the soldiery, first of the French guards, extended to those of every
other denomination, except the Swiss, and even to the body guards of
the King. They began to quit their barracks, to assemble in squads, to
declare they would defend the life of the King, but would not be the
murderers of their fellow-citizens. They called themselves the soldiers
of the nation, and left now no doubt on which side they would be, in
case of a rupture. Similar accounts came in from the troops in other
parts of the kingdom, giving good reason to believe they would side
with their fathers and brothers, rather than with their officers.
The operation of this medicine at Versailles, was as sudden as it was
powerful. The alarm there was so complete, that in the afternoon of the
27th, the King wrote with his own hand letters to the Presidents of the
Clergy and Nobles, engaging them immediately to join the _Tiers_. These
two bodies were debating, and hesitating, when notes from the Count
d’Artois decided their compliance. They went in a body, and took their
seats with the Tiers, and thus rendered the union of the orders in one
chamber complete.
The Assembly now entered on the business of their mission, and first
proceeded to arrange the order in which they would take up the heads of
their constitution, as follows:
First, and as preliminary to the whole, a general declaration of the
rights of man. Then, specifically, the principles of the monarchy;
rights of the nation; rights of the king; rights of the citizens;
organization and rights of the National Assembly; forms necessary for
the enactment of laws; organization and functions of the Provincial
and Municipal Assemblies; duties and limits of the Judiciary power;
functions and duties of the Military power.
A declaration of the rights of man, as the preliminary of their work,
was accordingly prepared and proposed by the Marquis de la Fayette.
But the quiet of their march was soon disturbed by information that
troops, and particularly the foreign troops, were advancing on Paris
from various quarters. The King had probably been advised to this on the
pretext of preserving peace in Paris. But his advisers were believed to
have other things in contemplation. The Marshal de Broglio was appointed
to their command, a highflying aristocrat, cool and capable of every
thing. Some of the French guards were soon arrested, under other
pretexts, but really on account of their dispositions in favor of the
national cause. The people of Paris forced their prison, liberated them,
and sent a deputation to the Assembly to solicit a pardon. The Assembly
recommended peace and order to the people of Paris, the prisoners to
the King, and asked from him the removal of the troops. His answer was
negative and dry, saying they might remove themselves, if they pleased,
to Noyon or Soissons. In the mean time, these troops, to the number of
twenty or thirty thousand, had arrived, and were posted in and between
Paris and Versailles. The bridges and passes were guarded. At three
o’clock in the afternoon of the 11th of July, the Count de la Luzerne
was sent to notify Mr. Necker of his dismission, and to enjoin him to
retire instantly, without saying a word of it to any body. He went home,
dined, and proposed to his wife a visit to a friend, but went in fact
to his country-house at St. Ouen, and at midnight set out for Brussels.
This was not known till the next day (the 12th), when the whole
ministry was changed, except Villedeuil, of the domestic department, and
Barenton, _Garde des Sceaux_. The changes were as follows.
The Baron de Breteuil, President of the Council of Finance; de la
Galasiere, Comptroller General, in the room of Mr. Necker; the Marshal
de Broglio, Minister of War, and Foulon under him, in the room of
Puy-Segur; the Duke de la Vauguyon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, instead
of the Count de Montmorin; de la Porte, Minister of Marine, in place of
the Count de la Luzerne; St. Priest was also removed from the Council.
Lucerne and Puy Segur had been strongly of the aristocratic party in
the Council but they were not considered as equal to the work now to
be done. The King was now completely in the hands of men, the principal
among whom had been noted through their lives for the Turkish despotism
of their characters, and who were associated around the King as proper
instruments for what was to be executed. The news of this change began
to be known at Paris about one or two o’clock. In the afternoon, a body
of about one hundred German cavalry were advanced, and drawn up in the
Place Louis XV., and about two hundred Swiss posted at a little distance
in their rear. This drew people to the spot, who thus accidentally found
themselves in front of the troops, merely at first as spectators; but,
as their numbers increased, their indignation rose. They retired a few
steps, and posted themselves on and behind large piles of stones, large
and small, collected in that place for a bridge, which was to be built
adjacent to it. In this position, happening to be in my carriage on a
visit, I passed through the lane they had formed, without interruption.
