_Meeting of the States-General--Predominant Influence of the
Tiers Etat--Property not represented sufficiently in that
Body--General character of the Members--Disposition of the
Estate of the Nobles--And of the Clergy--Plan of forming the
Three Estates into two Houses--Its advantages--It fails--The
Clergy unite with the Tiers Etat, which assumes the title of the
National Assembly--They assume the task of Legislation, and
declare all former Fiscal Regulations illegal--They assert their
determination to continue their Sessions--Royal
Sitting--Terminates in the Triumph of the Assembly--Parties in
that
Body--Mounier--Constitutionalists--Republicans--Jacobins--Orleans._
[Sidenote: INFLUENCE OF THE TIERS ETAT.]
The Estates-General of France met at Versailles on the 5th May, 1789,
and that was indisputably the first day of the Revolution. The Abbé
Siêyes, in a pamphlet which we have mentioned, had already asked, "What
was the Third Estate?--It was _the whole nation_. What had it been
hitherto in a political light?--Nothing. What was it about to become
presently?--Something." Had the last answer been _Every thing_, it would
have been nearer the truth; for it soon appeared that this Third Estate,
which, in the year 1614, the Nobles had refused to acknowledge even as a
younger brother[67] of their order, was now, like the rod of the
prophet, to swallow up all those who affected to share its power. Even
amid the pageantry with which the ceremonial of the first sitting
abounded, it was clearly visible that the wishes, hopes, and interest of
the public, were exclusively fixed upon the representatives of the
Commons. The rich garments and floating plumes of the Nobility, and the
reverend robes of the Clergy, had nothing to fix the public eye; their
sounding and emphatic titles had nothing to win the ear; the
recollection of the high feats of the one, and long sanctified
characters of the other order, had nothing to influence the mind of the
spectators. All eyes were turned on the members of the Third Estate, in
a plebeian and humble costume, corresponding to their lowly birth and
occupation, as the only portion of the assembly from whom they looked
for the lights and the counsels which the time demanded.[68]
It would be absurd to assert, that the body which thus engrossed the
national attention was devoid of talents to deserve it. On the contrary,
the Tiers Etat contained a large proportion of the learning, the
intelligence, and the eloquence of the kingdom; but unhappily it was
composed of men of theory rather than of practice, men more prepared to
change than to preserve or repair; and, above all, of men, who,
generally speaking, were not directly concerned in the preservation of
peace and order, by possessing a large property in the country.
The due proportion in which talents and property are represented in the
British House of Commons, is perhaps the best assurance for the
stability of the constitution. Men of talents, bold, enterprising, eager
for distinction, and ambitious of power, suffer no opportunity to escape
of recommending such measures as may improve the general system, and
raise to distinction those by whom they are proposed; while men of
substance, desirous of preserving the property which they possess, are
scrupulous in scrutinizing every new measure, and steady in rejecting
such as are not accompanied with the most certain prospect of advantage
to the state. Talent, eager and active, desires the means of employment;
Property, cautious, doubtful, jealous of innovation, acts as a regulator
rather than an impulse on the machine, by preventing its either moving
too rapidly, or changing too suddenly. The over-caution of those by whom
property is represented, may sometimes, indeed, delay a projected
improvement, but much more frequently impedes a rash and hazardous
experiment. Looking back on the Parliamentary history of two centuries,
it is easy to see how much practical wisdom has been derived from the
influence exercised by those members called Country Gentlemen, who,
unambitious of distinguishing themselves by their eloquence, and
undesirous of mingling in the ordinary debates of the house, make their
sound and unsophisticated good sense heard and understood upon every
crisis of importance, in a manner alike respected by the Ministry and
the opposition of the day,--by the professed statesmen of the house,
whose daily business is legislation, and whose thoughts, in some
instances, are devoted to public affairs, because they have none of
their own much worth looking after. In this great and most important
characteristic of representation, the Tiers Etat of France was
necessarily deficient; in fact, the part of the French constitution,
which, without exactly corresponding to the country gentlemen of
England, most nearly resembled them, was a proportion of the Rural
Noblesse of France, who were represented amongst the Estate of the
Nobility. An edict, detaching these rural proprietors, and perhaps the
inferior clergy, from their proper orders, and including their
representatives in that of the Tiers Etat, would have infused into the
latter assembly a proportional regard for the rights of landholders,
whether lay or clerical; and as they must have had a voice in those
anatomical experiments, of which their property was about to become the
subject, it may be supposed they would have resisted the application of
the scalpel, excepting when it was unavoidably necessary. Instead of
which, both the Nobles and Clergy came soon to be placed on the
anatomical table at the mercy of each state-quack, who, having no
interest in their sufferings, thought them excellent subjects on which
to exemplify some favourite hypothesis.
While owners of extensive landed property were in a great measure
excluded from the representation of the Third Estate, its ranks were
filled from those classes which seek novelties in theory, and which are
in the habit of profiting by them in practice. There were professed men
of letters called thither, as they hoped and expected, to realize
theories, for the greater part inconsistent with the present state of
things, in which, to use one of their own choicest common-places,--"Mind
had not yet acquired its due rank." There were many of the inferior
branches of the law; for, unhappily, in this profession also the graver
and more enlightened members were called by their rank to the Estate of
the Noblesse. To these were united churchmen without livings, and
physicians without patients; men, whose education generally makes them
important in the humble society in which they move, and who are
proportionally presumptuous and conceited of their own powers, when
advanced into that which is superior to their usual walk. There were
many bankers also, speculators in politics, as in their natural
employment of stock-jobbing; and there were intermingled with the
classes we have noticed some individual nobles, expelled from their own
ranks for want of character, who, like the dissolute Mirabeau, a moral
monster for talents and want of principle, menaced, from the station
which they had assumed, the rights of the order from which they had been
expelled, and, like deserters of every kind, were willing to guide the
foes to whom they had fled, into the intrenchments of the friends whom
they had forsaken, or by whom they had been exiled. There were also
mixed with these perilous elements many individuals, not only endowed
with talents and integrity, but possessing a respectable proportion of
sound sense and judgment; but who, unfortunately, aided less to
counteract the revolutionary tendency, than to justify it by argument or
dignify it by example. From the very beginning, the Tiers Etat evinced
a determined purpose to annihilate in consequence, if not in rank, the
other two orders of the state, and to engross the whole power into their
own hands.[69]
[Sidenote: VIEWS OF THE NOBLESSE.]
It must be allowed to the Commons, that the Noblesse had possessed
themselves of a paramount superiority over the middle class, totally
inconsistent with the just degree of consideration due to their
fellow-subjects, and irreconcilable with the spirit of enlightened
times. They enjoyed many privileges which were humiliating to the rest
of the nation, and others that were grossly unjust, among which must be
reckoned their immunities from taxation. Assembled as an estate of the
kingdom, they felt the _esprit-de-corps_, and, attached to the
privileges of their order, showed little readiness to make the
sacrifices which the times demanded, though at the risk of having what
they refused to grant, forcibly wrested from them. They were publicly
and imprudently tenacious, when, both on principle and in policy, they
should have been compliant and accommodating--for their own sake, as
well as that of the sovereign. Yet let us be just to that gallant and
unfortunate body of men. They possessed the courage, if not the skill or
strength of their ancestors, and while we blame the violence with which
they clung to useless and antiquated privileges, let us remember that
these were a part of their inheritance, which no man renounces
willingly, and no man of spirit yields up to threats. If they erred in
not adopting from the beginning a spirit of conciliation and concession,
no body of men ever suffered so cruelly for hesitating to obey a
summons, which called them to acts of such unusual self-denial.
The Clergy were no less tenacious of the privileges of the Church, than
the Noblesse of their peculiar feudal immunities. It had been already
plainly intimated, that the property of the clerical orders ought to be
subject, as well as all other species of property, to the exigencies of
the state; and the philosophical opinions which had impugned their
principles of faith, and rendered their persons ridiculous instead of
reverend, would, it was to be feared, induce those by whom they were
entertained, to extend their views to a general seizure of the whole,
instead of a part, of the Church's wealth.
Both the first and second estates, therefore, kept aloof, moved by the
manner in which the private interests of each stood committed, and both
endeavoured to avert the coming storm, by retarding the deliberations of
the States-General. They were particularly desirous to secure their
individual importance as distinct orders, and appealed to ancient
practice and the usage of the year 1614, by which the three several
estates sat and voted in three separate bodies. But the Tiers Etat, who,
from the beginning, felt their own strength, were determined to choose
that mode of procedure by which their force should be augmented and
consolidated. The double representation had rendered them equal in
numbers to both the other bodies, and as they were sure of some interest
among the inferior Noblesse, and a very considerable party amongst the
lower clergy, the assistance of these two minorities, added to their own
numbers, must necessarily give them the superiority in every vote,
providing the three chambers could be united into one.
