I
_From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789._
The first point which the reader must hold in the story of the
Revolution is the quarrel between its first Parliament and the Crown.
Of what nature was that quarrel?
It was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a simple issue between
privilege and a democratic demand for equality, or between traditional
organs of government and a democratic demand for self-government by the
nation. To imagine this is to read history backwards, and to see in the
untried conditions of 1789 the matured results which only appeared after
years of struggle.
The prime issue lay between legality and illegality.
The forms of French law and all the inherited method of French
administration demanded a certain form of authority; a centralised
government of unlimited power. The King was absolute. From him proceeded
in the simplest fashion whatever will was paramount in the State. He
could suspend a debtor’s liabilities, imprison a man without trial,
release him without revision of his case, make war or peace, and in
minor details such as the discipline and administration of public
bodies, the power of the Crown was theoretically and legally equally
supreme. It was not exercised as the enormous power of modern government
is exercised, it did not perpetually enter into every detail of the life
of the poor in the way in which the power of a modern English Government
enters into it; it is in the very nature of such autocratic power that,
while unlimited in theory, it is compelled to an instinctive and
perpetual self-limitation lest it break down; and autocracy maybe
compared in this to aristocracy, or more properly speaking to oligarchy,
the government of a few: for where a few govern they know that their
government reposes upon public opinion or public tolerance; they are
very careful not to exceed certain limits the transgression of which
would weaken the moral foundation of their power; they welcome allies,
they recruit themselves perpetually from other classes in the community.
In the same way an autocracy always has the desire to be popular. Its
strokes affect the great and the powerful, and are hardly ever aimed at
the mass of the community. The intellectual, the wealthy, the privileged
by birth, fortune or exceptional personal powers, are suspect to it. As
for the mass of men an Autocracy attempts to represent and, in a certain
sense, to obey them.
Now the French autocracy (for it was no less) erred not in the will to
act thus popularly in the early part of the Revolution, but in the
_knowledge_ requisite for such action.
The Parliament, shortly after it had met in May 1789, began to show, in
the Commons part of it, the working of that great theory which had
leavened all France for a generation. The Commons said, “We are the
people; at once the symbols of the people, the direct mandatory servants
of the people, and” (though this was a fiction) “we are of the people in
our birth and origin. We are therefore the true sovereign; and the
prince, the head of the Executive, is no more than an organ of
government, morally less in authority than ourselves, who are the true
source of government.” This attitude, which was at the back of all men’s
minds, and which was concentrated, of course, in the Commons, clashed
with legality. It could not express itself in the terms of law, it could
not act save in a fashion which should be, in the strictest sense of the
word, _revolutionary_.
Now the Crown, on the whole national in sympathy, and comprehending this
new theory well (I mean by the Crown the general body of advisers round
the King, and the King himself), was offended at the illegality not of
the theory or of the pretence (for these were not illegal), but of the
action of the Commons. And this comparatively small source of friction
was the irritant upon which we must fix as the cause of what followed.
The Nobles, by 108 to 47, decided, the day after the opening of the
Parliament, to sit as a separate House. The Clergy, by a much smaller
majority, 133 to 114, came to the same decision, but carefully qualified
it as provisional. The Commons declared that the hall in which they met
should be regarded as the hall of the National Assembly, and later made
it their business (to quote the phrase of the motion) “to attempt to
unite in common all the deputies of the nation in that hall and never to
abandon the principle of voting individually” (that is, not by separate
Houses) “or the principle that the States-General formed one undivided
body.” This attitude was qualified and compromised with to some extent
in the days that followed, but it held the field, and while the Commons
were insisting upon this attitude as a moral right, the Nobles countered
by a reaffirmation of the right of each House to a separate judgment
upon public matters. The Nobles were standing upon legal precedent: the
Commons had nothing in their favour but political theory; if the orders
sat all together and voted as individuals, the Commons, who were in
number equal to the two other Houses combined, would, with their noble
and clerical sympathisers, have a majority.
