CHAPTER I

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HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION FROM 1789 TO 1814

BY

F.A.M. MIGNET

INTRODUCTION

Of the great incidents of History, none has attracted more attention or

proved more difficult of interpretation than the French Revolution. The

ultimate significance of other striking events and their place in the

development of mankind can be readily estimated. It is clear enough that

the barbarian invasions marked the death of the classical world, already

mortally wounded by the rise of Christianity. It is clear enough that the

Renaissance emancipated the human intellect from the trammels of a bastard

mediaevalism, that the Reformation consolidated the victory of the "new

learning" by including theology among the subjects of human debate. But

the French Revolution seems to defy complete analysis. Its complexity was

great, its contradictions numerous and astounding. A movement ostensibly

directed against despotism culminated in the establishment of a despotism

far more complete than that which had been overthrown. The apostles of

liberty proscribed whole classes of their fellow-citizens, drenching in

innocent blood the land which they claimed to deliver from oppression. The

apostles of equality established a tyranny of horror, labouring to

extirpate all who had committed the sin of being fortunate. The apostles

of fraternity carried fire and sword to the farthest confines of Europe,

demanding that a continent should submit to the arbitrary dictation of a

single people. And of the Revolution were born the most rigid of modern

codes of law, that spirit of militarism which to-day has caused a world to

mourn, that intolerance of intolerance which has armed anti-clerical

persecutions in all lands. Nor were the actors in the drama less varied

than the scenes enacted. The Revolution produced Mirabeau and Talleyrand,

Robespierre and Napoleon, Sieyès and Hébert. The marshals of the First

Empire, the doctrinaires of the Restoration, the journalists of the

Orleanist monarchy, all were alike the children of this generation of

storm and stress, of high idealism and gross brutality, of changing

fortunes and glory mingled with disaster.

To describe the whole character of a movement so complex, so diverse in

its promises and fulfilment, so crowded with incident, so rich in action,

may well be declared impossible. No sooner has some proposition been

apparently established, than a new aspect of the period is suddenly

revealed, and all judgments have forthwith to be revised. That the

Revolution was a great event is certain; all else seems to be uncertain.

For some it is, as it was for Charles Fox, much the greatest of all events

and much the best. For some it is, as it was for Burke, the accursed

thing, the abomination of desolation. If its dark side alone be regarded,

it oppresses the very soul of man. A king, guilty of little more than

amiable weakness and legitimate or pious affection; a queen whose gravest

fault was but the frivolity of youth and beauty, was done to death. For

loyalty to her friends, Madame Roland died; for loving her husband,

Lucille Desmoulins perished. The agents of the Terror spared neither age

nor sex; neither the eminence of high attainment nor the insignificance of

dull mediocrity won mercy at their hands. The miserable Du Barri was

dragged from her obscure retreat to share the fate of a Malesherbes, a

Bailly, a Lavoisier. Robespierre was no more protected by his cold

incorruptibility, than was Barnave by his eloquence, Hébert by his

sensuality, Danton by his practical good sense. Nothing availed to save

from the all-devouring guillotine. Those who did survive seem almost to

have survived by chance, delivered by some caprice of fortune or by the

criminal levity of "les tricoteuses," vile women who degraded the very

dregs of their sex.

For such atrocities no apology need be attempted, but their cause may be

explained, the factors which produced such popular fury may be understood.

As he stands on the terrace of Versailles or wanders through the vast

apartments of the château, the traveller sees in imagination the dramatic

panorama of the long-dead past. The courtyard is filled with half-demented

women, clamouring that the Father of his People should feed his starving

children. The Well-Beloved jests cynically as, amid torrents of rain,

Pompadour is borne to her grave. Maintenon, gloomily pious, urges with

sinister whispers the commission of a great crime, bidding the king save

his vice-laden soul. Montespan laughs happily in her brief days of

triumph. And dominating the scene is the imposing figure of the Grand

Monarque. Louis haunts his great creation; Louis in his prime, the admired

and feared of Europe, the incarnation of kingship; Louis surrounded by

his gay and brilliant court, all eager to echo his historic boast, to sink

in their master the last traces of their identity.

Then a veil falls. But some can lift it, to behold a far different, a far

more stirring vision, and to such the deeper causes of the Terror are

revealed. For they behold a vast multitude, stained with care, haggard,

forlorn, striving, dying, toiling even to their death, that the passing

whim of a tyrant may be gratified. Louis commanded; Versailles arose, a

palace of rare delight for princes and nobles, for wits and courtly

prelates, for grave philosophers and ladies frail as fair. A palace and a

hell, a grim monument to regal egoism, created to minister to the inflated

vanity of a despot, an eternal warning to mankind that the abuse of

absolute power is an accursed thing. Every flower, in those wide gardens

has been watered with the tears of stricken souls; every stone in that

vast pile of buildings was cemented with human blood. None can estimate

the toll of anguish exacted that Versailles might be; none can tell all

its cost, since for human suffering there is no price. The weary toilers

went to their doom, unnoticed, unhonoured, their misery unregarded, their

pain ignored, And the king rejoiced in his glory, while his poets sang

paeans in his praise.

But the day of reckoning came, and that day was the Terror. The heirs of

those who toiled made their account with the heirs of those who played.

The players died bravely, like the gallant gentlemen they were; their

courage is applauded, a world laments their fate. The misery, thus

avenged, is forgotten; all the long agony of centuries, all the sunless

hours, all the darkness of a land's despair. For that sadness was hidden;

it was but the exceeding bitter lot of the poor, devoid of that dramatic

interest which illumines one immortal hour of pain. Yet he who would

estimate aright the Terror, who would fully understand the Revolution,

must reflect not only upon the suffering of those who fell victims to an

outburst of insensate frenzy, but also upon the suffering by which that

frenzy was aroused. In a few months the French people took what recompense

they might for many decades of oppression. They exacted retribution for

the building of Versailles, of all the châteaux of Touraine; for all the

burdens laid upon them since that day when liberty was enchained and

France became the bond-slave of her monarchs. Louis XVI. paid for the

selfish glory of Louis XIV.; the nobles paid for the pleasures which their

forefathers had so carelessly enjoyed; the privileged classes for the

privileges which they had usurped and had so grievously misused.

The payment fell heavily upon individuals; the innocent often suffered for

the guilty; a Liancourt died while a Polignac escaped. Many who wished

well to France, many who had laboured for her salvation, perished; virtue

received the just punishment of vice. But the Revolution has another side;

it was no mere nightmare of horrors piled on horrors. It is part of the

pathos of History that no good has been unattended by evil, that by

suffering alone is mankind redeemed, that through the valley of shadow

lies the path by which the race toils slowly towards the fulfilment of its

high destiny. And if the victims of the guillotine could have foreseen the

future, many might have died gladly. For by their death they brought the

new France to birth. The Revolution rises superior to the crimes and

follies of its authors; it has atoned to posterity for all the sorrow that

it caused, for all the wrong that was done in its name. If it killed

laughter, it also dried many tears. By it privilege was slain in France,

tyranny rendered more improbable, almost impossible. The canker of a

debased feudalism was swept away. Men were made equal before the law.

Those barriers by which the flow of economic life in France was checked

were broken down. All careers were thrown open to talent. The right of the

producer to a voice in the distribution of the product was recognised.

Above all, a new gospel of political liberty was expounded. The world, and

the princes of the world, learned that peoples do not exist for the

pleasure of some despot and the profit of his cringing satellites. In the

order of nature, nothing can be born save through suffering; in the order

of politics, this is no less true. From the sorrow of brief months has

grown the joy of long years; the Revolution slew that it might also make

alive.

Herein, perhaps, may be found the secret of its complexity, of its seeming

contradictions. The authors of the Revolution pursued an ideal, an ideal

expressed in three words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. That they might

win their quest, they had both to destroy and to construct. They had to

sweep away the past, and from the resultant chaos to construct a new

order. Alike in destruction and construction, they committed errors; they

fell far below their high ideals. The altruistic enthusiasts of the

National Assembly gave place to the practical politicians of the

Convention, the diplomatists of the Directory, the generals of the

Consulate. The Empire was far from realising that bright vision of a

regenerate nation which had dazzled the eyes of Frenchmen in the first

hours of the States-General. Liberty was sacrificed to efficiency;

equality to man's love for titles of honour; fraternity to desire of

glory. So it has been with all human effort. Man is imperfect, and his

imperfection mars his fairest achievements. Whatever great movement may be

considered, its ultimate attainment has fallen far short of its initial

promise. The authors of the Revolution were but men; they were no more

able than their fellows to discover and to hold fast to the true way of

happiness. They wavered between the two extremes of despotism and anarchy;

they declined from the path of grace. And their task remained unfulfilled.

Many of their dreams were far from attaining realisation; they inaugurated

no era of perfect bliss; they produced no Utopia. But their labour was not

in vain. Despite its disappointments, despite all its crimes and blunders,

the French Revolution was a great, a wonderful event. It did contribute to

the uplifting of humanity, and the world is the better for its occurrence.

That he might indicate this truth, that he might do something to

counteract the distortion of the past, Mignet wrote his _Histoire de la

Révolution Française_. At the moment when he came from Aix to Paris, the

tide of reaction was rising steadily in France. Decazes had fallen; Louis

XVIII. was surrendering to the ultra-royalist cabal. Aided by such

fortuitous events as the murder of the Duc de Berri, and supported by an

artificial majority in the Chamber, Villèle was endeavouring to bring back

the _ancien régime_. Compensation for the _émigrés_ was already mooted;

ecclesiastical control of education suggested. Direct criticism of the

ministry was rendered difficult, and even dangerous, by the censorship of

the press. Above all, the champions of reaction relied upon a certain

misrepresentation of the recent history of their country. The memory of

the Terror was still vivid; it was sedulously kept alive. The people were

encouraged to dread revolutionary violence, to forget the abuses by which

that violence had been evoked and which it had swept away. To all

complaints of executive tyranny, to all demands for greater political

liberty, the reactionaries made one answer. They declared that through

willingness to hear such complaints Louis XVI. had lost his throne and

life; that through the granting of such demands, the way had been prepared

for the bloody despotism of Robespierre. And they pointed the apparent

moral, that concessions to superficially mild and legitimate requests

would speedily reanimate the forces of anarchy. They insisted that by

strong government and by the sternest repression of the disaffected alone

could France be protected from a renewal of that nightmare of horror, at

the thought of which she still shuddered. And hence those who would

prevent the further progress of reaction had first of all to induce their

fellow-countrymen to realise that the Revolution was no mere orgy of

murder. They had to deliver liberty from those calumnies by which its

curtailment was rendered possible and even popular.

Understanding this, Mignet wrote. It would have been idle for him to have

denied that atrocities had been committed, nor had the day for a panegyric

on Danton, for a defence of Robespierre, yet dawned. Mignet did not

attempt the impossible. Rather by granting the case for his opponents he

sought to controvert them the more effectively. He laid down as his

fundamental thesis that the Revolution was inevitable. It was the outcome

of the past history of France; it pursued the course which it was bound to

pursue. Individuals and episodes in the drama are thus relatively

insignificant and unimportant. The crimes committed may be regretted;

their memory should not produce any condemnation of the movement as a

whole. To judge the Revolution by the Terror, or by the Consulate, would

be wrong and foolish; to declare it evil, because it did not proceed in a

gentle and orderly manner would be to outrage the historical sense. It is

wiser and more profitable to look below the surface, to search out those

deep lessons which may be learned. And Mignet closes his work by stating

one of these lessons, that which to him was, perhaps, the most vital: "On

ne peut régir désormais la France d'une manière durable, qu'en

satisfaisant le double besoin qui lui a fait entreprendre la révolution.

Il lui faut, dans le gouvernement, une liberté politique réelle, et dans

la société, le bien-être matériel que produit le développement sans cesse

perfectionné de la civilisation."

It was not Mignet's object to present a complete account of the

Revolution, and while he records the more important events of the period,

he does not attempt to deal exhaustively with all its many sides. It is

accordingly possible to point out various omissions. He does not explain

the organisation of the "deputies on mission," he only glances at that of

the commune or of the Committee of Public Safety. His account of the

Consulate and of the Empire appears to be disproportionately brief. But

the complexity of the period, and the wealth of materials for its history,

render it impossible for any one man to discuss it in detail, and Mignet's

work gains rather than loses by its limitations. Those facts which

illustrate his fundamental thesis are duly recorded; the causes and

results of events are clearly indicated; the actions of individuals are

described in so far as they subserve the author's purpose. The whole book

is marked by a notable impartiality; it is only on rare occasions, as in

the case of Lafayette, that the circumstances in which it was written have

been permitted to colour the judgments passed. Nor is the value of the

work seriously reduced by the fact that modern research compels its

revision in certain particulars, since it is so clearly not intended to be

a final and detailed history of the period. It is a philosophical study of

a great epoch, and as such, however its point of view may be criticised,

it is illuminating and well worthy of preservation. It supplies a

thoughtful and inspiring commentary upon the French Revolution.

L. CECIL JANE.

1915.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--François Auguste Marie Mignet was born at Aix in

Provence in 1796. He was educated at Avignon and in his native town, at

first studying law. But, having gained some literary successes, he removed

to Paris in 1821 and devoted himself to writing. He became professor of

history at the _Athenée_, and after the Revolution of 1830 was made

director of the archives in the Foreign Office, a post which he held until

1848. He was then removed by Lamartine and died in retirement in 1854. His

_Histoire de la Révolution Française_ was first published in 1824; a

translation into English appeared in Bogue's European library in 1846 and

is here re-edited. Among Mignet's other works may be mentioned _Antoine

Perez et Philippe II._ and _Histoire de Marie Stuart_. As a journalist, he

wrote mainly on foreign policy for the _Courrier Français_.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Éloge de Charles VII., 1820; Les Institutions de Saint Louis, 1821; De la

féodalité, des institutions de Saint Louis et de l'influence de la

législation de ce prince, 1822; Histoire de la révolution française, 1824

(trans. 2 vols., London, 1826, Bonn's Libraries, 1846); La Germanie au

VIIIe et au IXe siècle, sa conversion au christianisme, et son

introduction dans la société civilisée de l'Europe occidentale, 1834;

Essai sur la formation territoriale et politique de la France depuis la

fin de XIe siècle jusqu'a la fin du XVe, 1836; Notices et Mémoires

historiques, 1843; Charles Quint, son abdication, son séjour, et sa mort

au monastère de Yuste, 1845; Antonio Perez et Philippe II., 1845

(translated by C. Cocks, London, 1846; translated from second French

edition by W. F. Ainsworth, London, 1846); Histoire de Marie Stuart, 2

vols., 1851 (translated by A. R. Scoble, 1851); Portraits et Notices,

historiques et littéraires, 2 vols., 1852; Éloges historiques, 1864;

Histoire de la rivalité de François I. et de Charles Quint, 1875; Nouveaux

éloges historiques, 1877.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Character of the French revolution--Its results, its progress--Successive

forms of the monarchy--Louis XIV. and Louis XV.--State of men's minds, of

the finances, of the public power and the public wants at the accession of

Louis XVI.--His character--Maurepas, prime minister--His policy--Chooses

popular and reforming ministers--His object--Turgot, Malesherbes, Necker--

Their plans--Opposed by the court and the privileged classes--Their

failure--Death of Maurepas--Influence of the Queen, Marie-Antoinette--

Popular ministers are succeeded by court ministers--Calonne and his

system--Brienne, his character and attempts--Distressed state of the

finances--Opposition of the assembly of the notables, of the parliament,

and provinces--Dismissal of Brienne--Second administration of Necker--

Convocation of the states-general--Immediate causes of the revolution.

