to the King, and going to the Assembly thanked the members for his new
appointment and declared his unalterable devotion to the maintenance and
defense of the constitution. The president of the Assembly answered that
“the French people, which has sworn to conquer or to die in the cause of
liberty, will always confidently present to nations and to tyrants the
constitution and Lafayette.”
In view of what happened afterward it is important to remember that
Lafayette accepted his appointment under the constitution of France
and that he felt himself bound to support and obey it under all
circumstances.
Then he departed from Paris for the frontier, the cheers of the people
and the National Guards ringing in his ears. He was popular with all
parties except those of the two extremes, the friends of the King
considering him a rebel and the Jacobins calling him a courtier.
At Metz Lafayette met Rochambeau, Luckner, and Narbonne, and it was
arranged that the three generals should make their headquarters at
Liège, Trèves, and Coblentz. News of these military measures somewhat
cooled the ardor of the alliance against France and enemy troops stopped
collecting along the border. Lafayette took advantage of this to prepare
his raw recruits for a possible struggle. They needed this preparation,
for the army of France, which had once been the proudest in Europe, had
been allowed to scatter during the past few years.
He accomplished much in the way of discipline, was called to Paris to
consult on a plan of campaign, found the leaders there as much at odds
as ever, and returned to his post at Metz. Again the emigrant nobles and
their allies were uttering threats against the French government, and
finally, on April 20, 1792, the government declared war on its enemies.
Lafayette’s orders were to proceed against the Netherlands, marching
from Metz to Givet, and thence to Namur. Meantime Rochambeau’s army
was to attack the Austrians. But there was so much discord among
Rochambeau’s divisions that the attack turned into a retreat, and
Lafayette, learning this when he arrived at Givet, was obliged to wait
there instead of marching farther. The conduct of his soldiers so
discouraged Rochambeau that he resigned his commission and the territory
to be defended was divided between Lafayette and Luckner. The former
concentrated his troops at Maubeuge, and spent the month of May drilling
and occasionally making sorties.
In Paris the cause of law and order was having a hard time. The Jacobins
wanted to upset the constitution, dethrone the King, and establish
a republic, and they were steadily growing stronger. The spirit of
revolution was spreading through the country, and everywhere the
people gave the greatest applause to the most revolutionary orators.
The Assembly was treating Louis XVI. with insolence and the King was
retaliating by regarding the deputies with unconcealed contempt. The
monarchy and the constitution were fast falling to pieces, and the news
of the defeat of the army on the frontier helped to hasten the climax.
Gouverneur Morris wrote to Thomas Jefferson in June, 1792, “The best
picture I can give of the French people is that of cattle before a
thunder-storm.” And a week later he wrote, “We stand on a vast volcano;
we feel it tremble and we hear it roar; but how and where and when it
will burst, and who may be destroyed by its irruption, are beyond the
ken of mortal foresight to discover.”
Lafayette, in camp at Maubeuge, alarmed at the reports from Paris, felt
that the cause of liberty and order would be lost unless some effective
blow could be dealt at the power of the Jacobins. If some one would take
the lead in opposing that group, or club, he believed that the Assembly
and the rest of the people would follow. So he wrote a letter to the
Assembly, and in this he said, “Can you hide from yourselves that a
faction, and, to avoid vague terms, the Jacobite faction, has caused all
these disorders? It is this club that I openly accuse.” Then he went on
to denounce the Jacobins as the enemies of all order.
When the letter was read in the Assembly the Jacobins attacked it
furiously, charging that the General wanted to make himself a dictator.
His friends supported him, but the Jacobins were the more powerful.
Through their clubs, their newspapers, and their street orators they
soon led the fickle people to believe that Lafayette, their idol of a
few years before, was now a traitor to them and their greatest enemy.
