double game; to be revolutionary with the Revolution and a courtier
with the court. As to Madame Roland, he never placed himself at her
feet. The despotism of this female minister, the pretentious of this
demagogic bluestocking, {102} her affectation of puritan rigor, her
mania for directing everything, shocked the good sense of a man who
believed that woman is made to please, not to reign. It was repugnant
to this soldier to take his orders from the Egeria of the Girondins.
On the other hand, Dumouriez was displeasing to Madame Roland. She
found him too dissolute and not sentimental enough. She could not
pardon his having Madame de Beauvert for mistress and Bonne-Carrere for
confidant. She admitted neither his free-and-easy tone, his Gallic
humor, nor his natural gaiety, so unlike the declamatory tone and
pretentious jargon of the disciples of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Moreover, she found him too much of a royalist, too accustomed to the
old regime. The ministry, apparently so homogeneous, was soon to be
divided against itself.
{103}
X.
THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS.
Louis XVI. had been persuaded that the only means of regaining public
confidence would be to name a ministry chosen by the Gironde and
accepted by the Jacobins. The six ministers--Dumouriez of Foreign
Affairs, Roland of the Interior, De Grave of War, Claviere of Finances,
Duranton of Justice, Lacoste of Marine--formed what was called the
Girondin ministry; the reactionists named it the _sans-culottes_
ministry. The revolutionists rejoiced in its advent, while the
royalists sought to cover it with ridicule.
On the day when the Council met for the first time at the Tuileries (in
the great royal cabinet on the first floor, afterwards called the Salon
of Louis XIV.), Roland created a scandal by his plebeian dress. The
simplicity of his costume, his round hat, his shoes fastened with
ribbons instead of buckles, caused, as his wife disdainfully remarks,
"astonishment to all the valets, those creatures who, existing only for
the sake of etiquette, thought the safety of the empire depended on its
preservation." The master of ceremonies, approaching Dumouriez with an
{104} uneasy frown, glanced at Roland, and said in an undertone, "Eh!
sir, no buckles on his shoes!" "Ah! sir, all is lost!" replied
Dumouriez so coolly that it raised a laugh.
Louis XVI., who wished, as one might say, to enlarge the borders of
gentleness and resignation, displayed more than good-will towards the
ministers; he showed them deference. This was the more meritorious
because to him this ministry was like a reunion of the seditious, like
the Revolution in arms against his crown; his pretended advisers seemed
much more like enemies than auxiliaries. He tried, however, to attach
them to him by kindness, and made a sincere trial of his rights and
duties as a constitutional sovereign. Madame Roland herself, bitter
and violent as she is, renders him a certain justice. "Louis XVI.,"
says she, "showed the greatest good nature towards his new ministers;
this man was not precisely such as he has been painted by those who
seek to degrade him." As to Dumouriez, he says in his Memoirs:
"Dumouriez had been greatly deceived concerning the character of Louis
XVI., who had been represented to him as a violent and wrathful man,
who swore a great deal and maltreated his ministers. He must, on the
contrary, do him the justice to say that during three' months when he
observed him closely and in very delicate circumstances, he always
found him polite, gentle, affable, and even very patient. This prince
had a great timidity arising from his education and his distrust {105}
of himself, some difficulty in speaking, a just and dispassionate mind,
upright sentiments, great knowledge of history, geography, and the
arts, and an astonishing memory." Madame Roland also owns that he had
an excellent memory and much activity; that he was never idle; that he
read often, and had a distinct knowledge of all the different treaties
concluded by France with neighboring powers; that he knew history well,
and was the best geographer in the kingdom. "His knowledge of the
names and faces of those belonging to his court," she adds, "and the
anecdotes peculiar to each, extended to all persons who had come into
prominence during the Revolution; no subject could be mentioned to him
on which he had not some opinion founded on certain facts."
At first, the sessions of the ministry went off very tranquilly. The
King, with an accent of candor, protested his attachment to the
Constitution and his desire to see it solidly established. Often he
left his ministers to chat among themselves without taking any part in
their conversation. During such times he read his French and English
journals, or wrote letters. If a decree was presented for his
sanction, he deferred his decision until the next meeting, to which he
came with a settled opinion, concealing it carefully, none the less,
and appearing to decide only in accordance with the will of the
majority. He frequently evaded irritating questions by turning the
conversation to other subjects. If war were the {106} topic, he spoke
of travels; apropos of diplomacy, he described the manners of the
country in question; to Roland he spoke of his works, to Dumouriez of
his adventures. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was a first-class
story-teller, and whose freedom of speech was welcomed by the King, to
use Madame Roland's expression, amused both his colleagues and his
sovereign by his jests and anecdotes.
