THE FEDERATION OF FRANCE.
All the realm had bound itself together in the girdle of Federation, one
which preceded the United Europe of later utopists.
Mirabeau had favored the movement, thinking that the King would gain
by the country people coming to Paris, where they might overpower the
citizens. He deluded himself into the belief that the sight of royalty
would result in an alliance which no plot could break.
Men of genius sometimes have these sublime but foolish ideas at which
the tyros in politics may well laugh.
There was a great stir in the Congress when the proposition was brought
forward for this Federation ceremony at Paris which the provinces
demanded. It was disapproved by the two parties dividing the House, the
Jacobins (So called from the old Monastery of Jacobins where they met)
and the royalists. The former dreaded the union more than their foes
from not knowing the effect Louis XVI. might have on the masses.
The King's-men feared that a great riot would destroy the royal family
as one had destroyed the Bastile.
But there was no means to oppose the movement which had not its like
since the Crusades.
The Assembly did its utmost to impede it, particularly by resolving
that the delegates must come at their own expense; this was aimed
at the distant provinces. But the politicians had no conception of
the extent of the desire: all doors opened along the roads for these
pilgrims of liberty and the guides of the long procession were all the
discontented--soldiers and under-officers who had been kept down that
aristocrats should have all the high offices; seamen who had won the
Indies and were left poor: shattered waifs to whom the storms had left
stranded. They found the strength of their youth to lead their friends
to the capitol.
Hope marched before them.
All the pilgrims sang the same song: "It must go on!" that is, the
Revolution. The Angel of Renovation had taught it to all as it hovered
over the country.
To receive the five hundred thousand of the city and country, a gigantic
area was required: the field of Mars did for that, while the surrounding
hills would hold the spectators; but as it was flat it had to be
excavated.
Fifteen thousand regular workmen, that is, of the kind who loudly
complain that they have no work to do and under their breath thank
heaven when they do not find it--started in on the task converting the
flat into the pit of an amphitheatre. At the rate they worked they would
be three months at it, while it was promised for the Fourteenth of July,
the Anniversary of the Taking of the Bastile.
Thereupon a miracle occurred by which one may judge the enthusiasm of
the masses.
Paris volunteered to work the night after the regular excavators had
gone off. Each brought his own tools: some rolled casks of refreshing
drink, others food; all ages and both sexes, all conditions from the
scholar to the carter; children carried torches; musicians played all
kinds of instruments to cheer the multitude, and from one hundred
thousand workers sounded the song "It shall go on!"
Among the most enfevered toilers might be remarked two who had been
among the first to arrive; they were in National Guards uniform. One was
a gloomy-faced man of forty, with robust and thickset frame; the other a
youth of twenty.
The former did not sing and spoke seldom.
The latter had blue eyes in a frank and open countenance, with white
teeth and light hair; he stood solidly on long legs and large feet. With
his full-sized hands he lifted heavy weights, rolling dirt carts and
pulling hurdles without rest. He was always singing, while watching his
comrade out of the corner of the eye, saying joking words to which he
did not reply, bringing him a glass of wine which he refused, returning
to his place with sorrow, but falling to work again like ten men, and
singing like twenty.
These two men, newly elected Representatives by the Aisne District, ten
miles from Paris, having heard that hands were wanted, ran in hot haste
to offer one his silent co-operation, the other his merry and noisy
assistance.
Their names were François Billet and Ange Pitou. The first was a wealthy
farmer, whose land was owned by Dr. Gilbert, and the second a boy of the
district who had been the schoolmate of Gilbert's son Sebastian.
Thanks to their help, with that of others as energetic and patriotically
inspired, the enormous works were finished on the Thirteenth of July
1790.
To make sure of having places next day, many workers slept on the
battlefield.
Billet and Pitou were to officiate in the ceremonies and they went to
join their companions on the main street. Hotel-keepers had lowered
their prices and many houses were open to their brothers from the
country. The farther they came the more kindly they were treated, if any
distinction was made.
On its part the Assembly had received a portion of the shock. A few days
before, it had abolished hereditary nobility, on the motion of Marquis
Lafayette.
Contrarily, the influence of Mirabeau was felt daily. A place was
assigned in the Federation to him as Orator. Thanks to so mighty a
champion, the court won partisans in the opposition ranks. The Assembly
had voted liberal sums to the King for his civil list and for the Queen,
so that they lost nothing by pensioning Mirabeau.
The fact was, he seemed quite right in appealing to the rustics; the
Federalists whom the King welcomed seemed to bring love for royalty
along with enthusiasm for the National Assembly.
Unhappily the King, dull and neither poetical nor chivalric, met the
cheers coolly.
Unfortunately, also, the Queen, too much of a Lorrainer to love the
French and too proud to greet common people, did not properly value
these outbursts of the heart.
Besides, poor woman, she had a spot on her sun: one of those gloomy fits
which clouded her mind.