But the moment after I had passed, the people attacked the cavalry with
stones. They charged, but the advantageous position of the people, and
the showers of stones, obliged the horse to retire, and quit the field
altogether, leaving one of their number on the ground, and the Swiss in
their rear, not moving to their aid. This was the signal for universal
insurrection, and this body of cavalry, to avoid being massacred,
retired towards Versailles. The people now armed themselves with such
weapons as they could find in armorers’ shops, and private houses, and
with bludgeons; and were roaming all night, through all parts of the
city, without any decided object. The next day (the 13th), the Assembly
pressed on the king to send away the troops, to permit the Bourgeoisie
of Paris, to arm for the preservation of order in the city, and offered
to send a deputation from their body to tranquillize them: but their
propositions were refused. A committee of magistrates and electors
of the city were appointed by those bodies, to take upon them its
government. The people, now openly joined by the French guards, forced
the prison of St. Lazare, released all the prisoners, and took a great
store of corn, which they carried to the corn market. Here they got
some arms, and the French guards began to form and train; them. The
city-committee determined to raise forty-eight thousand _Bourgeois_, or
rather to restrain their numbers to forty-eight thousand. On the 14th,
they sent one of their members (Monsieur de Corny) to the _Hotel des
Invalides_, to ask arms for their _Garde Bourgeoise_. He was followed
by, and he found there, a great collection of people. The Governor
of the Invalids came out, and represented the impossibility of his
delivering arms, without the orders of those from whom he received them.
De Corny advised the people then to retire, and retired himself; but the
people took possession of the arms, it was remarkable, that not only the
Invalids themselves made no opposition, but that a body of five thousand
foreign troops, within four hundred yards, never stirred. M. de Corny,
and five others, were then sent to ask arms of M. de Launay, Governor of
the Bastile. They found a great collection of people already before the
place, and they immediately planted a flag of truce, which was answered
by a like flag hoisted on the parapet. The deputation prevailed on the
people to fall back a little, advanced themselves to make their demand
of the Governor, and in that instant, a discharge from the Bastile
killed four persons, of those nearest to the deputies. The deputies
retired. I happened to be at the house of M. de Corny, when he returned
to it, and received from him a narrative of these transactions. On the
retirement of the deputies, the people rushed forward, and almost in an
instant, were in possession of a fortification, of infinite strength,
defended by one hundred men, which in other times, had stood several
regular sieges, and had never been taken. How they forced their entrance
has never been explained. They took all the arms, discharged the
prisoners, and such of the garrison as were not killed in the first
moment of fury; carried the Governor and Lieutenant Governor to the
Place de Greve (the place of public execution), cut off their heads, and
sent them through the city, in triumph, to the Palais Royal. About the
same instant, a treacherous correspondence having been discovered in M.
