentlemen. The
court issued a decree of arrest against the holders of the king’s
commission. The youth of Nantes hurried to the aid of the youth of
Rennes. The intermediary commission of the states ordered the bishops to
have the prayers said which were customary in times of public calamity,
and a hundred and thirty gentlemen carried to the governor a declaration
signed by the noblesse of almost the whole province. “We, members of the
noblesse of Brittany, do declare infamous those who may accept any place,
whether in the new administration of justice or in the administration of
the states, which is not recognized by the laws and constitutions of the
province.” A dozen of them set off for Versailles to go and denounce the
ministers to Louis XVI. Being put in the Bastille, eighteen of their
friends went to demand then back; they were followed by fifty others.
The officers of the Bassigny regiment had taken sides with the
opposition, and discussed the orders sent to them. Among the great lords
of the province, attached to the king’s own person, MM. de La Tremoille,
de Rieux, and de Guichen left the court to join their protests to those
of their friends; the superintendent, Bertrand de Molleville, was hanged-
in effigy and had to fly.
In Bearn, the peasantry had descended from the mountains; hereditary
proprietors of their little holdings, they joined the noblesse to march
out and meet the Duke of Guiche, sent by the king to restore order.
Already the commandant of the province had been obliged to authorize the
meeting of the Parliament. The Bearnese bore in front of their ranks the
cradle of Henry IV., carefully preserved in the Castle of Pau. “We are
no rebels,” they said: “we claim our contract and fidelity to the oaths
of a king whom we love. The Bearnese is free-born, he will not die a
slave. Let the king have all from us in love and not by force; our blood
is his and our country’s. Let none come to take our lives when we are
defending our liberty.”
Legal in Normandy, violent in Brittany, tumultuous in Bearn, the
parliamentary protests took a politic and methodical form in Dauphiny.
An insurrection amongst the populace of Grenoble, soon supported by the
villagers from the mountains, had at first flown to arms at the sound of
the tocsin. The members of the Parliament, on the point of leaving the
city, had been detained by force, and their carriages had been smashed.
The troops offered little resistance; an entry was effected into the
house of the governor, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, and, with an axe
above his head, the insurgents threatened to hang him to the chandelier
in his drawing-room if he did not convoke the Parliament. Ragged
ruffians ran to the magistrates, and compelled them to meet in the
sessions-hall. The members of Parliament succeeded with great difficulty
in pacifying the mob. As soon as they found themselves free, they
hastened away into exile. Other hands had taken up their quarrel. A
certain number of members of the three orders met at the town hall, and,
on their private authority, convoked for the 21st of July the special
states of Dauphiny, suppressed a while before by Cardinal Richelieu.
The Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre had been superseded by old Marshal Vaux,
rough and ready. He had at his disposal twenty thousand men. Scarcely
had he arrived at Grenoble, when he wrote to Versailles. “It is too
late,” he said. The prerogatives of royal authority were maintained,
however. The marshal granted a meeting of the states-provincial, but he
required permission to be asked of him. He forbade the assembly to be
held at Grenoble. It was in the Castle of Vizille, a former residence
of the dauphins, that the three orders of Dauphiny met, closely united
together in wise and patriotic accord. The Archbishop of Vienne, Lefranc
de Pompignan, brother of the poet, lately the inveterate foe of Voltaire,
an ardently and sincerely pious man, led his clergy along the most
liberal path; the noblesse of the sword, mingled with the noblesse of the
robe, voted blindly all the resolutions of the third estate; these were
suggested by the real head of the assembly, M. Mounier, judge-royal of
Grenoble, a friend of M. Necker’s, an enlightened, loyal, honorable man,
destined ere long to make his name known over the whole of France by his
courageous resistance to the outbursts of the National Assembly.
Unanimously the three orders presented to the king their claims to the
olden liberties of the province; they loudly declared, however, that they
were prepared for all sacrifices and aspired to nothing but the common
rights of all Frenchmen. The double representation of the third in the
estates of Dauphiny was voted without contest, as well as equal
assessment of the impost intended to replace forced labor. Throughout
the whole province the most perfect order had succeeded the first
manifestations of popular irritation.
It was now more than a year since Brienne had become chief minister.
MM. de Segur and de Castries had retired, refusing to serve under a man
whom they did not esteem. Alone, shut up in his closet, the archbishop
listened without emotion to the low murmur of legal protests, the noisy
tumult of insurrections. “I have foreseen all, even civil war. The king
shall be obeyed, the king knows how to make himself obeyed,” he kept
repeating in the assured tones of an oracle. Resolved not to share the
responsibility of the reverse he foresaw, Baron de Breteuil sent in his
resignation.
Meanwhile the treasury was found to be empty; Brienne appealed to the
clergy, hoping to obtain from ecclesiastical wealth one of those
gratuitous gifts which had often come in aid of the State’s necessities.
The Church herself was feeling the influence of the times. Without
relaxing in her pretensions to the maintenance of privileges, the
ecclesiastical assembly thought itself bound to plead the cause of that
magistracy which it had so, often fought. “Our silence,” said the
remonstrances, “would be a crime, of which the nation and posterity would
never absolve us. Your Majesty has just effected at the bed of justice
of May 8, a great movement as regards things and persons. Such ought to
be a consequence rather than a preliminary of the States-general; the
will of a prince which has not been enlightened by his courts may be
regarded as a momentary will. Your Majesty has issued an edict carrying
the restoration of the plenary court, but that court has recalled an
ancient reign without recalling ancient ideas. Even if it had been once
the supreme tribunal of our kings, it now presents no longer that
numerous assemblage of prelates, barons, and lieges united together. The
nation sees nothing in it but a court-tribunal whose complaisance it
would be afraid of, and whose movements and intrigues it would dread in
times of minority and regency. . . . Our functions are sacred, when,
from the height of the altars, we pray heaven to send down blessings on
kings and on their subjects; they are still so, when, after teaching
people their duties, we represent their rights and make solicitations on
behalf of the afflicted, on behalf of the absent despoiled of their
position and their liberty. The clergy of France, Sir, stretch forth to
you their suppliant hands; it is so beautiful to see might and puissance
yielding to prayer! The glory of your Majesty is not in being King of
France, but in being King of the French, and the heart of your subjects
in the fairest of your domains.” The assembly of the clergy granted to
the treasury only a poor gift of eighteen hundred thousand livres.
All the resources were exhausted, disgraceful tricks had despoiled the
hospitals and the poor; credit was used up, the payments of the State
were backward; the discount-bank (_caisse d’escompte_) was authorized to
refuse to give coin. To divert the public mind from this painful
situation, Brienne proposed to the king to yield to the requests of the
members of Parliament, of the clergy, and of the noblesse themselves.
A decree of August 8, 1788, announced that the States-general would be
convoked May 1, 1789: the re-establishment of the plenary court was
suspended to that date. Concessions wrested from the weakness and
irresolution of governments do not strengthen their failing powers.
Brienne had exhausted his boldness as well as his basenesses; he
succumbed beneath the outcry of public wrath and mistrust. He offered
the comptroller-generalship to M. Necker, who refused. “He told XVI.
“Mercy,” is the expression in Brienne’s own account, “that under a
minister who, like me, had lost the favor of the public, he could not do
any good.” A court-intrigue at last decided the minister’s fall. The
Count of Artois, egged on by Madame de Polignac, made urgent entreaties
to the queen; she was attached to Brienne; she, however, resigned herself
to giving him up, but with so many favors and such an exhibition of
kindness towards all his family, that the public did not feel at all
grateful to Marie Antoinette. Already Brienne had exchanged the
archbishopric of Toulouse for that of Sens, a much richer one. “The
queen offered me the hat and anything I might desire,” writes the
prelate, “telling me that she parted from me with regret, weeping at
being obliged to do so, and permitting me to kiss her (_l’embrasser_) in
token of her sorrow and her interest.” “After having made the mistake of
bringing him into the ministry,” says Madame Campan [_Memoires,_ t. i.
p. 33], “the queen unfortunately made an equally grave one in supporting
him at the time of a disgrace brought upon him by the despair of the
whole nation. She considered it only consistent with her dignity to give
him, at his departure, ostensible proofs of her esteem, and, her very
sensibility misleading her, she sent him her portrait adorned with
precious stones and the patent of lady of the palace for his niece,
Madame de Courcy, saying that it was necessary to indemnify a minister
sacrificed by the trickery of courts and the factious spirit of the
nation. I have since seen the queen shed bitter tears over the errors
she committed at this period.”
