Lafayette took his business of being a soldier seriously, and in the
summer of 1785 made another journey, this time in the interest of his
military education. Frederick II, King of Prussia, was still living.
Lafayette obtained permission to attend the maneuvers of his army,
counting himself fortunate to receive lessons in strategy from this
greatest warrior of his time. He was not surprised to find the old
monarch bent and rheumatic, with fingers twisted with gout, and head
pulled over on one side until it almost rested on his shoulder; or to
see that his blue uniform with red facings was dirty and sprinkled with
snuff. But he was astonished to discover that the eyes in Frederick's
emaciated old face were strangely beautiful and lighted up his
countenance at times with an expression of the utmost sweetness. It
was not often that they transformed him thus from an untidy old man to
an angel of benevolence. Usually they were keen, sometimes mockingly
malicious.
It was certainly not without malice that he seated the young French
[Pg 181]general at his table between two other guests, Lord Cornwallis
and the Duke of York; and in the course of long dinners amused himself
by asking Lafayette questions about Washington and the American
campaigns. Lafayette answered with his customary ardor, singing praises
of his general and even venturing to praise republicanism in a manner
that irritated the old monarch.
"Monsieur!" Frederick interrupted him in such a flight. "I once knew
a young man who visited countries where liberty and equality reigned.
After he got home he took it into his head to establish them in his own
country. Do you know what happened?"
"No, Sire."
"He was hanged!" the old man replied, with a sardonic grin. It was
plain he liked Lafayette or he would not have troubled to give him the
warning.
Lafayette continued his journey to Prague and Vienna and Dresden,
where he saw other soldiers put through their drill. Then he returned
to Potsdam for the final grand maneuvers under the personal direction
of Frederick, but a sudden acute attack of gout racked his kingly old
bones, and the exercises which, in his clockwork military system, could
no more be postponed than the movements of the planets, were carried
out by the heir apparent, to Lafayette's great disappointment. He wrote
Washington that the prince was "a good officer, an honest fellow, a man
of sense," but that he would never have the talent of his two uncles.
As for the Prussian army, it was a wonderful machine, but "if the
resources of France, the vivacity of her soldiers, the intelligence
[Pg 182]of her officers, the national ambition and moral delicacy were
applied to a system worked out with equal skill, we would as far excel
the Prussians as our army is now inferior to theirs--which is saying a
great deal!"
_Vive la France! Vivent_ moral distinctions! He may not have realized
it, but Lafayette was all his life more interested in justice than in
war.
Almost from the hour of his last return from America the injustice with
which French Protestants were treated filled him with indignation.
Though not openly persecuted, they were entirely at the mercy of
official caprice. Legally their marriages were not valid; they could
not make wills; their rights as citizens were attacked on every side.
To use Lafayette's expression, they were "stricken with civil death."
He became their champion.
Everybody knew that very radical theories had been applauded in France
for many years, even by the men who condemned them officially. Dislike
of liberal actions, however, was still strong, as Lafayette found when
he attempted to help these people. His interest in them was treated as
an amiable weakness which might be overlooked in view of his many good
qualities, but should on no account be encouraged. "It is a work which
requires time and is not without some inconvenience to me, because
nobody is willing to give me one word of writing or to uphold me in any
way. I must run my chance," he wrote Washington. He did, however, get
permission from one of the king's ministers to go to Languedoc, where
[Pg 183]Protestants were numerous, in order to study their condition
and know just what it was he advocated. Evidence that he gathered thus
at first hand he used officially two years later before the Assembly
of Notables. So his championship of the French Protestants marks the
beginning of this new chapter in Lafayette's life, his entrance into
French politics.
Outwardly the condition of the country remained much as it had been;
but discontent had made rapid progress during the years of Lafayette's
stay in America. An answer attributed to the old Maréchal de Richelieu
sums up the change. The old reprobate had been ill and Louis XVI, with
good intentions, but clumsy cruelty, congratulated him on his recovery.
"For," said the king, "you are not young. You have seen three ages."
"Rather," growled the duke, "three reigns!" "Well, what do you think of
them?" "Sire, under Louis XIV nobody dared say a word; under Louis XV
they spoke in whispers; under your Majesty they speak loudly."
This education in discontent had proceeded under three teachers:
extravagance, hunger, and the success of America's war of independence.