CHAPTER I

FROM THE 5TH OF MAY, 1789, TO THE NIGHT OF THE 4TH OF AUGUST

Opening of the states-general--Opinion of the court, of the ministry, and

of the various bodies of the kingdom respecting the states--Verification

of powers--Question of vote by order or by poll--The order of the commons

forms itself into a national assembly--The court causes the Hall of the

states to be closed--Oath of the Tennis-court--The majority of the order

of the clergy unites itself with the commons--Royal sitting of the 23rd of

June--Its inutility--Project of the court--Events of the 12th, 13th, and

14th of July--Dismissal of Necker--Insurrection of Paris--Formation of

the national guard--Siege and taking of the Bastille--Consequences of the

14th of July--Decrees of the night of the 4th of August--Character of the

revolution which had just been brought about.

CHAPTER II

FROM THE NIGHT OF THE 4TH OF AUGUST TO THE 5TH AND 6TH OF

OCTOBER, 1789

State of the constituent assembly--Party of the high clergy and nobility--

Maury and Cazales--Party of the ministry and of the two chambers: Mounier,

Lally-Tollendal--Popular party: triumvirate of Barnave, Duport, and

Lameth--Its position--Influence of Sieyès--Mirabeau chief of the assembly

at that period--Opinion to be formed of the Orleans party--Constitutional

labours--Declaration of rights--Permanency and unity of the legislative

body--Royal sanction--External agitation caused by it--Project of the

court--Banquet of the gardes-du-corps--Insurrection of the 5th and 6th

October--The king comes to reside at Paris.

CHAPTER III

FROM THE 6TH OF OCTOBER, 1789, TO THE DEATH OF MIRABEAU,

APRIL, 1791

Results of the events of October--Alteration of the provinces into

departments--Organization of the administrative and municipal authorities

according to the system of popular sovereignty and election--Finances; all

the means employed are insufficient--Property of the clergy declared

national--The sale of the property of the clergy leads to assignats--Civil

constitution of the clergy--Religious opposition of the bishops--

Anniversary of the 14th of July--Abolition of titles--Confederation of the

Champ de Mars--New organization of the army--Opposition of the officers--

Schism respecting the civil constitution of the clergy--Clubs--Death of

Mirabeau--During the whole of this period the separation of parties

becomes more decided.

CHAPTER IV

FROM APRIL, 1791, TO THE 30TH SEPTEMBER, THE END OF THE

CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

Political state of Europe before the French revolution--System of alliance

observed by different states--General coalition against the revolution--

Motives of each power--Conference of Mantua, and circular of Pavia--Flight

to Varennes--Arrest of the king--His suspension--The republican party

separate, for the first time, from the party of the constitutional

monarchy--The latter re-establishes the king--Declaration of Pilnitz--The

king accepts the constitution--End of the constituent assembly--Opinion of

it.

THE NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

CHAPTER V

FROM THE 1ST OF OCTOBER, 1791, TO THE 21ST OF SEPTEMBER, 1792

Early relations between the legislative assembly and the king--State of

parties: the Feuillants rely on the middle classes, the Girondists on the

people--Emigration and the dissentient clergy; decree against them; the

king's veto--Declarations of war--Girondist ministry; Dumouriez, Roland--

Declaration of war against the king of Hungary and Bohemia--Disasters of

our armies; decree for a camp of reserve for twenty thousand men at Paris;

decree of banishment against the nonjuring priests; veto of the king; fall

of the Girondist ministry--Petition of insurgents of the 20th of June to

secure the passing of the decrees and the recall of the ministers--Last

efforts of the constitutional party--Manifesto of the duke of Brunswick--

Events of the 10th of August--Military insurrection of Lafayette against

the authors of the events of the 10th of August; it fails--Division of the

assembly and the new commune; Danton--Invasion of the Prussians--

Massacres of the 2nd of September--Campaign of the Argonne--Causes of the

events under the legislative assembly.

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION

CHAPTER VI

FROM THE 20TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1792, TO THE 21ST OF JANUARY, 1793

First measures of the Convention--Its composition--Rivalry of the Gironde

and of the Mountain--Strength and views of the two parties--Robespierre:

the Girondists accuse him of aspiring to the dictatorship--Marat--Fresh

accusation of Robespierre by Louvet; Robespierre's defence; the Convention

passes to the order of the day--The Mountain, victorious in this struggle,

demand the trial of Louis XVI.--Opinions of parties on this subject--The

Convention decides that Louis XVI. shall be tried, and by itself--Louis

XVI. at the Temple; his replies before the Convention; his defence; his

condemnation; courage and serenity of his last moments--What he was, and

what he was not, as a king.

CHAPTER VII

FROM THE 21ST OF JANUARY, 1793, TO THE 2ND OF JUNE

Political and military situation of France--England, Holland, Spain,

Naples, and all the circles of the empire fall in with the coalition--

Dumouriez, after having conquered Belgium, attempts an expedition into

Holland--He wishes to re-establish constitutional monarchy--Reverses of

our armies--Struggle between the Gironde and the Mountain--Conspiracy of

the 10th of March--Insurrection of La Vendée; its progress--Defection of

Dumouriez--The Gironde accused of being his accomplices--New conspiracies

against them--Establishment of the Commission of Twelve to frustrate the

conspirators--Insurrections of the 27th and 31st of May against the

Commission of Twelve; its suppression--Insurrection of the 2nd of June

against the two-and-twenty leading Girondists; their arrest--Total defeat

of that party.

CHAPTER VIII

FROM THE 2ND OF JUNE, 1793, TO APRIL, 1794

Insurrection of the departments against the 31st of May--Protracted

reverses on the frontiers--Progress of the Vendéans--The _Montagnards_

decree the constitution of 1793, and immediately suspend it to maintain

and strengthen the revolutionary government--_Levée en masse_; law against

suspected persons--Victories of the _Montagnards_ in the interior, and on

the frontiers--Death of the queen, of the twenty-two Girondists, etc.--

Committee of public safety; its power; its members--Republican calendar--

The conquerors of the 31st of May separate--The ultra-revolutionary

faction of the commune, or the Hébertists, abolish the catholic religion,

and establish the worship of Reason; its struggle with the committee of

public safety; its defeat--The moderate faction of the _Montagnards_, or

the Dantonists, wish to destroy the revolutionary dictatorship, and to

establish the legal government; their fall--The committee of public safety

remains alone, and triumphant.

CHAPTER IX

FROM THE DEATH OF DANTON, APRIL, 1794, TO THE 9TH THERMIDOR

(27TH JULY, 1794)

Increase of terror; its cause--System of the democrats; Saint-Just--

Robespierre's power--Festival of the Supreme Being--Couthon presents the

law of the 22nd Prairial, which reorganizes the revolutionary tribunal;

disturbances; debates; final obedience of the convention--The active

members of the committee have a division--Robespierre, Saint-Just, and

Couthon on one side; Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d'Herbois, Barrère, and the

members of the committee of general safety on the other--Conduct of

Robespierre--He absents himself from the committee, and rests on the

Jacobins and the commune--On the 8th of Thermidor he demands the renewal

of the committees; the motion is rejected--Sitting of the 9th Thermidor;

Saint-Just denounces the committees; is interrupted by Tallien; Billaud-

Varennes violently attacks Robespierre; general indignation of the

convention against the triumvirate; they are arrested--The commune rises

and liberates the prisoners--Peril and courage of the convention; it

outlaws the insurgents--The sections declare for the convention--Defeat

and execution of Robespierre.

CHAPTER X

FROM THE 9TH THERMIDOR TO THE 1ST PRAIRIAL, YEAR III. (20TH MAY, 1795).

EPOCH OF THE RISE AND FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

The convention, after the fall of Robespierre; party of the committees;

Thermidorian party; their constitution and object--Decay of the democratic

party of the committees--Impeachment of Lebon and Carrier--State of Paris

--The Jacobins and the Faubourgs declare for the old committees; the

_jeunesse dorée_, and the sections for the Thermidorians--Impeachment of

Billaud-Varennes, Collot-d'Herbois, Barrère, and Vadier--Movement of

Germinal--Transportation of the accused, and of a few of the Mountain,

their partisans--Insurrection of the 1st Prairial--Defeat of the

democratic party; disarming of the Faubourgs--The lower class is excluded

from the government, deprived of the constitution of '93, and loses its

material power.

CHAPTER XI

FROM THE 1ST PRAIRIAL (20TH OF MAY, 1795) TO THE 4TH BRUMAIRE

(26TH OF OCTOBER), YEAR IV., THE CLOSE OF THE CONVENTION

Campaign of 1793 and 1794--Disposition of the armies on hearing the news

of the 9th Thermidor--Conquest of Holland; position on the Rhine--Peace of

Basel with Prussia--Peace with Spain--Descent upon Quiberon--The reaction

ceases to be conventional, and becomes royalist--Massacre of the

revolutionists, in the south--Directorial constitution of the year III.--

Decrees of Fructidor, which require the re-election of two-thirds of the

convention--Irritation of the sectionary royalist party--It becomes

insurgent--The 13th of Vendémiaire--Appointment of the councils and of the

directory--Close of the convention; its duration and character.

THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORY

CHAPTER XII

FROM THE INSTALLATION OF THE DIRECTORY, ON THE 27TH OCTOBER, 1795, TO THE

COUP-D'ÉTAT OF THE 18TH FRUCTIDOR, YEAR V. (3RD AUGUST, 1797)

Review of the revolution--Its second character of reorganization;

transition from public to private life--The five directors; their labours

for the interior--Pacification of La Vendée--Conspiracy of Babeuf; final

defeat of the democratic party--Plan of campaign against Austria; conquest

of Italy by general Bonaparte; treaty of Campo-Formio; the French republic

is acknowledged, with its acquisitions, and its connection with the Dutch,

Lombard, and Ligurian republics, which prolonged its system in Europe--

Royalist elections in the year V.; they alter the position of the

republic--New contest between the counter-revolutionary party in the

councils, in the club of Clichy, in the salons, and the conventional

party, in the directory, the club of _Salm_, and the army--Coup d'état of

the 18th Fructidor; the Vendémiaire party again defeated.

CHAPTER XIII

FROM THE 18TH FRUCTIDOR, IN THE YEAR V. (4TH OF SEPTEMBER, 1797), TO THE

18TH BRUMAIRE, IN THE YEAR VIII. (9TH OF NOVEMBER, 1799)

By the 18th Fructidor the directory returns, with slight mitigation, to

the revolutionary government--General peace, except with England--Return

of Bonaparte to Paris--Expedition into Egypt--Democratic elections for the

year VI.--The directory annuls them on the 22nd Floréal--Second coalition;

Russia, Austria, and England attack the republic through Italy,

Switzerland, and Holland; general defeats--Democratic elections for the

year VII.; on the 30th Prairial the councils get the upper hand, and

disorganize the old directory--Two parties in the new directory, and in

the councils: the moderate republican party under Sieyès, Roger-Ducos, and

the ancients; the extreme republican party under Moulins, Golier, the Five

Hundred, and the Society of the Manège--Various projects--Victories of

Masséna, in Switzerland; of Brune, in Holland--Bonaparte returns from

Egypt; comes to an understanding with Sieyès and his party--The 18th and

19th Brumaire--End of the directorial system.

THE CONSULATE

CHAPTER XIV

FROM THE 18TH BRUMAIRE (9TH OF NOVEMBER, 1799) TO THE 2ND

OF DECEMBER, 1804

Hopes entertained by the various parties, after the 18th Brumaire--

Provisional government--Constitution of Sieyès; distorted into the

consular constitution of the year VIII.--Formation of the government;

pacific designs of Bonaparte--Campaign of Italy; victory of Marengo--

General peace: on the continent, by the treaty of Lunéville with England;

by the treaty of Amiens--Fusion of parties; internal prosperity of France

--Ambitious system of the First Consul; re-establishes the clergy in the

state, by the Concordat of 1802; he creates a military order of

knighthood, by means of the Legion of Honour; he completes this order of

things by the consulate for life--Resumption of hostilities with England--

Conspiracy of Georges and Pichegru--The war and royalist attempts form a

pretext for the erection of the empire--Napoleon Bonaparte appointed

hereditary emperor; is crowned by the pope on the 2nd of December, 1804,

in the church of Notre Dame--Successive abandonment of the revolution--

Progress of absolute power during the four years of the consulate.

THE EMPIRE

CHAPTER XV

FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE EMPIRE, 1804-1814

Character of the empire--Change of the republics created by the directory

into kingdoms--Third coalition; capture of Vienna; victories of Ulm and

Austerlitz; peace of Pressburg; erection of the two kingdoms of Bavaria

and Wurtemberg against Austria--Confederation of the Rhine--Joseph

Napoleon appointed king of Naples; Louis Napoleon, king of Holland--Fourth

coalition; battle of Jena; capture of Berlin; victories of Eylau and

Friedland; peace of Tilsit; the Prussian monarchy is reduced by one half;

the kingdoms of Saxony and Westphalia are instituted against it; that of

Westphalia given to Jerome Napoleon--The grand empire rises with its

secondary kingdoms, its confederation of the Rhine, its Swiss mediation,

its great fiefs; it is modelled on that of Charlemagne--Blockade of the

continent--Napoleon employs the cessation of commerce to reduce England,

as he had employed arms to subdue the continent--Invasion of Spain and

Portugal; Joseph Napoleon appointed to the throne of Spain; Murat replaces

him on the throne of Naples--New order of events: national insurrection of

the peninsula; religious contest with the pope--Commercial opposition of

Holland--Fifth coalition--Victory of Wagram; peace of Vienna; marriage of

Napoleon with the archduchess Marie Louise--Failure of the attempt at

resistance; the pope is dethroned; Holland is again united to the empire,

and the war in Spain prosecuted with vigour--Russia renounces the

continental system; campaign of 1812; capture of Moscow; disastrous

retreat--Reaction against the power of Napoleon; campaign of 1813; general

defection--Coalition of all Europe; exhaustion of France; marvellous

campaign of 1814--The allied powers at Paris; abdication at Fontainbleau;

character of Napoleon; his part in the French revolution--Conclusion.

INTRODUCTION

I am about to take a rapid review of the history of the French revolution,

which began the era of new societies in Europe, as the English revolution

had begun the era of new governments. This revolution not only modified

the political power, but it entirely changed the internal existence of the

nation. The forms of the society of the middle ages still remained. The

land was divided into hostile provinces, the population into rival

classes. The nobility had lost all their powers, but still retained all

their distinctions: the people had no rights, royalty no limits; France

was in an utter confusion of arbitrary administration, of class

legislation and special privileges to special bodies. For these abuses the

revolution substituted a system more conformable with justice, and better

suited to our times. It substituted law in the place of arbitrary will,

equality in that of privilege; delivered men from the distinctions of

classes, the land from the barriers of provinces, trade from the shackles

of corporations and fellowships, agriculture from feudal subjection and

the oppression of tithes, property from the impediment of entails, and

brought everything to the condition of one state, one system of law, one

people.

In order to effect such mighty reformation as this, the revolution had

many obstacles to overcome, involving transient excesses with durable

benefits. The privileged sought to prevent it; Europe to subject it; and

thus forced into a struggle, it could not set bounds to its efforts, or

moderate its victory. Resistance from within brought about the sovereignty

of the multitude, and aggression from without, military domination. Yet

the end was attained, in spite of anarchy and in spite of despotism: the

old society was destroyed during the revolution, and the new one became

established under the empire.

When a reform has become necessary, and the moment for accomplishing it

has arrived, nothing can prevent it, everything furthers it. Happy were it

for men, could they then come to an understanding; would the rich resign

their superfluity, and the poor content themselves with achieving what

they really needed, revolutions would then be quietly effected, and the

historian would have no excesses, no calamities to record; he would merely

have to display the transition of humanity to a wiser, freer, and happier

condition. But the annals of nations have not as yet presented any

instance of such prudent sacrifices; those who should have made them have

refused to do so; those who required them have forcibly compelled them;

and good has been brought about, like evil, by the medium and with all the

violence of usurpation. As yet there has been no sovereign but force.

