honor of speaking with the Queen of France. Even to salute her was to
expose one's self to the suspicion of belonging to the pretended
Austrian committee which was the perpetual object of popular invective.
When Louis XVI. told Dumouriez that the Queen desired a private
interview with him, the minister was not at all well pleased. He
thought it a useless step which might be misinterpreted by all parties.
However, {153} he must needs obey. He had received an order to go down
to the Queen an hour before the meeting of the Council. That it might
be the sooner over, he took the precaution of going half an hour late
to this perilous rendezvous. He had been presented to Marie Antoinette
on the day of his nomination as minister. She had then addressed him
several words, asking him to serve the King well, and he had replied
with a respectful phrase. Since then he had not seen her. When he
entered her room, he found the Queen alone, very much flushed, and
pacing to and fro in an agitation which promised a lively interview.
She approached him with an air of majestic irritation: "Sir!" she
exclaimed, "you are all-powerful at this moment, but it is by the favor
of the people, who soon break their idols. Your existence depends upon
your conduct." Dumouriez insisted on the necessity of scrupulously
respecting the Constitution, which Marie Antoinette was unwilling to
do. "It will not last," she said, raising her voice; "take care of
yourself!"--"Madame," replied the minister, "I am past fifty; I have
encountered many perils during my life, and in entering the ministry, I
thoroughly understood that responsibility was not the greatest of my
dangers."--"Nothing was wanting but to calumniate me," cried the Queen,
tears flowing from her eyes; "you seem to think me capable of having
you assassinated." Agitated as greatly as the sovereign, "God preserve
me," said Dumouriez, "from offering you so {154} grievous an offence!
Your Majesty's character is great and noble. You have given proofs of
it which I admire and which have attached me to you." Marie Antoinette
grew calmer. "Believe me, Madame," went on the minister; "I have no
interest in deceiving you, and I abhor anarchy and crime as much as you
do.... This is not, as you seem to think, a popular and transitory
movement. It is the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation
against inveterate abuses. The conflagration is stirred up by great
parties, and there are scoundrels and fools in all of them. I behold
nothing in the Revolution but the King and the nation as a whole; all
that tends to separate them leads to their mutual ruin; I am doing all
I can to reunite them, and it is your part to aid me. If I am an
obstacle to your designs, say so, and I will at once offer my
resignation to the King, and go into a corner to bewail the fate of my
country and your own." The interview ended amicably. The Queen and
the minister talked over the different factions. Dumouriez spoke to
Marie Antoinette of the faults and crimes of each; he tried to convince
her that she was misled by those who surrounded her, and the Queen
appeared to be convinced. When he was obliged to call her attention to
the clock, as the hour for the Council had arrived, she dismissed him
most affably.
If we may credit Madame Campan, who has also given an account of this
interview, the impression Marie Antoinette received from it was
scarcely a {155} good one. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I found the
Queen extremely troubled. She said she no longer knew where she stood;
whether the Jacobin chiefs were making overtures to her through
Dumouriez, or Dumouriez, abandoning the Jacobins, was acting on his own
account; that she had given him an audience; that, when alone with her,
he had fallen at her feet and said that although he had pulled the red
bonnet down to his ears, yet he was not and could not be a Jacobin;
that the Revolution had been allowed to fall into the hands of a rabble
of disorganizers who, seeking only for pillage, were capable of
everything, and could furnish the Assembly with a formidable army,
ready to undermine the support of a throne already too much shaken.
While speaking with extreme warmth, he had seized the Queen's hand,
and, kissing it with transport, cried, 'Permit yourself to be saved!'
The Queen said to me that the protestations of a traitor could not be
believed, and that his entire conduct was so well known that
undoubtedly the wisest thing would be not to trust him."
