THE MINISTRY OF M. ROLAND.
1792
Parlor of Madame Roland.--Vacillation of Louis.--Measures of the
Girondists.--Their perilous position.--Rumors of invasion.--The
rabble.--Danger of the Girondists.--Their demand of the king.--Letter
to the king.--Its character.--Refusal of the king.--Dismissal of M.
Roland.--The letter read to the Assembly.--Its celebrity.--Increasing
influence of the Rolands.--Barbaroux.--Project of a republic.--Seconded
by Madame Roland.--Barbaroux's opinion of the Rolands.--The Girondists
desert the king.--Madame Roland's influence over the Girondists.--Buzot
adores her.--Madame Roland's opinion of Buzot.--Effect of her
death.--Danton at Madame Roland's.--New scenes of violence.--Outrages
of the mob.--Recall of M. Roland.--Perilous situation of M. Roland.--His
wife's mode of living.--Library of Madame Roland.--Meetings
there.--Striking contrast.--Labors of Madame Roland.--French
artists at Rome.--Letter to the pope.--Anecdote.--Reverses of
fortune.--Increasing anarchy.--Baseness of the Jacobins.--The throne
demolished.--Cry for a republic.--The Republic.--Waning of M. Roland's
power.--Madame Roland's disgust at the horrors of the Revolution.
From all the spacious apartments of the magnificent mansion allotted
as the residence of the Minister of the Interior, Madame Roland
selected a small and retired parlor, which she had furnished with
every attraction as a library and a study. This was her much-loved
retreat, and here M. Roland, in the presence of his wife, was
accustomed to see his friends in all their confidential intercourse.
Thus she was not only made acquainted with all the important
occurrences of the times, but she formed an intimate personal
acquaintance with the leading actors in these eventful movements.
Louis, adopting a vacillating policy, in his endeavors to conciliate
each party was losing the confidence and the support of all. The
Girondists, foreseeing the danger which threatened the king and all
the institutions of government, were anxious that he should be
persuaded to abandon these mistaken measures, and firmly and openly
advocate the reforms which had already taken place. They felt that if
he would energetically take his stand in the position which the
Girondists had assumed, there was still safety for himself and the
nation. The Girondists, at this time, wished to sustain the throne,
but they wished to limit its power and surround it by the institutions
of republican liberty. The king, animated by his far more
strong-minded, energetic, and ambitious queen, was slowly and
reluctantly surrendering point by point as the pressure of the
multitude compelled, while he was continually hoping that some change
in affairs would enable him to regain his lost power.
The position of the Girondists began to be more and more perilous. The
army of emigrant nobles at Coblentz, within the dominions of the King
of Prussia, was rapidly increasing in numbers. Frederic was
threatening, in alliance with all the most powerful crowns of Europe,
to march with a resistless army to Paris, reinstate the king in his
lost authority, and take signal vengeance upon the leaders of the
Revolution. There were hundreds of thousands in France, the most
illustrious in rank and opulence, who would join such an army. The
Roman Catholic priesthood, to a man, would lend to it the influence
of all its spiritual authority. Paris was every hour agitated by
rumors of the approach of the armies of invasion. The people all
believed that Louis wished to escape from Paris and head that army.
The king was spiritless, undecided, and ever vacillating in his plans.
Maria Antoinette would have gone through fire and blood to have
rallied those hosts around her banner. Such was the position of the
Girondists in reference to the Royalists. They were ready to adopt the
most energetic measures to repel the interference of this armed
confederacy.
On the other hand, they saw another party, noisy, turbulent,
sanguinary, rising beneath them, and threatening with destruction all
connected in any way with the execrated throne. This new party, now
emerging from the lowest strata of society, upheaving all its
superincumbent masses, consisted of the wan, the starving, the
haggard, the reckless. All of the abandoned and the dissolute rallied
beneath its banners. They called themselves the people. Amazonian
fish-women; overgrown boys, with the faces and the hearts of demons;
men and girls, who had no homes but the kennels of Paris, in countless
thousands swelled its demonstrations of power, whenever it pleased
its leaders to call them out. This was the Jacobin party.
