CHAPTER IV

THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY

I have taken as a turning-point in the career of Danton the municipal

change which marks the summer of 1790, concluding with that event the

first chapter of his political action, and making it the beginning of a

new phase. Let me explain the reasons that have led me to make such a

division at a moment that is marked by no striking passage of arms, of

policy, or of debate.

In the first place, a recital of Danton’s life must of necessity follow

the fortunes of the capital. The spirit of the people whose tribune he

was (their growing enthusiasms and later their angers)—that spirit is the

chief thing to guide us in the interpretation of his politics, but the

mechanical transformations of the city government form the framework, as

it were, upon which the stuff of Parisian feeling is woven. The detail

is dry and often neglected; the mere passing of a particular law giving

Paris a particular constitution, a system not unexpected, and apparently

well suited to the first year of the Revolution, may seem an event of

but little moment in the development of the reform; but certain aspects

of the period lend that detail a very considerable importance. In the

rapid transformation which was remoulding French society, the law,

however new, possessed a strength which, at this hour, we can appreciate

only with difficulty. In a settled and traditional society custom is

of such overwhelming weight that a law can act only in accordance with

it; a sudden change in the machinery of government would break down of

itself—nay, in such a society laws can hardly be passed save those that

the development of tradition demands. But in a time of revolution this

postulate of social history fails. When a whole people starts out to

make fresh conditions for itself, every decree becomes an origin; the

forces that in more regular periods mould and control legislative action

are, in a time of feverish reconstruction, increased in power and give

an impetus to new institutions; the energy of society, which in years

of content and order controls by an unseen pressure, is used in years

of revolution to launch, openly and mechanically, the fabric that a new

theory has designed. Thus you may observe how in the framing of the

American constitution every point in a particular debate became of vast

moment to the United States; thus in our time the German Empire has found

its strength in a set of arbitrary decrees, all the creation of a decade;

thus in the Middle Ages the Hildebrandine reform framed in the life of

one man institutions which are vigorous after the lapse of eight hundred

years; and thus in the French Revolution a municipal organisation, new,

theoretic, and mechanical, was strong enough, not indeed to survive so

terrible a storm, but to give to the whole movement a permanent change of

direction.

This, then, is the transitional character of the summer of 1790, as

regards the particular life of Danton and the particular city of Paris.

What the Cordeliers had fought so hard to obtain as a constitutional

reform had failed. The direct action of the districts upon the

municipality was apparently lost for ever, and the centre of the new

system was in future to be controlled in the expression of ideas and

paralysed in its action. What the Cordeliers had represented in spirit,

though they had not formulated it in decrees—government by the whole

people—was apparently equally lost. The law of December (that which

established the “active and passive citizens”) was working for Paris

as for all France; and though a suffrage which admitted two-thirds of

the male population to the polls could not be called restrictive, yet

the exception of men working for wages under their master’s roof, the

necessity of a year’s residence, and the qualification of tax-paying did

produce a very narrow oligarchy in a town like Paris: the artisans were

excluded, and thousands of those governed fell just beyond the limits

which defined the municipal voter. Danton may receive the provincial

delegates, may make his speeches at the feast in the Bois de Boulogne;

but once the organ of government has been closed to his ideas, the road

towards the democracy lies through illegality and revolt.

Now there is another and a wider importance in this anniversary of the

fall of the Bastille. It is the point at which we can best halt and

survey the beginning of the heat which turned the Revolution from a

domestic reform of the French nation to a fire capable of changing the

nature of all our civilisation. I do not mean that you will find those

quarrels in the moment; in 1790 there is nothing of the spirit that

overturned the monarchy nor of the visions that inspired the Gironde; you

cannot even fairly say that there are general threats or mutterings of

war, although the Assembly saw fit to disclaim them: it is a year before

the fear of such dangers arises. But there is in this summer something

to be discovered, namely, an explanation of why two periods differing so

profoundly in character meet so suddenly and with such sharp contrast at

one point in the history of the movement; it is from the summer of 1790

and onwards that the laws are passed, the divisions initiated, which

finally alienate the King, from that lead to his treason, from that rouse

Europe, and from the consequent invasion produce the Terror, the armies,

and the Empire. The mind needs a link between two such different things

as reform and violence, and because that link is not supplied in the

mere declaration of war or in the mere flight to Varennes, men commit the

error of reading the spirit of the Republic into the days of Mirabeau,

or even of seeing temperate politics in the apostolic frenzy of ’93.

Some, more ignorant or less gifted than the general reader, explain it

by postulating in the character of the French nation quaint aberrations

which may be proper to the individual, but which never have nor can exist

in any community of human beings.

Let me recapitulate and define the problem which, as it seems to me, can

be solved by making a pivot of the anniversary of the States-General.

There are, then, in the story of the Revolution these two phases, so

distinct that their recognition is the foundation of all just views

upon the period. In the first, the leaders of the nation are bent

upon practical reforms; the monarchy is a machine to hand for their

accomplishment; the sketch of a new France is drawn, the outlines even

begin to be filled by trained and masterly hands. Phrases will be found

abundantly in those thirty months, because phrases are the christening

of ideas, and no nation of Roman training could attempt any work without

clear definitions to guide it. But these phrases, though often abstract

in the extreme, are never violent, and the oratory itself of the National

Assembly is rarely found to pass the limits which separate the art of

persuasion from the mere practice of defiance.

In the second phase, for which the name of the Convention often stands,

those subterranean fires which the crust of tradition and the stratified

rock of society had formerly repressed break out in irresistible

eruption. The creative work of the revolutionary idea realises itself in

a casting of molten metal rather than in a forging, and the mould it uses

is designed upon a conception of statuary rather than of architecture.

The majestic idol of the Republic, in whose worship the nation has since

discovered all its glories and all its misfortunes, is set up by those

artists of the ideal; but they forget, or perhaps ignore, the terrible

penalties that attach to superhuman attempts, the reactions of an

exclusive idealism.

What made the second out of the first? What made a France which had

discussed Sieyès listen to St. Just or even to Hébert? The answer to this

question is to be discovered in noting the fatal seeds that were sown in

this summer of 1790, and which in two years bore the fruit of civil war

and invasion.

In the first place, that summer creates, as we have seen, a discontented

Paris—a capital whose vast majority it refuses to train in the art of

self-government, and whose general voice it refuses to hear.

In the second place, it is the moment when the discontent in the army

comes to a head. The open threat of military reaction on the side of

a number of the officers, their intense animosity against the decrees

abolishing titles, their growing disgust at the privileges accorded to

the private soldiers—all these come face to face with non-commissioned

officers and privates who are full of the new liberties. These lower

ranks contained the ambitious men whose ability, the honest and loyal

men whose earnestness, were to carry French arms to the successes of the

Revolutionary wars.

In the third place, it is the consummation of the blunder that attempted

to create an established National Church in France. Before this last

misfortune a hundred other details of these months that were so many

mothers of discord become insignificant. Civil war first muttering in

the South, counter-revolution drilling in Savoy, the clerical petition

of Nîmes, the question of the Alsatian estates, the Parisian journals

postulating extreme democracy, the Jacobins appearing as an organised and

propagandist body, the prophetic cry of Lameth—all these things were

but incidents that would have been forgotten but for the major cause of

tumult, which is to be discovered in the civil constitution of the clergy.

Of course, the kings would have attacked, but they were divided, and

had not even a common motive. Of course, also, freedom, in whatever

form it came, would have worked in the moribund body of Europe like a

drug, and till its effect was produced would have been thought a poison.

But against the hatred of every oppressor would have been opposed a

disciplined and a united people, sober by instinct, traditionally slow in

the formation of judgments, traditionally tenacious of an opinion when

once it had been acquired. It would have been sufficient glory for the

French people to have broken the insolence of the aggressors, to have had

upon their lists the names of Marceau and of Hoche.

But with the false step that produced civil war, that made of the ardent

and liberal West a sudden opponent, that in its final effect raised Lyons

and alienated half the southern towns, that lost Toulon, that put the

extreme of fanaticism in the wisest and most loyal minds—such a generous

and easy war was doomed, and the Revolution was destined to a more tragic

and to a nobler history. God, who permitted this proud folly to proceed

from a pedantic aristocracy, foresaw things necessary to mankind. In

the despair of the philosophers there will arise on either side of a

great battle the enthusiasms which, from whencever they blow, are the

fresh winds of the soul. Here are coming the heroes and the epic songs

for which humanity was sick, and the scenes of one generation of men

shall give us in Europe our creeds for centuries. You shall hear the

“Chant du Départ” like a great hymn in the army of the Sambre et Meuse,

and the cheers of men going down on the _Vengeur_; the voice of a young

man calling the grenadiers at Lodi and Arcola; the noise of the guard

swinging up the frozen hill at Austerlitz. Already the forests below the

Pyrenees are full of the Spanish guerillas, and after how many hundred

years the love of the tribe has reappeared again above the conventions

that covered it. There are the three colours standing against the trees

in the North and the South; and the delicate womanly face of Nelson is

looking over the bulwarks of the _Victory_, with the slow white clouds

and the light wind of an October day above him, and before him the

enemy’s sails in the sunlight and the black rocks of the coast.

It may be well, at the expense of some digression, to say why the laws

affecting the clergy should be treated as being of paramount historical

importance. They ruined the position of the King; they put before a very

large portion of the nation not one, but two ideals; and what regular

formation can grow round two dissimilar nuclei? Finally—a thing that we

can now see clearly, though then the wisest failed to grasp it—they went

against the grain of the nation.

It is a common accusation that the Revolution committed the capital sin

of being unhistorical. Taine’s work is a long anathema pronounced against

men who dared to deny the dogmas of evolution before those dogmas were

formulated. Such a criticism is erroneous and vain; in the mouths of many

it is hypocritical. The great bulk of what the Revolution did was set

directly with the current of time. For example: The re-unison of Gaul

had been coming of itself for a thousand years—the Revolution achieved

it; the peasant was virtually master of his land—it made him so in law

and fact; Europe had been trained for centuries in the Roman law—it was

precisely the Roman law that triumphed in the great reform, and most of

its results, all of its phraseology, is drawn from the civil code. But

in this one feature of the constitution of the clergy it sinned against

the nature of France. Of necessity the Parliament was formed of educated

men, steeped in the philosophy of the time, and of necessity it worked

under the eyes of a great city population. In other words, the statesmen

who bungled in this matter and the artisans who formed their immediate

surroundings were drawn from the two classes which had most suffered from

the faults of the hierarchy in France.