In reviewing the history of the important period extending from the

opening of the states-general to 1814, I propose to explain the various

crises of the revolution, while I describe their progress. It will thus be

seen through whose fault, after commencing under such happy auspices, it

so fearfully degenerated; in what way it changed France into a republic,

and how upon the ruins of the republic it raise the empire. These various

phases were almost inevitable, so irresistible was the power of the events

which produced them. It would perhaps be rash to affirm that by no

possibility could the face of things have been otherwise; but it is

certain that the revolution, taking its rise from such causes, and

employing and arousing such passions, naturally took that course, and

ended in that result. Before we enter upon its history, let us see what

led to the convocation of the states-general, which themselves brought on

all that followed. In retracing the preliminary causes of the revolution,

I hope to show that it was as impossible to avoid as to guide it.

From its establishment the French monarchy had had no settled form, no

fixed and recognised public right. Under the first races the crown was

elective, the nation sovereign, and the king a mere military chief,

depending on the common voice for all decisions to be made, and all the

enterprises to be undertaken. The nation elected its chief, exercised the

legislative power in the Champs de Mars under the presidentship of the

king, and the judicial power in the courts under the direction of one of

his officers. Under the feudal regime, this royal democracy gave way to a

royal aristocracy. Absolute power ascended higher, the nobles stripped the

people of it, as the prince afterwards despoiled the nobles. At this

period the monarch had become hereditary; not as king, but as individually

possessor of a fief; the legislative authority belonged to the seigneurs,

in their vast territories or in the barons' parliaments; and the judicial

authority to the vassals in the manorial courts. In a word, power had

become more and more concentrated, and as it had passed from the many to

the few, it came at last from the few to be invested in one alone. During

centuries of continuous efforts, the kings of France were battering down

the feudal edifice, and at length they established themselves on its

ruins, having step by step usurped the fiefs, subdued the vassals,

suppressed the parliaments of barons, annulled or subjected the manorial

courts, assumed the legislative power, and effected that judicial

authority should be exercised in their name and on their behalf, in

parliaments of legists.

The states-general, which they convoked on pressing occasions, for the

purpose of obtaining subsidies, and which were composed of the three

orders of the nation, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate or

commons, had no regular existence. Originated while the royal prerogative

was in progress, they were at first controlled, and finally suppressed by

it. The strongest and most determined opposition the kings had to

encounter in their projects of aggrandizement, proceeded much less from

these assemblies, which they authorized or annulled at pleasure, than from

the nobles vindicating against them, first their sovereignty, and then

their political importance. From Philip Augustus to Louis XI. the object

of all their efforts was to preserve their own power; from Louis XI. to

Louis XIV. to become the ministers of that of royalty. The Fronde was the

last campaign of the aristocracy. Under Louis XIV. absolute monarchy

definitively established itself, and dominated without dispute.

The government of France, from Louis XIV. to the revolution, was still

more arbitrary than despotic; for the monarchs had much more power than

they exercised. The barriers that opposed the encroachments of this

immense authority were exceedingly feeble. The crown disposed of persons

by _lettres de cachet_, of property by confiscation, of the public revenue

by imposts. Certain bodies, it is true, possessed means of defence, which

were termed privileges, but these privileges were rarely respected. The

parliament had that of ratifying or of refusing an impost, but the king

could compel its assent, by a _lit de justice_, and punish its members by

exile. The nobility were exempt from taxation; the clergy were entitled to

the privilege of taxing themselves, in the form of free gifts; some

provinces enjoyed the right of compounding the taxes, and others made the

assessment themselves. Such were the trifling liberties of France, and

even these all turned to the benefit of the privileged classes, and to the

detriment of the people.

And this France, so enslaved, was moreover miserably organized; the

excesses of power were still less endurable than their unjust

distribution. The nation, divided into three orders, themselves subdivided

into several classes, was a prey to all the attacks of despotism, and all

the evils of inequality. The nobility were subdivided: into courtiers,

living on the favours of the prince, that is to say, on the labour of the

people, and whose aim was governorships of provinces, or elevated ranks in

the army; ennobled parvenus, who conducted the interior administration,

and whose object was to obtain comptrollerships, and to make the most of

their place while they held it, by jobbing of every description; legists

who administered justice, and were alone competent to perform its

functions; and landed proprietors who oppressed the country by the

exercise of those feudal rights which still survived. The clergy were

divided into two classes: the one destined for the bishoprics and abbeys,

and their rich revenues; the other for the apostolic function and its

poverty. The third estate, ground down by the court, humiliated by the

nobility, was itself divided into corporations, which, in their turn,

exercised upon each other the evil and the contempt they received from the

higher classes. It possessed scarcely a third part of the land, and this

was burdened with the feudal rents due to the lords of the manor, tithes

to the clergy, and taxes to the king. In compensation for all these

sacrifices it enjoyed no political right, had no share in the

administration, and was admitted to no public employment.

Louis XIV. wore out the main-spring of absolute monarchy by too protracted

tension and too violent use. Fond of sway, rendered irritable by the

vexations of his youth, he quelled all resistance, forbad every kind of

opposition,--that of the aristocracy which manifested itself in revolt,--

that of the parliaments displayed by remonstrance,--that of the

protestants, whose form was a liberty of conscience which the church

deemed heretical, and royalty factious. Louis XIV. subdued the nobles by

summoning them to his court, where favours and pleasures were the

compensation for their dependence. Parliament, till then the instrument of

the crown, attempted to become its counterbalance, and the prince

haughtily imposed upon it a silence and submission of sixty years'

duration. At length, the revocation of the edict of Nantes completed this

work of despotism. An arbitrary government not only will not endure

resistance, but it demands that its subjects shall approve and imitate it.

After having subjected the actions of men, it persecutes conscience;

needing to be ever in motion, it seeks victims when they do not fall in

its way. The immense power of Louis XIV. was exercised, internally,

against the heretics; externally, against all Europe. Oppression found

ambitious men to counsel it, dragoons to serve, and success to encourage

it; the wounds of France were hidden by laurels, her groans were drowned

in songs of victory. But at last the men of genius died, the victories

ceased, industry emigrated, money disappeared; and the fact became

evident, that the very successes of despotism exhaust its resources, and

consume its future ere that future has arrived.

The death of Louis XIV. was the signal for a reaction; there was a sudden

transition from intolerance to incredulity, from the spirit of obedience

to that of discussion. Under the regency, the third estate acquired in

importance, by their increasing wealth and intelligence, all that the

nobility lost in consideration, and the clergy in influence. Under Louis

XV., the court prosecuted ruinous wars attended with little glory, and

engaged in a silent struggle with opinion, in an open one with the

parliament. Anarchy crept into its bosom, the government fell into the

hands of royal mistresses, power was completely on the decline, and the

opposition daily made fresh progress.

The parliaments had undergone a change of position and of system. Royalty

had invested them with a power which they now turned against it. No sooner

had the ruin of the aristocracy been accomplished by the combined efforts

of the parliament and of royalty, than the conquerors quarrelled,

according to the common practice of allies after a victory. Royalty sought

to destroy an instrument that became dangerous when it ceased to be

useful, and the parliament sought to govern royalty. This struggle,

favourable to the monarch under Louis XIV., of mixed reverses and success

under Louis XV., only ceased with the revolution. The parliament, from its

very nature, was only called upon to serve as an instrument. The exercise

of its prerogative, and its ambition as a body, leading it to oppose

itself to the strong and support the weak, it served by turns the crown

against the aristocracy and the nation against the crown. It was this that

made it so popular under Louis XV. and Louis XVI., although it only

attacked the court from a spirit of rivalry. Opinion, without inquiring

into its motives, applauded not its ambition but its resistance, and

supported it because defended by it. Rendered daring by such

encouragement, it became formidable to authority. After annulling the will

of the most imperious and best-obeyed of monarchs; after protesting

against the Seven Years' War; after obtaining the control of financial

operations and the destruction of the Jesuits, its resistance became so

constant and energetic, that the court, meeting with it in every

direction, saw the necessity of either submitting to or subjecting it. It

accordingly carried into execution the plan of disorganization proposed by

the chancellor Maupeou. This daring man, who, to employ his own

expression, had offered _retirer la couronne du greffe_, replaced this

hostile parliament by one devoted to power, and subjected to a similar

operation the entire magistracy of France, who were following the example

of that of Paris.

But the time had passed for coups d'état. The current had set in against

arbitrary rule so decidedly that the king resorted to it with doubt and

hesitation, and even encountered the disapprobation of his court. A new

power had arisen--that of opinion; which, though not recognised, was not

the less influential, and whose decrees were beginning to assume sovereign

authority. The nation, hitherto a nonentity, gradually asserted its

rights, and without sharing power influenced it. Such is the course of all

rising powers; they watch over it from without, before they are admitted

into the government; then, from the right of control they pass to that of

co-operation. The epoch at which the third estate was to share the sway

had at last arrived. It had at former periods attempted to effect this,

but in vain, because its efforts were premature. It was then but just

emancipated, and possessed not that which establishes superiority, and

leads to the acquisition of power; for right is only obtained by might.

Accordingly, in insurrections as in the states-general, it had held but

the third rank; everything was done with its aid, but nothing for it. In

times of feudal tyranny, it had served the kings against the nobles; when

ministerial and fiscal despotism prevailed, it assisted the nobles against

the kings; but, in the first instance, it was nothing more than the

servant of the crown; in the second, than that of the aristocracy. The

struggle took place in a sphere, and on the part of interests, with which

it was reputed to have no connexion. When the nobles were definitively

beaten in the time of the Fronde, it laid down its arms; a clear proof how

secondary was the part it had played.

At length, after a century of absolute submission, it reappeared in the

arena, but on its own account. The past cannot be recalled; and it was not

more possible for the nobles to rise from their defeat than it would now

be for absolute monarchy to regain its position. The court was to have

another antagonist, for it must always have one, power never being without

a candidate. The third estate, which increased daily in strength, wealth,

intelligence, and union, was destined to combat and to displace it. The

parliament did not constitute a class, but a body; and in this new

contest, while able to aid in the displacement of authority, it could not

secure it for itself.

The court had favoured the progress of the third estate, and had

contributed to the development of one of its chief means of advancement,

its intelligence. The most absolute of monarchs aided the movement of

mind, and, without intending it, created public opinion. By encouraging

praise, he prepared the way for blame; for we cannot invite an examination

in our favour, without undergoing one afterwards to our prejudice. When

the songs of triumph, and gratulation, and adulation were exhausted,

accusation began, and the philosophers of the eighteenth century succeeded

to the litterateurs of the seventeenth. Everything became the object of

their researches and reflections; governments, religion, abuses, laws.

They proclaimed rights, laid bare men's wants, denounced injustice. A

strong and enlightened public opinion was formed, whose attacks the

government underwent without venturing to attempt its suppression. It even

converted those whom it attacked; courtiers submitted to its decisions

from fashion's sake, power from necessity, and the age of reform was

ushered in by the age of philosophy, as the latter had been by the age of

the fine arts.

Such was the condition of France, when Louis XVI. ascended the throne on

the 11th of May, 1774. Finances, whose deficiencies neither the

restorative ministry of cardinal de Fleury, nor the bankrupt ministry of

the abbé Terray had been able to make good, authority disregarded,

intractable parliaments, an imperious public opinion; such were the

difficulties which the new reign inherited from its predecessors. Of all

princes, Louis XVI., by his tendencies and his virtues, was best suited to

his epoch. The people were weary of arbitrary rule, and he was disposed to

renounce its exercise; they were exasperated with the burdensome

dissoluteness of the court of Louis XV.; the morals of the new king were

pure and his wants few; they demanded reforms that had become

indispensable, and he appreciated the public want, and made it his glory

to satisfy it. But it was as difficult to effect good as to continue evil;

for it was necessary to have sufficient strength either to make the

privileged classes submit to reform, or the nation to abuses; and Louis

XVI. was neither a regenerator nor a despot. He was deficient in that

sovereign will which alone accomplishes great changes in states, and which

is as essential to monarchs who wish to limit their power as to those who

seek to aggrandize it. Louis XVI. possessed a sound mind, a good and

upright heart, but he was without energy of character and perseverance in

action. His projects of amelioration met with obstacles which he had not

foreseen, and which he knew not how to overcome. He accordingly fell

beneath his efforts to favour reform, as another would have fallen in his

attempt to prevent it. Up to the meeting of the states-general, his reign

was one long and fruitless endeavour at amelioration.

In choosing, on his accession to the throne, Maurepas as prime minister,

Louis XVI. eminently contributed to the irresolute character of his reign.

Young, deeply sensible of his duties and of his own insufficiency, he had

recourse to the experience of an old man of seventy-three, who had lost

the favour of Louis XV. by his opposition to the mistresses of that

monarch. In him the king found not a statesman, but a mere courtier, whose

fatal influence extended over the whole course of his reign. Maurepas had

little heed to the welfare of France, or the glory of his master; his sole

care was to remain in favour. Residing in the palace at Versailles, in an

apartment communicating with that of the king, and presiding over the

council, he rendered the mind of Louis XVI. uncertain, his character

irresolute; he accustomed him to half-measures, to changes of system, to

all the inconsistencies of power, and especially to the necessity of doing

everything by others, and nothing of himself. Maurepas had the choice of

the ministers, and these cultivated his good graces as assiduously as he

the king's. Fearful of endangering his position, he kept out of the

ministry men of powerful connections, and appointed rising men, who

required his support for their own protection, and to effect their

reforms. He successively called Turgot, Malesherbes, and Necker to the

direction of affairs, each of whom undertook to effect ameliorations in

that department of the government which had been the immediate object of

his studies.

Malesherbes, descended from a family in the law, inherited parliamentary

virtues, and not parliamentary prejudices. To an independent mind, he

united a noble heart. He wished to give to every man his rights; to the

accused, the power of being defended; to protestants, liberty of

conscience; to authors, the liberty of the press; to every Frenchman,

personal freedom; and he proposed the abolition of the torture, the re-

establishment of the edict of Nantes, and the suppression of _lettres de

cachet_ and of the censure. Turgot, of a vigorous and comprehensive mind,

and an extraordinary firmness and strength of character, attempted to

realize still more extensive projects. He joined Malesherbes, in order,

with his assistance, to complete the establishment of a system which was

to bring back unity to the government and equality to the country. This

virtuous citizen constantly occupied himself with the amelioration of the

condition of the people; he undertook, alone, what the revolution

accomplished at a later period,--the suppression of servitude and

privilege. He proposed to enfranchise the rural districts from statute

labour, provinces from their barriers, commerce from internal duties,

trade from its shackles, and lastly, to make the nobility and clergy

contribute to the taxes in the same proportion as the third estate. This

great minister, of whom Malesherbes said, "he has the head of Bacon and

the heart of l'Hôpital," wished by means of provincial assemblies to

accustom the nation to public life, and prepare it for the restoration of

the states-general. He would have effected the revolution by ordinances,

had he been able to stand. But under the system of special privileges and

general servitude, all projects for the public good were impraticable.

Turgot dissatisfied the courtiers by his ameliorations, displeased the

parliament by the abolition of statute labour, wardenships, and internal

duties, and alarmed the old minister by the ascendancy which his virtue

gave him over Louis XVI. The prince forsook him, though at the same time

observing that Turgot and himself were the only persons who desired the

welfare of the people: so lamentable is the condition of kings!