The Girondists trembled before this mysterious apparition now looming
up before them, and clamoring for the overthrow of all human
distinctions. The crown had been struck from the head of the king, and
was snatched at by the most menial and degraded of his subjects. The
Girondists, through Madame Roland, urged the Minister of the Interior
that he should demand of the king an immediate proclamation of war
against the emigrants and their supporters, and that he should also
issue a decree against the Catholic clergy who would not support the
measures of the Revolution. It was, indeed, a bitter draught for the
king to drink. Louis declared that he would rather die than sign such
a decree. The pressure of the populace was so tremendous, displayed in
mobs, and conflagrations, and massacres, that these decisive measures
seemed absolutely indispensable for the preservation of the Girondist
party and the safety of the king. M. Roland was urged to present to
the throne a most earnest letter of expostulation and advice. Madame
Roland sat down at her desk and wrote the letter for her husband. It
was expressed in that glowing and impassioned style so eminently at
her command. Its fervid eloquence was inspired by the foresight she
had of impending perils. M. Roland, impressed by its eloquence, yet
almost trembling in view of its boldness and its truths, presented the
letter to the king. Its last paragraphs will give one some idea of its
character.
"Love, serve the Revolution, and the people will love it and serve
it in you. Deposed priests agitate the provinces. Ratify the
measures to extirpate their fanaticism. Paris trembles in view of
its danger. Surround its walls with an army of defense. Delay
longer, and you will be deemed a conspirator and an accomplice.
Just Heaven! hast thou stricken kings with blindness? I know that
truth is rarely welcomed at the foot of thrones. I know, too, that
the withholding of truth from kings renders revolutions so often
necessary. As a citizen, a minister, I owe truth to the king, and
nothing shall prevent me from making it reach his ear."
The advice contained in this letter was most unpalatable to the
enfeebled monarch. The adoption of the course it recommended was
apparently his only chance of refuge from certain destruction. We must
respect the magnanimity of the king in refusing to sign the decree
against the firmest friends of his throne, and we must also respect
those who were struggling against despotic power for the establishment
of civil and religious freedom. When we think of the king and his
suffering family, our sympathies are so enlisted in behalf of their
woes that we condemn the letter as harsh and unfeeling. When we think
for how many ages the people of France had been crushed into poverty
and debasement, we rejoice to hear stern and uncompromising truth fall
upon the ear of royalty. And yet Madame Roland's letter rather excites
our admiration for her wonderful abilities than allures us to her by
developments of female loveliness. This celebrated letter was
presented to the king on the 11th of June, 1792. On the same day M.
Roland received a letter from the king informing him that he was
dismissed from office. It is impossible to refrain from applauding the
king for this manifestation of spirit and self-respect. Had he
exhibited more of this energy, he might at least have had the honor of
dying more gloriously; but, as the intrepid wife of the minister
dictated the letter to the king, we can not doubt that it was the
imperious wife of the king who dictated the dismissal in reply. Maria
Antoinette and Madame Roland met as Greek meets Greek.
"Here am I, dismissed from office," was M. Roland's exclamation to his
wife on his return home.
"Present your letter to the Assembly, that the nation may see for what
counsel you have been dismissed," replied the undaunted wife.
