1789–1790
The Empress Catherine and the Emperor Joseph II.—The Turkish
War—Campaign of 1789 against the Turks—Battles of Foksany and
the Rymnik—Capture of Belgrade—Revolution in Sweden—Affairs
in Belgium—Policy of Joseph II. in Belgium—Revolution in
Liége—Elections to the States-General in France—Meeting of
the States-General: struggle between the Orders—The Tiers
État declares itself the National Assembly—Oath of the
Tennis Court—The Séance Royale—Mirabeau’s Address to the
King—Dismissal of Necker—Riot of 12th July in Paris—Capture
of the Bastille—Recall of Necker—Louis XVI. visits
Paris—Murder of Foullon—Session of 4th August—Declaration
of the Rights of Man—Question of the Veto—March of the
women of Paris to Versailles—Louis XVI. goes to reside in
Paris—Effect of the Revolution in France on Europe—The
Revolution in Belgium—Formation of the Belgian Republic—Death
of the Emperor Joseph II.—Failure of his reign—The attitude
of Louis XVI. to the French Revolution—The new French
Constitution—Civil Constitution of the Clergy—Measures of the
Constituent Assembly—Mirabeau—Danger threatened to the new
state of affairs in France by a foreign war—Mirabeau and the
French Court—Probable causes of a foreign war—Avignon and the
Venaissin—Affair of Nootka Sound—The Pacte de Famille—Rights
of Princes of the Empire in Alsace—The Emperor Leopold master
of the situation.
[Sidenote: Catherine and Joseph II. 1789.]
At the commencement of the year 1789 the thoughts of European statesmen
were mainly turned to the events which were passing in the east of
Europe. The alliance between Catherine of Russia and the Emperor Joseph
II. was regarded with anxiety not only by Pitt in England and by King
Frederick William II. of Prussia, but by the French ministers and by
all the smaller states of Europe. The projects of Russia and Austria
for the extension of their boundaries at the expense of Turkey, Poland,
and Bavaria, were viewed with alarm, and the ambitious ideas of their
rulers with dismay. The attention of educated people, who were not
statesmen or politicians, but disciples of the philosophical teachers
of the eighteenth century, was entirely concentrated on the progress
of the Emperor Joseph’s policy in the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium.
Success seemed to have crowned the warlike measures of General d’Alton;
the Belgian patriots were in prison or in exile; and the philanthropic
and centralising reforms of the Emperor seemed to have ended in Belgium
in the establishment of a military despotism. France was known to be
in an almost desperate financial condition; and the convocation of the
States-General for 1st May 1789, was generally looked upon as a means
adopted by Louis XVI. to obtain financial relief. The great results,
which were to follow the meeting of the States-General, were little
expected by even the most acute political observers, and it was not
foreseen that for more than a quarter of a century the interest of
Europe was to be fixed upon France, and that a series of events in
that country, unparalleled in history, were to bring about an entire
modification in the political system of Europe, and to open a new era
in the history of mankind.
[Sidenote: The War with the Turks.]
[Sidenote: Joseph’s prediction.]
The campaign of 1788 had, upon the whole, terminated favourably for
the Austrians and Russians in their war with the Turks. Loudon, who
commanded the Austrian forces, had taken Dubitza, and penetrating into
Bosnia had reduced Novi on 3d October. Francis Josias, of the House of
Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, commonly known as the Prince of Coburg, at the
head of an Austrian army, had in conjunction with a Russian force under
Prince Soltikov taken Choczim on 20th September. But, on the other
hand, the Turks had overrun and laid waste the Banat of Temesvar and
routed the Austrian army in that quarter, which was under the personal
command of the Emperor. The Russians had also made some progress, and
on 6th December Potemkin, with terrible loss of life, and owing mainly
to the intrepidity of Suvórov and Repnin stormed Oczakoff (Ochakov).
These successes, despite his own failure, greatly inspirited Joseph,
who, in a letter to Prince Charles of Nassau, made the following
curious predictions in January 1789:[3]—‘If the Grand Vizier should
come to meet me or the Russians near the Danube, he must offer a
battle; and then, after having defeated him, I shall drive him back
to take refuge under the cannon of Silistria. In October 1789 I shall
call a congress, at which the Osmanlis will be obliged to beg for peace
from the Giaours. The treaties of Carlowitz and Passarowitz will serve
as the basis for my ambassadors on which to conclude peace; in it,
however, I shall claim Choczim and part of Moldavia. Russia will keep
the Crimea, Prince Charles of Sweden will be Duke of Courland, and the
Grand Duke of Florence King of the Romans. Then there will be universal
peace in Europe. Until then, France will have settled affairs with the
notables of the nation; and the other gentlemen think too much about
themselves and too little about Austria.’
[Sidenote: The Campaign of 1789.]
The campaign of 1789 was far from fulfilling the expectations of
the Emperor Joseph. His own health had suffered too much from the
privations of the previous year to enable him to take the field again
in person, but he was well served by his generals. The Grand Vizier
determined to adopt the offensive, and crossed the Danube at Rustchuk
in March at the head of an army of 90,000 men, with the intention of
invading Transylvania. But an unexpected event led to the recall of
the most experienced Turkish general. The Sultan Abdul Hamid died at
Constantinople on 7th April, and his nephew and successor, Selim III.,
at once disgraced the Grand Vizier, and replaced him in the command
of the western army and the office of Grand Vizier by the Pasha of
Widdin. This incompetent commander rashly advanced, and was defeated
by the Prince of Coburg and Suvoróv at Foksany on 31st July in an
attempt to prevent the junction of the Austrians and Russians. The
allies then took the offensive and inflicted a crushing defeat on the
main Turkish army on the Rymnik, in which 18,000 Austrians and 7000
Russians routed nearly 100,000 Turks, and took all their baggage and
artillery. This great victory was vigorously followed up. Loudon was
appointed Commander-in-chief of the Austrian army, and he took Belgrade
on 9th October, and after occupying the whole of Servia, laid siege
to Orsova. For these services Joseph conferred upon him the title
of generalissimo, which had only been borne before by Wallenstein,
Montecuculi, and Prince Eugène. Among other results of the victory on
the Rymnik, the Prince of Coburg took Bucharest and occupied Moldavia,
while the Prince of Hohenlohe-Kirchberg forced his way into Wallachia.
In the eastern quarter of the Turkish frontier Prince Potemkin was
equally successful. He defeated the Turkish High Admiral, Hassan Pasha,
in a pitched battle at Tobac, and conquered Bessarabia, capturing
Bender, and laying siege to Ismail.
[Sidenote: Revolution in Sweden.]
Doubtless Catherine and Joseph would have met with even greater
successes, and perhaps they might have driven the Turks out of Europe,
had not their attention been diverted directly by the affairs of Sweden
and Belgium, and indirectly by the startling events which were taking
place in France. The Triple Alliance looked with great disfavour on the
alliance between Austria and Russia. Pitt, as has been said, prepared
a great fleet, which is known in English naval history as the Russian
Armament, and Frederick William II. began to negotiate an alliance with
Turkey. But they limited their direct interference to inducing Denmark
to make peace with Sweden. Gustavus III. of Sweden had, in 1788, forced
his way at the head of 30,000 men into Russian Finland, and the sound
of his guns had been heard in Saint Petersburg, which, owing to the
absence of the bulk of the Russian troops, was almost defenceless. But
the Swedish nobility had great influence over the army; they disliked
the war with Russia; and took this opportunity to declare themselves.
Under the secret leadership of Prince Charles, Duke of Sudermania,
they refused to obey the king’s orders, and hoped in the embarrassment
which ensued to regain their former power. At this moment Christian
VII., King of Denmark and Norway, at the instance of Catherine,
invaded Sweden and prepared to besiege Gothenburg. Gustavus saw the
opportunity which this invasion offered to rouse the patriotic feelings
of the Swedes. He appealed to the people, and leaving the command of
the army in Finland to the Duke of Sudermania, raised a fresh army of
volunteers to resist the invaders. In spite of his efforts, Sweden was
in great danger of falling before the combined attacks of Russia and
Denmark. The Triple Alliance now intervened promptly and decisively,
and by threatening to attack Denmark by land and sea, they induced
Bernstorff, the Danish minister, to evacuate Sweden and to agree to
an armistice. Gustavus III. returned to Stockholm with the reputation
of having repulsed the invaders, and summoned the Diet to meet on 2d
February 1789. Sure of the support of the Commons he proposed a new
Constitution, or rather a new fundamental law for the Swedish monarchy,
which is summed up in one of the articles: ‘The king can administer
the affairs of the State as seems good to him.’ The nobility opposed a
fruitless resistance; Gustavus imprisoned their leaders and completed
the work of his former revolution of 1772 by this _coup d’état_. He
then renewed the war with Russia, but the military operations of his
campaign in 1789 were not marked by any event of importance.