Turgot was succeeded in 1776 in the general control of the finances by

Clugny, formerly comptroller of Saint Domingo, who, six months after, was

himself succeeded by Necker. Necker was a foreigner, a protestant, a

banker, and greater as an administrator than as a statesman; he

accordingly conceived a plan for reforming France, less extensive than

that of Turgot, but which he executed with more moderation, and aided by

the times. Appointed minister in order to find money for the court, he

made use of the wants of the court to procure liberties for the people. He

re-established the finances by means of order, and made the provinces

contribute moderately to their administration. His views were wise and

just; they consisted in bringing the revenue to a level with the

expenditure, by reducing the latter; by employing taxation in ordinary

times, and loans when imperious circumstances rendered it necessary to tax

the future as well as the present; by causing the taxes to be assessed by

the provincial assemblies, and by instituting the publication of accounts,

in order to facilitate loans. This system was founded on the nature of

loans, which, needing credit, require publicity of administration; and on

that of taxation, which needing assent, requires also a share in the

administration. Whenever there is a deficit and the government makes

applications to meet it, if it address itself to lenders, it must produce

its balance-sheet; if it address itself to the tax-payers, it must give

them a share in its power. Thus loans led to the production of accounts,

and taxes to the states-general; the first placing authority under the

jurisdiction of opinion, and the second placing it under that of the

people. But Necker, though less impatient for reform than Turgot, although

he desired to redeem abuses which his predecessor wished to destroy, was

not more fortunate than he. His economy displeased the courtiers; the

measures of the provincial assemblies incurred the disapprobation of the

parliaments, which wished to monopolize opposition; and the prime minister

could not forgive him an appearance of credit. He was obliged to quit

power in 1781, a few months after the publication of the famous _Comptes

rendus_ of the finances, which suddenly initiated France in a knowledge of

state matters, and rendered absolute government for ever impossible.

The death of Maurepas followed close upon the retirement of Necker. The

queen took his place with Louis XVI., and inherited all his influence over

him. This good but weak prince required to be directed. His wife, young,

beautiful, active, and ambitious, gained great ascendancy over him. Yet it

may be said that the daughter of Marie Thérèse resembled her mother too

much or too little. She combined frivolity with domination, and disposed

of power only to invest with it men who caused her own ruin and that of

the state. Maurepas, mistrusting court ministers, had always chosen

popular ministers; it is true he did not support them; but if good was not

brought about, at least evil did not increase. After his death, court

ministers succeeded the popular ministers, and by their faults rendered

the crisis inevitable, which others had endeavoured to prevent by their

reforms. This difference of choice is very remarkable; this it was which,

by the change of men, brought on the change in the system of

administration. The revolution dates from this epoch; the abandonment of

reforms and the return of disorders hastened its approach and augmented

its fury.

Calonne was called from an intendancy to the general control of the

finances. Two successors had already been given to Necker, when

application was made to Calonne in 1783. Calonne was daring, brilliant and

eloquent; he had much readiness and a fertile mind. Either from error or

design he adopted a system of administration directly opposed to that of

his predecessor. Necker recommended economy, Calonne boasted of his lavish

expenditure. Necker fell through courtiers, Calonne sought to be upheld by

them. His sophisms were backed by his liberality; he convinced the queen

by _fêtes_, the nobles by pensions; he gave a great circulation to the

finances, in order that the extent and facility of his operations might

excite confidence in the justness of his views; he even deceived the

capitalists, by first showing himself punctual in his payments. He

continued to raise loans after the peace, and he exhausted the credit

which Necker's wise conduct had procured to the government. Having come to

this point, having deprived himself of a resource, the very employment of

which he was unable to manage, in order to prolong his continuance in

power he was obliged to have recourse to taxation. But to whom could he

apply? The people could pay no longer, and the privileged classes would

not offer anything. Yet it was necessary to decide, and Calonne, hoping

more from something new, convoked an assembly of notables, which began its

sittings at Versailles on the 22nd of February, 1787. But a recourse to

others must prove the end of a system founded on prodigality. A minister

who had risen by giving, could not maintain himself by asking.

The notables, chosen by the government from the higher classes, formed a

ministerial assembly, which had neither a proper existence nor a

commission. It was, indeed, to avoid parliaments and states-general, that

Calonne addressed himself to a more subordinate assembly, hoping to find

it more docile. But, composed of privileged persons, it was little

disposed to make sacrifices. It became still less so, when it saw the

abyss which a devouring administration had excavated. It learned with

terror, that the loans of a few years amounted to one thousand six hundred

and forty-six millions, and that there was an annual deficit in the

revenue of a hundred and forty millions. This disclosure was the signal

for Calonne's fall. He fell, and was succeeded by Brienne, archbishop of

Sens, his opponent in the assembly. Brienne thought the majority of the

notables was devoted to him, because it had united with him against

Calonne. But the privileged classes were not more disposed to make

sacrifices to Brienne than to his predecessor; they had seconded his

attacks, which were to their interest, and not his ambition, to which they

were indifferent.

The archbishop of Sens, who is censured for a want of plan, was in no

position to form one. He was not allowed to continue the prodigality of

Calonne; and it was too late to return to the retrenchments of Necker.

Economy, which had been a means of safety at a former period, was no

longer so in this. Recourse must be had either to taxation, and that

parliament opposed; or loans, and credit was exhausted; or sacrifices on

the part of the privileged classes, who were unwilling to make them.

Brienne, to whom office had been the chief object of life, who with, the

difficulties of his position combined slenderness of means attempted

everything, and succeeded in nothing. His mind was active, but it wanted

strength; and his character rash without firmness. Daring, previous to

action, but weak afterwards, he ruined himself by his irresolution, want

of foresight, and constant variation of means. There remained only bad

measures to adopt, but he could not decide upon one, and follow that one;

this was his real error.

The assembly of notables was but little submissive and very parsimonious.

After having sanctioned the establishment of provincial assemblies, a

regulation of the corn trade, the abolition of corvées, and a new stamp

tax, it broke up on the 25th of May, 1787. It spread throughout France

what it had discovered respecting the necessities of the throne, the

errors of the ministers, the dilapidation of the court, and the

irremediable miseries of the people.

Brienne, deprived of this assistance, had recourse to taxation, as a

resource, the use of which had for some time been abandoned. He demanded

the enrolment of two edicts--that of the stamps and that of the

territorial subsidies. But parliament, which was then in the full vigour

of its existence and in all the ardour of its ambition, and to which the

financial embarrassment of the ministry offered a means of augmenting its

power, refused the enrolment. Banished to Troyes, it grew weary of exile,

and the minister recalled it on condition that the two edicts should be

accepted. But this was only a suspension of hostilities; the necessities

of the crown soon rendered the struggle more obstinate and violent. The

minister had to make fresh applications for money; his existence depended

on the issue of several successive loans to the amount of four hundred and

forty millions. It was necessary to obtain the enrolment of them.

Brienne, expecting opposition from the parliament, procured the enrolment

of this edict by a _lit de justice_, and to conciliate the magistracy and

public opinion, the protestants were restored to their rights in the same

sitting, and Louis XVI. promised an annual publication of the state of

finances, and the convocation, of the states-general before the end of

five years. But these concessions were no longer sufficient: parliament

refused the enrolment, and rose against the ministerial tyranny. Some of

its members, among others the duke of Orleans, were banished. Parliament

protested, by a decree, against _lettres de cachet_, and required the

recall of its members. This decree was annulled by the king, and confirmed

by parliament. The warfare increased.

The magistracy of Paris was supported by all the magistracy of France, and

encouraged by public opinion. It proclaimed the rights of the nation, and

its own incompetence in matters of taxation; and, become liberal from

interest, and rendered generous by oppression, it exclaimed against

arbitrary imprisonment, and demanded regularly convoked states-general.

After this act of courage, it decreed the irremovability of its members,

and the incompetence of any who might usurp their functions. This bold

manifesto was followed by the arrest of two members, d'Eprémenil and

Goislard, by the reform of the body, and the establishment of a plenary

court.

Brienne understood that the opposition of the parliament was systematic,

that it would be renewed on every fresh demand for subsidies, or on the

authorization of every loan. Exile was but a momentary remedy, which

suspended opposition, without destroying it. He then projected the

reduction of this body to judicial functions, and associated with himself

Lamoignon, keeper of the seals, for the execution of this project.

Lamoignon was skilled in coups d'état. He had audacity, and combined with

Maupeou's energetic determination a greater degree of consideration and

probity. But he made a mistake as to the force of power, and what it was

possible to effect in his times. Maupeou had re-established parliament,

changing its members; Lamoignon wished to disorganize it. The first of

these means, if it had succeeded, would only have produced temporary

repose; the second must have produced a definitive one, since it aimed at

destroying the power, which the other only tried to displace; but

Maupeou's reform did not last, and that of Lamoignon could not be

effected. The execution of the latter was, however, tolerably well framed.

All the magistracy of France was exiled on the same day, in order that the

new judicial organization might take place. The keeper of the seals

deprived the parliament of Paris of its political attributes, to invest

with them a plenary court, ministerially composed, and reduced its

judicial competence in favour of bailiwicks, the jurisdiction of which he

extended. Public opinion was indignant; the Châtelet protested, the

provinces rose, and the plenary court could neither be formed nor act.

Disturbances broke out in Dauphiné, Brittany, Provence, Flanders,

Languedoc, and Béarn; the ministry, instead of the regular opposition of

parliament, had to encounter one much more animated and factious. The

nobility, the third estate, the provincial states, and even the clergy,

took part in it. Brienne, pressed for money, had called together an

extraordinary assembly of the clergy, who immediately made an address to

the king, demanding the abolition of his plenary court, and the recall of

the states-general: they alone could thenceforth repair the disordered

state of the finances, secure the national debt, and terminate such

conflicts of authority.

The archbishop of Sens, by his contest with the parliament, had postponed

the financial, by creating a political difficulty. The moment the latter

ceased, the former re-appeared, and made his retreat inevitable. Obtaining

neither taxes nor loans, unable to make use of the plenary court, and not

wishing to recall the parliaments, Brienne, as a last resource, promised

the convocation of the states-general. By this means he hastened his ruin.

He had been called to the financial department in order to remedy

embarrassments which he had augmented, and to procure money which he had

been unable to obtain. So far from it, he had exasperated the nation,

raised a rebellion in the various bodies of the state, compromised the

authority of the government, and rendered inevitable the states-general,

which, in the opinion of the court, was the worst means of raising money.

He succumbed on the 25th of August, 1788. The cause of his fall was a

suspension of the payment of the interest on the debt, which was the

commencement of bankruptcy. This minister has been the most blamed because

he came last. Inheriting the faults, the embarrassments of past times, he

had to struggle with the difficulties of his position with insufficient

means. He tried intrigue and oppression; he banished, suspended,

disorganized parliament; everything was an obstacle to him, nothing aided

him. After a long struggle, he sank under lassitude and weakness; I dare

not say from incapacity, for had he been far stronger and more skilful,

had he been a Richelieu or a Sully, he would still have fallen. It no

longer appertained to any one arbitrarily to raise money or to oppress the

people. It must be said in his excuse, that he had not created that

position from which he was not able to extricate himself; his only mistake

was his presumption in accepting it. He fell through the fault of Calonne,

as Calonne had availed himself of the confidence inspired by Necker for

the purposes of his lavish expenditure. The one had destroyed credit, and

the other, thinking to re-establish it by force, had destroyed authority.

The states-general had become the only means of government, and the last

resource of the throne. They had been eagerly demanded by parliament and

the peers of the kingdom, on the 13th of July, 1787; by the states of

Dauphiné in the assembly of Vizille; by the clergy in its assembly at

Paris. The provincial states had prepared the public mind for them; and

the notables were their precursors. The king after having, on the 18th of

December, 1787, promised their convocation in five years, on the 8th of

August, 1788, fixed the opening for the 1st of May, 1789. Necker was

recalled, parliament re-established, the plenary court abolished, the

bailiwicks destroyed, and the provinces satisfied; and the new minister

prepared everything for the election of deputies and the holding of the

states.

At this epoch a great change took place in the opposition, which till then

had been unanimous. Under Brienne, the ministry had encountered opposition

from all the various bodies of the state, because it had sought to oppress

them. Under Necker, it met with resistance from the same bodies, which

desired power for themselves and oppression for the people. From being

despotic, it had become national, and it still had them all equally

against it. Parliament had maintained a struggle for authority, and not

for the public welfare; and the nobility had united with the third estate,

rather against the government than in favour of the people. Each of these

bodies had demanded the states-general: the parliament, in the hope of

ruling them as it had done in 1614; and the nobility, in the hope of

regaining its lost influence. Accordingly, the magistracy proposed as a

model for the states-general of 1789, the form of that of 1614, and public

opinion abandoned it; the nobility refused its consent to the double

representation of the third estate, and a division broke out between these

two orders.

This double representation was required by the intellect of the age, the

necessity of reform, and by the importance which the third estate had

acquired. It had already been admitted in the provincial assemblies.

Brienne, before leaving the ministry, had made an appeal to the writers of

the day, in order to know what would be the most suitable method of

composing and holding the states-general. Among the works favourable to

the people, there appeared the celebrated pamphlet of Sieyès on the Third

Estate, and that of d'Entraigues on the States-general.

Opinion became daily more decided, and Necker wishing, yet fearing, to

satisfy it, and desirous of conciliating all orders, of obtaining general

approbation, convoked a second assembly of notables on the 6th of

November, 1788, to deliberate on the composition of the states-general,

and the election of its members. He thought to induce it to accept the

double representation of the third estate, but it refused, and he was

obliged to decide, in spite of the notables, that which he ought to have

decided without them. Necker was not the man to avoid disputes by removing

all difficulties beforehand. He did not take the initiative as to the

representation of the third estate, any more than at a later period he

took it with regard to the question of voting by orders or by poll. When

the states-general were assembled, the solution of this second question,

on which depended the state of power and that of the people, was abandoned

to force.

Be this as it may, Necker, having been unable to make the notables adopt

the double representation of the third estate, caused it to be adopted by

the council. The royal declaration of the 27th of November decreed that

the deputies in the states-general should amount to at least a thousand,

and that the deputies of the third estate should be equal in number to the

deputies of the nobility and clergy together. Necker moreover obtained the

admission of the curés into the order of the clergy, and of protestants

into that of the third estate. The district assemblies were convoked for

the elections; every one exerted himself to secure the nomination of

members of his own party, and to draw up manifestoes setting forth his

views. Parliament had but little influence in the elections, and the court

none at all. The nobility selected a few popular deputies, but mainly such

as were devoted to the interests of their order, and as much opposed to

the third estate as to the oligarchy of the great families of the court.

The clergy nominated bishops and abbés attached to privilege, and curés

favourable to the popular cause, which was their own; lastly, the third

estate selected men enlightened, firm, and unanimous in their wishes. The

deputation of the nobility was comprised of two hundred and forty-two

gentlemen, and twenty-eight members of the parliament; that of the clergy,

of forty-eight archbishops or bishops, thirty-five abbés or deans, and two

hundred and eight curés; and that of the communes, of two ecclesiastics,

twelve noblemen, eighteen magistrates of towns, two hundred county

members, two hundred and twelve barristers, sixteen physicians, and two

hundred and sixteen merchants and agriculturists. The opening of the

states-general was then fixed for the 5th of May, 1789.

Thus was the revolution brought about. The court in vain tried to prevent,

as it afterwards endeavoured to annul it. Under the direction of Maurepas,

the king nominated popular ministers, and made attempts at reform; under

the influence of the queen, he nominated court ministers, and made

attempts at authority. Oppression met with as little success as reform.