Mirabeau, for example, has passed his life in the rank where rich abbés

made excellent blasphemy; the artisan of Paris has passed his life

unprotected and unsolicited by the priests, whose chief duty is the

maintenance of human dignity in the poor. Add to this the Jansenist

legend of which Camus was so forcible a relic, and the Anglo-mania which

drew the best intellects into the worst experiments, and the curious

project is inevitable.

In these first essays of European democracy there was, as all the world

knows, a passion for election. In vain had Rousseau pointed out the

fundamental fallacy of representation in any scheme of self-government.

The example of America was before them; the vicious temptation of the

obvious misled them; and until the hard lessons of the war had taught

them the truth, representation for its own sake, like a kind of game,

seems to have been an obsession of the upper class in France. They

admitted it into the organisation of the Church.

Now let us look in its detail at this attempt to make of the Catholic

Church in the eighteenth century a mixture of the administration of

Constantine, of the presbyteries of first centuries, and of the “branch

of the civil service” which has suited so well a civilisation so

different from that of France.

The great feature of this reform was the attempt to subject the whole

clerical organisation to the State. I do not mean, of course, the

establishment of dogmas by civil discussion, nor the interference with

internal discipline; but the hierarchy was to be elected, from the

parish priest to the bishop; the new dioceses were to correspond to the

new Departments, and, most important of all, their confirmation was not

to be demanded from the Pope, but “letters of communion” were to be sent

to the Head of the Church, giving him notice of the election.

This scheme passed the House on July 12, 1790, two days before the great

feast of the federation. A time whose intellect was alien to the Church,

a class whose habits were un-Catholic, had attempted a reformation. Why

was the attempt a blunder? Simply because it was unnecessary. There were

certain ideas upon which the reconstruction of France was proceeding;

they have been constantly alluded to in this book; they are what the

French call “the principles of ’89.” Did they necessarily affect the

Church? Yes; but logically carried out they would have affected the

Church in a purely negative way. It was an obvious part of the new era

to deny the _imperium in imperio_. The Revolution would have stultified

itself had it left untouched the disabilities of Protestants and of Jews,

had it continued to support the internal discipline of the Church by the

civil power. It was logical when it said to the religious orders: “You

are private societies; we will not compel your members to remain, neither

will we compel them to leave their convents.” (In the decree of February

13, 1790.) It would have been logical had it said to the Church: “It

may be that you are the life of society; it may be that your effect is

evil; we leave you free to prove your quality, for freedom of action and

competition is our cardinal principle.” But instead of leaving the Church

free they amused themselves by building up a fantastic and mechanical

structure, and then found that they were compelling religion to enter a

prison. Nothing could be conceived more useless or more dangerous.

On the other hand, if this scheme as a whole was futile, there were some

details that were necessary results of what the clergy themselves had

done, and some which, if not strictly necessary, have at least survived

the Revolution, and are vigorous institutions to-day. It might have been

possible for Rome to seize on these as a basis of compromise, and it is

conceivable, though hardly probable, that the final scheme might have

left the Church a neutral in the coming wars. But if the councils of the

Holy See were ill-advised, the Parliament was still less judicious; its

extreme sensitiveness to interference from abroad was coupled with the

extreme pedantry of a Lanjuinais, and the scheme in its entirety was

forced upon Louis. He, almost the only pious man in a court which had so

neglected religion as to hate the people, wrote in despair to the Pope;

but before the answer came he had signed the law, and in that moment

signed the warrant for his own death and that of thousands of other loyal

and patriotic men.

While these future divisions were preparing, during the rest of the year

1790 Danton’s position becomes more marked. We find a little less about

him in the official records, for the simple reason that he has ceased to

be a member of an official body, or rather (since the first Commune was

not actually dissolved till September) he remains the less noticeable

from the fact that the policy which he represented has been defeated;

but his personality is making more impression upon Paris and upon his

enemies. We shall find him using for the first time moderation, and for

the first time meeting with systematic calumny. He acquires, though he

is not yet of any especial prominence, the mark of future success, for

he is beginning to be singled out as a special object of attack; and

throughout the summer and autumn he practises more and more that habit of

steering his course which up to the day of his death so marks him from

the extremists.

The failure of his policy, the check which had been given to the

Cordeliers, and the uselessness of their protests on the 1st, 2nd, and

3rd of July, had a marked effect upon the position of Danton even in his

own district. He had been president when they were issued, and his friend

D’Eglantine had been secretary. One may say that the policy of resistance

was Danton’s, and that but for his leadership it would have been unheard.

Hence, when it has notoriously failed, that great mass of men who (when

there is no party system) follow the event, lost their faith in him.

Bailly is not only elected by an enormous majority in all Paris[74] on

the 2nd of August, but even Danton’s own district, now become the Section

of the Théâtre Français, abandoned his policy for the moment. In a poll

of 580, 478 votes were given for Bailly.

In this moment of reverse he might with great ease have thrown himself

upon all the forces that were for the moment irregular. The Federation

of July had brought to Paris a crowd of deputies from the Departments,

and to these provincials the good-humour and the comradeship of this

Champenois had something attractive about it. In a Paris which bewildered

them they found in him something that they could understand. In a meeting

held by a section of them in the Bois de Boulogne it is Danton who is

the leading figure. When the deputies of Marseilles ask for Chenier’s

“Charles IX.,” it is Danton who gets it played for them at the Théâtre

Français in spite of the opposition of the Court; and again it is Danton

who is singled out during an _entr’acte_ for personal attack by the

loyalists, who had come to hiss the play.[75]

The unrepresented still followed him, and he still inspired a vague fear

in the minds of men like Lafayette. Innocent of any violence, he stood

(to those who saw him from a great distance) for insurrection. He was

remembered as the defender of Marat, and Marat in turn annoyed him by

repeated mention and praise in his ridiculous journal. Note also that the

time was one in which the two camps were separating, though slowly, and

the rôle of a demagogue would have been as tempting to a foolish man on

the Radical, as the rôle of true knight was to so many foolish men on the

Conservative side. Each part was easy to play, and each was futile.

Danton refused such a temptation. He, almost alone at that moment (with

the exception, in a much higher sphere, of Mirabeau), was capable of

being taught by defeat. He desired a solid foundation for action. Here

were certain existing things: the club of the Cordeliers, which had for a

while failed him; the Friends of the Constitution, which were a growing

power; the limited suffrage of Paris, which he regretted, but which was

the only legal force he could appeal to; the new municipal constitution,

which he had bitterly opposed, but which was an accomplished fact. Now

it is to all these realities that he turns his mind. He will re-capture

his place in the Section, and make of the quarter of the Odéon a new

République des Cordeliers. He will re-establish his position with

Paris. He will attempt to enter, and perhaps later to control, this new

municipality. It was for such an attitude that St. Just reproached him so

bitterly in the act of accusation of April 1794, while at the moment he

was adopting that attitude he was the mark of the most violent diatribe

from the Conservatives. Nothing defines Danton at this moment so clearly

as the fact that he alone of the popular party knew how to be practical

and to make enemies.

The month of August may be taken as the time when Danton had to be most

careful if he desired to preserve his place and to avoid a fall into

violence and unreason. It was the 2nd of that month (as we have said)

that saw Bailly’s election, the 5th that gave Danton a personal shock,

for on that date he received, for an office which he really coveted and

for which he was a candidate, but 193 votes out of over 3000 present.

From that moment he devotes all his energy to reconstruction. The first

evidence of his new attitude appears with the early days of September.

Already the old meeting of the Cordeliers had been changed into the club,

and already his influence was gaining ground again in the debates and in

the local battalion of the National Guard, when the news of Nancy came to

Paris.

A conflict between the National Guard and the people, an example of

that with which Lafayette continually menaced Paris—the conflict of the

armed bourgeoisie and the artisans, or rather of the militia used as a

professional army against the people—this had happened at last. It was

an occasion for raving. Marat raved loudly, and the royalists gave vent

to not a little complacent raving on their side. In the great question

whether the army was to be democratic or not, whether reaction was to

possess its old disciplined arm, it would seem that reaction had won, and

France had seen a little rehearsal of what in ten months was to produce

the 17th of July.

In such conditions the attitude of the Cordeliers was of real importance.

During all Lafayette’s attempt to centralise the militia of Paris this

battalion had remained independent; its attitude during the days of

October, its defence of Marat in January, had proved this. The crisis

appeared to demand from this revolutionary body a strong protest against

the use of the militia as an army to be aimed against the people. Such a

protest might have been the cause of an outbreak in Paris. Under these

circumstances Danton—by what arguments we cannot tell (for the whole

affair is only known to us by a few lines of Desmoulins)—obtained from

his battalion a carefully-worded pronouncement. “For all the high opinion

we have of the National Guards who took part in the affair of Nancy, we

can express no other sentiment than regret for what has happened.”[76] It

was moderate to the degree of the common-place, but it saved Danton from

the abyss and from the street.

There followed another check in which he showed once more his power of

self-control. The “Notables”—corresponding something to the aldermen of

our new municipal scheme in England—were to be elected for Paris a little

after the elections for the mayor and for the governor of the Commune.

Each Section was to elect three, and Danton had so far regained his

influence at home as to be elected for the Théâtre Français.

Unfortunately the new constitution of Paris had been provided with

one of those checks whose main object it is to interfere with direct

representation. The choice of each Section was submitted to the censure

or the approval of all the others. It is by the judgment which they pass

that we can best judge the suspicion in which he was held by the great

bulk of his equals. A regular campaign was led against him. The affair of

Marat was dragged up, especially the warrant for Danton’s arrest which

the Châtelet had issued six months before. That very favourite device in

electioneering, the doubt as to real candidature, was used. The voter,

not over-well informed in a detail of law (especially at a time when

all law was being re-modelled), was told that the warrant made Danton’s

candidature illegal. They said he was sold to Orleans, because he had

haunted the Palais Royal and because he hated Lafayette. The character

of demagogue—the one thing he desired to avoid—was pinned to his coat,

and alone of all the Notables he was rejected by forty-three Sections

(five only voting for him) in the week between the 9th and the 16th of

September.[77]

In these five were the Postes, Invalides, Luxembourg. It was not the

purely popular quarters that supported Danton, but rather the University

and the lawyers.