[Sidenote: Affairs in Belgium, 1789.]
While Catherine of Russia was being distracted from the vigorous
prosecution of the war against Turkey by the invasion of the Swedes,
her ally, the Emperor Joseph, was chiefly concerned with the state of
affairs in the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium. It seemed at first
as if he was to be as successful as Gustavus in changing the old
constitution of the country. But there was this difference. Whereas
Gustavus III. was enacting the part of a national deliverer, and
had the Swedish people on his side in his overthrow of the nobility,
Joseph II. was opposed not only by the Belgian nobles, but by the
clergy and the people also. The country seemed quiet enough under
the government of Count Trautmannsdorf and the military rule of the
Captain-General d’Alton. The suppression of the risings at Brussels and
Louvain, Malines and Antwerp seemed to have established the Austrian
sway most firmly, and the leading opponents of the Emperor’s policy
were in exile. The Estates of the different provinces were convoked
as usual, and all of them, except those of Hainault and Brabant,
voted the customary subsidies. The Estates of Hainault were at once
dissolved by a military force, and their constitution abolished on
31st January 1789. By this example the Emperor hoped to overawe the
wealthy and populous province of Brabant, and when it did not have
the expected effect, he directed Trautmannsdorf to summon a special
meeting of the Estates of Brabant, and to require them to increase
the number of deputies of the Third Estate or Commons, and to grant a
permanent subsidy. He also maintained his attitude towards the Church,
and tried to compel Cardinal Frankenberg, the Archbishop of Malines, to
withdraw his opposition to the new Imperial Seminary at Brussels, or
to resign his see. The Archbishop stoutly refused to comply, and the
Estates of Brabant proved equally stubborn. Joseph then decided on a
sudden blow, and by his orders Count Trautmannsdorf, on 18th June 1789,
declared the ‘Joyeuse Entrée,’ or Constitution of Brabant abolished.
The day was the anniversary of the battle of Kolin, in which, at the
crisis of the Seven Years’ War, the Austrians had defeated Frederick
the Great. D’Alton thought he made a happy comparison in saying: ‘The
18th of June is a happy epoch for the House of Austria; for on that
day the glorious victory of Kolin saved the monarchy, and the Emperor
became master of the Netherlands.’ But the victory was not to be won
so easily. The two parties of opposition, the Van der Nootists, or
partisans of Van der Noot, the supporter of the ancient constitutional
rights, and the Vonckists, or followers of Vonck, the advocate of
popular or democratic ideas, united. The Triple Alliance was as glad
to hamper Joseph’s activity in the East by encouraging these Belgian
patriots, as it had been to leave Gustavus free to harass Catherine, by
stopping the interference of Denmark in the north, and the ministers of
England, Holland, and Prussia all entered into relations with Van der
Noot. That partisan, encouraged by hopes of active assistance, formed
a patriotic committee at Breda, on the Dutch frontier, and raised an
army of exiles, which was placed under the command of Colonel Van der
Mersch. Joseph was not to be intimidated. D’Alton put down popular
riots, which broke out in various towns, notably at Tirlemont, Louvain,
Namur, and Brussels, with unrelenting severity. A sweeping decree was
issued on 19th October against the exiles or _émigrés_, declaring that
ordinary emigration would be punished by banishment and confiscation
of property, and that joining an armed force on the frontier for the
purpose of invasion would be punished by death, and that informers
against _émigrés_ would receive a reward of 10,000 livres and absolute
impunity.[4] But all the Emperor’s measures and decrees were of no
effect. The meeting of the States-General in France had been followed
by the capture of the Bastille and the bringing of the King of France
from Versailles to Paris by a Parisian mob; and the effects of the
French Revolution on affairs in Belgium was soon to be perceived.
[Sidenote: Revolution in Liège.]
In the bishopric of Liège, which, from its situation, always
reflected and repeated any political troubles that took place in
Belgium, the influence of the French Revolution was immediately
felt. The inhabitants of the bishopric had long resented the rule
of the prince-bishops, and felt the anomaly of being subject to an
ecclesiastical sovereign. Many exiles from the democratic party in
Belgium assembled in the bishopric, and on the news of the capture of
the Bastille, the people of Liége needed little persuasion to renew
their former insurrection. The revolution was carried out without the
shedding of blood. On 16th and 17th August 1789 the people of the city
of Liége rose in rebellion; on the 18th MM. Chestret and Fabry were
chosen burgomasters by popular acclamation, the garrison was disarmed,
and the citadel occupied by bourgeois national guards. On the same day
the Prince-Bishop, Count Cæsar Constantine Francis de Hoensbroeck, was
brought into the city, and he signed a proclamation acknowledging the
revolution and abrogating the despotic settlement of 1684. The other
towns in the bishopric followed the example of the capital, and in each
of them free municipalities were elected and national guards raised and
armed. The Prince-Bishop, after accepting the loss of his political
power, fled to Trèves, and considered himself fortunate to be allowed
to escape.
[Sidenote: The Elections to the States-General.]
It is now time to examine the course of the events in France, which
led to such important developments upon its north-east frontier, and
which distracted the attention of all the monarchs and ministers of
Europe, except Catherine of Russia, from the wars in the North and
East. It was owing to the increasing difficulty of raising money for
carrying on the administration of the State and paying the interest
on the national debt, and the consequent necessity for revising the
system of taxation and reorganising the financial resources of France
that Louis XVI., on the advice of his minister, Loménie de Brienne, had
vaguely promised in November 1787 to summon the States-General for July
1792, and had definitely convoked the ancient assembly of France on 8th
August 1788 to meet at Versailles on 1st May 1789. But the arrangements
for the elections were not made by Loménie de Brienne, who retired
from office in the same month as the States-General was convoked,
but by his successor Necker, who was recalled to office as an expert
financier, in view of the fact that the summons of the States-General
was looked on as a purely financial expedient. The procedure to be
adopted in electing deputies gave rise to much anxious deliberation
and heated controversy in the public press, and the Notables of 1787
were again assembled to give their advice. The burning question was
as to the representation of the Tiers État, Third Estate or Commons.
The ancient representative assembly of France was known to consist
of the three orders of the Nobility, the Clergy, and the Tiers État,
and the disputed question was as to the proportion of the number of
deputies of the Tiers État to that of the two other orders. This and
the other electoral questions were finally settled by the Résultat du
Conseil published on 27th December 1788. It was decreed that the royal
bailliages and royal sénéchaussées, feudal circumscriptions which had
long fallen into disuse, should be treated as electoral units, and that
they should elect, according to the extent of their population, one or
more deputations, each consisting of four members, one chosen by the
Nobility, one by the Clergy, and two by the Tiers État. The elections
were to be made in two and sometimes in three degrees, and at each
stage _cahiers_ or statements of grievances and projects for reform
were to be drawn up by the electoral assemblies.[5] In provinces, where
there were no royal bailliages or sénéchaussées, and consequently
no Grand Baillis or Grand Sénéchals to preside, corresponding
circumscriptions were adopted or invented. During the early months
of 1789 the French people were fully occupied in the election of the
deputies to the States-General. Whatever might be the opinion of the
French Court or the French Ministry, the people,—and more especially
the educated bourgeois of the towns and the country lawyers,—looked
upon the future assembly as something more than a financial expedient;
they trusted to it to draw up a new political system for the State,
which should admit the representative principle and allow the taxpayer
a voice not only in the granting, but in the spending of the national
revenue. The working classes, whether in the towns or the rural
districts, did not take much active interest in the elections, and
their representatives in the secondary electoral assemblies were
generally educated bourgeois, but they vaguely built high hopes on the
meeting of the States-General, and expected it to give them land or
higher wages. Considering the novelty of choosing representatives in
France, it is extraordinary that the electoral operations were carried
out as peacefully and as efficiently as they were. This was mainly
due to the success of a little revolutionary movement in Dauphiné,
where an unauthorised and irregular assembly had met in July 1788 to
protest against the abolition of the provincial Parlements by Loménie
de Brienne. That minister had left office when he was not permitted
to put down the assembly in Dauphiné by force, and Necker hoped to
save the prestige of the monarchy by summoning a new assembly of the
province in its place. But the ruse was quickly perceived; the men who
had sat in the illegal assembly were elected to its successor, and in
the eyes of France the representatives of the Dauphiné had won a signal
victory over the Court. The new assembly in Dauphiné became the court
of appeal in every electoral difficulty, and its secretary, Mounier,
the leader of the Tiers État of France. Owing to his energy and ability
local jealousies of town against town, province against province,
class jealousies and personal rivalry, were set at rest, and it was
more owing to Mounier than to any one else that the deputies to the
States-General were legally and quietly elected, and that the acts of
the future assembly could not be stigmatised as the work of a factious
or unrepresentative minority of the French nation.