On the 25th of August, 1788, the king sent for M. Necker.
A burst of public joy greeted the fall of the detested minister and
the return of the popular minister. There were illuminations in the
provinces as well as at Paris, at the Bastille as well as the houses of
members of Parliament; but joy intermingled with hate is a brutal and a
dangerous one: the crowd thronged every evening on the Pont-Neuf, forcing
carriages as well as foot passengers to halt in front of Henry IV.’s
statue. “Hurrah for Henry IV.! To the devil with Lamoignon and
Brienne!” howled the people, requiring all passers to repeat the same
cry. It was remarked that the Duke of Orleans took pleasure in crossing
over the Pont-Neuf to come in for the cheers of the populace. “He was
more crafty than ambitious, more depraved than naturally wicked,” says M.
Malouet: “resentment towards the court had hurried him into intrigue; he
wanted to become formidable to the queen. His personal aim was vengeance
rather than ambition, that of his petty council was to effect an upheaval
in order to set the prince at the head of affairs as lieutenant-general
and share the profits.”
The tumult in the streets went on increasing; the keeper of the seals,
Lamoignon, had tried to remain in power. M. Necker, supported by the
queen, demanded his dismissal. His departure, like that of Brienne, had
to be bought; he was promised an embassy for his son; he claimed a sum of
four hundred thousand livres; the treasury was exhausted, and there was
no finding more than half. The greedy keeper of the seals was succeeded
by Barentin, premier-president of the Court of Aids. Two dummies, one
dressed in a _simarre_ (gown) and the other in pontifical vestments, were
burned on the Pont-Neuf: the soldiers, having been ordered to disperse
the crowds, some persons were wounded and others killed; the mob had felt
sure that they would not be fired upon, whatever disorder they showed;
the wrath and indignation were great; there were threats of setting fire
to the houses of MM. de Brienne and de Lamoignon; the quarters of the
commandant of the watch were surrounded. The number of folks of no
avocation, of mendicants and of vagabonds, was increasing every day in
Paris.
Meanwhile the Parliament had gained its point, the great baillie-courts
were abolished; the same difficulty had been found in constituting them
as in forming the plenary court; all the magistrates of the inferior
tribunals refused to sit in them; the Breton deputies were let out of the
Bastille; everywhere the sovereign courts were recalled. The return of
the exiles to Paris was the occasion for a veritable triumph and the
pretext for new disorders among the populace. It was the Parliament’s
first duty to see to the extraordinary police (_haute police_) in its
district; it performed the duty badly and weakly. The populace had
applauded its return and had supported its cause during its exile; the
first resolution of the court was directed against the excesses committed
by the military in repressing the disorders. When it came to trying the
men seized with arms in their hands and the incendiaries who had
threatened private houses, all had their cases dismissed; by way of
example, one was detained a few days in prison. Having often been served
in its enterprises by the passions of the mob, the Parliament had not
foreseen the day when those same outbursts would sweep it away like chaff
before the wind with all that regimen of tradition and respect to which
it still clung even in its most audacious acts of daring.
For an instant the return of M. Necker to power had the effect of
restoring some hope to the most far-sighted. On his coming into office,
the treasury was empty, there was no scraping together as much as five
thousand livres. The need was pressing, the harvests were bad; the
credit and the able resources of the great financier sufficed for all;
the funds went up thirty percent. in one day, certain capitalists made
advances, the chamber of the notaries of Paris paid six millions into the
treasury, M. Necker lent two millions out of his private fortune.
Economy had already found its way into the royal household; Louis XVI.
had faithfully kept his promises; despite the wrath of courtiers, he had
reduced his establishment. The Duke of Coigny, premier equerry, had
found his office abolished. “We were truly grieved, Coigny and I,” said
the king, kindly, “but I believe he would have beaten me had I let him.”
“It is fearful to live in a country where one is not sure of possessing
to-morrow what one had the day before,” said the great lords who were
dispossessed; “it’s a sort of thing seen only in Turkey.” Other
sacrifices and more cruel lessons in the instability of human affairs
were already in preparation for the French noblesse.
The great financial talents of M. Necker, his probity, his courage, had
caused illusions as to his political talents; useful in his day and in
his degree, the new minister was no longer equal to the task. The
distresses of the treasury had powerfully contributed to bring about, to
develop the political crisis; the public cry for the States-general had
arisen in a great degree from the deficit; but henceforth financial
resources did not suffice to conjure away the danger; the discount-bank
had resumed payment, the state honored its engagements, the phantom of
bankruptcy disappeared from before the frightened eyes of stockholders;
nevertheless the agitation did not subside, minds were full of higher and
more tenacious concernments. Every gaze was turned towards the States-
general. Scarcely was M. Necker in power, when a royal proclamation,
sent to the Parliament returning to Paris, announced the convocation of
the Assembly for the month of January, 1789.
The States-general themselves had become a topic of the most lively
discussion. Amid the embarrassment of his government, and in order to
throw a sop to the activity of the opposition, Brienne had declared his
doubts and his deficiency of enlightenment as to the form to be given to
the deliberations of that ancient assembly, always convoked at the most
critical junctures of the national history, and abandoned for one
hundred and seventy-five years past. “The researches ordered by the
king,” said a decree of the council, “have not brought to light any
positive information as to the number and quality of the electors and
those eligible, any more than as to the form of the elections: the king
will always try to be as close as possible to the old usages; and, when
they are unknown, his Majesty will not supply the hiatus till after
consulting the wish of his subjects, in order that the most entire
confidence may hedge a truly national assembly. Consequently the king
requests all the municipalities and all the tribunals to make researches
in their archives; he likewise invites all scholars and well-informed
persons, and especially those who are members of the Academy of
Inscriptions and Literature, to study the question and give their
opinion.” In the wake of this appeal a flood of tracts and pamphlets had
inundated Paris and the provinces: some devoted to the defence of ancient
usages; the most part intended to prove that the Constitution of the
olden monarchy of France contained in principle all the political
liberties which were but asking permission to soar; some, finally, bolder
and the most applauded of all, like that of Count d’Entraigues, _Note on
the States-General, their Rights and the Manner of Convoking them;_ and
that of Abbe Sieyes, _What is the Third Estate?_ Count d’Entraigues’
pamphlet began thus: “It was doubtless in order to give the most heroic
virtues a home worthy of them that heaven willed the existence of
republics, and, perhaps to punish the ambition of men, it permitted great
empires, kings, and masters to arise.” Sieyes’ pamphlet had already sold
to the extent of thirty thousand copies; the development of his ideas was
an audacious commentary upon his modest title. “What is the third
estate?” said that able revolutionist. “Nothing. What ought it to be?
Everything?” It was hoisting the flag against the two upper orders.
“The deputies of the clergy and of the noblesse have nothing in common
with national representation,” he said, “and no alliance is possible
between the three orders in the States-general.”
It may be permissible to quote here a page or, so from the second volume
of this history. “At the moment when France was electing the constituent
assembly, a man, whose mind was more powerful than accurate, Abbe Sieyes,
could say, ‘What is the third estate? Everything. What has it been
hitherto in the body politic? Nothing. What does it demand? To be
something.’ There were in these words three grave errors. In the course
of the regimen anterior to 1789, so far was the third estate from being
nothing that it had every day become greater and stronger. What was
demanded for it in 1789 by M. Sieyes and his friends was not that it
should become something, but that it should be everything. It was to
desire what was beyond its right and its might; the Revolution, which was
its victory, itself proved this. Whatever may have been the weaknesses
and the faults of its adversaries, the third estate had to struggle
terribly to vanquish them, and the struggle was so violent and so
obstinate that the third estate was shattered to pieces in it and paid
right dearly for its triumph. It first of all found despotism instead of
liberty; and when the liberty returned, the third estate found itself
face to face with a twofold hostility: that of its adversaries of the old
regimen and that of absolute democracy, which, in its turn, claimed to be
everything. Excessive pretension entails unmanageable opposition, and
excites unbridled ambition. What there was in the words of Abbe Sieyes,
in 1789, was not the truth as it is in history; it was a lying programme
of revolution. Taking the history of France in its totality and in all
its phases, the third estate has been the most active and most decisive
element in French civilization. If we follow it in its relations with
the general government of the country, we see it first of all allied
during six centuries with the kingship, struggling pauselessly against
the feudal aristocracy, and giving the prevalence in place of that to a
central and unique power, pure monarchy to wit, closely approximating,
though with certain often-repeated but vain reservations, to absolute
monarchy. But, so soon as it has gained this victory and accomplished
this revolution, the third estate pursues another: it attacks this unique
power which it had contributed so much to establish, and it undertakes
the task of changing pure monarchy into constitutional monarchy. Under
whatever aspect we consider it in its two great and so very different
enterprises, whether we study the progressive formation of French society
itself or that of its government, the third estate is the most powerful
and the most persistent of the forces which have had influence over
French civilization. Not only is this fact novel, but it has for France
quite a special interest; for, to make use of an expression which is much
abused in our day, it is a fact eminently French, essentially national.
