_Legislative Assembly--Its Composition--Constitutionalists--Girondists
or Brissotins--Jacobins--Views and Sentiments of Foreign
Nations--England--Views of the Tories and Whigs--Anacharsis
Clootz--Austria--Prussia--Russia--Sweden--Emigration of the
French Princes and Clergy--Increasing Unpopularity of Louis from
this Cause--Death of the Emperor Leopold, and its Effects--France
declares War--Views and Interests of the different Parties in
France at this Period--Decree against Monsieur--Louis interposes
his Veto--Decree against the Priests who should refuse the
Constitutional Oath--Louis again interposes his
Veto--Consequences of these Refusals--Fall of De
Lessart--Ministers now chosen from the Brissotins--All Parties
favourable to War._
The first, or Constituent Assembly, in destroying almost all which
existed as law in France, when they were summoned together as
States-General, had preserved, at least in form, the name and power of a
monarch. The Legislative Assembly, which succeeded them, seemed
preparing to destroy the symbol of royalty which their predecessors had
left standing, though surrounded by republican enactments.
The composition of this second body of representatives was much more
unfavourable to the royal cause than that of those whom they succeeded.
In a bad hour for France and themselves, the Constituent Assembly had
adopted two regulations, which had the same disabling effect on their
own political interest, as the celebrated self-denying ordinance in the
Long Parliament had upon that of the Presbyterians. By the first of
these decrees, the members of the Constituent Assembly were rendered
incapable of being elected to that which should succeed its dissolution:
by the second, they were declared ineligible to be ministers of the
crown, until two years had elapsed after their sitting as
legislators.[159] Those individuals who had already acquired some
political knowledge and information, were thus virtually excluded from
the counsels of the state, and pronounced inadmissible into the service
of the crown. This exclusion was adopted upon the wild principle of
levelling, which was one prime moving spring of the Revolution, and
which affected to destroy even the natural aristocracy of talents. "Who
are the _distinguished members_ whom the speaker mentions?" said a
Jacobin orator, in the true spirit of this imaginary equality;--"There
are no members of the Assembly more distinguished than others by talents
or skill, any more than by birth or rank--We are all EQUAL."[160] Rare
words indeed, and flattering, doubtless, to many in the Assembly.
Unhappily no legislative decree can give sense to folly, or experience
to ignorance; it could only prevent a certain portion of wisdom and
talent from being called into the service of the country. Both King and
people were necessarily obliged to put their confidence in men of
inexperience in business, liable to act with all the rashness by which
inexperience is generally attended. As the Constituent Assembly
contained the first and readiest choice among the men of ability whom
France had in her bosom, it followed that the second Assembly could not
be equal to the first in abundance of talent; but still the Legislative
Assembly held in its ranks many men of no ordinary acquirements, and a
few of a corresponding boldness and determination of character. A slight
review of the parties into which it was divided, will show how much the
influence of the crown was lowered in the scale.
[Sidenote: CONSTITUTIONALISTS.]
There was no party remained which could be termed strictly or properly
Royalist. Those who were attached to the old monarchy of France were now
almost all exiles, and there were left but few even of that second class
of more moderate and more reasonable Royalists, who desired to establish
a free constitution on the basis of an effective monarchy, strong enough
to protect the laws against license, but not sufficiently predominant to
alter or overthrow them. Cazalès,[161] whose chivalrous defence of the
nobility,--Maury,[162] whose eloquent pleadings for the Church,--had so
often made an honourable but vain struggle against the advances of
revolution, were now silent and absent, and the few feeble remnants of
their party had ranged themselves with the Constitutionalists, who were
so far favourers of monarchy as it made part of their favourite
system--and no farther. La Fayette continued to be the organ of that
party, and had assembled under his banners Duport,[163] Barnave, Lameth,
all of whom had striven to keep pace with the headlong spirit of the
Revolution, but, being outstripped by more active and forward champions
of the popular cause, now shifted ground, and formed a union with those
who were disposed to maintain, that the present constitution was
adapted to all the purposes of free and effectual government, and that,
by its creation, all farther revolutionary measures were virtually
superseded.
In stern opposition to those admirers of the constitution, stood two
bodies of unequal numbers, strength, and efficacy; of which the first
was determined that the Revolution should never stop until the downfall
of the monarchy, while the second entertained the equally resolved
purpose of urging these changes still farther onwards, to the total
destruction of all civil order, and the establishment of a government,
in which terror and violence should be the ruling principles, to be
wielded by the hands of the demagogues who dared to nourish a scheme so
nefarious. We have indicated the existence of both these parties in the
first, or Constituent Assembly; but in the second, called the
Legislative, they assumed a more decided form, and appeared united
towards the abolition of royalty as a common end, though certain, when
it was attained, to dispute with each other the use which was to be made
of the victory. In the words of Shakspeare, they were determined
"To lay this Angiers even with the ground,
Then, after, fight who should be king of it."[164]
The first of these parties took its most common denomination from the
Gironde, a department which sent most of its members to the Convention.
Condorcet, dear to science, was one of this party, and it was often
named from Brissot, another of its principal leaders. Its most
distinguished champions were men bred as lawyers in the south of France,
who had, by mutual flattery, and the habit of living much together,
acquired no small portion of that self-conceit and overweening opinion
of each other's talents, which may be frequently found among small
provincial associations for political or literary purposes. Many had
eloquence, and most of them a high fund of enthusiasm, which a classical
education, and their intimate communication with each other, where each
idea was caught up, lauded, re-echoed, and enhanced, had exalted into a
spirit of republican zeal. They doubtless had personal ambition, but in
general it seems not to have been of a low or selfish character. Their
aims were often honourable though visionary, and they marched with great
courage towards their proposed goal, with the vain purpose of erecting a
pure republic, in a state so disturbed as that of France, and by hands
so polluted as those of their Jacobin associates.[165] It will be
recorded, however, to the disgrace of their pretensions to stern
republican virtue, that the Girondists were willing to employ, for the
accomplishment of their purpose, those base and guilty tools which
afterwards effected their own destruction. They were for using the
revolutionary means of insurrection and violence, until the republic
should be established, and no longer; or in the words of the satirist,
"For letting Rapine loose, and Murther,
To rage just so far, but no further;
And setting all the land on fire
To burn t' a scantling, but no higher."[166]
[Sidenote: JACOBINS.]
The Jacobins,--the second of these parties,--were allies of the
Brissotins, with the ulterior purpose of urging the revolutionary force
to the uttermost, but using as yet the shelter of their republican
mantle. Robespierre, who, by an affectation of a frugal and sequestered
course of life, preserved among the multitude the title of the
Incorruptible, might be considered as the head of the Jacobins, if they
had indeed a leader more than wolves have, which tune their united
voices to the cry of him who bays the loudest. Danton, inexorable as
Robespierre himself, but less prudent because he loved gold and pleasure
as well as blood and power, was next in authority. Marat, who loved to
talk of murder as soldiers do of battles; the wretched Collot d'Herbois,
a broken-down player; Chabot, an ex-capuchin;[167] with many other men
of desperate character, whose moderate talents were eked out by the most
profligate effrontery, formed the advanced-guard of this party, soiled
with every species of crime, and accustomed to act their parts in the
management of those dreadful insurrections, which had at once promoted
and dishonoured the Revolution. It is needless to preserve from oblivion
names such as Santerre and Hebert, distinguished for cruelty and villany
above the other subaltern villains. Such was the party who, at the side
of the Brissotins, stood prompt to storm the last bulwarks of the
monarchy, reserving to themselves the secret determination, that the
spoil should be all their own.[168]
[Sidenote: FORCE OF PARTIES.]
