So many local National Guards and revolutionary town governments had
been formed that France was in danger of being split into a thousand
self-governing fragments. Some of these came together in local
federations for mutual benefit; and as the anniversary of the fall
of the Bastile rolled around, Paris proposed a grand federation of
all such organizations as a fitting way to celebrate the new national
holiday. The idea caught popular fancy, and the city made ready for it
with a feverish good will almost as strange as that of the memorable
night when nobles and clergy in the National Assembly had vied with one
another to give up their century-old privileges.
The spot chosen for the ceremonies was the Champs de Mars, where the
Eiffel Tower now stands. It is a deal nearer the center of Paris now
than it was in 1790, when it was little more than a great field on the
banks of the Seine, near the military academy. This was to be changed
into an immense amphitheater three miles in circumference, a work
[Pg 209]which required a vast amount of excavating and building and
civil engineering. Men and women of all classes of society volunteered
as laborers, and from dawn till dark a procession, armed with spades
and every implement that could possibly be used, passed ceaselessly
between the heart of the city and the scene of the coming festivity.
Eye-witnesses tell us that on arriving each person threw down his coat,
his cravat, and his watch, "abandoning them to the loyalty of the
public" and fell to work. "A delicate duchess might be seen filling a
barrow to be trundled away by a fishwife"; or a chevalier of the Order
of Saint-Louis laboring with a hurried, flustered little school-boy;
or a priest and an actor doing excellent team-work together. A hundred
orchestras were playing; workers quitted their labors for a few turns
in the dance, then abandoned that again for toil.
Lafayette encouraged them by his enthusiastic presence, and filled and
trundled a barrow with his own hands; and when the king appeared one
day to view the strange scene he was greeted with extravagant joy.
Though this went on for weeks, the undertaking was so vast and the best
efforts of duchesses and school-boys so far from adequate, that a hurry
call had to be sent out, in response to which it was estimated that
during the last few days of preparation two hundred and fifty thousand
people were busy there. Evil rumors were busy, too, under cover of the
music, and whispers went through the crowd that no provisions were
to be allowed to enter Paris during the entire week of festivities
and that the field had been honeycombed with secret passages and laid
[Pg 210]with mines to blow up the whole great throng. Such rumors
were answered by a municipal proclamation which ended with the words,
"Cowards may flee these imaginary dangers: the friends of Revolution
will remain, well knowing that not a second time shall such a day be
seen."
The miracle was accomplished. By the 14th of July the whole Champs de
Mars had been transformed into an amphitheater of terraced greensward,
approached through a great triumphal arch. But on the day itself not a
single green terrace was visible, so thick were the masses of people
crowding the amphitheater and covering the hills on the other side
of the river. Opposite the triumphal arch a central pavilion for the
king, with covered galleries on each side, had been built against the
walls of the military school. On the level green in the center of the
great Champs de Mars stood an altar to "The Country," reached by a
flight of fifty steps. One hundred cannon, two thousand musicians,
and two hundred priests with the Tricolor added to their vestments,
were present to take part in the ceremonies. A model of the destroyed
Bastile lay at the foot of the altar. Upon the altar itself were
inscriptions, one of which bade the spectators "Ponder the three sacred
words that guarantee our decrees. The Nation, the Law, the King. You
are the Nation, the Law is your will, the King is the head of the
Nation and guardian of the Law."
The multitude was treated first to the spectacle of a grand procession
streaming through the three openings of the triumphal arch. Deputies
from the provinces, members of the National Assembly, and [Pg
211]representatives of the Paris Commune, with Mayor Bailly at their
head, marched slowly and gravely to their places. After them came the
visiting military delegations, the Paris guards, and regular troops
who had been called to Paris from all parts of the kingdom, to the
number of forty thousand or more, each with its distinctive banner.
These marched around the altar and broke into strange dances and mock
combats, undeterred by heavy showers. When the rain fell the ranks
of spectators blossomed into a mass of red and green umbrellas, no
longer the novelty they once had been. When a shower passed umbrellas
were furled and the crowd took on another color. At three o'clock
the queen appeared with the Dauphin beside her. Then the king, in
magnificent robes of state, took his seat on a purple chair sown with
fleurs-de-lis, which had been placed on an exact line and level with
a similar chair upholstered in blue for the president of the National
Assembly.
