PARTIES AND POLITICIANS UNDER THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY.
It was one of the misfortunes of the Constituent Assembly that it never
learned the arts of party government. When the preliminary struggle
between the Commons and the privileged orders was over, and the three
estates were finally united in one chamber, the Assembly broke up into
many different groups; and although these groups in process of time
shaped themselves roughly into parties, yet they so far retained their
independence, that it was rarely possible to say on any particular
question on which side the majority would be, or what groups and
politicians might or might not combine together. At first the only
distinction was between those who were opposed to the Revolution and
those who were its supporters. Gradually, however, as the friends of
the new movement insensibly divided, the representatives of the nobles
and upper clergy, who had regarded the King's policy as dangerous
from the first, found themselves reinforced by wiser politicians,
and expanded into a respectable party occupying the benches on the
Right. One section of this party--the extreme section--was, it is
true, only a noisy and obstructive faction, with reactionary views
and with interests largely selfish, which signalised itself, as
class-politicians are wont to do, by frequent violence of expression,
and by behaviour neither orderly nor well-bred. Among their leaders
were the well-known lawyer, d'Eprémesnil, who, as one of the heroes
of the Parlement of Paris, had enjoyed in 1788 an astonishing but
brief popularity, and the Vicomte de Mirabeau, the conspicuous but too
convivial brother of the great statesman who directed the Commons.
A more important section of the party was formed by the phalanx of
dignitaries of the Church, who followed the lead of the Archbishops of
Rouen and Aix. As the attack upon the Church proceeded, these prelates
drew after them a large number of the lower clergy, whose sympathies
had at first leaned to the popular side. But the most prominent figures
upon the benches of the Right were two men, whose remarkable abilities
became better known as time went on--Maury, the versatile, witty,
dissolute ecclesiastic, who, assisted by his rare power as a debater,
rose to the front rank among the leaders of his party, and Cazalés,
the indolent, unambitious soldier, whose clear head made it apparent
to him, as it was to Maury, that the old order could never be entirely
replaced, but who devoted his great oratorical gifts, whenever his lack
of energy permitted him to use them, to defending the monarchy, and to
denouncing mob-rule.
At first the politicians of the Right, though some were decidedly more
liberal-minded than others, consisted principally of men attached to
privilege upon grounds of interest, and utterly out of sympathy with
the reforming spirit. But events moved fast; and before long the
Right was reinforced by a group of deputies of higher capacity, who
had welcomed the reforming movement, but whom the measures of the
Assembly, after July, 1789, gradually drove into combination with the
enemies of change. Among the members whom this group included were a
few noblemen of Liberal opinions, in keen sympathy with constitutional
reform--the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, the Comte de Lally-Tollendal,
whose romantic story and generous eloquence more than once, in the
first days of the Revolution, roused the interest and enthusiasm of
the Assembly, and the Duc de Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, the friend of
Turgot and of Arthur Young, and the finest type which those days offer,
of what a Grand Seigneur might have been, but rarely was, under the
Ancien Régime. The real leaders of this group in the Assembly were two
conspicuous members of the Tiers-État, Mounier and Malouet. No deputies
of the Commons had come to Versailles with a higher reputation than
these two men. Mounier had been the head and front of the movement in
Dauphiné in 1788, which had led to the famous Assembly of Vizille, and
which had contributed as much as anything else to the summoning of
the States-General. When Mounier arrived at Versailles, many people
expected that he would become the recognised leader of the Commons.
Malouet too had obtained, in Auvergne, a very great reputation during
the elections. His fame also had preceded him to Versailles, and had
marked him out for future celebrity. These men were no lovers of the
Ancien Régime, no lovers of privilege or of unjust distinction. They
had, many of them, studied English politics and had a great admiration
for the English constitution. They wished to see something like it
established in France. They hoped for a Parliament of two Houses,
and for a State which would use and employ its leisured class. One
of them, Malouet, had had, at home and in the colonies, considerable
experience of affairs. They were all fully alive to the advisability of
proceeding, with caution, to the wisdom, when possible, of following
precedent, to the immediate necessity of enforcing and maintaining
order. But it may be that some of them lacked the force, and it seems
that Mounier especially lacked the self-command and insight, essential
to a leader. For when, in October 1789, difficulties accumulated round
them, some of them lost heart and temper, resigned their seats, and
gave up the struggle. They had comparatively little sympathy with the
vague philosophic and democratic theories in which the majority of
their colleagues delighted. They had no sympathy whatever with the
Assembly's hesitation to establish a strong Executive, with its passion
for equality, or with its suspicious dread of Kings and Ministers and
nobles. Studying their views to-day, in the calm light of our own
system, it is difficult to refuse to this group of men the praise
which is due to great enlightenment and moderation; but it is not
difficult to understand, how, in those stormy times, when precedent and
experience went for nothing, their grave, and measured counsels fell
unheeded, and how, outstripped by the pace of Revolution, they fell
back into the ranks of the party of reaction.
Opposite to the politicians of the Right sat the great bulk of the
Commons deputies, with a few nobles and a good many clergy among
them. This, with its many groups and interests, was, in general terms,
the party of Reform, the party which had made the Revolution, which
embodied its virtues, its doctrines, its follies, its faults, and with
which the responsibility for the policy of the Constituent Assembly
rests. In the ranks of this great, heterogeneous party were to be found
most of the well-known names of the early period of the Revolution.