M. Roland did so. He was received as a martyr to patriotism. The
letter was read amid the loudest applauses. It was ordered to be
printed, and circulated by tens of thousands through the eighty-three
departments of the kingdom; and from all those departments there came
rolling back upon the metropolis the echo of the most tumultuous
indignation and applause. The famous letter was read by all
France--nay, more, by all Europe. Roland was a hero. The plaudits of
the million fell upon the ear of the defeated minister, while the
execrations of the million rose more loudly and ominously around the
tottering throne. This blow, struck by Madame Roland, was by far the
heaviest the throne of France had yet received. She who so loved to
play the part of a heroine was not at all dismayed by defeat, when it
came with such an aggrandizement of power. Upon this wave of
enthusiastic popularity Madame Roland and her husband retired from the
magnificent palace where they had dwelt for so short a time, and, with
a little pardonable ostentation, selected for their retreat very
humble apartments in an apparently obscure street of the agitated
metropolis. It was the retirement of a philosopher proud of the gloom
of his garret. But M. Roland and wife were more powerful now than ever
before. The famous letter had placed them in the front ranks of the
friends of reform, and enshrined them in the hearts of the ever fickle
populace. Even the Jacobins were compelled to swell the universal
voice of commendation. M. Roland's apartments were ever thronged. All
important plans were discussed and shaped by him and his wife before
they were presented in the Assembly.
There was a young statesman then in Paris named Barbaroux, of
remarkable beauty of person, and of the richest mental endowments. The
elegance of his stature and the pensive melancholy of his classic
features invested him with a peculiar power of fascination. Between
him and Madame Roland there existed the most pure, though the
strongest friendship. One day he was sitting with M. Roland and wife,
in social conference upon the desperate troubles of the times, when
the dismissed minister said to him, "What is to be done to save
France? There is no army upon which we can rely to resist invasion.
Unless we can circumvent the plots of the court, all we have gained is
lost. In six weeks the Austrians will be at Paris. Have we, then,
labored at the most glorious of revolutions for so many years, to see
it overthrown in a single day? If liberty dies in France, it is lost
forever to mankind. All the hopes of philosophy are deceived.
Prejudice and tyranny will again grasp the world. Let us prevent this
misfortune. If the armies of despotism overrun the north of France,
let us retire to the southern provinces, and there establish a
_republic_ of freemen."
The tears glistened in the eyes of his wife as she listened to this
bold proposal, so heroic in its conception, so full of hazard, and
demanding such miracles of self-sacrifice and devotion. Madame Roland,
who perhaps originally suggested the idea to her husband, urged it
with all her impassioned energy. Barbaroux was just the man to have
his whole soul inflamed by an enterprise of such grandeur. He drew a
rapid sketch of the resources and hopes of liberty in the south, and,
taking a map, traced the limits of the republic, from the Doubs, the
Aire, and the Rhone, to La Dordogne; and from the inaccessible
mountains of Auvergne, to Durance and the sea. A serene joy passed
over the features of the three, thus quietly originating a plan which
was, with an earthquake's power, to make every throne in Europe
totter, and to convulse Christendom to its very center. Barbaroux left
them deeply impressed with a sense of the grandeur and the perils of
the enterprise, and remarked to a friend, "Of all the men of modern
times, Roland seems to me most to resemble Cato; but it must be owned
that it is to his wife that his courage and talents are due." Previous
to this hour the Girondists had wished to sustain the throne, and
merely to surround it with free institutions. They had taken the
government of England for their model. From this day the Girondists,
freed from all obligations to the king, conspired secretly in Madame
Roland's chamber, and publicly in the tribune, for the entire
overthrow of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic like
that of the United States. They rivaled the Jacobins in the endeavor
to see who could strike the heaviest blows against the throne. It was
now a struggle between life and death. The triumph of the invading
army would be the utter destruction of all connected with the
revolutionary movement. And thus did Madame Roland exert an influence
more powerful, perhaps, than that of any other one mind in the
demolition of the Bourbon despotism.
Her influence over the Girondist party was such as no _man_ ever can
exert. Her conduct, frank and open-hearted, was irreproachable, ever
above even the slightest suspicion of indiscretion. She could not be
insensible to the homage, the admiration of those she gathered around
her. Buzot adored Madame Roland as the inspiration of his mind, as the
idol of his worship. She had involuntarily gained that entire
ascendency over his whole being which made her the world to him. The
secret of this resistless enchantment was concealed until her death;
it was then disclosed, and revealed the mystery of a spiritual
conflict such as few can comprehend. She writes of Buzot, "Sensible,
ardent, melancholy, he seems born to give and share happiness. This
man would forget the universe in the sweetness of private virtues.
