IF LA FAYETTE HAD HELD THE FRENCH REIGN OF TERROR IN CHECK
In every age of the world, and in every place, one voice has always
commanded in the affairs of nations, peoples and communities. If
oligarchies, legislatures, groups or cabals have seemed to bear sway, it
has nevertheless been true that in each of these groups, from time to
time, the influence of some individual has been preponderant. The freest
republics are an organization of this principle--a willing submission of
the many to the leadership of chosen men.
In times of stress and strife and change it is impossible that strong
men should not seize the reins of power, no matter what political system
exists, no matter what anarchy tends to prevail. Change, indeed, makes
the opportunity of the strong; and the fate of nations and continents
depends upon the character of the strong man who is brought forth. If he
is good, as Washington was good, his fellow-countrymen derive lasting
and unmeasured benefit from his grasping of his opportunity. If he is
bad, as Napoleon Bonaparte was bad, the evil harvest of his vices may be
reaped through generations and centuries, as France has reaped, and is
now reaping, an inheritance of strife and national decline.
When the Revolution of 1789 came to France there were many people, of
all parties and conditions, who believed that the country had its
Washington. He was to be found, they thought, in the person of the
Marquis de La Fayette. This man was Washington's friend. He had
successfully copied many of his virtues. He was unselfishly patriotic.
He believed in the liberty of the people, and wished to see them govern
themselves. Though himself a nobleman, he believed in the abolition of
titles of nobility. In his room, and afterward in his office as a public
servant, he kept two frames hanging on the wall. In one frame was a copy
of the American Declaration of Independence. The other frame was empty,
but it bore the legend, "This space awaits the French Declaration of
Independence."
When the Revolution broke out, La Fayette was called by the people to
the center of real power--the command of the troops in Paris. Both king
and people trusted him. His power for good was almost absolute. He
prevented anarchy and restored order in Paris after the overthrow of the
Bastile. He gave the country a Bill of Rights and a Constitution founded
on the American models. The quarrels of the warring factions were
stayed by his hand. The mob dared not turn the king out. La Fayette's
moderating influence was the ballast that kept the French nation, in
spite of certain excesses, on a steady keel.
Even when the Girondists and Jacobins rose and were ready to fly at one
another's throats, the fear of La Fayette kept these factions from
violence. If he had maintained this influence--if he had preserved the
sagacity and boldness to side with the people and lead them--the French
nation might have been saved from anarchy, reaction, the tyrannies of
emperors and of mobs, and the slow degeneration that has followed its
long diet of gunpowder.
But in the test La Fayette did not exhibit this power. In 1792 he was in
the field, in command of an army, resisting the Prussian invasion. The
nation, aroused, was equal to the task of repelling foreign attack. But
in Paris events were marching. The people rose and overthrew the throne
and the royalist Constitution which La Fayette had made. But they turned
still to La Fayette. They offered him the chief executive power in the
new government.
This was his opportunity to save France. He was not equal to it. He did
not rise to the emergency. He not only refused the offer of power, but
made his troops renew their oaths of fidelity to the king. Then the
Assembly declared him a traitor; and La Fayette, taking with him a few
followers, deserted his command, made his way to Bouillon, on the
frontier, and rode out of France into a foreign land!
No man can imagine Washington taking such a step as that. La Fayette
suffered from it, and he afterwards served his country nobly. But the
eternal mischief of his weakness had been done. Girondists and Jacobins,
relieved from the fear of him, turned to mutual destruction and murder.
The Reign of Terror was on. The nation was plunged in an orgy of blood.
Four hundred thousand men and women were put to death. Liberty in France
was assassinated in the house of its friends.
One man, I have said, always comes to the top of things. With La Fayette
gone, Robespierre, the man of blood, prevailed. Robespierre was the
Terror. And after him, the Terror having appeased its fearful thirst,
and Robespierre's head having gone into the basket with his victims',
there came another man to take advantage of the paralysis the perverted
Revolution had inflicted upon France. That man was Napoleon Bonaparte.
Bonaparte freed La Fayette from captivity. Bonaparte held him in
contempt, calling him a "noodle." It was not so bad as that. But
Napoleon despised a man who had had his chance and failed to grasp it.
Had La Fayette proved equal to that opportunity, France would have been
organized as a constitutional republic. The Terror would not have been.
Napoleon's ambition might have been held in check. The balance in Europe
would have been maintained, but the leadership of France would have been
consolidated and become immortal. The nations would have followed her
example. Monarchy would have died of dry rot. The dream of a United
States of Europe might have been realized--perhaps with a city of La
Fayette, the capital of the vast confederation, the European equivalent
city of Washington, smiling down, it may be, from the neutral shores of
the Lake of Constance to east, to west, to north, to south, with a
benediction of peace.