read in history the struggles of ambitious men for power, and have seen
them in every age and country involving whole nations in the horrors of
civil strife, only for the worthless privilege of choosing a master,
will do well to mark the conduct of Washington on this occasion. He
waited only in Philadelphia to congratulate his successor and pay
respect to the choice of the people in the person of Mr. Adams. He
entered the Senate chamber as a private citizen, and, while every eye
glistened at thus seeing him, perhaps for the last time, grasped the
hand of the new President, wished that his administration might prove as
happy for himself as for his country, and, bowing to the assemblage,
retired unattended as he came.
As he was hailed with blessings on entering, so was he greeted with
blessings when he quitted forever, the Presidential chair. He came from
his retirement at Mount Vernon accompanied by joyful acclamations of
welcome, and he was followed thither by the love and veneration of
millions of grateful people. Blessed, and thrice blessed, is he who
closes a life of honest fame in such a dignified and happy repose;
fortunate the nation that can boast of such an example, and still more
fortunate the children who can call him "Father of their Country."
FRENCH REVOLUTION: STORMING OF THE BASTILLE
A.D. 1789
WILLIAM HAZLITT
In the scenes of blood and terror which accompanied it, and
in the dramatic episodes and strange actors appearing upon
its stage--in these respects, if not in the calculable
effects of the uprising on France and the world, the French
Revolution was the most extraordinary outbreak of modern
times.
Matters in France at this time, or during the next few
years, might have taken a very different course had not the
Eastern powers of Europe been absorbed in their own
quarrels, which culminated in the final "scramble for Polish
territory." As it was, France was left through the early
years of the Revolution to struggle with her own affairs.
Under Louis XV, loved at the beginning of his reign,
execrated by his people at its close, France had fallen into
bankruptcy and disgrace. The monarchy was weakened through
its head. Louis determined that it should live as long as he
survived; he cared nothing for its future. The peasantry of
France at this time had become keenly alive to the wrongs
under which they had long suffered in comparative silence.
The disfranchised bourgeois, or middle class, had lately
grown in wealth and now thought more about their political
rights. The "common" people were staggering under the burden
of taxation, from which the privileged nobility and clergy
were largely exempt.
The intellectual life of France during the second half of
the eighteenth century was profoundly affected by the
literature of the period, especially by the radical and
revolutionary writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and their
followers, and in many things the extreme views of these men
seemed to find confirmation in the calmer reasonings of
Montesquieu on the powers and limitations of governments.
Democratic ideas were in the air, and all except the
privileged classes were ready for general revolt. Frenchmen
returning from America reported the successful working of
the new order of things inaugurated by the Revolution there,
and this gave stronger impulse to the revolutionary tendency
in France.
When the well-meaning but weak-willed Louis XVI came to the
throne he found himself confronted with conditions before
which a far abler monarch might well have quailed. How the
storm broke upon him, and began its sweep over the kingdom
which he was set to rule, is told by Hazlitt without the
rhetorical flourishes indulged by many writers on this
subject, but with clear narration and philosophic judgment
of the facts recounted.
Louis XVI succeeded to the throne of France in 1774, and soon after
married Marie Antoinette, a daughter of the house of Austria. She was
young, beautiful, and thoughtless. In her the pride of birth was
strengthened and rendered impatient of the least restraint by the pride
of sex and beauty; and all three together were instrumental in hastening
the downfall of the monarchy. Devoted to the licentious pleasures of a
court, she looked both from education and habit on the homely comforts
of the people with disgust or indifference, and regarded the distress
and poverty which stood in the way of her dissipation with incredulity
or loathing.[33] Louis XVI himself, though a man of good intentions, and
free, in a remarkable degree, from the common vices of his situation,
had not firmness of mind to resist the passions and importunity of
others, and, in addition to the extravagance, petulance, and extreme
counsels of the Queen, fell a victim to the intrigues and officious
interference of those about him, who had neither the wisdom nor spirit
to avert those dangers and calamities which they had provoked by their
rashness, presumption, and obstinacy.