The force of these three parties was as variously composed as their
principles. That of La Fayette, as we have repeatedly observed, lay
amongst the better order of shopkeepers and citizens, and other
proprietors, who had assumed arms for their own protection, and to
maintain something like general good order. These composed the steadiest
part of the national guard, and, generally speaking, were at the
devotion of their commandant, though his authority was resisted by them
on some occasions, and seemed daily to grow more precarious. The
Royalists might perhaps have added some force to the Constitutional
party, but La Fayette did not now possess such an unsuspected character
with the so called friends of freedom, as could permit him to use the
obnoxious assistance of those who were termed its enemies. His high
character as a military man still sustained an importance, which,
nevertheless, was already somewhat on the wane.
The party of the Gironde had in their favour the theoretical amateurs
of liberty and equality, young men, whose heated imaginations saw the
Forum of ancient Rome in the gardens of the Palais Royal, and yielded a
ready assent to whatever doctrine came recommended by a flourishing and
eloquent peroration, and was rounded off in a sounding sentence, or a
quaint apothegm. The partisans of Brissot had some interest in the
southern departments, which had sent them to the capital, and conceived
that they had a great deal more. They pretended that there existed in
those districts a purer flame of freedom than in the metropolis itself,
and held out, that Liberty, if expelled from Paris, would yet find
refuge in a new republic, to be founded on the other side of the Loire.
Such day-dreams did not escape the Jacobins, who carefully treasured
them to be the apology of future violence, and finally twisted them into
an accusation which bestowed on the Brissotins the odious name of
Federalists, and charged them with an intention to dismember France, by
splitting it into a league of petty commonwealths, like those of Holland
and Switzerland.
The Brissotins had a point of union in the saloon of Madame Roland, wife
to one of their number. The beauty, talents, courage, and
accomplishments of this remarkable woman, pushed forward into public
notice a husband of very middling abilities, and preserved a high
influence over the association of philosophical rhapsodists, who hoped
to oppose pikes with syllogisms, and to govern a powerful country by the
discipline of an academy.
The substantial and dreadful support of the Jacobins lay in the club so
named, with the yet more violent association of Cordeliers and their
original affiliated societies, which reigned paramount over those of the
municipal bodies, which in most departments were fain to crouch under
their stern and sanguinary dominion. This club had more than once
changed masters, for its principal and leading feature being the highest
point of democratical ardour, it drove from its bosom in succession
those who fell short of the utmost pitch of extravagant zeal for liberty
and equality, manifested by the most uncompromising violence. The word
_moderation_ was as odious in this society as could have been that of
slavery, and he who could affect the most exaggerated and outrageous
strain of patriotism was sure to outstrip their former leaders. Thus the
Lameths took the guidance of the club out of the hands of La Fayette;
Robespierre, and Marat, wrenched the management from the Lameths; and,
considering their pitch of extravagant ferocity, there was little chance
of _their_ losing it, unless an Avatar of the Evil Spirit had brought
Satan himself to dispute the point in person.
The leaders, who were masters of this club, had possession, as we have
often remarked, of the master-keys to the passions of the populace,
could raise a forest of pikes with one word, and unsheath a thousand
daggers with another. They directly and openly recommended the bloodiest
and most ruffian-like actions, instead of those which, belonging to open
and manly warfare, present something that is generous even in the midst
of violence. "Give me," said the atrocious Marat, when instructing
Barbaroux in his bloody science,--"Give me two-hundred Neapolitans--the
knife in their right hand, in their left a _muff_, to serve for a
target--with these I will traverse France, and complete the revolution."
At the same lecture he made an exact calculation, (for the monster was
possessed of some science,) showing in what manner two hundred and sixty
thousand men might be put to death in one day.[169] Such were the means,
the men, and the plans of the Jacobins, which they were now, in the
Legislative Assembly, to oppose to the lukewarm loyalty of the
Constitutionalists, and, in the hour of need, to the fine-spun
republican theories of the Brissotins. But ere we proceed in our review
of the internal affairs of the nation, it becomes now necessary to
glance at her external relations.
Hitherto France had acted alone in this dreadful tragedy, while the
other nations of Europe looked on in amazement, which now began to give
place to a desire of action. No part of public law is more subtle in
argument than that which pretends to define the exact circumstances in
which, according to the proper interpretation of the _Jus Gentium_, one
nation is at liberty, or called upon, to interfere in the internal
concerns of another. If my next neighbour's house is on fire, I am not
only entitled, but obliged, by the rules alike of prudence and humanity,
to lend my aid to extinguish it; or, if a cry of murder arises in his
household, the support due to the law, and the protection of the
innocent, will excuse my forcible entrance upon his premises. These are
extreme cases, and easily decided; they have their parallels in the laws
of nations, but they are of rare occurrence. But there lies between them
and the general maxim, prohibiting the uncalled-for interference of one
party in what primarily and principally concerns another, a whole _terra
incognita_ of special cases, in which it may be difficult to pronounce
any satisfactory decision.
In the history of nations, however, little practical difficulty has been
felt, for wherever the jurisconsults have found a Gordian knot, the
sword of the sovereign has severed it without ceremony. The doubt has
usually been decided on the practical questions, What benefit the
neutral power is like to derive from his interference? And whether he
possesses the power of using it effectually, and to his own advantage?
In free countries, indeed, the public opinion must be listened to; but
man is the same in every situation, and the same desire of
aggrandizement, which induces an arbitrary monarch to shut his ears to
the voice of justice, is equally powerful with senates and popular
assemblies; and aggressions have been as frequently made by republics
and limited monarchs on the independence of their neighbours, as by
those princes who have no bounds to their own royal pleasure. The gross
and barefaced injustice of the partition of Poland had gone far to
extinguish any remains of hesitation upon such subjects, and might be
said to be a direct recognition of the right of the strongest. There
would not, therefore, have wanted pretexts for interference in the
affairs of France, of the nations around her, had any of them been at
the time capable of benefiting by the supposed opportunity.
[Sidenote: VIEWS OF ENGLAND.]
England, the rival of France, might, from the example of that country,
have exercised a right of interfering with her domestic concerns, in
requital of the aid which she afforded to the Americans; but besides
that the publicity of the Parliamentary debates must compel the most
ambitious British minister to maintain at least an appearance of respect
to the rights of other countries, England was herself much divided upon
the subject of the French Revolution.
This was not the case when the eventful scene first commenced. We
believe that the first display of light, reason, and rational liberty in
France, was hailed as a day-spring through all Britain, and that there
were few if any in that country, who did not feel their hearts animated
and enlarged by seeing such a great and noble nation throwing aside the
fetters, which at once restrained and dishonoured them, and assuming the
attitude, language, and spirit of a free people. All men's thoughts and
eyes were bent on struggles, which seemed to promise the regeneration of
a mighty country, and the British generally felt as if days of old hate
and mutual rivalry would thereafter be forgotten, and that in future the
similarity of liberal institutions, and the possession of a just portion
of rational liberty on either side, would throw kindness and cordiality
into the intercourse between the two countries, since France would no
longer have ground to contemn England as a country of seditious and
sullen clowns, or Britain to despise France as a nation of willing
slaves.
This universal sympathy was not removed by the forcible capture of the
Bastile, and the violences of the people on that occasion. The name of
that fortress was so unpopular, as to palliate and apologize for the
excesses which took place on its fall, and it was not to be expected
that a people so long oppressed, when exerting their power for the first
time, should be limited by the strict bounds of moderation. But in
England there always have been, and must exist, two parties of
politicians, who will not long continue to regard events of such an
interesting nature with similar sensations.