Meantime, the danger constantly increased. Even the gates of the
Tuileries were no longer fastened. Hawkers of vile pamphlets and
sanguinary satires on the Queen cried their infamous wares under the
very windows of the palace; and the National Assembly, sitting close
beside, and hearing them--the National Assembly, terrorized by Jacobins
and pikemen--dared not even censure such baseness. On June 4, {156} a
deputy named Ribes, till then unknown, cited from the tribune the
titles of the following articles in Freron's journal, _l'Orateur du
Peuple_: "The crowned porcupine, a constitutional animal who behaves
unconstitutionally."--"Crimes of M. Capet since the
Revolution."--"Decree to be passed forbidding the Queen to sleep with
the King."--"The royal tigress, separated from her worthy spouse, to
serve as a hostage." "Rouse up!" cried the indignant deputy. "There
is still time. Join with me in proclaiming war on traitors and justice
for the seditious, and the country is safe!" Ribes preached in the
desert. The Assembly shrugged their shoulders and treated him as a
fool.
June 11, another deputy, M. Delsaux, said from the tribune: "Last
evening, at half-past seven, passing through the Tuileries, I saw an
orator standing on a chair and speaking with great vehemence. Mixing
with the crowd, I heard him read a libel strongly inciting to the
King's assassination. This libel is called, 'The Fall of the Idol of
the French,' and these sentences occur in it: 'This monster employs his
power and his treasures to hinder our regeneration. A new Charles IX.,
he wishes to bring desolation and death to France. Go, cruel wretch;
thy crimes shall have an end. Damiens was less guilty. He was
punished by most horrible tortures for having desired to deliver France
from a monster. And thou, whose offences are twenty-five million times
greater, art left unpunished! But tremble, tyrant; there is a Scaevola
amongst us.'"
{157}
The Assembly listened, but took no measures. No further restraint was
placed either on moral or material disorder. Anarchy showed a nameless
epileptic ferocity. Never had the press been more furious or
licentious. It was a torrent of mud and gall and blood. The limits of
invective and insult were driven further back. "You see that I am
annoyed," said the Queen to Dumouriez in Louis XVI.'s presence; "I dare
not go to the window looking into the garden. Last evening, needing a
breath of air, I showed myself at the window facing the courtyard. A
gunner belonging to the guard apostrophized me in an insulting way, and
added: 'What pleasure it would give me to have your head on the end of
my bayonet!' In that frightful garden a man standing on a chair reads
out horrors against us on one side, and on the other may be seen a
soldier or a priest whom they are dragging through a pond, and crushing
with blows and insults. Meantime, others are flying balloons or
quietly strolling about. Ah! what a place! what a people!"
{158}
XV.
ROLAND'S DISMISSAL FROM OFFICE.
In the ministry, as elsewhere, discord reigned. At first, the
ministers had seemed to be of one mind. They dined at each other's
houses four times a week, on the days when there was a meeting of the
Council. Friday was Roland's day for receiving his colleagues at his
table, where his wife presided and perorated. "These dinners," says
Etienne Dumont, "were often remarkable for their gaiety, of which no
situation can deprive Frenchmen when they meet in society, and which
was natural to men contented with themselves and flattered by their
elevation. The future was hidden from them by the present. The cares
of the ministry were forgotten. They seated themselves in their
dwellings as if they were to abide there forever." This sort of
political honeymoon could not last very long. Things presently began
to change for the worse. Dumouriez tired very soon of Madame Roland's
pretensions; she wanted to know, see, and direct everything, and he
persisted in refusing to transform himself into a puppet whose strings
were to be pulled by this woman and the Girondins. Madame Roland, who
{159} posed as a puritan, caused remonstrances to be addressed to
Dumouriez on the subject of some more or less suspicious affairs, said
to have been negotiated by Bonne-Carrere, the director at the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, by which Madame de Beauvert was supposed to have
gained large sums. The wife of the Minister of the Interior had a
grudge against the favorite of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. "She
is Dumouriez's mistress," said she; "she lives in his house and does
the honors at his table, to the great scandal of sensible men, who are
friendly to good morals and liberty. For this license on the part of a
public man charged with State affairs marks too plainly his contempt
for decorum; and Madame de Beauvert, Rivarol's sister, very well and
very unfavorably known, is surrounded by the tools of aristocracy,
unworthy in all respects." One evening, after dinner, Roland, "with
the gravity belonging to his age and character," as his wife says, gave
a lecture on morality to the Minister of Foreign Affairs apropos of
this matter. At first Dumouriez made jesting replies, but afterwards
showed temper and appeared displeased with his entertainers.
