[Illustration: SIEGE OF THE BASTILLE]
Lafayette was in an embarrassing position. He sympathized with the
Third Estate, yet he had been elected to represent the nobles, and
his commission bound him to vote according to their wishes. He [Pg
195]considered resigning in order to appeal again to the voters of
Auvergne; but before he came to a decision the king asked the nobles
and clergy to give up their evidently futile opposition. Lafayette took
his place with the others in the National Assembly, but refrained for a
time from voting. The king and his ministers seemed to have no settled
policy. One day they tried to please the Third Estate; on another it
was learned that batteries were being placed where they could fire upon
the Assembly and that regiments were being concentrated upon Paris. It
was upon a motion of Mirabeau's for the removal of these threatening
soldiers that Lafayette broke his silence and began to take part again
in the proceedings of the Assembly.
On the 11th of July, about a fortnight after the nobles and clergy had
resumed their seats, he presented to the Assembly his Declaration of
Rights, modeled upon the American Declaration of Independence, to be
placed at the head of the French Constitution. Two days later he was
elected vice-president of the Assembly "with acclamations." Toward
evening of the 14th the Vicomte de Noailles came from Paris with the
startling news that people had been fighting in the streets for hours;
that they had gained possession of the Bastille, the gray old prison
which stood in their eyes for all that was hateful in the old regime;
that its commander and several of its defenders had been murdered; and
that their heads were being carried aloft on pikes among the crowds.
[Pg 196]On the 15th the king came with his brothers to the Assembly
and made a conciliatory speech, after which Lafayette hurried away to
Paris at the head of a delegation charged with the task of quieting the
city. They were met at the Tuileries gate and escorted to the Hôtel de
Ville, where the City Council of Paris, a parliament in miniature, held
its meetings. Lafayette congratulated the city on the liberty it had
won, delivered the king's message, and turned to go. As he was leaving
the room somebody cried out saying that here was the man Paris wanted
to command its National Guard, and that Bailly, who accompanied him,
ought to be mayor. It was one of those sudden ideas that seem to spread
like wildfire. Lafayette stopped, drew his sword, and, acting upon that
first impulse which he was so apt to follow, swore then and there to
defend the liberty of Paris with his life if need be. He sent a message
to the National Assembly asking permission to assume the new office,
and on the 25th took, with Bailly, a more formal oath. The force of
militia which he organized and developed became the famous National
Guard of Paris; while this governing body at the Hotel de Ville which
had so informally elected him, enlarged and changing from time to time
as the Revolution swept on, became the famous, and infamous, "Commune."
Lafayette himself, not many days after he assumed the new office,
ordered the destruction of the old Bastille. One of its keys he sent to
Washington at Mount Vernon. Another was made into a sword and presented
by his admirers to the man whose orders had reduced the old prison to a
heap of stones.
[Pg 197]The court party was aghast. The Comte d'Artois and two of his
friends shook the dust of their native land from their feet and left
France, the first of that long army of _émigrés_ whose flight still
further sapped the waning power of the king. Louis was of one mind one
day, another the next. Against the entreaties and tears of the queen he
accepted an invitation to visit Paris and was received, as Lafayette
had been, with cheers. He made a speech, ratifying and accepting all
the changes that had taken place; and to celebrate this apparent
reconciliation between the monarch and his subjects Lafayette added the
white of the flag of the king to red and blue, the colors of the city
of Paris, making the Tricolor. Up to that time the badge of revolution
had been green, because Camille Desmoulins, one of its early orators,
had given his followers chestnut leaves to pin upon their caps. But the
livery of the Comte d'Artois, now so hated, was green, and the people
threw away their green cockades and enthusiastically donned the red,
white, and blue, echoing Lafayette's prediction that it would soon make
the round of Europe.
The passions which had moved the city of Paris spread outward through
the provinces as waves spread when a stone is cast into a pool. One
town after another set up a municipal government and established
national guards of its own. Peasants in country districts began
assaulting tax-collectors, hanging millers on the charge that they were
raising the price of bread, and burning and looting châteaux in their
[Pg 198]hunt for old records of debts and judgments against the common
people. July closed in a veil of smoke ascending from such fires in all
parts of the realm.
All day long on the 4th of August the Assembly listened to reports of
these events, a dismaying recital that went on and on until darkness
fell and the candles were brought in. About eight o'clock, when the
session seemed nearing its end, De Noailles mounted the platform and
began to speak. He said that there was good reason for these fires
and the hate they disclosed. The châteaux were symbols of that kind
of unjust feudal government which was no longer to be tolerated. He
moved that the Assembly abolish feudalism. His motion was seconded by
the Duc d'Aiguillon, the greatest feudal noble in France, with the
one exception of the king. The words of these two aristocrats kindled
another sort of fire--an emotional fire like that of a great religious
revival. Noble after noble seemed impelled to mount the platform and
renounce his special privileges. Priests and prelates followed their
example. So did representatives of towns and provinces. The hours of
the day had passed in increasing gloom; the night went by in this
crescendo of generosity. By morning thirty or more decrees had been
passed and feudalism was dead, so far as law could kill it.
The awakening from this orgy of feeling was like the awakening from any
other form of emotional excess. With it came the knowledge that neither
the world nor human nature can be changed overnight. When the news went
[Pg 199]abroad there were many who interpreted as license what had been
given them for liberty. Forests were cut down. Game-preserves were
invaded and animals slaughtered. Artisans found themselves out of work
and hungrier than ever because of the economy now necessarily practised
by the nobility. Such mighty reforms required time and the readjustment
of almost every detail of daily life. Even before experience made this
manifest the delegates began to realize that towns and bishoprics
and provinces might refuse to ratify the impulsive acts of their
representatives; and some of the nobles who had spoken for themselves
alone did not feel as unselfish in the cold light of day as they had
believed themselves to be while the candles glowed during that strange
night session. The final result was to bring out differences of opinion
more sharply and to widen the gulf between conservatives who clung to
everything which belonged to the past and liberals whose desire was to
give the people all that had been gained and even more.
[Pg 200]XXII