Among them was Bailly, the cultivated and distinguished man of science,
with his high character, his gentle demeanour, his convinced optimism,
his tender heart, his pardonable vanity, and his obvious limitations,
perhaps the best type of the enthusiastic philanthropists who adopted
with ardour the popular cause. Bailly played for a few months a
conspicuous and honourable part. He received the high compliment of
being appointed successively first President of the National Assembly
and first Mayor of Paris; and then, losing heart and reputation among
the embarrassments of the great office which he had not sought, he
learned the fickleness of popular favour, and was sacrificed to the
resentment of the people. Among them too was Sieyès, the democratic
priest, the calm logician, the happiest maker of phrases in a nation
of happy phrase-makers, the readiest of any to frame reports, to
cast resolutions, to draw up plans, the imperturbable builder of
constitutions which never endured, sublime in the assurance of his
theories, and important owing to the influence which his cool head and
ready tongue obtained. Among them was Talleyrand, the Bishop of Autun,
the only distinguished Churchman of the time who took a leading part in
the attack upon the Church, witty, supple, dissolute, extraordinarily
able, and already beginning to display the rare dexterity in
understanding men and in ranging his abilities upon the winning side,
which afterwards made him the most powerful subject in Europe. Among
them were Lafayette, who soon discovered in the great office conferred
on him by the Parisians a larger scope for his restless ambition than
he could have obtained in Parliamentary tactics, and Mirabeau, leader
of no groups, but cynosure of all, the greatest statesman and orator of
modern France. Among them were a number of eminent lawyers, Target and
Thouret, second only to Sieyès in the influence which they exercised
upon the form of the new constitution, with Lanjuinais and Tronchet,
and many another celebrated advocate and jurist. Among them were Camus,
the grave and determined leader of the Jansenists, who have been aptly
named the Puritans of the Roman Catholic Church in France; Rabaut
de St. Etienne, the leader of the Protestants, a brave, high-minded
man, who had already, before the Revolution, won from the King the
recognition of the rights of his co-religionists to citizenship; Dom
Gerle, the singular Jacobin monk, whose earnestness was stronger than
his reason; and Grégoire, the eloquent priest, with his fine dream of a
purified national Church, one of the best of the many enthusiasts who
contributed their high-minded errors to the work of national reform.
Among them was Garat, the accomplished professor of history, whose
facile and excitable convictions always moved with the tide, and who,
in spite of his excellent intentions, was perhaps more responsible than
any other man for the ruin of the brilliant party with which he came to
be associated at a later time. Among them, lastly, was the fortunate
Barère, in turn advocate, journalist and politician, at the beginning
of the extraordinary career, in which, by dint of never having fixed
opinions, he was to rise to the highest place in France.
But the most remarkable, and on the whole the most influential, of the
many different groups in the party of Reform, was that which followed
the lead of Duport, Barnave and Lameth. These men formed a close
triumvirate of political allies. They collected about them the nucleus
of a powerful party, and they generally controlled the policy of the
Left. This group possessed in Duport a party organiser of elastic
principles, but of considerable tact and ability; in Barnave an orator
inferior in capacity to very few men in the history of the Revolution;
and in the Comte Charles de Lameth one of the most popular and gifted
of the young, liberal-minded nobles. Led by the triumvirate, and
managed by Duport, it attached to itself many brilliant, well-bred and
ambitious Radicals, including the Comte Alexandre de Lameth, the Duc
d'Aiguillon and the Vicomte de Noailles, and it commanded a majority
which on many occasions effectually decided the policy of the Assembly.
Finally, apart from the great majority of the deputies of the Left,
there sat a small group of extreme politicians, destined to become very
famous as a party. They were democrats of an acerb and uncompromising
type. They were often violent in their speeches, exceedingly dogmatic
in their views, finely contemptuous of experience and of facts,
morbidly jealous of government and authority. But they unceasingly
put forward, regardless of what the Assembly thought, the doctrines
of theoretic democracy, in which they passionately believed, and they
steadily won favour with the multitude, which, caring little for their
dogmatic errors, appreciated their real devotion to its cause. Among
the speakers of this remarkable group, the Assembly gradually learned
to listen to the far-strained, interminable rhetoric of Robespierre,
and to recognise the growing importance of Pétion, Merlin, Rewbell,
Vadier, and Buzot.
If the popular party was the stronger in the Assembly, it was
infinitely the stronger out of doors. The politicians of the galleries,
of the cafés, of the district assemblies of Paris--notably of the
district of the Cordeliers, where the well-known lawyer Danton was
already building up his great reputation--began to exercise upon
the course of events an influence which increased every day. The
politicians of the streets and the elements of disorder were mostly
upon the democratic side, and the consequence was that prominent
members of the Right were repeatedly exposed to insults and
persecution, which made their lives unsafe and almost intolerable. Some
of them unwisely responded by challenging their opponents to duels,
and the increase of political duels led more than once to outbreaks
of excitement. In the matter of political clubs also the superiority
of the popular party was marked. The little group of Breton deputies,
which had expanded into a club of advanced reformers at Versailles,
still further expanded when its members came to Paris. It took up its
abode in the library of the old Jacobin convent in the Rue St. Honoré.
