POWERFUL, PERHAPS; HAPPY, NEVER.
The Narbonne Ministry lasted three months. A speech of Vergniaud
blasted it. On the news that the Empress of Russia had made a treaty
with Turkey, and Austria and Prussia had signed an alliance, offensive
and defensive, he sprung into the rostrum and cried:
"I see the palace from here where this counter-revolution is scheming
those plots which aim to deliver us to Austria. The day has come when
you must put an end to so much audacity, and confound the plotters. Out
of that palace have issued panic and terror in olden times, in the
name of despotism--let them now rush into it in the name of the law!"
Dread and terror did indeed enter the Tuileries, whence De Narbonne,
wafted thither by a breath of love, was expelled by a gust of storm.
This downfall occurred at the beginning of March, 1792.
Scarce three months after the interview of Gilbert and the queen, a
small, active, nervy little man, with flaming eyes blazing in a bright
face, was ushered into King Louis' presence. He was aged fifty-six, but
appeared ten years younger, though his cheek was brown with camp-fire
smoke; he wore the uniform of a camp-marshal.
The king cast a dull and heavy glance on the little man, whom he had
never met; but it was not without observation. The other fixed on him a
scrutinizing eye full of fire and distrust.
"You are General Dumouriez? Count de Narbonne, I believe, called you to
Paris?"
"To announce that he gave me a division in the army in Alsace."
"But you did not join, it appears?"
"Sire, I accepted; but I felt that I ought to point out that as war
impended"--Louis started visibly--"and threatened to become general,"
went on the soldier, without appearing to remark the emotion, "I deemed
it good to occupy the south, where an attack might come unawares;
consequently, it seemed urgent to me that a plan for movements there
should be drawn up, and a general and army sent thither."
"Yes; and you gave this plan to Count de Narbonne, after showing it to
members of the Gironde?"
"They are friends of mine, as I believe they are of your majesty."
"Then I am dealing with a Girondist?" queried the monarch, smiling.
"With a patriot, and faithful subject of his king."
Louis bit his thick lips.
"Was it to serve the king and the country the more efficaciously that
you refused to be foreign minister for a time?"
"Sire, I replied that I preferred, to being any kind of minister, the
command promised me. I am a soldier, not a statesman."
"I have been assured, on the contrary, that you are both," observed the
sovereign.
"I am praised too highly, sire."
"It was on that assurance that I insisted."
"Yes, sire; but in spite of my great regret, I was obliged to persist
in refusing."
"Why refuse?"
"Because it is a crisis. It has upset De Narbonne and compromises
Lessart. Any man has the right to keep out of employment or be
employed, according to what he thinks he is fitted for. Now, my liege,
I am good for something or for nothing. If the latter, leave me in my
obscurity. Who knows for what fate you draw me forth? If I am good for
something, do not give me power for an instant, the premier of a day,
but place some solid footing under me that I may be your support at
another day. Our affairs--your majesty will pardon me already regarding
his business as mine--our affairs are in too great disfavor abroad for
courts to deal with an _ad interim_ ministry; this interregnum--you
will excuse the frankness of an old soldier"--no one was less frank
than Dumouriez, but he wanted to appear so at times--"this interval
will be a blunder against which the House will revolt, and it will make
me disliked there; more, I must say that it will injure the king, who
will seem still to cling to his former Cabinet, and only be waiting for
a chance to bring it back."
"Were that my intention, do you not believe it possible, sir?"
"I believe, sire, that it is full time to drop the past."
"And make myself a Jacobin, as you have said to my valet, Laporte?"
"Forsooth, did your majesty this, it would perplex all the parties, and
the Jacobins most of all."
"Why not straightway advise me to don the red cap?"
"I wish I saw you in it," said Dumouriez.
For an instant the king eyed with distrust the man who had thus replied
to him; and then he resumed:
"So you want a permanent office?"