[Sidenote: Meeting of the States-General.]
On 5th May 1789 the first States-General held in France since the
year 1614 met at Versailles. Barentin, the Keeper of the Seals, and
Necker harangued the collected deputies, and the latter explained
the desperate financial situation of the State and the necessity for
immediate action to relieve the national treasury. The representatives
of the nobility and clergy then retired to separate chambers,
leaving their colleagues of the Tiers État in the great hall. No word
was spoken about the relation of the three orders to each other.
It was assumed that each order was to deliberate separately. The
representatives of the Tiers État were placed in a most difficult
position. There was no advantage in their being as numerous as
the two other orders put together, if the three orders were to be
independent of each other, for in that case the majorities of the
privileged orders could outweigh the opinion of the majority among
themselves. The question of _vote par ordre_, which would give each
order equal authority, or _vote par tête_, which would allow the
numerical preponderance of the Tiers État to take effect, had been
long recognised as crucial. It had been assumed from the grant of
double representation to the Tiers État that the Government intended
to sanction the _vote par tête_, and the tacit acknowledgment of the
separation of the orders and consequent recognition of the _vote par
ordre_ on 5th May disconcerted for the moment the popular leaders.
[Sidenote: Struggle between the Orders.]
[Sidenote: The Tiers État declare themselves the National Assembly.]
But the deputies of the Tiers État, under the guidance of Le Chapelier,
a Breton lawyer from Rennes, and of Rabaut de Saint-Étienne, a
Protestant pastor from Nîmes, proceeded to take up a most skilful
attitude. They resolved on a policy of masterly inactivity. They
refused to form themselves into the assembly of the Order of the Tiers
État; they refused to open letters addressed to them under that title;
they refused to elect a president or secretaries; and stated that
they were a body of citizens, representatives of the French nation,
waiting in that hall to be joined by the other deputies. This attitude
received the unanimous approval of the people of Paris, and threw upon
the Government the onus of declaring that the double representation
of the Tiers État was merely a sterile gift. The representatives of
the two privileged orders treated the situation very differently. The
nobility accepted the separation of the orders to distinct chambers,
and resolved to constitute their chamber by 188 votes to 47, while the
clergy only decided in the same sense by 133 votes to 114. Even this
majority was not really significant. For, owing to a tendency which had
developed during the course of the elections, the greater part of the
deputies of the clergy were poor country curés, who sympathised with
the Tiers État, from which they sprung, and not with the prelates and
dignitaries of the Church, who belonged to the nobility. This tendency
of the true majority of the clergy was well known to the leaders of
the Tiers État and encouraged them in their passive attitude. In
vain the King and Necker attempted to terminate the deadlock; the
deputies of the Tiers État persisted that they did not form an order,
and they were reinforced by the representatives of Paris, where the
elections were not concluded until the end of May. At last, on 10th
June, on the proposition of the Abbé Sieyès, deputy for Paris, a final
invitation was sent to the deputies of the nobility and the clergy to
join the deputies of the Tiers État, and it was resolved that whether
the request was granted or refused the Tiers État would constitute
itself into a regular deliberative body. The invitation was rejected
by the nobility, and only a few curés, including the Abbé Grégoire,
belonging to the Order of the Clergy, complied with it. The deputies
then verified their powers, and elected Bailly, a famous astronomer
and deputy for Paris, to be their president. But what sort of assembly
were they? They denied that they were representatives of an Order, and
they were certainly not the States-General of France. The question was
hotly debated, and on 16th June they declared themselves the National
Assembly. They then declared all the taxes, hitherto levied, to be
illegal, and ordered that they should only be paid provisionally. This
defiant conduct disconcerted the King and his ministers, and it was
announced that a Séance Royale, or Royal Session, would be held by the
King in person to settle all disputed questions.
[Sidenote: The Oath of the Tennis Court. 20th June.]
[Sidenote: The Séance Royale. 23d June.]
On 20th June the deputies of the Tiers État, or of the National
Assembly, as they now termed themselves, were excluded from their usual
meeting-place. They therefore met in the Jeu de Paume or Tennis Court
at Versailles, and, amidst a scene of wild excitement, swore that they
would not separate until they had drawn up a new Constitution for
France. By this act they practically became rebels, and the French
Revolution really commenced. On 22d June they met in the Church of
Saint Louis at Versailles, where they were joined by 149 deputies of
the clergy, who thus recognised the act of rebellion. On 23d June the
Séance Royale was held. In the speech from the throne it was announced
that the King, ‘of his own goodness and generosity,’ would levy no
taxes in future without the assent of the representatives of the
people, but it was also declared that the financial privileges of the
nobility and clergy were unassailable, and that the States-General
was to vote _par ordre_. This was the most critical moment in the
first stage of the Revolution. If the deputies of the Tiers État had
given way, the oath of the Tennis Court would have seemed only an
idle threat. But they found a leader in the Comte de Mirabeau, deputy
for the Tiers État of Aix, a man of extraordinary ability, who in
the course of a tempestuous career had travelled much and learned
much. He courageously faced the situation, and after making a reply
to the Grand Master of the Ceremonies that the deputies of France
would only be expelled by force, he induced the National Assembly to
declare the persons of its members inviolable. Sieyès summed up the
situation by telling the deputies: ‘Gentlemen, you are to-day what
you were yesterday.’ Before this daring opposition the King gave way:
on 25th June the minority of the Order of the Nobility, consisting of
forty-seven deputies, headed by the Marquis de Lafayette, the friend
of Washington, joined the National Assembly, and two days later the
majority of that Order reluctantly followed their example at the
command of the King.
[Sidenote: Mirabeau’s Address to the King. 9th July.]
[Sidenote: Dismissal of Necker. 12th July.]
The rapid transformation of the deputies of the Tiers État into a
National Assembly, which defied the royal authority and spoke of
drawing up a new Constitution for France, exasperated the courtiers,
who looked with disgust at all attempts to modify the _ancien régime_.
The King did not share their feelings; he was honestly desirous of
doing his duty by his people, and preferred the diminution of his
royal prerogative to coming into open conflict with his subjects and
to initiating a civil war. He had hitherto trusted to Necker and
followed Necker’s advice. But the result had not been encouraging. His
minister had repeatedly put him in a false position. He had been made
to speak in a haughty tone to the deputies of the Tiers État at the
Séance Royale on 23d June, and then to eat his words by directing the
deputies of the Nobility to join the self-created National Assembly.
This great concession seemed to have been wrung from him; the deputies
of the Tiers État appeared to have won a great victory in the face of
the royal opposition, when in reality the King had yielded from the
goodness of his heart. Since he found that following the advice of
Necker had only resulted in a loss of authority, combined with profound
unpopularity, without improving the financial prospect, Louis XVI.
not unnaturally turned his attention to the enemies of the minister.
These enemies were headed by the Queen, Marie Antoinette, who resented
Necker’s endeavours to restrain the extravagance of the Court and his
admission of the need to make concessions to the will of the people,
and by the King’s younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, a staunch
supporter of the absolute prerogative of the Crown and of the system
of the _ancien régime_. Yielding unwillingly to the arguments of the
enemies of Necker and of the National Assembly, the King determined
to use force, and he began to concentrate troops in the neighbourhood
of Paris and Versailles. The National Assembly did not know what to
do; Mounier and other leaders had formed a committee to draw up the
bases of a new constitution; but they had no force on which they could
depend to resist the royal troops, and felt that they would probably be
arrested and the Assembly dissolved long before the foundation of the
Constitution was laid. At this crisis Mirabeau again came to the front.
With the most daring audacity he attacked and revealed the policy of
the Court on 8th July, and on 9th July carried an address to the King
on the part of the Assembly, requesting the immediate removal of the
troops collected in the neighbourhood, but protesting the loyalty of
the Assembly to the person of the King. But the King was now under the
influence of the opponents of the Assembly. His answer to Mirabeau’s
address was the dismissal of Necker and his colleagues on 12th July,
the banishment of Necker, and the appointment of the Maréchal de
Broglie, an experienced general, who detested the idea of change, to be
Minister for War and Marshal-General of the troops in the neighbourhood
of Paris.
[Sidenote: Formation of National Guards.]
Hitherto the struggle had been between the Court and the deputies of
the Tiers État; the popular element was now to intervene; and the
people of Paris was for the first time to make its influence felt. The
news of Necker’s dismissal was received in Paris with wrath and dismay.
