WAR BREAKS OUT
From the 25th of June to the 17th of July the conflict between the
middle class and the democratic party continued with great intensity.
Louis was, in reality, less the object than the pretext of their
quarrel. The Cordeliers urged that France, and not the assembly,
should pronounce the King's fate, and to effect that it would be
necessary to proceed to a referendum, to demand a popular vote. But
this was precisely what the Constitution refused to permit, and hence
the demand was in reality an attack on the Constitution. Day after day
the agitation grew, changing slightly in form. Finally the democrats
decided on a monster petition to be signed at the altar of the Champ de
Mars on the 17th of July.
Danton himself stood at one of the corners of the platform that day to
help on the signing of the protest of the Parisian democracy. But
Bailly, La Fayette, and the mass of the assembly had decided on a
policy of repression. {124} The national guards arrived in strong
force. Confusion followed. Volleys were fired. The mob, after losing
many dead, fled for safety. Danton, escaping, left Paris and proceeded
to London, where he remained until the storm had blown over. By this
stroke the assembly for the moment retained control. But the situation
was profoundly changed. If Danton and the popular insurrectional force
were for the moment defeated, Robespierre and intellectual democracy
were making rapid headway; the centre of gravity of revolutionary
opinion was shifting in his direction. Just before the crisis the
Jacobins had been invaded by a Palais Royal mob who had hooted down the
constitutionalist speakers, and imposed their opinion on the club.
This led to disruption. The moderate Jacobins left, and, at the
neighbouring _Feuillants_, founded a new society that was gradually to
become more and more retrograde. The few advanced Jacobins retained
possession of the old club, with its great affiliation of country
clubs, infused a radical element into its membership, and soon, making
of Robespierre its mouthpiece and its prophet, advanced in the
direction of imposing his doctrine of political salvation on France.
Meanwhile the assembly, with its constitutional {125} keystone securely
locked up in the Tuileries, was hastening to profit by its victory.
The opportunity for completing the Constitution might never recur, and
was eagerly seized. Louis, a necessary prop to the elaborate structure
devised by the wisdom of the deputies, was deliberately made use of.
Discredited, a virtual prisoner, finished as a monarch, he was
converted into a constitutional fiction, and was compelled by his
circumstances to resume the farce of kingship, and to put his signature
to the Constitution which, on the 3rd of September, was sent to him.
The Constitution of 1791 was compounded partly of political theory,
partly of revolutionary effort, of desire to pull down the prerogatives
of the monarchy in favour of the middle class. It was prefaced by a
declaration of the rights of man that stamps the whole as a piece of
class legislation. By this all Frenchmen were guaranteed certain
fundamental rights of justice, of opinion, of speech, of
opportunity,--these were passive rights. There were, however, active
rights as well; and those were reserved for a privileged class.[1]
{126} Only those paying taxes equivalent to three days' labour had
active political rights, that is, the right to vote. In primary and
secondary assemblies they were to elect the 750 deputies who were to
constitute the sole representative chamber. This chamber was to sit
for two years, the King having no authority to dissolve or prorogue it;
and it was to possess full legislative power subject to the King's
suspensive veto.
The King was chief executive official, with a large power of
appointment, and general control of matters of foreign policy. He was
not to choose his ministers from among the deputies, and he lost all
direct administrative control in the local sense. The intendants, and
the provinces, and the généralités were gone; instead of them was a new
territorial division into departments, in which local elective
self-government was established. Communes and departments were to
choose their own governing {127} committees, and the old centralized
administration of the Bourbons had for the moment to make way for an
opposite conception of government.
The signing of the constitution by the King brought it into effect, and
thereby an election became necessary for constituting the new
representative body, a body that was to be known as the _Législative_.
Before leaving its parent body, however, that began as States-General,
became a national assembly and was later known as the _Constituante_, a
word or two may be added to emphasize points not yet sufficiently
indicated. The assembly changed in opinion and attitude during the
course of its history, and was vastly different in September 1791 from
what it had been in May 1789. It did achieve the purpose of
translating a large part of the demands of the cahiers into legislative
enactments; yet it did not learn the meaning of the word toleration,
and it did not pave the way for liberty, but only for a doctrine of
liberty.