Thereafter he seldom visited the Ministry of the Interior. Reflecting
on this, Madame Roland said to her husband: "Though not a good judge of
intrigue, I think worldly wisdom would dictate that the hour has come
for getting rid of Dumouriez, if we wish to avoid being ruined by him.
I know very well that you would be unwilling to lower yourself to such
an {160} action; and yet it is plain that Dumouriez must be seeking to
disembarrass himself of those whose censure has offended him. When one
undertakes to preach, and does so in vain, he must either punish or
expect to be molested."
Thenceforward, Madame Roland formed a distinct group within the
ministry, composed of her husband, Claviere, and Servan, who had just
replaced De Grave as Minister of War. While Dumouriez, Lacoste, and
Duranton (whom Louis XVI. called "the good Duranton") allowed
themselves to be affected by the King's goodness, and sincerely wished
to save him, their three colleagues, inspired by the spiteful Madame
Roland, had but one idea: to destroy him. "Roland, Claviere, and
Servan," says Dumouriez in his Memoirs, "no longer observed any
moderation, not merely with their colleagues, but with the King
himself. At every meeting of the Council they abused the mildness of
this prince, in order to mortify and kill him with pin-pricks."
It was Servan who proposed forming a camp of twenty thousand federates
around Paris. He thought it would be a sort of central revolutionary
army, analogous to that English parliamentary army under command of
Cromwell, which had brought Charles I. to the scaffold. "Servan, a
very wicked man and most inimical to the King," says Dumouriez again,
"took the notion to write to the President of the Assembly, without
consulting his colleagues, and propose a decree for assembling an army
of twenty {161} thousand men around Paris. This was at the time when
the Girondin faction was at the height of its power, having the
Jacobins at their command, and governing Paris through Petion. They
wanted to destroy the Feuillants, perhaps at the sword's point, to put
down the court, and probably to begin putting their republican projects
into execution. Thus it was this faction which brought to Paris the
federates who ended by causing every one of them to perish on the
scaffold after making Louis XVI. ascend it." Dumouriez was indignant
that the Minister of War should have taken it on himself to propose
such a decree without even mentioning it to the sovereign. The dispute
on this matter was so violent that, but for the presence of the King,
the meeting of the Council might have come to a bloody close. Louis
XVI., deeply grieved by such scandals, resolved to dismiss the three
ministers, who, instead of supporting him, were merely conspirators who
had sworn his ruin.
The anguish of the unhappy monarch had reached its height. Four
councils were held without his returning the decrees submitted to him
for consideration. The National Assembly grew impatient. The Jacobins
were in a rage. At last the King concluded to take up in the Council
the decree relative to the camp of twenty thousand federates. "I
think," said Dumouriez, "that the decree is dangerous to the nation,
the King, the National Assembly, and above all to its authors, whose
chastisement it {162} will turn out to be; and yet, Sire, it is my
opinion that you cannot refuse it. It was proposed by profound malice,
debated with fury, and decreed with enthusiasm; everybody is blinded.
If you veto it, it will none the less be passed." The hesitation of
Louis XVI. redoubled. As to the decree concerning the clergy, he
declared that he would never sanction it. This was the only time that
Dumouriez ever saw "the character of this gentle soul somewhat changed
for the worse."