After applying in vain to courtiers for retrenchments, to parliament for

levies, to capitalists for loans, he sought for new tax-payers, and made

an appeal to the privileged orders. He demanded of the notables,

consisting of the nobles and the clergy, a participation in the charges of

the state, which they refused. He then for the first time applied to all

France, and convoked the states-general. He treated with the various

bodies of the nation before treating with the nation itself; and it was

only on the refusal of the first, that he appealed from it to a power

whose intervention and support he dreaded. He preferred private

assemblies, which, being isolated, necessarily remained secondary, to a

general assembly, which representing all interests, must combine all

powers. Up to this great epoch every year saw the wants of the government

increasing, and resistance becoming more extensive. Opposition passed from

parliaments to the nobility, from the nobility to the clergy, and from

them all to the people. In proportion as each participated in power it

began its opposition, until all these private oppositions were fused in or

gave way before the national opposition. The states-general only decreed a

revolution which was already formed.

CHAPTER I

FROM THE 5TH OF MAY, 1789, TO THE NIGHT OF THE 4TH OF AUGUST

The 5th of May, 1789, was fixed for the opening of the states-general. A

religious ceremony on the previous day prefaced their installation. The

king, his family, his ministers, the deputies of the three orders, went in

procession from the church of Notre-Dame to that of Saint Louis, to hear

the opening mass. Men did not without enthusiasm see the return of a

national ceremony of which France had for so long a period been deprived.

It had all the appearance of a festival. An enormous multitude flocked

from all parts to Versailles; the weather was splendid; they had been

lavish of the pomp of decoration. The excitement of the music, the kind

and satisfied expression of the king, the beauty and demeanour of the

queen, and, as much as anything, the general hope, exalted every one. But

the etiquette, costumes, and order of the ranks of the states in 1614,

were seen with regret. The clergy, in cassocks, large cloaks, and square

caps, or in violet robes and lawn sleeves, occupied the first place. Then

came the nobles, attired in black coats with waistcoats and facings of

cloth of gold, lace cravats, and hats with white plumes, turned up in the

fashion of Henry IV. The modest third estate came last, clothed in black,

with short cloaks, muslin cravats, and hats without feathers or loops. In

the church, the same distinction as to places existed between the three

orders.

The royal session took place the following day in the Salle des Menus.

Galleries, arranged in the form of an amphitheatre, were filled with

spectators. The deputies were summoned and introduced according to the

order established in 1614. The clergy were conducted to the right, the

nobility to the left, and the commons in front of the throne at the end of

the hall. The deputations from Dauphiné, from Crépi in Valois, to which

the duke of Orleans belonged, and from Provence, were received with loud

applause. Necker was also received on his entrance with general

enthusiasm. Public favour was testified towards all who had contributed to

the convocation of the states-general. When the deputies and ministers had

taken their places, the king appeared, followed by the queen, the princes,

and a brilliant suite. The hall resounded with applause on his arrival.

When he came in, Louis XVI. took his seat on the throne, and when he had

put on his hat, the three orders covered themselves at the same time. The

commons, contrary to the custom of the ancient states, imitated the

nobility and clergy, without hesitation: the time when the third order

should remain uncovered and speak kneeling was gone by. The king's speech

was then expected in profound silence. Men were eager to know the true

feeling of the government with regard to the states. Did it purpose

assimilating the new assembly to the ancient, or to grant it the part

which the necessities of the state and the importance of the occasion

assigned to it?

"Gentlemen," said the king, with emotion, "the day I have so anxiously

expected has at length arrived, and I see around me the representatives of

the nation which I glory in governing. A long interval had elapsed since

the last session of the states-general, and although the convocation of

these assemblies seemed to have fallen into disuse, I did not hesitate to

restore a custom from which the kingdom might derive new force, and which

might open to the nation a new source of happiness."

These words which promised much, were only followed by explanations as to

the debt and announcements of retrenchment in the expenditure. The king,

instead of wisely tracing out to the states the course they ought to

follow, urged the orders to union, expressed his want of money, his dread

of innovations, and complained of the uneasiness of the public mind,

without suggesting any means of satisfying it. He was nevertheless very

much applauded when he delivered at the close of his discourse the

following words, which fully described his intentions: "All that can be

expected from the dearest interest in the public welfare, all that can be

required of a sovereign, the first friend of his people; you may and ought

to hope from my sentiments. That a happy spirit of union may pervade this

assembly, gentlemen, and that this may be an ever memorable epoch for the

happiness and prosperity of the kingdom, is the wish of my heart, the most

ardent of my desires; it is, in a word, the reward which I expect for the

uprightness of my intentions, and my love of my subjects."

Barentin, keeper of the seals, spoke next. His speech was an amplification

respecting the states-general, and the favours of the king. After a long

preamble, he at last touched upon the topics of the occasion. "His

Majesty," he said, "has not changed the ancient method of deliberation, by

granting a double representation in favour of the most numerous of the

three orders, that on which the burden of taxation chiefly falls. Although

the vote by poll, by producing but one result, seems to have the advantage

of best representing the general desire, the king wishes this new form

should be adopted only with the free consent of the states, and the

approval of his majesty. But whatever may be the opinion on this question,

whatever distinctions may be drawn between the different matters that will

become subjects of deliberation, there can be no doubt but that the most

entire harmony will unite the three orders on the subject of taxation."

The government was not opposed to the vote by poll in pecuniary matters,

it being more expeditious; but in political questions it declared itself

in favour of voting by order, as a more effectual check on innovations. In

this way it sought to arrive at its own end,--namely, subsidies, and not

to allow the nation to obtain its object, which was reform. The manner in

which the keeper of the seals determined the province of the states-

general, discovered more plainly the intentions of the court. He reduced

them, in a measure, to the inquiry into taxation, in order to vote it, and

to the discussion of a law respecting the press, for the purpose of fixing

its limits, and to the reform of civil and criminal legislation. He

proscribed all other changes, and concluded by saying: "All just demands

have been granted; the king has not noticed indiscreet murmurs; he has

condescended to overlook them with indulgence; he has even forgiven the

expression of those false and extravagant maxims, under favour of which

attempts have been made to substitute pernicious chimeras for the

unalterable principles of monarchy. You will with indignation, gentlemen,

repel the dangerous innovations which the enemies of the public good seek

to confound with the necessary and happy changes which this regeneration

ought to produce, and which form the first wish of his majesty."

This speech displayed little knowledge of the wishes of the nation, or it

sought openly to combat them. The dissatisfied assembly looked to M.

Necker, from whom it expected different language. He was the popular

minister, had obtained the double representation, and it was hoped he

would approve of the vote by poll, the only way of enabling the third

estate to turn its numbers to account. But he spoke as comptroller-general

and as a man of caution. His speech, which lasted three hours, was a

lengthened budget; and when, after tiring the assembly, he touched on the

topic of interest, he spoke undecidedly, in order to avoid committing

himself either with the court or the people.

The government ought to have better understood the importance of the

states-general. The restoration of this assembly alone announced a great

revolution. Looked for with hope by the nation, it reappeared at an epoch

when the ancient monarchy was sinking, and when it alone was capable of

reforming the state and providing for the necessities of royalty. The

difficulties of the time, the nature of their mission, the choice of their

members, everything announced that the states were not assembled as tax-

payers, but as legislators. The right of regenerating France had been

granted them by opinion, was devolved on them by public resolutions, and

they found in the enormity of the abuses and the public encouragement,

strength to undertake and accomplish this great task.

It behoved the king to associate himself with their labours. In this way

he would have been able to restore his power, and ensure himself from the

excesses of a revolution, by himself assisting in bringing it about. If,

taking the lead in these changes, he had fixed the new order of things

with firmness, but with justice; if, realizing the wishes of France, he

had determined the rights of her citizens, the province of the states-

general and the limits of royalty; if, on his own part, he had renounced

arbitrary power, inequality on the part of the nobility, and privileges on

the part of the different bodies; in a word, if he had accomplished all

the reforms which were demanded by public opinion, and executed by the

constituent assembly, he would have prevented the fatal dissensions which

subsequently arose. It is rare to find a prince willing to share his

power, or sufficiently enlightened to yield what he will be reduced to

lose. Yet Louis XVI. would have done this, if he had been less influenced

by those around him, and had he followed the dictates of his own mind. But

the greatest anarchy pervaded the councils of the king. When the states-

general assembled, no measures had been taken, nothing had been decided

on, which might prevent dispute. Louis XVI. wavered between his ministry,

directed by Necker, and his court, directed by the queen and a few princes

of his family.

Necker, satisfied with obtaining the representation of the third estate,

dreaded the indecision of the king and the discontent of the court. Not

appreciating sufficiently the importance of a crisis which he considered

more as a financial than a social one, he waited for the course of events

in order to act, and flattered himself with the hope of being able to

guide these events, without attempting to prepare the way for them. He

felt that the ancient organization of the states could no longer be

maintained; that the existence of three orders, each possessing the right

of refusal, was opposed to the execution of reform and the progress of

administration. He hoped, after a trial of this triple opposition, to

reduce the number of the orders, and bring about the adoption of the

English form of government, by uniting the clergy and nobility in one

chamber, and the third estate in another. He did not foresee that the

struggle once begun, his interposition would be in vain: that half

measures would suit neither party; that the weak through obstinacy, and

the strong through passion, would oppose this system of moderation.

Concessions satisfy only before a victory.

The court, so far from wishing to organize the states-general, sought to

annul them. It preferred the casual resistance of the great bodies of the

nation, to sharing authority with a permanent assembly. The separation of

the orders favoured its views; it reckoned on fomenting their differences,

and thus preventing them from acting. The states-general had never

achieved any result, owing to the defect of their organization; the court

hoped that it would still be the same, since the two first orders were

less disposed to yield to the reforms solicited by the last. The clergy

wished to preserve its privileges and its opulence, and clearly foresaw

that the sacrifices to be made by it were more numerous than the

advantages to be acquired. The nobility, on its side, while it resumed a

political independence long since lost, was aware that it would have to

yield more to the people than it could obtain from royalty. It was almost

entirely in favour of the third estate, that the new revolution was about

to operate, and the first two orders were induced to unite with the court

against the third estate, as but lately they had coalesced with the third

estate against the court. Interest alone led to this change of party, and

they united with the monarch without affection, as they had defended the

people without regard to public good.

No efforts were spared to keep the nobility and clergy in this

disposition. The deputies of these two orders were the objects of favours

and allurements. A committee, to which the most illustrious persons

belonged, was held at the countess de Polignac's; the principal deputies

were admitted to it. It was here that were gained De Eprémenil and De

Entraigues, two of the warmest advocates of liberty in parliament, or

before the states-general, and who afterwards became its most decided

opponents. Here also the costume of the deputies of the different orders

was determined on, and attempts made to separate them, first by etiquette,

then by intrigue, and lastly, by force. The recollection of the ancient

states-general prevailed in the court; it thought it could regulate the

present by the past, restrain Paris by the army, the deputies of the third

estate by those of the nobility, rule the states by separating the orders,

and separate the orders by reviving ancient customs which exalted the

nobles and lowered the commons. Thus, after the first sitting, it was

supposed that all had been prevented by granting nothing.

On the 6th of May, the day after the opening of the states, the nobility

and clergy repaired to their respective chambers, and constituted

themselves. The third estate being, on account of its double

representation, the most numerous order, had the Salle des États allotted

to it, and there awaited the two other orders; it considered its situation

as provisional, its members as presumptive deputies, and adopted a system

of inactivity till the other orders should unite with it. Then a memorable

struggle commenced, the issue of which was to decide whether the

revolution should be effected or stopped. The future fate of France

depended on the separation or reunion of the orders. This important

question arose on the subject of the verification of powers. The popular

deputies asserted very justly, that it ought to be made in common, since,

even if the union of the orders were refused, it was impossible to deny

the interest which each of them had in the examination of the powers of

the others; the privileged deputies argued, on the contrary, that since

the orders had a distinct existence, the verification ought to be made

respectively. They felt that one single co-operation would, for the

future, render all separation impossible.

The commons acted with much circumspection, deliberation, and steadiness.

It was by a succession of efforts, not unattended with peril, by slow and

undecided success, and by struggles constantly renewed, that they attained

their object. The systematic inactivity they adopted from the commencement

was the surest and wisest course; there are occasions when the way to

victory is to know how to wait for it. The commons were unanimous, and

alone formed the numerical half of the states-general; the nobility had in

its bosom some popular dissentients; the majority of the clergy, composed

of several bishops, friends of peace, and of the numerous class of the

curés, the third estate of the church, entertained sentiments favourable

to the commons. Weariness was therefore to bring about a union; this was

what the third estate hoped, what the bishops feared, and what induced

them on the 13th of May to offer themselves as mediators. But this

mediation was of necessity without any result, as the nobility would not

admit voting by poll, nor the commons voting by order. Accordingly, the

conciliatory conferences, after being prolonged in vain till the 27th of

May, were broken up by the nobility, who declared in favour of separate

verification.

The day after this hostile decision, the commons determined to declare

themselves the assembly of the nation, and invited the clergy to join them

_in the name of the God of peace and the common weal_. The court taking

alarm at this measure, interfered for the purpose of having the

conferences resumed. The first commissioners appointed for purposes of

reconciliation were charged with regulating the differences of the orders;

the ministry undertook to regulate the differences of the commissioners.

In this way, the states depended on a commission, and the commission had

the council of the prince for arbiter. But these new conferences had not a

more fortunate issue than the first. They lingered on without either of

the orders being willing to yield anything to the others, and the nobility

finally broke them up by confirming all its resolutions.

Five weeks had already elapsed in useless parleys. The third estate,

perceiving the moment had arrived for it to constitute itself, and that

longer delay would indispose the nation towards it, and destroy the

confidence it had acquired by the refusal of the privileged classes to co-

operate with it, decided on acting, and displayed herein the same

moderation and firmness it had shown during its inactivity. Mirabeau

announced that a deputy of Paris had a motion to propose; and Sieyès,

physically of timid character, but of an enterprising mind, who had great

authority by his ideas, and was better suited than any one to propose a

measure, proved the impossibility of union, the urgency of verification,

the justice of demanding it in common, and caused it to be decreed by the

assembly that the nobility and clergy should be _invited_ to the Salle des

États in order to take part in the verification, which would take place,

_whether they were absent or present_.

The measure for general verification was followed by another still more

energetic. The commons, after having terminated the verification on the

17th of June, on the motion of Sieyès, constituted themselves _the

National Assembly_. This bold step, by which the most numerous order and

the only one whose powers were legalized, declared itself the

representation of France and refused to recognise the other two till they

submitted to the verification, determined questions hitherto undecided,

and changed the assembly of the states into an assembly of the people. The

system of orders disappeared in political powers, and this was the first

step towards the abolition of classes in the private system. This

memorable decree of the 17th of June contained the germ of the night of

the 4th of August; but it was necessary to defend what they had dared to

decide, and there was reason to fear such a determination could not be

maintained.

The first decree of _the National Assembly_ was an act of sovereignty. It

placed the privileged classes under its dependence, by proclaiming the

indivisibility of the legislative power. The court remained to be

restrained by means of taxation. The assembly declared the illegality of

previous imposts, voted them provisionally, as long as it continued to

sit, and their cessation on its dissolution; it restored the confidence of

capitalists by consolidating the public debt, and provided for the

necessities of the people, by appointing a committee of subsistence.

Such firmness and foresight excited the enthusiasm of the nation. But

those who directed the court saw that the divisions thus excited between

the orders had failed in their object; and that it was necessary to resort

to other means to obtain it. They considered the royal authority alone

adequate to prescribe the continuance of the orders, which the opposition

of the nobles could no longer preserve. They took advantage of a journey

to Marly to remove Louis XVI. from the influences of the prudent and

pacific counsels of Necker, and to induce him to adopt hostile measures.