de Flesselles, _Prévôt des Marchands_, they seized him in the _Hotel
de Ville_, where he was in the execution of his office, and cut off his
head. These events, carried imperfectly to Versailles, were the subject
of two successive deputations from the Assembly to the King, to both of
which he gave dry and hard answers; for nobody had as yet been permitted
to inform him, truly and fully, of what had passed at Paris. But at
night, the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the King’s bed-chamber,
and obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters of
the day in Paris. He went to bed fearfully impressed. The decapitation
of De Launay worked powerfully, through the night, on the whole
Aristocratical party; insomuch, that in the morning, those of the
greatest influence on the Count d’Artois, represented to him the
absolute necessity, that the King should give up every thing to the
Assembly. This according with the dispositions of the King, he went
about eleven o’clock, accompanied only by his brothers, to the Assembly,
and there read to them a speech, in which he asked their interposition
to re-establish order. Although couched in terms of some caution, yet
the manner in which it was delivered made it evident, that it was
meant as a surrender at discretion. He returned to the Chateau afoot,
accompanied by the Assembly. They sent off a deputation to quiet Paris,
at the head of which was the Marquis de la Fayette, who had, the same
morning, been named _Commandant en Chef_ of the _Milice Bourgeoise_; and
Monsieur Bailly, former President of the States General, was called for
as _Prévôt des Marchands_. The demolition of the Bastile was now ordered
and begun. A body of the Swiss guards, of the regiment of Ventimille,
and the city horse-guards joined the people. The alarm at Versailles
increased. The foreign troops were ordered off instantly. Every Minister
resigned. The King confirmed Bailly as Prévôt des Marchands, wrote to
Mr. Necker, to recall him, sent his letter open to the Assembly, to be
forwarded by them, and invited them to go with him to Paris the next
day, to satisfy the city of his dispositions; and that night, and
the next morning, the Count d’Artois, and M. de Montesson, a deputy
connected with him, Madame de Polignac, Madame de Guiche, and the Count
de Vaudreuil, favorites of the Queen, the Abbe de Vermont her confessor,
the Prince of Conde. and Duke of Bourbon fled. The King came to Paris,
leaving the Queen in consternation for his return. Omitting the less
important figures of the procession, the King’s carriage was in the
centre; on each side of it, the Assembly, in two ranks afoot; at their
head the Marquis de la Fayette, as commander-in-chief, on horse-back,
and _Bourgeois_ guards before and behind. About sixty thousand citizens,
of all forms and conditions, armed with the conquests of the Bastile and
Invalids, as far as they would go, the rest with pistols, swords, pikes,
pruning hooks, scythes, &c. lined all the streets through which the
procession passed, and with the crowds of people in the streets,
doors, and windows, saluted them everywhere with the cries of ‘_Vive la
Nation_,’ but not a single ‘_Vive le Roi_’ was heard. The King stopped
at the _Hotel de Ville_. There M. Bailly presented, and put into his
hat, the popular cockade, and addressed him. The King being unprepared,
and unable to answer, Bailly went to him, gathered from him some
scraps of sentences, and made out an answer, which he delivered to the
audience, as from the King. On their return, the popular cries were
‘_Vive le Roi et la Nation_.’ He was conducted by a _garde Bourgeoise_,
to his palace at Versailles, and thus concluded such an ‘_amende
honorable_,’ as no sovereign ever made, and no people ever received.
And here, again, was lost another precious occasion of sparing to France
the crimes and cruelties through which she has since passed, and to
Europe, and finally America, the evils which flowed on them also from
this mortal source. The King was now become a passive machine in the
hands of the National Assembly, and had he been left to himself, he
would have willingly acquiesced in whatever they should devise as best
for the nation. A wise constitution would have been formed, hereditary
in his line, himself placed at its head, with powers so large, as to
enable him to do all the good of his station, and so limited, as to
restrain him from its abuse. This he would have faithfully administered,
and more than this, I do not believe, he ever wished. But he had a Queen
of absolute sway over his weak mind and timid virtue, and of a character
the reverse of his in all points. This angel, as gaudily painted in the
rhapsodies of Burke, with some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense,
was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her
will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to
her desires, or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gambling and
dissipations, with those of the Count d’Artois, and others of her
clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury,
which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her
opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness, and dauntless spirit, led
herself to the Guillotine, drew the King on with her, and plunged the
world into crimes and calamities which will for ever stain the pages
of modern history. I have ever believed, that had there been no Queen,
there would have been no revolution. No force would have been provoked,
nor exercised. The King would have gone hand in hand with the wisdom of
his sounder counsellors, who, guided by the increased lights of the
age, wished only, with the same pace, to advance the principles of their
social constitution. The deed which closed the mortal course of these
sovereigns, I shall neither approve nor condemn. I am not prepared to
say, that the first magistrate of a nation cannot commit treason against
his country, or is unamenable to its punishment: nor yet, that where
there is no written law, no regulated tribunal, there is not a law in
our hearts, and a power in our hands, given for righteous employment in
maintaining right, and redressing wrong. Of those who judged the King,
many thought him wilfully criminal; many, that his existence would keep
the nation in perpetual conflict with the horde of Kings, who would war
against a regeneration which might come home to themselves, and that it
were better that one should die than all. I should not have voted with
this portion of the legislature. I should have shut up the Queen in
a convent, putting harm out of her power, and placed the King in his
station, investing him with limited powers, which, I verily believe,
he would have honestly exercised, according to the measure of his
understanding. In this way, no void would have been created, courting
the usurpation of a military adventurer, nor occasion given for those
enormities which demoralized the nations of the world, and destroyed,
and is yet to destroy, millions and millions of its inhabitants. There
are three epochs in history, signalized by the total extinction of
national morality. The first was of the successors of Alexander, not
omitting himself: the next, the successors of the first Cæsar: the
third, our own age. This was begun by the partition of Poland, followed
by that of the treaty of Pilnitz; next the conflagration of Copenhagen;
then the enormities of Bonaparte, partitioning the earth at his will,
and devastating it with fire and sword; now the conspiracy of Kings,
the successors of Bonaparte, blasphemously calling themselves ‘The Holy
Alliance,’ and treading in the footsteps of their incarcerated leader;
not yet, indeed, usurping the government of other nations, avowedly and
in detail, but controlling by their armies the forms in which they will
permit them to be governed; and reserving, _in petto_, the order and
extent of the usurpations further meditated. But I will return from a
digression, anticipated, too, in time, into which I have been led
by reflection on the criminal passions which refused to the world
a favorable occasion of saving it from the afflictions it has since
suffered.
Mr. Necker had reached Basle before he was overtaken by the letter of
the King, inviting him back to resume the office he had recently left.
He returned immediately, and all the other ministers having resigned,
a new administration was named, to wit: St. Priest and Montmorin were
restored; the Archbishop of Bordeaux was appointed _Garde des Sceaux_;
La Tour du Pin, Minister of War; La Luzerne, Minister of Marine. This
last was believed to have been effected by the friendship of Montmorin;
for although differing in politics, they continued firm in friendship,
and Luzerne, although not an able man, was thought an honest one. And
the Prince of Bauvau was taken into the Council.
Seven Princes of the blood royal, six ex-ministers, and many of the
high _Noblesse_, having fled, and the present ministers, except Luzerne,
being all of the popular party, all the functionaries of government
moved, for the present, in perfect harmony.
In the evening of August the 4th, and on the motion of the Viscount
de Noailles, brother-in-law of La Fayette, the Assembly abolished all
titles of rank, all the abusive privileges of feudalism, the tythes
and casuals of the clergy, all provincial privileges, and, in fine, the
feudal regimen generally. To the suppression of tythes, the Abbe Sieyes
was vehemently opposed; but his learned and logical arguments were
unheeded, and his estimation lessened by a contrast of his egoism (for
he was beneficed on them) with the generous abandonment of rights by the
other members of the Assembly. Many days were employed in putting into
the form of laws the numerous demolitions of ancient abuses; which done,
they proceeded to the preliminary work of a declaration of rights. There
being much concord of sentiment on the elements of this instrument, it
was liberally framed, and passed with a very general approbation.