A young lawyer without practice, named Camille Desmoulins, announced
the event to the crowd collected in the Palais Royal and incited his
hearers to resistance. His words were eagerly applauded. The population
of Paris, both bourgeois and proletariat, had watched the course of
events at Versailles with unflagging interest, and the formation of a
camp of soldiers in the neighbourhood with terror. The working classes,
who lived near the margin of starvation, expected that the National
Assembly would cause in some way a rise in wages and a decrease in
the price of necessaries, and were exasperated at the prospect of the
non-fulfilment of their hopes. They had already sacked the house of a
manufacturer, named Réveillon, who was reported to have spoken scornful
words of their poverty, on 28th April, and were ready for any mischief.
From the Palais Royal, excited by the news and the words of Camille
Desmoulins, started a tumultuous procession bearing busts of Necker
and of the Duke of Orleans, a prince of the royal house, who had been
exiled by the King for previous opposition to him, and who was regarded
as a supporter of the popular claims. The procession was charged by a
German cavalry regiment in the French service, commanded by the Prince
de Lambesc, a near relative of the Queen, and the mob dispersed to riot
and to pillage. The more patriotic rioters broke into the gunsmiths’
shops to seize weapons, the rest pillaged the butchers’ and bakers’
shops, and burned the barriers where octroi duties were collected. This
scene of riot brought about its own remedy. The bourgeois, terrified
for the safety of their shops, took up arms, and on the following
day formed themselves into companies of national guards for the
preservation of the peace. The guidance of this movement was taken by
the electors of Paris, who, after completing their work of electing
deputies for Paris, continued to meet at the Hôtel-de-Ville.
[Sidenote: Capture of the Bastille. 14th July.]
The 14th of July found the capital of France organised for resistance.
The Gardes Françaises, the force maintained for the security of Paris,
were devoted to the cause of the National Assembly, and were resolved
to fight with the people, not against them. And it was ascertained
that the soldiers in the camp were very lukewarm in their attachment
to their officers, and were likely to refuse to attack the citizens.
Under these circumstances an idea arose that an armed demonstration of
the Parisians at Versailles would strengthen the King, whose sentiments
were well known, to resist the Court party and to recall Necker. With
this notion, large crowds approached the Hôtel des Invalides and the
Bastille, the two principal store-houses of arms in Paris. The crowd,
which went to the Hôtel des Invalides, had no difficulty in seizing
the arms there, in spite of the opposition of the Governor. But it was
otherwise at the Bastille. The mob, which collected in the Governor’s
Court in that fortress and shouted for arms, was isolated by the
raising of the outer drawbridge and fired upon by the weak garrison
in the Bastille itself. The sound of this firing brought a number of
armed men from other parts of the city; the outer drawbridge was cut
down, and preparations were being made to force a way into the fortress
itself, when the garrison surrendered. The result of the firing upon
the mob in the Governor’s Court had been to kill eighty-three persons
and wound many others. The sight of the corpses and the cries of the
wounded excited the anger of the successful conquerors of the fortress.
A panic arose, and three officers and four soldiers of the garrison
were murdered. Then the more disciplined of the conquerors started to
take the rest of the defenders of the Bastille to the Hôtel-de-Ville.
On the way the Governor and the Major of the fortress were murdered by
the mob, and M. de Flesselles, the Provost of the merchants of Paris,
who was accused of encouraging the Governor to resist, was also slain.
By these events the people of Paris felt that they had commenced a
war against the Crown; entrenchments were thrown up and barricades
were erected in the streets; all shops were shut up; the barriers were
closed; no one was allowed to leave the city, and preparations were
made to stand a siege.
[Sidenote: Recall of Necker. 15th July.]
[Sidenote: The King’s visit to Paris. 17th July.]
But if the people of Paris were ready to fight, the King was not. As
has been said, he loathed the idea of civil war, and when he heard of
the capture of the Bastille and of the martial attitude of Paris, he
at once gave up the idea of opposing the revolutionary movement by
force. He dismissed his reactionary ministers and recalled Necker, and
he declared himself ready to co-operate with the National Assembly
in restoring order. The first victories of the Assembly had been won
by its statesmanlike inaction in the month of May and its courage on
23d June; the victory over the party of force had been won by Paris
on 14th July. The Assembly prepared to take advantage of this fresh
success. On 16th July it legalised the establishment of National Guards
and elective municipalities all over France, and recognising that the
only way to convince the Parisians that the King had accepted the new
situation and had abandoned the idea of employing force, was to induce
the King to visit Paris in person, it proposed that he should do so at
once. Louis XVI. was not devoid of personal courage, and consented. On
17th July, accordingly, he entered Paris accompanied by 100 deputies,
and amidst wild acclamation put on the tricolour cockade, which the
Parisians had assumed as their badge, and consented to the nomination
of Bailly, the President of the National Assembly, to be Mayor of
Paris, and of Lafayette to be Commander-in-chief of the Paris National
Guard. These concessions, and the victory of the National Assembly
and of Paris threw consternation among the court party of reaction:
the Comte d’Artois and those of his adherents, who were most hated as
conspicuous reactionaries or who had advocated the employment of force,
fled from the country.
[Sidenote: Murder of Foullon. 21st July.]
The immediate results of the capture of the Bastille were no less
important in the provinces of France. In every city, even in small
country towns, mayors and municipalities were elected and National
Guards formed; in many the local citadels were seized by the people;
in all the troops fraternised with the people; and in some there was
bloodshed. This movement was essentially bourgeois; where blood was
shed and pillage took place at the hands of the working classes, the
new National Guards soon restored order. The general excitement was so
great that it is surprising that there was not more bloodshed and that
peace was so quickly and efficiently established. Among these outbreaks
the most noteworthy took place in Paris itself, where on 21st July
Foullon de Doué, who had been nominated to succeed Necker on 12th July,
and his son-in-law Berthier de Sauvigny were murdered almost before the
eyes of Bailly, the new Mayor of Paris. But these occasional town riots
were speedily quelled by the armed bourgeois. Far more widespread and
important was the upheaval in the rural districts of France.
The peasants believed that the time had come, when they were to
own their land free from copyhold rights or the relics of feudal
servitudes. Even the better-educated farmers for their own interests
favoured this idea. The result was a regular jacquerie in many
parts of France. The châteaux of the lords were burnt, or in some
instances only the charters stored in them, and the lords’ dovecotes
and rabbit-warrens were generally destroyed. In certain provinces
the National Guards of the neighbouring towns put down these rural
outbreaks, occasionally with great severity, but as a rule they ran
their course unchecked.
[Sidenote: The Session of 4th August.]
On 4th August a deputy named Salomon read a report on these occurrences
to the National Assembly, or as it is generally called from the
Constitution it framed, the Constituent Assembly. His report was
followed by a curious scene, which marked the transition from feudal
to modern France. The scene was opened by the sacrifice by some of the
young liberal noblemen of their feudal rights. Privileges of all sorts,
privileges of class, of town and of province were solemnly abandoned.
Feudal customs and all relics of feudalism were condemned and declared
to be abolished. Even tithes were swept away, in spite of a protest
from Sieyès, and the ‘orgie,’ as Mirabeau termed it, closed with a
decree that a monument should be erected to Louis XVI., ‘the restorer
of French liberty.’
[Sidenote: The Declaration of the Rights of Man.]
[Sidenote: The Suspensive Veto.]
But it was not possible to restore peace and prosperity to France
by the abolition of the relics of feudalism. Destruction of former
anomalies and of a crumbling system of government would inevitably lead
to anarchy, unless accompanied by the construction of a new scheme of
central and local administration. It was here that the Constituent
Assembly failed. The deputies were quick to destroy but slow to
construct. For two months they wasted time instead of hastening to draw
up a new constitution for France. They first wrangled over the wording
of a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which they resolved to compile
in imitation of the founders of the American Republic. They then
debated lengthily whether the future representative assembly of France
should consist of one or two chambers, and whether the King should have
power to veto its acts. The first question was decided in favour of a
single chamber, more because the English Constitution sanctioned two
chambers, and the deputies feared to be thought imitators, than for
any logical reason. And the debate on the second question terminated
in the grant to the King of a suspensive veto for six months, in spite
of the eloquence of Mirabeau, who saw that a monarchical constitution,
which gave the King no more power than the President of the United
States of America, would prove unworkable, because it would divorce
responsibility from real authority, leaving the former to the King and
the latter to the Legislature.
[Sidenote: The march of the Women to Versailles. 5th October.]
[Sidenote: The King brought to Paris. 6th October.]