This prince, alike accessible to good and bad counsels, surrounded by a

court given up to party spirit, and entreated for the interests of his

crown and in the name of religion to stop the pernicious progress of the

commons, yielded at last, and promised everything. It was decided that he

should go in state to the assembly, annul its decrees, command the

separation of the orders as constitutive of the monarchy, and himself fix

the reforms to be effected by the states-general. From that moment the

privy council held the government, acting no longer secretly, but in the

most open manner. Barentin, the keeper of the seals, the count d'Artois,

the prince de Condé, and the prince de Conti conducted alone the projects

they had concerted. Necker lost all his influence; he had proposed to the

king a conciliatory plan, which might have succeeded before the struggle

attained this degree of animosity, but could do so no longer. He had

advised another royal sitting, in which the vote by poll in matters of

taxation was to be granted, and the vote by order to remain in matters of

private interest and privilege. This measure, which was unfavourable to

the commons, since it tended to maintain abuses by investing the nobility

and clergy with the right of opposing their abolition, would have been

followed by the establishment of two chambers for the next states-general.

Necker was fond of half measures, and wished to effect, by successive

concessions, a political change which should have been accomplished at

once. The moment was arrived to grant the nation all its rights, or to

leave it to take them. His project of a royal sitting, already

insufficient, was changed into a stroke of state policy by the new

council. The latter thought that the injunctions of the throne would

intimidate the assembly, and that France would be satisfied with promises

of reform. It seemed to be ignorant that the worst risk royalty can be

exposed to is that of disobedience.

Strokes of state policy generally come unexpectedly, and surprise those

they are intended to influence. It was not so with this; its preparations

tended to prevent success. It was feared that the majority of the clergy

would recognise the assembly by uniting with it; and to prevent so decided

a step, instead of hastening the royal sitting, they closed the Salle des

États, in order to suspend the assembly till the day of the sitting. The

preparations rendered necessary by the presence of the king was the

pretext for this unskilful and improper measure. At that time Bailly

presided over the assembly. This virtuous citizen had obtained, without

seeking them, all the honours of dawning liberty. He was the first

president of the assembly, as he had been the first deputy of Paris, and

was to become its first mayor. Beloved by his own party, respected by his

adversaries, he combined with the mildest and most enlightened virtues,

the most courageous sense of duty. Apprised on the night of the 20th of

June, by the keeper of the seals, of the suspension of the sitting, he

remained faithful to the wishes of the assembly, and did not fear

disobeying the court. At an appointed hour on the following day, he

repaired to the Salle des États, and finding an armed force in possession,

he protested against this act of despotism. In the meantime the deputies

arrived, dissatisfaction increased, all seemed disposed to brave the

perils of a sitting. The most indignant proposed going to Marly, and

holding the assembly under the windows of the king; one named the Tennis-

court; this proposition was well received, and the deputies repaired

thither in procession. Bailly was at their head; the people followed them

with enthusiasm; even soldiers volunteered to escort them, and there, in a

bare hall, the deputies of the commons standing with upraised hands, and

hearts full of their sacred mission, swore, with only one exception, not

to separate till they had given France a constitution.

This solemn oath, taken on the 20th of June, in the presence of the

nation, was followed on the 22nd by an important triumph. The assembly,

still deprived of their usual place of meeting, unable to make use of the

Tennis-court, the princes having hired it purposely that it might be

refused them, met in the church of Saint Louis. In this sitting, the

majority of the clergy joined them in the midst of patriotic transports.

Thus, the measures taken to intimidate the assembly, increased its

courage, and accelerated the union they were intended to prevent. By these

two failures the court prefaced the famous sitting of the 23rd of June.

At length it took place. A numerous guard surrounded the hall of the

states-general, the door of which was opened to the deputies, but closed

to the public. The king came surrounded with the pomp of power; he was

received, contrary to the usual custom, in profound silence. His speech

completed the measure of discontent by the tone of authority with which he

dictated measures rejected by public opinion and by the assembly. The king

complained of a want of union, excited by the court itself; he censured

the conduct of the assembly, regarding it only as the order of the third

estate; he annulled its decrees, enjoined the continuance of the orders,

imposed reforms, and determined their limits; enjoined the states-general

to adopt them, and threatened to dissolve them and to provide alone for

the welfare of the kingdom, if he met with more opposition on their part.

After this scene of authority, so ill-suited to the occasion, and at

variance with his heart, Louis XVI. withdrew, having commanded the

deputies to disperse. The clergy and nobility obeyed. The deputies of the

people, motionless, silent, and indignant, remained seated. They continued

in that attitude some time, when Mirabeau suddenly breaking silence, said:

"Gentlemen, I admit that what you have just heard might be for the welfare

of the country, were it not that the presents of despotism are always

dangerous. What is this insulting dictatorship? The pomp of arms, the

violation of the national temple, are resorted to--to command you to be

happy! Who gives this command? Your mandatary. Who makes these imperious

laws for you? Your mandatary; he who should rather receive them from you,

gentlemen--from us, who are invested with a political and inviolable

priesthood; from us, in a word, to whom alone twenty-five millions of men

are looking for certain happiness, because it is to be consented to, and

given and received by all. But the liberty of your discussions is

enchained; a military force surrounds the assembly! Where are the enemies

of the nation? Is Catiline at our gates? I demand, investing yourselves

with your dignity, with your legislative power, you inclose yourselves

within the religion of your oath. It does not permit you to separate till

you have formed a constitution."

The grand master of the ceremonies, finding the assembly did not break up,

came and reminded them of the king's order.

"Go and tell your master," cried Mirabeau, "that we are here at the

command of the people, and nothing but the bayonet shall drive us hence."

"You are to-day," added Sieyès, calmly, "what you were yesterday. Let us

deliberate."

The assembly, full of resolution and dignity, began the debate

accordingly. On the motion of Camus, it was determined to persist in the

decrees already made; and upon that of Mirabeau the inviolability of the

members of the assembly was decreed.

On that day the royal authority was lost. The initiative in law and moral

power passed from the monarch to the assembly. Those who, by their

counsels, had provoked this resistance, did not dare to punish it. Necker,

whose dismissal had been decided on that morning, was, in the evening,

entreated by the queen and Louis XVI. to remain in office. This minister

had disapproved of the royal sitting, and, by refusing to be present at

it, he again won the confidence of the assembly, which he had lost through

his hesitation. The season of disgrace was for him the season of

popularity. By this refusal he became the ally of the assembly, which

determined to support him. Every crisis requires a leader, whose name

becomes the standard of his party; while the assembly contended with the

court, that leader was Necker.

At the first sitting, that part of the clergy which had united with the

assembly in the church of Saint Louis, again sat with it; a few days

after, forty-seven members of the nobility, among whom was the duke of

Orleans, joined them; and the court was itself compelled to invite the

nobility, and a minority of the clergy, to discontinue a dissent that

would henceforth be useless. On the 27th of June the deliberation became

general. The orders ceased to exist legally, and soon disappeared. The

distinct seats they had hitherto occupied in the common hall soon became

confounded; the futile pre-eminences of rank vanished before national

authority.

The court, after having vainly endeavoured to prevent the formation of the

assembly, could now only unite with it, to direct its operations. With

prudence and candour it might still have repaired its errors and caused

its attacks to be forgotten. At certain moments, the initiative may be

taken in making sacrifices; at others, all that can be done is to make a

merit of accepting them. At the opening of the states-general, the king

might himself have made the constitution, now he was obliged to receive it

from the assembly; had he submitted to that position, he would infallibly

have improved it. But the advisers of Louis XVI., when they recovered from

the first surprise of defeat, resolved to have recourse to the use of the

bayonet, after they had failed in that of authority. They led the king to

suppose that the contempt of his orders, the safety of his throne, the

maintenance of the laws of the kingdom, and even the well-being of his

people depended on his reducing the assembly to submission; that the

latter, sitting at Versailles, close to Paris, two cities decidedly in its

favour, ought to be subdued by force, and removed to some other place or

dissolved; that it was urgent that this resolution should be adopted in

order to stop the progress of the assembly, and that in order to execute

it, it was necessary speedily to call together troops who might intimidate

the assembly and maintain order at Paris and Versailles.

While these plots were hatching, the deputies of the nation began their

legislative labours, and prepared the anxiously expected constitution,

which they considered they ought no longer to delay. Addresses poured in

from Paris and the principal towns of the kingdom, congratulating them on

their wisdom, and encouraging them to continue their task of regenerating

France. The troops, meantime, arrived in great numbers; Versailles assumed

the aspect of a camp; the Salle des États was surrounded by guards, and

the citizens refused admission. Paris was also encompassed by various

bodies of the army, ready to besiege or blockade it, as the occasion might

require. These vast military preparations, trains of artillery arriving

from the frontiers, and the presence of foreign regiments, whose obedience

was unlimited, announced sinister projects. The populace were restless and

agitated; and the assembly desired to enlighten the throne with respect to

its projects, and solicit the removal of the troops. At Mirabeau's

suggestion, it presented on the 9th of July a firm but respectful address

to the king, which proved useless. Louis XVI. declared that he alone had

to judge the necessity of assembling or dismissing troops, and assured

them, that those assembled formed only a precautionary army to prevent

disturbances and protect the assembly. He moreover offered the assembly to

remove it to Noyon or Soissons, that is to say, to place it between two

armies and deprive it of the support of the people.

Paris was in the greatest excitement; this vast city was unanimous in its

devotion to the assembly. The perils that threatened the representatives

of the nation, and itself, and the scarcity of food disposed it to

insurrection. Capitalists, from interest and the fear of bankruptcy; men

of enlightenment and all the middle classes, from patriotism; the people,

impelled by want, ascribing their sufferings to the privileged classes and

the court, desirous of agitation and change, all had warmly espoused the

cause of the revolution. It is difficult to conceive the movement which

disturbed the capital of France. It was arising from the repose and

silence of servitude; it was, as it were, astonished at the novelty of its

situation, and intoxicated with liberty and enthusiasm. The press excited

the public mind, the newspapers published the debates of the assembly, and

enabled the public to be present, as it were, at its deliberations, and

the questions mooted in its bosom were discussed in the open air, in the

public squares. It was at the Palais Royal, more especially, that the

assembly of the capital was held. The garden was always filled by a crowd

that seemed permanent, though continually renewed. A table answered the

purpose of the _tribune_, the first citizen at hand became the orator;

there men expatiated on the dangers that threatened the country, and

excited each other to resistance. Already, on a motion made at the Palais

Royal, the prisons of the Abbaye had been broken open, and some grenadiers

of the French guards, who had been imprisoned for refusing to fire on the

people, released in triumph. This outbreak was attended by no

consequences; a deputation had already solicited, in behalf of the

delivered prisoners, the interest of the assembly, who had recommended

them to the clemency of the king. They had returned to prison, and had

received pardon. But this regiment, one of the most complete and bravest,

had become favourable to the popular cause.

Such was the disposition of Paris when the court, having established

troops at Versailles, Sèvres, the Champ de Mars, and Saint Denis, thought

itself able to execute its project. It commenced, on the 11th of July, by

the banishment of Necker, and the complete reconstruction of the ministry.

The marshal de Broglie, la Galissonnière, the duke de la Vauguyon, the

Baron de Breteuil, and the intendant Foulon, were appointed to replace

Puységur, Montmorin, La Luzerne, Saint Priest, and Necker. The latter

received, while at dinner on the 11th of July, a note from the king

enjoining him to leave the country immediately. He finished dining very

calmly, without communicating the purport of the order he had received,

and then got into his carriage with Madame Necker, as if intending to

drive to Saint Omer, and took the road to Brussels.

On the following day, Sunday, the 12th of July, about four in the

afternoon, Necker's disgrace and departure became known at Paris. This

measure was regarded as the execution of the plot, the preparations for

which had so long been observed. In a short time the city was in the

greatest confusion; crowds gathered together on every side; more than ten

thousand persons flocked to the Palais Royal all affected by this news,

ready for anything, but not knowing what measure to adopt. Camille

Desmoulins, a young man, more daring than the rest, one of the usual

orators of the crowd, mounted on a table, pistol in hand, exclaiming:

"Citizens, there is no time to lose; the dismissal of Necker is the knell

of a Saint Bartholomew for patriots! This very night all the Swiss and

German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all; one

resource is left; to take arms!" These words were received with violent

acclamations. He proposed that cockades should be worn for mutual

recognition and protection. "Shall they be green," he cried, "the colour

of hope; or red, the colour of the free order of Cincinnatus?" "Green!

green!" shouted the multitude. The speaker descended from the table, and

fastened the sprig of a tree in his hat. Every one imitated him. The

chestnut-trees of the palace were almost stripped of their leaves, and

the crowd went in tumult to the house of the sculptor Curtius.

They take busts of Necker and the duke of Orleans, a report having also

gone abroad that the latter would be exiled, and covering them with crape,

carry them in triumph. This procession passes through the Rues Saint

Martin, Saint Denis, and Saint Honoré, augmenting at every step. The crowd

obliges all they meet to take off their hats. Meeting the horse-patrol,

they take them as their escort. The procession advances in this way to the

Place Vendôme, and there they carry the two busts twice round the statue

of Louis XIV. A detachment of the Royal-allemand comes up and attempts to

disperse the mob, but are put to flight by a shower of stones; and the

multitude, continuing its course, reaches the Place Louis XV. Here they

are assailed by the dragoons of the prince de Lambesc; after resisting a

few moments they are thrown into confusion; the bearer of one of the busts

and a soldier of one of the French guards are killed. The mob disperses,

part towards the quays, part fall back on the Boulevards, the rest hurry

to the Tuileries by the Pont Tournant. The prince de Lambesc, at the head

of his horsemen, with drawn sabre pursues them into the gardens, and

charges an unarmed multitude who were peaceably promenading and had

nothing to do with the procession. In this attack an old man is wounded by

a sabre cut; the mob defend themselves with the seats, and rush to the

terraces; indignation becomes general; the cry _To arms!_ soon resounds on

every side, at the Palais Royal and the Tuileries, in the city and in the

faubourgs.

We have already said that the regiment of the French guard was favourably

disposed towards the people: it had accordingly been ordered to keep in

barracks. The prince de Lambesc, fearing that it might nevertheless take

an active part, ordered sixty dragoons to station themselves before its

dépôt, situated in the Chaussée-d'Antin. The soldiers of the guards,

already dissatisfied at being kept as prisoners, were greatly provoked at

the sight of these strangers, with whom they had had a skirmish a few days

before. They wished to fly to arms, and their officers using alternately

threats and entreaties, had much difficulty in restraining them. But they

would hear no more, when some of their men brought them intelligence of

the attack at the Tuileries, and the death of one of their comrades: they

seized their arms, broke open the gates, and drew up in battle array at

the entrance of the barracks, and cried out, "_Qui vive?_"--"Royal-

allemand."--"Are you for the third estate?" "We are for those who command

us." Then the French guards fired on them, killed two of their men,

wounded three, and put the rest to flight. They then advanced at quick

time and with fixed bayonets to the Place Louis XV. and took their stand

between the Tuileries and the Champs Élysées, the people and the troops,

and kept that post during the night. The soldiers of the Champ de Mars

were immediately ordered to advance. When they reached the Champs Élysées,

the French guards received them with discharges of musketry. They wished

to make them fight, but they refused: the Petits-Suisses were the first to

give this example, which the other regiments followed. The officers, in

despair, ordered a retreat; the troops retired as far as the Grille de

Chaillot, whence they soon withdrew into the Champ de Mars. The defection

of the French guard, and the manifest refusal even of the foreign troops

to march on the capital, caused the failure of the projects of the court.

During the evening the people had repaired to the Hôtel de Ville, and

requested that the tocsin might be sounded, the districts assembled, and

the citizens armed. Some electors assembled at the Hôtel de Ville, and

took the authority into their own hands. They rendered great service to

their fellow-citizens and the cause of liberty by their courage, prudence,

and activity, during these days of insurrection; but in the first

confusion of the rising it was with difficulty they succeeded in making

themselves heard. The tumult was at its height; each only answered the

dictates of his own passions. Side by side with well-disposed citizens

were men of suspicious character, who only sought in insurrection

opportunities for pillage and disorder. Bands of labourers employed by

government in the public works, for the most part without home or

substance, burnt the barriers, infested the streets, plundered houses, and

obtained the name of brigands. The night of the 12th and 13th was spent in

tumult and alarm.