On the other hand, the clergy and nobles saw that a union of this nature
would place all their privileges and property at the mercy of the
Commons, whom the union of the chambers in one assembly would invest
with an overwhelming majority in that convocation. They had no reason to
expect that this power, if once acquired, would be used with moderation,
for not only had their actually obnoxious privileges been assailed by
every battery of reason and of ridicule, but the records of former ages
had been ransacked for ridiculous absurdities and detestable cruelties
of the possessors of feudal power, all which were imputed to the present
privileged classes, and mingled with many fictions of unutterable
horror, devised on purpose to give a yet darker colouring to the system
which it was their object to destroy.[70] Every motive, therefore, of
self-interest and self-preservation, induced the two first chambers,
aware of the possession which the third had obtained over the public
mind, to maintain, if possible, the specific individuality of their
separate classes, and use the right hitherto supposed to be vested in
them, of protecting their own interests by their own separate votes, as
distinct bodies.
Others, with a deeper view, and on less selfish reasoning, saw much
hazard in amalgamating the whole force of the state, saving that which
remained in the crown, into one powerful body, subject to all the hasty
impulses to which popular assemblies lie exposed, as lakes to the wind,
and in placing the person and authority of the King in solitary and
diametrical opposition to what must necessarily, in moments of
enthusiasm, appear to be the will of the whole people. Such statesmen
would have preferred retaining an intermediate check upon the popular
counsels of the Tiers Etat by the other two chambers, which might, as in
England, have been united into one, and would have presented an imposing
front, both in point of wealth and property, and through the respect
which, excepting under the influence of extraordinary emotion, the
people, in spite of themselves, cannot help entertaining for birth and
rank. Such a body, providing the stormy temper of the times had admitted
of its foundations being laid sufficiently strong, would have served as
a breakwater betwixt the throne and the streamtide of popular opinion;
and the monarch would have been spared the painful and perilous task of
opposing himself personally, directly, and without screen or protection
of any kind, to the democratical part of the constitution. Above all, by
means of such an upper house, time would have been obtained for
reviewing more coolly those measures, which might have passed hastily
through the assembly of popular representatives. It is observed in the
history of innovation, that the indirect and unforeseen consequences of
every great change of an existing system, are more numerous and
extensive than those which had been foreseen and calculated upon,
whether by those who advocated, or those who opposed the alteration. The
advantages of a constitution, in which each measure of legislation must
necessarily be twice deliberately argued by separate senates, acting
under different impressions, and interposing, at the same time, a
salutary delay, during which heats may subside, and erroneous views be
corrected, requires no further illustration.
[Sidenote: INFLUENCE OF THE TIERS ETAT.]
It must be owned, nevertheless, that there existed the greatest
difficulty in any attempt which might have been made to give weight to
the Nobles as a separate chamber. The community at large looked to
reforms deeply affecting the immunities of the privileged classes, as
the most obvious means for the regeneration of the kingdom at large, and
must have seen with jealousy an institution like an upper house, which
placed the parties who were principally to suffer these changes in a
condition to impede, or altogether prevent them. It was naturally to be
expected, that the Clergy and Nobles, united in an upper house, must
have become somewhat partial judges in the question of retrenching and
limiting their own exclusive privileges; and, besides the ill-will which
the Commons bore them as the possessors and assertors of rights
infringing on the liberties of the people, it might be justly
apprehended that, if the scourge destined for them were placed in their
own hand, they might use it with the chary moderation of the squire in
the romance of Cervantes.[71] There would also have been reason to doubt
that, when the nation was so much divided by factions, two houses, so
different in character and composition, could hardly have been brought
to act with firmness and liberality towards each other--that the one
would have been ever scheming for the recovery of their full privileges,
supposing they had been obliged to surrender a part of them, while the
other would still look forward to the accomplishment of an entirely
democratical revolution. In this way, the checks which ought to have
acted merely to restrain the violence of either party, might operate as
the means of oversetting the constitution which they were intended to
preserve.
Still, it must be observed, that while the King retained any portion of
authority, he might, with the countenance of the supposed upper chamber,
or senate, have balanced the progress of democracy. Difficult as the
task might be, an attempt towards it ought to have been made. But,
unhappily, the King's ear was successively occupied by two sets of
advisers, one of whom counselled him to surrender every thing to the
humour of the reformers of the state, while the other urged him to
resist their most reasonable wishes;--without considering that he had to
deal with those who had the power to take by force what was refused to
petition. Mounier and Malouet advocated the establishment of two
chambers in the Tiers Etat, and Necker was certainly favourable to some
plan of the kind; but the Noblesse thought it called upon them for too
great a sacrifice of their privileges, though it promised to ensure what
remained, while the democratical part of the Tiers Etat opposed it
obstinately, as tending to arrest the march of the revolutionary
impulse.
Five or six weeks elapsed in useless debates concerning the form in
which the estates should vote; during which period the Tiers Etat
showed, by their boldness and decision, that they knew the advantage
which they held, and were sensible that the other bodies, if they meant
to retain the influence of their situation in any shape, must unite with
them, on the principle according to which smaller drops of water are
attracted by the larger. This came to pass accordingly. The Tiers Etat
were joined by the whole body of inferior clergy, and by some of the
nobles, and on 17th June, 1789, proceeded to constitute themselves a
legislative body, exclusively competent in itself to the entire province
of legislation; and, renouncing the name of the Third Estate, which
reminded men they were only one out of three bodies, they adopted[72]
that of the NATIONAL ASSEMBLY, and avowed themselves not merely the
third branch of the representative body, but the sole representatives of
the people of France, nay, the people themselves, wielding in person the
whole gigantic powers of the realm. They now claimed the character of a
supreme body, no longer limited to the task of merely requiring a
redress of grievances, for which they had been originally appointed, but
warranted to destroy and rebuild whatever they thought proper in the
constitution of the state. It is not easy, on any ordinary principle, to
see how a representation, convoked for a certain purpose, and with
certain limited powers, should thus essentially alter their own
character, and set themselves in such a different relation to the crown
and the nation, from that to which their commissions restricted them;
but the National Assembly were well aware, that, in extending their
powers far beyond the terms of these commissions, they only fulfilled
the wishes of their constituents, and that, in assuming to themselves so
ample an authority, they would be supported by the whole nation,
excepting the privileged orders.
The National Assembly proceeded to exercise their power with the same
audacity which they had shown in assuming it. They passed a sweeping
decree, by which they declared all the existing taxes to be illegal
impositions, the collection of which they sanctioned only for the
present, and as an interim arrangement, until they should have time to
establish the financial regulations of the state upon an equal and
permanent footing.[73]
[Sidenote: ROYAL SITTING.]
The King, acting under the advice of Necker, and fulfilling the promise
made on his part by the Archbishop of Sens, his former minister, had, as
we have seen, assembled the States-General; but he was not prepared for
the change of the Third Estate into the National Assembly, and for the
pretensions which it asserted in the latter character. Terrified, and it
was little wonder, at the sudden rise of this gigantic and
all-overshadowing fabric, Louis became inclined to listen to those who
counselled him to combat this new and formidable authority, by opposing
to it the weight of royal power; to be exercised, however, with such
attention to the newly-asserted popular opinions, and with such ample
surrender of the obnoxious part of the royal prerogative, as might
gratify the rising spirit of freedom. For this purpose a Royal Sitting
was appointed, at which the King in person was to meet the three estates
of his kingdom, and propose a scheme which, it was hoped, might unite
all parties, and tranquillize all minds. The name and form of this
_Séance Royale_ was perhaps not well chosen, as being too nearly allied
to those of a Bed of Justice, in which the King was accustomed to
exercise imperative authority over the Parliament; and the proceeding
was calculated to awaken recollection of the highly unpopular Royal
Sitting of the 19th November, 1787, the displacing of Necker, and the
banishment of the Duke of Orleans.
But, as if this had not been sufficient, an unhappy accident, which
almost resembled a fatality, deranged this project, destroyed all the
grace which might, on the King's part, have attended the measure, and in
place of it, threw upon the court the odium of having indirectly
attempted the forcible dissolution of the Assembly, while it invested
the members of that body with the popular character of steady patriots,
whose union, courage, and presence of mind, had foiled the stroke of
authority which had been aimed at their existence.
The hall of the Commons was fixed upon for the purposes of the Royal
Sitting, as the largest of the three which were occupied by the three
estates, and workmen were employed in making the necessary arrangements
and alterations. These alterations were imprudently commenced, [June
20,] before holding any communication on the subject with the National
Assembly; and it was simply notified to their president, Bailli, by the
master of the royal ceremonies, that the King had suspended the meeting
of the Assembly until the Royal Sitting should have taken place. Bailli,
the president, well known afterwards by his tragical fate, refused to
attend to an order so intimated, and the members of Assembly, upon
resorting to their ordinary place of meeting, found it full of workmen,
and guarded by soldiers. This led to one of the most extraordinary
scenes of the Revolution.