Nowhere has burgessdom had a destiny so vast, so fertile as that which
has fallen to it in France. There have been commons all over Europe, in
Italy, in Spain, in Germany, in England, as well as in France. Not only
have there been commons everywhere, but the commons in France are not
those which, _qua_ commons, under that name and in the middle ages, have
played the greatest part and held the highest place in history. The
Italian commons begot glorious republics. The German commons became free
towns, sovereign towns, which have their own special history, and
exercised throughout the general history of Germany a great deal of
influence. The commons of England allied themselves with a portion of
the English feudal aristocracy, formed with it the preponderating house
in the British government, and thus played, full early, a powerful part
in the history of their country. The French commons, under that name and
in their season of special activity, were certainly far from rising to
that importance in politics and that rank in history. And yet it is in
France that the people of the commons, the burgessdom, became most
completely, most powerfully developed, and ended by acquiring, in the
general social body, the most decided preponderance. There have been
commons throughout the whole of Europe; there has been in truth no third
estate victorious save in France; it is in the French Revolution of 1789,
assuredly the greatest, that the French third estate reached its
ultimatum, and France is the only country where, in an excess of
burgesspride, a man of great mind could say: ‘What is the third estate?
Every thing.’”
So much excitement in men’s minds, and so much commotion amongst the
masses, reasonably disquieted prudent folks. In spite of its natural
frivolity, the court was at bottom sad and anxious. The time had passed
for the sweet life at the manor-house of Trianon, for rustic amusements
and the charity of youth and romance. Marie Antoinette felt it deeply
and bitterly; in the preceding year, at the moment when M. de Calonne was
disputing with the Assembly of notables, she wrote to the Duchess of
Polignac who had gone to take the waters in England: “Where you are you
can at least enjoy the pleasure of not hearing affairs talked about.
Though in the country of upper and lower houses, of oppositions and
motions, you can shut your ears and let the talk glide; but here there is
a deafening noise, notwithstanding all I can do; those words opposition
and motion are as firmly established here as in the Parliament of
England, with this difference, that, when you go over to the opposition
in London, you commence by relinquishing the king’s graces, whereas here
many oppose all the wise and beneficent views of the most virtuous of
masters and keep his benefits all the same; that perhaps is more clever,
but it is not so noble. The time of illusions is over, and we are having
some cruel experiences. Happily all the means are still in the king’s
hands, and he will arrest all the mischief which the imprudent want to
make.” The queen preserved some confidence: she only half perceived the
abyss beginning to yawn beneath her feet, she had not yet criticised the
weakness and insufficiency of the king her husband; she did not as yet
write: “The personage over me is not fit, and as for me, whatever may be
said and come what may, I am never anything but secondary, and, in spite
of the confidence reposed by the first, he often makes me feel it.” She
was troubled, nevertheless, and others more sagacious were more so than
she. “When I arrived at Paris, where I had not been for more than three
years,” says M. Malouet, for a long while the king’s commissioner in the
colonies, and latterly superintendent of Toulon, “observing the heat of
political discussions as well as of the pamphlets in circulation,
M. d’Entraigues’ work and Abbe Sieyes’, the troubles in Brittany and
those in Dauphiny, my illusions vanished; I was seized with all the
terrors confided to me by Abbe Raynal on my way to Marseilles. I found
M. Necker beginning to be afraid, but still flattering himself that he
would have means of continuing, directing, and bringing everything
right.” The Parliament was still more affrighted than M. Malouet and M.
Necker. Summoned, on the 28th of September, to enregister the king’s
proclamation relative to the convocation of the States-general, it added
this clause: “According to the forms observed in 1614.” It was a reply
in the negative on the part of the magistracy to all the new aspirations
to the vote by polling (_vote par tete_) as well as to the doubling of
the third already gained in principle amongst the provincial assemblies;
the popularity of the Parliament at once vanished. M. d’Espremesnil,
hardly returned from the Isles of St. Marguerite, and all puffed up with
his glory, found himself abandoned by those who had been loudest in
vaunting his patriotic zeal. An old councillor had but lately said to
him, when he was calling for the States-general with all his might,
“Providence will punish your fatal counsels by granting your wishes.”
After the triumph of his return to Paris, amidst the desert which was
forming around the Parliament, “the martyr, the hero of liberty,” as his
enthusiastic admirers had been wont to call him, had to realize that
instability of human affairs and that fragility of popularity to which he
had shut his eyes even in his prison, when Mirabeau, ever biting and
cynical, wrote to one of his friends
“Neighborhood will doubtless procure you a visit from that immense
D’Espremesnil, the sage commentator upon Mesmer, who, from the Isles of
St. Marguerite even unto this place, has made everybody laugh at the
ostentation with which he shook his fetters to make them clank.”
The troubles amongst the populace had subsided, but agitation amongst the
thoughtful went on increasing, and the embarrassments of M. Necker
increased with the agitation amongst the thoughtful. Naturally a
stranger to politics properly so called, constantly engaged as he was in
finance or administration, the minister’s constitutional ideas were
borrowed from England; he himself saw how inapplicable they were to the
situation of France. “I was never called upon,” he says in his
_Memoirs,_ “to examine closely into what I could make, at the time of my
return to office, of my profound and particular esteem for the government
of England, for, if at a very early period my reflections and my
conversation could not but show symptoms of the opinions I held, at a
very early period, also, I perceived how averse the king was from
anything that might resemble the political practices and institutions of
England.” “M. Necker,” says M. Malouet, “showed rare sagacity in espying
in the greatest detail and on the furthest horizon the defects, the
inconveniences of every measure, and it was this faculty of extending his
observations to infinity which made him so often undecided.” What with
these doubts existing in his own mind, and what with the antagonistic
efforts of parties as well as individual wills, the minister conceived
the hope of releasing himself from the crushing burden of his personal
responsibility; he convoked for the second time the Assembly of notables.
Impotent as it was in 1787, this assembly was sure to be and was even
more so in 1788. Mirabeau had said with audacious intuition: “It is no
longer a question of what has been, but of what has to be.” The notables
clung to the past like shipwrecked mariners who find themselves invaded
by raging waters. Meeting on the 6th of November at Versailles, they
opposed in mass the doubling of the third (estate); the committee
presided over by Monsieur, the king’s brother, alone voted for the double
representation, and that by a majority of only one-voice. The Assembly
likewise refused to take into account the population of the
circumscriptions (outlying districts) in fixing the number of its
representatives; the seneschalty of Poitiers, which numbered seven
hundred thousand inhabitants, was not to have more deputies than the
bailiwick of Dourdan, which had but eight thousand. The liberality on
which the notables plumed themselves as regarded the qualifications
required in respect of the electors and the eligible was at bottom as
interested as it was injudicious. The fact of domicile and payment of
taxes did not secure to the electors the guaranty given by property; the
vote granted to all nobles whether enfeoffed or not, and to all members
of the clergy for the elections of their orders, was intended to increase
the weight of those elected by the number of suffrages; the high noblesse
and the bishops reckoned wrongly upon the influence they would be able to
exercise over their inferiors. Already, on many points, the petty nobles
and the parish priests were engaged and were to be still more deeply
engaged on the popular side.