He took his defeat as a signal for still greater reserve, letting his

name take perspective, and refusing by any act or phrase to obscure his

reputation with new issues. The tactics succeeded. When, in October,

a public orator was needed, they remembered him, and he presents the

deputation of the 10th of November. The circumstances were as follows:—

The ministry which surrounded the King was frankly reactionary. I do not

mean that it was opposed to the constitution of the moment. Perhaps the

majority (and the less important) of its members would have been loath

to bring back anything approaching the old regime. But there were in the

Revolution not only the facts but the tendencies, and in a period when

every day brought its change, the tendencies were watched with an extreme

care. France may have thought, seeing the federation on the Champ de Mars

and the altar where Talleyrand had said mass, that the Revolution was at

an end and the new state of affairs established in peace, but those in

the capital knew better; and the men immediately surrounding the King,

who saw the necessary consequences of his signing the civic constitution,

and the growing breach between himself and the assembly—these men were on

the King’s side. The affair at Nancy, which had aroused so many passions,

was the thing which finally roused Parisian opinion; and at the very

moment when the King is secretly planning the flight to Montmédy—that

flight which six months later failed—Paris is for the first time claiming

to govern the councils of the kingdom.

It was the Sections that began the movement, those Sections whose action

was to have been so restricted, and which, upon the contrary, were

becoming the permanent organs of expression in the capital.

The Section Mauconseil on the 22nd of October sent in a petition for

the dismissal of the cabinet and appealed to the National Assembly. The

Section of the National Library followed suit three days later, and

sent its petition not only to the Assembly but to the King. It must

be remembered that the legend of a good king deceived by his advisers

held at the time. Indeed, it survived the flight to Varennes; it partly

survived the 10th of August, and only the research of recent times has

proved clearly the continual intrigue of which the King was the head.

On the 27th Mauconseil came forward again with a petition to the

mayor, Bailly, to call the general council of the Commune and consider

the complaints. Fourteen other Sections backed this petition. Bailly

hesitated, and while he temporised, all the forty-eight Sections

named commissioners and sent them to an informal gathering at the

Archbishopric.[78]

Danton was a member of this big committee and was made secretary. He drew

up an address; the mayor was twice summoned to call the general council

of the Commune. Hesitating and afraid, Bailly finally did so, and after

a violent debate the resolution passed. Bailly was sent by the town to

“present the Commune at the bar of the Assembly and demand the recall” of

the Ministers of Justice, War, and the Interior—De Cicé, La Tour du Pin,

and St. Priest.

Danton was taken out of the informal body to which he had acted as

secretary, and asked to be the orator of the legal Commune. There

followed on the 10th of November a very curious scene.

Bailly pitifully apologising with his eyes brought in the representative

body of Paris. It was present for the first time in the National

Parliament, and before three years were over Paris was to be the mistress

of the Parliament. At present they were out of place; their demand

frightened them. It needed Danton’s voice to reassure them and to bring

the opposing forces to a battle.

His voice, big, rough, and deep, perhaps with a slight provincial accent,

helped to strengthen the false idea that the gentlemen of the Parliament

had formed. This Danton, of whom they heard so much, had appeared

suddenly out of his right place—for he had no official position—and the

Right was furious.

Yet Danton’s harangue was moderate and sensible. There is, indeed,

one passage on the position of Paris in France which is interesting

because it is original, but the bulk of the speech is a string of plain

arguments. This passage is as follows:—

“That Commune, composed of citizens who belong in a fashion to the

eighty-three Departments—(_The Right_, No! no!)—jealously desiring to

fulfil in the name of all good citizens the duties of a sentinel to the

constitution, is in haste to express a demand which is dear to all the

enemies of tyranny—a demand which would be heard from all the Sections

of the Empire, could they be united with the same promptitude as the

Sections of Paris.”[79]

For the rest, he is continually insisting upon the right of the

Parliament to govern—the right, above all, of a representative body to

dismiss a ministry. He had in this, as in certain other matters, a very

English point of view, and certainly the arguments he used were able. But

he was interrupted continually, and we get, even in the dry account of

the _Moniteur_, a good picture of what the scene must have been like—

“A dismissal which the Assembly has the right to demand.”

The Abbé Maury: “Who ever said that?” [Murmurs and discussion followed.

The Abbé was called to order, when....]

M. Cazales remarked: “It is our duty to listen, even if they talk

nonsense.”

Danton began again with: “The Commune of Paris is better able to judge

the conduct of ministers than....”

The Abbé Maury: “Why?” [He is again called to order.]

And so it went on. But in a duel of this kind lungs are the weapons, and

Danton had the best lungs in the hall. He had also perhaps the soundest

brain of any; but the Abbé Maury and his friends had chosen more rapid

methods than those of arguments. The short address ended (it did not take

a quarter of an hour to read), and the deputation left the Assembly. This

last debated and refused the decree; yet the Commune had succeeded, for

in a few days the Archbishop of Bordeaux left the Ministry of Justice,

and La Tour du Pin, “who thought that parchment alone made nobility” (a

phrase of Danton’s which had upset the Right), left the Ministry of War.

The deputation had petitioned on Wednesday, the 10th of November. Four

days later he was elected head of the militia battalion in which he had

served for a year.[80] There is some doubt as to whether he remained

long at this post. Some antagonists talk vaguely of his “leading his

battalion” in ’92, but never as eye-witnesses. On the other hand, there

is a letter in existence talking of Danton’s resignation; but it is

unsigned and undated. Only some one has written in pencil, “Gouvion, 22nd

November.”[81]

At any rate, the interest of the little incident lies in the fact that it

meant a meeting between Danton and Lafayette, and, as Freron remarks in

his journal, “Cela serait curieux.”[82] Perhaps they did not meet.

The campaign continually directed against Danton was as active in

this matter as in all others. It gives one, for instance, an insight

into the management and discipline of the guards to learn that

“Coutra, a corporal, went about asking for signatures against Danton’s

nomination.”[83] He had just risen above the successes of his enemies.

November had put him on a sure footing again, and in January he reached

the place he had had so long in view, the administration of Paris.

It will be remembered that the voting was by two degrees. The electors

nominated an “electoral college,” who elected the Commune and its

officers. Already in October Danton had been put into the electoral

college by twenty-six members chosen by his Section, but not without

violent opposition. Finally, after eight ballots, on the 31st of

January 1791, he became a member of the administration of the town—the

twenty-second on a list of thirty-six elected. He failed, however, in his

attempt to be chosen “Procureur,” and through all the year 1791 he keeps

his place in the administration of Paris merely as a stepping-stone. He

does not speak much in the Council. He used his partial success only for

the purpose of attaining a definite position from which he could exercise

some measure of executive control; this position he finally attains (as

we shall see) in the following December, and it is from it that he is

able to direct the movement of 1792.

The year 1791 does not form a unit in the story of the Revolution. It is

cut sharply in two by the flight of the King in June. Before that event

things went with a certain quietude. The tendency to reaction and the

tendency to extreme democracy are to be discovered, but there can be no

doubt that a kind of lassitude has taken the public mind. After all, the

benefits of the Revolution are there. The two years of discussion, the

useless acrimony of the preceding autumn, began to weary the voters—there

is a sentiment of joviality abroad.

After the flight of the King all is changed. To a period of development

there succeeds a period of violent advance, and of retreat yet more

violent; there appears in France the first mention of the word republic,

and all the characters that hung round Lafayette come definitely into

conflict with the mass of the people. The action of the troops on the

Champ de Mars opens the first of those impassable gulfs between the

parties, and from that moment onward there arise the hatreds that are

only satisfied by the death of political opponents.

In that first period, then, which the death of Mirabeau was to disturb,

the 18th of April to endanger, and the flight of the King to close,

Danton’s rôle, like that of all the democrats, is effaced. Why should it

not be? The violent discussions that followed the affair of Nancy led,

as it were, to a double satisfaction: the loyal party saw that after all

the Radicals were not destroying the State; the Radicals, on the other

hand, had learnt that the loyalists could do nothing distinctly injurious

to the nation without being discovered. At least, they thought they had

learnt this truth. They did not know how for months Mirabeau had been in

the pay of the Court, and how the executive power had concerned itself

with the King rather than with the nation.

A sign of this appeasement in the violence of the time (a movement,

by the way, which was exactly what Danton desired) is his letter to

La Rochefoucald, the president of the Department, when the successful

election, which I have described above, was known. This letter, one of

the very few which Danton has left, is a singularly able composition. He

alludes to the mistrust which had been felt when his name was mentioned;

he does not deny the insurrectionary character of the quarter of Paris

which he inspired. But he replies: “I will let my actions, now that I

hold public office, prove my attitude, and if I am in a position of

responsibility, it will have a special value in showing that I was right

to continually claim the public control of administrative functions.”

The whole of the long letter[84] is very well put; it is Danton himself

that speaks, and it is hard to doubt that at this moment he also was one

of those who thought they were touching the end of the reform, that goal

which always fled from the men who most sincerely sought it.

He did not, however, come often to the Council—to less than a quarter of

its sittings, at the most; moreover, the men who composed it still looked

upon him with suspicion; and when, on the 4th of May, the committees were

drawn up, his name was omitted. He asked on the next day to be inscribed

on the committee that contained Sieyès, and his request was granted.

The activity of Danton during these few months was not even shown at

the Cordeliers; though that club occasionally heard him, it was at the

Jacobins that he principally spoke.

This famous club, on which the root of the Revolution so largely depends,

was at this period by no means the extreme and Robespierrian thing

with which we usually associate the name. It hardly even called itself

“the Jacobins” yet, but clung rather to its original name of “Friends

of the Constitution.” Its origin dated from the little gathering of

Breton deputies who were in the habit, while the Assembly was still at

Versailles, of meeting together to discuss a common plan of action. When

the Assembly came to Paris, this society, in which by that time a very

large number of deputies had enrolled themselves, took up their place in

the hall of the Dominicans or “Jacobins,” just off the Rue St. Honoré.