Capable of sublime impulses and unvarying affections, the vulgar, who
like to depreciate what it can not equal, accuse him of being a
dreamer. Of sweet countenance, elegant figure, there is always in his
attire that care, neatness, and propriety which announce the respect
of self as well as of others. While the dregs of the nation elevate
the flatterers and corrupters of the people to station--while
cut-throats swear, drink, and clothe themselves in rags, in order to
fraternize with the populace, Buzot possesses the morality of
Socrates, and maintains the decorum of Scipio. So they pull down his
house, and banish him as they did Aristides. I am astonished that they
have not issued a decree that his name should be forgotten."
These words Madame Roland wrote in her dungeon the night before her
execution. Buzot was then an exile, pursued by unrelenting fury, and
concealed in the caves of St. Emilion. When the tidings reached him of
the death of Madame Roland, he fell to the ground as if struck by
lightning. For many days he was in a state of phrensy, and was never
again restored to cheerfulness.
Danton now appeared in the saloon of Madame Roland, with his gigantic
stature, and shaggy hair, and voice of thunder, and crouched at the
feet of this mistress of hearts, whom his sagacity perceived was soon
again to be the dispenser of power. She comprehended at a glance his
herculean abilities, and the important aid he could render the
Republican cause. She wished to win his co-operation, and at first
tried to conciliate him, "as a woman would pat a lion;" but soon,
convinced of his heartlessness and utter want of principle, she
spurned him with abhorrence. He subsequently endeavored, again and
again, to reinstate himself in her favor, but in vain. Every hour
scenes of new violence were being enacted in Paris and throughout all
France. Roland was the idol of the nation. The famous letter was the
subject of universal admiration. The outcry against his dismission was
falling in thunder tones on the ear of the king. This act had fanned
to increased intensity those flames of revolutionary phrensy which
were now glaring with portentous flashes in every part of France. The
people, intoxicated and maddened by the discovery of their power, were
now arrayed, with irresistible thirstings for destruction and blood,
against the king, the court, and the nobility. The royal family,
imprisoned in the Tuileries, were each day drinking of the cup of
humiliation to its lowest dregs. Austria and Prussia, united with the
emigrants at Coblentz, prepared to march to Paris to reinstate the
king upon his throne. Excitement, consternation, phrensy, pervaded all
hearts. A vast assemblage of countless thousands of women, and boys,
and wan and starving men, gathered in the streets of Paris. Harangues
against the king and the aristocrats rendered them delirious with
rage. They crowded all the avenues to the Tuileries, burst through the
gates and over the walls, dashed down the doors and stove in the
windows, and, with obscene ribaldry, rioted through all the apartments
sacred to royalty. They thrust the dirty red cap of Jacobinism upon
the head of the King. They poured into the ear of the humiliated queen
the most revolting and loathsome execrations. There was no hope for
Louis but in the recall of M. Roland. The court party could give him
no protection. The Jacobins were upon him in locust legions. M. Roland
alone could bring the Girondists, as a shield, between the throne and
the mob. He was recalled, and again moved, in calm triumph, from his
obscure chambers to the regal palace of the minister. If Madame
Roland's letter dismissed him from office, her letter also restored
him again with an enormous accumulation of power.
[Illustration: THE LIBRARY.]
His situation was not an enviable one. Elevated as it was in dignity
and influence, it was full of perplexity, toil, and peril. The spirit
of revolution was now rampant, and no earthly power could stay it. It
was inevitable that those who would not recklessly ride upon its
billows must be overwhelmed by its resistless surges. Madame Roland
was far more conscious of the peril than her husband. With intense
emotion, but calmly and firmly, she looked upon the gathering storm.