The representatives of the nation, thus expelled by armed guards from
their proper place of assemblage, found refuge in a common Tennis-court,
while a thunder-storm, emblem of the moral tempest which raged on the
earth, poured down its terrors from the heavens. It was thus that,
exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and with the wretched
accommodations which such a place afforded, the members of Assembly
took, and attested by their respective signatures, a solemn oath, "to
continue their sittings until the constitution of the kingdom, and the
regeneration of the public order, should be established on a solid
basis."[74] The scene was of a kind to make the deepest impression both
on the actors and the spectators; although, looking back at the distance
of so many years, we are tempted to ask, at what period the National
Assembly would have been dissolved, had they adhered literally to their
celebrated oath? But the conduct of the government was, in every
respect, worthy of censure. The probability of this extraordinary
occurrence might easily have been foreseen. If mere want of
consideration gave rise to it, the King's ministers were most culpably
careless; if the closing of the hall, and suspending of the sittings of
the Assembly, was intended by way of experiment upon its temper and
patience, it was an act of madness equal to that of irritating an
already exasperated lion. Be this, however, as it may, the conduct of
the court had the worst possible effect on the public mind, and prepared
them to view with dislike and suspicion all propositions emanating from
the throne; while the magnanimous firmness and unanimity of the Assembly
seemed that of men determined to undergo martyrdom, rather than desert
the assertion of their own rights, and those of the people.
At the Royal Sitting, which took place three days after the vow of the
Tennis-Court, a plan was proposed by the King, offering such security
for the liberty of the subject, as would, a year before, have been
received with grateful rapture; but it was the unhappy fate of Louis
XVI. neither to recede nor advance at the fortunate moment. Happy would
it have been for him, for France, and for Europe, if the science of
astrology, once so much respected, had in reality afforded the means of
selecting lucky days. Few of his were marked with a white stone.
[Sidenote: CONCESSIONS OF THE KING.]
By the scheme which he proposed, the King renounced the power of
taxation, and the right of borrowing money, except to a trifling extent,
without assent of the States-General; he invited the Assembly to form a
plan for regulating _lettres de cachet_, and acknowledged the personal
freedom of the subject; he provided for the liberty of the press, but
not without a recommendation that some check should be placed upon its
license; and he remitted to the States, as the proper authority, the
abolition of the _gabelle_,[75] and other unequal or oppressive taxes.
But all these boons availed nothing, and seemed, to the people and their
representatives, but a tardy and ungracious mode of resigning rights
which the crown had long usurped, and only now restored when they were
on the point of being wrested from its gripe. In addition to this,
offence was taken at the tone and terms adopted in the royal address.
The members of the Assembly conceived, that the expression of the royal
will was brought forward in too imperative a form. They were offended
that the King should have recommended the exclusion of spectators from
the sittings of the Assembly; and much displeasure was occasioned by his
declaring, thus late, their deliberations and decrees on the subject of
taxes illegal. But the discontent was summed up and raised to the height
by the concluding article of the royal address, in which,
notwithstanding their late declarations, and oath not to break up their
sittings until they had completed a constitution for France, the King
presumed, by his own sole authority, to dissolve the estates.[76] To
conclude, Necker, upon whom alone among the ministers the popular party
reposed confidence, had absented himself from the Royal Sitting, and
thereby intimated his discontent with the scheme proposed.[77]
This plan of a constitutional reformation was received with great
applause by the Clergy and the Nobles, while the Third Estate listened
in sullen silence. They knew little of the human mind, who supposed that
the display of prerogative, which had been so often successfully
resisted, could influence such a body, or induce them to descend from
the station of power which they had gained, and to render themselves
ridiculous by rescinding the vow which they had so lately taken.
The King having, by his own proper authority, dissolved the Assembly,
left the hall, followed by the Nobles and part of the Clergy; but the
remaining members, hitherto silent and sullen, immediately resumed their
sitting. The King, supposing him resolute to assert the prerogative
which his own voice had but just claimed, had no alternative but that of
expelling them by force, and thus supporting his order for dissolution
of the Assembly; but, always halting between two opinions, Louis
employed no rougher means of removing them than a gentle summons to
disperse, intimated by the royal master of ceremonies. To this officer,
not certainly the most formidable satellite of arbitrary power, Mirabeau
replied with energetic determination,--"Slave! return to thy master,
and tell him, that his bayonets alone can drive from their post the
representatives of the people."
The Assembly then, on the motion of Camus, proceeded to pass a decree,
that they adhered to their oath taken in the Tennis-court; while by
another they declared, that their own persons were inviolable, and that
whoever should attempt to execute any restraint or violence upon a
representative of the people, should be thereby guilty of the crime of
high treason against the nation.
Their firmness, joined to the inviolability with which they had invested
themselves, and the commotions which had broken out at Paris, compelled
the King to give way, and renounce his purpose of dissolving the states,
which continued their sittings under their new title of the National
Assembly; while at different intervals, and by different manœuvres,
the Chambers of the Clergy and Nobles were united with them, or, more
properly, were merged and absorbed in one general body. Had that
Assembly been universally as pure in its intentions as we verily believe
to have been the case with many or most of its members, the French
government, now lying dead at their feet, might, like the clay of
Prometheus, have received new animation from their hand.
But the National Assembly, though almost unanimous in resisting the
authority of the crown, and in opposing the claims of the privileged
classes, was much divided respecting ulterior views, and carried in its
bosom the seeds of internal dissension, and the jarring elements of at
least FOUR parties, which had afterwards their successive entrance and
exit on the revolutionary stage; or rather, one followed the other like
successive billows, each obliterating and destroying the marks its
predecessor had left on the beach.
[Sidenote: PARTIES OF THE ASSEMBLY.]
The FIRST and most practical division of these legislators, was the
class headed by Mounier,[78] one of the wisest, as well as one of the
best and worthiest men in France,--by Malouet,[79] and others. They were
patrons of a scheme at which we have already hinted, and they thought
France ought to look for some of the institutions favourable to freedom,
to England, whose freedom had flourished so long. To transplant the
British oak, with all its contorted branches and extended roots, would
have been a fruitless attempt, but the infant tree of liberty might have
been taught to grow after the same fashion. Modern France, like England
of old, might have retained such of her own ancient laws, forms, or
regulations, as still were regarded by the nation with any portion of
respect, intermingling them with such additions and alterations as were
required by the liberal spirit of modern times, and the whole might have
been formed on the principles of British freedom. The nation might
thus, in building its own bulwarks, have profited by the plan of those
which had so long resisted the tempest. It is true, the French
legislature could not have promised themselves, by the adoption of this
course, to form at once a perfect and entire system; but they might have
secured the personal freedom of the subject, the trial by jury, the
liberty of the press, and the right of granting or withholding the
supplies necessary for conducting the state,--of itself the strongest of
all guarantees for national freedom, and that of which, when once vested
in their own representatives, the people will never permit them to be
deprived. They might have adopted also other checks, balances, and
controls, essential to the permanence of a free country; and having laid
so strong a foundation, there would have been time to experience their
use as well as their stability, and to introduce gradually such further
improvements, additions, or alterations, as the state of France should
appear to require, after experience of those which they had adopted.
But besides that the national spirit might be revolted,--not
unnaturally, however unwisely,--at borrowing the essential peculiarities
of their new constitution from a country which they were accustomed to
consider as the natural rival of their own, there existed among the
French a jealousy of the crown, and especially of the privileged
classes, with whom they had been so lately engaged in political
hostility, which disinclined the greater part of the Assembly to trust
the King with much authority, or the nobles with that influence which
any imitation of the English constitution must have assigned to them. A
fear prevailed, that whatever privileges should be left to the King or
nobles, would be so many means of attack furnished to them against the
new system. Joined to this was the ambition of creating at once, and by
their own united wisdom, a constitution as perfect as the armed
personification of wisdom in the heathen mythology. England had worked
her way, from practical reformation of abuses, into the adoption of
general maxims of government. It was reserved, thought most of the
National Assembly, for France, to adopt a nobler and more intellectual
course, and, by laying down abstract doctrines of public right, to
deduce from these their rules of practical legislation;--just as it is
said, that in the French naval yards their vessels are constructed upon
the principles of abstract mathematics, while those in England are, or
were, chiefly built upon the more technical and mechanical rules.[80]
But it seems on this and other occasions to have escaped these acute
reasoners, that beams and planks are subject to certain unalterable
natural laws, while man is, by the various passions acting in his
nature, in contradiction often to the suggestions of his understanding,
as well as by the various modifications of society, liable to a thousand
variations, all of which call for limitations and exceptions qualifying
whatever general maxims may be adopted concerning his duties and his
rights.
All such considerations were spurned by the numerous body of the new
French legislature, who resolved, in imitation of Medea, to fling into
their renovating kettle every existing joint and member of their old
constitution, in order to its perfect and entire renovation. This mode
of proceeding was liable to three great objections. _First_, That the
practical inferences deduced from the abstract principle were always
liable to challenge by those, who, in logical language, denied the minor
of the proposition, or asserted that the conclusion was irregularly
deduced from the premises. _Secondly_, That the legislators, thus
grounding the whole basis of their intended constitution upon
speculative political opinions, strongly resembled the tailors of
Laputa, who, without condescending to take measure of their customers,
like brethren of the trade elsewhere, took the girth and altitude of the
person by mathematical calculation, and if the clothes did not fit, as
was almost always the case, thought it ample consolation for the party
concerned to be assured, that, as they worked from infallible rules of
art, the error could only be occasioned by his own faulty and irregular
conformation of figure. _Thirdly_, A legislature which contents itself
with such a constitution as is adapted to the existing state of things,
may hope to attain their end, and in presenting it to the people, may be
entitled to say, that, although the plan is not perfect, it partakes in
that but of the nature of all earthly institutions, while it comprehends
the elements of as much good as the actual state of society permits; but
from the lawmakers, who begin by destroying all existing enactments, and
assume it as their duty entirely to renovate the constitution of a
country, nothing short of absolute perfection can be accepted. They can
shelter themselves under no respect to ancient prejudices which they
have contradicted, or to circumstances of society which they have thrown
out of consideration. They must follow up to the uttermost the principle
they have adopted, and their institutions can never be fixed or secure
from the encroachments of succeeding innovators, while they retain any
taint of that fallibility to which all human inventions are necessarily
subject.