Meanwhile, Madame Roland, more impatient and vindictive than ever,
wrote the famous letter supposed to issue from her husband, which was
to echo in the ears of royalty like a funeral knell. She says of it:--
"The letter was written at one stroke, like nearly all matters of the
sort which I have done; for, to feel the necessity, the fitness of a
thing, to apprehend its good effect, to desire to produce it, and to
give form to the object from which this effect should result, was to me
but a single operation."
This letter, a veritable arraignment of the King, was much more like a
club speech or a newspaper article than a letter from a minister of
state to his sovereign. Such sentences as these occur in it: "Sire,
the existing state of things in France cannot long continue; it is a
crisis whose violence is attaining its highest point; it must end by an
outbreak which should interest Your Majesty as seriously as it affects
the entire kingdom.... It is no longer possible to draw back. The
Revolution is {163} accomplished in men's minds; it will end in blood
and be cemented by blood if wisdom does not avert the evils which it is
still possible to prevent.... Yet a little more delay, and the
afflicted people will behold in their King the friend and accomplice of
conspirators. Just Heaven! hast Thou stricken with blindness the
powerful of this earth, and will they never heed other counsels than
those which drag them to destruction! I know that the austere language
of truth is rarely welcomed near the throne; I know, also, that it is
because it so rarely obtains a hearing there that revolutions become
necessary; I know, above all, that I am bound to employ it to Your
Majesty, not merely as a citizen submissive to the law, but as a
minister honored with your confidence, or vested with functions which
imply this."
The letter also contained a defence of the two decrees, and plainly
threatened Louis XVI., should he veto them, with the horrors of a civil
war which would develop "that sombre energy, mother of virtues and of
crimes, which is always fatal to those who have evoked it!" Was not
Madame Roland here announcing the September massacres, and the heinous
crimes of which she herself was speedily to become one of the most
celebrated victims?
At first Roland sent this letter to the King, with a promise that it
should always remain a secret between them. But, incited by the vanity
of his wife, who was incessantly urging him on to notoriety and
display, Roland did not keep this promise. He read {164} the letter at
the next meeting of the Council, June 11. "The King," says Dumouriez,
"listened to this impudent diatribe with admirable patience, and said
with the greatest coolness: 'M. Roland, you had already sent me your
letter; it was unnecessary to read it to the Council, as it was to
remain a secret between ourselves.'" Dumouriez was summoned to the
palace the following morning, June 12. He found the King in his own
room, accompanied by the Queen. "Do you think, Monsieur," said Marie
Antoinette, "that the King ought to submit any longer to the threats
and insolence of Roland and the knavery of Servan and Claviere?"--"No,
Madame," he replied; "I am indignant at them; I admire the King's
patience, and I venture to ask him to make an entire change in his
ministry. Let him dismiss us on the spot, and appoint men belonging to
neither party."--"That is not my intention," said Louis XVI. "I wish
you to remain, as well as Lacoste and that good man, Duranton. Do me
the service of ridding me of these three factious and insolent persons,
for my patience is exhausted."--"It is a dangerous matter, Sire, but I
will do it." As a condition of remaining in the ministry, Dumouriez
exacted the sanction of the two decrees. There was another ministerial
council the same evening. Roland, Servan, and Claviere were more
insolent and acrimonious than usual. Louis XVI. closed the session
with mingled dissatisfaction and dignity.
At eight o'clock that evening (June 12), Servan, {165} the Minister of
War, went to Madame Roland and said: "Congratulate me! I have been
turned out."--"I am much piqued," replied she, "that you should be the
first to receive that honor, but I hope it will not be long before it
will be decreed to my husband also." Madame Roland's prayer was
granted. The virtuous Minister of the Interior received his letters of
dismissal the next morning. As Duranton, who delivered it at the
Ministry of Justice, was slowly drawing it from his pocket,--
"You make us wait for our liberty," said Roland; and, taking the
letter, he added, "In reality that is what it is." Then he went home
to his wife to announce to her that he was no longer minister.