"I am wishing nothing at all, only ready to receive the king's orders;
still, I should prefer them to send me to the frontier to retaining me
in town."
"But if I give you the order to stay, and the foreign office portfolio
in permanency, what will you say?"
"That your majesty has dispelled your prejudices against me," returned
the general, with a smile.
"Well, yes, entirely, general; you are my premier."
"Sire, I am devoted to your service; but--"
"Restrictions?"
"Explanations, sire. The first minister's place is not what it was.
Without ceasing to be your majesty's faithful servant on entering the
post, I become the man of the nation. From this day, do not expect
the language my predecessors used; I must speak according to the
Constitution and liberty. Confined to my duties, I shall not play the
courtier; I shall not have the time, and I drop all etiquette so as to
better serve the king. I shall only work with you in private or at the
council--and I warn you that it will be hard work."
"Hard work--why?"
"Why, it is plain; almost all your diplomatic corps are
anti-revolutionists. I must urge you to change them, cross your tastes
on the new choice, propose officials of whom your majesty never so much
as heard the names, and others who will displease."
"In which case?" quickly interrupted Louis.
"Then I shall obey when your majesty's repugnance is too strong and
well-founded, as you are the master; but if your choice is suggested
by your surroundings, and is clearly made to get me into trouble, I
shall entreat your majesty to find a successor for me. Sire, think of
the dreadful dangers besieging your throne, and that one must have the
public confidence in support; sire, this depends on you."
"Let me stay you a moment; I have long pondered over these dangers."
He stretched out his hand to the portrait of Charles I. of England,
by Vandyke, and continued, while wiping his forehead with his
handkerchief: "This would remind me, if I were to forget them. It is
the same situation, with similar dangers; perhaps the scaffold of
Whitehall is erecting on City Hall Place."
"You are looking too far ahead, my lord."
"Only to the horizon. In this event, I shall march to the scaffold
as Charles I. did, not perhaps as knightly, but at least as like a
Christian. Proceed, general."
Dumouriez was checked by this firmness, which he had not expected.
"Sire, allow me to change the subject."
"As you like; I only wish to show that I am not daunted by the prospect
they try to frighten me with, but that I am prepared for even this
emergency."
"If I am still regarded as your Minister of Foreign Affairs, I will
bring four dispatches to the first consul. I notify your majesty that
they will not resemble those of previous issue in style or principles;
they will suit the circumstances. If this first piece of work suits
your majesty, I will continue; if not, my carriage will be waiting to
carry me to serve king and country on the border; and, whatever may be
said about my diplomatic ability," added Dumouriez, "war is my true
element, and the object of my labors these thirty-six years."
"Wait," said the other, as he bowed before going out; "we agree on one
point, but there are six more to settle."
"My colleagues?"
"Yes; I do not want you to say that you are hampered by such a one.
Choose your Cabinet, sir."
"Sire, you are fixing grave responsibility on me."
"I believe I am meeting your wishes by putting it on you."
"Sire, I know nobody at Paris save one, Lacoste, whom I propose for the
navy office."
"Lacoste? A clerk in the naval stores, I believe?" questioned the king.
"Who resigned rather than connive at some foul play."
"That's a good recommendation. What about the others?'"
"I must consult Petion, Brissot, Condorcet--"
"The Girondists, in short?"
"Yes, sire."
"Let the Gironde pass; we shall see if they will get us out of the
ditch better than the other parties."
"We have still to learn if the four dispatches will suit."
"We might learn that this evening; we can hold an extraordinary
council, composed of yourself, Grave, and Gerville--Duport has
resigned. But do not go yet; I want to commit you."
He had hardly spoken before the queen and Princess Elizabeth stood in
the room, holding prayer-books.
"Ladies," said the king, "this is General Dumouriez, who promises to
serve us well, and will arrange a new Cabinet with us this evening."
Dumouriez bowed, while the queen looked hard at the little man who was
to exercise so much influence over the affairs of France.