It threw open its doors to all ardent supporters of the Revolution,
whether they were members of the Assembly or not. It became the
headquarters of those members of the Left who followed the lead of
Duport and Barnave, and before long also of those sterner politicians
who recognised the leadership of Robespierre and Pétion. On their side,
the moderate members of the Right maintained for some time the 'Club
des Impartiaux,' which afterwards became the 'Club Monarchique;' and
the more moderate members of the Left, including among others Mirabeau,
Lafayette, Talleyrand and Bailly, founded, in May, 1790, the 'Club of
1789,' to counterbalance the influence of the Jacobins. But neither of
these enterprises succeeded in forming a strong political connection,
and the advantages of elaborate organisation remained at the disposal
of the Jacobins alone.
The predominance, however, of the advanced politicians was most
noticeable in the press. The French Revolution is the age which marks
the accession of the Press to power, as a principal force in the
government of States. Up to within a few years of the Revolution,
French readers had been satisfied with such information as they could
gather from the ancient _Gazette de France_, which dated from the days
of Richelieu, or from the highly-respected _Mercure_, the chief journal
of the days of Louis XIV. The first daily paper published in France,
the _Journal de Paris_, dated from 1777, and was only an unpretending
sheet filled with odds and ends of literature and news. But from 1780
onwards a new period of activity began. Enterprising publishers like
Panckoucke and Prudhomme found their opportunities suddenly increase.
Brilliant writers like Linguet, Brissot, and Mallet du Pan, publishing
their opinions, under many difficulties, in London, Brussels, Geneva
and Paris, began to make their mark in ephemeral literature. As the
Revolution approached, a flood of pamphlets and broadsheets appeared.
Volney in Brittany roused the democratic enthusiasm of his province
with the bold doctrines of the _Sentinelle du Peuple_. Panckoucke,
already the owner of both the _Mercure_ and the _Gazette de France_,
planned the publication of the _Moniteur_. Prudhomme, with a stronger
belief in democratic principles, brought out, two days before the
capture of the Bastille, the first number of the _Révolutions de Paris_.
But with the meeting of the States-General, the glories of journalism
really began, and the most conspicuous member of the Assembly was the
first to appeal against the policy of the Court to the independent
judgment of the Press. On the 2nd May, Mirabeau issued the first number
of the _Journal des Etats-Généraux_, and when his sharp criticism of
Necker provoked the Government to suppress the paper, he proceeded
to fill its place with the series of _Letters_ addressed to his
constituents, which, after the capture of the Bastille, took the form
of a regular journal and the title of the _Courrier de Provence_.
Mirabeau's object was to inform his constituents of the proceedings and
policy of the Assembly, and in so doing to promulgate his own views.
The _Courrier de Provence_, which he ceased to edit, but to which he
continued to contribute to the end of his life, often rose above a
chronicle of affairs to a very high level of political discussion,
and remained of great importance as the chief exponent of his views.
Mirabeau's example was soon followed by one of his colleagues. In
the middle of June, Barère began his journalistic career with the
publication of the _Point du Jour_, a daily journal at first moderate
in tone, and chiefly remarkable for its accounts of the proceedings
of the Assembly. The reporting of debates rapidly developed into
a distinct branch of journalism. Out of it arose the _Journal des
Débats_, which still exists. And the most famous reporter of the day,
the author, from the beginning of 1790, of the celebrated reports in
the _Moniteur_, was the young Maret, whom a strange experience was
afterwards to make Duc de Bassano and director of the foreign policy of
France.
Outside the National Assembly were four journalists on the democratic
side, whose writings, among many other newspapers the names of which
cannot be chronicled here, enjoyed conspicuous popularity, and
three of whom were destined before long to play conspicuous parts
as politicians. Brissot, once a fellow-clerk with Robespierre in a
lawyer's office, had, in the vicissitudes of a singular career, in
which his private character had not escaped reproach, acquired a
reputation as a pamphleteer of advanced and cosmopolitan views. In
the summer of 1789, he became the editor of the _Patriote Français_,
and he made that paper the organ of those theoretic and philanthropic
sentiments which the Girondists afterwards combined with advanced
republican opinions. Another noted journalist, Loustallot, the youngest
and most brilliant of the democratic writers, became, until his death
in September, 1790, the chief contributor to the _Révolutions de
Paris_, and his fervent enthusiasm, his great ability, his bold and
stirring phrases, sometimes falling into violence, his fine, emotional,
ill-governed belief in the splendour of freedom and in the virtue
of the people, secured for the paper with which he was connected an
astonishing circulation and success. By the side of Loustallot in
the ranks of journalism there stands a figure equally attractive,
but intended for a greater part. Camille Desmoulins was one of the
many young advocates who, at the outset of the Revolution, forsook
for dreams of literature and politics the barren realities of law,
and in return for the doubtful sacrifice found themselves suddenly a
power in the State. Raised to fame on the 12th July by his memorable
harangue in the Palais Royal, Camille Desmoulins determined to dedicate
to journalism the gaiety, the light touch, the mocking eloquence and
careless wit, which veiled his unconsidered views and his genuine love
of freedom, and in the autumn of 1789 he brought out the _Révolutions
de France et de Brabant_. Lastly, in September, 1789, there appeared
the first number of a newspaper, which, under the title of the _Ami
du Peuple_, was soon to acquire a sinister fame, and which, by the
violence of its language, and the wild, suspicious indignation of its
tone, represented more truly than any other journal the temper, the
fears, the bitterness, the passions, which animated the most ignorant
and necessitous class.