(Its site is just to the east of the square of Vendôme to-day.) It was a

union of all those who desired reform, and in the first part of the year

1790 it had been remarkable for giving a common ground where the moderate

and extremist, all who desired reform, could meet. The Duc de Broglie

figures among its presidents. It was the Royalists, the extreme Court

party, that dubbed these “Friends of the Constitution” “Jacobins,” and

it was not till somewhat later that they themselves adopted and gloried

in the nickname. It was composed not only of deputies, but of all the

best-born and best-bred of the Parisian reformers, drawn almost entirely

from the noble or professional classes, and holding dignified sessions,

to which the public were not admitted.

Almost at the same moment, namely, towards the autumn and winter of

1790, two features appeared in it. First, the Moderates begin to leave

it, and the schism which finally produced the “Feuillants” is formed;

secondly, there come in from all over France demands from the local

popular societies to be affiliated to the great club in Paris. These

demands were granted. There arises a kind of “Jacobin order,” which

penetrates even to the little country towns, everywhere preaches the

same doctrine, everywhere makes it its business to keep a watch against

reaction. These local clubs depended with a kind of superstition upon

the decrees of what, without too violent a metaphor, we may call the

“Mother House” in Paris; it was this organisation that aroused the apathy

of provincial France and trained the new voters in political discussion,

and it was this also that was later captured by Robespierre, who, like a

kind of high priest, directed a disciplined body wherever the affiliated

societies existed.

Danton first joined the society at the very moment when this double

change was in progress, in September 1790. His energies, which were

employed in the club to arrange the difficulty with the Moderates (if

that were possible), were also used (to quote a well-known phrase)

in “letting France hear Paris.” The Cordeliers had been essentially

Parisian; steeped in that feeling, Danton spoke from the Rue St. Honoré

to the whole nation.

It is with the end of March that he begins to be heard, in a speech

attacking Collot d’Herbois; for that unpleasant fellow was then a

Moderate. It is apropos of that speech that the “Sabbots Jacobites” give

us the satirical rhyme on Danton, which recalls his face when he spoke,

looking all the uglier for the energy which he put into his words:—

“Monsieur Danton,

Quittez cet air farouche,

Monsieur Danton,

On vous prendrez pour un démon.”[85]

On the 3rd of April it was known in Paris that Mirabeau was dead. He

had been killed with the overwork of attempting to save the King from

himself. A masterly intrigue, a double dealing which was hidden for a

generation, had exhausted him, and in the terrible strain of balancing

such opposite interests as those of France, which he adored, and Louis,

whom he served, his two years of struggle suddenly fell upon him and

crushed him. He smiled at the sun and called it God’s cousin, boasted

like a genius, gave a despairing phrase to the monarchy, demanded sleep,

and died.

Danton had always, from a long way off, understood his brother in silk

and with the sword. On this day he passionately deplored the loss. Like

all Paris, the Jacobins forgot Mirabeau’s treason, and remembered his

services when the news of his sudden death fell upon them. From their

tribune Danton spoke in terms in which he almost alone foretold the

coming reaction, and he was right. The King, hardly restrained from

folly by the compromise of the great statesman, plunged into it when his

support was withdrawn. He had been half Mirabeau’s man, now he was all

Antoinette’s.

It was the fatal question of religion that precipitated the crisis. Louis

could not honestly receive the Easter communion from a constitutional

priest. On the other hand, he might have received it quietly in his

household. He chose to make it a public ceremony, and to go in state

to St. Cloud for his Easter duties. It was upon April 18th, a day or

two more than a fortnight after Mirabeau’s death, that he would have

set out. As one might have expected, the streets filled at once. The

many battalions of the National Guard who were on the democratic side

helped the people to stop the carriage; in their eyes, as in that of the

populace, the King’s journey to St. Cloud was only part of the scheme to

leave Paris to raise an army against the Assembly.[86]

On the other hand, those of the National Guard who obeyed Lafayette[87]

could not, by that very fact, move until Lafayette ordered them. Thus the

carriage was held for hours, until at last, in despair, the King went

back to the Tuilleries.

Meanwhile, what had occurred at the Hotel de Ville? The testimony is

contradictory and the whole story confused, but the truth seems to

have been something of this kind. Lafayette certainly called on the

administration of the Department and asked for martial law. Bailly as

certainly was willing to grant it. Danton was called from his rank and

came to oppose it; but did he end the matter by his speech? Camille

Desmoulins[88] says so, and draws a fine picture of Danton carrying

the administration with him, as he carried the club or the street. But

Desmoulins is often inaccurate, and here his account is improbable.

Danton’s own note of the circumstance (which he thought worthy of being

pinned to his family papers) runs: “I was present at the Department when

MM. the commandant and the mayor demanded martial law.” Nothing more.

Desmoulins makes another mistake when he attributes to Danton the letter

which was written to the King, and which was sent on the night of the

18th; it reproached him for his action, sharply criticised his rejection

of constitutional priests. It was not Danton, it was Talleyrand (a member

also of the Department) who wrote this letter.

It is probable that Danton and Talleyrand knew each other. Talleyrand was

a good judge of men, and would have many strings to his bow—we know that

he depended upon Danton’s kindness at a critical moment in 1792—but the

style of the letter is not Danton’s, and the document as we find it in

Schmidt is definitely ascribed to Talleyrand.

This is all we can gather as to his place in the popular uprising to

prevent the King’s leaving Paris. A placard of some violence issued from

the Cordeliers, saying that he had “forbidden Lafayette to fire on the

people;” but Danton disowned it in a meeting of the Department.

This much alone is certain, that the 18th of April had finally put

Danton and Lafayette face to face, and that in the common knowledge of

Paris they would be the heads of opposing forces in the next crisis. But

their rôles turned out to be the very opposite of what men would have

predicted. It was Lafayette who shot and blustered, and had his brief

moment of power; it was Danton who made a flank movement and achieved a

final victory. For the next crisis was the flight of the King.

It would be irrelevant to give the story of this flight in the life of

Danton. Our business is to understand Danton by following the exact

course of his actions during June and July, and by describing exactly the

nature of the movement in which his attitude took the form which we are

investigating.

Two things command the attention when we study the France of 1791. France

was monarchic and France was afraid. History knows what was to follow;

the men of the time did not. There lay in their minds the centuries of

history that had been; their future was to them out of conception, and

as unreal as our future is to us. You may notice from the very first

moment of the true Revolution a passion for the King. For most he is

a father, but for all a necessary man. They took him back to Paris;

they forced him to declarations of loyalty, and then, with the folly of

desire, accepted as real an emotion which they had actually dictated.

Such was the movement of the 4th of February 1790; such the sentiment

of the Federation in July of that year. And the people understood his

reluctance in taking communion from a nonjuring priest, however much the

upper class might be astonished. What no one understood was that only

Mirabeau stood between the Crown and its vilest temptations; only his

balance of genius, his great and admirable fault of compromise, prevented

Louis from yielding to his least kingly part, and while he lived the

king of the French preferred the nation to his own person. But Mirabeau

was dead. They did well to mourn him, those who had smelt out his treason

and guessed the weakness of the artist in him; they did well to forgive

him; his head misunderstood France, but his broad French shoulders had

supported her. The 18th of April was a direct consequence of his death;

the 21st of June was a fall through a broken bridge: Louis had yielded to

himself.

Well, France was also afraid. This democracy (as it had come to be),

an experiment based upon a vision, knew how perilous was the path

between the old and the new ideals. She feared the divine sunstroke that

threatens the road to Damascus. In that passage, which was bounded on

either side by an abyss, her feet went slowly, one before the other, and

she looked backward continually. In the twisting tides at night her one

anchor to the old time was the monarchy. Thus when Louis fled the feeling

was of a prop broken. France only cried out for one thing—“Bring the King

back.” Tie up the beam—a makeshift—anything rather than a new foundation.

Here is the attitude of Danton in this crisis. France is not republican;

his friends in Paris are. He inclines to France. It was Danton more than

any other one man who finally prepared the Republic, yet the Republic was

never with him an idea. The consequences of the Republic were his goal;

as for the systems, systems were not part of his mind. At the close of

this chapter we shall see him overthrowing the Crown; he did it because

he thought it the one act that could save France; but the Crown as an

idea he never hated: he lived in existing things.

These were the reasons that made him hesitate at this date. A man

understanding Europe, he saw that the governments were not ready to move;

a man understanding his own country, he saw that it would have the King

in his place again; a man, on the other hand, who had met and appreciated

the idealists, he saw that the Republic already existed in the mind; and

a man who understood the character of his fellows better than did any

contemporary, he saw that the men who were bound to lead were inclined to

a declaration against the King. He suffered more than his action should

have warranted, and he goes through a sharp few days of danger on account

of association and of friends in spite of all his caution.

When Louis was known to have fled, and when Paris, vigilant beyond the

provinces, and deceived by the declaration of April, had undergone its

first wave of passion, the word Republic began to be spoken out loud. The

theorists found themselves for once in accordance with public humour; and

against the keenness, if not the numbers, of those who petitioned for

the deposition of the King on his return, there stood two barriers—the

Assembly and the moderate fortunes of the capital. Danton lived with the

former, thought with the latter, and was all but silent.

The bust of Louis XIV. before the Hotel de Ville was broken; men climbed

on ladders to chisel off the lilies from the palaces, and there soon

appears a new portent: some one cries out, “Only a Republic can defend

itself at the last.”

To this somewhat confused cry for a Republic came the very sharp

announcement from no less a person than Condorcet. Condorcet, the

moderate and illumined, was also half a visionary, and there had always

floated in his mind the system of contract by which England had excused

the movement of 1688, but which France took seriously. England had for

him the attraction which it had for all the professionals of that date—an

attraction which lasted till the disasters of 1870, and which you may

yet discover here and there among those who are the heirs of Lamartine.

England had given them Locke, and Condorcet’s reasoning on the King’s

flight[89] reads like a passage from the Bill of Rights. Yet he was a

good and sincere man, and died through simplicity of heart.

On the 4th of July, ten days or more after the King had been brought back

to Paris,[90] it was Condorcet who made the demand for the Republic; in a

speech at Fauchet’s club he asked for a National Convention to settle the

whole matter. He wrote so in the papers[91] all through July, and even

after the affair of the Champ de Mars he continued his agitation.