"Do you know Doctor Gilbert?" she asked. "If not, make his acquaintance
as an excellent prophet. Three months ago he foretold that you would
be Count de Narbonne's successor."
The main doors opened, for the king was going to mass. Behind him
Dumouriez went out; but the courtiers shunned him as though he had the
leprosy.
"I told you I should get you committed," whispered the monarch.
"Committed to you, but not to the aristocracy," returned the warrior;
"it is a fresh favor the king grants me." Whereupon he retired.
At the appointed hour he returned with the four dispatches
promised--for Spain, Prussia, England, and Austria. He read them to
the king and Messieurs Grave and Gerville, but he guessed that he had
another auditor behind the tapestry by its shaking.
The new ruler spoke in the king's name, but in the sense of the
Constitution, without threats, but also without weakness. He discussed
the true interests of each power relatively to the French Revolution.
As each had complained of the Jacobin pamphlets, he ascribed the
despicable insults to the freedom of the press, a sun which made weeds
to grow as well as good grain to flourish. Lastly, he demanded peace
in the name of a free nation, of which the king was the hereditary
representative.
The listening king lent fresh interest to each paper.
"I never heard the like, general," he said, when the reading was over.
"That is how ministers should speak and write in the name of rulers,"
observed Gerville.
"Well, give me the papers; they shall go off to-morrow," the king said.
"Sire, the messengers are waiting in the palace yard," said Dumouriez.
"I wanted to have a duplicate made to show the queen," objected the
king, with marked hesitation.
"I foresaw the wish, and have copies here," replied Dumouriez.
"Send off the dispatches," rejoined the king.
The general took them to the door, behind which an aid was waiting.
Immediately the gallop of several horses was heard leaving the
Tuileries together.
"Be it so," said the king, replying to his mind, as the meaning sounds
died away. "Now, about your Cabinet?"
"Monsieur Gerville pleads that his health will not allow him to remain,
and Monsieur Grave, stung by a criticism of Madame Roland, wishes to
hold office until his successor is found. I therefore pray your majesty
to receive Colonel Servan, an honest man in the full acceptation of the
words, of a solid material, pure manners, philosophical austerity, and
a heart like a woman's, withal an enlightened patriot, a courageous
soldier, and a vigilant statesman."
"Colonel Servan is taken. So we have three ministers: Dumouriez for the
Foreign Office, Servan for War, and Lacoste for the Navy. Who shall be
in the Treasury?"
"Clavieres, if you will. He is a man with great financial friends and
supreme skill in handling money."
"Be it so. As for the Law lord?"
"A lawyer of Bordeaux has been recommended to me--Duranthon."
"Belonging to the Gironde party, of course?"
"Yes, sire, but enlightened, upright, a very good citizen, though slow
and feeble; we will infuse fire into him and be strong enough for all
of us."
"The Home Department remains."
"The general opinion is that this will be fitted to Roland."
"You mean Madame Roland?"
"To the Roland couple. I do not know them, but I am assured that the
one resembles a character of Plutarch and the other a woman from Livy."
"Do you know that your Cabinet is already called the Breechless
Ministry?"
"I accept the nickname, with the hope that it will be found without
_breaches_."
"We will hold the council with them the day after to-morrow."
General Dumouriez was going away with his colleagues, when a valet
called him aside and said that the king had something more to say to
him.
"The king or the queen?" he questioned.
"It is the queen, sir; but she thought there was no need for those
gentlemen to know that."
And Weber--for this was the Austrian foster-brother of Marie
Antoinette--conducted the general to the queen's apartments, where he
introduced him as the person sent for.
Dumouriez entered, with his heart beating more violently than when he
led a charge or mounted the deadly breach. He fully understood that he
had never stood in worse danger. The road he traveled was strewn with
corpses, and he might stumble over the dead reputations of premiers,
from Calonne to Lafayette.