The want of economy in the court, or a maladministration of the
finances, first occasioned pecuniary difficulties to the Government, for
which a remedy was in vain sought by a succession of ministers, Necker,
Calonne, Maupeou, and by the Parliament. Considerable embarrassment and
uneasiness began to be felt throughout the kingdom when in 1787 the
King undertook to convoke the States-General, as alone competent to meet
the emergency, and to confer on other topics of the highest consequence,
which were at this time agitated with general anxiety and interest. The
necessity of raising the supplies to defray the expenses of government
was indeed only made the handle to introduce and enforce other more
important and widely extended plans of reform.
For some time past the public mind had been growing critical and
fastidious with the progress of civilization and letters; the monarchy,
as it existed at the period "with all its imperfections on its head,"
had been weighed in the balance of reason and opinion, and found
wanting; and a favorable opportunity was only required, and the first
that presented itself was eagerly seized to put in practice what had
been already resolved upon in theory by the wits, philosophers, and
philanthropists of the eighteenth century. From the first calling
together the general council of the nation to deliberate and determine
for the public good, in the then prevailing ferment of the popular
feeling and with the predisposing causes, not a measure of finance was
to be looked to, but a revolution became inevitable. All the _cahiers_,
or instructions given to the deputies by the great mass of their
constituents, show that the kingdom at large was ripe for a material
change in its civil and political institutions, and for the most part
point out the individual grievances which were afterward done away with.
The States-General met at Versailles on May 5, 1789. They consisted of
the representatives of the nobility, of the clergy, and of the _Tiers
Etat_ or people in general, the number of the last having been doubled
in order to equal that of the other two. They heard mass the evening
before at the Church of St. Louis, in the same dresses, and with the
same forms and order of precedence as in 1614, the last time they had
ever been assembled. The King opened the sitting with a speech which
gave little satisfaction, as it dwelt chiefly on the liquidation of the
debt and the unsettled state of the public mind, and did not go into
those general measures on which the views of the assembly were bent and
from which alone relief was expected. The first question which divided
opinion and led to a conflict was that regarding the vote by head or by
order. By the first mode, that of counting voices, the commons would be
numerically on a par with the privileged classes; by the latter, their
opponents would always have the advantage of two to one. In order to
keep this advantage, and prevent that reform of abuses which the Third
Estate was supposed to have principally at heart, the Court did all it
could to separate the different orders, first by adhering to etiquette,
afterward by means of intrigue, and in the end by force.
On the day following the meeting, the deputies of the three estates were
called upon to verify their powers, which the nobles and clergy wished
to do apart; but the commons refused to take any steps toward this
object, except conjointly, or as a general legislative body. This led to
various overtures and discussions, which lasted for several weeks. The
Court offered its mediation; but the nobles giving a peremptory refusal
to come to any compromise, at the motion of the Abbe Sieyes, the Third
Estate, after in vain inviting the two others to join them, constituted
themselves into a national assembly.
This was the first act of the Revolution, or the first occasion on which
a part of a given body of individuals took upon them to decide for the
rest, from the urgency and magnitude of the case, without the consent of
their coadjutors, and contrary to established rules. It was a stroke of
state necessity, to be defended not by the forms but by the essence of
justice, and by the great ends of human society. The usurpation of a
discretionary and illegal power was clear, but nothing could be done
without it, everything with it. Yet so strong and natural is the
prejudice against every appearance of what is violent and arbitrary,
that serious attempts were made to reconcile the letter with the spirit
of justice in this instance, and to prove that the Tiers Etat, being the
representatives of the nation, and the nation being everything, the
nobility and clergy were included in it and had nothing to complain of.