The king had been named for that one day Supreme Commander of all the
National Guards of France. He had delegated his powers, whatever they
may have been, to Lafayette; and it was Lafayette on a white horse such
as Washington rode who was here, there, and everywhere, the central
figure of the pageant as he moved about fulfilling the duties of his
office. General Thiébault wrote in his _Memoirs_ that the young buoyant
figure on the shining horse, riding through that great mass of men,
seemed to be commanding all France. "Look at him!" cried an enthusiast.
"He is galloping through the centuries!" And it was upon Lafayette,
[Pg 212]at the crowning moment of the ceremony, that all eyes rested.
After the two hundred priests had solemnly marched to the altar and
placed ahead of all other banners their sacred oriflamme of St.-Denis,
Lafayette dismounted and approached the king to receive his orders.
Then, slowly ascending the many steps to the altar, he laid his sword
before it and, turning, faced the soldiers. Every arm was raised and
every voice cried, "I swear!" as he led them in their oath of loyalty;
and as if in answer to the mighty shout, the sun burst at that instant
through the stormclouds. Music and artillery crashed in jubilant sound;
other cannon at a distance took up the tale; and in this way news of
the oath was borne to the utmost limits of France. The day ended with
fireworks, dancing, and a great feast. Lafayette was the center of
the cheers and adulation, admirers pressing upon him from all sides.
He was even in danger of bodily harm from the embraces, "perfidious
or sincere," of a group of unknown men who had to be forcibly driven
away by his aides-de-camp. That night somebody hung his portrait upon
the railing surrounding the statue of France's hero-king, Henri IV; an
act of unwise enthusiasm or else of very clever malignity of which his
critics made the most.
After this, his enemies increased rapidly. The good will and harmony
celebrated at the Feast of the Federation had been more apparent than
real; a "delicious intoxication," as one of the participants called it,
and the ill-temper that follows intoxication soon manifested itself.
The Jacobins grew daily more radical. The club did not expel Lafayette;
[Pg 213]he left it of his own accord in December, 1790; but that was
almost as good for the purposes of his critics.
The task he had set himself of steering a middle course between
extremes became constantly more difficult. Mirabeau was president of
the Jacobin Club after Lafayette left it, and their mutual distrust
increased. Gouverneur Morris thought Lafayette able to hold his own
and that "he was as shrewd as any one." He said that "Mirabeau has the
greater talent, but his adversary the better reputation." In spite of
being president of the Jacobins, Mirabeau was more of a royalist than
Lafayette and did what he could to ruin Lafayette with the court party.
The quarrel ended only with Mirabeau's sudden death in April, 1791.
At the other extreme Marat attacked Lafayette for his devotion to the
king, saying he had sold himself to that side. Newspapers circulated
evil stories about his private life. Slanders and attacks, wax figures
and cartoons, each a little worse than the last, flooded Paris at this
time. Some coupled the queen's name with his, which increased her
dislike of him, and in the end may have played its small part in her
downfall.
The king and queen were watched with lynxlike intensity by all parties,
and about three months after Mirabeau's death they made matters much
worse by betraying their fear, and what many thought their perfidy,
in an attempt to escape in disguise, meaning to get help from outside
countries and return to fight for their power. There had been rumors
[Pg 214]that they contemplated something of this sort, and Lafayette
had gone frankly to the king, urging him not to commit such folly. The
king reassured him, and Lafayette had announced that he was willing to
answer "with his head" that Louis would not leave Paris. One night,
however, rumors were so persistent that Lafayette went himself to the
Tuileries. He talked with a member of the royal family, and the queen
saw him when she was actually on her way to join the king for their
flight. Luck and his usual cleverness both failed Lafayette that night.
He suspected nothing, yet next morning it was discovered that the royal
beds had not been slept in and that the fugitives were already hours
on their way. Lafayette issued orders for their arrest, but clamor was
loud against him and Danton was for making him pay literally with his
head for his mistake.