At the very moment when the public were making merry over the Assembly of
notables, and were getting irritated at the delay caused by their useless
discussions in the convocation of the States-general, the Parliament, in
one of those sudden fits of reaction with which they were sometimes
seized from their love of popularity, issued a decree explanatory of
their decision on the 24th of September. “The real intentions of the
court,” said the decree, “have been distorted in spite of their
plainness. The number of deputies of each order is not determined by any
law, by any invariable usage, and it depends upon the king’s wisdom to
adjudge what reason, liberty, justice, and the general wish may
indicate.” The Parliament followed up this strange retractation with a
series of wise and far-sighted requests touching the totality of the
public administration. Its part was henceforth finished, wisdom in words
could not efface the effect of imprudent or weak acts; when the decree
was presented to the king, he gave the deputation a cold reception. “I
have no answer to make to the prayers of the Parliament,” he replied; “it
is with the States-general that I shall examine into the interests of my
people.”
Whilst all the constituted bodies of the third estate, municipalities,
corporations, commissions of provincial assemblies, were overwhelming the
king with their addresses in favor of the people’s rights, the Prince of
Conti, whose character always bore him into reaction against the current
of public opinion, had put himself at the head of the opposition of the
courtiers. Already, at one of the committees of the Assembly of
notables, he had addressed Monsieur, the most favorable of all the
princes to the liberal movement. “The very existence of the monarchy is
threatened,” he said, “its annihilation is desired, and we are close upon
that fatal moment. It is impossible that the king should not at last
open his eyes, and that the princes his brothers should not co-operate
with him; be pleased, therefore, to represent to the king how important
it is for the stability of his throne, for the laws, and for good order,
that the new systems be forever put away, and that the constitution and
ancient forms be maintained in their integrity.” Louis XVI. having shown
some ill-humor at the Prince of Conti’s remarks, the latter sent him a
letter signed by all the princes of the royal family except Monsieur and
the Duke of Orleans. The perils with which the state was threatened were
evident and even greater than the prince’s letter made out; the remedies
they indicated were as insufficient in substance as they were
contemptuous in form. “Let the third estate,” they said, cease to attack
the rights of the two upper orders, rights which, not less ancient than
the monarchy, ought to be as unalterable as the constitution; but let it
confine itself to asking for diminution of the imposts with which it may
be surcharged; then the two upper orders might, in the generosity of
their feelings, give up prerogatives which have pecuniary interests for
their object.” . . . Whilst demanding on the part of the third estate
this modest attitude, the princes let fall threatening expressions, the
use of which had been a lost practice to the royal house since the days
of the Fronde. “In a kingdom in which for so long a time there have been
no civil dissensions, the word schism cannot be uttered without regret,”
they said; “such an event, however, would have to be expected if the
rights of the two upper orders suffered any alteration, and what
confidence would not be felt in the mind of the people in protests which
tended to release them from payment of imposts agreed upon in the
states?”
Thirty dukes and peers had beforehand proposed to the king the
renunciation of all their pecuniary privileges, assuring him that the
whole French noblesse would follow the example if they were consulted.
Passions were too violently excited, and the disorder of ideas was too
general to admit of the proper sense being given to this generous and
fruitless proceeding. The third estate looked upon it as a manoeuvre
against double representation; the mass of the two orders protested
against the forced liberality which it was attempted to thrust upon them.
People made merry over the signataries. “Have you read the letter of the
dupes and peers?” they said.
The Assembly of notables had broken up on the 12th of December; the
convocation of the States-general was at hand, and the government of King
Louis XVI. still fluctuated undecidedly between the various parties which
were so violently disputing together over public opinion left to itself.
The dismay of wise men went on increasing, they were already conscious of
the fruitlessness of their attempts to direct those popular passions of
which they had, but lately been reckoning, upon availing themselves in
order to attain an end as laudable as it was moderate. One of the most
virtuous as well as the most enlightened and the most courageous,
M. Malouet, has related in his _Memoires_ the conversations he held at
this very juncture with the ministers, M. Necker and M. de Montmorin
especially. It is worth while to give the complete summary, as sensible
as it is firm, a truthful echo of the thoughts in the minds of the cream
of the men who had ardently desired reforms, and who attempted in vain to
rein up the revolution in that fatal course which was to cost the lives
of many amongst them, and the happiness and peace of nearly all.
“It is the first Assembly of notables,” said M. Malouet, “which has
apprised the nation that the government was henceforth subordinated to
public opinion.
“This is a false and dangerous position, if it is not strong enough to
enlighten that opinion, direct it, and restrain it.
“The wish of France has summoned the States-general, there was no way but
to obey it. The doubling of the third (estate) is likewise proclaimed in
an irresistible manner, but as yet there is nothing but your own mistakes
to imperil the kingly authority.
“Your shiftings, your weaknesses, your inconsistencies no longer leave
you the resource of absolute power. From the moment that, exhibiting
your embarrassments, you are obliged to invoke the counsels and aid of
the nation, you can no longer walk without it; from its strength you must
recruit your own; but your wisdom must control its strength; if you leave
it bridleless and guideless, you will be crushed by it.
“You must not wait, then, for the States-general to make demands upon you
or issue orders to you; you must hasten to offer all that sound minds can
desire, within reasonable limits, whether of authority or of national
rights.
“Everything ought to be foreseen and calculated in the king’s council
before the opening of the States-general. You ought to determine what
can be given up without danger in ancient usages, forms, maxims,
institutions, obsolete or full of abuses. All that the public experience
and reason denounce to you as proscribed, take heed that you do not
defend; but do not be so imprudent as to commit to the risks of a
tumultuous deliberation the fundamental basis and the essential springs
of the kingly authority. Commence by liberally granting the requirements
and wishes of the public, and prepare yourselves to defend, even by
force, all that violent, factious, and extravagant systems would assail.
In the state of uncertainty, embarrassment, and denudation in which you
have placed yourselves, you have no strength, I can feel, I can see. Get
out, then, of this state; put fresh energy into your concessions, into
your plans; in a word, take up a decided attitude, for you have it not.
“The revolution which is at this instant being effected, and which we may
regard as accomplished, is the elevation of the commons to an influence
equal to that of the two other orders. Another revolution must follow
that, and it is for you to carry it out: that is the destruction of
privileges fraught with abuse and onerous to the people. When I say that
it is for you to carry it out, I mean that you must take your measures in
such wise as to prevent anything from being done without you, and
otherwise than by your direction.
“Thus, then, you should have a fixed plan of concessions, of reforms,
which, instead of upsetting everything, will consolidate the basis of
legitimate authority. This plan should become, by your influence, the
text of all the bailiwick memorials. God forbid that I should propose to
you to bribe, to seduce, to obtain influence by iniquitous means over the
elections! You need, on the contrary, the most honest, the most
enlightened, the most energetic men. Such are those who must be brought
to the front, and on whom the choice should be made to fall.”
Admirable counsels on the part of the most honest and most far-sighted of
minds; difficult, however, if not impossible, to be put into practice by
feeble ministers, themselves still undecided on the very brink of the
abyss, having to face the repugnance and the passions of the two
privileged orders on which it was a question of imposing painful
sacrifices, however legitimate and indispensable they might be.
M. Malouet and those who thought with him, more in number than anybody
could tell, demanded instructions as to the elections in the bailiwicks.
“Can you have allowed this great crisis to come on without any
preparations for defence, without any combination?” they said to the
ministers. “You have, through the police, the superintendents, the
king’s proctors in the tribunals, means of knowing men and choosing them,
or, at any rate, of directing choice; these means, have you employed
them?”
M. Necker could not give his instructions; he had not yet made up his
mind on the question which was engaging everybody’s thoughts; he
hesitated to advise the king to consent to the doubling of the third.
“He had a timid pride which was based on his means, on his celebrity, and
which made him incessantly afraid of compromising himself with public
opinion, which he could no longer manage to control when he found himself
opposed by it,” said Malouet. Marmontel, who knew the minister well,
added, “That solitary mind, abstracted, self-concentrated, naturally
enthusiastic, had little communication with men in general, and few men
were tempted to have communication with him; he knew them only by
glimpses too isolated or too vague, and hence his illusions as to the
character of the people at whose mercy he was placing the state and the
king.”