The majority of the French Assembly entertained, nevertheless, the
ambitious view of making a constitution, corresponding in every respect
to those propositions they had laid down as embracing the rights of man,
which, if it should not happen to suit the condition of their country,
would nevertheless be such as _ought_ to have suited it, but for the
irregular play of human passions, and the artificial habits acquired in
an artificial state of society. But this majority differed among
themselves in this essential particular, that the SECOND division of the
legislature, holding that of Mounier for the first, was disposed to
place at the head of their newly-manufactured government the reigning
King, Louis XVI. This resolution in his favour might be partly out of
regard to the long partiality of the nation to the House of Bourbon,
partly out of respect for the philanthropical and accommodating
character of Louis. We may conceive also, that La Fayette, bred a
soldier, and Bailli, educated a magistrate, had still, notwithstanding
their political creed, a natural though unphilosophical partiality to
their well-meaning and ill-fated sovereign, and a conscientious desire
to relax, so far as his particular interest was concerned, their general
rule of reversing all that had previously had a political existence in
France.
[Sidenote: REPUBLICANS.]
A THIRD faction, entertaining the same articles of political creed with
La Fayette, Bailli, and others, carried them much farther, and set at
defiance the scruples which limited the two first parties in their
career of reformation. These last agreed with La Fayette on the
necessity of reconstructing the whole government upon a new basis,
without which entire innovation, they further agreed with him, that it
must have been perpetually liable to the chance of a counter-revolution.
But carrying their arguments farther than the Constitutional party, as
the followers of Fayette, these bolder theorists pleaded the
inconsistency and danger of placing at the head of their new system of
reformed and regenerated government, a prince accustomed to consider
himself, as by inheritance, the legitimate possessor of absolute power.
They urged that, like the snake and peasant in the fable, it was
impossible that the monarch and his democratical counsellors could
forget, the one the loss of his power, the other the constant temptation
which must beset the King to attempt its recovery. With more
consistency, therefore, than the Constitutionalists, this third party of
politicians became decided Republicans, determined upon obliterating
from the new constitution every name and vestige of monarchy.
The men of letters in the Assembly were, many of them, attached to this
faction. They had originally been kept in the background by the lawyers
and mercantile part of the Assembly. Many of them possessed great
talents, and were by nature men of honour and of virtue. But in great
revolutions, it is impossible to resist the dizzying effect of
enthusiastic feeling and excited passion. In the violence of their zeal
for the liberty of France, they too frequently adopted the maxim, that
so glorious an object sanctioned almost any means which could be used to
attain it. Under the exaggerated influence of a mistaken patriotism,
they were too apt to forget that a crime remains the same in character,
even when perpetrated in a public cause.[81]
It was among these ardent men that first arose the idea of forming a
Club, or Society, to serve as a point of union for those who entertained
the same political sentiments. Once united, they rendered their sittings
public, combined them with affiliated societies in all parts of France,
and could thus, as from one common centre, agitate the most remote
frontiers with the passionate feelings which electrified the metropolis.
This formidable weapon was, in process of time, wrested out of the hands
of the Federalists, as the original Republicans were invidiously called,
by the faction who were generally termed JACOBINS, from their influence
in that society, and whose existence and peculiarities as a party, we
have now to notice.
[Sidenote: JACOBINS.]
As yet this FOURTH, and, as it afterwards proved, most formidable party,
lurked in secret among the Republicans of a higher order and purer
sentiments, as they, on their part, had not yet raised the mask, or
ventured to declare openly against the plan of a constitutional
monarchy. The Jacobins[82] were termed, in ridicule, _Les Enragès_, by
the Republicans, who, seeing in them only men of a fiery disposition,
and violence of deportment and declamation, vainly thought they could
halloo them on, and call them off, at their pleasure. They were yet to
learn, that when force is solemnly appealed to, the strongest and most
ferocious, as they must be foremost in the battle, will not lose their
share of the spoil, and are more likely to make the lion's partitions.
These Jacobins affected to carry the ideas of liberty and equality to
the most extravagant lengths, and were laughed at and ridiculed in the
Assembly as a sort of fanatics, too absurd to be dreaded. Their
character, indeed, was too exaggerated, their habits too openly
profligate, their manners too abominably coarse, their schemes too
extravagantly violent, to be produced in open day, while yet the decent
forms of society were observed. But they were not the less successful in
gaining the lower classes, whose cause they pretended peculiarly to
espouse, whose passions they inflamed by an eloquence suited to such
hearers, and whose tastes they flattered by affectation of brutal
manners and vulgar dress. They soon, by these arts, attached to
themselves a large body of followers, violently inflamed with the
prejudices which had been infused into their minds, and too boldly
desperate to hesitate at any measures which should be recommended by
their demagogues. What might be the ultimate object of these men cannot
be known. We can hardly give any of them credit for being mad enough to
have any real patriotic feeling, however extravagantly distorted. Most
probably, each had formed some vague prospect of terminating the affair
to his own advantage; but, in the meantime, all agreed in the necessity
of sustaining the revolutionary impulse, of deferring the return of
quiet, and of resisting and deranging any description of orderly and
peaceful government. They were sensible that the return of law, under
any established and regular form whatever, must render them as
contemptible as odious, and were determined to avail themselves of the
disorder while it lasted, and to snatch at and enjoy such portions of
the national wreck as the tempest might throw within their individual
reach.
This foul and desperate faction could not, by all the activity it used,
have attained the sway which it exerted amongst the lees of the people,
without possessing and exercising extensively the power of suborning
inferior leaders among the populace. It has been generally asserted,
that means for attaining this important object were supplied by the
immense wealth of the nearest prince of the blood royal, that Duke of
Orleans, whose name is so unhappily mixed with the history of this
period. By his largesses, according to the general report of historians,
a number of the most violent writers of pamphlets and newspapers were
pensioned, who deluged the public with false news and violent abuse.
This prince, it is said, recompensed those popular and ferocious
orators, who nightly harangued the people in the Palais Royal, and
openly stimulated them to the most violent aggressions upon the persons
and property of obnoxious individuals. From the same unhappy man's
coffers were paid numbers of those who regularly attended on the debates
of the Assembly, crowded the galleries to the exclusion of the public at
large, applauded, hissed, exercised an almost domineering influence in
the national councils, and were sometimes addressed by the
representatives of the people, as if they had themselves been the people
of whom they were the scum and the refuse.
Fouler accusations even than these charges were brought forward. Bands
of strangers, men of wild, haggard, and ferocious appearance, whose
persons the still watchful police of Paris were unacquainted with, began
to be seen in the metropolis, like those obscene and ill-omened birds
which are seldom visible except before a storm. All these were
understood to be suborned by the Duke of Orleans and his agents, to
unite with the ignorant, violent, corrupted populace of the great
metropolis of France, for the purpose of urging and guiding them to
actions of terror and cruelty. The ultimate object of these manœuvres
is supposed to have been a change of dynasty, which should gratify the
Duke of Orleans's revenge by the deposition of his cousin, and his
ambition by enthroning himself in his stead, or at least by nominating
him Lieutenant of France, with all the royal powers. The most daring and
unscrupulous amongst the Jacobins are said originally to have belonged
to the faction of Orleans; but as he manifested a want of decision, and
did not avail himself of opportunities of pushing his fortune, they
abandoned their leader, (whom they continued, however, to flatter and
deceive,) and, at the head of the partisans collected for his service,
and paid from his finances, they pursued the path of their individual
fortunes.
Besides the various parties which we have detailed, and which gradually
developed their discordant sentiments as the Revolution proceeded, the
Assembly contained the usual proportion of that prudent class of
politicians who are guided by events, and who, in the days of Cromwell,
called themselves "Waiters upon Providence;"--men who might boast, with
the miller in the tale, that though they could not direct the course of
the wind, they could adjust their sails so as to profit by it, blow from
what quarter it would.
All the various parties in the Assembly, by whose division the King
might, by temporizing measures, have surely profited, were united in a
determined course of hostility to the crown and its pretensions, by the
course which Louis XVI. was unfortunately advised to pursue. It had been
resolved to assume a menacing attitude, and to place the King at the
head of a strong force. Orders were given accordingly.
[Sidenote: TREACHERY OF THE ARMY.]