The elections to the _Législative_ took place in September, under the
influence of several cross currents of opinion. There was a slight
reaction among certain classes in Paris in favour of the King, and
several demonstrations took {128} place which an abler and more active
monarch might have turned to advantage. On the other hand, the Jacobin
Club attempted to use its machinery to influence the action of the
electoral meetings. As a result, when the deputies met on the 1st of
October, it was calculated that about 400 belonged to the floating
central mass, 136 to the Jacobins, that is, Jacobins in the new
Robespierre-Danton sense, 264 to the _Feuillants_. Among the latter
there was a general inclination towards a policy of rehabilitating the
royal power.
The personnel of the new assembly differed totally from that of its
predecessor, because of a self-denying ordinance whereby the members of
the _Constituante_ had excluded themselves from the new assembly. Yet
there were many notable men among the new deputies, nearly all,
however, Jacobins:--Brissot, the journalist, soon to be leader of a
wing of the party that detaches itself from the one that follows
Robespierre; Vergniaud, great as an orator; Isnard, Guadet, Gensonné;
Condorcet, marquis and mathematician, philosopher, physicist and
republican, noble mind and practical thinker; Cambon, stalwart in
politics as in finance; Couthon, hostile to Brissot, later to be one of
the Robespierre triumvirate.
{129} This Jacobin group nearly at once established its influence over
the more flaccid part of the assembly. Through its club organization
it packed the public galleries of the house, and from that point
directed the current of opinion by the judicious application of
applause or disapproval. This was reinforced by the _appel nominal_,
the manner of voting whereby each individual deputy could be compelled
to enter the speaker's rostrum and there declare and explain his vote.
To check the efforts of this dominating party, there was little but the
inertia of the Court, and what the _Feuillants_ might accomplish.
Bailly, La Fayette, Lameth, La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, Clermont
Tonnerre were among the conspicuous men of the club, but whatever their
worth most of them were associated with a too narrow, unyielding
attitude to obtain any wide support. The popular force was not behind
them, but, for the moment, behind the Jacobins, and the instant the
Jacobins became engaged in a struggle against the _Feuillants_, it
pushed against the latter and presently toppled them over. Had the
_Feuillants_ and the Court come together, there was yet a chance that
the tide would be stemmed. But that proved impossible. To the royal
{130} family foreign help, foreign intervention, appeared the only
chance of relief, and Marie Antoinette had long been urging her brother
Leopold to come to her assistance. No course could have been more
fatal, and the more probable intervention became, the more the
democratic party appeared a patriotic party, and the more the King and
Queen seemed traitors to the national cause.
It was the foreign question that immediately engrossed the chief
attention of the _Législative_, and the foreign question always led
back to the great internal one represented by the King. At Coblenz, in
the dominions of the Archbishop of Trièr, the Comte de Provence had set
up what was virtually a government of his own. The _émigrés_ had 3,000
or 4,000 men under arms, and a royal council organized, all that was
necessary to administer France if she could be regained. The
_Législative_ now aimed a blow at them; the _émigrés_ were to return to
France before the 1st of January 1792, and those failing to do this
were to be punishable by death. The decree was sent to the King who,
unwilling to sign assent to the death of his brother and nobles, used
his constitutional right of veto.
This was the beginning of a conflict between {131} the assembly and the
King, a struggle that showed the determination of the former not to
recognise the right of veto prescribed by the Constitution. The
_Législative_ followed its attack on the _émigrés_ by one on the
priests. The clergy was discontented and, in the west, showed signs of
inciting the peasantry to revolt; it was therefore decreed that every
member of the clergy might be called on to take the oath to the civil
constitution. This, again, the King vetoed, encouraged in his attitude
by the _Feuillants_. The old struggle was being renewed; Jacobins and
_Feuillants_ were fighting one another over the person of the King.