M. Necker’s illusions as to himself never disappeared; he had a vague
presentiment of the weakening of his influence over public opinion, and
he was pained thereat. He resolved at last to follow it. “It is a great
mistake,” he wrote at a later period in his _Memoires,_ “to pretend to
struggle, with only antiquated notions on your side, against all the
vigor of the principles of natural justice, when that justice renews its
impulse and finds itself seconded by the natural desire of a nation. The
great test of ability in affairs is to obtain the merit of the sacrifice
before the moment when that same sacrifice will appear a matter of
necessity.”
The favorable moment, which M. Necker still thought of seizing, had
already slipped by him. The royal resolution proclaimed under this
strange title, _Result of the King’s Council held on the 27th of
December, 1788,_ caused neither great astonishment nor lively
satisfaction amongst the public. M. Necker was believed to be more
favorable to the doubling of the third (estate) than he really was; the
king was known to be weak and resigned to following the counsels of the
minister who had been thrust upon him. “The cause of the third estate,”
said the Report to the king, “will always have public opinion for it; the
wishes of the third estate, when unanimous, when in conformity with the
principles of equity, will always be only another name for the wishes of
the nation; the judgment of Europe will encourage it. I will say, then,
upon my soul and conscience, and as a faithful servant of his Majesty,
I do decidedly think that he may and ought to call to the States-general
a number of deputies of the third estate equal to that of the deputies of
the two other orders together, not in order to force on decisions by poll
(_deliberation par tete_), as appears to be feared, but in order to
satisfy the general wishes of the commons of his kingdom.” “The king,”
said the edict, “having heard the report made in his council by the
minister of finance relative to the approaching convocation of the
States-general, his Majesty has adopted its principles and views, and has
ordained what follows: 1. That the deputies shall be at least one
thousand in number; 2. That the number shall be formed, as nearly as
possible, in the, compound ratio of the population and taxes of each
bailiwick; 3. That the number of deputies of the third estate shall be
equal to that of the two other orders together, and that this proportion
shall be established by the letters of convocation.” The die was cast,
the victory remained with the third (estate), legitimate in principle,
and still possible perhaps to be directed and regulated, but dangerous
and already menacing. “It is not resistance from the two upper orders
that I fear,” said M. Malouet to the ministers, “it is the excess of the
commons; you have done too much, or let too much be done to prevent now
the propositions I submitted to you from being realized; the point is not
to go any further, for beyond lies anarchy. But if, in the very decided
and very impetuous course taken by public opinion, the king should
hesitate and the clergy and noblesse resist, woe to us, for all is lost!
Do you expect the least appearance of order and reason in a gathering of
twelve hundred legislators, drawn from all classes, without any practice
in discussion and meditation over the important subjects they are about
to handle, carried away by party spirit, by the impetuous force of so
many diverging interests and opinions? If you do not begin by giving
them fixed ideas, by hedging them, through their constituents, with
instructions and impediments which they cannot break through, look out
for all sorts of vagaries, for irremediable disorders.”
In his sad forecast of the confusion which threatened the new Assembly,
M. Malouet counted too much upon the authority of mandates and upon the
influence of the constituents; he was destined to look on, impotent and
despairing, at that great outburst of popular passions which split
asunder all ties and broke through all engagements as so many useless
impediments. “When the Assembly, in the first paroxysms of its delirium,
dared to annul its oaths and declared itself freed from the yoke of the
instructions which we received from our constituents, the king had a
right--what do I say? he was bound to send us back to our bailiwicks,”
says M. Malouet. The States-general were convoked for the 27th of April,
1789, and not a soul had yet received instructions from the government.
“Those that we did at last receive were as honest as they were
insufficient. They told us in substance to get adopted, if we could, the
proposal to present candidates for the departments, and to admit into the
list of candidates none but men whose morality, means, and fair
reputation were established, to prevent wrangles, schism between the
orders, and to carry, as far as in us lay, the most moderate notions as
regarded reforms and innovations. It was no longer the king speaking, it
was the consulting counsel for the crown, asking advice of everybody, and
appearing to say to everybody: ‘What’s to be done? What can I do? How
much do they want to lop from my authority? How much of it will they
leave me?” [_Memoires de M. Malouet,_ t. i. p. 249.] It was a tacit
abdication of the kingship at the juncture when its traditional
authority, if not its very existence, was brought to book.
The party of honest men, still very numerous and recruited amongst all
classes of society, went confidently to the general elections and
preparatory assemblies which had to precede them. “Hardly conscious were
they of the dark clouds which had gathered around us; the clouds shrouded
a tempest which was not slow to burst.” [Ibidem, p. 260.]
The whole of France was fever-stricken. The agitation was contradictory
and confused, a medley of confidence and fear, joy and rage, everywhere
violent and contagious. This time again Dauphiny showed an example of
politic and wise behavior. The special states of the province had met on
the 1st of December, 1788, authorized by the government, according to a
new system proposed by the delegates of the three orders. Certain
members of the noblesse and of the clergy had alone protested against the
mode of election. Mounier constantly directed the decisions of the third
(estate); he restrained and enlightened young Barnave, advocate in the
court, who, for lack of his counsels, was destined to frequently go
astray hereafter. The deliberations were invariably grave, courteous;
a majority, as decided as it was tolerant, carried the day on all the
votes. “When I reflect upon all we gained in Dauphiny by the sole force
of justice and reason,” wrote Mounier afterwards, in his exile, “I see
how I came to believe that Frenchmen deserve to be free.” M. Mounier
published a work on the convocation of the States-general demanding the
formation of two chambers. That was likewise the proposition of M. de La
Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, an enlightened, a zealous, and a far-sighted
prelate. “This plan had probably no approbation but mine,” says M.
Malouet. The opposition and the objections were diverse and
contradictory, but they were general. Constitutional notions were as yet
novel and full of confusion in all minds. The most sagacious and most
prudent were groping their way towards a future enveloped in mist.
The useful example of Dauphiny had no imitators. Bourbonness and
Hainault had accepted the system proposed by M. Necker for the formation
of preparatory assemblies. Normandy, faithful to its spirit of
conservative independence, claimed its ancient privileges and refused the
granted liberties. In Burgundy the noblesse declared that they would
give up their pecuniary privileges, but that, on all other points, they
would defend to the last gasp the ancient usages of the province. The
clergy and noblesse of Languedoc held pretty much the same language. In
Franche-Comte, where the states-provincial had not sat since Louis XIV.’s
conquest, the strife was so hot on the subject of the administrative
regimen, that the ministry declared the assembly dissolved, and referred
the decision to the States-general. The Parliament of Besancon
protested, declaring that the constitution of the province could not be
modified save by the nationality of Franche-Comte, and that deputies to
the States-general could not be elected save by the estates of the
country assembled according to the olden rule. This pretension of the
magistrates excluded the people from the elections; they rose and drove
the court from the sessions-hall.
Everywhere the preparatory assemblies were disturbed, they were
tumultuous in many spots; in Provence, as well as in Brittany, they
became violent. In his province, Mirabeau was the cause or pretext for
the troubles. Born at Bignon, near Nemours, on the 9th of March, 1749,
well known already for his talent as a writer and orator as well as for
the startling irregularities of his life, he was passionately desirous of
being elected to the States-general. “I don’t think I shall be useless
there,” he wrote to his friend Cerruti. Nowhere, however, was his
character worse than in Provence: there people had witnessed his
dissensions with his father as well as with his wife. Public contempt,
a just punishment for his vices, caused his admission into the states-
provincial to be unjustly opposed. The assembly was composed exclusively
of nobles in possession of fiefs, of ecclesiastical dignitaries, and of a
small number of municipal officers. It claimed to elect the deputies to
the States-general according to the ancient usages. Mirabeau’s common
sense, as well as his great and puissant genius, revolted against the
absurd theories of the privileged: he overwhelmed them with his terrible
eloquence, whilst adjuring them to renounce their abuseful and obsolete
rights; he scared them by his forceful and striking hideousness.