The peculiarity of her character, and her great moral courage, was
illustrated by the mode of life she vigorously adopted. Raised from
obscurity to a position so commanding, with rank and wealth bowing
obsequiously around her, she was entirely undazzled, and resolved
that, consecrating all her energies to the demands of the tempestuous
times, she would waste no time in fashionable parties and heartless
visits. "My love of study," she said, "is as great as my detestation
of cards, and the society of silly people affords me no amusement."
Twice a week she gave a dinner to the members of the ministry, and
other influential men in the political world, with whom her husband
wished to converse. The palace was furnished to their hands by its
former occupants with Oriental luxury. Selecting for her own use, as
before, one of the smallest parlors, she furnished it as her library.
Here she lived, engrossed in study, busy with her pen, and taking an
unostentatious and unseen, but most active part, in all those measures
which were literally agitating the whole civilized world. Her little
library was the sanctuary for all confidential conversation upon
matters of state. Here her husband met his political friends to mature
their measures. The gentlemen gathered, evening after evening, around
the table in the center of the room, M. Roland, with his serene,
reflective brow, presiding at their head, while Madame Roland, at her
work-table by the fireside, employed herself with her needle or her
pen. Her mind, however, was absorbed by the conversation which was
passing. M. Roland, in fact, in giving his own views, was but
recapitulating those sentiments with which his mind was imbued from
previous conference with his companion.
It is not possible that one endowed with the ardent and glowing
imagination of Madame Roland should not, at times, feel inwardly the
spirit of exultation in the consciousness of this vast power. From the
windows of her palace she looked down upon the shop of the mechanic
where her infancy was cradled, and upon those dusty streets where she
had walked an obscure child, while proud aristocracy swept by her in
splendor--that very aristocracy looking now imploringly to her for a
smile. She possessed that peculiar tact, which enabled her often to
guide the course of political measures without appearing to do so. She
was only anxious to promote the glory of her husband, and was never
more happy than when he was receiving plaudits for works which she had
performed. She wrote many of his proclamations, his letters, his state
papers, and with all the glowing fervor of an enthusiastic woman.
"Without me," she writes, "my husband would have been quite as good a
minister, for his knowledge, his activity, his integrity were all his
own; but with me he attracted more attention, because I infused into
his writings that mixture of spirit and gentleness, of authoritative
reason and seducing sentiment, which is, perhaps, only to be found in
the language of a woman who has a clear head and a feeling heart."
This frank avowal of just self-appreciation is not vanity. A _vain_
woman could not have won the love and homage of so many of the noblest
men of France.
A curious circumstance occurred at this time, which forcibly and even
ludicrously struck Madame Roland's mind, as she reflected upon the
wonderful changes of life, and the peculiar position which she now
occupied. Some French artists had been imprisoned by the pope at Rome.
The Executive Council of France wished to remonstrate and demand their
release. Madame Roland sat down to write the letter, severe and
authoritative, to his holiness, threatening him with the severest
vengeance if he refused to comply with the request. As in her little
library she prepared this communication to the head of the Papal
States and of the Catholic Church, she paused, with her pen in her
hand, and reflected upon her situation but a few years before as the
humble daughter of an engraver. She recalled to mind the emotions of
superstitious awe and adoration with which, in the nunnery, she had
regarded his holiness as next to the Deity, and almost his equal. She
read over some of the imperious passages which she had now addressed
to the pope in the unaffected dignity of conscious power, and the
contrast was so striking, and struck her as so ludicrous, that she
burst into an uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter.
When Jane was a diffident maiden of seventeen, she went once with her
aunt to the residence of a nobleman of exalted rank and vast wealth,
and had there been invited to dine _with the servants_. The proud
spirit of Jane was touched to the quick. With a burning brow she sat
down in the servants' hall, with stewards, and butlers, and cooks, and
footmen, and _valet de chambres_, and ladies' maids of every degree,
all dressed in tawdry finery, and assuming the most disgusting airs of
self-importance. She went home despising in her heart both lords and
menials, and dreaming, with new aspirations, of her Roman republic.