Now how do we know Danton’s attitude? The Cordeliers presented a petition

of June 21st itself and demanded the Republic. It is largely from this

document that the error has arisen. But Danton was not then with the

Cordeliers; his name does not appear. It is at the Jacobins that he is

heard, and the Jacobins took up a distinctly monarchical position. They

all rose in a body on the 22nd and passed a unanimous vote in favour of

the constitution and the King.[92] Danton was present when this vote was

passed, and he had just heard the hissing of the Cordeliers’ petition;

he was silent. Thomas Payne is demanding the Republic in the _Moniteur_;

Sieyès replies for the monarchy;[93], even Robespierre tardily speaks

in favour of ideas and against change of etiquette; Marat shouts for a

dictator;[94] Danton, almost alone, refuses to be certain. On June 23rd

he spoke at the Jacobins in favour of a council to be elected by the

Departments immediately, but he proposed nothing as to its actions; it

was merely his permanent idea of a central, strong power.

Lafayette amused himself by arresting people who repeated this in the

street, but Lafayette hated Danton blindly. Nothing republican can be

made of a speech which his enemies said was “a loophole for Orleans.”

Danton attacked Lafayette: he saw persons more clearly than ideas, and

Lafayette was Danton’s nightmare. He was that being which of all on earth

Danton thought most dangerous, the epitome of all the faults which he

attacked to the day of his death; in Louis, in Robespierre, “The weak man

in power.” He drove him out of the Jacobins on the 21st, and later in the

day gave the cry against his enemy in the street, which the fears of the

Assembly so much exaggerated.

For the events of the twenty-four hours had all added to his natural

opposition to Lafayette, and as we relate them from Danton’s standpoint,

we shall see this much of truth in the idea that he led the movement,

namely, that the three days of the King’s flight and recapture, while

they put Lafayette into a position of great power, made also Danton his

antagonist, the leader of the protest against the general’s methods. It

is the more worthy of remark that in such conditions the word “Republic”

never crossed his lips.

At eleven o’clock at night on the Monday of the King’s flight, Danton and

Desmoulins were coming home alone from the Jacobins. Each remarked to the

other the emptiness of the streets and the lack of patrols, and at that

moment, when the evasion was little suspected, each was in a vague doubt

that Lafayette had some reason for concentrating the National Guard.[95]

Desmoulins will even have it that he saw him enter the palace, as the two

friends passed the Tuilleries.

The next morning at the Cordeliers Danton cried out against Lafayette

for a moment, and then at the Jacobins he made the speech that has been

mentioned above. Continually he attacks the man who was preparing a

counter-revolution, but I do not believe he would have attached the least

importance at that moment to a change in the etiquette of government.

Thus, as the Department was sent for by the Assembly in the afternoon,

Danton came later than his colleagues, provided himself with a guard, and

as he crossed the Tuilleries gardens he harangued the people, but against

Lafayette, not against the King.

Now, to make sure of this feature, the duel between Lafayette and Danton,

and to see that it is the principal thing at the time, turn once more to

the scene at the Jacobins, and compare it with Lafayette’s Memoirs, and

you will find that Danton was the terror of the saviour of two worlds,

and that it was upon Lafayette that Danton had massed his artillery.

Here is Danton at the Jacobins, sitting by Desmoulin’s side; he goes to

the tribune and speaks upon the disgrace and danger that the Moderates

have brought about. When Lafayette entered during the speech, he turned

upon him suddenly, and launched one of those direct phrases which

made him later the leader of the Convention: “I am going to talk as

though I were at the bar of God’s justice, and I will say before you,

M. Lafayette, what I would say in the presence of Him who reads all

hearts.... How was it that you, who pretend to know nothing of me, tried

to corrupt me to your views of treason?... How was it that you arrested

those who in last February demanded the destruction of Vincennes? You are

present; try to give a clear reason.... How was it that the very same men

were on guard when the King tried to go to St. Cloud on the 18th of April

were on guard last night when the King fled?... I will not mention the

6000 men[96] whom you have picked as a garrison for the King; only answer

clearly these three accusations. For in their light you, who answered

with your head that the King should not fly, are either a traitor or a

fool. For either you have permitted him to fly, or else you undertook a

responsibility which you could not fulfil: in the best case, you are not

capable of commanding the guard.... I will leave the tribune, for I have

said enough.”[97]

This is clear enough in all conscience to show what was Danton’s

main pre-occupation in the days of June 1791. And if, upon the other

hand, you will turn to Lafayette’s Memoirs, the third volume, the

83rd and following pages, you will find that Danton was Lafayette’s

pre-occupation, and that he makes this moment the occasion to deliver

the most definite and (luckily) the most demonstrably false of his many

accusations of venality. He tells us that he could not reply because it

would have “cost Montmorin his life;” that Montmorin “had the receipt

for the 100,000 francs;” that Danton had been “reimbursed to the extent

of 100,000 francs for a place worth 10,000,” and so forth. We know now

exactly the amount of compensation paid to him and his colleagues at the

court of appeal,[98] and we know that Lafayette, writing a generation

later, animated by a bitter hatred, and remembering that somebody had

paid Danton something, and with his head full of vague rumours of

bribing, has fallen into one of those unpardonable errors common to vain

and vacillating men. But at this juncture the main point that should be

seized is that Danton was taking the opportunity of the King’s evasion

to attack Lafayette with all his might, and that a generation later the

old man chiefly remembered Danton as leading the popular anger which the

commander of the guard thought himself bound to repress. It is this that

will explain why Danton, who so carefully avoided giving the word for the

Republican “false start,” was yet marked out, fled, and returned to lead

the opposition.

The Cordeliers followed Danton’s lead. They got up a petition,[99] signed

by 30,000 in Paris, demanding that the affair should be laid before

the country, but not demanding the abolition of the monarchy. Memdar,

their president, declared himself a monarchist. But the petition, though

read at the Assembly, was not adopted, and, on the 9th of July, the

Cordeliers presented another. Charles de Lameth (who was president that

fortnight) refused to read it. The Assembly, in other words, was dumb;

it was determined (like its successor a year later) to do nothing—an

attitude which (for all it knew) might be very wise, and those who

were following Danton determined upon a definite policy. On Friday the

15th, at the Jacobins, it was determined to draw up a petition which

begged that the Assembly should _first_ recognise Louis as having

abdicated by his flight, unless the nation voted his reinstatement, and

_secondly_ (in case the nation did not do so), take measures to have him

constitutionally replaced. Now the constitution was monarchist.

The petition was to be taken to be read at the Champ de Mars on the

altar, and there to obtain signatures. It was drawn up by Danton,

Sergent, Lanthanas, Ducanel, and Brissot, who wrote it out and worded

most of it. The events that follow must be noted with some care, because

on their exact sequence depends our judgment of Lafayette’s action and of

Danton’s politics.

On Saturday[100] the 16th, about mid-day, a deputation of four from the

Jacobins came to the Champ de Mars. The petition was read by a little

light-haired Englishman on one side, and by a red-haired Frenchman in

a red coat on the other; picturesque but unimportant details. Danton

leapt on to the corner of the altar, and read it again to the thick

of the crowd. The signatures were written in great numbers, and when

the completed document was about to start for the Assembly, when the

deputation that was to take it was already formed, it was suddenly spread

abroad that the Assembly had passed a vote exonerating Louis.

The Jacobins were appealed to, and replied that under the conditions the

petition which they had drawn up could not be presented. The Cordeliers,

however, lost their tempers, and Robert determined to draw up a new

petition. Now in this second action Danton took no part. It was this new

petition that (signed by Robert, Peyre, Vachard, and Demoy) was drawn up

hastily in the Champ de Mars on Sunday the 17th, to this that the 6000

signatures were attached, and this which demanded a “Convention to judge

the King.” There followed the proclamation of martial law, the appearance

of Lafayette and Bailly in the Champ de Mars with the red flag, the

conflict between the National Guard and the crowd, and all that is called

the “Massacre of the Champ de Mars.”

That petition was not signed by Danton.[101] He was not even

present,[102] as we know from his speech on his election to be

“Substitut-Procureur,” and especially from the fact that in the fortnight

of terror, when the red flag stood over the Hotel de Ville, when the

democrats were arrested or in hiding, when the door of the Cordeliers

was shut and nailed, and when the Radical newspapers were suppressed, no

warrant of arrest could be issued, because there existed nothing definite

against him. Lafayette was determined, however, to act in a military

fashion, and on the 4th of August the arrest of Danton was ordered, on

some other plea which he alludes to in his speech of the next January,

but the exact terms of which have not come down to us.

He had left Paris at once when he saw that Lafayette had practically

absolute power for the moment. He first went to his father-in-law’s,

Charpentier, at Rosny-sur-Bois, and then escaped to Arcis. Before the

warrant was actually made out, Lafayette had sent a man to watch him

at Arcis. He was “giving a dinner. It would need a troop of cavalry to

arrest him. Everybody was on his side.”[103] Marseilles and Bar spoke up

for him. But the attack only grew stronger. On the 31st of July he moved

again to Troyes, to the house of Millaud, of his father’s profession,

and a friend, because he feared a new arrival from Paris who seemed a

spy.[104] He was there when the warrant was sent down to the “procureur”

for the arrest; the official in question was Beugnot, and Beugnot told

Danton jocularly that he would not arrest him. He did not think this

a sufficient guarantee, and as his stepfather, Recordain, was off to

England to buy some machinery for a cotton-mill that he thought of

starting, Danton went to England with him, and remained in this country

for a month, staying in the house of his stepfather’s sons, who were

established in London. It was in the last days of July or the first days

in August[105] that he arrived, and he did not return to Paris until the

appointment of his friend Garran de Coulon as President of the Court of

Appeal. He appears again at the Jacobins on the 12th of September; some

say he was in Paris on the 10th.[106]

It would be of the utmost interest to know how he passed those thirty or

forty days. Unfortunately there is no direct evidence as to whom he met

or what negotiations he entered into. As to his English acquaintances,

his letters from Priestley and Christie, the relations he had with

Talleyrand, and their common diplomacy for the English alliance—all

these properly belong to Danton in power, the minister directing France

after August 1792, and it is in that place that they will be dealt with.

Of historical events in his voyage we have none, and there is no more

regrettable gap in the very disconnected series of ascertained facts

concerning him.