“Generous friends of peace,” said he, addressing the two upper orders,
“I hereby appeal to your honor! Nobles of Provence, the eyes of Europe
are upon you, weigh well your answer! Ye men of God, have a care; God
hears you! But, if you keep silence, or if you intrench yourselves in
the vague utterances of a piqued self-love, allow me to add a word. In
all ages, in all countries, aristocrats have persecuted the friends of
the people, and if, by I know not what combination of chances, there have
arisen one in their own midst, he it is whom they have struck above all,
thirsting as they were to inspire terror by their choice of a victim.
Thus perished the last of the Gracchi, by the hand of the patricians;
but, wounded to the death, he flung dust towards heaven, calling to
witness the gods of vengeance, and from that dust sprang Marius, Marius
less great for having exterminated the Cimbri than for having struck down
at Rome the aristocracy of the noblesse.”
Mirabeau was shut out from the states-provincial and soon adopted eagerly
by the third estate. Elected at Marseilles as well as at Aix for the
States-general, he quieted in these two cities successively riots
occasioned by the dearness of bread. The people, in their enthusiasm,
thronged upon him, accepting his will without a murmur when he restored
to their proper figure provisions lowered in price through the terror of
the authorities. The petty noblesse and the lower provincial clergy had
everywhere taken the side of the third estate. Mirabeau was triumphant.
“I have been, am, and shall be to the last,” he exclaimed, “the man for
public liberty, the man for the constitution. Woe to the privileged
orders, if that means better be the man of the people than the man of the
nobles, for privileges will come to an end, but the people is eternal!”
Brittany possessed neither a Mounier nor a Mirabeau; the noblesse
there were numerous, bellicose, and haughty, the burgessdom rich and
independent. Discord was manifested at the commencement of the
states-provincial assembled at Rennes in the latter part of December,
1788. The governor wanted to suspend the sessions, the two upper orders
persisted in meeting; there was fighting in the streets. The young men
flocked in from the neighboring towns; the states-room was blockaded.
For three days the members who had assembled there endured a siege; when
they cut their way through, sword in hand, several persons were killed
the enthusiasm spread to the environs. At Angers, the women published a
resolution declaring that “the mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts
of the young citizens of Angers would join them if they had to march to
the aid of Brittany, and would perish rather than desert the
nationality.” When election time arrived, and notwithstanding the
concessions which had been made to them by the government, the Breton
nobles refused to proceed to the nominations of their order if the choice
of deputies were not intrusted to the states-provincial; they persisted
in staying away, thus weakening by thirty voices their party in the
States-general.
The great days were at hand. The whole of France was absorbed in the
drawing up of the memorials (_cahiers_) demanded by the government from
each order, in each bailiwick. The weather was severe, the harvest had
been bad, the suffering was extreme. “Famine and fear of insurrection
overthrew M. Necker, the means of providing against them absorbed all his
days and nights and the greater part of the money he had at his
disposal.” Agitators availed themselves ably of the misery as a means of
exciting popular passion. The alms-giving was enormous, charity and fear
together opened both hearts and purses. The gifts of the Duke of Orleans
to the poor of Paris appeared to many people suspicious; but the
Archbishop of Paris, M. de Juigne, without any other motive but his
pastoral devotion, distributed all he possessed, and got into debt four
hundred thousand livres, in order to relieve his flock. The doors of the
finest houses were opened to wretches dying of cold; anybody might go in
and get warmed in the vast halls. The regulations for the elections had
just been published (24th of January, 1789). The number of deputies was
set at twelve hundred. The electoral conditions varied according to
order and dignity, as well as according to the extent of the bailiwicks;
in accordance with the opinion of the Assembly of notables, the simple
fact of nationality and of inscription upon the register of taxes
constituted electoral rights. No rating (_cens_) was required.
The preparatory labors had been conducted without combination, the
elections could not be simultaneous; no powerful and dominant mind
directed that bewildered mass of ignorant electors, exercising for the
first time, under such critical circumstances, a right of which they did
not know the extent and did not foresee the purport. “The people has
more need to be governed and subjected to a protective authority than it
has fitness to govern,” M. Malouet had said in his speech to the assembly
of the three orders in the bailiwick of Riom. The day, however, was
coming when the conviction was to be forced upon this people, so impotent
and incompetent in the opinion of its most trusty friends, that the
sovereign authority rested in its hands, without direction and without
control.
“The elective assembly of Riom was not the most stormy,” says M. Malouet,
who, like M. Mounier at Grenoble, had been elected by acclamation head of
the deputies of his own order at Riom, “but it was sufficiently so to
verify all my conjectures and cause me to truly regret that I had come to
it and had obtained the deputyship. I was on the point of giving in my
resignation, when I found some petty burgesses, lawyers, advocates
without any information about public affairs, quoting the _Contrat
social,_ declaiming vehemently against tyranny, abuses, and proposing a
constitution apiece. I pictured to myself all the disastrous
consequences which might be produced upon a larger stage by such
outrageousness, and I arrived at Paris very dissatisfied with myself,
with my fellow-citizens, and with the ministers who were hurrying us into
this abyss.”
The king had received all the memorials; on some few points the three
orders had commingled their wishes in one single memorial. M. Malouet
had failed to get this done in Auvergne. “The clergy insist upon putting
theology into their memorials,” he wrote to M. de Montmorin, on the 24th
of March, 1789, “and the noblesse compensations for pecuniary sacrifice.
I have exhausted my lungs and have no hope that we shall succeed
completely on all points, but the differences of opinion between the
noblesse and the third estate are not embarrassing. There is rather more
pigheadedness amongst the clergy as to their debt, which they decline to
pay, and as to some points of discipline which, after all, are matters of
indifference to us; we shall have, all told, three memorials of which the
essential articles are pretty similar to those of the third estate. We
shall end as we began, peaceably.”
“The memorials of 1789,” says M. de Tocqueville [_L’ancien regime et la
Revolution,_ p. 211], “will remain as it were the will and testament of
the old French social system, the last expression of its desires, the
authentic manifesto of its latest wishes. In its totality and on many
points it likewise contained in the germ the principles of new France. I
read attentively the memorials drawn up by the three orders before
meeting in 1789,--I say the three orders, those of the noblesse and
clergy as well as those of the third estate,--and when I come to put
together all these several wishes, I perceive with a sort of terror that
what is demanded is the simultaneous and systematic abolition of all the
laws and all the usages having currency in the country, and I see at a
glance that there is about to be enacted one of the most vast and most
dangerous revolutions ever seen in the world. Those who will to-morrow
be its victims have no idea of it, they believe that the total and sudden
transformation of so complicated and so old a social system can take
effect without any shock by the help of reason and its power, alone.
Poor souls! They have forgotten even that maxim which their fathers
expressed four hundred years before in the simple and forcible language
of those times: ‘By quest of too great franchise and liberties, getteth
one into too great serfage.’”
However terrible and radical it may have been in its principles and its
results, the French Revolution did not destroy the past and its usages,
it did not break with tradition so completely as was demanded, in 1789,
by the memorials of the three orders, those of the noblesse and the
clergy, as well as those of the third estate.
One institution, however, was nowhere attacked or discussed. It is not
true,” says M. Malouet, “that we were sent to constitute the kingship,
but undoubtedly to regulate the exercise of powers conformably with our
instructions. Was not the kingship constituted in law and in fact? Were
we not charged to respect it, to maintain it on all its bases?” Less
than a year after the Revolution had begun, Mirabeau wrote privately to
the king: “Compare the new state of things with the old regimen, there
is the source of consolations and hopes. A portion of the acts of the
National Assembly, and the most considerable too, is clearly favorable to
monarchical government. Is it nothing, pray, to be without Parliaments,
without states-districts, without bodies of clergy, of privileged, of
noblesse? The idea of forming but one single class of citizens would
have delighted Richelieu. This even surface facilitates the exercise of
power. Many years of absolute government could not have done so much as
this single year of revolution for the kingly authority.”