Louis really desired to see his people happy and prosperous. He had
made an attempt at reforms, early in his reign, but, having neither
a strong will nor a strong mind, it speedily lapsed. Even under his
own eyes at Versailles many abuses continued, merely because they
had become part of the cumbersome court etiquette which Frederick II
had condemned back in the days of Louis's grandfather. Many other
[Pg 184]abuses had increased without even the pretense of reforming
them. There was increased personal extravagance among the well-to-do;
increased extortion elsewhere. Tax-collectors were still going about
shutting their eyes to the wealth of men who had influence and judging
the peasants as coldly as they would judge cattle. In one district they
were fat; they must pay a heavier tax. Chicken feathers were blowing
about on the ground? That meant the people had poultry to eat; the
screw could be given another vigorous turn. Among all classes there
seemed to be less and less money to spend. With the exception of a few
bankers and merchants, everybody from the king down felt poor. The
peasants felt hungry. The poor in cities actually were very hungry;
almost all the nobles were deeply in debt. In short, the forces for
good and ill which had already honeycombed the kingdom when Lafayette
was a boy had continued their work, gnawing upward and downward and
through the social fabric until only a very thin and brittle shell
remained. And, as the Maréchal de Richelieu pointedly reminded his weak
king, people were no longer afraid to talk aloud about these things.
The success of the Revolution in America had done much to remove the
ban of silence. Loans made by France had added to the scarcity of
money; and it was these loans which had brought America success. The
people across the ocean had wiped the slate clean and begun afresh.
Why not follow their example? In the winter of 1782, when Paris was
[Pg 185]suffering from the Russian influenza, a lady with a clever
tongue and the eye of a prophet had said, "We are threatened with
another malady which will come from America--the _Independenza!_"
Thoughtful people were beginning to believe that a change was only a
matter of time; but that it would come slowly and stretch over many
years.
Meanwhile the months passed and the glittering outer shell of the
old order of things continued to glitter. Lafayette divided his time
between Paris, the court, and Chavaniac. He made at least one journey
in the brilliant retinue of the king. He dined and gave dinners. He did
everything in his power to increase commerce with the United States.
He took part in every public movement for reform, and instituted small
private ones of his own. One of these was to ask the king to revoke
a pension of seven hundred and eighty livres that had been granted
him when he was a mere baby, and to divide it between a retired old
infantry officer and a worthy widow of Auvergne. Incidentally people
seemed to like him in spite of his republicanism. It was no secret
to any one that he had come home from America a thorough believer in
popular government.
His fame was by no means confined to France and the lands lying to
the west of it. Catherine II of Russia became curious to see this
much-talked-of person and invited him to St. Petersburg. Learning
that she was soon to start for the Crimea, he asked leave to pay his
respects to her there; but that was a journey he never made. Before he
could set out Louis XVI called a meeting of the Assembly of Notables,
[Pg 186]to take place on February 22, 1787. This was in no true sense
a parliament; only a body of one hundred and forty-four men who held
no offices at court, selected arbitrarily by the king to discuss such
subjects as he chose to set before it. The subject was to be taxation,
how to raise money for government expenses, a burning question with
every one.
Deliberative assemblies were no new thing in France. Several times in
long-past history a king had called together representative men of
the nobles, the clergy, and even of the common people, to consider
questions of state and help bring about needed reforms. Such gatherings
were known as States General. But they had belonged to a time before
the kings were quite sure of their power, and it was one hundred and
seventy years since the last one had been called. Little by little, in
the mean time, even the provincial parliaments, of which there were
several in different parts of France, had been sapped of strength
and vitality. There was a tendency now to revive them. Lafayette had
stopped in Rennes on his way home from Brest after his last trip across
the Atlantic, to attend such a gathering in Brittany, where he owned
estates, his mother having been a Breton. Favoring representative
government as he did, he was anxious to see such assemblages meet
frequently at regular intervals.
The call for the Assembly of Notables had come about in an unexpected
way. Some years before, the Minister of Finance, Necker, had printed
a sort of treasurer's report showing how public funds had been spent.
[Pg 187]This was a great novelty, such questions having been shrouded
in deepest mystery. Everybody who could read read Necker's report.
It was seen on the dressing-tables of ladies and sticking out of the
pockets of priests. Necker had meant it to pave the way for reforms,
because he believed in cutting down expenses instead of imposing more
taxes. It roused such a storm of discussion and criticism that he was
driven from the Cabinet; after which his successor, M. Calonne, "a
veritable Cagliostro of finance," managed to juggle for four years with
facts and figures before the inevitable day of reckoning came. This
left the country much worse off than it had been when he took office;
so badly off, in fact, that the king called together the Assembly of
Notables.