The Revolutionists of France were naturally desirous to obtain the
applause of the elder-born of freedom, and the societies in Britain,
which assumed the character of the peculiar admirers and protectors of
liberty, conceived themselves obliged to extend their countenance to the
changes in the neighbouring nation. Hence there arose a great
intercourse between the clubs and self-constituted bodies in Britain,
which assumed the extension of popular freedom as the basis of their
association, and the Revolutionists in France, who were realizing the
systems of philosophical theorists upon the same ground. Warm tributes
of applause were transmitted from several of these associations; the
ambassadors sent to convey them were received with great distinction by
the National Assembly; and the urbane intercourse which took place on
these occasions led to exaggerated admiration of the French system on
the part of those who had thus unexpectedly become the medium of
intercourse between a great nation and a few private societies.[170] The
latter were gradually induced to form unfavourable comparisons betwixt
the Temple of French freedom, built, as it seemed to them, upon the most
perfect principles of symmetry and uniformity, and that in which the
goddess had been long worshipped in England, and which, on the contrast,
appeared to them like an ancient edifice constructed in barbaric times,
and incongruously encumbered with Gothic ornaments and emblems, which
modern political architects had discarded. But these political sages
overlooked the important circumstance, that the buttresses, which seemed
in some respects encumbrances to the English edifice, might, on
examination, be found to add to its stability; and that in fact they
furnished evidence to show, that the venerable pile was built with
cement, fitted to endure the test of ages, while that of France,
constructed of lath daubed with untempered mortar, like the pageants she
exhibited on the revolutionary festivals, was only calculated to be the
wonder of a day.
The earnest admiration of either party of the state is sure in England
to be balanced by the censure of the other, and leads to an immediate
trial of strength betwixt them. The popular side is always the more
loud, the more active, the more imposing of the two contending parties.
It is formidable, from the body of talents which it exhibits, (for those
ambitious of distinction are usually friends to innovation,) and from
the unanimity and vigour with which it can wield them. There may be, and
indeed always are, great differences in the point to which each leader
is desirous to carry reformation; but they are unanimous in desiring its
commencement. The Opposition, also, as it is usually termed, has always
included several of the high aristocracy of the country, whose names
ennoble their rank, and whose large fortunes are a pledge that they
will, for their own sakes, be a check upon eager and violent
experimentalists. The Whigs, moreover, have the means of influencing
assemblies of the lower orders, to whom the name of liberty is, and
ought to be dear, since it is the privilege which must console them for
narrow circumstances and inferiority of condition; and these means the
party, so called, often use successfully, always with industry and
assiduity.
The counterbalance to this active and powerful body is to be found,
speaking generally, in the higher classes at large--the great mass of
nobility and gentry--the clergy of the Established Church--the superior
branches of the law--the wealthier of the commercial classes--and the
bulk of those who have property to lose, and are afraid of endangering
it. This body is like the Ban of the Germanic empire, a formidable
force, but slow and diffident in its operations, and requiring the
stimulus of sudden alarm to call it into effective exercise. To one or
other of these great national parties, every Englishman, of education
enough to form an opinion, professes to belong; with a perfect
understanding on the part of all men of sense and probity, that the
general purpose is to ballast the vessel of the state, not to overset
it, and that it becomes a state-treason in any one to follow his party
when they carry their doctrines to extremity.
From the nature of this grand national division, it follows, that the
side which is most popular should be prompt in adopting theories, and
eager in recommending measures of alteration and improvement. It is by
such measures that men of talents rise into importance, and by such that
the popular part of the constitution is maintained in its integrity. The
other party is no less useful, by opposing to each successive attempt at
innovation the delays of form, the doubts of experience, the prejudices
of rank and condition, legal objections, and the weight of ancient and
established practice. Thus, measures of a doubtful tendency are severely
scrutinized in Parliament, and if at length adopted, it is only when
public opinion has long declared in their favour, and when, men's minds
having become habituated to the discussion, their introduction into our
system cannot produce the violent effect of absolute novelty. If there
were no Whigs, our constitution would fall to pieces for want of repair;
if there were no Tories, it would be broken in the course of a
succession of rash and venturous experiments.
[Sidenote: BURKE'S "REFLECTIONS."]
It followed, as a matter of course, that the Whigs of Britain looked
with complacence, the Tories with jealousy, upon the progress of the new
principles in France; but the latter had a powerful and unexpected
auxiliary in the person of Edmund Burke, whose celebrated _Reflections
on the Revolution in France_[171] had the most striking effect on the
public mind, of any work in our time. There was something exaggerated at
all times in the character as well as the eloquence of that great man;
and upon reading at this distance of time his celebrated composition, it
must be confessed that the colours he has used in painting the
extravagances of the Revolution, ought to have been softened, by
considering the peculiar state of a country, which, long labouring under
despotism, is suddenly restored to the possession of unembarrassed
license. On the other hand, no political prophet ever viewed futurity
with a surer ken. He knew how to detect the secret purpose of the
various successive tribes of revolutionists, and saw in the constitution
the future republic; in the republic the reign of anarchy; from anarchy
he predicted military despotism; and from military despotism, last to be
fulfilled, and hardest to be believed, he prophesied the late but secure
resurrection of the legitimate monarchy. Above all, when the cupidity of
the French rulers aspired no farther than the forcible possession of
Avignon and the Venaissin territories, he foretold their purpose of
extending the empire of France by means of her new political theories,
and, under pretext of propagating the principles of freedom, her project
of assailing with her arms the states, whose subjects had been already
seduced by her doctrines.
The work of Burke raised a thousand enemies to the French Revolution,
who had before looked upon it with favour, or at least with
indifference. A very large portion of the talents and aristocracy of the
Opposition party followed Burke into the ranks of the Ministry, who saw
with pleasure a member, noted for his zeal in the cause of the
Americans, become an avowed enemy of the French Revolution, and with
equal satisfaction heard him use arguments, which might, in their own
mouths, have assumed an obnoxious and suspicious character.
But the sweeping terms in which the author reprobated all attempts at
state-reformation, in which he had himself been at one time so powerful
an agent, subjected him to the charge of inconsistency among his late
friends, many of whom, and Fox in particular, declared themselves
favourable to the progress of the Revolution in France, though they did
not pretend to excuse its excesses. Out of Parliament it met more
unlimited applause; for England, as well as France, had talent impatient
of obscurity, ardour which demanded employment, ambition which sought
distinction, and men of headlong passions, who expected, in a new order
of things, more unlimited means of indulging them. The middling classes
were open in England as elsewhere, though not perhaps so much so, to the
tempting offer of increased power and importance; and the populace of
London and other large towns loved license as well as the sans culottes
of France. Hence the division of the country into Aristocrats and
Democrats, the introduction of political hatred into the bosom of
families, and the dissolution of many a band of friendship which had
stood the strain of a lifetime. One part of the kingdom looked upon the
other with the stern and relentless glance of keepers who are
restraining madmen, while the others bent on them the furious glare of
madmen conspiring revenge on their keepers.
From this period the progress of the French Revolution seemed in England
like a play presented upon the stage, where two contending factions
divide the audience, and hiss or applaud as much from party spirit as
from real critical judgment, while every instant increases the
probability that they will try the question by actual force.
Still, though the nation was thus divided on account of French politics,
England and France observed the usual rules of amity, and it seemed that
the English were more likely to wage hostility with each other than to
declare war against France.
There was, in other kingdoms and states upon the Continent, the same
diversity of feelings respecting the Revolution which divided England.