There was one question, however, on which the _Feuillants_ and
Brissot's wing of the Jacobins agreed; both wanted war. La Fayette,
chief figure among the _Feuillants_, had sunk rapidly in popularity
since his repression of the mob in July. In October he had resigned
his command of the national guard. In November he had been defeated by
the Jacobin Pétion for the mayoralty of Paris. He now hoped for a
military command, and saw in war the opportunity for consolidating a
victorious army by means of which the King and Constitution might be
imposed on Paris.
Brissot, ambitious and self-confident, his {132} head turned at the
prospect of a conflagration, saw in a European war a field large enough
in which to develop his untried statesmanship. The pretexts for war
lay ready to hand. There was not only the tense situation arising
between Austria and France because of the relation between the two
reigning families, but there was also acute friction over certain
territories belonging to German sovereign princes, such as those of
Salm or Montbéliard, that were enclaved within the French border.
Could the extinction of the feudal rights hold over such territory as
German princes held within the borders of France? Such was the
vexatious question which those princes were carrying to their supreme
tribunal, that of the Emperor at Vienna.
The opposition to the war was not so weighty. Louis realized the
danger clearly enough, and knew that Austrian success would be visited
on his head. Yet he was so helpless that he had to call the
_Feuillant_ nominee, Count Louis de Narbonne, his own natural cousin,
to the ministry of war. The King was not alone in his opposition to
the war,--Robespierre and Marat, nearly in accord, both stood for
peace. Robespierre, from the first, had foreseen the course of the
Revolution, had {133} prophetically feared the success of some soldier
of fortune,--he was at this moment that unknown lieutenant of
artillery, Napoleone Buonaparte,--who should with a stroke of the sword
convert the Revolution to his purposes. Marat, in his more hectic,
malevolent, uncertain way, was haunted by the same presentiment, and
what he saw in war was this: "What afflicts the friends of liberty is
that we have more to fear from success than from defeat . . . the
danger is lest one of our generals be crowned with victory and
lest . . . he lead his victorious army against the capital to secure
the triumph of the Despot. I invoke heaven that we may meet with
constant defeat . . . and that our soldiers . . . drown their leaders
in their own blood."--This Marat wrote on the 24th of April 1792, in
his little pamphlet newspaper _l'Ami du peuple_.
During the first part of 1792 the popular agitation grew. France was
now throwing all the enthusiasm, the vital emotion of patriotism into
her internal upheaval. Rouget de Lisle invented his great patriotic
hymn, christened in the following August the _Marseillaise_. Men who
could get no guns, armed themselves with pikes. The red Phrygian cap
of liberty was adopted. The magic word, citizen, became {134} the
cherished appellation of the multitude. And in the assembly the
orators declaimed vehemently against the traitors, the supporters of
the foreigner in their midst. Vergniaud, from the tribune of the
assembly menacing the Austrian princess of the Tuileries, exclaimed:
"Through this window I perceive the palace where perfidious counsels
delude the Sovereign. . . . Terror and panic have often issued from
its portals; this day I bid them re-enter, in the name of the Law; let
all its inmates know that it is the King alone who is inviolable, that
the Law will strike the guilty without distinction, and that no head on
which guilt reposes can escape its sword."
The thunders of Vergniaud and the other Jacobin orators rolled not in
vain. By March the Drissotins dominated the situation. They
frightened the King into acquiescence in their war policy and they
drove Narbonne and the Fayettists, their temporary allies, from office,
installing a new ministry made up of their own adherents. That new
ministry included Roland, Clavière and Dumouriez;--Roland, a
hard-headed, hard-working man of business, whose young wife with her
beauty and enthusiasm was to be the soul of the unfortunate Girondin
party; Clavière, a banker, speculator, {135} friend of Mirabeau, and
generally doubtful liberal; Dumouriez, a soldier, able, adventurous, of
large instincts political and human, ambitious and forceful beyond his
colleagues.