Marat, the editor of this celebrated paper, had already had a
remarkable career, and his ascendency in the Revolution is one of
the phenomena of the time. From his childhood upwards he seems to
have been of a morbidly nervous and sensitive disposition, keenly
intelligent and alert, ambitious of knowledge and rapid in acquiring
it, fond of science, and at the same time devoted to speculative
enquiry, endowed with an extraordinary belief in his own powers and a
jealous distrust of the abilities of others, strongly pronounced in
his own opinions, and unrestrained in attacking those who differed
from him. In later life it is probable that his constitutional, morbid
irritability impaired his reason, but there is no ground for denying
that his abilities were really considerable, although they were often
vitiated by a perverse singularity of view. Early in life Marat made
a reputation as a physician and man of science, and for several years
he resided in England, where he seems at one time to have enjoyed a
practice in Soho. His writings on all sorts of topics made him well
known, and he signalised himself by attacking Newton and Locke, and by
engaging in controversy with Helvetius and Voltaire. From science and
philosophy Marat plunged into politics. He became connected with some
of the popular societies in England, which were then busily agitating
for reform, and his democratic opinions made him keenly alive to the
defects of the English Parliamentary system in the eighteenth century.
On returning to France, he received an appointment on the establishment
of the Comte d'Artois, and obtained some experience of life at Court.
His scientific work continued to win him reputation, but it appears
that his views, or more probably his manner of expressing them, made
him unpopular in his profession, and the coldness with which he was
treated still further embittered his irritable nature. The approach of
the Revolution at last gave him an opportunity to display the devotion
to democratic ideals, which was perhaps the most genuine passion of his
mind; and his real love for what he thought was freedom, his unceasing
insistence on the needs and sufferings of the multitude, his fearless
attacks upon the powerful and great, his jealous hatred of superiority,
whether of wealth, of wisdom, or of station, struck a chord in the
hearts of the poor, and won for Marat the enthusiastic attachment of
thousands, who could feel panic and hunger, although they could not
think. From the first, the _Ami du Peuple_ preached the doctrine of
suspicion. It attacked, often with reckless and cruel libels, all who
were in power. It spared no invective. It hesitated at no calumny. It
was always urging the people to action, always warning them to guard
against the traitors in the Court, in the army, in the Assembly, and in
the clubs. It claimed for itself the utmost license, and boldly threw
upon those whom it denounced the burden of proving their innocence
to the people. In vain the authorities attempted to restrain it,
and threatened its editor with prosecution and punishment. In vain
Lafayette exerted his influence to crush the dauntless advocate of the
needy, the dauntless minister of sedition and spite. Persecution only
made Marat more bitter in his warnings, and endeared him more to those
who half believed his warnings to be true.
But while the democratic Press claimed the largest indulgence for
itself, the people who accepted its teaching would permit no indulgence
to their opponents. From the reactionary Press they had not much to
fear. Three newspapers of some importance were subsidised by the Court,
the _Actes des Apôtres_, the _Ami du Roi_, and the _Journal général
de la Cour et de la Ville_, popularly known as _Petit Gautier_. But
none of these productions showed any real literary or political merit,
and for the most part the contributors to them, of whom the Vicomte de
Mirabeau is a not unfair type, contented themselves with ridicule and
obscenity, with witty personalities or vulgar abuse. Only one journal
of the first rank, the _Mercure_, continued to brave unpopularity by a
steady defence of liberty and order, and under the guidance of Mallet
du Pan, supported with eloquence and staunch moderation the views
which Malouet vainly endeavoured to recommend to the Assembly. But
again and again self-constituted critics, deputations from the Palais
Royal, representatives of the mob, and even the agents of the local
authorities, denounced, remonstrated and interfered with the writer,
and plainly threatened with violence and death any one who dared to use
the freedom of the Press to defend unpopular, though liberal, opinions.
Under such conditions, and having regard to the disorganisation and
unwisdom of the royalists, and to the energy and enthusiasm which
pervaded the popular party, it is not surprising that the power of the
Press came to be enlisted almost entirely upon the democratic side,
and helped to render irresistible the victorious advocates of the
Revolution.
Among the politicians of this early period, there were a few men
whose importance raised them above others, and whose attitude demands
special attention. When the States-General met at Versailles, the
two most popular men in France were probably Necker and the Duke
of Orleans. Philippe of Orleans was a cousin of the King. His lax
principles and enormous fortune had won him celebrity as a leader of
fashion, and his dislike of Louis, increased by the scanty favour
shown him at Court, and stimulated by his own ambition and the advice
of interested friends, induced him to espouse the popular cause.