The favour of the lower and unprivileged classes, in Germany especially,
was the more fixed upon the progress of the French Revolution, because
they lingered under the same incapacities from which the changes in
France had delivered the Commons, or Third Estate, of that country. Thus
far their partiality was not only natural and innocent, but
praiseworthy. It is as reasonable for a man to desire the natural
liberty from which he is unjustly excluded, as it is for those who are
in an apartment where the air is polluted, to wish for the wholesome
atmosphere.
Unhappily, these justifiable desires were connected with others of a
description less harmless and beneficial. The French Revolution had
proclaimed war on castles, as well as peace to cottages.[172] Its
doctrine and practice held out the privileged classes in every country
as the natural tyrants and oppressors of the poor, whom it encouraged by
the thousand tongues of its declaimers to pull down their thrones,
overthrow their altars, renounce the empire of God above, and of kings
below, and arise, like regenerated France, alike from thraldom and from
superstition. And such opinions, calling upon the other nations of
Europe to follow them in their democratic career, were not only
trumpeted forth in all affiliated clubs of the Jacobins, whose influence
in the National Assembly was formidable, but were formally recognised by
that body itself upon an occasion, which, but for the momentous omen it
presented, might have been considered as the most ridiculous scene ever
gravely acted before the legislators of a great nation.
There was in Paris a native of Prussia, an exile from his country, whose
brain, none of the soundest by nature, seems to have been affected by
the progress of the Revolution, as that of ordinary madmen is said to be
influenced by the increase of the moon. This personage having become
disgusted with his baptismal name, had adopted that of the Scythian
philosopher, and uniting it with his own Teutonic family appellation,
entitled himself--"Anacharsis Clootz, Orator of the Human Race."[173]
[Sidenote: FEAST OF FEDERATION.]
It could hardly be expected, that the assumption of such a title should
remain undistinguished by some supreme act of folly. Accordingly, the
self-dubbed Anacharsis set on foot a procession, which was intended to
exhibit the representatives of delegates from all nations upon earth, to
assist at the Feast of the Federation of the 14th July, 1790, by which
the French nation proposed to celebrate the Revolution. In recruiting
his troops, the orator easily picked up a few vagabonds of different
countries in Paris; but as Chaldeans, Illinois, and Siberians, are not
so common, the delegates of those more distant tribes were chosen among
the rabble of the city, and subsidized at the rate of about twelve
francs each. We are sorry we cannot tell whether the personage, whose
dignity was much insisted upon as "a Miltonic Englishman," was genuine,
or of Parisian manufacture. If the last, he must have been worth seeing.
Anacharsis Clootz, having got his ragged regiment equipped in costume at
the expense of the refuse of some theatrical wardrobe, conducted them in
solemn procession to the bar of the National Assembly, presented them as
the representatives of all the nations on earth, awakened to a sense of
their debased situation by the choral voices of twenty-five millions of
freemen, and demanding that the sovereignty of the people should be
acknowledged, and their oppressors destroyed, through all the universe,
as well as in France.
So far this absurd scene was the extravagance of a mere madman, and if
the Assembly had sent Anacharsis to bedlam, and his train to the
Bicêtre, it would have ended as such a farce ought to have done. But
_the President, in the name of the Assembly_, M. de Menou, (the same, we
believe, who afterwards turned Turk when in Egypt,)[174] applauded the
zeal of the orator, and received the homage of his grotesque attendants
as if they had been what they pretended, the deputies of the four
quarters of the globe. To raise the jest to the highest, Alexander
Lameth proposed,--as the feelings of these august pilgrims must
necessarily be hurt to see, in the land of freedom, those kneeling
figures representing conquered nations, which surround the statue of
Louis XV.,--that, from respect to this body of charlatans, these figures
should be forthwith demolished. This was done accordingly, and the
destruction of these symbols was regarded as a testimony of the
assistance which France was ready to render such states as should
require her assistance, for following in the revolutionary course. The
scene, laughable in itself, became serious when its import was
considered, and went far to persuade the governments of the neighbouring
countries, that the purpose of France was to revolutionize Europe, and
spread the reign of liberty and equality over all the civilized nations
of the globe. Hopes so flattering as these, which should assign to the
commons not merely freedom from unjust restraints and disqualifications,
(and that granted with reserve, and only in proportion as they became
qualified to use it with advantage,) but their hour of command and
sovereignty, with the privilege of retaliation on those who had so long
kept them in bondage, were sure to find a general good reception among
all to whom they were addressed, in whatever country; while, on the
contrary, the fears of existing governments for the propagation of
doctrines so seductive in themselves, and which France seemed apparently
prepared to support with arms, were excited in an equal proportion.
It is true that the National Assembly had formally declared, that France
renounced the unphilosophical practices of extending her limits by
conquest, but although this disavowal spoke to the ear, it was
contradicted by the annexation of those desirable possessions, the
ancient city of Avignon, and the district called the Comtat Venaissin,
to the kingdom of France; while the principle on which the annexation
was determined on, seemed equally applicable in all similar cases.
A dispute had broken out betwixt the aristocrats and democrats in the
town and province in question [Oct. 30]; blood had flowed; a part of the
population had demanded to become citizens of regenerated France.[175]
Would it be worthy of the Protectress of Liberty, said the advocates for
the annexation, to repel from her bosom supplicants, who panted to share
the freedom they had achieved? And so Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin
were declared lawful prize, and _reunited_ to France, (so went the
phrase,) as Napoleon afterwards reunited the broken fragments of the
empire of Charlemagne. The prescient eye of Burke easily detected, in
these petty and surreptitious acquisitions, the gigantic plan by which
France afterwards encircled herself by dependent states, which, while
termed allies and auxiliaries, were, in fact, her most devoted subjects,
and the governments of which changed their character from monarchical to
popular, like the Great Nation.[176]
[Sidenote: AUSTRIA--PRUSSIA--SWEDEN.]
The princes at the head of despotic governments were, of course, most
interested in putting an end, if it were possible, to the present
Revolution of France, and extinguishing a flame which appeared so
threatening to its neighbours. Yet there was a long hesitation ere any
thing to this purpose was attempted. Austria, whom the matter concerned
as so near an ally of France, was slow ere she made any decisive step
towards hostility. The Emperor Joseph was too much embroiled by the
dissensions which he had provoked in the Netherlands, to involve himself
in war with France. His successor, Leopold, had been always reckoned to
belong to the philosophical party. He put down, without much trouble,
the insurrection which had nearly cost his brother the dominion of
Flanders, and as he used the victory with moderation, it seemed unlikely
that the tranquillity of his government should be again disturbed.
Still, it would have been hazardous to expose the allegiance of the
subjects, so newly restored to order, to the temptations which must have
opened to the Flemings by engaging in a war with France, and Leopold,
far from seeking for a ground of quarrel with the favourers of the
Revolution, entered into friendly relations with the government which
they established; and, with anxiety, doubtless, for the safety of his
brother-in-law, and an earnest desire to see the government of France
placed on something like a steady footing, the Emperor continued in
amicable terms with the existing rulers of that country down till his
death. Francis, his successor, for some time seemed to adopt the same
pacific policy.
Prussia, justly proud of her noble army, her veteran commanders, and the
bequest of military fame left her by the Great Frederick, was more eager
than Austria to adopt what began to be called the cause of Kings and
Nobles, though the sovereign of the latter kingdom was so nearly
connected with the unfortunate Louis. Frederick William had been taught
to despise revolutionary movements by his cheap victory over the Dutch
democracy, while the resistance of the Low Countries had induced the
Austrians to dread such explosions.
Russia declared herself hostile to the French Revolution, but hazarded
no effective step against them. The King of Sweden, animated by the
adventurous character which made Gustavus, and after him Charles, sally
forth from their frozen realms to influence the fates of Europe, showed
the strongest disposition to play the same part, though the limited
state of his resources rendered his valour almost nugatory.