Necker, though approving of many parts of the proposal made to the
Assembly at the Royal Sitting, had strongly dissented from others, and
had opposed the measure of marching troops towards Versailles and Paris
to overawe the capital, and, if necessary, the National Assembly. Necker
received his dismission,[83] and thus a second time the King and the
people seemed to be prepared for open war. The force at first glance
seemed entirely on the royal side. Thirty regiments were drawn around
Paris and Versailles, commanded by Marshal Broglio,[84] an officer of
eminence, and believed to be a zealous anti-revolutionist, and a large
camp formed under the walls of the metropolis. The town was opened on
all sides, and the only persons by whom defence could be offered were an
unarmed mob; but this superiority existed only in appearance. The French
Guards had already united themselves, or, as the phrase then went,
_fraternized_ with the people, yielding to the various modes employed to
dispose them to the popular cause; and little attached to their
officers, most of whom only saw their companies upon the days of parade
or duty, an apparent accident, which probably had its origin in an
experiment upon the feelings of these regiments, brought the matter to a
crisis. The soldiers had been supplied secretly with means of unusual
dissipation, and consequently a laxity of discipline was daily gaining
ground among them. To correct this license, eleven of the guards had
been committed to prison for military offences; the Parisian mob
delivered them by violence, and took them under the protection of the
inhabitants, a conduct which made the natural impression on their
comrades. Their numbers were three thousand six hundred of the best
soldiers in France, accustomed to military discipline, occupying every
strong point in the city, and supported by its immense though disorderly
populace.
The gaining these regiments gave the Revolutionists the command of
Paris, from which the army assembled under Broglio might have found it
hard to dislodge them; but these last were more willing to aid than to
quell any insurrection which might take place. The modes of seduction
which had succeeded with the French Guards were sedulously addressed to
other corps. The regiments which lay nearest to Paris were not
forgotten. They were plied with those temptations which are most
powerful with soldiers--wine, women, and money, were supplied in
abundance--and it was amidst debauchery and undiscipline that the French
army renounced their loyalty, which used to be even too much the god of
their idolatry, and which was now destroyed like the temple of
Persepolis, amidst the vapours of wine, and at the instigation of
courtezans. There remained the foreign troops, of which there were
several regiments, but their disposition was doubtful; and to use them
against the citizens of Paris, might have been to confirm the soldiers
of the soil in their indisposition to the royal cause, supported as it
must then have been by foreigners exclusively.
Meanwhile, the dark intrigues which had been long formed for
accomplishing a general insurrection in Paris, were now ready to be
brought into action. The populace had been encouraged by success in one
or two skirmishes with the gens-d'armes and foreign soldiery. They had
stood a skirmish with a regiment of German horse, and had been
successful. The number of desperate characters who were to lead the van
in these violences, was now greatly increased. Deep had called to deep,
and the revolutionary clubs of Paris had summoned their confederates
from among the most fiery and forward of every province. Besides troops
of galley-slaves and deserters, vagabonds of every order flocked to
Paris, like ravens to the spoil. To these were joined the lowest
inhabitants of a populous city, always ready for riot and rapine; and
they were led on and encouraged by men who were in many instances
sincere enthusiasts in the cause of liberty, and thought it could only
be victorious by the destruction of the present government. The
Republican and Jacobin party were open in sentiment and in action,
encouraging the insurrection by every means in their power. The
Constitutionalists, more passive, were still rejoiced to see the storm
arise, conceiving such a crisis was necessary to compel the King to
place the helm of the state in their hands. It might have been expected,
that the assembled force of the crown would be employed to preserve the
peace at least, and prevent the general system of robbery and plunder
which seemed about to ensue. They appeared not, and the citizens
themselves took arms by thousands, and tens of thousands, forming the
burgher militia, which was afterwards called the National Guard. The
royal arsenals were plundered to obtain arms, and La Fayette was adopted
the commander-in-chief of this new army, a sufficient sign that they
were to embrace what was called the Constitutional party. Another large
proportion of the population was hastily armed with pikes, a weapon
which was thence termed Revolutionary. The Baron de Besenval, at the
head of the Swiss guards, two foreign regiments, and eight hundred
horse, after an idle demonstration which only served to encourage the
insurgents, retired from Paris without firing a shot, having, he says in
his Memoirs, no orders how to act, and being desirous to avoid
precipitating a civil war. His retreat was the signal for a general
insurrection, in which the French guard, the national guard, and the
armed mob of Paris, took the Bastile, and massacred a part of the
garrison, [July 14.]
We are not tracing minutely the events of the Revolution, but only
attempting to describe their spirit and tendency; and we may here notice
two changes, which for the first time were observed to have taken place
in the character of the Parisian populace.
The _Baudauds de Paris_,[85] as they were called in derision, had been
hitherto viewed as a light, laughing, thoughtless race, passionately
fond of news, though not very acutely distinguishing betwixt truth and
falsehood, quick in adopting impressions, but incapable of forming firm
and concerted resolutions, still more incapable of executing them, and
so easily overawed by an armed force, that about twelve hundred police
soldiers had been hitherto sufficient to keep all Paris in subjection.
But in the attack of the Bastile, they showed themselves resolute, and
unyielding, as well as prompt and headlong. These new qualities were in
some degree owing to the support which they received from the French
guards; but are still more to be attributed to the loftier and more
decided character belonging to the revolutionary spirit, and the mixture
of men of the better classes, and of the high tone which belongs to
them, among the mere rabble of the city. The garrison of this too-famous
castle was indeed very weak, but its deep moats, and insurmountable
bulwarks, presented the most imposing show of resistance; and the
triumph which the popular cause obtained in an exploit seemingly so
desperate, infused a general consternation into the King and the
Royalists.
[Sidenote: MURDER OF FOULON AND BERTHIER.]
The second remarkable particular was, that from being one of the most
light-hearted and kind-tempered of nations, the French seemed, upon the
Revolution, to have been animated not merely with the courage, but with
the rabid fury of unchained wild-beasts. Foulon and Berthier, two
individuals whom they considered as enemies of the people, were put to
death, with circumstances of cruelty and insult fitting only at the
death-stake of a Cherokee encampment; and, in emulation of literal
cannibals, there were men, or rather monsters, found, not only to tear
asunder the limbs of their victims, but to eat their hearts, and drink
their blood.[86] The intensity of the new doctrines of freedom, the
animosity occasioned by civil commotion, cannot account for these
atrocities, even in the lowest and most ignorant of the populace. Those
who led the way in such unheard-of enormities, must have been practised
murderers and assassins, mixed with the insurgents, like old hounds in a
young pack, to lead them on, flesh them with slaughter, and teach an
example of cruelty too easily learned, but hard to be ever forgotten.
The metropolis was entirely in the hands of the insurgents, and civil
war or submission was the only resource left to the sovereign. For the
former course sufficient reasons might be urged. The whole proceedings
in the metropolis had been entirely insurrectionary, without the least
pretence of authority from the National Assembly, which continued
sitting at Versailles, discussing the order of the day while the
citizens of Paris were storming castles, and tearing to pieces their
prisoners, without authority from the national representatives, and even
without the consent of their own civic rulers. The provost of the
merchants[87] was assassinated at the commencement of the disturbance,
and a terrified committee of electors were the only persons who
preserved the least semblance of authority, which they were obliged to
exercise under the control and at the pleasure of the infuriated
multitude. A large proportion of the citizens, though assuming arms for
the protection of themselves and their families, had no desire of
employing them against the royal authority; a much larger only united
themselves with the insurgents, because, in a moment of universal
agitation, they were the active and predominant party. Of these the
former desired peace and protection; the latter, from habit and shame,
must have soon deserted the side which was ostensibly conducted by
ruffians and common stabbers, and drawn themselves to that which
protected peace and good order. We have too good an opinion of a people
so enlightened as those of France, too good an opinion of human nature
in any country, to believe that men will persist in evil, if defended in
their honest and legal rights.
[Sidenote: CONDUCT OF THE KING.]
What, in this case, was the duty of Louis XVI.? We answer without
hesitation, that which George III. of Britain proposed to himself, when,
in the name of the Protestant religion, a violent and disorderly mob
opened prisons, destroyed property, burned houses, and committed, though
with far fewer symptoms of atrocity, the same course of disorder which
now laid waste Paris.[88] It is known that when his ministers hesitated
to give an opinion in point of law concerning the employment of military
force for protection of life and property against a disorderly banditti,
the King, as chief magistrate, declared his own purpose to march into
the blazing city at the head of his guards, and with the strong hand of
war to subdue the insurgents, and restore peace to the affrighted
capital.[89] The same call now sounded loudly in the ear of Louis. He
was still the chief magistrate of the people, whose duty it was to
protect their lives and property--still commander of that army levied
and paid for protecting the law of the country, and the lives and
property of the subject. The King ought to have proceeded to the
National Assembly without an instant's delay, cleared himself before
that body of the suspicions with which calumny had loaded him, and
required and commanded the assistance of the representatives of the
people to quell the frightful excesses of murder and rapine which
dishonoured the capital. It is almost certain that the whole moderate
party, as they were called, would have united with the Nobles and the
Clergy. The throne was not yet empty, nor the sword unswayed. Louis had
surrendered much, and might, in the course of the change impending, have
been obliged to surrender more; but he was still King of France, still
bound by his coronation oath to prevent murder and put down
insurrection. He could not be considered as crushing the cause of
freedom, in answering a call to discharge his kingly duty; for what had
the cause of reformation, proceeding as it was by the peaceful
discussion of an unarmed convention, to do with the open war waged by
the insurgents of Paris upon the King's troops, or with the gratuitous
murders and atrocities with which the capital had been polluted? With
such members as shame and fear might have brought over from the opposite
side, the King, exerting himself as a prince, would have formed a
majority strong enough to show the union which subsisted betwixt the
Crown and the Assembly, when the protection of the laws was the point in
question. With such a support--or without it--for it is the duty of the
prince, in a crisis of such emergency, to serve the people, and save the
country, by the exercise of his royal prerogative, whether with or
without the concurrence of the other branches of the legislature,--the
King, at the head of his _gardes du corps_, of the regiments which might
have been found faithful, of the nobles and gentry, whose principles of
chivalry devoted them to the service of their sovereign, ought to have
marched into Paris, and put down the insurrection by the armed hand of
authority, or fallen in the attempt, like the representative of Henry
IV. His duty called upon him, and the authority with which he was
invested enabled him, to act this part; which, in all probability, would
have dismayed the factious, encouraged the timid, decided the wavering,
and, by obtaining a conquest over lawless and brute violence, would have
paved the way for a moderate and secure reformation in the state.