It is not worth while to answer this sophistry. The truth is that the
Third Estate erected themselves from parties concerned into framers of
the law and judges of the reason of the case, and must themselves be
judged, not by precedent and tradition, but by posterity, to whom, from
the scale on which they acted, the benefit or the injury of their
departure from common and worn-out forms will reach. Acts that supersede
old established rules and create a new era in human affairs are to be
approved or condemned by what comes after, not by what has gone before,
them.
This first independent and spirited step on the part of the commons
produced a reaction on the part of the Court. They shut up the place of
sitting. The King had been prevailed on to consent to hostile measures
against the popular side during an excursion to Marly with the Queen and
princes of the blood. Bailly, afterward mayor of Paris, had been chosen
president of the new National Assembly, and, arriving with other
members, and finding the doors of the hall shut against them, they
repaired to the _Jeu de Paumes_ ("Tennis-court") at Versailles, followed
by the people and soldiers in crowds, and there, enclosed by bare walls,
with heads uncovered, and a strong and spontaneous burst of enthusiasm,
made a solemn vow, with the exception of only one person present, never
to separate till they had given France a constitution.
This memorable and decisive event took place on June 20th. On the 23d
the King came to the Church of St. Louis, whither they had been
compelled to remove, and where they were joined by a considerable number
of the clergy; addressed them in a tone of authority and reprimand,
treated them as simply the Tiers Etat, pointed out certain partial
reforms which he approved, and which he enjoined them to effect in
conjunction with the other orders, or threatened to dissolve them and
take the whole management of the government upon himself, and ended with
a command that they should separate. The nobles and the clergy obeyed;
the deputies of the people remained firm, immovable, silent.
Mirabeau then started from his seat and appealed to the Assembly in that
mixed style of the academician and the demagogue which characterized his
eloquence. The words are worth repeating here, both as a sample of the
unqualified tone of the period and on account of the fierce and personal
attack on the King, whom he stigmatizes by a sort of nickname.
"Gentlemen, I acknowledge that what you have just heard might be a
pledge of the welfare of the country, if the offers of despotism were
not always dangerous. What is the meaning of this insolent dictation,
the array of arms, the violation of the national temple, merely to
command you to be happy? Who gives you this command? your _Mandatory_
['deputy']. Who imposes his imperious laws? your Mandatory, he who ought
to receive them from you; from us, gentlemen, who are invested with an
inviolable political priesthood; from us, in short, to whom, and to whom
alone, twenty-five millions of men look up for a happiness insured by
its being agreed upon, given, and received by all. But the freedom of
your deliberations is suspended: a military force surrounds the
Assembly! Where are the enemies of the nation, that this outrage should
be attempted? Is Catiline at our gates? I demand that in asserting the
claims of your insulted dignity, of your legislative power, you arm
yourselves with the sanctity of your oath: it does not permit us to
separate till we have achieved the constitution."
From this unbridled effusion of bombast, affectation, and real passion
two things are evident: first, that the designs of the Court were
already looked upon as altogether hostile and alien to the patriotic
side; secondly, that the Assembly, from the beginning, felt in
themselves the strong and undoubted conviction of their being called to
the task of removing the abuses of power and regenerating the hopes of a
mighty people. The die was cast, the lists were marked out in the
opinions and sentiments of the two parties toward each other. The grand
master of the ceremonies of this occasion, seeing that the Assembly did
not break up, reminded them of the command of the King. "Go tell your
master," cried Mirabeau, "that we are here by order of the people; and
that we shall not retire but at the point of the bayonet." This was at
once an invitation to violence and a defiance of authority. Sieyes
added, with his customary coolness: "You are to-day in the same
situation that you were yesterday; let us deliberate!" The Assembly
immediately confirmed its former resolutions, and, at the instance of
Mirabeau, decreed the inviolability of its members.