Thus, while so many increasing discontents and suspicions showed that a
decision by arms became every day more inevitable, Europe seemed still
reluctant to commence the fatal encounter, as if the world had
anticipated the long duration of the dreadful struggle, and the millions
of lives which it must cost to bring it to a termination.
There can be no doubt that the emigration of the French princes,
followed by a great part of the nobles of France, a step ill-judged in
itself, as removing beyond the frontiers of the country all those most
devotedly interested in the preservation of the monarchy, had the utmost
effect in precipitating the impending hostilities. The presence of so
many noble exiles,[177] the respect and sympathy which their
misfortunes excited in those of the same rank, the exaggerated accounts
which they gave of their own consequence; above all, the fear that the
revolutionary spirit should extend beyond the limits of France, and work
the same effects in other nations, produced through the whole
aristocracy of Germany a general desire to restore them to their country
and to their rights by the force of arms, and to extinguish by main
force a spirit which seemed destined to wage war against all established
governments, and to abolish the privileges which they recognised in
their higher classes.
The state of the expatriated French clergy, driven from their home, and
deprived of their means of subsistence, because they refused an oath
imposed contrary to their ecclesiastical vows, and to their conscience,
added religious zeal to the general interest excited by the spectacle,
yet new to Europe, of thousands of nobility and clergy compelled to
forsake their country, and take refuge among aliens.
Several petty princes of the empire made a show of levying forces, and
complained of a breach of public faith, from the forfeiture of rights
which individual princes of the Germanic body possessed in Alsace and
Lorraine, and which, though sanctioned by the treaty of Westphalia, the
National Assembly had not deemed worthy of exception from their sweeping
abolition of feudal tenures. The emigrants formed themselves into armed
corps at Treves and elsewhere, in which the noblest youths in France
carried arms as privates, and which, if their number and resources had
been in any proportion to their zeal and courage, were qualified to bear
a distinguished part in deciding the destinies of the nation. Thus
united, they gave way but too much to the natural feelings of their rank
and country, menaced the land from which they had emigrated, and boasted
aloud that it needed but one thrust (_botte_) of an Austrian general, to
parry and pay home all the decrees of the National Assembly.[178] This
ill-timed anticipation of success was founded in a great measure on the
disorganization of the French army, which had been begun by the decay of
discipline during the progress of the Revolution, and was supposed to be
rendered complete by the emigration of such numbers of officers as had
joined the princes and their standards. It was yet to be learned how
soon such situations can be filled up, from the zeal and talent always
found among the lower classes, when critical circumstances offer a
reward to ambition.
[Sidenote: DECLARATION OF PILNITZ.]
Yet, while confident of success, the position of the emigrants was far
from being flattering. Notwithstanding their most zealous exertions, the
princes found their interest with foreign courts unable to bring either
kings or ministers willingly or hastily to the point which they desired.
The nearest approach was by the declaration of Pilnitz, [August 27,] in
which, with much diplomatical caution, the Emperor and King of Prussia
announced the interest which they took in the actual condition of the
King of France; and intimated, that, supposing the other nations
appealed to, should entertain feelings of the same kind, they would,
conjoined with those other powers, use the most efficacious means to
place Louis in a situation to establish in his dominions, on the basis
of the most perfect liberty, a monarchical government, suitable to the
rights of the sovereign, and the welfare of the people.[179]
This implied threat, which was to be conditionally carried into effect
in case other powers not named should entertain the same sentiments with
the two sovereigns by whom it was issued, was well calculated to
irritate, but far too vague to intimidate, such a nation as France. It
showed the desire to wound, but showed it accompanied by the fear to
strike, and instead of inspiring respect, only awakened indignation,
mingled with contempt.
The emigrants were generally represented among the people of France as
men who, to recover their own vain privileges, were willing to lead a
host of foreigners into the bosom of their country; and lest some
sympathy with their situation, as men suffering for the cause to which
they had devoted themselves, and stimulated by anxiety for the fate of
their imprisoned King, should have moderated the severity of this
judgment, forgery was employed to render their communication with the
foreign monarchs still more odious and unpopular.
The secret articles of a pretended treaty were referred to, by which it
was alleged that Monsieur and the Comte d'Artois had agreed to a
dismemberment of France; Lorraine and Alsace being to be restored to
Austria, in consequence of her entering into the counter-revolutionary
league. The date of this supposed treaty was first placed at Pavia, and
afterwards transferred to Pilnitz; but although it was at one time
assumed as a real document in the British House of Commons, it is now
generally allowed to have had no existence.[180] In the meanwhile, as a
calumny well adapted to the prejudices of the time, the belief in such a
secret compact became generally current, and excited the utmost
indignation against the selfish invaders, and against the exiles who
were supposed willing to dismember their native country, rather than
submit to a change in its constitution adverse to their own selfish
interests.
A great deal of this new load of unpopularity was transferred to the
account of the unfortunate Louis, who was supposed to instigate and
support in private the attempts of his brothers for engaging foreign
courts in his favour, while the Queen, from her relationship to the
Emperor of Austria, was universally represented as a fury, urging him to
revenge her loss of power on the rebellious people of France. An
Austrian committee was talked of as managing the correspondence between
these royal persons on the one part, and the foreign courts and emigrant
princes on the other. This was totally groundless; but it is probable
and natural that some intercourse was maintained between Louis and his
brothers, as, though their warlike schemes suited the King's temper too
little, he might wish to derive advantage from the dread which it was
vainly supposed their preparations would inspire. The royal pair were
indeed in a situation so disastrous, that they might have been excused
for soliciting rescue by almost any means. But, in fact, Louis and
Leopold seem to have agreed in the same system of temporizing politics.
Their correspondence, as far as can be judged from the letters of De
Lessart, Louis' trusted minister for foreign affairs, seems always to
point to a middle course; that of suffering the Constitution of France
to remain such as it had been chosen by the people, and sanctioned by
the National Assembly, while the ministers attempted, by the influence
of fear of dangers from abroad, to prevent any future assaults upon the
power of the Crown, and especially against the King's person. On
condition that such further aggression should be abstained from, the
Emperor seems to have been willing to prohibit the mustering of the
emigrant forces in his dominions. But Leopold demanded that, on their
part, the French nation should release themselves from the clubs of
Jacobins and Cordeliers, (another assembly of the same nature,) which,
pretending to be no more than private associations, without public
character or responsibility, nevertheless dictated to the National
Assembly, the King, and all France, in virtue of the power of exciting
the insurrectional movements, by which their denunciations and proposed
revolutions had been as regularly seconded, as the flash is followed by
the thunderbolt.
On the death of Leopold, [March 1, 1792,] and the succession of the
Emperor Francis to the imperial throne, the disposition of Austria
became much more turned towards war. It became the object of Francis to
overcome the revolutionists, and prevent, if possible, the impending
fate of the royal family. In adopting these warlike counsels, the mind
of the new Emperor was much influenced by the desire of Prussia to take
the field. Indeed, the condition of the royal family, which became every
day more precarious, seemed to both powers to indicate and authorise
hostile measures, and they were at no pains to conceal their
sentiments. It is not probable that peace would have remained long
unbroken, unless some change, of an unexpected and unhoped-for
character, in favour of royalty, had taken place in France; but, after
all the menaces which had been made by the foreign powers, it was France
herself, who, to the surprise of Europe, first resorted to arms. The
ostensible reason was, that, in declaring war, she only anticipated, as
became a brave and generous nation, the commencement of hostilities
which Austria had menaced. But each party in the state had its own
private views for concurring in a measure, which, at the time, seemed of
a very audacious character.