But having obtained this victory, in the name of the law of the realm,
the King could only be vindicated in having resorted to arms, by using
his conquest with such moderation, as to show that he threw his sword
into the one scale, solely in order to balance the clubs and poniards of
popular insurrection with which the other was loaded. He must then have
evinced that he did not mean to obstruct the quiet course of moderation
and constitutional reform, in stemming that of headlong and violent
innovation. Many disputes would have remained to be settled between him
and his subjects; but the process of improving the constitution, though
less rapid, would have been more safe and certain, and the kingdom of
France might have attained a degree of freedom equal to that which she
now possesses, without passing through a brief but dreadful anarchy to
long years of military despotism, without the loss of mines of treasure,
and without the expenditure of oceans of blood. To those who object the
peril of this course, and the risk to the person of the sovereign from
the fury of the insurgents, we can only answer, in the words of the
elder Horatius, _Qu'il mourût_.[90] Prince or peasant have alike lived
long enough, when the choice comes to be betwixt loss of life and an
important duty undischarged. Death, at the head of his troops, would
have saved Louis more cruel humiliation, his subjects a deeper crime.
We do not affect to deny, that in this course there was considerable
risk of another kind, and that it is very possible that the King,
susceptible as he was to the influence of those around him, might have
lain under strong temptation to have resumed the despotic authority, of
which he had in a great measure divested himself, and have thus abused a
victory gained over insurrection into a weapon of tyranny. But the
spirit of liberty was so strong in France, the principles of leniency
and moderation so natural to the King, his own late hazards so great,
and the future, considering the general disposition of his subjects, so
doubtful, that we are inclined to think a victory by the sovereign at
that moment would have been followed by temperate measures. How the
people used theirs is but too well known. At any rate, we have strongly
stated our opinion, that Louis would, at this crisis, have been
justified in employing force to compel order, but that the crime would
have been deep and inexpiable had he abused a victory to restore
despotism.
It may be said, indeed, that the preceding statement takes too much for
granted, and that the violence employed on the 14th July was probably
only an anticipation of the forcible measures which might have been
expected from the King against the Assembly. The answer to this is, that
the successful party may always cast on the loser the blame of
commencing the brawl, as the wolf punished the lamb for troubling the
course of the water, though he drank lowest down the stream. But when we
find one party completely prepared and ready for action, forming plans
boldly, and executing them skilfully, and observe the other uncertain
and unprovided, betraying all the imbecility of surprise and indecision,
we must necessarily believe the attack was premeditated on the one side,
and unexpected on the other.
The abandonment of thirty thousand stand of arms at the Hôtel des
Invalides, which were surrendered without the slightest resistance,
though three Swiss regiments lay encamped in the Champs Elysées; the
totally unprovided state of the Bastile, garrisoned by about one hundred
Swiss and Invalids, and without provisions even for that small number;
the absolute inaction of the Baron de Besenval, who--without entangling
his troops in the narrow streets, which was pleaded as his
excuse--might, by marching along the Boulevards, a passage so well
calculated for the manœuvres of regular troops, have relieved the
siege of that fortress;[91] and, finally, that general's bloodless
retreat from Paris,--show that the King had, under all these
circumstances, not only adopted no measures of a hostile character, but
must, on the contrary, have issued such orders as prevented his officer
from repelling force by force.
We are led, therefore, to believe, that the scheme of assembling the
troops round Paris was one of those half measures, to which, with great
political weakness, Louis resorted more than once--an attempt to
intimidate by the demonstration of force, which he was previously
resolved not to use. Had his purposes of aggression been serious, five
thousand troops of loyal principles--and such might surely have been
selected--would, acting suddenly and energetically, have better assured
him of the city of Paris, than six times that number brought to waste
themselves in debauch around its walls, and to be withdrawn without the
discharge of a musket. Indeed, the courage of Louis was of a passive,
not an active nature, conspicuous in enduring adversity, but not of that
energetic and decisive character which turns dubious affairs into
prosperity, and achieves by its own exertions the success which Fortune
denies.
The insurrection of Paris being acquiesced in by the sovereign, was
recognised by the nation as a legitimate conquest, instead of a state
crime; and the tameness of the King in enduring its violence, was
assumed as a proof that the citizens had but anticipated his intended
forcible measures against the Assembly, and prevented the military
occupation of the city. In the debates of the Assembly itself, the
insurrection was vindicated; the fears and suspicions alleged as its
motives were justified as well-founded; the passions of the citizens
were sympathized with, and their worst excesses palliated and excused.
When the horrors accompanying the murder of Berthier and Foulon were
dilated upon by Lally Tolendal in the Assembly, he was heard and
answered as if he had made mountains of mole-hills. Mirabeau said, that
"it was a time to think, and not to feel." Barnave asked, with a sneer,
"If the blood which had been shed was so pure?" Robespierre, rising into
animation with acts of cruelty fitted to call forth the interest of such
a mind, observed, that "the people, oppressed for ages, had a right to
the revenge of a day."
But how long did that day last, or what was the fate of those who
justified its enormities? From that hour the mob of Paris, or rather the
suborned agitators by whom the actions of that blind multitude were
dictated, became masters of the destiny of France. An insurrection was
organized whenever there was any purpose to be carried, and the Assembly
might be said to work under the impulse of the popular current, as
mechanically as the wheel of a water engine is driven by a cascade.
The victory of the Bastile was extended in its consequences to the
Cabinet and to the Legislative body. In the former, those ministers who
had counselled the King to stand on the defensive against the Assembly,
or rather to assume a threatening attitude, suddenly lost courage when
they heard the fate of Foulon and Berthier. The Baron de Breteueil, the
unpopular successor of Necker, was deprived of his office, and driven
into exile; and, to complete the triumph of the people, Necker himself
was recalled by their unanimous voice.
The King came, or was conducted to, the Hôtel de Ville of Paris, in
what, compared to the triumph of the minister, was a sort of ovation, in
which he appeared rather as a captive than otherwise. He entered into
the edifice under a vault of steel formed by the crossed sabres and
pikes of those who had been lately engaged in combating his soldiers,
and murdering his subjects. He adopted the cockade of the insurrection;
and in doing so, ratified and approved of the acts done expressly
against his command, acquiesced in the victory obtained over his own
authority, and completed that conquest by laying down his arms.
The conquest of the Bastile was the first, almost the only appeal to
arms during the earlier part of the Revolution; and the popular success,
afterwards sanctioned by the monarch, showed that nothing remained save
the name of the ancient government. The King's younger brother, the
Comte d'Artois, now reigning King of France,[92] had been distinguished
as the leader and rallying point of the Royalists. He left the kingdom
with his children, and took refuge in Turin. Other distinguished
princes, and many of the inferior nobility, adopted the same course, and
their departure seemed to announce to the public that the royal cause
was indeed desperate, since it was deserted by those most interested in
its defence. This was the first act of general emigration, and although,
in the circumstances, it may be excused, yet it must still be termed a
great political error. For though, on the one hand, it is to be
considered, that these princes and their followers had been educated in
the belief that the government of France rested in the King's person,
and was identified with him; and that when the King was displaced from
his permanent situation of power, the whole social system of France was
totally ruined, and nothing remained which could legally govern or be
governed; yet, on the other hand, it must be remembered that the instant
the emigrants crossed the frontier, they at once lost all the natural
advantages of birth and education, and separated themselves from the
country which it was their duty to defend.
To draw to a head, and raise an insurrection for the purpose of
achieving a counter revolution, would have been the ready and natural
resource. But the influence of the privileged classes was so totally
destroyed, that the scheme seems to have been considered as hopeless,
even if the King's consent could have been obtained. To remain in
France, whether in Paris or the departments, must have exposed them, in
their avowed character of aristocrats, to absolute assassination. It has
been therefore urged, that emigration was their only resource.