Now the King and his advisers, notably Necker, who still had great
weight, were by no means “Impossiblists” in this struggle. They desired
an understanding, and through the last days of May and the first days of
June the attempt at an understanding was made. But the attempt dragged,
and as it seemed that nothing would come of it, on the 10th of June
Sièyes moved that the Assembly should “verify its powers” (a French
phrase for admitting and registering the presence of each member as
acceptable to the whole body, and to the theory of its Constitution),
and that this should be done “in the case of each member” (meaning
members of all the three orders and _not_ of the Commons alone),
“whether the members of the two privileged Houses were present or
absent.” The roll was called and completed upon the 15th. None of the
nobles attended the common roll-call, three of the parish clergy (they
were from the province of Poitou) did so, and thus admitted the right of
the Commons so to act. A dozen of their colleagues joined them later;
but that was all.
So far there had been no action which could be precisely called illegal
or revolutionary. The Commons had affirmed a right based upon a
political theory which the vast majority of the nation admitted, and the
legal depositary of power, the King, had not yet reproved. One may draw
a parallel and compare the action of the Commons so far to some action
which a trade union, for instance, may take in England; some action the
legality of which is doubtful but upon which the courts have not yet
decided.
It was upon the 17th of June, two days after the completion of the
roll-call by the Commons, that the first revolutionary act took place,
and the student of the Revolution will do well to put his finger upon
that date and to regard it not indeed as the moral origin of the
movement, but as the precise moment from which the Revolution, as a
Revolution, begins to act. For upon that day the Commons, though in fact
only joined by a handful of the Clerical House, and by none of the
nobility, _declared themselves to be the National Assembly_; that is,
asserted the fiction that Clergy, Nobles and Commons were all present
and voted together. To this declaration they added a definite act of
sovereignty which trespassed upon and contradicted the legal authority
of the Crown. True, the motion was only moved and passed
“provisionally,” but the words used were final, for in this motion the
self-styled “National Assembly” declared that “provisionally” taxes and
dues might be raised upon the old authority but that only until the
National Assembly should disperse; “after which day”--and here we reach
the sacramental formula, as it were, of the crisis--“the National
Assembly _wills and decrees_ that all taxes and dues of whatever nature
which have not been specifically formally and freely granted by the said
Assembly shall cease in every province of the kingdom no matter how such
that province may be administered.” (This is an allusion to the fact
that in some provinces there was a representative machinery, in others
nothing but the direct action of the Crown.) “The Assembly declares that
when it has _in concert with_ (not in obedience to) the King laid down
the principle of a national re-settlement, it will busy itself with the
examination and ordering of the public debt.” Etc., etc.
Such was the point of departure after which sovereignty was at issue
between the Crown and the States-General; the Crown a known institution
with its traditions stretching back to the Roman Empire, and the
National Assembly a wholly new organ according to its own claims, basing
its authority upon a political theory stretching back to the very
origins of human society.
Two days later, on the 19th of June, the “National Assembly,” still only
self-styled and possessing only the powers which it had ascribed to
itself beyond all forms of law, set to work, nominated its committees,
and assumed the sovereignty thus claimed. The Nobles protested (notably
the Bishops), and the King, on the advice of Barentin, keeper of the
Seals, determined upon immediate resistance. The excuse was taken that
the Royal Session, as it was called, in which the King would declare his
will, needed the preparation of the hall, and when the Commons presented
themselves at the door of that hall on the next day, the 20th, they
found it shut against them. They adjourned to a neighbouring tennis
court, and took a solemn corporate oath that they would not separate
without giving France a Constitution. They continued to meet, using a
church for that purpose, but on the 23rd the Royal Session was opened
and the King declared his will.
The reader must especially note that even in this crisis the Crown did
not offer a complete resistance. There was an attempt at compromise.
Necker would have had a more or less complete surrender, the Queen and
her set would have preferred an act of authority which should have
annulled all that the Commons had done. What actually happened was a
permission by the Crown that the three Orders should meet as one body
for certain common interests, but should preserve the system of voting
as separate Houses in “all that might regard the ancient and
constitutional rights of the three Orders, the Constitution to be given
to future Parliaments, feudal property, and the rights and prerogatives
of the two senior Houses.” As a mere numerical test, such a conclusion
would have destroyed the power of the Commons, since, as we have seen,
numbers were the weapon of the Commons, who were equal to the two other
Houses combined, and if all sat together would, with the Liberal
members of the clergy and the nobility, be supreme. But apart from this
numerical test, the act of sovereignty affirmed by the National Assembly
when it declared itself, and itself only, competent to vote taxes, was
annulled. Moreover, the royal declaration ended with a command that on
the next day the three Orders should meet separately.