One day, when Madame Roland was in power, she had just passed from her
splendid dining-room, where she had been entertaining the most
distinguished men of the empire, into her drawing-room, when a
gray-headed gentleman entered, and bowing profoundly and most
obsequiously before her, entreated the honor of an introduction to the
Minister of the Interior. This gentleman was M. Haudry, with whose
servants she had been invited to dine. This once proud aristocrat,
who, in the wreck of the Revolution, had lost both wealth and rank,
now saw Madame Roland elevated as far above him as he had formerly
been exalted above her. She remembered the many scenes in which her
spirit had been humiliated by haughty assumptions. She could not but
feel the triumph to which circumstances had borne her, though
magnanimity restrained its manifestation.
Anarchy now reigned throughout France. The king and the royal family
were imprisoned in the Temple. The Girondists in the Legislative
Assembly, which had now assumed the name of the National Convention,
and M. Roland at the head of the ministry, were struggling, with
herculean exertions, to restore the dominion of law, and, if possible,
to save the life of the king. The Jacobins, who, unable to resist the
boundless popularity of M. Roland, had, for a time, co-operated with
the Girondists, now began to separate themselves again more and more
widely from them. They flattered the mob. They encouraged every
possible demonstration of lawless violence. They pandered to the
passions of the multitude by affecting grossness and vulgarity in
person, and language, and manners; by clamoring for the division of
property, and for the death of the king. In tones daily increasing in
boldness and efficiency, they declared the Girondists to be the
friends of the monarch, and the enemies of popular liberty. Upon this
tumultuous wave of polluted democracy, now rising with resistless and
crested billow, Danton and Robespierre were riding into their terrific
power. Humanity shut its eyes in view of the hideous apparition of wan
and haggard beggary and crime. The deep mutterings of this rising
storm, which no earthly hand might stay, rolled heavily upon the ear
of Europe. Christendom looked astounded upon the spectacle of a
barbarian invasion bursting forth from the cellars and garrets of
Paris. Oppressed and degraded humanity was about to take vengeance for
its ages of accumulated wrongs. The throne was demolished. The
insulted royal family, in rags and almost in starvation, were in a
dungeon. The universal cry from the masses of the people was now for a
republic. Jacobins and Girondists united in this cry; but the Jacobins
accused the Girondists of being insincere, and of secretly plotting
for the restoration of the king.
Madame Roland, in the name of her husband, drew up for the Convention
the plan of a republic as a substitute for the throne. From childhood
she had yearned for a republic, with its liberty and purity,
fascinated by the ideal of Roman virtue, from which her lively
imagination had banished all human corruption. But now that the throne
and hereditary rank were virtually abolished, and all France clamoring
for a republic, and the pen in her hand to present to the National
Assembly a Constitution of popular liberty, her heart misgave her. Her
husband was nominally Minister of the Interior, but his power was
gone. The mob of Paris had usurped the place of king, and
Constitution, and law. The Jacobins were attaining the decided
ascendency. The guillotine was daily crimsoned with the blood of the
noblest citizens of France. The streets and the prisons were polluted
with the massacre of the innocent. The soul of Madame Roland recoiled
with horror at the scenes she daily witnessed. The Girondists
struggled in vain to resist the torrent, but they were swept before
it. The time had been when the proclamation of a republic would have
filled her soul with inexpressible joy. Now she could see no gleam of
hope for her country. The restoration of the monarchy was impossible.
The substitution of a republic was inevitable. No earthly power could
prevent it. In that republic she saw only the precursor of her own
ruin, the ruin of all dear to her, and general anarchy. With a
dejected spirit she wrote to a friend, "We are under the knife of
Robespierre and Marat. You know my enthusiasm for the Revolution. I am
ashamed of it now. It has been sullied by monsters. It is hideous."