But all this was far from agreeable to the spiteful companion of the
Minister of the Interior. Indignant at the accord which seemed to
exist between Louis XVI. and his counsellors, she dreamed of nothing
but discussions and conflicts. All that wore the appearance of
reconciliation was repugnant to her. She made her obedient spouse
recount to her the smallest details of the sessions of the Council,
meddling with and criticising all. During the first three weeks,
Roland and Claviere, enchanted with the King's dispositions, flattered
themselves that the Revolution was at an end. Madame Roland scoffed at
their confidence. "_Bon Dieu_," she said to them, "every time I see
you start for the Council with this charming confidence, it seems to me
you are ready to commit some folly."--"I assure you," replied Claviere,
"that the King is perfectly aware that his interests are bound up with
the observance of the laws just established; he reasons too pertinently
not to be convinced of this truth."--"Well," added Roland, "if he is
not an honest man, he is the greatest rascal in the kingdom; nobody can
dissimulate {107} like that." Madame Roland rejoined that she could
not believe in love for the Constitution on the part of a man nourished
in the prejudices and accustomed to the use of despotic power. She,
who doubtless thought herself the only person capable of presiding well
at the council of ministers, treated it as a "cafe where they amused
themselves with idle gossip." "There was no record of their
deliberations," says she, "nor a secretary to take them down; after
sitting three or four hours, they went away without having accomplished
anything but a few signatures; it was like this three times a
week."--"This is pitiable!" she would exclaim impatiently when, on his
return, she asked her husband what had passed. "You are all in very
good humor because there have been no disputes or vexations, and you
have even been treated with civility; each of you seems to be doing
pretty much as he pleases in his own department. I am afraid you are
being made game of."--"Nevertheless, business is getting on."--"Yes,
and time is wasted, for in the torrent that is carrying you away, I
should be much better pleased to have you employ three hours in solid
meditation on great combinations than to see you spend them in useless
chatter."
It must needs be said that no person contributed more to the downfall
of royalty than Madame Roland. At the moment when the good temper and
gentleness of Louis XVI. began to gain upon his ministers, when
Dumouriez was softened by the {108} royal kindness, when minds
experienced a relaxation, and honest people, worn out by so many
political shocks, were sincerely desirous of repose, it was she who
nourished discord, made the Gironde irreconcilable, inspired the
subversive pamphlets of Louvet, embittered her husband's heart, and
invented the provocations against which the conscience of the
unfortunate monarch rebelled. This part, which would have been a sorry
one for a man to play, seems still worse in a woman. Count Beugnot has
said very justly: "I have seen that a woman can preserve only the
faults of her sex in the midst of such a frightful catastrophe, not its
virtues. The gentle, amiable, sensitive qualities grow and develop in
the shelter of peaceful domestic joys; they are lost and obliterated in
the heat of debates, the bitterness of parties, and the shock of
passions. The soft and tender foot of woman cannot tread unharmed in
paths bristling with steel and red with blood. To do so with safety
she must become a man; but to me, a man-woman seems a monster. Ah! let
them leave to us, whom nature has granted the pitiful advantage of
strength, the field of contention and the fate of war; we are adequate
to this cruel destiny; but let them keep to the easier and sweeter part
of pouring balm into wounds and staunching tears."
Roland's character was tranquil; it was his wife who made him
ambitious, haughty, and inflexible. She should have pacified her
husband, but instead of that she excited him. Never was he malevolent
and {109} spiteful enough to suit her. She would not pardon him a
single movement of compassion or respect towards the august
unfortunates. Led by her, Roland no longer dared entertain a generous
thought. He returned shamefaced to the Ministry of the Interior if he
had felt a humane sentiment while at the Tuileries. It is sad to find
tenderness and pity in the heart of a man, Dumouriez, and in the heart
of a woman, Madame Roland, nothing but malevolence and hatred.
Dumouriez wanted to put out the fire; Madame Roland, to stir it up.