They then appointed a committee for the ‘reduction of a _projet_’ of
a constitution, at the head of which was the Archbishop of Bordeaux. I
received from him, as chairman of the committee, a letter of July the
20th, requesting me to attend and assist at their deliberations; but I
excused myself, on the obvious considerations, that my mission was to
the King as Chief Magistrate of the nation, that my duties were limited
to the concerns of my own country, and forbade me to intermeddle with
the internal transactions of that in which I had been received under a
specific character only. Their plan of a constitution was discussed
in sections, and so reported from time to time, as agreed to by the
committee. The first respected the general frame of the government;
and that this should be formed into three departments, executive,
legislative, and judiciary, was generally agreed. But when they
proceeded to subordinate developments, many and various shades of
opinion came into conflict, and schism, strongly marked, broke the
Patriots into fragments of very discordant principles. The first
question, Whether there should be a King? met with no open opposition;
and it was readily agreed, that the government of France should be
monarchical and hereditary. Shall the King have a negative on the laws?
Shall that negative be absolute, or suspensive only? Shall there be
two Chambers of Legislation, or one only? If two, shall one of them be
hereditary? or for life? or for a fixed term? and named by the King?
or elected by the people? These questions found strong differences of
opinion, and produced repulsive combinations among the Patriots. The
aristocracy was cemented by a common principle of preserving the ancient
regime or whatever should be nearest to it. Making this their polar
star, they moved in phalanx, gave preponderance on every question to the
minorities of the Patriots, and always to those who advocated the
least change. The features of the new constitution were thus assuming a
fearful aspect, and great alarm was produced among the honest Patriots
by these dissensions in their ranks. In this uneasy state of things, I
received one day a note from the Marquis de la Fayette, informing me,
that he should bring a party of six or eight friends, to ask a dinner of
me the next day. I assured him of their welcome. When they arrived, they
were La Fayette himself, Duport, Barnave, Alexander la Meth, Blacon,
Mounier, Maubourg, and Dagout. These were leading Patriots, of honest
but differing opinions, sensible of the necessity of effecting a
coalition by mutual sacrifices, knowing each other, and not afraid,
therefore, to unbosom themselves mutually. This last was a material
principle in the selection. With this view, the Marquis had invited the
conference, and had fixed the time and place inadvertently, as to the
embarrassment under which it might place me. The cloth being removed,
and wine set on the table, after the American manner, the Marquis
introduced the objects of the conference, by summarily reminding them of
the state of things in the Assembly, the course which the principles of
the constitution were taking, and the inevitable result, unless checked
by more concord among the Patriots themselves. He observed, that
although he also had his opinion, he was ready to sacrifice it to that
of his brethren of the same cause; but that a common opinion must now be
formed, or the aristocracy would carry every thing, and that, whatever
they should now agree on, he, at the head of the national force, would
maintain. The discussions began at the hour of four, and were continued
till ten o’clock in the evening; during which time I was a silent
witness to a coolness and candor of argument unusual in the conflicts
of political opinion; to a logical reasoning, and chaste eloquence,
disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation, and truly
worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of
antiquity, as handed to us by Xenophon, by Plato, and Cicero. The result
was, that the King should have a suspensive veto on the laws, that the
legislature should be composed of a single body only, and that to
be chosen by the people. This Concordat decided the fate of the
constitution. The Patriots all rallied to the principles thus settled,
carried every question agreeably to them, and reduced the aristocracy
to insignificance and impotence. But duties of exculpation were now
incumbent on me. I waited on Count Montmorin the next morning, and
explained to him, with truth and candor, how it happened that my house
had been made the scene of conferences of such a character. He told me
he already knew every thing which had passed, that so far from taking
umbrage at the use made of my house on that occasion, he earnestly
wished I would habitually assist at such conferences, being sure I
should be useful in moderating the warmer spirits, and promoting a
wholesome and practicable reformation only. I told him I knew too well
the duties I owed to the King, to the nation, and to my own country, to
take any part in councils concerning their internal government, and that
I should persevere, with care, in the character of a neutral and passive
spectator, with wishes only, and very sincere ones, that those measures
might prevail which would be for the greatest good of the nation. I have
no doubt, indeed, that this conference was previously known and approved
by this honest minister, who was in confidence and communication with
the Patriots, and wished for a reasonable reform of the constitution.