Such was at one time the brilliant, daring, and forward zeal of a man
who not long after sold himself to the Court: so little has flashy
eloquence or bold pretension to do with steadiness of principle! Indeed,
the Revolution, of which he was one of the most prominent leaders,
presented too many characters of this kind--dazzling, ardent, wavering,
corrupt--a succession of momentary fires, made of light and worthless
materials, soon kindled and soon exhausted, and requiring some new fuel
to repair them: nothing deep, internal, relying on its own
resources--"outliving fortunes outward with a mind that doth renew
swifter than blood decays"--but a flame rash and violent, fanned by
circumstances, kept alive by vanity, smothered by sordid interest, and
wandering from object to object in search of the most contemptible and
contradictory excitement! We may also remark, in the debates and
proceedings of this early period, the fevered and anxious state of the
public mind; while galling and intolerable abuses, called in question
for the first time and defended with blind confidence, were exposed in
the most naked and flagrant point of view; and the drapery of forms and
circumstances was torn from rank and power with sarcastic petulance or a
ruthless logic.
The resistance of the Assembly alarmed the Court, who did not, however,
as yet dare to proceed against it. Necker, who had disapproved of the
royal interference, and whose dismission had been determined on in the
morning, was the same night entreated both by the King and Queen to
stay. On the next meeting of the Assembly a large portion of the clergy
again repaired to their place of sitting; and four days after, forty
members of the _noblesse_ joined them, with the Duke of Orleans at their
head. The conduct of this nobleman, all through the Revolution, was in
my opinion uncalled for, indecent, and profligate, and his fate not
unmerited. Persons situated as he was cannot take a decided part one way
or the other, without doing violence either to the dictates of reason
and justice or to all their natural sentiments, unless they are
characters of that heroic stamp as to be raised above suspicion or
temptation: the only way for all others is to stand aloof from a
struggle in which they have no alternative but to commit a parricide on
their country or their friends, and to await the issue in silence and at
a distance.
The people should not ask the aid of their lordly taskmasters to shake
off their chains; nor can they ever expect to have it cordial and
entire. No confidence can be placed in those excesses of public
principle which are founded on the sacrifice of every private affection
and of habitual self-esteem! The Court, soon after this reenforcement to
the popular party, came forward of its own accord to request the
attendance of the dissentient orders, which took place on June 27th; and
after some petty ebullitions of jealousy and contests for precedence,
the Assembly became general, and all distinctions were lost.
The King's secret advisers were, however, by no means reconciled to this
new triumph over ancient privilege and existing authority, and meditated
a reprisal by removing the Assembly farther from Paris, and there
dissolving, if it could not overawe them. For this purpose the troops
were collected from all parts; Versailles, where the Assembly sat, was
like a camp; Paris looked as if it were in a state of siege. These
extensive military preparations, the trains of artillery arriving every
hour from the frontier, with the presence of the foreign regiments,
occasioned great suspicion and alarm; and on the motion of Mirabeau, the
Assembly sent an address to the King, respectfully urging him to remove
the troops from the neighborhood of the capital; but this he declined
doing, hinting at the same time that they might retire, if they chose,
to Noyon or Soissons, thus placing themselves at the disposal of the
Crown, and depriving themselves of the aid of the people.
Paris was in a state of extreme agitation. This immense city was
unanimous in its devotedness to the Assembly. A capital is at all times,
and Paris was then more particularly, the natural focus of a revolution.
To this many causes contribute. The actual presence of the monarch
dissipates the illusions of royalty; and he is no longer, as in the
distant province or petty village, an abstraction of power and majesty,
another name for all that is great and exalted, but a common mortal, one
man among a million of men, perhaps one of the meanest of his race.