On his return, he discovered that the Section of the Théâtre Français had

named him a member of the electoral college which sat at the Archbishop’s

palace. Many members of this Assembly had been arrested, or had fled

during Lafayette’s violent efforts of reaction in August and September.

The new Parliament which had just met did not decree an amnesty (as it

was asked to do on the 5th of September), but it was of course far more

democratic than the old Assembly, and it was understood to be tacitly in

favour of the return of those whom Lafayette had driven out. Following

Danton’s example, they slowly came back; but a curious incident shows how

much of the danger remained.

On the 13th of September the Parliament, at the desire of the King,

voted the amnesty. While it was actually voting, a constable called

Damien got into the gallery of the hall in which Danton and the electors

were debating, and sent a note to the president asking him to allow the

arrest. The president and the electoral college (who did not like Danton,

by the way, and who would not give him more than forty votes when it came

to electing members for Paris) yet ordered the arrest by Damien, and it

was only when they learnt of the amnesty that, on Danton’s own motion, he

was released.

It has just been said that Danton failed to be elected: let us point out

the conditions under which the Legislative met, that short Parliament

of one year which made the war, and saw to its dismay the end of the

monarchy.

The Legislative was not elected in one of those moments of decision which

were the formative points of the Revolution. It came upon a very curious

juncture, and showed in all its first acts a marked indecision.

The members were chosen under the action of a peculiar combination, or

rather confusion of emotions. The King had fled, had been recaptured.

France, of many possible evils, had chosen what she believed to be the

least when she reinstated him. “The New Pact” was accepted even by those

who had spoken of the Republic in July. Condorcet, who had led the civic

theorists towards the Republic, leads them also now in this movement of

reconciliation. Again, these were the first elections held since the

middle class and the peasantry had been given the suffrage over the heads

of the artisans: it was the most sober part of France that dictated the

policy of the moment. The divisions that the King’s flight had laid

bare, the sharp reaction and terror of the Champ de Mars—all these were

forgotten.

Thus the Parliament will not have Garran-Coulon for its first president,

and yet on the next day passes the extreme democratic etiquette as to

the reception of the King should he visit the Assembly. Next day it

repeals this, and when the King does visit the Assembly, he is met by an

outburst of loyalty and affection.

As to parties, the power lay, as it always does in a French Assembly,

with the centre—some three hundred men, unimportant, of no fixed idea,

unless indeed it were to keep the Legislative to the work for which it

had been elected, that is, to keep it moving moderately on the lines laid

down for it by the constitution of 1791.

The right, well organised, loyal and brave, was Feuillant; that is, it

was monarchic and constitutional, but more monarchic than constitutional.

It was the support of Lafayette, and on the whole the centre would vote

with it on any important occasion.

But there sat on the left a group less compact, full of personal

ambitions and personal creeds, containing almost all the orators whose

names were to make famous the following year. It was but a group of 130

men, even if we include all those who signed the register of the Jacobins

when the Assembly met; yet it was destined, ill-disciplined as it was,

part wild and part untrue, to lead all France. Why? Because the King was

to make impossible the action of the Moderates, because his intrigue made

Frenchmen choose between him and France, and in the inevitable war the

men who were determined to realise the Revolution could not but be made

the leaders.

As has been said above, Danton was not elected. The electoral college,

of which he was a member, chose Moderates for the most part, such as

Pastoret and De Quincy, and the narrow suffrage represented the true

drift of Parisian feeling only in the case of a few—De Séchelles,

Brissot, Condorcet, and a handful of others. But though Danton did not

sit in the Legislative he was free for action in two other directions,

which (as it turned out) were the commanding positions in the great

changes that came with the war. He was free to attain an administrative

position in the municipality of Paris, and he was free to use his power

of oratory at the Jacobins.

As to the first, it came with his moderate but important success in the

municipal elections at the close of the year. Bailly, frightened out of

place, half-regretting his action of the Champ de Mars, had resigned, and

Pétion, on November 16th, was elected in his place. Only ten thousand

voted, and he obtained 6700 votes. On the same day the Procureur of the

new Commune was to be elected. A Procureur under the new system was a

position of the greatest importance. He was, so to speak, the advocate of

the town, its tribune in the governing body, and with his two substitutes

(who aided and occasionally replaced him) was meant to form a kind

of small committee whose business was to watch the interests and to

define the attitude of the electorate whenever those interests were in

jeopardy or that attitude was opposed to the policy of the elected body.

These three positions were dangerous, but would lead to popularity, and

perhaps to power, if they were directed by a certain kind of ability. It

was precisely such a power, the quality of a tribune, that Danton knew

himself to possess.

His candidature for the principal position was cordially supported by the

Cordeliers, but the Jacobins were divided, and they hesitated. Manuel was

elected, and Danton obtained only the third place. This vote, however,

was not decisive, and there was a second ballot on December the 2nd. In

this Manuel was definitely elected.

Cahier de Gerville (the second substitute) was made Minister of the

Interior, and Danton, on December 6th,[107] was elected to his place by

a majority of 500 over Collot d’Herbois. It was from this position that

he prepared the 10th of August, and it was still as substitute that he

remained side by side with the insurrectionary commune, and lending it

something of legal sanction when the King was overthrown.

Let me, before leaving this point, define exactly the position in which

his new dignity placed him. Three men were charged with the advocacy

of public opinion, the Procureur and his two substitutes. Manuel, who

was elected to the principal position, was energetic, kindly, and

conscientious, but a man of no genius; he was good to Madame De Staël

in the days of September, as is apparent from her rather contemptuous

description of how she appealed to him for safety; he did his very best

(with no power in his hands) to stop the massacres at that same time. He

was fond of work, and a little pompous in his idea of office; he was,

therefore, a man who would only leave his substitutes the less important

work to do, and, from close by, would have been the dominating member

of the three. On the other hand, his lack of decision and of initiative

effaced him in moments of danger or of new departures, and it is thus his

second substitute who seems to lead when seen from a distance, from the

point of view of the people, who only look round when there is a noise.

The first substitute was Desmousseaux. He had not resigned, and had

therefore not been re-elected. Forming part of the old Commune, and in

office since the winter of 1790, he was a Moderate by preference and long

tradition.

As for Danton himself, standing third in the group, it was for him a

position of honour and of dignity. That part of him which was so capable

of high office and so desirous of an opportunity to act was well served

by the election. It seemed to put a term to the misconceptions which his

person, his faults, and the course of the Revolution had created. But

the great stream of events moved him at their will. This office wherein

he desired to appear settled at last, to show himself an administrator

rather than a leader of unreasoning men, was precisely suited in case

of danger to call out those other qualities which had made him despised

by many whom he himself respected, and had aroused against him hatred—a

passion which he himself had never allowed to arise from anger.

If the spirit of 1791 had been kept, and if after so many false promises

the Revolution had been really accomplished, then the official, or,

if you will, the statesman, would have appeared in him. I can see him

in the difficulties which even a settled kingdom would have had to

meet, convincing his contemporaries as he has convinced posterity. He

was the man to impress on others the true attitude of Europe—the only

diplomat among the patriots. His disadvantages were of the kind that

are forgotten in the constant proof of ability; and his learning, which

was exactly of the kind to be used in the new regime (a knowledge of

languages, of law, of surrounding nations, a combination of detail and of

comprehension)—this learning would have made necessary a man so popular

with the people to be ruled, and, in the matter of the heart, so honestly

devoted to his country. Had France, I say, by some miracle been spared

her Passion, and had she been permitted to be happier and to do less for

the world, then as the new regime settled into the lower reaches of quiet

and content, I believe Danton would have remained for us a name, perhaps

less great, but certainly among the first. England has been permitted.

She has been given good fortune, and no fate has asked her to save

civilisation with her blood, and therefore in England we are accustomed

to such careers; men whose origin, whose exterior, and whose faults might

have exiled them, have yet been seen to rise from the municipal to the

imperial office, because they were possessed of supreme abilities, and

because they devoted those abilities to the service of England. They have

died in honour.

I will not discuss what it was that made the war. There are no causes.

Burke raved like a madman, but then so did Marat. The King was alienated

by the clerical laws, but nothing is an excuse for treason. Pilnitz was

an affront and even a menace, but it was not a declaration of war. There

were peoples behind the kings, as Mayence tragically proved; and if

France fought intolerable evils, she also seemed the iconoclast when she

put out the altar-lamp, which she is lighting again with her own hand.

There are no causes. Only, if you will look and see how Europe has lived,

and how our great things have been done, you will find nothing but armies

upon armies marching past, and our history is an epic whose beginning is

lost, whose books are Roncesvalles and Cortenuova and Waterloo, and whose

end is never reached. The war came, and with it a definite necessity to

choose between France and the Crown. In that crisis Danton is thrown back

upon insurrection. He, who desired men to forget the days of October,

was compelled to the 10th of August because he was aroused. Even the

massacres were attached to his name, and there still trails after him an

easy flow of accusation, only a little less sordid or less terrible.

To follow his action during the first months of 1772, to hear his

speeches on the war, and to note his policy, we must leave him at his

post in the Commune (where we shall find him again when Paris rises in

the summer), and see how he stands for the Mountain at the Jacobins.

This club was now definitely the organ of the left. It was after Danton

had been elected, but before he was definitely installed in office,[108]

on the 14th of December, a week after the former and five weeks before

the latter event, that the debate on the war was begun at the Jacobins,—a

debate of the first importance, because it opened the breach between the

Girondins and the Mountain, between the orators who insisted on going

to meet Europe, and even on a war of propaganda, and the reformers who

wished Europe to take the first step, who dreaded war or who thought a

war of aggression immoral. At the head of these last was Robespierre.

But it is not too much to say that in the first months of the year

Danton was more important at the Jacobins than Robespierre. What was his

attitude? It was part of the general policy upon which he had determined:

he compromised. In his first motion on the 14th of December, he attacked

the idea of declaring war. On the 16th he still attacked it, but in other

terms. “I know it must come. If any one were to ask me, ‘Are we to have

war?’ I would reply (not in argument, but as a matter of fact), ‘We shall

hear the bugles,’” But the whole speech is taken up with an argument upon

its dangers, and especially upon “those who desire war in the hope of

reaction, who talk of giving us a constitution like that of England, in

the hope of giving us, later, one like that of Turkey.”