Dumouriez sincerely desired the King's safety; Madame Roland swore that
he should perish. If a germ of pity woke to life in the hearts of the
ministers, Madame Roland hastened to stifle it. Her hostility towards
the royal family was more than deliberate; there was something like
ferocity in it. Her Memoirs and those of Dumouriez display two very
different minds. Sadness dominates in his; anger in hers. Even on the
steps of the scaffold, Madame Roland will not feel her hatred lessen.
Dumouriez, on the contrary, will cast a glance of melancholy respect
upon the unfortunate sovereign whose sorrows and whose resignation,
whose gentleness and uprightness, had touched him so profoundly.
{110}
XI.
THE FETE OF THE SWISS OF CHATEAUVIEUX.
Dumouriez, at the beginning of his ministry, was still the slave of the
Jacobins, his allies and protectors. His elevation to the ministry was
in great part due to them, and even while despising them, he felt
unable to shake off their yoke. Little by little, they inspired him
with horror, and before many weeks were over, his only idea was to free
himself from their control. But at first he treated them like a power
with which he was obliged to reckon. What proves this is his passive
attitude at the time of the celebrated fete of the Swiss of
Chateauvieux. The prologue of the bloody tragedies that were in course
of preparation, this fete shows what headway the revolutionary ideas
had made. The sinister days of the Convention were approaching, the
Terror existed in germ, and already many representatives who, on a
secret ballot, would have voted in accordance with right and honor,
were cowardly enough to do so against their conscience when they had to
answer to their names.
Things had travelled fast since the close of the Constituent Assembly.
In 1790, that Assembly, as {111} the faithful guardian of discipline,
had congratulated the Marquis de Bouille on the energy with which he
repressed the military rebellion that broke out at Nancy, August 31.
The soldiers garrisoned at this town were guilty of the greatest
crimes. They pillaged the military chests, arrested the officers, and
fired on the troops who remained faithful. M. Desilles, an officer of
the King's regiment, conducted himself at the time in a heroic manner.
When the insurgents were about to discharge the cannon opposite the
Stainville gate, he sprang towards it, and covering it with his body,
cried: "It is your friends, your brothers, who are coming! The
National Assembly sends them. Do you mean to fire on them? Will you
disgrace your flags?" It was useless to try to hold Desilles back. He
broke away from his friends and threw himself again in front of the
rebels, falling under four wounds at the moment when the fight began.
The Constituent Assembly passed a decree by which it thanked the
Marquis de Bouille and his troops "for having gloriously fulfilled
their duty" in repressing the military insurrection of Nancy. Its
president wrote an official letter to Desilles, soon to die in
consequence of his wounds: "The National Assembly has learned with just
admiration, mingled with profound sorrow, the danger to which your
heroic devotion has exposed you; in trying to describe it, I should
weaken the emotion by which the Assembly was penetrated. So sublime an
example of courage {112} and civic virtue is above all praise. It has
secured you a sweeter recompense and one more worthy of you; you will
find it in your own heart, and the eternal memory of the French people."
The Swiss regiment of Chateauvieux had taken part in the rebellion at
Nancy. Switzerland had reserved, by treaty, its federal jurisdiction
over such of its troops as had taken service under the King of France.
By virtue of this special jurisdiction the soldiers of the regiment of
Chateauvieux, taken arms in hand, were tried before a council of war
composed of Swiss officers. Twenty-two were condemned to death and
shot. Fifty were condemned to the galleys and sent to the convict
prison at Brest. It was in vain that Louis XVI. attempted to negotiate
their pardon with the Swiss Confederacy. It remained inflexible, and
the guilty were still undergoing their penalty when the Jacobins
resolved to release them from prison in defiance of the treaties
uniting Switzerland and France. "To deliver these condemned
prisoners," says Dumouriez in his Memoirs, "was to insult the Cantons,
attack their treaty rights, and judge their criminals. We had enemies
enough already without seeking new ones among an allied people who were
behaving wisely towards us, especially a free and republican people."
But revolutionary passions do not reason. Collot d'Herbois, a wretched
actor who had passed from the theatrical stage to that of politics, and
who, not content with having bored people, wished to terrorize them
also, {113} made himself the champion of the galley-slaves of the
regiment of Chateauvieux. He was the principal impresario of the
lugubrious fete which disgraced Paris on April 15, 1792.
