(1749-1791)
[Footnote 6: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Mirabeau. [TN]]
Honore Gabriel Riquetti, Count de Mirabeau, one of the most eminent
among the great authors, orators, and statesmen of France, was born on
March 9, 1749 on his father's estate at Bignon, near Nemours.
The earliest of Mirabeau's ancestors of whom there is any notable
record, was Jean Riquetti, a prominent merchant at Marseilles, who, in
1570, bought the chateau and estate of Mirabeau, near Pertuis, from the
well-known Provencal family of Barras and who, a few years later,
acquired the title of Esquire.
In 1685, one hundred and fifteen years after the purchase above
mentioned, Honore Riquetti, lineal descendant of the Marseilles
merchant, obtained the title of Marquis de Mirabeau, and there was born
to this marquis a son, Jean Antoine Riquetti, who achieved a worthy
record as a soldier, but whose prominent place in history is due to the
fact that he was the grandfather of the great Mirabeau.
Victor Riquetti, son of this second Marquis de Mirabeau and father of
the great, the Count de Mirabeau, was in his early manhood an
indifferent soldier, but he afterward became distinguished as a writer
and leader in French politics. His wife (the mother of Count de
Mirabeau) was Marie Genevieve, daughter of M. de Vassan, a brigadier in
the French army, she being, also, the widow of the Marquis de
Saulyeboeuf. This union, entered into without a previous meeting between
the principals to the contract, and at a time when the Marquis de
Mirabeau was well started in his career as a politician, was not a happy
one. The new husband was more loyal to politics than to his wife, so
that, when their son, who was destined to achieve fame, was but thirteen
years old, there was a separation between the parents by mutual consent.
Thus, in outline, is indicated the ancestry of Mirabeau through a period
of nearly two centuries, and, meagre as the showing is, it is evident
that he was the scion of a long line of wealth and nobility, his
paternal ancestors having served with credit as soldiers, while his
father was eminent as a politician. There is a second group of facts
which bear interestingly upon the career under discussion. Mirabeau the
great was born at a time when more than two-thirds of France was in the
hands of privileged classes--the king, the nobility, and the clergy--and
at a time, too, when the structure founded upon years of feudalism and
absolutism was about to be shaken to its base by the magic of popular
public opinion.
Under such conditions, at such a time, and from such stock, occurred the
birth of Mirabeau the great; a coming into the world of a babe "scarce
half made up;" a child with a head so large that it was a dire
deformity, with one foot sadly twisted, and with a tongue that was tied;
in brief, an infant ogre born with teeth. So great was the chagrin of
the father that he made no effort to conceal his dislike for the
misshapen child. Hence, when at three years of age the little one was
left wretchedly pitted by a severe attack of small-pox, its fate was
listed. It must not, could not, bear the name of Mirabeau.
Accordingly, when the youngster was fourteen years old--after several
years of instruction under the private tutorship of Lachabeaussiere,
_pere_--he was entered under the fictitious name of "Pierre Buffiere,"
at a private military school in Paris. Here, strong of limb, body, and
mind, industrious and aggressive, he remained for four years. Then his
father placed him in the Berry regiment of cavalry, which regiment had
been commanded, sixty-two years before, by his grandfather.
This event marked the end of a boyhood which had been clouded by an
almost entire absence of paternal favor, and wholly free from maternal
care--the mother's absence having been secured by the father, by a
_lettre de cachet_. In addition, that boyhood had been irritated and
embittered by a continuous and exasperating development of his natural
personal disfigurement. His enormous head grew less in harmony with his
torso, his lips and nose became thick and heavy, great moles revealed
themselves upon his cheeks, and in every way, physically, his growth was
a perpetual disappointment.
However, he was now (1767) the eighteen-year old "Pierre Buffiere," a
lieutenant of cavalry, conscious of his exceptional mental strength and
somewhat vain thereof, and full of ambition and determination to win as
he wished and in spite of all of his many obstacles. Unfortunately, but
most naturally, considering his temperament, the first test of his will,
his passion, and his determination, resulted in his victory. He won the
affection of a young woman to whom his colonel had long been devoted,
and the scandal resulting therefrom caused the father to obtain a
_lettre de cachet_, by authority of which the indiscreet young man was
placed in confinement in the Isle of Rhe. Immediately the prisoner began
his first illustration of his ability to gain to his own purposes the
ability and influence of others--one of his strongest and most useful
characteristics. Within two months he had secured the esteem and
confidence of his jailer, so that that official soon made a most
favorable report, upon the strength of which Mirabeau was accepted as a
volunteer to accompany the French expedition sent (in 1769) to conquer
Corsica. So well did the young soldier conduct himself during this
campaign, that he was not only promoted to a captaincy in the dragoons,
but he effected a partial reconciliation with his father, returned to
Provence, was permitted to assume his true name and title, and was
presented at court. In June, 1772, he married, by his father's advice,
Marie Emile de Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane. She
came to him portionless, and he, impetuous, ambitious, and extravagant,
became, during the next two years, deeply involved in debt. The marriage
was a failure. Again the father utilized the _lettre de cachet_, and a
second time was Mirabeau a prisoner (August 23, 1774), this time in the
Chateau d'If, at Marseilles. Here it was that he wrote his first work of
which we have any exact knowledge, its title being: "Essai sur le
Despotisme."