Now at this critical point the King was disobeyed. The current of the
time chose the revolutionary bed, and as it began to flow deepened and
confirmed its course with every passing day and event. Already the
majority of the clergy had joined the National Assembly when it had
affirmed its right to sit in spite of the check of the 20th of June.
There was a half-hour on that decisive day of the Royal Session, the
23rd of June, when armed force might have been used for the arrest and
dispersion of the Deputies. They declared themselves inviolable and
their arrest illegal, but there was, of course, no sanction for this
decree. As a fact, not a corporal’s file was used against them. The next
day, the 24th, the majority of the clergy again joined the Commons in
their session (in flat defiance of the King’s orders), and on the 25th,
forty-seven of the nobles followed their example. The King yielded, and
on the 27th, two days later, ordered the three Houses to meet together.
The National Assembly was now legally constituted, and set out upon its
career. The Crown, the old centre of authority, had abandoned its
position, and had confirmed the Revolution, but in doing so it had acted
as it were in contradiction with itself. It had made technically legal
an illegality which destroyed its own old legal position, but it had
done so with ill-will, and it was evident that some counter-stroke would
be attempted to restore the full powers of the Crown.
At this point the reader must appreciate what forces were face to face
in the coming struggle. So far, the illegal and revolutionary act of the
17th of June, the Royal Session which replied to that act upon the 23rd,
the King’s decree which yielded to the Commons upon the 27th, had all of
them been but words. If it came to action, what physical forces were
opposed?
On the side of the Crown was the organised armed force which it
commanded. For it must never be forgotten that the Crown was the
Executive, and remained the Executive right on to the capture of the
palace three years later, and the consummation of the Revolution on the
10th of August, 1792. On the side of the National Assembly was without
doubt the public opinion of the country (but that is not a force that
can be used under arms), and, what was much more to the point, the
municipal organisation of France.
Space forbids a full description of the origins and strength of the
French municipal system; it is enough to point out that the whole of
Gallic civilisation, probably from a moment earlier than Cæsar’s
invasion, and certainly from the moment when Roman rule was paramount
in Gaul, was a _municipal_ one. It is so still. The countrysides take
their names mainly from their chief towns. The towns were the seats of
the bishops, whose hierarchy had preserved whatever could be preserved
of the ancient world. In the towns were the colleges, the guilds, the
discussion and the corporations which built up the life of the nation.
The chief of these towns was Paris. The old systems of municipal
government, corrupt and varied as they were, could still give the towns
a power of corporate expression. And even where that might be lacking it
was certain that some engine would be found for expressing municipal
action in a crisis of the sort through which France was now passing. In
Paris, for instance, it was seen when the time came for physical force
that the College of Electors, who had chosen the representatives for
that city, were willing to act at once and spontaneously as a municipal
body which should express the initiative of the people. It was the
towns, and especially Paris, prompt at spontaneous organisation, ready
to arm, and when armed competent to frame a fighting force, which was
the physical power behind the Assembly.
What of the physical power behind the King? His power was, as we have
said, the Regular Armed forces of the country: the army. But it is
characteristic of the moment that only a part of that armed force could
be trusted. For an army is never a mere weapon: it consists of living
men; and though it will act against the general opinion of its members
and will obey orders long after civilians would have broken with the
ties of technical and legal authority, yet there is for armies also a
breaking point in those ties, and the Crown, I repeat, could not use as
a whole the French-speaking and French-born soldiery. Luckily for it, a
very great proportion of the French army at that moment consisted of
foreign mercenaries.
Since the position was virtually one of war, we must consider what was
the strategical object of this force. Its object was Paris, the chief of
the towns; and round Paris, in the early days of July, the mercenary
regiments were gathered from all quarters. That military concentration
once effected, the gates of the city held, especially upon the north and
upon the west, by encamped regiments and by a particularly large force
of cavalry (ever the arm chosen for the repression of civilians), the
Crown was ready to act.