But there remained for these princes, nobles, and cavaliers, a more
noble task, could they but have united themselves cordially to that
portion of the Assembly, originally a strong one, which professed,
without destroying the existing state of monarchy in France, to wish to
infuse into it the spirit of rational liberty, and to place Louis in
such a situation as should have ensured him the safe and honourable
station of a limited monarch, though it deprived him of the powers of a
despot. It is in politics, however, as in religion--the slighter in
itself the difference between two parties, the more tenacious is each of
the propositions in which they disagree. The pure Royalists were so far
from being disposed to coalesce with those who blended an attachment to
monarchy with a love of liberty, that they scarce accounted them fit to
share the dangers and distresses to which all were alike reduced.
[Sidenote: EMIGRATION.]
This first emigration proceeded not a little perhaps on the feeling of
self-consequence among those by whom it was adopted. The high-born
nobles of which it was chiefly composed, had been long the WORLD, as it
is termed, to Paris, and to each other, and it was a natural conclusion,
that their withdrawing themselves from the sphere which they adorned,
must have been felt as an irremediable deprivation. They were not aware
how easily, in the hour of need, perfumed lamps are, to all purposes of
utility, replaced by ordinary candles, and that, carrying away with them
much of dignity, gallantry, and grace, they left behind an ample stock
of wisdom and valour, and all the other essential qualities by which
nations are governed and defended.
The situation and negotiations of the emigrants in the courts to which
they fled, were also prejudicial to their own reputation, and
consequently to the royal cause, to which they had sacrificed their
country. Reduced "to show their misery in foreign lands," they were
naturally desirous of obtaining foreign aid to return to their own, and
laid themselves under the heavy accusation of instigating a civil war,
while Louis was yet the resigned, if not the contented, sovereign of the
newly modified empire. To this subject we must afterwards return.
The conviction that the ancient monarchy of France had fallen for ever,
gave encouragement to the numerous parties which united in desiring a
new constitution, although they differed on the principles on which it
was to be founded. But all agreed that it was necessary, in the first
place, to clear away the remains of the ancient state of things. They
resolved upon the abolition of all feudal rights, and managed the matter
with so much address, that it was made to appear on the part of those
who held them a voluntary surrender. The debate in the National Assembly
[August 4] was turned by the popular leaders upon the odious character
of the feudal rights and privileges, as being the chief cause of the
general depression and discontent in which the kingdom was involved. The
Nobles understood the hint which was thus given them, and answered it
with the ready courage and generosity which has been at all times the
attribute of their order, though sometimes these noble qualities have
been indiscreetly exercised. "Is it from us personally that the nation
expects sacrifices?" said the Marquis de Focault; "be assured that you
shall not appeal in vain to our generosity. We are desirous to defend to
the last the rights of the monarchy, but we can be lavish of our
peculiar and personal interests."
[Sidenote: THE DAY OF DUPES.]
The same general sentiment pervaded at once the Clergy and Nobles, who,
sufficiently sensible that what they resigned could not operate
essentially to the quiet of the state, were yet too proud to have even
the appearance of placing their own selfish interests in competition
with the public welfare. The whole privileged classes seemed at once
seized with a spirit of the most lavish generosity, and hastened to
despoil themselves of all their peculiar immunities and feudal rights.
Clergy and laymen vied with each other in the nature and extent of their
sacrifices. Privileges, whether prejudicial or harmless, rational or
ridiculous, were renounced in the mass. A sort of delirium pervaded the
Assembly; each member strove to distinguish the sacrifice of his
personal claims by something more remarkable than had yet attended any
of the previous renunciations. They who had no rights of their own to
resign, had the easier and more pleasant task of surrendering those of
their constituents: the privileges of corporations, the monopolies of
crafts, the rights of cities, were heaped on the national altar; and the
members of the National Assembly seemed to look about in ecstasy, to
consider of what else they could despoil themselves and others, as if,
like the silly old earl in the civil dissensions of England, there had
been an actual pleasure in the act of renouncing.[93] The feudal rights
were in many instances odious, in others oppressive, and in others
ridiculous; but it was ominous to see the institutions of ages
overthrown at random, by a set of men talking and raving all at once,
so as to verify the observation of the Englishman, Williams, one of
their own members, "The fools! they would be thought to deliberate, when
they cannot even listen." The singular occasion on which enthusiasm,
false shame, and mutual emulation, thus induced the Nobles and Clergy to
despoil themselves of all their seigneurial rights, was called by some
the _day of the sacrifices_, by others, more truly, the _day of the
dupes_.
During the currency of this legislative frenzy, as it might be termed,
the popular party, with countenances affecting humility and shame at
having nothing themselves to surrender, sat praising each new sacrifice,
as the wily companions of a thoughtless and generous young man applaud
the lavish expense by which they themselves profit, while their seeming
admiration is an incentive to new acts of extravagance.
At length, when the sacrifice seemed complete, they began to pause and
look around them. Some one thought of the separate distinctions of the
provinces of France, as Normandy, Languedoc, and so forth. Most of these
provinces possessed rights and privileges acquired by victory or treaty,
which even Richelieu had not dared to violate. As soon as mentioned,
they were at once thrown into the revolutionary smelting-pot, to be
re-modelled after the universal equality which was the fashion of the
day. It was not urged, and would not have been listened to, that these
rights had been bought with blood, and sanctioned by public faith; that
the legislature, though it had a right to extend them to others, could
not take them from the possessors without compensation; and it escaped
the Assembly no less, how many honest and generous sentiments are
connected with such provincial distinctions, which form, as it were, a
second and inner fence around the love of a common country; or how much
harmless enjoyment the poor man derives from the consciousness that he
shares the privileges of some peculiar district. Such considerations
might have induced the legislature to pause at least, after they had
removed such marks of distinction as tended to engender jealousy betwixt
inhabitants of the same kingdom. But her revolutionary level was to be
passed over all that tended to distinguish one district, or one
individual, from another.
There was one order in the kingdom which, although it had joined largely
and readily in the sacrifices of the _day of dupes_, was still
considered as indebted to the state, and was doomed to undergo an act of
total spoliation. The Clergy had agreed, and the Assembly had decreed,
on 4th August, that the tithes should be declared redeemable, at a
moderate price, by the proprietors subject to pay them. This regulation
ratified, at least, the legality of the Clergy's title. Nevertheless, in
violation of the public faith thus pledged, the Assembly, three days
afterwards, pretended that the surrender of tithes had been absolute,
and that, in lieu of that supposed revenue, the nation was only bound to
provide decently for the administration of divine worship. Even the
Abbé Siêyes on this occasion deserted the revolutionary party, and made
an admirable speech against this iniquitous measure.[94] "You would be
free," he exclaimed, with vehemence, "and you know not how to be just!"
A curate in the Assembly, recalling to mind the solemn invocation by
which the Tiers Etat had called upon the Clergy to unite with them,
asked, with similar energy, "Was it to rob us, that you invited us to
join with you in the name of the God of Peace?" Mirabeau, on the other
hand, forgot the vehemence with which he had pleaded the right of
property inherent in religious bodies, and lent his sophistry to defend
what his own reasoning had proved in a similar case to be indefensible.
The complaints of the Clergy were listened to in contemptuous silence,
or replied to with bitter irony, by those who were conscious how little
sympathy that body were likely to meet from the nation in general, and
who therefore spoke "as having power to do wrong."
We must now revert to the condition of the kingdom of France at large,
while her ancient institutions were crumbling to pieces of themselves,
or were forcibly pulled down by state innovators. That fine country was
ravaged by a civil war of aggravated horrors, waged betwixt the rich and
poor, and marked by every species of brutal violence. The peasants,
their minds filled with a thousand wild suppositions, and incensed by
the general scarcity of provisions, were every where in arms, and every
where attacked the chateaux of their _seigneurs_, whom they were incited
to look upon as enemies of the Revolution, and particularly of the
commons. In most instances they were successful, and burnt the dwellings
of the nobility, practising all the circumstances of rage and cruelty by
which the minds of barbarians are influenced. Men were murdered in
presence of their wives; wives and daughters violated before the eyes of
their husbands and parents; some were put to death by lingering
tortures; others by sudden and general massacre. Against some of these
unhappy gentlemen, doubtless, the peasants might have wrongs to remember
and to avenge; many of them, however, had borne their faculties so
meekly that they did not even suspect the ill intentions of these
peasants, until their castles and country-seats kindled with the general
conflagration, and made part of the devouring element which raged
through the whole kingdom.
What were the National Assembly doing at this dreadful crisis? They were
discussing the abstract doctrines of the rights of man, instead of
exacting from the subject the respect due to his social duties.
Yet a large party in the Convention, and who had hitherto led the way in
the paths of the Revolution, now conceived that the goal was attained,
and that it was time to use the curb and forbear the spur. Such was the
opinion of La Fayette and his followers, who considered the victory over
the Royalists as complete, and were desirous to declare the Revolution
ended, and erect a substantial form of government on the ruins of
monarchy, which lay prostrate at their feet.
They had influence enough in the Assembly to procure a set of
resolutions, declaring the monarchy hereditary in the person of the King
and present family, on which basis they proceeded to erect what might be
termed a Royal Democracy, or, in plainer terms, a Republic, governed, in
truth, by a popular assembly, but encumbered with the expense of a king,
to whom they desired to leave no real power, or free will to exercise
it, although his name was to remain in the front of edicts, and although
he was still to be considered entitled to command their armies, as the
executive authority of the state.