Before the outbreak of the Revolution, the Duke had displayed his
liberal opinions by taking a conspicuous part in the opposition which
the Parlement of Paris offered to Brienne. His money was of the
greatest service in circulating popular pamphlets. His rank and the
political position which he assumed, secured him the honour of a triple
election to the States-General. The gardens of his residence in the
Palais-Royal, already thrown open by the Duke to the public, became
the headquarters of the revolutionary party in Paris. His agents, not,
apparently, without his sanction, deliberately encouraged disorder
in the capital, and hoped, by rendering Louis' position untenable,
to secure for their master high political position, and possibly the
title of Constitutional King. The Duke himself, though unprincipled and
mischievous, was rather a man of pleasure than a skilful politician,
and his influence was due less to his abilities than to his rank and
fortune, and to the energy of his supporters. His wealth and prospects
procured him the services of Duport, one of the ablest tacticians in
the Assembly, until Duport found that nothing was to be made of so
disappointing a leader. They gained him the support of the licentious
but clever Laclos, who proved himself a most useful auxiliary at the
Jacobin Club, and of St. Hurugues, a worthless, brawling nobleman, who
headed all the important riots in Paris during the early years of
the Revolution. How far the Duke's money and influence were used to
stimulate panic and insurrection, and to spread false rumours in the
capital, it is not possible accurately to say. But it is certain that
his name played a large part in the riot which ended in the capture
of the Bastille, and it is certain that the rising of the 5th October
was encouraged, if not originated, by his agents, in the expectation
that the violence of the rioters might clear the way for Orleans to
the throne. On that occasion, however, the Duke was outmatched by
his watchful rival Lafayette, and soon afterwards he allowed himself
to be driven by Lafayette's menacing attitude into the polite exile
of a mission to London. His banishment, and the tameness with which
he submitted to it, disgusted his adherents and shattered his party;
and although, on his return, he still remained for some time longer
influential for mischief, and from the resources which he commanded, a
dangerous enemy to the Court and to Lafayette, the Duke's opportunity
was really over, and he gradually descended into the contempt which he
deserved.
Necker, too, lived to learn the bitterness of being found out. At
the beginning of May, 1789, he was the only man high in the counsels
of the Government believed to be a friend to freedom, and as such
he enjoyed a popularity somewhat undeserved. For a few months that
popularity lingered. His disappointing speech on the meeting of the
States-General, and the vacillating policy which followed it, very
soon opened the eyes of those who came into contact with him; but
his dismissal in July saved his reputation for the moment, and made
him, until his return, the popular hero. From the day of his return,
however, his popularity declined. His unsatisfactory finance and his
inability or unwillingness to face the economic situation, rapidly
destroyed his fame as a financier. His indecisive views, his jealousy
of rivals, his determination not to admit Mirabeau to power, and the
indirect support which he consequently gave to the disastrous decree
of the 7th November, 1789, his entire want of statesmanship, if
statesmanship implies insight and resource, and his helplessness on
all occasions when people turned to him for help, rapidly made him a
non-entity. 'M. Necker,' said Mirabeau, with bitter truth, 'has no idea
of what he wants, of what he ought, or of what he is able to do.' In
September, 1790, thoroughly alienated from the revolutionary leaders,
vexed by the decline of his popularity, and harassed by the vagaries of
an Assembly which he was powerless to control, Necker at last resigned
his post, and carried another lost reputation into exile.
Another politician of high place, but of less importance, was the
King's eldest brother, Monsieur, le Comte de Provence. From the first,
this prince had been the persistent enemy of the Queen, and had busily
intrigued against her influence and reputation. His exact hopes are
not easy to discover, for his conduct was not always consistent or
clear; but it seems that he cherished the idea of supplanting Louis
on the throne, and waited with quiet, deliberate selfishness, to see
if the Revolution would bring the opportunity of doing so in his way.
He did not, like Orleans, throw himself headlong into the arms of the
revolutionary party, nor did he, like his younger brother, the Comte
d'Artois, put himself at the head of the reactionary royalists. He
refrained from committing himself to either side, and continued to
exercise a great deal of influence over the mind of the King. The part
which he took in bringing Mirabeau into relation with the Court seems
to indicate some degree of political wisdom; but whether in so doing he
intended to serve the King, or only wished to preserve the interests
of a crown which he hoped to secure for himself, it is impossible to
say. The intrigues and manœuvres of the Comte de Provence ought not
to be viewed in the same light as the more guilty ones of the Duke of
Orleans, and his character is less entitled to contempt. But he cannot
be regarded as loyal or friendly to his brother, and his attitude
emphatically illustrates the precarious isolation of the King.
Two men, however, Lafayette and Mirabeau, during the first two years
of the Revolution, surpassed all competitors in influence and power.
Of these two, in actual authority Lafayette stood first, and in the
middle of the year 1790 he was by far the most powerful man in France.
Lafayette's disposition was not without elements of nobleness. He
was a brave and high-principled man, very capable of fine feeling
and enthusiasm, and by no means devoid of generosity or honour. He
was strongly attached to his own idea of freedom, and he believed it
to be his peculiar destiny to secure it for his country. His rank
and fortune, the wide reputation which his enterprising voyage to
America had won him, his well-known advanced opinions, and above all
the fortunate chance which made him Commander of the National Guard
of Paris, and thus controller of the armed force of the Revolution,
combined to raise him to an extraordinary position. Had he only
known how to use it, Lafayette might have made himself master of the
destinies of France. Never again, till the days of Brumaire, did such
an opportunity fall to the lot of a French politician.