The departure of Necker, which threw the capital into this state of

excitement, had no less effect at Versailles and in the assembly. It

caused the same astonishment and discontent. The deputies repaired early

in the morning to the Salle des États; they were gloomy, but their silence

arose from indignation rather than dejection. "At the opening of the

session," said a deputy, "several addresses of adherence to the decrees

were listened to in mournful silence by the assembly, more attentive to

their own thoughts than to the addresses read." Mounier began; he

exclaimed against the dismissal of ministers beloved by the nation, and

the choice of their successors. He proposed an address to the king

demanding their recall, showing him the dangers attendant on violent

measures, the misfortunes that would follow the employment of troops, and

telling him that the assembly solemnly opposed itself to an infamous

national bankruptcy. At these words, the feelings of the assembly,

hitherto restrained, broke out in clapping of hands, and cries of

approbation. Lally-Tollendal, a friend of Necker, then came forward with a

sorrowful air, and delivered a long and eloquent eulogium on the banished

minister. He was listened to with the greatest interest; his grief

responded to that of the public; the cause of Necker was now that of the

country. The nobility itself sided with the members of the third estate,

either considering the danger common, or dreading to incur the same blame

as the court if it did not disapprove its conduct, or perhaps it obeyed

the general impulse.

A noble deputy, the count de Virieu, set the example, and said: "Assembled

for the constitution, let us make the constitution; let us tighten our

mutual bonds; let us renew, confirm, and consecrate the glorious decrees

of the 17th of June; let us join in the celebrated resolution made on the

20th of the same month. Let us all, yes, all, all the united orders, swear

to be faithful to those illustrious decrees which now can alone save the

kingdom." "_The constitution shall be made, or we will cease to be_,"

added the duc de la Rochefoucauld. But this unanimity became still more

confirmed when the rising of Paris, the excesses which ensued the burning

of the barriers, the assembling of the electors at the Hôtel de Ville, the

confusion of the capital, and the fact that citizens were ready to be

attacked by the soldiers or to slaughter each other, became known to the

assembly. Then one cry resounded through the hall: "Let the recollection

of our momentary divisions be effaced! Let us unite our efforts for the

salvation of the country!" A deputation was immediately sent to the king,

composed of eighty members, among whom were all the deputies of Paris. The

archbishop of Vienne, president of the assembly, was at its head. It was

to represent to the king the dangers that threatened the capital, the

necessity of sending away the troops, and entrusting the care of the city

to a militia of citizens; and if it obtained these demands from the king,

a deputation was to be sent to Paris with the consolatory intelligence.

But the members soon returned with an unsatisfactory answer.

The assembly now saw that it must depend on itself, and that the projects

of the court were irrevocably fixed. Far from being discouraged, it only

became more firm, and immediately voted unanimously a decree proclaiming

the responsibility of the present ministers of the king, and of all his

counsellors, _of whatever rank they might be_; it further passed a vote of

regret for Necker and the other disgraced ministers; it resolved that it

would not cease to insist upon the dismissal of the troops and the

establishment of a militia of citizens; it placed the public debt under

the safeguard of French honour, and adhered to all its previous decrees.

After these measures, it adopted a last one, not less necessary;

apprehending that the Salle des États might, during the night, be occupied

by a military force for the purpose of dispersing the assembly, it

resolved to sit permanently till further orders. It decided that a portion

of the members should sit during the night, and another relieve them early

in the morning. To spare the venerable archbishop of Vienne the fatigue of

a permanent presidency, a vice-president was appointed to supply his place

on these extraordinary occasions. Lafayette was elected to preside over

the night sittings. It passed off without a debate; the deputies remaining

in their seats, observing silence, but apparently calm and serene. It was

by these measures, this expression of public regret, by these decrees,

this unanimous enthusiasm, this sustained good sense, this inflexible

conduct, that the assembly rose gradually to a level with its dangers and

its mission.

On the 13th the insurrection took at Paris a more regular character. Early

in the morning the populace flocked to the Hôtel de Ville; the tocsin was

sounded there and in all the churches; and drums were beat in the streets

to call the citizens together. The public places soon became thronged.

Troops were formed under the titles of volunteers of the Palais Royal,

volunteers of the Tuileries, of the Basoche, and of the Arquebuse. The

districts assembled, and each of them voted two hundred men for its

defence. Arms alone were wanting; and these were eagerly sought wherever

there was any hope of finding them. All that could be found at the gun-

smiths and sword-cutlers were taken, receipts being sent to the owners.

They applied for arms at the Hôtel de Ville. The electors who were still

assembled, replied in vain that they had none; they insisted on having

them. The electors then sent the head of the city, M. de Flesselles, the

Prévôt des marchands, who alone knew the military state of the capital,

and whose popular authority promised to be of great assistance in this

difficult conjuncture. He was received with loud applause by the

multitude: "_My friends_," said he, "_I am your father; you shall be

satisfied_." A permanent committee was formed at the Hôtel de Ville, to

take measures for the general safety.

About the same time it was announced that the Maison des Lazaristes, which

contained a large quantity of grain, had been despoiled; that the Garde-

Meuble had been forced open to obtain old arms, and that the gun-smiths'

shops had been plundered. The greatest excesses were apprehended from the

crowd; it was let loose, and it seemed difficult to master its fury. But

this was a moment of enthusiasm and disinterestedness. The mob itself

disarmed suspected characters; the corn found at the Lazaristes was taken

to the Halle; not a single house was plundered, and carriages and vehicles

filled with provisions, furniture and utensils, stopped at the gates of

the city, were taken to the Place de Grève, which became a vast depôt.

Here the crowd increased every moment, shouting _Arms!_ It was now about

one o'clock. The provost of the merchants then announced the immediate

arrival of twelve thousand guns from the manufactory of Charleville, which

would soon be followed by thirty thousand more.

This appeased the people for some time, and the committee was enabled to

pursue quietly its task of organizing a militia of citizens. In less than

four hours the plan was drawn up, discussed, adopted, printed, and

proclaimed. It was resolved that the Parisian guard should, till further

orders, be increased to forty-eight thousand men. All citizens were

invited to enrol their names; every district had its battalion; every

battalion its leaders; the command of this army of citizens was offered to

the duc d'Aumont, who required twenty-four hours to decide. In the

meantime the marquis de la Salle was appointed second in command. The

green cockade was then exchanged for a blue and red one, which were the

colours of the city. All this was the work of a few hours. The districts

gave their assent to the measures adopted by the permanent committee. The

clerks of the Châtelet, those of the Palais, medical students, soldiers of

the watch, and what was of still greater value, the French guards offered

their services to the assembly. Patrols began to be formed, and to

perambulate the streets.

The people waited with impatience the realisation of the promise of the

provost of the merchants, but no guns arrived; evening approached, and

they feared during the night another attack from the troops. They thought

they were betrayed when they heard of an attempt to convey secretly from

Paris nearly fifty cwt. of powder, which had been intercepted by the

people at the barriers. But soon after some cases arrived, labelled

_Artillery_. At this sight, the commotion subsided; the cases were

escorted to the Hôtel de Ville, it being supposed that they contained the

guns expected from Charleville. On opening them, they were found to

contain old linen and pieces of wood. A cry of treachery arose on every

side, mingled with murmurs and threats against the committee and the

provost of the merchants. The latter apologized, declaring he had been

deceived; and to gain time, or to get rid of the crowd, sent them to the

Chartreux, to seek for arms. Finding none there, the mob returned, enraged

and mistrustful. The committee then felt satisfied there was no other way

of arming Paris, and curing the suspicions of the people, than by forging

pikes; and accordingly gave orders that fifty thousand should be made

immediately. To avoid the excesses of the preceding night, the town was

illuminated, and patrols marched through it in every direction.

The next day, the people that had been unable to obtain arms on the

preceding day, came early in the morning to solicit some from the

committee, blaming its refusal and failures of the day before. The

committee had sent for some in vain; none had arrived from Charleville,

none were to be found at the Chartreux, and the arsenal itself was empty.

The mob, no longer satisfied with excuses, and more convinced than ever

that they were betrayed, hurried in a mass to the Hôtel des Invalides,

which contained a considerable depot of arms. It displayed no fear of the

troops established in the Champ de Mars, broke into the Hôtel, in spite of

the entreaties of the governor, M. de Sombreuil, found twenty-eight

thousand guns concealed in the cellars, seized them, took all the sabres,

swords, and cannon, and carried them off in triumph. The cannon were

placed at the entrance of the Faubourgs, at the palace of the Tuileries,

on the quays and on the bridges, for the defence of the capital against

the invasion of troops, which was expected every moment.

Even during the same morning an alarm was given that the regiments

stationed at Saint Denis were on the march, and that the cannon of the

Bastille were pointed on the Rue Saint Antoine. The committee immediately

sent to ascertain the truth; appointed bands of citizens to defend that

side of the town, and sent a deputation to the governor of the Bastille,

soliciting him to withdraw his cannon and engage in no act of hostility.

This alarm, together with the dread which that fortress inspired, the

hatred felt for the abuses it shielded, the importance of possessing so

prominent a point, and of not leaving it in the power of the enemy in a

moment of insurrection, drew the attention of the populace in that

direction. From nine in the morning till two, the only rallying word

throughout Paris was "à la Bastille! à la Bastille!" The citizens hastened

thither in bands from all quarters, armed with guns, pikes, and sabres.

The crowd which already surrounded it was considerable; the sentinels of

the fortress were at their posts, and the drawbridges raised as in war.

A deputy of the district of Saint Louis de la Culture, named Thuriot de la

Rosière, then requested a parley with De Launay, the governor. When

admitted to his presence he summoned him to change the direction of the

cannon. The governor replied, that the cannon had always been placed on

the towers, and it was not in his power to remove them; yet, at the same

time, having heard of the alarm prevalent among the Parisians, he had had

them withdrawn a few paces, and taken out of the port-holes. With some

difficulty Thuriot obtained permission to enter the fortress further, and

examine if its condition was really as satisfactory for the town as the

governor represented it to be. As he advanced, he observed three pieces of

cannon pointed on the avenues leading to the open space before the

fortress, and ready to sweep those who might attempt to attack it. About

forty Swiss, and eighty Invalides, were under arms. Thuriot urged them, as

well as the staff of the place, in the name of honour and of their

country, not to act as the enemies of the people. Both officers and

soldiers swore they would not make use of their arms unless attacked.

Thuriot then ascended the towers, and perceived a crowd gathering in all

directions, and the inhabitants of the Faubourg Saint Antoine, who were

rising in a mass. The multitude without, not seeing him return, were

already demanding him with great clamour. To satisfy the people, he

appeared on the parapet of the fortress, and was received with loud

applause from the gardens of the arsenal. He then rejoined his party, and

having informed them of the result of his mission, proceeded to the

committee.

But the impatient crowd now clamoured for the surrender of the Bastille.

From time to time the cry arose, "The Bastille! we will have the

Bastille!" At length, two men, more determined than the rest, darting from

the crowd, sprang on a guardhouse, and struck at the chains of the

drawbridge with heavy hatchets. The soldiers shouted to them to retire,

and threatened to fire; but they continued to strike, succeeded in

breaking the chains and lowering the bridge, and then rushed over it,

followed by the crowd. In this way they advanced to cut the chains of the

second bridge. The garrison now dispersed them with a discharge of

musketry. They returned, however, to the attack, and for several hours

their efforts were confined to the second bridge, the approach to which

was defended by a ceaseless fire from the fortress. The mob infuriated by

this obstinate resistance, tried to break in the gates with hatchets, and

to set fire to the guard-house. A murderous discharge of grapeshot

proceeded from the garrison, and many of the besiegers were killed and

wounded. They only became the more determined, and seconded by the daring

and determination of the two brave men, Elie and Hulin, who were at their

head, they continued the attack with fury.

The committee of the Hôtel de Ville were in a state of great anxiety. The

siege of the Bastille seemed to them a very rash enterprise. They ever and

anon received intelligence of the disasters that had taken place before

the fortress. They wavered between fear of the troops should they prove

victorious, and that of the multitude who clamoured for ammunition to

continue the siege. As they could not give what they did not possess, the

mob cried treachery. Two deputations had been sent by the committee for

the purpose of discontinuing hostilities, and inviting the governor to

confide the keeping of the place to the citizens; but in the midst of the

tumult, the cries, and the firing, they could not make themselves heard. A

third was sent, carrying a drum and banner, that it might be more easily

distinguished, but it experienced no better fortune: neither side would

listen to anything. The assembly at the Hôtel de Ville, notwithstanding it

efforts and activity, still incurred the suspicions of the populace. The

provost of the merchants, especially, excited the greatest mistrust. "He

has already deceived us several times during the day," said one. "He

talks," said another, "of opening a trench; he only wants to gain time, to

make us lose ours." Then an old man cried: "Comrades, why do you listen to

traitors? Forward, follow me! In less than two hours the Bastille will be

taken!"

The siege had lasted more than four hours when the French guards arrived

with cannon. Their arrival changed the appearance of the combat. The

garrison itself begged the governor to yield. The unfortunate De Launay,

dreading the fate that awaited him, wished to blow up the fortress, and

bury himself under its ruins and those of the faubourg. He went in despair

towards the powder magazine, with a lighted match. The garrison stopped

him, raised a white standard on the platform, and reversed the guns, in

token of peace. But the assailants still continued to fight and advance,

shouting, "Lower the bridges!" Through the battlements a Swiss officer

proposed to capitulate, with permission to retire from the building with

the honours of war. "No! no!" clamoured the crowd. The same officer

proposed to lay down arms, on the promise that their lives should be

spared. "Lower the bridge," rejoined the foremost of the assailants, "you

shall not be injured." The gates were opened and the bridge lowered, on

this assurance, and the crowd rushed into the Bastille. Those who led the

multitude wished to save from its vengeance the governor, Swiss soldiers,

and Invalides; but cries of "Give them up! give them up! they fired on

their fellow-citizens, they deserve to be hanged!" rose on every side. The

governor, a few Swiss soldiers and Invalides were torn from the protection

of those who sought to defend them, and put to death by the implacable

crowd.

The permanent committee knew nothing of the issue of the combat. The hall

of the sittings was invaded by a furious multitude, who threatened the

provost of the merchants and electors. Flesselles began to be alarmed at

his position; he was pale and agitated. The object of the most violent

reproaches and threats, they obliged him to go from the hall of the

committee to the hall of the general assembly, where a great crowd of

citizens was assembled. "Let him come; let him follow us," resounded from

all sides. "This is too much!" rejoined Flesselles. "Let us go, since they

request it; let us go where I am expected." They had scarcely reached the

great hall, when the attention of the multitude was drawn off by shouts on

the Place de Grève. They heard the cries of "Victory! victory! liberty!"

It was the arrival of the conquerors of the Bastille which this announced.

They themselves soon entered the hall with the most noisy and the most

fearful pomp. The persons who had most distinguished themselves were

carried in triumph, crowned with laurels. They were escorted by more than

fifteen hundred men, with glaring eyes and dishevelled hair, with all

kinds of arms, pressing one upon another, and making the flooring yield

beneath their feet. One carried the keys and standard of the Bastille;

another, its regulations suspended to his bayonet; a third, with horrible

barbarity, raised in his bleeding hand the buckle of the governor's stock.