[Sidenote: THE VETO.]
A struggle was made to extend the royal authority to an absolute
negative upon the decrees of the representative body; and though it was
limited by the jealousy of the popular party to a suspensive veto only,
yet even this degree of influence was supposed too dangerous in the
hands of a monarch who had but lately been absolute. There is indeed an
evident dilemma in the formation of a democracy, with a king for its
ostensible head. Either the monarch will remain contented with his daily
parade and daily food, and thus play the part of a mere pageant, in
which case he is a burdensome expense to the state, which a popular
government, in prudent economy, as well as from the severity of
principle assumed by republicans, are particularly bound to avoid; or
else he will naturally endeavour to improve the shadow and outward form
of power into something like sinew and substance, and the democracy will
be unexpectedly assailed with the spear which they desired should be
used only as their standard pole.
To these reasonings many of the deputies would perhaps have answered,
had they spoken their real sentiments, that it was yet too early to
propose to the French a pure republic, and that it was necessary to
render the power of the King insignificant, before abolishing a title to
which the public ear had been so long accustomed. In the meantime, they
took care to divest the monarch of whatever protection he might have
received from an intermediate senate, or chamber, placed betwixt the
King and the National Assembly. "One God," exclaimed Rabaut St. Etienne,
"one Nation, one King, and one Chamber." This advocate for unity at once
and uniformity, would scarce have been listened to if he had added, "one
nose, one tongue, one arm, and one eye;" but his first concatenation of
unities formed a phrase; and an imposing phrase, which sounds well, and
can easily be repeated, has immense force in a revolution. The proposal
for a Second, or Upper Chamber, whether hereditary like that of England,
or elective like that of America, was rejected as aristocratical. Thus
the King of France was placed, in respect to the populace, as Canute of
old to the advancing tide--he was entitled to sit on his throne and
command the waves to respect him, and take the chance of their obeying
his commands, or of being overwhelmed by them. If he was designed to be
an integral part of the constitution, this should not have been--if he
was considered as something that it was more seemly to abandon to his
fate than to destroy by violence, the plan was not ill concerted.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] The Baron de Senneci, when the estates of the kingdom were compared
to three brethren, of which the Tiers Etat was youngest, declared that
the Commons of France had no title to arrogate such a relationship with
the nobles, to whom they were so far inferior in blood, and in
estimation.
[68] Madame de Staël, and Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister for
Foreign Affairs, beheld from a gallery the spectacle. The former exulted
in the boundless prospect of national felicity which seemed to be
opening under the auspices of her father. "You are wrong to rejoice,"
said Madame de Montmorin; "this event forebodes much misery to France
and to ourselves." Her presentiment was but too well founded. She
herself perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; her husband was
murdered on September 2d; her eldest daughter died in the hospital of a
prison, and her youngest died of a broken heart.--See M. DE STAËL, vol.
i., p. 187.
[69] Lacretelle, tom. i., p. 32; Rivarol, p. 37.
[70] It was, for example, gravely stated, that a seigneur of a certain
province possessed a feudal right to put two of his vassals to death
upon his return from hunting, and to rip their bellies open, and plunge
his feet into their entrails to warm them.--S.
[71] See Don Quixote, part ii., chap. lxi., (vol. v., p. 296. Lond.,
1822.)
[72] "By a majority of 491 to 90."--LACRETELLE.
[73] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 39.
[74] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 41.
[75] The government monopoly of salt, under the name of the _gabelle_,
was maintained over about two-thirds of the kingdom.
[76] Mignet, tom. i., p. 43.
[77] "The evening before, he had tendered his resignation, which was not
accepted, as the measures adopted by the court were not such as he
thoroughly approved."--LACRETELLE, tom. vii., p. 47.
[78] Mounier was born at Grenoble in 1758. He quitted France in 1790,
but returned in 1802. He afterwards became one of Napoleon's counsellors
of state in 1806.
[79] Malouet was born at Riom in 1740. To escape the massacres of
September, 1790, he fled to England; but returned to France in 1801,
and, in 1810, was appointed one of Napoleon's counsellors of state. He
died in 1814.
[80] "Abstract science will not enable a man to become a ship-wright.
The French are perhaps the worst ship-wrights in all Europe, but they
are confessedly among the first and best theorists in naval
architecture, and it is one of those unaccountable phenomena in the
history of man, that they never attempted to combine the two. Happily
the English have hit upon that expedient."--BARROW.
[81] A singular instance of this overstrained and dangerous enthusiasm
is given by Madame Roland. [Memoirs, part i., p. 144.] It being the
purpose to rouse the fears and spirit of the people, and direct their
animosity against the court party, Grangeneuve agreed that he himself
should be murdered, by persons chosen for the purpose, in such a manner
that the suspicion of the crime should attach itself to the aristocrats.
He went to the place appointed, but Chabot, who was to have shared his
fate, neither appeared himself, nor had made the necessary preparations
for the assassination of his friend, for which Madame Roland, that
high-spirited republican, dilates upon his poltroonery. Yet, what was
this patriotic devotion, save a plan to support a false accusation
against the innocent, by an act of murder and suicide, which, if the
scheme succeeded, was to lead to massacre and proscription? The same
false, exaggerated, and distorted views of the public good centering, as
it seemed to them, in the establishment of a pure republic, led Barnave
and others to palliate the massacres of September. Most of them might
have said of the Liberty which they had worshipped, that at their death
they found it an empty name.--S.
[82] So called, because the first sittings of the Club were held in the
ancient convent of the Jacobins.
[83] July 11. "The formal command to quit the kingdom was accompanied by
a note from the King, in which he prayed him to depart in a private
manner, for fear of exciting disturbances. Necker received this
intimation just as he was dressing for dinner: he dined quietly, without
divulging it to any one, and set out in the evening with Madame Necker
for Brussels."--MIGNET, tom. i., p. 47.
[84] The Marshal was born in 1718, and died, at the age of eighty-six,
in 1804.
[85] Cockneys.
[86] "M. Foulon, an old man of seventy, member of the former
Administration, was seized near his own seat, and with his hands tied
behind his back, a crown of thistles on his head, and his mouth stuffed
with hay, conducted to Paris, where he was murdered with circumstances
of unheard-of cruelty. His son-in-law, Berthier, compelled to kiss his
father's head, which was thrust into his carriage on a pike, shortly
after shared his fate; and the heart of the latter was torn out of his
palpitating body."--LACRETELLE, tom. vii., p. 117.
[87] M. de Flesselles. It was alleged that a letter had been found on
the Governor of the Bastile, which implicated him in treachery to the
public cause.--See MIGNET, tom. i., p. 62.
[88] For an account of Lord George Gordon's riots in 1780, see _Annual
Register_, vol. xxiii., p. 254; and WRAXALL'S _Own Time_, vol. i., p.
319.
[89] "If the gardes Françaises, in 1789, had behaved like our regular
troops in 1780, the French Revolution might have been suppressed in its
birth; but, the difference of character between the two sovereigns of
Great Britain and of France, constituted one great cause of the
different fate that attended the two monarchies. George the Third, when
attacked, prepared to defend his throne, his family, his country, and
the constitution intrusted to his care; they were in fact saved by his
decision. Louis the Sixteenth tamely abandoned all to a ferocious
Jacobin populace, who sent him to the scaffold. No man of courage or of
principle could have quitted the former prince. It was impossible to
save, or to rescue, the latter ill-fated, yielding, and passive
monarch."--WRAXALL, vol. i., p. 334.
[90]
"Que voulez-vous qu'il fit contre trois? Qu'il mourût,
Ou qu'un beau désespoir alors le secourût."
CORNEILLE--_Les Horaces_, Act iii., Sc. 6.
[91] We have heard from a spectator who could be trusted, that during
the course of the attack on the Bastile, a cry arose among the crowd
that the regiment of Royales Allemandes were coming upon them. There was
at that moment such a disposition to fly, as plainly showed what would
have been the effect had a body of troops appeared in reality. The Baron
de Besenval had commanded a body of the guards, when, some weeks
previously, they subdued an insurrection in the Fauxbourg St. Antoine.
On that occasion many of the mob were killed; and he observes in his
Memoirs, that, while the citizens of Paris termed him their preserver,
he was very coldly received at court. He might be, therefore, unwilling
to commit himself, by acting decidedly on the 14th July.--S.
[92] Charles the Tenth.
[93] "Is there nothing else we can renounce?" said the old Earl of
Pembroke and Montgomery, in the time of the Commonwealth, after he had
joined in renouncing Church and King, Crown and Law. "Can no one think
of any thing else? I love RENOUNCING." The hasty renunciations of the
French nobles and churchmen were brought about in the manner practised
of yore in convivial parties, when he who gave a toast burned his wig,
had a loose tooth drawn, or made some other sacrifice, which, according
to the laws of compotation, was an example necessary to be imitated by
all the rest of the company, with whatever prejudice to their wardrobes
or their persons.--S.
[94] "Next day Siêyes gave vent to his spleen to Mirabeau, who answered,
'My dear abbé, you have unloosed the bull do you expect he is not to
make use of his horns?'"--DUMONT, p. 147.