In March and April, the months when the war was preparing and was

declared, he was silent. And we can understand his silence when we turn

to his speech in the Commune when he was given office. He alludes to the

false character given him; he speaks of the reputation which his past

actions in Paris had given; he says things that indicate a determination

to play the part of a Moderate, and to see whether in his case, as in

that of so many others, there would not be permanence in the compromise

of the last six months. But there rankled in his mind the insults of the

men with whom he sat, Condorcet’s disavowal in his paper of so much as

knowing Danton, and he made a peroration which at the time offended, but

which possesses for us a certain pathos. “Nature gave me a strong frame,

and she put into my face the violence of liberty. I have not sprung from

a family which was weakened by the protection of the old privileges;

my existence has been all my own; I know that I have kept and shown my

vigour, but in my profession and in my private life I have controlled

it. If I was carried away by enthusiasm in the first days of our

regeneration, have I not atoned for it? Have I not been ostracised?... I

have given myself altogether to the people, and now that they are beyond

attack, now that they are in arms and ready to break the league unless

it consents to dissolve,[109] I will die in their cause if I must, ...

for I love them only, and they deserve it. Their courage will make them

eternal.”

This outburst is the one occasion of his public life in which Danton

spoke of himself, and it has the ring of genuine emotion; for in all

his harangues he preserved, both before and after this, an objective

attitude, if anything too much bent upon the outward circumstances.

Thus, when the notes came to go between the Austrian and the French

governments, he was silent. He fears that France is unprepared; he

fears that the King is betraying the nation. How much he was a traitor

was not known till a far later period; but when at least it is proved

that something is undermining the French people, that, apart from the

defeats and the lack of preparation, there is treason, then he leaves

his silence. The policy of the Moderate acting in a settled state is no

longer possible to any one; the court and the nation stood one against

the other, and one side or the other must be taken by every man. Then

he put off the conventions which he respected, and which he regretted

to the end; he went back into the street; he headed the insurrection,

destroyed the monarchy; for twelve months he took upon himself all the

responsibility of errors in his own policy, and of crime in that of his

associates. He saved France, but at this expense, that he went out of the

world with a reputation which he knew to be false, that he saw his great

powers vulgarised, and that he could never possess, either in his own

mind or before the world, not even in France, his true name. The whole of

this tragedy is to be found in his trial, and here and there in the few

phrases that escape him in the speeches or with his friends. If you sum

it up, it comes to this paraphrase of a great sentence: _Son nom était

flétri mais la France était libre_.

It was upon April the 18th that the new Girondin ministry received the

note from Vienna rejecting the French proposals of a month before. The

poor King, who had been protesting his loyalty to the nation in Paris,

had been protesting in Vienna the necessity of sending an army to save

him, and Austria gave this reply. On April 20th the Assembly declared war

with practical unanimity[110] upon “the King of Hungary and of Bohemia.”

But the phrase was useless. You might as well put a match into gunpowder

and say, “It is the sulphur I am after, not the charcoal.” Prussia

joined, and within a year we shall see all Europe at war with France, in

a war that outlawed and destroyed.

Danton was right. France was hopelessly unready. She had not learnt the

necessary truth that the soldier is a man with a trade. The orators

had mistaken words for things; honest and great as they were, they had

fallen in this matter into the faults common to small and dishonest

verbiage. The rout and panic under De Dillon, his murder by the troops,

the occupation of Quiévrain, came one upon the other. Paris was full of

terror and anger in proportion to the greatness of the things she had

done, which now seemed all destroyed. “We said and did things that should

have convinced the world; we were to be a people unconquerable from our

love of liberty, and we appear a beaten, panic-stricken lot—volunteers

and babblers who cannot stand fire.” The King dismissed the Girondin

ministers, even sent Dumouriez away, heard Roland’s remonstrance, knew

that the Assembly was more and more against him; but he remained calm.

There was a plan of the simplest. There was to be nothing but a few days

of monotonous marching between the allies and Paris. Lafayette with his

army of the centre was on his side. The Assembly decreed a great camp of

20,000 men under Paris, and the disbanding of the guard; the guard was

disbanded, but the King vetoed the decree. Lafayette wrote his letter

menacing the Parliament with his army; the reaction seemed in full

success and the invaders secure, when Danton reappeared.

On the 18th of June he found the old phrases against Lafayette at the

Jacobins. “It is a great day for France; Lafayette with only one face on

is no longer dangerous.” He did not make, but he permitted the 20th of

June; and as Paris rose, and the immense mob, grotesque, many-coloured,

armed with all manner of sharp things, passed before the Assembly and

into the Tuilleries, it might have been a signal or a warning. The

excited citizen makes a poor soldier, but if Paris moves the whole great

body of France stirs. Such giants take long to be fully awake, and it is

a matter of months to drill men; still it is better to let great enemies

sleep. There was in that foolish, amiable crowd, with its pleasure at

the sight of the King, its comic idea of warning him, something serious

underlying. Danton will be using it in a very short time; for there are

points of attack where mobs are like machine-guns—ridiculous in general

warfare, but very useful indeed in special conditions, and in these

conditions invincible. This something serious was that vague force (you

may call it only an idea) which you will never find in an individual, and

which you will always discover in a mass—the great common man which the

French metaphysicians have called “Le Peuple;” that, drilled, is called

by the least metaphysical an army.

A week later Lafayette appeared. He demanded the right to use the army,

and July opened with the certainty of civil war.

July is the month of fevers; the heat has been moving northward, and

all France is caught in it. The grapes fill out, and even in Picardy or

in the Cotentin you feel as though the Midi were giving her spirit to

the north. July made the Revolution and closed it. A month that saw the

Bastille fall and that buried Robespierre is a very national time.

If you overlook France at this moment, you may see the towns stirring as

they had stirred three years before; it is from them that the opposition

rises—especially from Marseilles. A crowd of young men dragging cannon,

the common-place sons of bourgeois, whom the time had turned into

something as great as peasants or as soldiers, surged up the white

deserts along the Rhone, passing the great sheet of vineyards that slopes

up the watershed of Burgundy. As they came along they sang an excellent

new marching song. When they at last saw Paris, especially the towers

of Notre Dame from where they just show above the city as you come in

from Fontainebleau, and as the roads came in together and the suburbs

thickened they sang it with louder voices. On the evening of the 30th

they came to the gates, and the workmen of the south-eastern quarter

began to sing it and called it the “Marseillaise.” No one can describe

music; but if in a great space of time the actions of the French become

meaningless and the Revolution ceases to be an origin, some one perhaps

will recover this air, as we have recovered a few stray notes of Greek

music, and it will carry men back to the Republic.

For ten days the insurrection grew. In a secret committee which the

Sections formed, men violent like Fournier, or good soldiers like

Westermann, or local leaders of quarters like Santerre—but all outside

the official body—organised the fighting force, and at their head the

one man who held the strings of the municipality—Danton. The Assembly

had heard Vergniaud’s angry speech, but it had also confirmed the

constitution and the monarchy in the “baiser Lamourette.” Paris had

to work alone, and the King, seeing only Paris before him, filled the

Tuilleries, and stood by with a small garrison to repress the mere

movement of the city—“something that should have been done in ’89.”

It was on a Paris thus enfevered, doubtful, nursing a secret

insurrectionary plan, but full of men who hesitated and doubted,

having still many who were loyal, that there fell[111] the document

which the King had asked of his friends—but which he must, on seeing

it, have regretted—the manifesto of the commander of the allies. This

extraordinary monument of folly is rarely presented in its entirety. It

is only in such a form that its full monstrosity can be appreciated, and

I have therefore been at pains to translate for my readers the rather

halting French in which Charles William proposed to arrest the movements

of Providence. It ran as follows[112]:—

“Their Majesties the Emperor and the King of Prussia having given me the

command of the armies assembled on the French frontier, I have thought

it well to tell the inhabitants of that kingdom the motives that have

inspired the measures taken by the two sovereigns and the intentions that

guide them.

“After having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and the possessions of

the German princes in Alsace and Lorraine, troubled and overset public

order and their legitimate government, exercised against the sacred

person of the King and against his august family violence which is

(moreover) repeated and renewed from day to day, those who have usurped

the reins of the administration have at last filled up the measure by

causing an unjust war to be declared against his Majesty the Emperor, and

by attacking his provinces in the Netherlands.

“Several possessions of the German Empire have been drawn into this

oppression, and several others have only escaped from a similar danger

by yielding to the imperious threats of the dominant party and its

emissaries.

“His Prussian Majesty with his Imperial Majesty, by the ties of a strict

and defensive alliance, and himself a preponderant member of the Germanic

body (_sic_), has therefore been unable to excuse himself from going to

the aid of his ally and of his fellow State (_sic_). And it is under both

these heads that he undertakes the defence of that monarch and of Germany.

“To these great interests another object of equal importance must be

added, and one that is near to the heart of the two sovereigns: it is

that of ending the domestic anarchy of France, of arresting the attacks

which are directed against the altar and the throne, of re-establishing

the legitimate power, of giving back to the King the freedom and safety

of which he is deprived, and of giving him the means to exercise the

lawful authority which is his due.

“Convinced as they are that the healthy part of the French people abhors

the excesses of a party that enslaves them, and that the majority of

the inhabitants are impatiently awaiting the advent of a relief that

will permit them to declare themselves openly against the odious schemes

of their oppressors, His Majesty the Emperor and His Majesty the King

of Prussia call upon them to return at once to the call of reason and

justice, of order, of peace. It is in view of these things that I, the

undersigned, General Commander-in-Chief of the two armies, declare—

“(1) That led into the present war by irresistible

circumstances, the two allied courts propose no object to

themselves but the happiness of France, and do not propose to

enrich themselves by annexation.

“(2) That they have no intention of meddling with the domestic

government of France, but only wish to deliver the King, and

the Queen, and the Royal Family from their captivity, and

procure for his Most Christian Majesty that freedom which is

necessary for him to call such a council as he shall see fit,

without danger and without obstacle, and to enable him to work

for the good of his subjects according to his promises and as

much as may be his concern.

“(3) That the combined armies will protect all towns, boroughs,

and villages, and the persons and goods of all those that will

submit to the King, and that they will help to re-establish

immediately the order and police of France.