Almost at the frontier the king and queen were recognized through the
likeness of Louis to his portrait on the paper money that flooded the
kingdom, and they were brought back to Paris, real prisoners this
time. They passed on their way through silent crowds who eyed them
with terrifying hostility. The queen, who was hysterical and bitter,
insisted on treating Lafayette as her personal jailer. Louis, whatever
his faults, had a sense of humor and smiled when Lafayette appeared "to
receive the orders of the king," saying it was evident that orders were
to come from the other side. It is strange that he was not dethroned at
once, for he had left behind him a paper agreeing to repeal every law
[Pg 215]that had been passed by the National Assembly. Dread of civil
war was still strong, however, even among the radicals, and he was
only kept a prisoner in the Tuileries until September, when the new
Constitution was finished and ready for him to sign. After he swore to
uphold it he was again accorded royal honors.
But meantime there had been serious disturbances. Lafayette had felt it
his duty to order the National Guard to fire upon the mob; and for that
he was never forgiven. On that confused day an attempt was made upon
his life. The culprit's gun missed fire, and when he was brought before
Lafayette the latter promptly set him at liberty; but before midnight a
mob surrounded Lafayette's house, crying that they had come to murder
his wife and carry her head to the general. The garden wall had been
scaled, and they were about to force an entrance when help arrived.
After the Constitution became the law of the land, Lafayette followed
Washington's example, resigned his military commission, and retired
to live at Chavaniac. Several times before when criticism was very
bitter he had offered to give up his sword to the Commune, but there
had been no one either willing or able to take his place and he had
been persuaded to remain. Now he felt that he could withdraw with
dignity and a clear conscience. In accepting his resignation the
Commune voted him a medal of gold. The National Guard presented him
with a sword whose blade was made from locks of the old Bastille, and
on his 360-mile journey to Chavaniac he received civic crowns enough to
[Pg 216]fill his carriage. His reception at home was in keeping with
all this. "Since you are superstitious," he wrote Washington, "I will
tell you that I arrived here on the anniversary of the surrender of
Cornwallis." But even in far-away Chavaniac there were ugly rumors and
threats against his life. The local guard volunteered to keep a special
watch; an offer he declined with thanks.
Bailly retired as mayor of Paris soon after this, whereupon Lafayette's
friends put up his name as a candidate. The election went against
him two to one in favor of Pétion, a Jacobin, and from that time the
clubs held undisputed sway. According to law the new Assembly had
to be elected from men who had not served in the old one; this was
unfortunate, since it deprived the new body of experienced legislators.
The pronounced royalists in the Assembly had now dwindled to a scanty
hundred.
Neighboring powers showed signs of coming to the aid of Louis, and
the country did not choose to wait until foreign soldiers crossed its
frontiers. Nobody knew better than Lafayette how unprepared France was
for war against a well-equipped enemy, but the marvels America had
accomplished with scarcely any equipment were fresh in his memory, and
he looked upon foreign war as a means of uniting quarreling factions
at home--a dangerous sort of political back-fire, by no means new, but
sometimes successful. Before December, 1791, three armies had been
formed for protection. Lafayette was put in command of one of them,
his friend Rochambeau of another, and the third was given to General
[Pg 217]Luckner, a Bavarian who had served France faithfully since the
Seven Years' War.
Lafayette's new commission bore the signature of the king. He hurried
to Paris, thanked his sovereign, paid his respects to the Assembly,
and departed for Metz on Christmas Day in a semblance of his old
popularity, escorted to the city barriers by a throng of people and a
detachment of the National Guard. He entered on his military duties
with enthusiasm, besieging the Assembly with reports of all the army
lacked, consulting with his co-commanders, and putting his men through
stiff drill.
By May war had been declared against Sardinia, Bohemia, and Hungary,
but the back-fire against anarchy did not work. Troubles at home
increased. The Paris mob became more lawless, and on the 20th of June,
1792, the Tuileries was invaded and the king was forced to don the
red cap of Liberty; a serio-comic incident that might easily have
become tragedy if Louis had possessed more spirit. Lafayette spoke the
truth about this king when he said that he "desired only comfort and
tranquillity--beginning with his own."