During the two months occupied by these debates the situation had
again become critical. Necker’s only idea to relieve the financial
situation was to propose loans, which the Assembly granted, but which
he could not succeed in raising. The King was again being acted
upon by the Court party, which advocated the use of force and the
dissolution of the Assembly, and this party was encouraged by the
Queen and by the King’s sister, Madame Elizabeth. He was also urged
to leave the neighbourhood of Paris and to establish himself in some
provincial town, where the populace could be more easily restrained
by the regular troops. He would not heartily agree to either of these
courses, but weakly consented once more to concentrate troops round his
person. Everything advised at Versailles was soon known in Paris. The
journalists, who had since the capture of the Bastille sprung up in the
capital to advocate the views of the popular party, and of whom the
ablest were Loustalot, editor of the _Révolutions de Paris_, and Marat,
editor of the _Ami du Peuple_, kept warning the people of Paris against
treason on the part of the King, and prophesying dire consequences if
he were allowed to leave the neighbourhood or to concentrate troops.
Their words did not fall on unheeding ears. The working classes feared
a siege of Paris again as they had done in July, and looked on the
King’s presence in Paris as the only means to keep down the price
of necessaries. The thinking bourgeois, whether liberal deputies in
the Assembly or national guards in Paris, feared a sudden forced
dissolution of the Assembly, and not only the loss of the advantages
they had gained but punishment for the part they had played. Both
these elements were perceptible in the movement which followed. The
description given in the popular journals of a banquet at Versailles,
honoured by the presence of the royal family, at which the national
cockade had been trampled underfoot, on 1st October, roused the people
of Paris to a frenzy of wrath and fear. On 5th October a crowd of women
collected in Paris, declaring that they were starving, and were led to
Versailles by Maillard, one of the conquerors of the Bastille, followed
by a mob. The representatives of the women interviewed the King, and
the mob prepared to spend the night outside the palace walls. Late at
night they were followed by a powerful detachment of the National Guard
of Paris, under the command of Lafayette, who protested that he came to
save the King. Nevertheless, owing to bad management, some of the mob
broke into the palace before daybreak on the morning of 6th October and
murdered two of the royal bodyguards. Lafayette came to the rescue and
demanded that the King and royal family should come to Paris and take
up their residence at the Tuileries. The King, horrified by the events
of the morning, and obliged to obey Lafayette, consented, and the royal
family, accompanied by the mob, and escorted by the National Guard, at
once proceeded to the capital. This second victory of the Parisians was
not less important than the first: on 14th July the people of Paris had
terrified the King into abandoning the idea of dissolving the National
Assembly by force; on 6th October they brought him amongst them, so
that if he again conceived the idea, he would be unable to execute it.
[Sidenote: Effect in Europe.]
The capture of the Bastille caused the most profound astonishment in
Europe. Where the people possessed some amount of political liberty,
as in the United States of America and in England, it appealed to the
imagination, and the French were regarded as the conquerors of their
freedom. In the neighbourhood of France, in the Rhenish principalities,
in Belgium, and above all in Liège, it caused a general sense of
discontent and even riots. The despotic monarchs of Europe and their
principal ministers did not pay so much attention to the capture of
the Bastille as did the inhabitants of free countries; they did not
for one moment believe that the National Assembly would be allowed to
alter the old constitution of France, and looked upon the whole of the
popular movement with a favourable eye as likely to weaken France and
prevent her from interfering in the affairs of the Continent. They took
care, however, to suppress all similar risings in their own states. The
King of Sardinia and the Elector of Mayence were especially severe;
the Emperor’s General d’Alton was more than severe in Belgium; and the
King of Prussia sent General Schlieffen with a strong force to restore
the authority of the Bishop of Liège. This attitude of the continental
monarchs was encouraged by the first French _émigrés_, who loudly
declared that the success of the Assembly was due to the culpable
weakness of Louis XVI.
[Sidenote: The Belgian Revolution. Oct. 1789-Jan. 1790.]
The tidings of the events of 5th and 6th October showed both the French
_émigrés_ and the continental monarchs that they were wrong in their
estimate of the Revolution. That the French royal family should be
triumphantly brought to Paris and be practically imprisoned in the
Tuileries under the eyes of the Parisian populace was a startling
proof of the power of the people. It proportionately encouraged the
supporters of all the popular movements on the French borders. Of
these, the most important was that which had already made so much
progress two years before in Belgium. The first result of the removal
of the King of France to Paris was the Belgian Revolution of 1789,
which filled almost as large a place in the eyes of contemporaries
as the French Revolution itself. Encouraged by the Triple Alliance,
and more especially by Frederick William II. of Prussia, the Belgian
exiles of both wings, the supporters of Van der Noot, the advocate
of the ancient Constitution, and of Vonck, the radical, had formed a
patriotic army at Breda. The news of the events of 5th and 6th October
determined them to act. On 23d October the army under Van der Mersch
crossed the border, and on 24th October Van der Noot issued a manifesto
declaring the Emperor Joseph deprived of his sovereignty over the Duchy
of Brabant for having violated its fundamental charter.
[Sidenote: Formation of the Belgian Republic, 10th Jan. 1790.]
The march of the patriotic army was both rapid and successful. Bruges
and Ostend opened their gates to the exiles; the fort of St. Pierre
at Ghent was stormed; and the Estates of Flanders at once assembled,
published a declaration of independence, and called on the other
provinces to join in the movement. In Brabant the excitement was at
its height. Trautmannsdorf in vain promised to restore the ‘Joyeuse
Entrée,’ to abolish the Imperial Seminary at Brussels, and to declare a
general amnesty. The patriots would not trust him, and Van der Mersch
advanced into the Duchy and occupied Tirlemont. The people of Brussels
then rose in insurrection. From 7th to 12th December was a period of
long-continued riot and street fighting. Many of the Austrian soldiers
deserted to the popular side, and those who remained true to their
colours were shot at from windows and refused to charge. The advance
of Van der Mersch set the seal upon d’Alton’s discomfiture. He made a
capitulation on 12th December, and marched out of Brussels, leaving
his guns, military stores, and military chest containing 3,000,000
florins behind. He retreated to Luxembourg, the only province which
remained faithful to the House of Austria, and his example was followed
by the imperial garrisons of Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, which
were abandoned to the patriots. D’Alton himself died at Trèves, it is
said by taking poison, on being summoned to Vienna to be tried by a
court-martial, and was succeeded in command of the Austrian troops in
Luxembourg by General Bender. On 18th December the patriot committee
entered Brussels, headed by Van der Noot, who was hailed by the people
as the Belgian Franklin. On 7th January 1790 representatives from all
the provinces of the former Austrian Netherlands met at Brussels under
the presidency of Cardinal Frankenberg, Archbishop of Malines, and
on 10th January they passed a federal constitution for the ‘United
Belgian States,’ resembling that of Holland, under which each province
was to preserve its internal independence, and only foreign affairs
and national defence were left to the central government. Van der Noot
was chosen Minister of State, and he at once asked for the official
recognition of the new Belgian Constitution by the Triple Alliance,
whose ministers at the Hague, Lord Auckland, Count Keller, and Van
der Spiegel had, he asserted, promised to guarantee the independence
of the new United States of Belgium. Frederick William II. of Prussia
endeavoured to carry out this promise. He authorised one of his
officers, General Schönfeld, to organise the Belgian army, and ordered
General Schlieffen at Liége to enter into communication with the new
government. But England and Holland, though approving the insurrection
of Belgium as affording a powerful counterpoise to the Emperor’s policy
in the East, were in no hurry to guarantee the new Republic, and Van
der Noot then determined, under the influence of the radicals or
Vonckists, to solicit the help of France, and announced the new Belgian
Constitution in a significant manner both to Louis XVI. and to the
President of the National Assembly.
[Sidenote: Death of the Emperor Joseph. 20th Feb. 1790.]
The news of the declaration of the independence of the Belgian
provinces, and of the revolution which had led to it, proved to be the
death-blow of the Emperor Joseph. To the Prince de Ligne, a native
of Belgium, he said, just before his death, ‘Your country has killed
me; the taking of Ghent is my agony; the evacuation of Brussels is
my death. What a disgrace this is for me! I die; I must be made of
wood, if I did not. Go to the Netherlands; make them return to their
allegiance. If you do not succeed in the attempt, remain there. Do
not sacrifice your fortune for me; you have children.’ The dying
Emperor in his despair made concessions in every direction. He humbled
his pride to entreat the Pope to use his influence with the Belgian
clergy. He gave in to the Hungarian magnates, who demanded the repeal
of his great reforms with threats of insurrection; and on 28th January
1790 he issued his ‘Revocatio Ordinationum quæ sensu communi legibus
adversari videbantur,’ by which he revoked all his reforms in Hungary,
except the edict of toleration and the decrees against serfdom; and
on 18th February he ordered the Crown of St. Stephen to be sent back
to Pesth. He assented to the suspension of his reforming edicts in
Bohemia, and even in the Tyrol, where an insurrection was on the point
of breaking out. Then, feeling his life a failure, he prepared for
death. He confessed and received the ordinances of the Church; the
last words he was heard to say were: ‘I believe I have done my duty
as a man and a prince,’ and on the morning of 20th February he died.