Another quarrel arose between King Louis and the Assembly, and the
former dismissed his ministers. The Jacobins seized on this to
inaugurate a reign of terror. The streets were filled with mobs,
passionate orators harangued the crowds, men and women pushed their way
into the meetings of the Assembly and told the deputies what they wanted
done. June twentieth was the anniversary of the Tennis Court Oath, and
on that day a great rabble invaded the Assembly, denounced the King, and
then marched to the Tuileries, where it found that the gates had been
left open. The mob surged through the palace, singing the revolutionary
song “_Ça ira_,” and shouting “Down with the Austrian woman! Down with
Marie Antoinette!” The Queen and her children fled to an inner room,
protected by a few grenadiers. The King watched the crowd surge by him,
his only concession to their demands being to put a liberty cap on his
head. After three hours of uproar the leaders felt that Louis had been
taught a sufficient lesson and led their noisy followers back to the
streets.
A story is told that a young and penniless lieutenant by the name of
Napoleon Bonaparte was dining with a friend in the Palais Royal when
the mob attacked the Tuileries. Taking a position on the bank of the
Seine he watched the scene with indignation. When he saw the King at the
window with the red liberty cap on his head, he exclaimed, “Why have
they let in all that rabble? They should sweep off four or five hundred
of them with cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough.” But the
time had not yet come for this lieutenant to show how to deal with the
people.
Lafayette heard of the mob’s invasion of the Tuileries and decided to
go to Paris to see what he could do to check the spirit of revolution.
General Luckner had no objection to his leaving his headquarters at
Maubeuge, but warned him that if the Jacobins once got him in their
power they would cut off his head. Undaunted by this idea Lafayette
went to the capital, and arrived at the house of his friend La
Rochefoucauld, entirely unexpected, on the twenty-eighth of June.
His visit caused great excitement. He went to the Assembly and made a
stirring speech in which he said that the violence committed at the
Tuileries had roused the indignation of all good citizens. His words
were cheered by the more sober deputies, but the Jacobins protested
loudly. One of the latter asked how it happened that General Lafayette
was allowed to leave his army to come and lecture the Assembly on its
duties. The General’s speech had some influence in restoring order, but
the power of the Jacobins was steadily increasing.
Lafayette then went to the Tuileries, where he saw the royal family.
Louis was ready to receive any assurance of help that the General
could give him, for the King saw now that his only reliance lay in the
constitution he had signed, and felt that might prove a slight support.
Marie Antoinette, however, refused to forgive Lafayette for the part he
had taken in the early days of revolution, and would have no aid at his
hands.
When he left the Tuileries some of his former National Guards followed
his carriage with shouts of “Vive Lafayette! Down with the Jacobins!”
and planted a liberty pole before his house. This gave Lafayette the
idea of appealing to the whole force of the National Guard and urging
them to stand by the constitution. He asked permission to speak to them
at a review the next day, but the mayor, fearing Lafayette’s influence,
countermanded the review. Then the General held meetings at his house
and did all he could to persuade Guards and citizens to oppose the
Jacobins, who, if they had their way, would, in his opinion, ruin the
country.
At the end of June he returned to the army. Daily he heard reports of
the growing power of his enemies, the Jacobins. Then he resolved to make
one more attempt to save the King and the constitution. He received
orders to march his troops by a town called La Capelle, which was about
twenty miles from Compiègne, one of the King’s country residences.
His plan was that Louis XVI. should go to the Assembly and declare
his intention of passing a few days at Compiègne; there Lafayette’s
army would meet him, and the King would proclaim that he was ready
to send his troops against the enemies of France who had gathered on
the frontiers and should reaffirm his loyalty to the constitution. The
General thought that if the King would do this it would restore the
confidence of the people in their sovereign.
But neither the King nor the nobles who were with him at the Tuileries
were attracted by this plan, which meant that Louis would openly
declare his hostility toward those emigrant nobles who had gathered
on the borders. And when the Jacobins learned that Lafayette had been
communicating secretly with the King they used this news as fresh fuel
for their fire. So the result of the scheme was only to add to the
currents of suspicion and intrigue that were involving Paris in the
gathering storm.
The power of the Assembly grew weaker; its authority was more and more
openly thwarted; the deputies wanted to stand by the constitution, but
it appeared that the country did not care to live under its laws. The
government of Paris was now entirely under the control of the Jacobins.