[Sidenote: LA FAYETTE.]
La Fayette now felt his influence in the national guard of Paris was
greatly on the wane. With the democrats he was regarded as a denounced
and devoted man, for having employed the armed force to disperse the
people in the Champ de Mars, upon the 17th of July, 1791. Those who
countenanced him on that occasion were Parisian citizens of substance
and property, but timorous, even from the very consciousness of their
wealth, and unwilling, either for the sake of La Fayette, or the
Constitution which he patronised, to expose themselves to be denounced
by furious demagogues, or pillaged by the hordes of robbers and
assassins whom they had at their disposal. This is the natural progress
in revolutions. While order continues, property has always the superior
influence over those who may be desirous of infringing the public peace;
but when law and order are in a great measure destroyed, the wealthy are
too much disposed to seek, in submission, or change of party, the means
of securing themselves and their fortunes. The property which, in
ordinary times, renders its owners bold, becomes, in those of imminent
danger, the cause of their selfish cowardice. La Fayette tried, however,
one decisive experiment, to ascertain what share remained of his once
predominant influence over the Parisians. He stood an election for the
mayoralty of Paris against Pétion, [Nov. 17,] a person attached to the
Brissotin, or Republican faction, and the latter was preferred.
Unsuccessful in this attempt, La Fayette became desirous of foreign war.
A soldier, and an approved one, he hoped his fortune would not desert
him, and that, at the head of armies, which he trusted to render
victorious over the public enemy, he might have a better chance of being
listened to by those factions who began to hold in disrespect the red
flag, and the decaying efforts of the national guard of Paris; and thus
gaining the power of once more enforcing submission to the constitution,
which he had so large a share in creating. Unquestionably, also, La
Fayette remembered the ardour of the French for national glory, and
welcomed the thoughts of shifting the scene to combat against a public
and avowed enemy, from his obscure and unsatisfactory struggle with the
clubs of Paris. La Fayette, therefore, desired war, and was followed in
his opinion by most of the Constitutional party.
[Sidenote: VIEWS OF THE PARTIES.]
The Girondists were not less eager for a declaration of hostilities.
Either the King must, in that case, place his veto upon the measure, or
he must denounce hostilities against his brother-in-law and his
brothers, subjecting himself to all the suspicions of bad faith which
such a measure inferred. If the arms of the nation were victorious, the
risk of a revolution in favour of royalty by insurrections within, or
invasions from without the kingdom, was ended at once and for ever. And
if the foreigners obtained advantages, it would be easy to turn the
unpopularity of the defeat upon the monarch, and upon the
Constitutionalists, who had insisted, and did still insist, on retaining
him as the ostensible head of the executive government.
The Jacobins, those whose uniform object it was to keep the impulse of
forcible and revolutionary measures in constant action, seemed to be
divided among themselves on the great question of war or peace.
Robespierre himself struggled, in the club, against the declaration of
hostilities, probably because he wished the Brissotins to take all the
responsibility of that hazardous measure, secure beforehand to share the
advantage which it might afford those Republicans against the King and
Constitutionalists. He took care that Louis should profit nothing by the
manner in which he pleaded the cause of justice and humanity. He
affected to prophesy disasters to the ill-provided and ill-disciplined
armies of France, and cast the blame beforehand on the known treachery
of the King and the Royalists, the arbitrary designs of La Fayette and
the Constitutionalists, and the doubtful patriotism of Brissot and
Condorcet. His arguments retarded, though they could not stop, the
declaration of war, which probably they were not intended seriously to
prevent; and the most violent and sanguinary of men obtained a temporary
character for love of humanity, by adding hypocrisy to his other vices.
The Jacobins in general, notwithstanding Robespierre's remonstrances,
moved by the same motives which operated with the Brissotins, declared
ultimately in favour of hostilities.[181]
The resolution for war, therefore, predominated in the Assembly, and two
preparatory measures served, as it were, to sound the intentions of the
King on the subject, and to ascertain how far he was disposed to adhere
to the constitutional government which he had accepted, against those
who, in his name, seemed prepared by force of arms to restore the old
system of monarchy. Two decrees were passed against the emigrants in the
Assembly, [Nov. 9.] The first was directed against the King's brother,
and summoned Xavier Stanislaus, Prince of France, to return into France
in two months, upon pain of forfeiting his right to the regency. The
King consented to this decree: he could not, indeed, dissent from it
with consistency, being, as he had consented to be, the holder of the
crown under a constitution, against which his exiled brother had
publicly declared war. The second decree denounced death against all
emigrants who should be found assembled in arms on the 1st of January
next.[182] The right of a nation to punish with extreme pains those of
its native subjects who bear arms against her, has never been disputed.
But although, on great changes of the state, the vanquished party, when
essaying a second struggle, stand in the relation of rebels against the
existing government, yet there is generally wisdom as well as humanity,
in delaying to assert this right in its rigour, until such a period
shall have elapsed, as shall at once have established the new government
in a confirmed state of possession, and given those attached to the old
one time to forget their habits and predilections in its favour.
Under this defence, Louis ventured to use the sole constitutional weapon
with which he was intrusted. He refused his consent to the decree.
Sensible of the unpopularity attending this rejection, the King
endeavoured to qualify it, by issuing a severe proclamation against the
emigrants, countermanding their proceedings;--which was only considered
as an act of dissimulation and hypocrisy.
The decree last proposed, jarred necessarily on the heart and
sensibility of Louis; the next affected his religious scruples. The
National Assembly had produced a schism in the Church, by imposing on
the clergy a constitutional oath, inconsistent with their religious
vows. The philosophers in the present legislative body, with all the
intolerance which they were in the habit of objecting against the
Catholic Church, resolved to render the breach irreparable.
They had, they thought, the opportunity of striking a death's blow at
the religion of the state, and they remembered, that the watch-word
applied by the Encyclopedists to Christianity, had been _Ecrasez
l'Infame_. The proposed decree bore, that such priests as refused the
constitutional oath should forfeit the pension allowed them for
subsistence, when the government seized upon the estates of the clergy;
that they should be put into a state of surveillance, in the several
departments where they resided, and banished from France the instant
they excited any religious dissensions.[183]
A prince, with the genuine principles of philosophy, would have rejected
this law as unjust and intolerant; but Louis had stronger motives to
interpose his constitutional _veto_, as a Catholic Christian, whose
conscience would not permit him to assent to the persecution of the
faithful servants of his Church. He refused his assent to this decree
also.
In attempting to shelter the emigrants and the recusant churchmen, the
King only rendered himself the more immediate object of the popular
resentment. His compassion for the former was probably mingled with a
secret wish, that the success of their arms might relieve him from his
present restraint; at any rate, it was a motive easily imputed, and
difficult to be disproved. He was, therefore, represented to his people
as in close union with the bands of exiled Frenchmen, who menaced the
frontiers of the kingdom, and were about to accompany the foreign armies
on their march to the metropolis. The royal rejection of the decree
against the orthodox clergy was imputed to Louis's superstition, and his
desire of rebuilding an ancient Gothic hierarchy unworthy of an
enlightened age. In short, that was now made manifest, which few wise
men had ever doubted, namely, that so soon as the King should avail
himself of his constitutional right, in resistance to the popular will,
he was sure to incur the risk of losing both his crown and life.[184]
Meantime this danger was accelerated by the consequences of a dissension
in the royal cabinet. It will scarcely be believed, that situations in
the ministry of France, so precarious in its tenure, so dangerous in its
possession, so enfeebled in its authority, should have been, even at
this time, the object of ambition; and that to possess such momentary
and doubtful eminence, men, and wise men too, employed all the usual
arts of intrigue and circumvention, by which rival statesmen, under
settled governments and in peaceful times, endeavour to undermine and
supplant each other. We have heard of criminals in the Scottish
Highlands, who asserted with obstinacy the dignity of their clans, when
the only test of pre-eminence was the priority of execution. We have
read, too, of the fatal raft, where shipwrecked men in the midst of the
Atlantic, contended together with mortal strife for equally useless
preferences. But neither case is equal in extravagance to the conduct of
those rivals, who struggled for power in the cabinet of Louis XVI. in
1792, when, take what party they would, the jealousy of the Assembly,
and the far more fatal proscription of the Jacobins, was sure to be the
reward of their labours. So, however, it was, and the fact serves to
show, that a day of power is more valuable in the eyes of ambition, than
a lifetime of ease and safety.