Madame Roland, with the instinct of hatred, saw at once how to obtain
revenge. "One thing remains to be done," she cried; "we must be the
first to communicate the news to the Assembly, sending them at the same
time a copy of the letter to the King which must have caused it." This
idea pleased the ex-minister highly, and he put it instantly into
execution. "I was conscious," says the irascible Egeria of the
Girondins in her Memoirs, "of all the effects this might produce, and I
was not deceived; my double object was attained, and both utility and
glory attended the retirement of my husband. I had not been proud of
his entering the ministry, but I was of his leaving it." Thenceforward
Madame Roland was to be the most indefatigable cause of the Revolution,
and Louis XVI. was to learn by experience what the vengeance of a woman
can accomplish.
{166}
XVI.
A THREE DAYS' MINISTRY.
Dumouriez had taken the portfolio of war. He kept it three days only.
But during those three days what activity! what excitement! More than
fifteen hundred signatures affixed, instructions sent to all the
generals, a most tumultuous session of the National Assembly, a last
effort to induce Louis XVI. to make further concessions, a resignation
which was to be the signal for catastrophes. How the scenes of the
drama multiply! How the denouement is accelerated!
The session at which Dumouriez was to appear for the first time as
Minister of War could not fail to be singular. It took place June 13,
1792, and from ten o'clock in the morning all the galleries had been
crowded. The Jacobins had filled them with their satellites. The
Girondins had prepared a dramatic surprise. The three ex-ministers
were to be brought into the chamber under pretext of explaining the
causes of their dismissal. It was agreed that they should be received
as victims of the aristocracy and martyrs of the Revolution. Roland's
letter--say, rather, his wife's letter--to Louis XVI. was read to {167}
the Assembly and frequently interrupted by loud bursts of applause.
Just as it was finished, and some one was demanding that it should be
sent to all the eighty-three departments, Dumouriez entered the hall.
Murmurs and hisses arose on all sides. The Assembly voted the despatch
of the letter to the departments. A deputy exclaimed: "It will be a
famous document in the history of the Revolution and of the ministers."
The Assembly went on to declare that Roland was followed by the regrets
of the nation. Then Dumouriez ascended the tribune and read a message
in which M. Lafayette announced the death of M. de Gouvion. He had
been major-general of the National Guard, and, having quitted the
Assembly rather than be present at the triumph of the Swiss of
Chateauvieux, had met his death bravely in the Army of the North. "A
cannon-ball," said the message, "has terminated a virtuous life." The
Assembly was affected, and voted complimentary condolences to the
father of the heroic officer.
Afterwards, Dumouriez read his report on military affairs. It was a
long criticism on the legislators who had ordered a new levy of troops
before providing the existing corps with their full complements; on the
muster-masters, the standing committees, and the market-contractors,
who were piling up abuses. Dumouriez complained of everything; he
reproached the factions, and insisted on the consideration due to
ministers. Guadet thundered out: "Do you hear him? He already thinks
himself so {168} sure of power that he takes it on him to give us
advice."--"And why not?" resumed the minister, turning toward the side
of the Mountain.[1] This bold response astonished the most furious.
Some one said: "The document is not signed. Let him sign it! Let him
sign it!" Dumouriez called for pen and ink, signed his memoir, and
went to lay it on the desk. Then he slowly crossed the hall and went
quietly out by the door beneath the Mountain, with a haughty glance at
his adversaries. His martial attitude disconcerted them. The shouts
and hootings ceased, and complete silence ensued. On leaving the
Assembly, Dumouriez was surrounded by a group of persons before the
door of the Feuillants, but their faces displayed no signs of anger
toward him. As soon as he quitted the Assembly, his enemies, no longer
intimidated by his presence, redoubled their attacks. Three or four
deputies left the Chamber, and making their way to him through the
crowd, said: "They are raising the devil inside; they would like to
send you to Orleans." (It was there the Duke de Brissac was imprisoned
and the Superior Court held its sessions.) "So much the better,"
replied Dumouriez; "I would take the baths, drink butter-milk, and rest
myself." This sally amused the crowd, and the minister as he entered
the Tuileries garden, said to the deputies who followed him: "It will
be a mistake for my enemies to have {169} my memoir printed, for it
will bring all good citizens back to me. At present, being drunk and
crazy, you have just extolled Roland's infamous perfidy to the skies."