They filled the ranks of the National Guards with ruffians in their
pay. On July fourteenth the King reviewed soldiers who were secretly
ready to tear the crown from his head and was forced to listen to bitter
taunts and jibes.
Then, at the end of July, the allied armies of Austria and Prussia,
accompanied by a great many French noblemen, crossed the frontier and
began their heralded invasion. The general in command, the Duke of
Brunswick, issued a proclamation calling on the people of Paris to
submit to their king, and threatening all sorts of dire things if they
persisted in their rebellion. The proclamation acted like tinder to
powder. The invasion united all parties for the moment. If the Duke of
Brunswick succeeded, no man who had taken part in the Revolution could
think his life or property secure, and France would return to the old
feudal despotism, made worse by its dependence on foreign armies.
The people of Paris and of France demanded immediate and vigorous
action; the Assembly could not lead them, and the Jacobins seized their
chance. Danton and his fellows addressed the crowds in the streets and
told them that France would not be safe until the monarchy and the
aristocracy had been exterminated. The people heard and believed, and by
August first were ready to strike down any men their leaders pointed out
to them.
Danton and the Jacobins made their plans rapidly. They filled the floor
and the galleries of the Assembly with men whose violent threats kept
the deputies constantly in fear of physical force. They taught the
people to hate all those who defended the constitution, and chief among
the latter Lafayette, whom the Jacobins feared more than any other man
in France. So great was their fury against him that Gouverneur Morris
wrote to Jefferson at the beginning of August, “I verily believe that if
M. de Lafayette were to appear just now in Paris unattended by his army,
he would be torn in pieces.”
On August tenth the mob, armed with pikes, surrounded the Tuileries.
The King looked out on a crowd made up of the most vicious elements of
the city. He tried to urge the National Guards to protect him, but they
were demoralized by the shouts of the throngs. Finally he decided to
take refuge with the National Assembly, and with the Queen and their
children succeeded in reaching the Assembly chamber.
The Swiss guards at the Tuileries attempted to make some resistance, but
the mob drove them from their posts and killed many of them. The reign
of terror spread. Nobles or citizens who had opposed the Jacobins were
hunted out and murdered. When the Assembly adjourned the deputies found
armed bands at the doors, waiting to kill all those who were known to
have supported the constitution.
Meantime the royal family had found the Assembly a poor refuge. A
deputy had moved that the King be dethroned and a convention summoned
to determine the future government of the country. The measure was
instantly carried. Louis XVI. and his family were handed over to
officers who took them to the Temple, which then became their prison.
The Jacobins had won the day by force and violence. They formed a
government called the “Commune of August 10th,” filled it with their
own men, drove all respectable soldiers out of the National Guard and
placed Jacobin pikemen in their places. All nobles and friends of the
King who were found in Paris were thrown into the prisons, which were
soon crammed. The Reign of Terror had begun in fact. Only a short time
later the prisoners were being tried and sent to the guillotine.
Lafayette heard of the events of August tenth and begged his troops to
remain true to the King and the constitution. Then the Commune of Paris
sent commissioners to the armies to announce the change of government
and to demand allegiance to the Commune. Lafayette met the commissioners
at Sedan, heard their statements, and declaring them the agents of a
faction that had unlawfully seized on power, ordered them imprisoned.
News of Lafayette’s arrest of the commissioners added to the turmoil
in Paris. Some Jacobins wanted to have him declared a traitor at once;
others, however, feared that his influence with the army might be too
great for them to take such a step safely. But troops in the other parts
of France had come over to the Commune, and so, on the nineteenth of
August the Jacobin leaders felt their power strong enough to compel the
Assembly to declare Lafayette a traitor.
Lafayette now had to face a decision. France had declared for the
Commune of Paris and overthrown King and constitution. He had three
choices. He might accept the rule of the Jacobins and become one of
their generals; he might continue to oppose them and probably be
arrested by his own soldiers and sent to the guillotine; he might leave
the country, seek refuge in some neutral land, and hope that some day
he could again be of service to liberty in France. To accept the first
course was impossible for him, because he had no confidence in Jacobin
rule. To take the second would be useless. Therefore the third course
was the one he decided on.