The Brissotin ministry was well equipped with talent, and was intended
to carry through the war, which was voted by the assembly on the 20th
of April. This step had been gradually led up to by an acrimonious
exchange of diplomatic votes. The war, now that it had broken out, was
found to involve more powers than Austria. The king of Prussia,
unwilling to let Austria pose as the sole defender of the Germanic
princes of the Rhineland, had in August 1791 joined the Emperor in the
declaration of Pillnitz, threatening France with coercion. He now
acted up to this, and joined in the war as the ally of the Emperor.
Leopold died in March, and was succeeded by his son, Marie Antoinette's
nephew, Francis II.
Three armies were formed by France for the conflict, and were placed
under the orders of Rochambeau, La Fayette, and Luckner. They were
weak in numbers, as the fortresses soaked up many thousands of men, and
unprepared for war. The allies concentrated their troops in the
neighbourhood of Coblenz. The {136} Duke of Brunswick was placed in
command, and by the end of July perfected arrangements for marching on
Paris with an Austro-Prussian army of 80,000 men.
The breaking out of war inflamed still further the political excitement
of France. In April a festival, or demonstration, was held in honour
of the soldiers of Chateauvieux' Swiss regiment, now released from the
galleys. Angry protests arose from the moderates, an echo of the
assembly's vote of thanks to Bouillé for repressing the mutineers six
months before. These protests, however, went unheeded, for the
Jacobins were now virtually masters of Paris. Not only did they
control the public galleries of the assembly but they had gained a
majority on the Commune and had secured for Manuel and Danton its legal
executive offices of _procureur_ and _substitut_.
In May difficulties arose between the King and his ministers, arising
partly from the exercise of the power of veto once more. On the 12th
of June the ministers were forced from office and were replaced by
moderates or Fayettists, Dumouriez going to the army to replace
Rochambeau. The Brissotin party, furious at this defeat, decided on a
monster {137} demonstration against the King for the 20th of June.
The 20th of June 1792 was one of the great days of the Revolution, but,
on the whole, less an insurrection than a demonstration. Out of the
two great faubourgs of the working classes, St. Antoine and St.
Marceaux, came processions of market porters, market women, coal
heavers, workmen, citizens, with detachments of national guards here
and there. Santerre, a popular brewer and national guard commander,
appeared the leader; but the procession showed little sign of having
recourse to violence. Bouquets were carried, and banners with various
inscriptions such as: "We want union!" "Liberty!" One of the most
extreme said: "Warning to Louis XVI: the people, weary of suffering,
demand liberty or death!"
Proceeding to the assembly a petition was tumultuously presented
wherein it was declared that the King must observe the law, and that if
he was responsible for the continued inactivity of the armies he must
go. The mob then flowed on to the palace, was brought up by some loyal
battalions of national guards; but presently forced one of the gates
and {138} irresistibly poured in. A disorderly scene followed.
The King maintained his coolness and dignity. For four long hours the
mob pushed through the palace, jostling, apostrophising, the King and
Queen. A few national guards, a few members of the assembly, attempted
to give Louis some sort of protection. But he was practically
surrounded and helpless. What saved him was his coolness, his good
sense, and the fact that there was no intent to do him bodily harm save
among some groups too unimportant to make themselves felt. To please
the men of the faubourgs Louis consented to place a red liberty cap on
his head, and to empty a bottle of wine as a sign of fraternization.
Finally Vergniaud and Pétion succeeded in having the palace evacuated;
and the assassination of Louis, which many had feared and a few hoped,
had been averted.
[1] There is no opportunity here for discussing adequately the clause
in the declaration to the effect that every citizen is entitled to
concur in making laws. That clause apparently conflicts with what I
have said above. My explanation of the discrepancy is based on this:
that the declaration is a much tinkered, composite document, made up
over a period of many months, and not logical at every point. The
clause here mentioned I explain as a direct echo of the elections to
the States-General; it was one of the first drafted; its precise
significance was soon lost sight of and its inconsistency remained
unnoticed.
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