[Sidenote: CHANGE OF MINISTRY.]
De Lessart, the Minister of Foreign Affairs already mentioned, had
wished to avoid war, and had fed Leopold and his ministers with hopes,
that the King would be able to establish a constitutional power,
superior to that of the dreadful Jacobins. The Comte de Narbonne, on the
other side, being Minister of War, was desirous to forward the views of
La Fayette, who, as we have said, longed to be at the head of the army.
To obtain his rival's disgrace, Narbonne combined with La Fayette and
other generals to make public the opposition which De Lessart and a
majority of the cabinet ministers had opposed to the declaration of
hostilities. Louis, justly incensed at an appeal to the public from the
interior of his own cabinet, displaced Narbonne.[185]
The legislative body immediately fell on De Lessart. He was called to
stand on his defence, and imprudently laid before the Assembly his
correspondence with Kaunitz, the Austrian minister. In their
communications De Lessart and Kaunitz had spoken with respect of the
constitution, and with moderation even of their most obnoxious measures;
but they had reprobated the violence of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, and
stigmatized the usurpations of those clubs over the constitutional
authorities of the state, whom they openly insulted and controlled.
These moderate sentiments formed the real source of De Lessart's fall.
He was attacked on all sides--by the party of Narbonne and his friends
from rivalry--by Brissot and his followers from policy, and in order to
remove a minister too much of a royalist for their purpose--by the
Jacobins, from hatred and revenge. Yet, when Brissot condescended upon
the following evidence of his guilt, argument and testimony against him
must have indeed been scarce. De Lessart, with the view of representing
the present affairs of France under the most softened point of view to
the Emperor, had assured him that the constitution of 1791 was firmly
adhered to by a _majority_ of the nation.[186] "Hear the atrocious
calumniator!" said the accuser. "The inference is plain. He dares to
insinuate the existence of a minority, which is not attached to the
Constitution."[187] Another accusation, which in like manner was adopted
as valid by the acclamation of the Assembly, was formed thus. A most
horrible massacre[188] had taken place during the tumults which
attended the union of Avignon with the kingdom of France. Vergniaud, the
friend and colleague of Brissot, alleged, that if the decree of union
had been early enough sent to Avignon, the dissensions would not have
taken place; and he charged upon the unhappy De Lessart that he had not
instantly transmitted the official intelligence. Now the decree of
reunion was, as the orator knew, delayed on account of the King's
scruples to accede to what seemed an invasion of the territory of the
Church; and, at any rate, it could no more have prevented the massacre
of Avignon, which was conducted by that same Jourdan, called Coupe-tête,
the Bearded Man of the march to Versailles, than the subsequent massacre
of Paris, perpetrated by similar agents. The orator well knew this; yet,
with eloquence as false as his logic, he summoned the ghosts of the
murdered from the glacière, in which their mangled remains had been
piled, to bear witness against the minister, to whose culpable neglect
they owed their untimely fate. All the while he was imploring for
justice on the head of a man, who was undeniably ignorant and innocent
of the crime, Vergniaud and his friends secretly meditated extending the
mantle of safety over the actual perpetrators of the massacre, by a
decree of amnesty; so that the whole charge against De Lessart can only
be termed a mixture of hypocrisy and cruelty. In the course of the same
discussion, Gauchon, an orator of the suburb of Saint Antoine, in which
lay the strength of the Jacobin interest, had already pronounced
sentence in the cause, at the very bar of the Assembly which was engaged
in trying it. "Royalty may be struck out of the Constitution," said the
demagogue, "but the unity of the legislative body defies the touch of
time. Courtiers, ministers, kings, and their civil lists, may pass away,
but the sovereignty of the people, and the pikes which enforce it, are
perpetual."
This was touching the root of the matter. De Lessart was a royalist,
though a timid and cautious one, and he was to be punished as an example
to such ministers as should dare to attach themselves to their sovereign
and his personal interest. A decree of accusation was passed against
him, and he was sent to Orleans to be tried before the High Court there.
Other royalists of distinction were committed to the same prison, and,
in the fatal month of September, 1792, were involved in the same
dreadful fate.[189]
Pétion, the Mayor of Paris, appeared next day, at the bar, at the head
of the municipality, to congratulate the Assembly on a great act of
justice, which he declared resembled one of those thunder-storms by
which nature purifies the atmosphere from noxious vapours. The ministry
was dissolved by this severe blow on one of the wisest, at least one of
the most moderate, of its members. Narbonne and the Constitutional party
who had espoused his cause, were soon made sensible, that he or they
were to gain nothing by the impeachment, to which their intrigues led
the way. Their claims to share the spoils of the displaced ministry were
passed over with contempt, and the King was compelled, in order to have
the least chance of obtaining a hearing from the Assembly, to select his
ministers from the Brissotin, or Girondist faction, who, though averse
to the existence of a monarchy, and desiring a republic instead, had
still somewhat more of principle and morals than the mere Revolutionists
and Jacobins, who were altogether destitute of both.
[Sidenote: WAR WITH AUSTRIA.]
With the fall of De Lessart, all chance of peace vanished; as indeed it
had been gradually disappearing before that event. The demands of the
Austrian court went now, when fully explained, so far back upon the
Revolution, that a peace negotiated upon such terms, must have laid
France and all its various parties, (with the exception perhaps of a few
of the first Assembly,) at the foot of the sovereign, and, what might be
more dangerous, at the mercy of the restored emigrants. The Emperor
demanded the establishment of monarchy in France, on the basis of the
royal declaration of 23d June, 1789, which had been generally rejected
by the Tiers Etat when offered to them by the King. He farther demanded
the restoration of the effects of the Church, and that the German
princes having rights in Alsace and Lorraine should be replaced in those
rights, agreeably to the treaty of Westphalia.
The Legislative Assembly received these extravagant terms as an insult
on the national dignity; and the King, whatever might be his sentiments
as an individual, could not, on this occasion, dispense with the duty
his office as Constitutional Monarch imposed upon him. Louis, therefore,
had the melancholy task [April 20] of proposing to an Assembly, filled
with the enemies of his throne and person, a declaration of war against
his brother-in-law the Emperor, in his capacity of King of Hungary and
Bohemia,[190] involving, as matter of course, a civil war with his own
two brothers, who had taken the field at the head of that part of his
subjects from birth and principle the most enthusiastically devoted to
their sovereign's person, and who, if they had faults towards France,
had committed them in love to him.[191]
The proposal was speedily agreed to by the Assembly; for the
Constitutionalists saw their best remaining chance for power was by
obtaining victory on the frontiers,--the Girondists had need of war, as
what must necessarily lead the way to an alteration in the constitution,
and the laying aside the regal government,--and the Jacobins, whose
chief, Robespierre, had just objected enough to give him the character
and credit of a prophet if any reverses were sustained, resisted the war
no longer, but remained armed and watchful, to secure the advantage of
events as they might occur.