By an odd coincidence it held its first meeting at Versailles on a date
forever linked in American minds with ideas of popular liberty--the 22d
of February. For practical work, it was divided into seven sections or
committees, each one of which was presided over by a royal prince. If
the intention had been to check liberal tendencies among its members,
the effort was vain. The spirit of independence was in it, and it
refused to solve the king's financial riddles for him.
From the beginning Lafayette took an active and much more radical part
than some of his friends wished. He worked in behalf of the French
Protestants. He wanted to reform criminal law; to give France a jury
system such as England had; and he advocated putting a stop to the
abuses of _lettres de cachet_. He was very plain-spoken in favor of
[Pg 188]cutting down expenses, particularly in the king's own military
establishment, in pensions granted to members of the royal family, and
in the matter of keeping up the palaces and pleasure-places that former
monarchs had loved, but which Louis XVI never visited. He believed in
taxing lands and property belonging to the clergy, which had not as yet
been taxed at all. He wanted the nobility to pay their full share, too,
and he thought a treasurer's report should be published every year.
Indeed, he wanted reports printed about all departments of government
except that of Foreign Affairs.
This was worse than amiable weakness, it was rank republicanism; the
more dangerous because, as one of the ministers said, "all his logic is
in action." The queen, who had never more than half liked him, began
to distrust him. Calonne, who was about to leave the treasury in such
a muddle, declared that he ought to be shut up in the Bastille; and a
remark that Lafayette was overheard to make one day when the education
of the dauphin was under discussion did not add to his popularity with
the court party. "I think," he said, "that the prince will do well to
begin his study of French history with the year 1787."
One day he had the hardihood to raise his voice and say, "I appeal
to the king to convene a national assembly." There was a hush of
astonishment and of something very like fear. "What!" cried a younger
brother of the king, the Comte d'Artois, who presided over the section
of which Lafayette was a member. "You demand the convocation of [Pg
189]the States General?" "Yes, Sire." "You wish to go on record? To
have me say to the king that M. de Lafayette has made a motion to
convene the States General?" "Yes, Monseigneur--and better than that!"
by which Lafayette meant he hoped such an assembly might be made more
truly representative than ever before.
That Lafayette realized the personal consequences of his plain speaking
there is no doubt. He wrote to Washington, "The king and his family,
as well as the notables who surround him, with the exception of a few
friends, do not pardon the liberties I have taken or the success I have
gained with other classes of society." If he cherished any illusions,
they were dispelled a few months later when he received a request from
the king to give up his commission as major-general.
As for his appeal for a meeting of the States General, nobody
possessed the hardihood to sign it with him, and it had no immediate
consequences. Before the Assembly of Notables adjourned it advised
the king to authorize legislative assemblies in the provinces, which
he did, Lafayette being one of the five men named by the monarch to
represent the nobility in his province of Auvergne. At the sessions of
this provincial assembly he further displeased the members of his own
class, but the common people crowded about and applauded him wherever
he went. "He was the first hero they had seen, and they were never
tired of looking at him," a local chronicler states, with disarming
frankness.
[Pg 190]The situation grew worse instead of better. The country's debt
increased daily. The Assembly of Notables held another session; but
it was only to arrange details for the meeting of the States General
which the king had at last been forced to call. It was to meet in May,
1789, and was to be made up, as the other had been, of nobles, clergy,
and more humble folk, called the bourgeoisie, or the Third Estate. But
there was one immense difference. Instead of being appointed by the
king, these were to be real representatives, nobles elected by the
nobles, clergy by the clergy, and the common people expressing their
own choice. In addition, people of all classes were invited to draw up
_cahiers_--that is, statements in writing showing the kind of reforms
they desired.
The nobles and clergy held small meetings and elected delegates from
among their own number. The Third Estate elected men of the upper
middle class, or nobles of liberal views. Lafayette found considerable
opposition among the nobles of Auvergne, but the common people begged
him to represent them, promising to give him their unanimous vote if he
would do so. He preferred, however, to make the fight in his own order
and was successful, taking his seat, when the States General convened,
as a representative of the nobility of Auvergne.
[Pg 191]XXI