In the following year he was transferred from the Chateau d'If to the
Castle of Joux, where he was less strictly confined. He had the freedom
of the place and frequent opportunities for visiting the near-by town of
Pontarlier. It was in this town that he first met Marie Therese, the
Marchioness de Monnier, the young and attractive wife of an aged
magistrate. A love affair was the result, and it culminated in August,
1776, in an elopement, first to Switzerland and then to Amsterdam. For
over nine months the fugitive pair lived together in the Dutch capital,
Mirabeau, under the assumed name of St. Mathieu, earning a livelihood as
a pamphleteer and by making translations for Holland publishers.
Meanwhile the tribunal of Pontarlier had condemned both
parties--Mirabeau to be beheaded and his companion (his "Sophie," as she
is most widely known) to imprisonment for life. On May 14, 1777, they
were arrested at Amsterdam, and Mirabeau was imprisoned by a _lettre de
cachet_ in the Castle of Vincennes, while Sophie was surrendered to the
Pontarlier authorities.
For three and a half years thereafter Mirabeau was in confinement, a
term which proved sufficient to temper his passion, and during which he
wrote his well-known "Letters to Sophie," the "Erotica Biblion," and "My
Conversion." He also wrote, during this time, his first worthy political
production, the "Lettres de Cachet." He was released from this
imprisonment on December 13, 1780, and at once sought out Sophie, to
quarrel with and leave her, and so, fortunately, end the most
disgraceful portion of his life.
Mirabeau, now thirty-one years old, and, according to the times, most
liberally experienced in the ways of the then turbulent world,
undertook, as his first task, the removal of the sentence of death which
still confronted him. Not only did he succeed in this, but, by his
plausibility and eloquence, he shifted the entire cost of the
proceedings to the shoulders of the complainant--the aged magistrate he
had so grossly wronged. His next venture was an effort before the
tribunal of Aix, to compel his wife to return to him. Here he failed, as
also he failed in an effort to compromise a suit pending between his
father and mother. Not only that, but by his pleadings his mother became
forever alienated from him, and by reason of his bitter attacks upon the
rulings of the court he was forced to leave Paris. Locating at
Amsterdam, he began his lasting and respectable relations with Madame de
Nehra, daughter of Zwier van Haren, a Dutch writer and politician. She
was a woman of education and refinement, who exercised a valuable
influence over his rapidly growing celebrity, bringing out his good
qualities, subduing his undesirable characteristics, and encouraging all
of his better ambitions. It was at her suggestion that he went to
England, after a brief stay in Holland, while she repaired to Paris. His
mission--which he accomplished--was to publish his "Considerations sur
l'Ordre de Cincinnatus" and his "Doutes sur la Liberte de l'Escaut;"
while her mission, also successful, was to establish peace between
Mirabeau and the authorities at the French capital.
During twenty years of the thirty-six years he had lived, Mirabeau had
been, either through his father's intervention or by his own acts, a
constant topic of consideration by the French authorities. On the other
hand, by virtue of his writings, his declared enmity to all forms of
tyranny and oppression, and his distaste for pretence, he had become a
popular idol. He was, as Carlyle puts it, "a swallower of formulas," and
it seems he had the ability to digest such food thus taken. Therefore,
upon his return to Paris in April, 1785, he made a series of attacks
upon agiotage, or stock jobbing, most effectively assaulting the
Compagnie des Eaux and the Banque de St. Charles. While such efforts
proved offensive to the government, it caused such an appreciation of
his ability that he was sent, in June, 1786, on a secret mission to
Berlin. He remained there for half a year, and during that time he
secured the material for his notable work, "Histoire Secrete de la Cour
de Berlin." Among other writings which he produced about this time were
his "Moses Mendelssohn, ou la Reforme politique des Juifs," and his
pamphlet "Denonciation de l'Agiotage," aimed against the policy of
Calonne. Again he was in danger of the _lettre de cachet_, and so he
repaired to Brunswick, where he finished his work "De la Monarchie
Prussienne," which was published in 1788.