The words he wished to be written on his grave were: ‘Here rests a
prince, whose intentions were pure; but who had the misfortune to
see all his plans miscarry;’ but the people of Vienna, with a deeper
sense of the merits of the great ruler who had lived in their midst,
placed on his statue the inscription, ‘Josepho secundo, arduis nato,
magnis perfuncto, majoribus præcepto, qui saluti publicæ vixit non
diu, sed totus.’ The failure of the career of Joseph, the noblest
sovereign of the eighteenth century,—one of the noblest sovereigns
of any century,—was a proof of the fallacy of the eighteenth century
conception of benevolent despotism. He had tried to accomplish in his
dominions the very measures of reform which the Constituent Assembly
had undertaken in France. The abolition of the relics of feudalism,
the creation of a spirit of nationality, based upon the existence of
uniform laws, the nationalisation of the Church and of education, the
removal of all caste privileges, whether in the payment of taxes or in
eligibility for public employment, and the maintenance of good internal
administration, the primary aims and the great achievements of the
Revolution in France, were also the objects of Joseph’s reforms. But
everything was to be done for the people, nothing by the people, and
it is doubtful whether, if Joseph had been in the place of Louis XVI.,
the French people would have relished the advantages he might have
conferred. The spirit of locality was perhaps not so strong in France
as in the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria. Dauphiné and
Burgundy did not differ from Brittany and Normandy as much as Bohemia
and Hungary, Belgium and the Milanese differed from each other. Yet the
abolition of local distinctions might have been resented in France,
as it was in the dominions of Joseph, if it had been accomplished by
the monarch, instead of being the work of elected representatives.
It is indeed remarkable that, allowing for the want of exactness in
the parallel, owing to the difference of local conditions, the very
reforms, which rallied all France to the side of the Revolution,
should have led to the disastrous termination of the Emperor Joseph’s
reign, and it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the
whole subject illustrates the grand distinction between the eighteenth
and the nineteenth centuries, the distinction between alterations in
the political, social, or economical conditions of a state made by a
monarch for his people, and by a people for itself.
Louis XVI., indeed, showed himself a very different type of monarch
from Joseph. He wished for the good of his people as ardently as his
brother-in-law, but he had during the early years of his reign been
satisfied with wishing for reforms, instead of energetically initiating
them. When the success of the Revolution was assured by the policy of
the deputies of the Tiers État, by the capture of the Bastille and by
his own establishment at Paris, he never thought of setting himself at
the head of the party of reform. He did not openly ally himself with
the Tiers État, to vanquish the opposition of the nobles, as Gustavus
III. of Sweden had done; he did not dream of outbidding the National
Assembly for popularity by lavish promises, as other monarchs before
and since have done; and he did not even try to share the credit of the
representatives of the people by exhibiting an ardent zeal for reform.
The horror he felt for civil war was not recognised; his partial
yielding to the Court party of reaction in July and October, though at
so late a date and so half-heartedly as to nullify any chance of its
success, was imputed to him as a crime; and the difficulty presented
by the fact that his dearest relatives, his Queen, Marie Antoinette,
and his sister, Madame Elizabeth, were against all reform, was never
fully appreciated. In consequence, the King’s real wishes to please
his people and avoid bloodshed were looked on as simulated by the
members of the National Assembly, and not only Louis himself, but the
very principle of the French monarchy, were regarded as hostile to
representative institutions. Louis XVI. was as weak as Joseph II. was
energetic, but he was equally well-intentioned; and it was a distinct
misfortune, both for himself and for France, that the value of the
passive inertness, which he generally opposed to the reactionary
schemes of his family and of the partisans of the _ancien régime_, was
not adequately recognised.
[Sidenote: The New French Constitution. 1789–1791.]
This attitude towards the King had an important effect upon the
constitution which the Constituent Assembly was engaged in framing
during the year 1790. Only the main points in the growth of this
Constitution, which occupied the greater part of the time of the
Assembly from 1789 to 1791, can here be touched upon. But one striking
feature must first be observed, that it was drawn up and applied
piecemeal, not as an organic whole, like the later French constitutions
of the revolutionary period. The first important principle was decreed
upon 12th November 1789, when it was resolved that all the old local
divisions of France, which perpetuated the memory of the gradual
growth of the French provinces into France, should be abolished, and
that the country should be divided into eighty departments of nearly
equal size. It was naturally some months before the new division
was effected, and still longer before the further division of each
department into districts, and each district into cantons was finished.
No wiser step for converting France from a congeries of provinces into
a nation could have been devised. On the basis of the new divisions
a new local government was established. Each department and district
was to be administered by elected authorities, elaborately chosen by a
system of double election. Next to the local government, the judicial
system was reorganised. The Parlements were all abolished, and local
courts, consisting of elected judges of departmental and district
tribunals, and elected justices of the peace, were substituted. A
uniform system of law was projected, and juries were sanctioned in
criminal but not in civil cases. In these sweeping reforms one natural
blemish is perceptible: from having no elected officials the other
extreme was adopted of having all officials elected.
[Sidenote: The Civil Constitution of the Clergy.]
The mania for election affected the reform of the ecclesiastical
arrangements of France, and directly brought about the schism, which
so largely contributed to the misfortunes of France during the
revolutionary period. On 2d November 1789 it had been resolved, in
the face of the financial distress, that the property of the Church
in France should be confiscated or resumed, as it was represented by
opposite parties, while acknowledging the duty of providing and paying
curés and bishops. This implied the formation of a State Church, a
measure which needed the most delicate handling. On 13th February 1790
all monasteries and religious houses were suppressed; but as there had
already been a partial suppression a few years previously, this would
not by itself have caused a schism. It was otherwise with regard to the
Civil Constitution of the Clergy. It was resolved to reduce the number
of bishoprics to one for each department, and that all the beneficed
clergy, from curés to bishops, should be elected. This violation of
a fundamental principle of the Catholic Church could not be allowed
to pass unchallenged, and when the Constituent Assembly found that
opposition was raised, it drove matters to a crisis by ordering that
every beneficed ecclesiastic should take an oath to observe the new
Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This oath was generally refused by
the bishops and dignitaries, and largely by the parochial clergy, and
it was resolved by the Assembly, on 27th November 1790, that all who
refused the oath within one week should be held to be dismissed from
their offices. The King sanctioned this decree on 26th December 1790,
and the great schism in France began. It was doubtful at first whether
apostolical succession could be preserved in the new Church of France.
Only four beneficed bishops, including Loménie de Brienne, Cardinal
Archbishop of Sens, and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, out of one hundred
and thirty-five, and three coadjutor bishops, or bishops _in partibus_,
including Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, consented to take the oath, but
by them the first of the elected bishops of departmental sees were
consecrated.
The measures of the Constituent Assembly in abolishing the old
provincial divisions and law courts, and substituting new and more
modern arrangements for administration, were in the nature of great
reforms, though marred by the mania for election; the attempt to
establish a Gallican Church, though obviously opposed to the discipline
of the Catholic Church, and seriously discounted by the same mania,
was patriotic, if not very wise; but the arrangements for the central
administration were utterly absurd. In their dislike of the system
of the _ancien régime_, and their fear of a strong executive, the
Constituent Assembly thought it could not do enough to hamper the
authority of the throne and of the central administration. The King,
under the new Constitution, was left powerless. He was to be the first
functionary of the State, nothing more. His veto on the measures of the
Legislature was to have effect for only six months; his guards were
suppressed, and his position made untenable for a strong monarch, and
unbearable for a weak one. The ministers were invested with supreme
executive authority, but more regulations were made to ensure their
responsibility and limit their actual power, than to define their
functions. They were to be answerable to the Legislature, in which they
were not allowed to sit; and their measures were to be criticised by
an irresponsible representative assembly. Under such regulations the
King and his ministers, that is, the executive, were put in a position
of inferiority, which no vigorous man could be expected to accept, to
the inevitable derangement of the whole administrative machine. In
addition to the Constitution, the Constituent Assembly carried several
measures of the greatest importance to a free state. All citizens,
of whatever religion or class, were declared eligible for employment
by the State; and on 13th April 1790 a noble decree, declaring the
most absolute and entire toleration of every form of religion, was
carried. The Constitution of 1791 was, on the whole, a praiseworthy
effort of untried legislators to give their country a representative
constitution. It was marred only by the fatal jealousy of giving due
authority to the executive, and the mania for election. But it was
in no way democratic. For the election to all offices was to be by
at least two degrees, and no man was to have a vote unless he was an
‘active citizen.’ To be an active citizen, a man had to contribute to
the direct taxation of the country an amount equivalent in value to
three days’ wages in his locality. Further, to be eligible for office,
a candidate had to pay taxes of the value of a ‘silver mark,’ which
inevitably restricted all offices to the bourgeois, or very prosperous
working men.