On the 11th of July, Necker, who stood for Liberal opinions, was
dismissed. A new ministry was formed, and the counter-revolution begun.
What followed was the immediate rising of Paris.
The news of Necker’s dismissal reached the masses of the capital (only
an hour’s ride from Versailles) on the afternoon of the 12th, Sunday.
Crowds began to gather; an ineffectual cavalry charge in one of the
outer open spaces of the city only inflamed the popular enthusiasm, for
the soldiers who charged were German mercenary soldiers under the
command of a noble. Public forces were at once organised, arms were
commandeered from the armourers’ shops, the Electoral College, which had
chosen the members of the Assembly for Paris, took command at the Guild
Hall, but the capital point of the insurrection--what made it
possible--was the seizure of a great stock of arms and ammunition,
including cannon, in the depot at the Invalides.
With such resources the crowd attacked, at the other end of the city, a
fortress and arsenal which had long stood in the popular eye as the
symbol of absolute monarchy, the Bastille. With the absurdly
insufficient garrison of the Bastille, its apparent impregnability to
anything the mob might attempt, the supposed but doubtful treason of its
governor in firing upon those whom he had admitted to parley, we are not
here concerned. The Bastille was rushed, after very considerable efforts
and an appreciable loss in killed and wounded. By the evening of that
day, Tuesday, the 14th of July, 1789, Paris had become a formidable
instrument of war. The next news was the complete capitulation of the
King.
He came on the morrow to the National Assembly, promising to send away
the troops; he promised to recall Necker, a municipal organisation was
granted to the city, with Bailly for its first mayor, and--a point of
capital importance--an armed militia dependent upon that municipality
was legally formed, with La Fayette at its head. On the 17th Louis
entered Paris to consummate his capitulation, went to the Guild Hall,
appeared in the tricoloured cockade, and the popular battle was won.
It behoves us here to consider the military aspect of this definitive
act from which the sanction of the Revolution, the physical power behind
it, dates.
Paris numbered somewhat under a million souls: perhaps no more than
600,000: the number fluctuated with the season. The foreign mercenary
troops who were mainly employed in the repression of the popular feeling
therein, were not sufficient to impose anything like a siege. They could
at the various gates have stopped the provisioning of the city, but then
at any one of those separate points, any one of their detachments upon a
long perimeter more than a day’s march in circumference would certainly
have been attacked and almost as certainly overwhelmed by masses of
partially armed civilians.
Could the streets have been cleared while the ferment was rising? It is
very doubtful. They were narrow and tortuous in the extreme, the area to
be dealt with was enormous, the tradition of barricades not forgotten,
and the spontaneous action of that excellent fighting material which a
Paris mob contains, had been quite as rapid as anything that could have
been effected by military orders.
The one great fault was the neglect to cover the Invalides, but even had
the Invalides not been looted, the stock of arms and powder in the city
would have been sufficient to have organised a desperate and prolonged
resistance. The local auxiliary force (of slight military value, it is
true), the “French Guards,” as they were called, were wholly with the
people. And in general, the Crown must be acquitted of any considerable
blunder on the military side of this struggle. It certainly did not fail
from lack of will.
The truth is (if we consider merely the military aspect of this military
event) that in dealing with large bodies of men who are (a) not
previously disarmed, (b) under conditions where they cannot be
dispersed, and (c) capable by a national tradition or character of some
sort of rapid, spontaneous organisation, the issue will always be
doubtful, and the uncertain factor (which is the tenacity, decision and
common will of the civilians, to which soldiers are to be opposed) is
one that varies within the very widest limits.
In massing the troops originally, the Crown and its advisers estimated
that uncertain factor at far too low a point. Even contemporary educated
opinion, which was in sympathy with Paris, put it too low. That factor
was, as a fact, so high that no armed force of the size and quality
which the Crown then disposed of, could achieve its object or hold down
the capital.
As for the absurd conception that any body of men in uniform, however
small, could always have the better of civilian resistance, however
large and well organised, it is not worthy of a moment’s consideration
by those who interest themselves in the realities of military history.
It is worthy only of the academies.
So ends the first phase of the Revolution. It had lasted from the
opening of the States-General in May to the middle of July 1789.