Up to 1789, Mirabeau had been a dramatic character, an individual
revelation of theatric passion, a figure-piece single and alone; but the
climax was at hand. The achievement of American independence had been an
object-lesson most potent. Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette, could
not check the storm, and for the first time in one hundred and
seventy-three years, France was to have an assembly of the nation by its
representatives. The "third estate" was aroused and the States-General
was summoned. Mirabeau, having a deep-rooted desire to provide for
France a government in accord with the wishes and intent of a majority
of the people, and having been rejected by the noblesse of his own
district, presented himself to the "third estate," as a candidate. He
was elected both for Aix and for Marseilles, and he decided to sit for
Aix. Naturally an enthusiast, he was present (May 4, 1789) at the
opening of the States-General, but with excellent sagacity he entered
that body as an independent. To the end of his life, twenty-three months
later, he maintained that independence.
[Illustration: The Third Estate takes refuge in the tennis court.]
When, being shut out in the rain from the great hall of the Estates, the
"third estate" established themselves in the adjacent tennis-court, and
when, being ejected from there, they came together again and forced the
king to recognize them as the representatives of the nation; through all
these earlier and wiser stages of the great revolt, Mirabeau was the
leader and director. But when, on June 5, 1789, a resolution was passed
by the delegates declaring themselves--the people, the Commons of
France--to be the National Assembly, he spoke and worked bravely and
eloquently against abandoning the old order of things before formulating
an exact and sufficient policy as its successor. He declared the action
a hasty one, and finally avoided the issue in the only way possible, by
absenting himself when the vote was taken. And yet, eight days later, at
the close of the royal sitting, he bade the grand master of ceremonies:
"Go and tell your master we are here by the power of the people, and
that we are only to be driven out by that of the bayonet."
He advised the Assembly against the publication of pompous
proclamations, and classed the demonstration of the night of August 4th
as a theoretical display of liberty wholly without practical value. He
was opposed to mob-law, and in no sense was he dazzled by the fall of
the Bastille. He pleaded in favor of the royal right to veto, and
proclaimed that he was willing, even, to advocate a "restoration of the
king's legitimate authority as the only means of saving France."
He was a leader of magnificent power, enthusiastic in the advocacy and
support of his convictions; a statesman who would not speak, write or
do, in politics, anything not in accord with his estimate as to what was
right. True, he was accused of treason for speaking in support of the
king's right to proclaim war or peace, but three days thereafter he
defended himself against the charge, and with overwhelming success. He
was a leader who worked prodigiously. In addition to his duties as a
member of the Assembly, he was also publisher and editor of a paper
first called the _Journal des Etats-Generaux_, later the _Lettres a mes
Constituants_, and at last the _Courrier de Provence_. As clerk of the
Comite Diplomatique of the Assembly and because of his thorough
knowledge of foreign affairs, he was the constant adviser of Montmorin,
the foreign secretary. Thus, by his wise appreciation of the subject, he
established harmony between the Assembly and Montmorin, and so prevented
foreign intervention, at the same time maintaining the honor of France
abroad. But this bulwark to the nation's safety was about to topple and
fall, precipitated by its own decay. As in all things, Mirabeau had been
colossal in his excesses, and like them, the punishment was great. He
wished to live, but he did not fear death. Early in 1791 the structure
began to weaken, and realizing that the time was at hand, Mirabeau
carefully collected all of his writings, and after classifying them,
forwarded them to his firm friend and companion, Sir Gilbert Elliott, in
England. So far as he was able, he continued to contribute to the
guidance and protection of his country. He was patient and fearless, his
only regret taking the form of a pardonable conceit that, could he but
live, the Revolution could be controlled and guided, that the awful
Reign of Terror, so soon to follow, could be averted. The progress of
his decline was without hindrance, in spite of all that science could
devise. It is reported that, as he looked out from his sick-room, on the
day of his death, on the brilliant spring-time sun, he said: "If he is
not God, he is at least his cousin-german." Those were, it is said, his
last spoken words, although some time later when unable to articulate,
he feebly held a pen in his hand as he wrote the single word: "dormir."
And so, on April 2, 1791, he died. Thus ended the life of a wondrous
statesman; a singular career, of which Carlyle (in his "French
Revolution") says: "Strange lot! Forty years of that smouldering with
foul fire-damp and vapor enough; then victory over that;--and like a
burning mountain, he blazes heaven high; and for twenty-three
resplendent months pours out, in flame and molten fire-torrents, all
that is in him, the Pharos and the Wondersign of an amazed Europe;--and
then lies hollow, cold, forever."
[Signature of the author.]