Genius has lights which cannot be obscured by either mental bias or
irregularities of life. Rejected by the noblesse, dreaded by the third
estate, even when it was under his influence, Mirabeau constantly sought
alliance between the kingship and liberty. “What is most true and nobody
can believe,” he wrote to the Duke of Lauzun on the 24th of December,
1788, “is that, in the National Assembly, I shall be a most zealous
monarchist, because I feel most deeply how much need we have to slay
ministerial despotism and resuscitate the kingly authority.” The States-
general were scarcely assembled when the fiery orator went to call upon
M. Malouet. The latter was already supposed to be hostile to the
revolution. “Sir,” said Mirabean, “I come to you because of your
reputation; and your opinions, which are nearer my own than you suppose,
determine this step on my part. You are, I know, one of liberty’s
discreet friends, and so am I; you are scared by the tempests gathering,
and I no less; there are amongst us more than one hot head, more than one
dangerous man; in the two upper orders all that have brains have not
common sense, and amongst the fools I know several capable of setting
fire to the magazine. The question, then, is to know whether the
monarchy and the monarch will survive the storm which is a-brewing, or
whether the faults committed and those which will not fail to be still
committed will ingulf us all.”
M. Malouet listened, not clearly seeing the speaker’s drift. Mirabeau
resumed: “What I have to add is very simple I know that you are a friend
of M. Necker’s and of M. de Montmorin’s, who form pretty nearly all the
king’s council; I don’t like either of them, and I don’t suppose that
they have much liking for me. But it matters little whether we like one
another, if we can come to an understanding. I desire, then, to know
their intentions. I apply to you to get me a conference. They would be
very culpable or very narrow-minded, the king himself would be
inexcusable, if he aspired to reduce the States-general to the same
limits and the same results as all the others have had. That will not
do, they must have a plan of adhesion or opposition to certain
principles. If that plan is reasonable under the monarchical system, I
pledge myself to support it and employ all my means, all my influence, to
prevent that invasion of the democracy which is coming upon us.”
This was M. Malouet’s advice, incessantly repeated to the ministers for
months past; he reported to them what Mirabeau had said; both had a bad
opinion of the man and some experience of his want of scruple.
“M. Necker looked at the ceiling after his fashion; he was persuaded that
Mirabeau had not and could not have any influence.” He was in want of
money, it was said. M. Necker at last consented to the interview.
Malouet was not present as he should have been. Deprived of this
sensible and well-disposed intermediary, the Genevese stiffness and the
Provencal ardor were not likely to hit it off. Mirabeau entered. They
saluted one another silently and remained for a moment looking at one
another. “Sir,” said Mirabeau, “M. de Malouet has assured me that you
understood and approved of the grounds for the explanation I desire to
have with you.” “Sir,” replied M. Necker, “M. Malouet has told me that
you had proposals to make to me; what are they?” Mirabeau, hurt at the
cold, interrogative tone of the minister and the sense he attached to the
word proposals, jumps up in a rage and says: “My proposal is to wish you
good day.” Then, running all the way and fuming all the while, Mirabeau
arrives at the sessions-hall. “He crossed, all scarlet with rage, over
to my side,” says M. Malouet, and, as he put his leg over one of our
benches, he said to me, ‘Your man is a fool, he shall hear of me.’”
When the expiring kingship recalled Mirabeau to its aid, it was too late
for him and for it. He had already struck fatal blows at the cause which
he should have served, and already death was threatening himself with its
finishing stroke. “He was on the point of rendering great services to
the state,” said Malouet: “shall I tell you how? By confessing to you
his faults and pointing out your own, by preserving to you all that was
pure in the Revolution and by energetically pointing out to you all its
excesses and the danger of those excesses, by making the people
affrighted at their blindness and the factions at their intrigues. He
died ere this great work was accomplished; he had hardly given an inkling
of it.”
Timidity and maladdress do not retard perils by ignoring them. The day
of meeting of the States-general was at hand. Almost everywhere the
elections had been quiet and the electors less numerous than had been
anticipated. We know what indifference and lassitude may attach to the
exercise of rights which would not be willingly renounced; ignorance and
inexperience kept away from the primary assemblies many working-men and
peasants; the middle class alone proceeded in mass to the elections. The
irregular slowness of the preparatory operations had retarded the
convocations; for three months, the agitation attendant upon successive
assemblies kept France in suspense. Paris was still voting on the 28th
of April, 1789, the mob thronged the streets; all at once the rumor ran
that an attack was being made on the house of an ornamental paper-maker
in the faubourg St. Antoine, named Reveillon. Starting as a simple
journeyman, this man had honestly made his fortune; he was kind to those
who worked in his shops: he was accused, nevertheless, amongst the
populace, of having declared that a journeyman could live on fifteen sous
a day. The day before, threats had been levelled at him; he had asked
for protection from the police, thirty men had been sent to him. The
madmen who were swarming against his house and stores soon got the better
of so weak a guard, everything was destroyed; the rioters rushed to the
archbishop’s, there was voting going on there; they expected to find
Reveillon there, whom they wanted to murder. They were repulsed by the
battalions of the French and Swiss guards. More than two hundred were
killed. Money was found in their pockets. The Parliament suspended its
prosecutions against the ringleaders of so many crimes. The government,
impotent and disarmed, as timid in presence of this riot as in presence
of opposing parties, at last came before the States-general, but blown
about by the contrary winds of excited passions, without any guide and
without fixed resolves, without any firm and compact nucleus in the midst
of a new and unknown Assembly, without confidence in the troops, who were
looked upon, however, as a possible and last resort.
The States-general were presented to the king on the 2d of May, 1789. It
seemed as if the two upper orders, by a prophetic instinct of their ruin,
wanted, for the last time, to make a parade of their privileges.
Introduced without delay to the king, they left, in front of the palace,
the deputies of the third estate to wait in the rain. The latter were
getting angry and already beginning to clamor, when the gates were opened
to them. In the magnificent procession on the 4th, when the three orders
accompanied the king to the church of St. Louis at Versailles, the laced
coats and decorations of the nobles, the superb vestments of the
prelates, easily eclipsed the modest cassocks of the country priests as
well as the sombre costume imposed by ceremonial upon the deputies of the
third estate; the Bishop of Nancy, M. de la Fare, maintained the
traditional distinctions even in the sermon he delivered before the king.
“Sir,” said he, “accept the homage of the clergy, the respects of the
noblesse, and the most humble supplications of the third estate.” The
untimely applause which greeted the bishop’s words were excited by the
picture he drew of the misery in the country-places exhausted by the
rapacity of the fiscal agents. At this striking solemnity, set off with
all the pomp of the past, animated with all the hopes of the future, the
eyes of the public sought out, amidst the sombre mass of deputies of the
third (estate), those whom their deeds, good or evil, had already made
celebrated: Malouet, Mounier, Mirabeau, the last greeted with a murmur
which was for a long while yet to accompany his name. “When the summons
by name per bailiwick took place,” writes an eye-witness, “there were
cheers for certain deputies who were known, but at the name of Mirabeau
there was a noise of a very different sort. He had wanted to speak on
two or three occasions, but a general murmur had prevented him from
making himself heard. I could easily see how grieved he was, and I
observed some tears of vexation standing in his bloodshot eyes ”
[_Souvenirs de Dumont,_ p. 47].
Three great questions were already propounded before the Assembly entered
into session; those of verification of powers, of deliberation by the
three orders in common, and of vote by poll. The wise men had desired
that the king should himself see to the verification of the powers of the
deputies, and that they should come to the Assembly confirmed in their
mandates. People likewise expected to find, in the speech from the
throne or in the minister’s report, an expression of the royal opinions
on the two other points in dispute. In a letter drawn up by M. Mounier
and addressed to the king, the estates of Dauphiny had referred, the year
before, to the ancient custom of the States-general. “Before the States
held at Orleans in 1569,” said this document, “the orders deliberated
most frequently together, and, when they broke up, they afterwards met to
concert their deliberations; they usually chose only one president, only
one speaker for all the orders, generally amongst the members of the
clergy. The States of Orleans had the imprudence not to follow the forms
previously observed, and the orders broke up. The clergy in vain invited
them to have but one common memorial and to choose one single speaker,
but they were careful to protest that this innovation would not interfere
with the unity and integrity of the body of the States. The clergy’s
speaker said in his address that the three estates, as heretofore, had
but one mouth, one heart, and one spirit. In spite of these protests,
the fatal example set by the States of Orleans was followed by those of
Blois and those of 1614. Should it be again imitated, we fear that the
States-general will be powerless to do anything for the happiness of the
kingdom and the glory of the throne, and that Europe will hear with
surprise that the French know neither how to bear servitude nor how to
deserve freedom.”