He turned his troops over to other officers, and with a few friends,
who, like himself, had been declared traitors because they had supported
the constitution, rode away from Sedan and crossed the border into
Belgium at the little town of Bouillon. He was now an exile from his
own country. The cause of liberty that he had fought so hard for had
now become the cause of lawlessness. His dream of France, safe and
prosperous under a constitution like that of the young republic across
the sea, had come to an end, at least for the time being. He could do
nothing but wash his hands of the Reign of Terror that followed on the
footsteps of the Revolution he had helped to start.
XI
LAFAYETTE IN PRISON AND EXILE
Lafayette knew that he could expect to find no place of refuge on either
side of the French frontier; on the one hand were the Jacobin soldiers
of the Reign of Terror who held him to be a traitor, and on the other
the emigrant noblemen and their allies who regarded him as in large part
responsible for all the troubles that had befallen Louis XVI. and his
court. He had got himself into a position where both sides considered
him an enemy; and his best course seemed to be to make his way to
England and there take ship for America, where he was always sure to
meet a friendly welcome.
Austrian and Prussian troops held the northern border of France and
garrisoned the outpost towns of Belgium. Lafayette and his companions
crossed the frontier on their road to Brussels, but were stopped at the
town of Rochefort because they had no passports. One of the party,
Bureaux de Pusy, rode to Namur, the nearest large town, to try to get
the necessary papers, but when he told the officer in charge there that
the passports were wanted for General Lafayette and several friends
there was great commotion. “Passports for Lafayette, the enemy of the
King and of order!” the Austrian officer exclaimed. Lafayette was too
important a man to let escape in any such fashion. And at once the
command was given to arrest the Frenchman and his companions.
They were found at Liège and arrested. Lafayette protested that he
and his friends were now non-combatants, and moreover were on neutral
territory in Belgium. In spite of that they were held as prisoners,
although a secret message was sent to Lafayette that he could have
his freedom if he would forswear his republican principles and give
certain information about conditions in France. Indignantly he refused
to buy his liberty in any such way, and then was sent to the Prussian
fortress of Wesel on the Rhine. On the journey there he was questioned
several times about the French army he had commanded, but the haughty
contempt with which he refused to make any answers quickly showed his
captors the sort of man they had to deal with. At one town an officer
of the Duke of Saxe Teschen came to him and demanded that Lafayette
turn over to the Duke the treasure chest of his army that his enemies
supposed he had taken with him. At first Lafayette thought the request a
joke; but when the demand was repeated he turned on the officer. “I am
to infer, then, that if the Duke of Saxe Teschen had been in my place,
he would have stolen the military chest of the army?” said he. The
officer backed out of the room in confusion, and afterward no one dared
to doubt the Frenchman’s honesty.
[Illustration: LAFAYETTE, A PRUSSIAN PRISONER]
The prison at Wesel was mean and unhealthy, and the cells so small and
cold and damp that the prisoners suffered greatly. Yet to every protest
of Lafayette the only answer vouchsafed was that he should have better
treatment if he would tell his captors the military plans of the army
of France. His reply was always the same, an indignant refusal. The
Jacobins had declared him a traitor to the government of the Commune,
but he never repaid them by any treachery.
The Prussians and Austrians, arch-enemies of liberty, felt that in
Lafayette they had caught the chief apostle of freedom in all Europe,
and for greater security they presently moved him from the prison at
Wesel to the stronger fortress at Magdeburg on the Elbe. There Lafayette
had a cell about eight feet by four in size, under the outer rampart,
never lighted by a ray of sun. Its walls were damp with mould, and
two guards constantly watched the prisoner. Even the nobles in Paris,
victims of the Terror, were treated better than the Prussians treated
Lafayette. For five months he stayed there, with no chance for exercise
or change, proof against every threat and bribe. Then the King of
Prussia, seeing that he would soon have to make peace with France, and
unwilling that this leader of liberty should be set free, decided to
hand Lafayette and his comrades over to the Emperor of Austria, the
bitterest foe of freedom and of France.