[Sidenote: Other acts of the Constituent Assembly.]
Though the main occupation of the Constituent Assembly was the
building up of the Constitution of 1791, it interfered only too much
in matters of current administration. It was soon obvious that its
power exceeded that of the King, and it has been observed that Van der
Noot announced the new Belgian Constitution alike to the King and the
President of the Assembly, as to authorities of equal importance. The
mischief produced by this constant interference was perceptible in
every department of government. Mirabeau, who was a profound master of
statecraft, saw through the fallacies of endeavouring to separate the
legislative and executive powers in the State, and, what was implied
in the preponderance of a legislature in which the ministers had no
seat, to divorce authority from responsibility. He understood and
approved of the English system, and as soon as the Constituent Assembly
had removed to Paris in October 1789, after the establishment of the
King at the Tuileries, and he had got the ear of the Court through his
friend, La Marck, Mirabeau proposed the formation of a constitutional
ministry, after the English fashion, from among the leading members of
the Assembly. His scheme got noised abroad: the Assembly in its fear
of the executive, which was afterwards consecrated in the Constitution
of 1791, and stimulated by Lafayette, who dreaded the influence of a
strong ministry, passed a motion on 7th November, that no member of the
Assembly could take office as a minister while he remained a deputy, or
for three years after his resignation.
The spirit, which lay at the root of this decree, showed itself in
other ways. The fear of the influence of the Crown extended itself
to the army and navy, as the natural instruments of the Crown for
re-establishing its former authority. The army, already disorganised by
the emigration of many of its officers, was practically destroyed in
its efficiency as a fighting machine by the relaxation of discipline
among the soldiers, caused not only by the actual decrees of the
Assembly, but by the impunity allowed to desertion and mutiny. The
Marquis de Bouillé, the general commanding at Metz, did indeed put
down a military mutiny at Nancy on 31st August 1790, but his action,
though applauded by the Assembly, which could not openly encourage
mutiny, was isolated and not imitated. In the navy matters were even
more desperate, for a larger proportion of officers deserted, resigned,
or emigrated than in the army, and loss of discipline is even more
disastrous in a naval than in a military force. The weakness of the
army was intended to be compensated by the enrolment of national
guards. But these citizen soldiers could not be treated with the
strictness of regular troops. They were chiefly of the bourgeois class,
and had the prejudices of that class, caring more for the protection of
their property than for military efficiency. In Paris they were of the
most importance, owing to their numbers, and their commander-in-chief,
Lafayette, probably the most powerful man in France in 1790. The
framing of the Constitution, and the disorganisation of the central
authority and its instruments were the chief results of the labours of
the Constituent Assembly in 1790; but among its minor acts should be
noted the abolition of titles of nobility, liveries and other relics of
social pre-eminence on 13th July 1790, as an evidence of its desire to
extirpate even the outward signs of the _ancien régime_.
[Sidenote: Mirabeau.]
Only one man seems to have understood the dangers to which France
was drifting owing to the policy of the Constituent Assembly, and
that man was Mirabeau. He had done more than any man to assure the
victory of the Tiers État in June 1789; he was the greatest orator and
greatest statesman the revolutionary crisis had produced. Mirabeau,
however, hated anarchy as much as he did despotism. He saw the absolute
necessity of establishing a strong executive, if the crisis of 1789,
the dissolution of the old authorities, the unpunished riots in towns,
and the jacquerie in the rural districts were not to lead to anarchy.
Foiled in his prudent scheme of selecting a strong ministry from the
Constituent Assembly[6] by the vote of 7th November 1789, Mirabeau
saw that it was impossible to overcome the distrust of the Assembly
for the executive. He therefore turned to the Court, and in May 1790
he became the secret adviser of the King through the mediation of
his friend La Marck. In a series of memoirs or notes for the Court
of surpassing political wisdom, Mirabeau analysed the situation of
affairs and proposed remedies. The two main dangers were the state of
the finances and the fear of foreign intervention. Mirabeau’s horror
of national bankruptcy was as great as his personal extravagance in
expenditure. In September 1789 he advocated Necker’s scheme of a
general contribution, though it was accompanied by stipulations which
were certain to make it almost entirely unproductive, and he personally
disapproved of it; in December 1789 he grudgingly acquiesced in the
first issue of ‘assignats’ or promises to pay, based on the value of
the property of the Church, resumed or confiscated by the Assembly,
and to be extinguished as this property was sold. In August 1790
he went yet further. Comprehending that men are mainly influenced
by their pecuniary interests, he advocated a wide extension of the
system of assignats, down to small sums, on the grounds that they
would then be able to reach the hands of the poorer classes and give
them an interest in their maintaining their value, and would also
frustrate the machinations of speculators, who began to make money by
depreciating the exchange of specie against the new paper currency. But
he also wisely proposed and successfully carried severe regulations
for the extinction of assignats as the national property was realised,
regulations which, unfortunately, were not strictly observed. His
decree was followed in September 1790 by the retirement of Necker from
office, and it is a significant proof of the change in popular opinion
that the final retirement of the minister, whose dismissal in July 1789
had brought about the capture of the Bastille, was received without
excitement.
The other great danger which France incurred, by the disorganising
policy of the Constituent Assembly, was the possibility of the armed
intervention of foreign powers. Mirabeau thought that if national
bankruptcy and the interference of foreigners could be avoided, the
anarchy, which was making itself felt, might soon be quelled. He did
not fear civil war; indeed, he argued that it might be a positive
advantage, and that as long as the King did not retract his concession
of a representative constitution, a large portion of his subjects would
support him in winning back the legitimate authority of the executive.
But foreign war was to him an evil to be feared as much as national
bankruptcy. He knew the spirit of his countrymen well, and that they
would in case of national disaster submit to any despotism rather than
submit to the dictation or the interference of a foreign power in their
internal affairs. Success in a foreign war owing to the state of the
army was not to be expected, but if it did come, it would with almost
equal certainty lead to the despotism of the conquering government,
whether it were the reigning monarch, his successor, or a victorious
general. To avoid a foreign war it was necessary as far as possible to
leave the conduct of foreign affairs in the hands of the King. This
was Mirabeau’s intention in the great debate on the right of declaring
peace and war in May 1790, and he succeeded in getting the Assembly
to sanction the initiation of peace or war as part of the duties of
the King. But at this period Louis XVI. was too weak or too unwilling
to understand the paramount necessity of maintaining peace. Mirabeau,
therefore, got himself elected to a special Diplomatic Committee of the
Constituent Assembly, and as its reporter endeavoured throughout the
year 1790 to keep France clear of international complications.
[Sidenote: Mirabeau and the Court.]
Unfortunately neither Louis XVI. nor his ministers, and still less
Marie Antoinette, grasped the truth of Mirabeau’s memoirs for the
Court. On the contrary, the one idea of the Queen was to get her
brother, the Emperor Leopold, to interfere, and, if necessary, by force
of arms to restore the power of the French monarch. The King, too, was
startled at Mirabeau’s ideas; he felt no horror at the notion of a
foreign war, but would suffer anything rather than engage in a civil
war. The wise advice of the great statesman went unheeded; both King
and Queen regarded their connection with him as the clever muzzling of
a dangerous revolutionary leader. They could not comprehend his desire
to establish a strong executive for the sake of France, and looked
on it as a bit of personal ambition. The King was not sufficiently
far-seeing, nor the Queen sufficiently patriotic to understand his
views. If the Constituent Assembly distrusted the Court, the King and
Queen no less strongly distrusted Mirabeau.
As reporter of the Diplomatic Committee, Mirabeau had three different
problems to solve, in which the policy of the Assembly came in contact
with foreign powers, the affairs of Avignon, the maintenance of the
Pacte de Famille with Spain, and the interference caused by the
legislation of the Assembly with the Princes of the Empire who owned
fiefs of the Empire in Alsace.
[Sidenote: Avignon and the Venaissin.]