“(4) That the National Guard are ordered to see to the peace of

the towns and country-sides provisionally, and to the security

of the persons and goods of all Frenchmen provisionally, that

is, until the arrival of the troops of their Royal and Imperial

Majesties, or until further orders, under pain of being

personally responsible; that on the contrary, the National

Guards who may have fought against the troops of the allied

courts, and who are captured in arms, shall be treated as

enemies, and shall be punished as rebels and disturbers of the

public peace.

“(5) That the generals, officers, non-commissioned officers,

and privates of the French troops of the line are equally

ordered to return to their old allegiance and to submit at once

to the King, their legitimate sovereign.

“(6) That the members of departmental, district, and town

councils are equally responsible with their heads and property

for all crimes, arson, murders, thefts, and assaults, the

occurrence of which they allow or do not openly, and to the

common knowledge, try to prevent in their jurisdiction;

that they shall equally be bound to keep their functions

provisionally until his Most Christian Majesty, reinstated in

full liberty, has further decreed; or until, in the interval,

other orders shall have been given.

“(7) That the inhabitants of towns, boroughs, and villages

who may dare to defend themselves against the troops of their

Imperial and Royal Majesties by firing upon them, whether

in the open or from the windows, doors, or apertures of

their houses, shall be punished at once with all the rigour

of the laws of war, their houses pulled down or burnt. All

those inhabitants, on the contrary, of the towns, boroughs,

and villages who shall hasten to submit to their King by

opening their gates to the troops of their Majesties shall

be placed under the immediate protection of their Majesties;

their persons, their goods, their chattels shall be under the

safeguard of the laws, and measures will be taken for the

general safety of each and all of them.

“(8) The town of Paris and all its inhabitants without

distinction shall be bound to submit on the spot, and without

any delay, to the King, and to give that Prince full and entire

liberty, and to assure him and all the Royal Family that

inviolability and respect to which the laws of nature and of

nations entitle sovereigns from their subjects. Their Imperial

and Royal Majesties render personally responsible for anything

that may happen, under peril of their heads, and of military

execution without hope of pardon, all members of the National

Assembly as of the Districts, the Municipality, the National

Guards, the Justices of the Peace, and all others whom it may

concern. Their aforesaid Majesties declare, moreover, on their

word and honour as Emperor and King, that if the Palace of the

Tuilleries be insulted or forced, that if the least violence,

the least assault, be perpetrated against their Majesties, the

King, the Queen, and the Royal Family, and if steps be not at

once taken for their safety, preservation, and liberty, they,

their Imperial and Royal Majesties, will take an exemplary and

never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by giving up the town of Paris

to military execution and to total subversion, and the guilty

rebels to the deaths they have deserved. Their Imperial and

Royal Majesties promise, on the contrary, to the inhabitants of

Paris to use their good offices with his Most Christian Majesty

to obtain pardon for their faults and errors, and to take the

most vigorous measures to ensure their persons and goods if

they promptly and exactly obey the above command.

“Finally, since their Majesties can recognise no laws in France

save those that proceed from the King in full liberty, they

protest in advance against any declarations that may be made in

the name of his Most Christian Majesty, so long as his sacred

person, those of the Queen and of the Royal Family, are not

really safe, for which end their Imperial and Royal Majesties

invite and beg his Most Christian Majesty to point out to what

town in the immediate neighbourhood of his frontiers he may

judge it best to retire with the Queen and the Royal Family,

under good and sure escort that will be sent him for that

purpose, in order that his Most Christian Majesty may be in

all safety to call to him such deputies and counsellors as he

sees fit, call such councils as may please him, see to the

re-establishment of order, and arrange the administration of

his kingdom.

“Lastly, I engage myself, in my own private name and in my

aforesaid capacity, to cause the troops under my command to

observe everywhere a good and exact discipline, promising to

treat with mildness and moderation all well-meaning subjects

who may show themselves peaceful and submissive, and to use

force with those only who may be guilty of resistance and of

recalcitrance.

“It is for these reasons that I require and exhort, in the

strongest and most instant fashion, all the inhabitants of this

kingdom not to oppose themselves to the march and operations

of the troops under my command, but rather to give them on all

sides a free entry and all the good-will, aid, and assistance

that circumstances may demand.

“Given at our headquarters of Coblentz, July 28.

(Signed) “CHARLES WILLIAM FERDINAND,

Duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg.”

With that weapon the insurrection was certain of all Paris. Mandat, who

had replaced Lafayette at the head of the armed force in the town, was

still loyal to the King; he organised, as far as was possible, the forces

that he could count upon. The other side also prepared, and the movements

had all the appearance of troops entrenching themselves before battle.

Danton went to Arcis and settled an income on his mother in case of

his death, came back to Paris, and on the night of August the 9th

the Sections named commissioners to act. They met and formed the

“insurrectionary commune.” At eight the next morning they dissolved the

legal commune, kept Danton, and directed the fighting of the morning.

Meanwhile the King had gathered in the Tuilleries about 6000 men, and

depended very largely upon the thick mass of wooden buildings in the

Carrousel for cover. The Swiss Guard, whom the decree had removed, were

only as far off as Rueil, and were ordered into Paris, over 1500. They

were the nucleus, and with them some 2000 of the National Guard, 1500

of the old “Constitutional Guards,” and a group of “Gentilshommes.”

Mandat had ordered a battery of the National Guard’s artillery to keep

the Pont Neuf; they revolted and joined the people, and Mandat himself,

the chief of the defence, was killed on the steps of the Hotel de Ville.

Danton, who had not slept, but had lain down in Desmoulin’s flat till

midnight, had been to the Hotel de Ville since two in the morning, and

he took before posterity—in his trial—the responsibility of Mandat’s

death. He did more. He acted during the short night (a night of calm and

great beauty, dark and with stars) as the organiser and chief of the

insurrection. Especially he appoints Santerre to lead the National Guard.

On these rapid determinations the morning broke, and the first hours of

the misty day passed in gathering the forces.

Meanwhile all morning the King had waited anxiously in the Tuilleries

gardens, and asked Roederer, like a king in comic opera, “when the revolt

would begin.”

All night the tocsin had sounded, but the people were slow to gather—“le

tocsin ne rend pas”—and it was not till the insurrectionary commune had

done its work that a great mob, partly armed, and in no way disciplined,

came into the Carrousel.

Westermann (riding, as was Santerre) came up to parley with the Swiss

Guard; he asked them in German (which was his native tongue, for he was

an Alsatian) to leave the Tuilleries, and promised that if the guard

retired and left the palace un-garrisoned the people would also retire.

The Swiss—the only real soldiers in Paris—replied that they were under

orders, and when Westermann retired to the crowd they opened fire.

Antoinette had said, “Nail me to the Palace,” and even Louis, timid and

uncertain, thought that the chances were in his favour. Let only this day

succeed, and the city could be kept quiet till the allies should arrive;

that had been the boast in the Royalist journal of August 1st; it was

Louis’s hope now.

Had the Carrousel been a little more open, the battle might have ended in

favour of the garrison, but the numerous buildings, on the whole, helped

the attack, and the Swiss, unable to deploy, fought, almost singly,

a very unequal fight. There were no volleys except the first. Rapid

individual firing from the doors and windows of the palace, the crowd

pressing up through the narrowest space (but at a loss of hundreds of

lives), and finally, by the end which gave on the “Grande Galerie” the

Tuilleries were forced, the garrison killed, and only a small detachment

of the Swiss Guard retreated through the gardens, firing alternate

volleys, and saving themselves by an admirable discipline.

But while the issue was still doubtful, Louis and his family had gone

slowly through the same gardens to the Riding-school, and had taken

refuge with the Assembly. The noise of the fusillade came sharply in

at the windows, and the event was still uncertain when the Parliament

received the King and promised him protection. The president opened for

him a small door at the right of the chair, and the King and Queen and

their children watched the meaningless resolutions through a grating as

they sat in the little dark box that gave them refuge. The debate, I say,

lacked meaning, but the battle grew full of meaning as they heard it.

The shots were less frequent, the noise of the mob—the roar—was suddenly

muffled in the walls of the palace. The crowd had entered it. Then came

the few sharp volleys of the retreating guard right under the windows of

the Manège, and finally the firing ceased, and the Assembly knew that

their oath was of no value, and that the Tuilleries had fallen. Louis

also knew it, eating his grotesque roast chicken in the silent and hidden

place that was the first of his prisons. He saw in the bright light

of the hall many of the faces that were to be the rulers of France,

but for himself, in his silence, he felt all power to be gone. He had

become a Capet—there was truth in the Republican formula. There had been

played—though few have said it, it should be said—a very fine game. The

stakes were high and the Court party dared them. They played to win

all that the Kings had possessed, and for this great stake they risked

a few foolish titles without power. The game was even; it was worth

playing, and they had lost. But the man who had been their puppet and

their figure-head hardly knew what had happened. Perhaps the Queen alone

comprehended, and from that moment found the proud silence and the glance

that has dignified her end. In her the legend of the lilies had found its

last ally, but now the great shield was broken for ever.

So perished the French monarchy. Its dim origins stretched out and lost

themselves in Rome; it had already learnt to speak and recognised its

own nature when the vaults of the Thermae echoed heavily to the slow

footsteps of the Merovingian kings. Look up that vast valley of dead men

crowned, and you may see the gigantic figure of Charlemagne, his brows

level and his long white beard tangled like an undergrowth, having in

his left hand the globe and in his right the hilt of an unconquerable

sword. There also are the short, strong horsemen of the Robertian house,

half-hidden by their leather shields, and their sons before them growing

in vestment and majesty, and taking on the pomp of the Middle Ages;

Louis VII., all covered with iron; Philip the Conqueror; Louis IX., who

alone is surrounded with light: they stand in a widening interminable

procession, this great crowd of kings; they loose their armour, they

take their ermine on, they are accompanied by their captains and their

marshals; at last, in their attitude and in their magnificence they sum

up in themselves the pride and the achievement of the French nation. But

time has dissipated what it could not tarnish, and the process of a

thousand years has turned these mighty figures into unsubstantial things.

You may see them in the grey end of darkness, like a pageant all standing

still. You look again, but with the growing light and with the wind that

rises before morning they have disappeared.