Feeling that his monarch had been insulted, Lafayette hurried off
to Paris to use his influence against the Jacobins. He went without
specific leave, though without being forbidden by General Luckner, his
superior officer, who knew his plan. To his intense chagrin he found
that he no longer had an atom of influence in Paris. The court received
him coldly, the Assembly was completely in the hands of the Jacobins,
[Pg 218]timid people were too frightened to show their real feelings,
and the National Guard, upon whose support Lafayette had confidently
relied, was now in favor of doing away with kingship altogether.
Lafayette could not succor people who refused to be helped, and he
returned to the army, followed by loud accusations that he had been
absent without leave and that he was "the greatest of criminals."
"Strike Lafayette and the nation is saved!" Robespierre had shouted,
even before he appeared on his fruitless mission. "Truly," wrote
Gouverneur Morris, "I believe if Lafayette should come to Paris at
this moment without his army he would be knifed. What, I pray you, is
popularity?"
In July Prussia joined the nations at war, threatening dire vengeance
if Paris harmed even a hair of the king or queen. The mob clamorously
paraded the streets, led by five hundred men from Marseilles, singing a
new and strangely exciting song whose music and whose words, "To arms!
To arms! Strike down the tyrant!" were alike incendiary. In spite of
his recent rebuff, Lafayette made one more attempt to rescue the king,
not for love of Louis or of monarchy, but because he believed that
Louis now stood for sane government, having signed the Constitution.
It is doubtful whether the plan could have succeeded; it was one of
Lafayette's generous dreams, based on very slight foundation. He
wanted to have himself and General Luckner called to Paris for the
coming celebration of July 14th. At that time, making no secret of
it, the king should go with his generals before the Assembly and [Pg
219]announce his intention of spending a few days at Compiègne, as he
had a perfect right to do. Once away from Paris and surrounded by the
loyal troops the two generals would have taken care to bring with them,
Louis could issue a proclamation forbidding his brothers and other
_émigrés_ to continue their plans and could say that he was himself at
the head of an army to resist foreign invasion; and, having taken the
wind out of the sails of the Jacobins by this unexpected move, could
return to Paris to be acclaimed by all moderate, peace-loving men.
There were personal friends of the king who urged him to try this as
the one remaining possibility of safety. Others thought it might save
Louis, but could not save the monarchy. The queen quoted words of
Mirabeau's about Lafayette's ambition to keep the king a prisoner in
his tent. "Besides," she added, "it would be too humiliating to owe
our lives a second time to that man." So Lafayette was thanked for his
interest and his help was refused. On the 10th of August there was
another invasion of the Tuileries, followed this time by the massacre
of the Swiss Guard. The royal family, rescued from the palace, was kept
for safety for three days in a little room behind the one in which
the Assembly held its sessions; then it was lodged, under the cruel
protection of the Commune, in the small medieval prison called the
Temple, in the heart of Paris.
With the Commune in full control, it was not long before an accusation
was officially made against Lafayette. "Evidence" to bear it out was
speedily found; and on August 19th, less than ten days after [Pg
220]the imprisonment of the king, the Assembly, at the bidding of the
Commune, declared Lafayette a traitor. He knew he had nothing to hope
from his own troops, for only a few days before this his proposal that
they renew their oath of fidelity to the Nation, the Law, and the
King had met with murmurs of disapproval, until one young captain,
making himself spokesman, had declared that Liberty, Equality, and
the National Assembly were the only names to which the soldiers could
pledge allegiance.
Lafayette still had faith in the future, but the present offered
only two alternatives--flight, or staying quietly where he was to be
arrested and carried to Paris, where he would be put to death as surely
as the sun rose in the east. This was what his Jacobin friends seemed
to expect him to do, and they assailed him bitterly for taking the
other course. He could not see that his death at this time and in this
way would help the cause of civil liberty. He said that if he must die
he preferred to perish at the hands of foreign tyrants rather than by
those of his misguided fellow-countrymen. He placed his soldiers in the
best position to offset any advantage the enemy might gain through his
flight, and, with about a score of officers and friends, crossed the
frontier into Liège on the night of August 20th, meaning to make his
way to Holland and later to England. From England, in case he could not
return and aid France, he meant to go to America.
Instead of that, the party rode straight into the camp of an Austrian
advance-guard.
[Pg 221]XXIV