Then he went to the palace. Louis XVI. complimented him on his
firmness, but absolutely refused to sanction the decree against the
priests.
Far from ameliorating, the situation continued to grow worse. Petion's
emissaries stirred up the inhabitants of the faubourgs. That evening
Dumouriez sent a letter to the King announcing that a riot was
apprehended. Louis XVI. suspected that the minister was lying, and
wrote to him: "Do not believe, Monsieur, that any one can succeed in
frightening me by threats; my resolution is taken." Dumouriez had
based his entire scheme on the hypothesis that the decree concerning
the priests would be accepted by the King. From the moment that Louis
XVI. rejected it, Dumouriez no longer hoped to remain in the ministry.
He wrote again, imploring the sovereign to give it his sanction, and
announcing that, in case of his refusal, the ministers would all feel
obliged to retire. The next day, June 15, the King received them in
his chamber. "Are you still," said he to Dumouriez, "in the same
sentiments expressed in your letter last evening?"--"Yes, Sire, if Your
Majesty will not permit yourself to be moved by our fidelity and
attachment."--"Very well," replied Louis XVI., with a gloomy air,
"since your decision is made, I accept your resignation and will
provide for it." Dumouriez was no {170} longer a minister. In his
Memoirs he describes himself as much affected, "not on account of
quitting a dangerous post, which simply made his existence disturbed
and painful, but because he saw all his trouble thrown away, and the
King handed over to the fury of cruel enemies and the criminal
indiscretion of false friends."
At bottom, Dumouriez inspired nobody with confidence. He belonged to
no party, and no one knew his opinions. He had leaned on both Jacobins
and Girondins, while at the same time he was inspiring certain hopes in
the Feuillants, and flattering the King, to whom he promised signs and
wonders. Too revolutionary for the conservatives and too conservative
for the revolutionists, he had tried a see-saw policy which would no
longer answer. It became indispensable to make a choice. It was
impossible to please both the Jacobins and the court.
And yet Dumouriez was a man of resources, and it is much to be
regretted, on the King's account, that no better understanding could be
arrived at between them. More successfully than any one else,
Dumouriez might have resorted to bold measures and called in at this
time the intervention of the army, as he did several years later. He
loved money and rank; royalty still excited a great prestige over him,
and he had used the Revolution as a means, not as an end.
Could Louis XVI. have pretended patience for a few days longer, perhaps
he might have extricated {171} himself from difficulties which, though
grave, were still not insoluble. He did not choose his hour for
resistance wisely. It was either too late or too soon. The dismission
of Dumouriez was a blunder. At what moment did Louis XVI. elect to
deprive himself of his minister's aid? That very one when, attacked by
the Girondins, exasperated by Roland's conduct, and disgusted with the
progress of anarchy, the force of circumstances was about to toss
Dumouriez back to the side of the reactionists. The camp of twenty
thousand men, if confided to safe hands, and secret service money
judiciously employed, might have become the nucleus of a monarchical
resistance. Lafayette and his partisans were becoming conservative,
and between him and Dumouriez agreement was not impossible. Louis XVI.
was in too great a hurry. His conscience revolted at an unfortunate
moment. Why, if he was bent on this veto, so just, so honest, but so
ill-timed, had he freely made so many concessions which thus became
inexplicable? In rejecting the offers of Dumouriez, the Queen possibly
deprived herself of her only remaining support. He who saved France in
the Passes of Argonne might, had he gained the entire confidence of
Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, have saved the King and royalty.