In some respects Lafayette is a character to whom it is difficult
to be just. His opportunities were so great. His limitations were
so obvious. His failure was so complete. But it is possible that
his failure inclines us to judge him too harshly. It is not fair to
condemn a man because he could not understand a portent, to censure a
politician who could not cope with the French Revolution. Had Lafayette
been a worse man, he might have fared better than he did. Had he
been a less conspicuous man, he would have borne a higher reputation
to-day. He was certainly ambitious. He was certainly vain. He had
little breadth of judgment or of vision. He was too much the slave of
his own formulas. He was too ready to echo democratic phrases, without
considering whether they applied or not. He was too ready to destroy
the authority of the Crown, to reduce the ministers to puppets, to
encourage the rash schemes of the Assembly. He was too ready to spend
time and pains in winning popularity from the bourgeois of Paris. He
was too ready to countenance dubious acts of policy and intrigue. He
had not sufficient statesmanship to see the dangers of the time and the
imperative necessity of combined and well-considered action. His stiff
propriety would not permit him to associate with Mirabeau, even for
public ends. But still, in a day when the character of many public men
was low, Lafayette's motives were neither sordid nor corrupt, and all
through his long career he displayed a staunch loyalty to his honest,
if limited, ideals. Unwavering consistency, although the virtue of
weak men, often lends dignity to conduct, and that dignity Lafayette
possessed. The worst charge which can be brought against him in the
early days of the Revolution is that his policy mingled too largely
with ideas of personal aggrandisement. From the 5th and 6th October,
when his doubtful behaviour secured him the first power in the State,
Lafayette's chief object seems to have been so to organise the National
Guard, as to maintain his own dictatorship, to assert the predominance
of the middle classes, with whose views he cordially agreed, and to
repress all attempts from the Court, from Mirabeau, from the multitude,
or from any other quarter, to lead the political movement into courses
which would take its direction out of his hands.
But where all other politicians failed, one man, Mirabeau, displayed
in the general confusion the high capacities of a statesman. Mirabeau
brought to the States-General at Versailles the reputation of great
abilities and even greater vices, and the fame of a man who, in the
vagaries of an astonishing career, had almost exhausted the resources
of politics, of literature and of dissipation. He found himself
thoroughly distrusted by the Court, by the Government, by the nobility,
by the vast majority of respectable people. He was received with
murmurs in the Assembly itself. But before a month had gone by, he had
won the ear of the Assembly, and after his great speech of the 23rd
June, 1789, he became, whenever he chose to speak, its leader. To
Mirabeau's mind the first thing to be done in France was to destroy
the despotism which paralysed alike freedom, ambition, thought, trade,
industry and labour, to sweep away the foundations of privilege and
oppression upon which it rested, and to build up in its place a system
which should offer liberty to all. For that end he was prepared to
encounter any hazard and, if need were, to face all the risks of
revolution. But, could that object be effectually attained, he had no
wish to destroy more than was necessary to gain it, and he was anxious
to carry through the change with as little loss and ruin as might be.
Almost alone in his generation, Mirabeau had noticed what his
contemporaries had missed. He had caught, as they had, the spirit of
the time. He had welcomed, as they had, the idea of reform. He had
learned, as they had, the doctrines of the day. He had conceived, as
they had, a passionate hatred of tyranny and misrule and a hot desire
for liberty and justice. But, instead of skimming the surface of
democracy, and of filling his brain with theories which could not fit
with facts, Mirabeau had tried to understand the new science, and had
realised that it was the task of a statesman not to advertise theories,
but to apply them. Politics were not to him merely a stage for strayed
enthusiasms, but rather the business of conducting government, so as
to redress the wrongs from which the men around him suffered, and to
give them the opportunity of living in future with satisfaction and
self-respect. Almost alone among his contemporaries he brought to the
task of reform no fixed preconceptions or systems, but only a desire
to appreciate the circumstances round him, to foresee and meet the
difficulties which were certain to arise, to use such instruments as
might be necessary to his purpose, whether he liked them personally or
not, and to draw out of the confusion, at whatever sacrifice of his own
predilections, a constitution which, by guaranteeing freedom, should
meet the wishes of reasonable men. Mirabeau steadily refused to waste
time in talking about abstract equality, or to contemplate millenniums
which he could not advance. He had no wish to pull down the throne
which Frenchmen had loved for ages, to level the old order, to sweep
away the ancient traditions of the land. He did not covet change for
its own sake. Unjust privilege, caste distinction, Court extravagance,
bigoted intolerance, partial justice, personal insecurity, burdensome
taxation, false economic laws,--these things he was determined to
abolish, and he looked to the experience of other nations to help him
in establishing a working system in their place. Almost alone among his
contemporaries, he set himself loyally to discover what France needed,
and what at the least cost of suffering she could gain.