The programme was not arranged without some opposition. Public opinion
was not yet ripe for saturnalia. There were still a few honest and
courageous publicists who, like Andre Chenier, boldly lifted their
voices to stigmatize certain infamies. In the tribune of the Assembly
some orators were to be found who expressed their minds freely and held
their own against the tempests of demagogy. There were generals and
soldiers in the army for whom discipline was not an idle word; and if
the fete of the Swiss of Chateauvieux made the future Septembrists and
furies of the guillotine utter shouts of joy, it drew from honest men a
long cry of grief and indignation.
Intimidated by the menaces of the Jacobins, the Assembly voted the
release of the Swiss incarcerated in the prison of Brest. But merely
to deliver them was not enough: the Jacobins wanted to give them an
ovation. Their march from Brest to Paris was a triumph, and Collot
d'Herbois organized a gigantic fete in their honor.
Andre Chenier was at this time writing weekly letters for the _Journal
de Paris_, in which he eloquently supported the principles of order and
liberty. As M. de Lamartine has said, he was the Tyrtaeus of good sense
and moderation. He was indignant at {114} the threatened scandal, and,
in concert with his collaborator on the _Journal de Paris_, Roucher,
the poet of _Les Mois_, he criticised in most energetic terms the
revolutionary manifestation then organizing. At the Jacobin Club, on
April 4, Collot d'Herbois freed his mind against him. "This is not
Chenier-Gracchus," said the comedian; "it is another person, quite
another." He spoke of Andre as a "sterile prose writer," and pointed
him out to popular vengeance. The two brothers were in opposing camps.
While Andre Chenier stigmatized the fete of anarchy, his brother Joseph
was diligently manufacturing scraps of poetry, inscriptions, and
devices which were to figure in the programme. "What!" cried Andre,
"must we invent extravagances capable of destroying any form of
government, recompense rebellion against the laws, and crown foreign
satellites for having shot French citizens in a riot? People say that
the statues will be veiled in every place through which this procession
is to pass. Oh! if this odious orgy takes place, it will be well to
veil the whole city; but it is not the images of despots that should be
wrapt in funeral crape, but the faces of honest men. How is it that
you do not blush when a turbulent handful, who seem numerous because
they are united and make a noise, oblige you to do their will, telling
you that it is your own, and amusing your childish curiosity meanwhile
with unworthy spectacles? In a city which respected itself such a fete
would meet nothing but solitude and silence." The controversy {115}
waxed furious. The walls were covered with posters for and against the
fete. Roucher thus flagellated Collot d'Herbois: "This character out
of a comic novel, who skipped from Polichinello's booth to the platform
of the Jacobins, has sprung at me as if he were going to strike me with
the oar the Swiss brought back from the galleys!"
Petion, then mayor of Paris, far from opposing the fete, approved and
encouraged it. "I think it my duty," he wrote, April 6, 1792, "to
explain myself briefly concerning the fete which is being arranged to
celebrate the arrival of the soldiers of Chateauvieux. Minds are
heated, passions are in ferment, and citizens hold different opinions;
everything seems to betoken disorder. It is sought to change a day of
rejoicing into a day of mourning.... What is it all about? Some
soldiers, leaders with the French guards, who have broken our chains
and afterwards been overloaded with them, are about to enter within our
walls; some citizens propose to meet and offer them a fraternal
welcome; these citizens are obeying a natural impulse and using a right
which belongs to all. The magistrates see nothing but what is simple
and innocent in all this; they see certain citizens abandoning
themselves to joy and mirth; every one is at liberty to participate or
not to participate in the fete. Public spirit rises and assumes a new
degree of energy amidst civic amusements." The municipality ordered
this letter of Petion's to be printed, posted on the walls, and {116}
sent to the forty-eight sectional committees and the sixty battalions
of the National Guard.