So Lafayette and several of the others were secretly transferred across
the frontier to the fortress of Olmutz, a town of Moravia in central
Austria. Here they were given numbers instead of names, and only a few
officials knew who the prisoners were or where they were kept. Lafayette
practically disappeared, as many other famous prisoners had disappeared
in Austrian dungeons. Neither his wife and friends in France nor
Washington in America had any inkling of what had become of him.
When he had first left France on his way to Brussels he had written to
his wife at Chavaniac. “Whatever may be the vicissitudes of fortune,
my dear heart,” he said, “you know that my soul is not of the kind to
give way; but you know it too well not to have pity on the suffering
that I experienced on leaving my country.... There is none among you who
would wish to owe fortune to conduct contrary to my conscience. Join me
in England; let us establish ourselves in America. We shall find there
the liberty which exists no longer in France, and my tenderness will
seek to recompense you for all the enjoyments you have lost.” Later,
in his first days in prison, he wrote to a friend in England, using a
tooth-pick with some lemon juice and lampblack for pen and ink. “A
prison,” he said, “is the only proper place for me, and I prefer to
suffer in the name of the despotism I have fought, than in the name of
the people whose cause is dear to my heart, and which is profaned to-day
by brigands.”
For as brigands he thought of Robespierre and his crew who were making
of France a country of horror and fear. From time to time he had news
of the execution in Paris of friends who had been very near and dear to
him. When Louis XVI. was beheaded he wrote of it as “the assassination
of the King, in which all the laws of humanity, of justice, and of
national faith were trampled under foot.” When his old friend La
Rochefoucauld had fallen at the hands of the Terror he said, “The name
of my unhappy friend La Rochefoucauld ever presents itself to me. Ah,
that crime has most profoundly wounded my heart! The cause of the people
is not less sacred to me; for that I would give my blood, drop by drop;
I should reproach myself every instant of my life which was not devoted
to that cause; _but the charm is lost_.”
The lover of liberty saw anarchy in the land he had worked to set free;
king, nobles and many citizens swept away by the fury of a mob that
mistook violence for freedom. Few things are more bitter than for a man
who has labored for a great cause to see that cause turn and destroy his
ideals.
Meantime Madame Lafayette was suffering also. She was arrested at the
old castle of Chavaniac and for a time imprisoned, persecuted, and even
threatened with death. The state had denounced Lafayette as an _émigré_,
or runaway, and had confiscated all his property. Yet through all these
trials his wife remained calm and determined, her one purpose being to
learn where her husband was and secure his release if possible. She
wrote to Washington, who was then the President of the United States,
begging him to intercede for her husband, and when she finally managed
to find out where Lafayette was imprisoned she urged the Austrians to
allow her to share his captivity.
The Emperor of Austria turned a deaf ear to all requests made on behalf
of Lafayette. The United States, however, was able to do something for
the man who had befriended it, and deposited two thousand florins in
Prussia, subject to his order, and obtained permission of the King of
Prussia that Lafayette should be informed that his wife and children
were alive.
The prisoner might well have thought that his own family had shared the
fate of so many of their relatives and friends. The name of Lafayette
was no protection to them, rather an added menace in a land where the
Jacobins held sway. On September 2, 1792, when the Reign of Terror was
in full flood in Paris, Minister Roland ordered that Madame Lafayette
should be arrested at Chavaniac. She was taken, with her aunt and her
elder daughter, who refused to leave her, as far as the town of Puy, but
there she wrote such vigorous letters of protest to Roland and other
officials that she was allowed to return to her home on parole. In
October of the next year she was again arrested, this time under the new
law that called for the arrest of all persons who might be suspected of
hostility to the government, and now she was actually put into a country
prison. In June, 1794, Robespierre’s agents brought her to Paris, and
she was imprisoned in the College du Plessis, where her husband had
gone to school as a boy. From there her next journey, according to the
custom of that time, would have been to the guillotine.