With this parade, the procession of the conquerors of the Bastille,

followed by an immense crowd that thronged the quays, entered the hall of

the Hôtel de Ville to inform the committee of their triumph, and decide

the fate of the prisoners who survived. A few wished to leave it to the

committee, but others shouted: "No quarter for the prisoners! No quarter

for the men who fired on their fellow-citizens!" La Salle, the commandant,

the elector Moreau de Saint-Méry, and the brave Elie, succeeded in

appeasing the multitude, and obtained a general amnesty.

It was now the turn of the unfortunate Flesselles. It is said that a

letter found on De Launay proved the treachery of which he was suspected.

"I am amusing the Parisians," he wrote, "with cockades and promises. Hold

out till the evening, and you shall be reinforced." The mob hurried to his

office. The more moderate demanded that he should be arrested and confined

in the Châtelet; but others opposed this, saying that he should be

conveyed to the Palais-Royal, and there tried. This decision gave general

satisfaction. "To the Palais-Royal! To the Palais-Royal!" resounded from

every side. "Well--be it so, gentlemen," replied Flesselles, with

composure, "let us go to the Palais-Royal." So saying, he descended the

steps, passed through the crowd, which opened to make way for him, and

which followed without offering him any violence. But at the corner of the

Quay Pelletier a stranger rushed forward, and killed him with a pistol-

shot.

After these scenes of war, tumult, dispute, and vengeance, the Parisians,

fearing, from some intercepted letters, that an attack would be made

during the night, prepared to receive the enemy. The whole population

joined in the labour of fortifying the town; they formed barricades,

opened intrenchments, unpaved streets, forged pikes, and cast bullets.

Women carried stones to the tops of the houses to crush the soldiers as

they passed. The national guard were distributed in posts; Paris seemed

changed into an immense foundry and a vast camp, and the whole night was

spent under arms, expecting the conflict.

While the insurrection assumed this violent, permanent, and serious

character at Paris, what was doing at Versailles? The court was preparing

to realize its designs against the capital and assembly. The night of the

14th was fixed upon for their execution. The baron de Breteuil, who was at

the head of the ministry, had promised to restore the royal authority in

three days. Marshal de Broglie, commander of the army collected around

Paris, had received unlimited powers of all kinds. On the 15th the

declaration of the 23rd of June was to be renewed, and the king, after

forcing the assembly to adopt it, was to dissolve it. Forty thousand

copies of this declaration were in readiness to be circulated throughout

the kingdom; and to meet the pressing necessities of the treasury more

than a hundred millions of paper money was created. The movement in Paris,

so far from thwarting the court, favoured its views. To the last moment it

looked upon it as a passing tumult that might easily be suppressed; it

believed neither in its perseverance nor in its success, and it did not

seem possible to it that a town of citizens could resist an army.

The assembly was apprised of these projects. For two days it had sat

without interruption, in a state of great anxiety and alarm. It was

ignorant of the greater portion of what was passing in Paris. At one time

it was announced that the insurrection was general, and that all Paris was

marching on Versailles; then that the troops were advancing on the

capital. They fancied they heard cannon, and they placed their ears to the

ground to assure themselves. On the evening of the 14th it was announced

that the king intended to depart during the night, and that the assembly

would be left to the mercy of the foreign regiments. This last alarm was

not without foundation. A carriage and horses were kept in readiness, and

the body-guard remained booted for several days. Besides, at the Orangery,

incidents truly alarming took place; the troops were prepared and

stimulated for their expedition by distributions of wine and by

encouragements. Everything announced that a decisive moment had arrived.

Despite the approaching and increasing danger, the assembly was unshaken,

and persisted in its first resolutions. Mirabeau, who had first required

the dismissal of the troops, now arranged another deputation. It was on

the point of setting out, when the viscount de Noailles, a deputy, just

arrived from Paris, informed the assembly of the progress of the

insurrection, the pillage of the Invalides, the arming of the people, and

the siege of the Bastille. Wimpfen, another deputy, to this account added

that of the personal dangers he had incurred, and assured them that the

fury of the populace was increasing with its peril. The assembly proposed

the establishment of couriers to bring them intelligence every half hour.

M. M. Ganilh and Bancal-des-Issarts, despatched by the committee at the

Hôtel de Ville as a deputation to the assembly, confirmed all they had

just heard. They informed them of the measures taken by the electors to

secure order and the defence of the capital; the disasters that had

happened before the Bastille; the inutility of the deputations sent to the

governor, and told them that the fire of the garrison had surrounded the

fortress with the slain. A cry of indignation arose in the assembly at

this intelligence, and a second deputation was instantly despatched to

communicate these distressing tidings to the king. The first returned with

an unsatisfactory answer; it was now ten at night. The king, on learning

these disastrous events, which seemed to presage others still greater,

appeared affected. Struggling against the part he had been induced to

adopt, he said to the deputies,--"You rend my heart more and more by the

dreadful news you bring of the misfortunes of Paris. It is impossible to

suppose that the orders given to the troops are the cause of these

disasters. You are acquainted with the answer I returned to the first

deputation; I have nothing to add to it." This answer consisted of a

promise that the troops of the Champ de Mars should be sent away from

Paris, and of an order given to general officers to assume the command of

the guard of citizens. Such measures were not sufficient to remedy the

dangerous situation in which men were placed; and it neither satisfied nor

gave confidence to the assembly.

Shortly after this, the deputies d'Ormesson and Duport announced to the

assembly the taking of the Bastille, and the deaths of De Launay and

Flesselles. It was proposed to send a third deputation to the king,

imploring the removal of the troops. "No," said Clermont Tonnerre, "leave

them the night to consult in; kings must buy experience as well as other

men." In this way the assembly spent the night. On the following morning,

another deputation was appointed to represent to the king the misfortunes

that would follow a longer refusal. When on the point of starting,

Mirabeau stopped it: "Tell him," he exclaimed, "that the hordes of

strangers who invest us, received yesterday, visits, caresses,

exhortations, and presents from the princes, princesses, and favourites;

tell him that, during the night, these foreign satellites, gorged with

gold and wine, predicted in their impious songs the subjection of France,

and invoked the destruction of the national assembly; tell him, that in

his own palace, courtiers danced to the sound of that barbarous music, and

that such was the prelude to the massacre of Saint Bartholomew! Tell him

that the Henry of his ancestors, whom he wished to take as his model,

whose memory is honoured by all nations, sent provisions into a Paris in

revolt when besieging the city himself, while the savage advisers of Louis

send away the corn which trade brings into Paris loyal and starving."

But at that moment the king entered the assembly. The duke de Liancourt,

taking advantage of the access his quality of master of the robes gave

him, had informed the king, during the night, of the desertion of the

French guard, and of the attack and taking of the Bastille. At this news,

of which his councillors had kept him in ignorance, the monarch exclaimed,

with surprise, "this is a revolt!" "No sire! it is a revolution." This

excellent citizen had represented to him the danger to which the projects

of the court exposed him; the fears and exasperations of the people, the

disaffection of the troops, and he determined upon presenting himself

before the assembly, to satisfy them as to his intentions. The news at

first excited transports of joy. Mirabeau represented to his colleagues,

that it was not fit to indulge in premature applause. "Let us wait," said

he, "till his majesty makes known the good intentions we are led to expect

from him. The blood of our brethren flows in Paris. Let a sad respect be

the first reception given to the king by the representatives of an

unfortunate people: the silence of the people is the lesson of kings."

The assembly resumed the sombre demeanour which had never left it during

the three preceding days. The king entered without guards, and only

attended by his brothers. He was received, at first, in profound silence;

but when he told them he was _one with the nation_, and that, relying on

the love and fidelity of his subjects, he had ordered the troops to leave

Paris and Versailles; when he uttered the affecting words--_Eh bien, c'est

moi qui me fie à vous_, general applause ensued. The assembly arose

spontaneously, and conducted him back to the château.

This intelligence diffused gladness in Versailles and Paris, where the

reassured people passed, by sudden transition, from animosity to

gratitude. Louis XVI. thus restored to himself, felt the importance of

appeasing the capital in person, of regaining the affection of the people,

and of thus conciliating the popular power. He announced to the assembly

that he would recall Necker, and repair to Paris the following day. The

assembly had already nominated a deputation of a hundred members, which

preceded the king to the capital. It was received with enthusiasm. Bailly

and Lafayette, who formed part of it, were appointed, the former mayor of

Paris, the latter commander-in-chief of the citizen guard. Bailly owed

this recompense to his long and difficult presidency of the assembly, and

Lafayette to his glorious and patriotic conduct. A friend of Washington,

and one of the principal authors of American independence, he had, on his

return to his country, first pronounced the name of the states-general,

had joined the assembly, with the minority of the nobility, and had since

proved himself one of the most zealous partisans of the revolution.

On the 27th, the new magistrates went to receive the king at the head of

the municipality and the Parisian guard. "Sire," said Bailly, "I bring

your majesty the keys of your good town of Paris; they are the same which

were presented to Henry IV.; he had regained his people; now the people

have regained their king." From the Place Louis XV. to the Hôtel de Ville,

the king passed through a double line of the national guard, placed in

ranks three or four deep, and armed with guns, pikes, lances, scythes, and

staves. Their countenances were still gloomy; and no cry was heard but the

oft-repeated shout of "Vive la Nation!" But when Louis XVI. had left his

carriage and received from Bailly's hands the tri-coloured cockade, and,

surrounded by the crowd without guards, had confidently entered the Hôtel

de Ville, cries of "Vive le Roi!" burst forth on every side. The

reconciliation was complete; Louis XVI. received the strongest marks of

affection. After approving the choice of the people with respect to the

new magistrates, he returned to Versailles, where some anxiety was

entertained as to the success of his journey, on account of the preceding

troubles. The national assembly met him in the Avenue de Paris; it

accompanied him as far as the château, where the queen and her children

ran to his arms.

The ministers opposed to the revolution, and all the authors of the

unsuccessful projects, retired from court. The count d'Artois and his two

sons, the prince de Condé, the prince de Conti, and the Polignac family,

accompanied by a numerous train, left France. They settled at Turin, where

the count d'Artois and the prince de Condé were soon joined by Calonne,

who became their agent. Thus began the first emigration. The emigrant

princes were not long in exciting civil war in the kingdom, and forming an

European coalition against France.

Necker returned in triumph. This was the finest moment of his life; few

men have had such. The minister of the nation, disgraced for it, and

recalled for it, he was welcomed along the road from Bâle to Paris, with

every expression of public gratitude and joy. His entry into Paris was a

day of festivity. But the day that raised his popularity to its height put

a term to it. The multitude, still enraged against all who had

participated in the project of the 14th of July, had put to death, with

relentless cruelty, Foulon, the intended minister, and his nephew,

Berthier. Indignant at these executions, fearing that others might fall

victims, and especially desirous of saving the baron de Besenval,

commander of the army of Paris, under marshal de Broglie, and detained

prisoner, Necker demanded a general amnesty and obtained it from the

assembly of electors. This step was very imprudent, in a moment of

enthusiasm and mistrust. Necker did not know the people; he was not aware

how easily they suspect their chiefs and destroy their idols. They thought

he wished to protect their enemies from the punishment they had incurred;

the districts assembled, the legality of an amnesty pronounced by an

unauthorised assembly was violently attacked, and the electors themselves

revoked it. No doubt, it was advisable to calm the rage of the people, and

recommend them to be merciful; but instead of demanding the liberation of

the accused, the application should have been for a tribunal which would

have removed them from the murderous jurisdiction of the multitude. In

certain cases that which appears most humane is not really so. Necker,

without gaining anything, excited the people against himself, and the

districts against the electors; from that time he began to contend against

the revolution, of which, because he had been for a moment its hero, he

hoped to become the master. But an individual is of slight importance

during a revolution which raises the masses; that vast movement either

drags him on with it, or tramples him under foot; he must either precede

or succumb. At no time is the subordination of men to circumstances more

clearly manifested: revolutions employ many leaders, and when they submit,

it is to one alone.

The consequences of the 14th of July were immense. The movement of Paris

communicated itself to the provinces; the country population, imitating

that of the capital, organized itself in all directions into

municipalities for purposes of self-government; and into bodies of

national guards for self-defence. Authority and force became wholly

displaced; royalty had lost them by its defeat, the nation had acquired

them. The new magistrates were alone powerful, alone obeyed; their

predecessors were altogether mistrusted. In towns, the people rose against

them and against the privileged classes, whom they naturally supposed

enemies to the change that had been effected. In the country, the châteaux

were fired and the peasantry burned the title-deeds of their lords. In a

moment of victory it is difficult not to make an abuse of power. But to

appease the people it was necessary to destroy abuses, in order that, they

might not, while seeking to get rid of them, confound privilege with

property. Classes had disappeared, arbitrary power was destroyed; with

these, their old accessory, inequality, too, must be suppressed. Thus must

proceed the establishment of the new order of things, and these

preliminaries were the work of a single night.

The assembly had addressed to the people proclamations calculated to

restore tranquillity. The Châtelet was constituted a court for trying the

conspirators of the 14th of July, and this also contributed to the

restoration of order by satisfying the multitude. An important measure

remained to be executed, the abolition of privileges. On the night of the

4th of August, the viscount de Noailles gave the signal for this. He

proposed the redemption of feudal rights, and the suppression of personal

servitude. With this motion began the sacrifice of all the privileged

classes; a rivalry of patriotism and public offerings arose among them.

The enthusiasm became general; in a few hours the cessation of all abuses

was decreed. The duke du Châtelet proposed the redemption of tithes and

their conversion into a pecuniary tax; the bishop of Chartres, the

abolition of the game-laws; the count de Virieu, that of the law

protecting doves and pigeons. The abolition of seigneurial courts, of the

purchase and sale of posts in the magistracy, of pecuniary immunities, of

favouritism in taxation, of surplice money, first-fruits, pluralities, and

unmerited pensions, were successively proposed and carried. After

sacrifices made by individuals, came those of bodies, of towns and

provinces. Companies and civic freedoms were abolished. The marquis des

Blacons, a deputy of Dauphiné, in the name of his province, pronounced a

solemn renunciation of its privileges. The other provinces followed the

example of Dauphiné, and the towns that of the provinces. A medal was

struck to commemorate the day; and the assembly decreed to Louis XVI. the

title of _Restorer of French Liberty_.

That night, which an enemy of the revolution designated at the time, the

Saint Bartholomew of property, was only the Saint Bartholomew of abuses.

It swept away the rubbish of feudalism; it delivered persons from the

remains of servitude, properties from seigneurial liabilities; from the

ravages of game, and the exaction of tithes. By destroying the seigneurial

courts, that remnant of private power, it led to the principle of public

power; in putting an end to the purchasing posts in the magistracy, it

threw open the prospect of unbought justice. It was the transition from an

order of things in which everything belonged to individuals, to another in

which everything was to belong to the nation. That night changed the face

of the kingdom; it made all Frenchmen equal; all might now obtain public

employments; aspire to the idea of property of their own, of exercising

industry for their own benefit. That night was a revolution as important

as the insurrection of the 14th of July, of which it was the consequence.

It made the people masters of society, as the other had made them masters

of the government, and it enabled them to prepare the new, while

destroying the old constitution.

The revolution had progressed rapidly, had obtained great results in a

very short time; it would have been less prompt, less complete, had it not

been attacked. Every refusal became for it the cause of a new success; it

foiled intrigue, resisted authority, triumphed over force; and at the

point of time we have reached, the whole edifice of absolute monarchy had

fallen to the ground, through the errors of its chiefs. The 17th of June

had witnessed the disappearance of the three orders, and the states-

general changed into the national assembly; with the 23rd of June

terminated the moral influence of royalty; with the 14th of July its

physical power; the assembly inherited the one, the people the other;

finally, the 4th of August completed this first revolution. The period we

have just gone over stands prominently out from the rest; in its brief

course force was displaced, and all the preliminary changes were

accomplished. The following period is that in which the new system is

discussed, becomes established, and in which the assembly, after having

been destructive, becomes constructive.