Not all the members of the National Assembly shared the optimism of the
mayor of Paris. The preparations for the fete, which was announced for
April 15, occasioned, on the 9th, a session as affecting as it was
stormy. The whole debate should be read in the _Moniteur_. The
question was put whether the Swiss of Chateauvieux, then waiting
outside the doors, should be introduced and admitted to the honors of
the session. M. de Gouvion, who had been major-general of the National
Guard under Lafayette, gravely ascended the tribune. "Gentlemen," said
he, "I had a brother, a good patriot, who, through the favorable
opinion of your fellow-citizens, had been successively a commander of
the National Guard and a member from the Department. Always ready to
sacrifice himself for the Revolution and the law, it was in the name of
the Revolution and the law that he was required to march to Nancy with
the brave National Guards. There he fell, pierced by fifty bayonets in
the hands of those who.... I ask if I am condemned to look on
tranquilly while the assassins of my brother enter here?" A voice
rising from the midst of the Assembly cried: "Very well, sir, go out!"
The galleries applauded. Gouvion attempted to continue. The murmurs
redoubled. Several persons in the galleries cried: "Down! down!"
The Assembly, revolutionary though it was, felt {117} indignant at the
scandal, and called the galleries to order. The president reiterated
the injunction to keep silence. Gouvion began anew: "I treat with all
the contempt he merits, and with ... I would say the word if I did not
respect the Assembly--the coward who has been base enough to outrage a
brother's grief." The question was then put whether the Swiss of
Chateauvieux should be admitted to the honors of the session. Out of
546 votes, 288 were in the affirmative, and 265 in the negative.
Consequently, the president announced that the soldiers of
Chateauvieux, who had asked to present themselves to the Assembly,
should be admitted to the honors of the session. Gouvion went out by
one door, indignant, and swearing that he would never re-enter an
Assembly which received his brother's assassins as conquerors. By
another door, Collot d'Herbois made his entry with his proteges, the
ex-galley slaves.
The party of the left and the spectators in the galleries burst into
transports of joy, and gave three rounds of applause. The soldiers
entered the hall to the beating of drums and cries of "Long live the
nation!" They were followed by a large procession of men and women
carrying pikes and banners. Collot d'Herbois, the showman of the
Swiss, pronounced an emphatic address in praise of the pretended
martyrs of liberty, which the Assembly ordered to be printed. One
Goachon, speaking for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and holding a pike
ornamented with a {118} red liberty cap, exclaimed: "The citizens of
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the victors of the Bastille, the men of
July 14, have charged me to warn you that they are going to make ten
thousand more pikes after the model which you see."
The fete took place on Sunday, April 15. It was the triumph of
anarchy, the glorification of indiscipline and revolt. On that day the
galley slaves were treated like heroes. The emblems adopted were a
colossal galley, ornamented with flowers, and the convicts' head gear,
that hideous red bonnet in which Dumouriez had already played the
buffoon, and which was presently to be set on the august head of Louis
XVI. The soldier galley slaves, whose chains were kissed with
transports by a swarm of harlots, came forward wearing civic crowns.
What a difference between the Constituent Assembly and the Legislative
Assembly! Under the one, a grand expiatory ceremony on the
Champ-de-Mars had honored the soldiers slain at Nancy, and the National
Guards had worn mourning for these martyrs of duty. Under the other,
it was not the victims who were lauded, but their assassins. A goddess
of Liberty in a Phrygian cap was borne in a state chariot. The
procession halted at the Bastille, the Hotel de Ville, and the
Champ-de-Mars. The mayor and municipality of Paris were present in
their official capacity. The _Ca ira_ was sung in a frenzy of
enthusiasm. Soldiers and public women embraced each other. It was
David who had {119} designed the costumes, planned the chariot, and
organized the whole performance,--David, the revolutionary artist who
was destined by a change of fortune to paint the portrait of a Pope and
the coronation of an Emperor.
In 1791, Andre Chenier and David, then friends, and saluting together
the dawn of the Revolution, had celebrated with lyre and pencil the
"_Serment du Jeu de Paume_"[1] Consecrating an ode to the painter's
magnificent tableau, the poet exclaimed:--
Resume thy golden robe, bind on thy chaplet rich,
Divine and youthful Poesy!
To David's lips, King of the skilful brush,
Bear the ambrosial cup.
How he repented his enthusiasm now! What ill-will he bore the artist
who placed his art, that sacred gift, at the service of anarchical
passions! With what irony the same pen passed from dithyramb to satire!
Arts worthy of our eyes, pomp and magnificence
Worthy of our liberty,
Worthy of the vile tyrants who are devouring France,
Worthy of the atrocious dementia
Of that stupid David whom in other days I sang!