Pageants and spectacles may impose on the crowd; but a weak or haughty
look undoes the effect, and leads to disadvantageous reflections on the
title to or the good resulting from all this display of pomp and
magnificence. From being the seat of the court, its vices are better
known, its meannesses are more talked of.[34] In the number and
distraction of passing objects and interests, the present occupies the
mind alone--the chain of antiquity is broken, and custom loses its
force. Men become "flies of a summer." Opinion has here many ears, many
tongues, and many hands to work with. The slightest whisper is rumored
abroad, and the roar of the multitude breaks down the prison or the
palace gates. They are seldom brought to act together but in extreme
cases; nor is it extraordinary that, in such cases, the conduct of the
people is violent, from the consciousness of transient power, its
impatience of opposition, its unwieldy bulk and loose texture, which
cannot be kept within nice bounds or stop at half-measure.
Nothing could be more critical or striking than the situation of Paris
at this moment. Everything betokened some great and decisive change.
Foreign bayonets threatened the inhabitants from without, famine within.
The capitalists dreaded a bankruptcy; the enlightened and patriotic the
return of absolute power; the common people threw all the blame on the
privileged classes. The press inflamed the public mind with innumerable
pamphlets and invectives against the government, and the journals
regularly reported the proceedings and debates of the Assembly.
Everywhere in the open air, particularly in the Palais-Royal, groups
were formed, where they read and harangued by turns. It was in
consequence of a proposal made by one of the speakers in the
Palais-Royal that the prison of the Abbaye was forced open and some
grenadiers of the French Guards, who had been confined for refusing to
fire upon the people, were set at liberty and led out in triumph.
Paris was in this state of excitement and apprehension when the Court,
having first stationed a number of troops at Versailles, at Sevres, at
the Champ-de-Mars, and at St. Denis, commenced offensive measures by the
complete change of all the ministers and by the banishment of Necker.
The latter, on Saturday, July 11th, while he was at dinner, received a
note from the King, enjoining him to quit the kingdom without a moment's
delay. He calmly finished his dinner, without saying a word of the order
he had received, and immediately after got into his carriage with his
wife and took the road to Brussels. The next morning the news of his
disgrace reached Paris. The whole city was in a tumult: above ten
thousand persons were, in a short time, collected in the garden of the
Palais-Royal. A young man of the name of Camille Desmoulins, one of the
habitual and most enthusiastic haranguers of the crowd, mounted on a
table and cried out that "there was not a moment to lose; that the
dismission of Necker was the signal for the St. Bartholomew of liberty;
that the Swiss and German regiments would presently issue from the
Champ-de-Mars to massacre the citizens; and that they had but one
resource left, which was to resort to arms." And the crowd, tearing each
a green leaf, the color of hope, from the chestnut-trees in the garden,
which were nearly laid bare, and wearing it as a badge, traversed the
streets of Paris, with the busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orleans,
who was also said to be arrested, covered with crape and borne in solemn
pomp.
They had proceeded in this manner as far as the Place Vendome, when they
were met by a party of the Royal Allemand, whom they put to flight by
pelting them with stones; but at the Place Louis XV they were assailed
by the dragoons of the Prince of Lambesc; the bearer of one of the busts
and a private of the French Guards were killed; the mob fled into the
Garden of the Tuileries, whither the Prince followed them at the head of
his dragoons, and attacked a number of persons who knew nothing of what
was passing, and were walking quietly in the gardens. In the scuffle, an
old man was wounded; the confusion as well as the resentment of the
people became general; and there was but one cry, "To arms!" to be heard
throughout the Tuileries, the Palais-Royal, in the city, and the
suburbs.
The French Guards had been ordered to their quarters in the
Chaussee-d'Antin, where sixty of Lambesc's dragoons were posted opposite
to watch them. A dispute arose, and it was with much difficulty they
were prevented from coming to blows. But when the former learned that
one of their comrades had been slain, their indignation could no longer
be restrained; they rushed out, killed two of the foreign soldiers,
wounded three others, and the rest were forced to fly. They then
proceeded to the Place Louis XV, where they stationed themselves between
the people and the troops, and guarded this position the whole of the
night. The soldiers in the Champ-de-Mars were then ordered to attack
them, but refused to fire, and were remanded back to their quarters.