She had long loved Count Charny, lieutenant of the Royal Lifeguards, but
his loyalty to the King, who had treated him like a brother in times of
danger, had rendered him invulnerable to the woman's wiles.
Marie Antoinette was no longer a young woman and sorrow had touched her
head with her wing, which was making the threads of silver appear in the
blonde tresses--but she was fair enough to bewitch a Mirabeau and might
have enthralled George Charny.
But, married to save the Queen's reputation to a lady of the court,
Andrea de Taverney, he was falling in love with her, she having loved
him at first sight, and this love naturally fortified his tacit pledge
never to wrong his sovereign.
Hence the Queen was miserable, and all the more as Charny had departed
on some errand for the King of which he had not told her the nature.
Probably this was why she had played the flirt with Mirabeau. The genius
had flattered her by kneeling at her feet. But she too soon compared the
bloated, heavy, leonine man with Charny.
George Charny was elegance itself, the noble and the courtier and yet
more a seaman, who had saved a war-ship by nailing the colors to the
mast and bidding the crew fight on.
In his brilliant uniform he looked like a prince of battles, while
Mirabeau, in his black suit, resembled a canon of the church.
The fourteenth of July came impassibly, draped in clouds and promising
rain and a gale when it ought to have illumined a splendid day.
But the French laugh even on a rainy day.
Though drenched with rain and dying of hunger, the country delegates
and National Guards, ranked along the main street, made merry and sang.
But the population, while unable to keep the wet off them, were not
going to let them starve. Food and drink were lowered by ropes out of
the windows. Similar offerings were made in all the thoroughfares they
passed through.
During their march, a hundred and fifty thousand people took places on
the edges of the Field of Mars, and as many stood behind them. It was
not possible to estimate the number on the surrounding hills.
Never had such a sight struck the eye of man.
The Field was changed in a twinkling of the plain into a pit, with the
auditorium holding three hundred thousand.
In the midst was the Altar of the Country, to which led four staircases,
corresponding with the faces of the obelisk which overtowered it.
At each corner smoked incense dishes--incense being decreed henceforth
to be used only in offerings to God.
Inscriptions heralded that the French People were free, and invited all
nations to the feast of Freedom.
One grand stand was reserved for the Queen, the court and the Assembly.
It was draped with the Red, White and Blue which she abhorred, since she
had seen it flaunt above her own, the Austrian black.
For this day only the King was appointed Commander-in-chief, but he had
transferred his command to Lafayette who ruled six millions of armed men
in the National Guards of France.
The tricolor surmounted everything--even to the distinctive banners of
each body of delegates.
At the same time as the President of the Assembly took his seat, the
King and the Queen took theirs.
Alas, poor Queen! her court was meager: her best friends had fled
in fright: perhaps some would have returned if they knew what money
Mirabeau had obtained for her; but they were ignorant.
She knew that Charny, whom she vainly looked for, would not be attracted
by the power or by gold.
She looked for his younger brother, Isidore, wondering why all the
Queen's defenders seemed absent from their post.
Nobody knew where he was. At this hour he was conducting his sweetheart,
Catherine, daughter of the gloomy farmer Billet, to a house in Bellevue,
Paris, for refuge from the contumely of her sisters in the village and
the wrath of her father.
Who knows, though, but that the heiress to the throne of the Caesars
would have consented to be an obscure peasant girl to be loved by George
again as Isidore loved the farmer's daughter.
She was no doubt revolving such ideas when Mirabeau, who saw her with
glances, half thunderous weather, half sunshine, and could not help
exclaiming:
"Of what is the royal enchantress thinking?"
She was brooding over the absence of Charny and his love died out.
The mass was said by Talleyrand, the French "Vicar of Bray," who swore
allegiance to all manner of Constitutions himself. It must have been of
evil augury. The storm redoubled as though protesting against the false
priest who burlesqued the service.
Here followed the ceremony of taking the oath. Lafayette was the first,
binding the National Guards. The Assembly Speaker swore for France; and
the King in his own name.
When the vows were made in deep silence, a hundred pieces of artillery
burst into flame at once and bellowed the signal to the surrounding
country.
From every fortified place an immense flame issued, followed by the
menacing thunder invented by man and eclipsing that of heaven if
superiority is to be measured by disasters. So the circle enlarged until
the warning reached the frontier and surpassed it.
When the King rose to declare his purpose the clouds parted and the sun
peered out like the Eye of God.
"I, King of the French," he said, "swear to employ all the power
delegated to me by the Constitutional Law of the State to maintain the
Constitution."
Why had he not eluded the solemn pledge as before; for his next step,
flight from the kingdom, was to be the key to the enigma set that day.
But, true or false, the cannon-fire none the less roared the oath to the
confines. It took the warning to the monarchs:
"Take heed! France is afoot, wishing to be free, and she is ready like
the Roman envoy to shake peace or war, as you like it, from the folds of
her dress."