One consequence of this attitude was that from the first Mirabeau
took the lead in assailing the abuses of the old system. Another
consequence was that, as soon as he saw that the Revolution had
unquestionably won--and his penetration enabled him to see this before
most people found it out, and when other minds were still engrossed
with apprehensions of an impossible reaction--he devoted his energies
to giving a practical shape to the policy of the Reformers. As a
practical statesman, he looked with contempt on the 'orgy' of the
4th August, on Lafayette's voluminous Declaration of the Rights of
Man, and on the agitation in favour of the suspensive veto. As a
practical statesman, in October, 1789, when his adversaries were
trying to make him responsible for the march of the Parisian mob to
Versailles, Mirabeau was endeavouring, through his connection with
La Marck, a brilliant young Flemish nobleman, who was both a member
of the States-General and a devoted friend of the Queen, to induce
the Government to face the crisis and to adopt a definite policy for
the future. His acquaintance with La Marck had opened to Mirabeau a
channel by which his advice could penetrate to the Comte de Provence,
and so to the King. Even at this time he is found urging the King to
withdraw from Paris to Rouen or to some other town in the interior,
where his freedom would not be threatened, to put himself at the head
of the reforming party, and to surround himself with a strong Ministry
of well-known and popular leaders. This aim, the establishment of a
Government powerful enough to act with vigour, and popular enough
to secure support, Mirabeau never ceased to pursue. The coldness of
Lafayette, the jealous egotism of Necker, and the distrust which he
personally inspired at Court, defeated his project, and the fatal
decree of the 7th November destroyed that prospect for a time. Still
Mirabeau did not despair of reconciling the King with the Revolution,
and of securing for the support of constitutional monarchy the services
of the chief revolutionary leaders. He made repeated efforts to break
down Lafayette's stubborn aloofness, and to induce him to co-operate
in his plans. 'Lafayette,' he writes to him, 'we must unite, I cannot
act without you.' In vain he warns him against the 'little men,' who
were endeavouring to keep them apart. 'You have many followers and
agents,' he writes again, 'but only a few real friends and servants
among them, and none of ability. You and I need one another. Why refuse
to act with me?' But to all these overtures Lafayette returned steadily
the same chilling refusal, and after June, 1790, Mirabeau gave up
trying to win him, and contented himself with watching the General, and
with defeating his manœuvres, whenever he could.
Meanwhile, in the Assembly, Mirabeau's ascendency increased every day.
On all questions, in all difficulties, his wide knowledge and practical
ability contrasted conspicuously with the vagaries of his colleagues,
and made him inevitably, except when intrigues or theories carried the
day against him, the leader of the House. His speeches on financial
questions showed him to be by far the ablest financier there, and more
than once decided the Assembly's policy in that department. In foreign
affairs he undertook the entire management of the policy of France,
and with the assistance of Montmorin in the Ministry, and of his own
surpassing knowledge and eloquence in the House, steered the King's
tottering administration safely through diplomatic troubles till his
death. On the question of giving to the Executive or to the Assembly
the initiative in matters of peace and war, Mirabeau fearlessly risked
his popularity in order to secure that essentially executive function
to the Crown. On the questions of enforcing order, of forbidding
emigration, of re-organising the army and navy, of strengthening the
administration, Mirabeau alone showed in a high degree the instinct
of a sound and practical statesman; and if eloquence, enthusiasm,
courage and understanding could have made his views prevail, the
labours of the Assembly might have taken a happier direction and might
have had happier results. On one point only, the question of the
Church, did Mirabeau fail to display his wonted wisdom. The violence
of his language and advice upon this point is in marked contrast
with his usual sagacity, and is, it may be, largely responsible for
the errors into which the Church policy of the Assembly fell. It is
possible that his action in urging the House to take extreme measures
against the non-juring clergy, was part of the Machiavellian scheme
which he had formed for discrediting the Assembly by driving it into
reckless courses. But even that explanation, if it be true, is very
far from relieving him from censure, and it seems more probable that
his language on Church questions was the genuine expression of his
feelings. Apart from that, and apart from other faults of judgment
and of temper which he sometimes showed, but which, considering his
ceaseless activity and the innumerable subjects with which he had
to deal, were singularly few and rare, Mirabeau's conduct in the
Constituent Assembly reveals him as one of the most extraordinary
statesmen whom a great crisis ever produced.
From March, 1790, when La Marck, after some months of absence, returned
to Paris, Mirabeau's relations with the Court assumed a more definite
character, and in the following summer his notes for the Court
regularly began. In his first letter to Louis, Mirabeau denounced all
schemes of counter-revolution as 'dangerous, criminal and chimerical,'
and made it plain that to his mind the only hope of saving the Monarchy
lay in frankly accepting the Revolution, and in placing the King in
cordial co-operation with the large and loyal party of reform. In the
memoranda which he forwarded to the Court in rapid succession all
through the summer and autumn, he laid stress upon the dangers to be
feared,--the increasing disorder, the untrustworthiness of Lafayette,
the mistakes of the Assembly, the intrigues in Paris, in the provinces,
in the army, the terrible risks of bankruptcy and of winter. He urged
unceasingly the necessity of facing these dangers, and pointed out
the steps to be taken and the means to be employed in order to escape
them. On the 14th October, 1790, in a note of great thoroughness and
insight, he recapitulated the whole political position, and laid
down what must be accepted as the bases of the constitution for the
future. He again exhorted the Court to recognise the new departure
and to abandon for ever all reactionary ideas. He again urged the
desirability of securing the repeal of the decree of the 7th November.
With singular breadth of view he suggested the formation of a Ministry,
in which the Jacobin leaders were to be included, in order to teach
them moderation and the responsibilities of power. And he sketched out
the plan, which he afterwards matured, of sending out recognised agents
into the provinces, to instruct the people upon politics, to begin an
agitation against the action of the Assembly, and to prepare the way
for recovering the influence of the Crown.