The city of Avignon and the county of the Venaissin, though inhabited
by Frenchmen and surrounded by French territory, were under the
sovereignty of the Pope. As early as the ‘orgie’ of 4th August 1789
the Constituent Assembly had pronounced on the expediency of uniting
both the city and the county with France. A French party was formed in
Avignon; and a free municipal constitution after the model of those
just established in France was framed and assented to by the Cardinal
Vice-Legate in April 1790. The Pope, however, annulled his deputy’s
assent, with the result that fierce street fighting took place in the
city, which was only stopped by the intervention of the National Guard
of the neighbouring French city of Orange. The result of these events
was that the city of Avignon, or at least the French party there,
declared Avignon united to France on 12th June 1790. The inhabitants
of the Venaissin, on the other hand, declared their attachment for the
Pope, and their wish to remain subject to him. When these circumstances
became known in Paris a strong party showed itself in the Assembly in
favour of accepting the union of Avignon with or without the Pope’s
assent. Mirabeau skilfully averted the danger of a flagrant breach of
international law by securing the appointment of an Avignon Committee,
and when it became necessary to send regular troops to maintain order
in the city, he secured their despatch thither without the assumption
of any rights of sovereignty.
[Sidenote: The Affair of Nootka Sound. May 1790.]
Far more serious was the question which arose in May 1790, and which
gave rise to the debate in the Constituent Assembly on the right
of declaring peace and war, for it brought into prominence a doubt
whether the Assembly should recognise the treaties made by the French
monarchy. Of these treaties, the most popular in France, and the first
to be brought into evidence, was the Pacte de Famille, which had been
concluded in 1761 by Choiseul between France and Spain. Charles IV.
had succeeded his able and accomplished father, Charles III., on 12th
December 1788. The new monarch was completely under the influence
of his wife, Marie Louise, a princess of Parma, who in her turn was
governed by a young guardsman, her lover, Godoy. Charles IV. made a
friend of Godoy, a fact which of itself shows the essential weakness
of his character. He, as well as his Queen, was, outwardly at least,
deeply religious, and it was pretty certain that before long a reaction
would take place at the Spanish Court against the liberal _régime_,
which, in the previous reign, under the administration of Aranda and
Florida Blanca, Campomanes and Jovellanos, had done so much for Spain.
But for the first three years of his reign, Charles IV. maintained
his father’s experienced ministers, with the assent of the Queen, who
did not dare at once to introduce her lover into the ministry, or
invest him openly with power. Florida Blanca, the Spanish minister,
with Spanish pride, refused to recognise the actual weakness of Spain,
and was particularly active in maintaining her supremacy in America.
When, therefore, Vancouver Island was demonstrated to be an island
and not a peninsula, he claimed its possession for Spain, and also
alleged pre-colonisation. But he went further. Spanish officers had
seized an English ship in Nootka Sound, now St. George’s Sound, in
Vancouver Island, had destroyed an English settlement there, and had
even insulted an English naval captain. When Pitt demanded reparation,
Florida Blanca replied haughtily, and claimed the possession of the
island on the grounds stated. Pitt at once sent one of the ablest
English diplomatists, Alleyne Fitzherbert, afterwards Lord St. Helens,
to threaten to declare war, and prepared a great fleet, known in
English naval history as the Spanish Armament.
Both Pitt and Florida Blanca knew that a war between England and Spain
would only be seriously undertaken if France decided to intervene.
Florida Blanca claimed the assistance of France under the terms of the
Pacte de Famille, and Pitt, who understood that power had passed from
Louis XVI. to the Constituent Assembly, sent two secret emissaries to
Paris to see if the Assembly was inclined to maintain the policy of
the _ancien régime_. One of these emissaries was Hugh Elliot, brother
of Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards Lord Minto, an old schoolfellow of
Mirabeau, who was expected to influence the orator, and the other,
William Augustus Miles, who was to ally himself with the leading
democratic deputies. The question came before the Constituent Assembly
on a letter from the Comte de Montmorin, Minister for Foreign Affairs.
The enthusiasm in the Assembly for the maintenance of the Spanish
Alliance was extreme, defiance was hurled at England, Spain’s faithful
adherence to the Pacte de Famille in the Seven Years’ War and the War
of American Independence was remembered, and a fleet for active service
was ordered to be got ready at Brest, and sixteen new ships of war
built. But the first burst of enthusiasm soon cooled. Some deputies
feared war would strengthen the monarchy, others did not like to be
bound by the treaties, especially the dynastic treaties of the _ancien
régime_, and others again, headed by Robespierre and Pétion, inveighed
against the idea of any offensive war. The whole question was referred
to the Diplomatic Committee. Mirabeau, who knew perfectly well that
Spain would not fight without the aid of France, read an able report,
recommending that the Pacte de Famille should be changed to a simple
defensive treaty, which was adopted. The Court of Spain, seeing that no
help was to be got from France under these circumstances, resigned its
pretensions to Vancouver Island, and consented to pay the compensation
demanded by England. This diplomatic victory of England exasperated the
Spaniards; Charles IV. was surprised and disgusted at the concessions
made by Louis XVI., and declared them a breach of the Pacte de Famille;
and by her conduct France lost the friendship of her closest ally of
the eighteenth century.
[Sidenote: The Rights of the Princes of the Empire in Alsace.]
The third question in which the new state of things in France
touched the diplomatic system of old Europe and threatened to cause
international complications, which might lead to a foreign war, was
concerned with the fiefs of the Empire in Alsace. By the Treaty of
Westphalia that province had been ceded to France in full and entire
sovereignty, but reserving the rights of the Empire. The complications
caused by this ambiguous arrangement had raised perpetual difficulties
throughout the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and many separate
treaties had been concluded with individual princes, by which they
recognised the sovereignty of France in Alsace, in return for the
acknowledgment of all their ancient rights. A further problem was
added by the fact that the more important princely landowners in
Alsace were also ruling and independent sovereigns across the French
border. They were thus supreme, save for the loose over-lordship of
the Emperor in Germany, and subject to the French monarchy for their
domains in Alsace. Among the principal of these rulers were the
three ecclesiastical electors, the Archbishops of Mayence, Trèves,
and Cologne, the Bishops of Strasbourg, Spires, Worms, and Basle,
the Abbot of Murbach, the Dukes of Würtemburg and of Deux-Ponts or
Zweibrücken, the Elector Palatine, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave
of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the Princes of Nassau, Leiningen, Salm-Salm,
and Hohenlohe-Bartenstein. These princes were naturally profoundly
affected by the abolition of feudalism decreed by the Constituent
Assembly, which further complicated their position. They felt as German
princes, and appealed against the measures of the Assembly as contrary
to international law, and violating the Treaty of Westphalia and the
many separate treaties. The protests of certain of these princes were
laid before the Assembly on 11th February 1790, and referred by it to
the Feudal Committee on 28th April. The reporter of the Committee on
this matter was Merlin of Douai, one of the greatest French jurists
and statesmen of the whole revolutionary period. On 28th October he
read his report, in which he insisted on the new principle of the
sovereignty of the people. He asserted that the unity of Alsace with
France rested not on ancient treaties, but on the unanimous resolution
of the Alsatian people to be Frenchmen. But at the same time he argued
that in practice old rights ought to be maintained. Mirabeau, with his
usual sagacity, saw that international complications might, on this
ground, be adjourned, if not altogether avoided; and it was on his
motion that the Constituent Assembly resolved to uphold the sovereignty
of France in Alsace, and the application of all its decrees to that
province, but at the same time requested the King to arrange the amount
of indemnity to be paid to the Princes of the Empire as compensation
for the rights of which they were thus deprived. These princes,
however, with but very few exceptions, refused absolutely to accept any
monetary compensation, and appealed to the Diet of the Empire. It was
on this question, therefore, that foreign intervention most seriously
threatened France at the end of 1790, in spite of the diplomatic
knowledge and skill of two of her leading statesmen, Mirabeau and
Merlin of Douai.
While Mirabeau was doing his best to keep France from the disturbance,
and even disasters, which a foreign war would cause in the midst of
her new development, the Queen cast all her hopes for the restoration
of the power of the French monarchy on the armed help of foreign
states. Louis XVI. in a half-hearted fashion was opposed to foreign
interference, but his younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, and the
French _émigrés_, who had established themselves on the borders of
France, declared that the King was not in his right senses, and that
he was forced to yield to the measures of the Constituent Assembly
against his will. They felt no patriotic misgivings, and loudly invoked
the assistance of all monarchs in the cause of monarchy and the feudal
system. The ruler on whom the Queen chiefly relied, and to whom she
appealed most fervently, the monarch to whom the _émigrés_ looked with
most confidence, was Leopold, the brother and successor of Joseph
II. He held the key of the position; he was the sovereign especially
feared by the leaders of the Constituent Assembly, and as Emperor and
as brother of Marie Antoinette he was expected by the royalists to
intervene in the affairs of France.