An honest but useless appeal to the memories of the far past! Times were
changed; whereas the municipal officers representing the third estate
used to find themselves powerless in presence of the upper orders
combined, the third (estate); now equal to the privileged by extension of
its representation, counted numerous adherents amongst the clergy,
amongst the country parsons, and even in the ranks of the noblesse.
Deliberation in common and vote by poll delivered the two upper orders
into its hands; this was easily forgotten by the partisans of a reunion
which was desirable and even necessary, but which could not be forced
upon the clergy or noblesse, and which they could only effect with a view
to the public good and in the wise hope of preserving their influence by
giving up their power. All that preparatory labor characteristic of the
free, prudent and bold, frank and discreet government, had been neglected
by the feebleness or inexperience of the ministers. “This poor
government was at grips with all kinds of perils, and the man who had
shown his superiority under other difficult circumstances flinched
beneath the weight of these. His talents were distempered, his lights
danced about, he was, sustained only by the rectitude of his intentions
and by vanity born of his hopes, for he had ever in reserve that
perspective of confidence and esteem with which he believed the third
estate to be impressed towards him; but the promoters of the revolution,
those who wanted it complete and subversive of the old government, those
men who were so small a matter at the outset, either in weight or in
number, had too much interest in annihilating M. Necker not to represent
as pieces of perfidy his hesitations, his tenderness towards the two
upper orders, and his air of restraint towards the commons” [_Memoires de
Malouet,_ t. i. p. 236].
It was in this state of feeble indecision as regarded the great
questions, and with this minuteness of detail in secondary matters, that
M. Necker presented himself on the 5th of May before the three orders at
the opening of the session in the palace of Versailles by King Louis XVI.
The royal procession had been saluted by the crowd with repeated and
organized shouts of “Hurrah for the Duke of Orleans!” which had disturbed
and agitated the queen. “The king,” says Marmontel, “appeared with
simple dignity, without pride, without timidity, wearing on his features
the impress of the goodness which he had in his heart, a little affected
by the spectacle and by the feelings with which the deputies of a
faithful nation ought to inspire in its king.” His speech was short,
dignified, affectionate, and without political purport. With more of
pomp and detail, the minister confined himself within the same limits.
“Aid his Majesty,” said he, “to establish the prosperity of the kingdom
on solid bases, seek for them, point them out to your sovereign, and you
will find on his part the most generous assistance.” The mode of action
corresponded with this insufficient language. Crushed beneath the burden
of past defaults and errors, the government tendered its abdication, in
advance, into the hands of that mightily bewildered Assembly it had just
convoked. The king had left the verification of powers to the States-
general themselves. M. Necker confined himself to pointing out the
possibility of common action between the three orders, recommending the
deputies to examine those questions discreetly. “The king is anxious
about your first deliberations,” said the minister, throwing away at
haphazard upon leaders as yet unknown the direction of those discussions
which he with good reason dreaded. “Never did political assembly combine
so great a number of remarkable men,” says M. Malouet, “without there
being a single one whose superiority was decided and could command the
respect of the others. Such abundance of stars rendered this assembly
unmanageable, as they will always be in France when there is no man
conspicuous in authority and in force of character to seize the helm of
affairs or to have the direction spontaneously surrendered to him.
Fancy, then, the state of a meeting of impassioned men, without rule or
bridle, equally dangerous from their bad and their good qualities,
because they nearly all lacked experience and a just appreciation of the
gravity of the circumstances under which they were placed; insomuch that
the good could do no good, and the bad, from levity, from violence, did
nearly always more harm than they intended.”
It was amidst such a chaos of passions, wills, and desires, legitimate or
culpable, patriotic or selfish, that there was, first of all, propounded
the question of verification of powers. Prompt and peremptory on the
part of the noblesse, hesitating and cautions on the part of the clergy,
the opposition of the two upper orders to any common action irritated the
third estate; its appeals had ended in nothing but conferences broken
off, then resumed at the king’s desire, and evidently and painfully to no
purpose. “By an inconceivable oversight on the part of M. Necker in the
local apportionment of the building appointed for the assembly of the
States-general, there was the throne-room or room of the three orders, a
room for the noblesse, one for the clergy, and none for the commons, who
remained, quite naturally, established in the states-room, the largest,
the most ornate, and all fitted up with tribunes for the spectators who
took possession of the public boxes (_loges communes_) in the room. When
it was perceived that this crowd of strangers and their plaudits only
excited the audacity of the more violent speakers, all the consequences
of this installation were felt. Would anybody believe,” continues M.
Malouet, “that M. Necker had an idea of inventing a ground-slip, a
falling-in of the cellars of the Menus, and of throwing down during the
night the carpentry of the grand room, in order to remove and install the
three orders separately? It was to me myself that he spoke of it, and I
had great difficulty in dissuading him from the notion, by pointing out
to him all the danger of it.” The want of foresight and the nervous
hesitation of the ministers had placed the third estate in a novel and a
strong situation. Installed officially in the statesroom, it seemed to
be at once master of the position, waiting for the two upper orders to
come to it. Mirabeau saw this with that rapid insight into effects and
consequences which constitutes, to a considerable extent, the orator’s
genius. The third estate had taken possession, none could henceforth
dispute with it its privileges, and it was the defence of a right that
had been won which was to inspire the fiery orator with his mighty
audacity, when on the 23d of June, towards evening, after the miserable
affair of the royal session, the Marquis of Dreux-Breze came back into
the room to beg the deputies of the third estate to withdraw. The king’s
order was express, but already certain nobles and a large number of
ecclesiastics had joined the deputies of the commons; their definitive
victory on the 27th of June, and the fusion of the three orders, were
foreshadowed; Mirabeau rose at the entrance of the grand-master of the
ceremonies. “Go,” he shouted, “and tell those who send you, that we are
here by the will of the people, and that we shall not budge save at the
point of the bayonet.” This was the beginning of revolutionary violence.
On the 12th of June the battle began; the calling over of the bailiwicks
took place in the states-room. The third estate sat alone. At each
province, each chief place, each roll (_proces-verbal_), the secretaries
repeated in a loud voice, “Gentlemen of the clergy? None present.
Gentlemen of the noblesse? None present.” Certain parish priests alone
had the courage to separate from their order and submit their powers for
verification. All the deputies of the third (estate) at once gave them
precedence. The day of persecution was not yet come.
Legality still stood; the third estate maintained a proud moderation, the
border was easily passed, a name was sufficient.
The title of States-general was oppressive to the new assembly, it
recalled the distinction between the orders as well as the humble posture
of the third estate heretofore. “This is the only true name,” exclaimed
Abbe Sieyes; “assembly of acknowledged and verified representatives of
the nation.” This was a contemptuous repudiation of the two upper
orders. Mounier replied with another definition “legitimate assembly of
the majority amongst the deputies of the nation, deliberating in the
absence of the duly invited minority.” The subtleties of metaphysics and
politics are powerless to take the popular fancy. Mirabeau felt it.
“Let us call ourselves representatives of the people!” he shouted. For
this ever fatal name he claimed the kingly sanction. “I hold the king’s
veto so necessary,” said the great orator, “that, if he had it not, I
would rather live at Constantinople than in France. Yes, I protest, I
know of nothing more terrible than a sovereign aristocracy of six hundred
persons, who, having the power to declare themselves to-morrow
irremovable and the next day hereditary, would end, like the
aristocracies of all countries in the world, by swooping down upon
everything.”
An obscure deputy here suggested during the discussion the name of
National Assembly, often heretofore employed to designate the States-
general; Sieyes took it up, rejecting the subtle and carefully prepared
definitions. “I am for the amendment of M. Legrand,” said he, “and I
propose the title of National Assembly.” Four hundred and ninety-one
voices against ninety adopted this simple and superb title. In contempt
of the two upper orders of the state, the national assembly was
constituted. The decisive step was taken towards the French Revolution.
During the early days, in the heat of a violent discussion, Barrere had
exclaimed, “You are summoned to recommence history.” It was an arrogant
mistake. For more than eighty years modern France has been prosecuting
laboriously and in open day the work which had been slowly forming within
the dark womb of olden France. In the almighty hands of eternal God a
people’s history is interrupted and recommenced never.