As time went on, Mirabeau became more and more impatient with the
behaviour of the Assembly, and less confident of the feeling of the
departments. He foresaw, and was prepared to face, the possibility of
civil war. He found that the Queen was listening to other advisers,
and would not put herself unreservedly into his hands. 'They are more
anxious,' he bitterly confessed, 'to hear my advice than to take it.'
Still he persisted in his labours. When one scheme had to be abandoned,
he soon had another ready to take its place, and the increase of his
difficulties only rendered his plans and precautions more elaborate. At
the end of December, 1790, he presented to the Court the most complete
and weighty of all his memoranda. In it he pointed out the dangers
arising from the King's indecision, from the Queen's unpopularity,
and from the 'frenzied demagogism of Paris.' He urged the necessity
of taking measures to re-organise the National Guard, and to diminish
Lafayette's influence over them. He advised the Government to take
advantage of the mistakes of the Assembly, to encourage it in its most
foolish and least popular measures, and by forming a party in it and
winning over its important members, to induce it to consent to its
own dissolution. He urged the Government to bring all its forces to
bear upon organising public opinion in the provinces in favour of the
restoration of order and of the modification of the constitution. Then
he hoped that, if a dissolution were secured, the Government would be
able to assert itself in the interval, while the elections were going
on, and that the departments, tired of disorder, recognising the King's
honest intentions, and learning experience from the errors of the
past, would return a body of representatives friendly to freedom but
friendly to the Monarchy as well, who would revise the constitution in
a reasonable spirit and on moderate lines. In order to further these
objects, Mirabeau drew up an elaborate plan, the supervision of which
was to be entrusted to Montmorin, who was to be in daily communication
with Mirabeau himself. One part of the plan consisted in persuading
able and popular deputies to support in the Assembly the views of the
Government. Mirabeau hoped to secure in this manner the co-operation
not only of members of the Right, but of some of the wire-pullers
of the Left also, who were discontented with Lafayette, and even of
politicians like Barnave and Thouret, who were beginning to think that
on some points the Assembly had gone too far. Another part of the
plan, the most important, was the scheme for organising support in the
provinces. For this end Mirabeau proposed that a number of agents, in
correspondence with Montmorin alone, should be sent out, to influence
local opinion against the Assembly and in favour of the King, to
prepare the way for a dissolution, to mix intimately with all classes,
and to report minutely upon the inhabitants and the opinions of the
districts through which they passed. Besides that a smaller body of
agents was to be appointed, under the direction of Clermont-Tonnerre,
principally to furnish and circulate political literature in the
interests of Mirabeau's ideas. A third part of the plan consisted in
the establishment of a secret police organisation in Paris, under the
direction of Talon and Sémonville, two former agents of Lafayette,
who possessed considerable ability for intrigue, to watch carefully
the movements of the capital, and to do what they could to win
supporters among the journalists, the National Guard, the clergy, the
administrative bodies, the cafés, and the clubs. In this plan no stress
was laid on the necessity of the King's leaving Paris; but that idea
Mirabeau continued steadily to entertain.
It is idle to enquire whether this or any of Mirabeau's busy schemes
could have succeeded, and whether even his ability could have driven
into one groove of public advantage the Revolution and the Court. It
is equally idle to pretend, that, because he laboured to save the
Monarchy, he must have been a traitor to freedom, or to rail, as some
have railed, against the democrat bought over by the King. Mirabeau
never labelled himself with names of uncertain meaning, and he was
never bought. He exerted himself to make the Revolution triumphant,
because he believed in freedom. When the battle of freedom was won, he
exerted himself to save the Monarchy, because he believed in that as
well. Other men may differ from his views, but it is not necessary on
that account to assail his motives. It is perfectly true that the Court
paid 200,000 francs to free him from his debts, and while he wrote
memoranda for them, a salary of 2,000 francs a month. But the money was
not paid to win his services, for the Monarchy had those already. It
was not paid to change his opinions, but because the Court wished to
be kept informed of what his opinions were. The constitution did not
permit him, while he was a deputy, to take office openly, and obvious
reasons made it desirable to keep his connection with the Government
secret; but Mirabeau always regarded himself as an unrecognised
Minister in the service of the Crown. Of course a relation of that
kind is rightly open to censure and suspicion. Mirabeau's standard was
not always a high one. He bears no pure and no unsullied name. The
record of his early life never ceased to injure and embarrass him. He
could be impetuous and capricious. He could stoop to acts of intrigue
and to tactical devices which a serener statesmanship would scorn. To
a certain extent, although not corruptible, he was corrupt. But when
that is admitted, the worst is said. The greatness of his character,
the range and variety of his powers, the breadth of his keen and
vigorous wisdom, his absolute freedom from littleness and meanness,
his unsparing labour for the public cause, his splendid gifts of
eloquence and genius, and the infinite charm which made men work for
him and love him with an enthusiasm which even friendship rarely shows,
overwhelmingly decide our judgment in his favour, and make his career
one of the most absorbing pages in the absorbing history of the time.
Mirabeau did not live to see his hopes accomplished. On the 2nd April,
1791, worn out by work and illness, the great statesman died, and with
him died any hope that still existed of reconciling the Revolution with
the Crown.