FOOTNOTES:
[159] Mignet, tom. i., p. 141; Dumont, p. 244.
[160] "One evening M. de Narbonne made use of this expression: 'I appeal
to the most distinguished members of this Assembly.' At that moment the
whole party of the Mountain rose up in a fury, and Merlin, Bazire, and
Chabot, declared, that 'all the deputies were equally
distinguished.'"--M. DE STAËL, tom. ii., p. 39.
[161] Cazalès, one of the most brilliant orators of the Assembly, was
born at Grenade-sur-la-Garonne in 1752. He died in 1805. In 1821, _Les
Discours et Opinions de Cazalès_ were published at Paris, in an octavo
volume.
[162] Shortly after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Maury
retired to Italy, where he became a cardinal. In 1806, he returned to
France, and in 1810 was made, by Napoleon, Archbishop of Paris. He died
at Rome in 1817.
[163] After the 10th of August, 1792, Duport fled to Switzerland, where
he died in 1798.
[164] King John, act ii., sc. i.
[165] Dumont, p. 272; Mignet, tom. i., p. 151.
[166] Hudibras, part iii., c. 2.
[167] Chabot was the principal editor of a paper entitled _Journal
Populaire, ou le Catéchisme des Sans Culottes_. He was guillotined in
April, 1794.
[168] Thiers, tom. ii., p. 12; Mignet, tom. i., p. 152.
[169] Mémoires de Barbaroux, p. 47; Mignet, tom. i., p. 220.
[170] See Annual Register, vol. xxxiv., pp. 70-72, 73.
[171] This work made its appearance in November, 1790; about 30,000
copies were sold; and a French translation, by M. Dupont, quickly spread
its reputation throughout Europe. "The publication of Burke towards the
close of the year 1790," says Lacretelle, "was one of the most
remarkable events of the eighteenth century. It is a history, by
anticipation, of the first fifteen years of the French
Revolution."--Tom. viii., p. 182. "However the arguments of Burke may
seem to have been justified by posterior events, it yet remains to be
shown, that the war-cry then raised against France did not greatly
contribute to the violence which characterised that period. It is
possible that had he merely roused the attention of the governments and
wealthy classes to the dangers of this new political creed, he might
have proved the saviour of Europe; but he made such exaggerated
statements, and used arguments so alarming to freedom, that on many
points he was not only plausibly, but victoriously refuted."--DUMONT, p.
137.
[172] "Guerre aux châteaux, paix aux hamaux."
[173] Clootz was born at Cleves in 1755. Being suspected by Robespierre,
he was, in May, 1794, sent to the guillotine.
[174] Menou was born at Boussay de Loches in 1750. After Buonaparte's
flight from Egypt, he turned Mahometan, submitted to the peculiar rites
of Islamism, and called himself Abdallah James Menou. He died at Venice
in 1810; of which place he had been appointed Governor by Napoleon.
[175] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 52.
[176] See Burke's Works, vol. viii., p. 272.
[177] Their number was at this time, with their families, nearly a
hundred thousand.--See Burke, vol. viii., p. 72, and Lacretelle, tom.
viii., p. 117.
[178] See Lacretelle, tom. viii., p. 117.
[179] Jomini, tom. i., p. 265; Lacretelle, tom. viii., pp. 334, 439; De
Bouillé, p. 422.
[180] See two articles on the pretended treaties of Pavia and Pilnitz,
signed Detector, in the Anti-jacobin Newspaper, July 2, 1798. They were,
we believe, written by the late Mr. Pitt. [Since this work was published
it seems to have become certain that the letters there referred to were
the productions of Lord Grenville, at that time Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs.]--"As far as we have been able to trace," said Mr.
Pitt, in 1800, "the declaration signed at Pilnitz referred to the
imprisonment of Louis: its immediate view was to effect his deliverance,
if a concert sufficiently extensive could be formed for that purpose. I
left the internal state of France to be decided by the King restored to
his liberty, with the free consent of the states of the kingdom, and it
did not contain one word relative to the dismemberment of the
country."--_Parliamentary History_, vol. xxxiv., p. 1316.--S.
[181] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 61; Thiers, tom. ii., p. 48.
[182] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 48.
[183] "The adoption of this oppressive decree was signalized by the
first open expression of _atheistical_ sentiments in the Assembly. 'My
God is the Law; I acknowledge no other,' was the expression of Isnard.
The remonstrance of the constitutional bishops had no effect. The decree
was carried amidst tumult and acclamation."--LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p.
46.
[184] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 46.
[185] Mignet, tom. i., p. 164; Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 74. "The war
department was intrusted, in December, 1791, to M. de Narbonne. He
employed himself with unfeigned zeal in all the preparations necessary
for the defence of the kingdom. Possessing rank and talents, the manners
of a court, and the views of a philosopher, that which was predominant
in his soul was military honour and French valour. To oppose the
interference of foreigners under whatever circumstances, always seemed
to him the duty of a citizen and a gentleman. His colleagues combined
against him, and succeeded in obtaining his removal. He lost his life at
the siege of Torgau, in 1813."--M. DE STAËL, vol. ii., p. 39.
[186] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 77.
[187] This strange argument reminds us of an Essay read before a
literary society in dispraise of the east wind, which the author
supported by quotations from every poem or popular work, in which Eurus
is the subject of invective. The learned auditors sustained the first
part of this infliction with becoming fortitude, but declined submitting
to the second, understanding that the accomplished author had there
fortified himself by the numerous testimonies of almost all poets in
favour of the west, and which, with logic similar to that of M. Brissot
in the text, he regarded as indirect testimony against the east
wind.--S.
[188] "On Sunday, the 30th October, 1791, the gates were closed, the
walls guarded so as to render escape impossible, and a band of
assassins, commanded by the barbarous Jourdan, sought out in their own
houses the individuals destined for death. Sixty unhappy wretches were
speedily thrust into prison, where, during the obscurity of night, the
murderers wreaked their vengeance with impunity. One young man put
fourteen to death with his own hand, and only desisted from excess of
fatigue. Twelve women perished, after having undergone tortures which my
pen cannot describe. When vengeance had done its worst, the remains of
the victims were torn and mutilated, and heaped up in a ditch, or thrown
into the Rhone."--LACRETELLE, tom. ix., p. 54.
[189] Lacretelle, tom. ix., p. 75.
[190] "After a long exposition by Dumouriez, the King, with a tremulous
voice, pronounced these words:--'You have heard, gentlemen, the result
of my negotiations with the Court of Vienna: they are conformable to the
sentiments more than once expressed to me by the National Assembly, and
confirmed by the great majority of the kingdom. All prefer a war to the
continuance of outrages to the national honour, or menaces to the
national safety. I have exhausted all the means of pacification in my
power; I now come, in terms of the Constitution, to propose to the
Assembly, that we should declare war against the King of Hungary and
Bohemia.'"--MIGNET, tom. i., p. 168; _Annual Register_, vol. xxxiv., p.
201; DUMOURIEZ, vol. ii., p. 272.
[191] "I was present at the sitting in which Louis was forced to a
measure which was necessarily painful to him in so many ways. His
features were not expressive of his thoughts, but it was not from
dissimulation that he concealed them; a mixture of resignation and
dignity repressed in him every outward sign of his sentiments. On
entering the Assembly, he looked to the right and left, with that kind
of vacant curiosity which is usual to persons who are so shortsighted
that their eyes seem to be of no use to them. He proposed war in the
same tone of voice as he might have used in requiring the most
indifferent decree possible."--M. DE STAËL, vol. ii., p. 40.