The queen was walking up and down, with a very red face. She advanced
with a majestic and irritated air as he stopped on the sill where the
door had been closed behind him.
"Sir, you are all-powerful at this juncture," she said, breaking the
ice with her customary vivacity. "But it is by favor of the populace,
who soon shatter their idols. You are said to have much talent. Have
the wit, to begin with, to understand that the king and I will not
suffer novelties. Your constitution is a pneumatic machine; royalty
stifles in it for want of air. So I have sent for you to learn, before
you go further, whether you side with us or with the Jacobins."
"Madame," responded Dumouriez, "I am pained by this confidence,
although I expected it, from the impression that your majesty was
behind the tapestry."
"Which means that you have your reply ready?"
"It is that I stand between king and country, but before all I belong
to the country."
"The country?" sneered the queen. "Is the king no longer anything, that
everybody belongs to the country and none to him?"
"Excuse me, lady; the king is always the king, but he has taken oath
to the Constitution, and from that day he should be one of the first
slaves of the Constitution."
"A compulsory oath, and in no way binding, sir!"
Dumouriez held his tongue for a space, and, being a consummate actor,
he regarded the speaker with deep pity.
"Madame," he said, at length, "allow me to say that your safety, the
king's, your children's, all, are attached to this Constitution which
you deride, and which will save you, if you consent to be saved by it.
I should serve you badly, as well as the king, if I spoke otherwise to
you."
The queen interrupted him with an imperious gesture.
"Oh, sir, sir, I assure you that you are on the wrong path!" she
said; adding, with an indescribable accent of threat: "Take heed for
yourself!"
"Madame," replied Dumouriez, in a perfectly calm tone, "I am over fifty
years of age; my life has been traversed with perils, and on taking the
ministry I said to myself that ministerial responsibility was not the
slightest danger I ever ran."
"Fy, sir!" returned the queen, slapping her hands together; "you have
nothing more to do than to slander me?"
"Slander you, madame?"
"Yes; do you want me to explain the meaning of the words I used? It is
that I am capable of having you assassinated. For shame, sir!"
Tears escaped from her eyes. Dumouriez had gone as far as she wanted;
he knew that some sensitive fiber remained in that indurated heart.
"Lord forbid I should so insult my queen!" he cried. "The nature of
your majesty is too grand and noble for the worst of her enemies to be
inspired with such an idea, she has given heroic proofs which I have
admired, and which attached me to her."
"Then excuse me, and lend me your arm. I am so weak that I often fear I
shall fall in a swoon."
Turning pale, she indeed drooped her head backward. Was it reality, or
only one of the wiles in which this fearful Medea was so skilled? Keen
though the general was, he was deceived; or else, more cunning than the
enchantress, he feigned to be caught.
"Believe me, madame," he said, "that I have no interest in cheating
you. I abhor anarchy and crime as much as yourself. Believe, too,
that I have experience, and am better placed than your majesty to see
events. What is transpiring is not an intrigue of the Duke of Orleans,
as you are led to think; not the effect of Pitt's hatred, as you have
supposed; not even the outcome of popular impulse, but the almost
unanimous insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses.
I grant that there is in all this great hates which fan the flames.
Leave the lunatics and the villains on one side; let us see nothing in
this revolution in progress but the king and the nation, all tending
to separate them brings about their mutual ruin. I come, my lady, to
work my utmost to reunite them; aid me, instead of thwarting me. You
mistrust me? Am I an obstacle to your anti-revolutionary projects? Tell
me so, madame, I will forthwith hand my resignation to the king, and go
and wail the fate of my country and its ruler in some nook."
"No, no," said the queen; "remain, and excuse me."
"Do you ask me to excuse you? Oh, madame, I entreat you not to humble
yourself thus."
"Why should I not be humble? Am I still a queen? am I yet treated like
a woman?"
Going to the window, she opened it in spite of the evening coolness;
the moon silvered the leafless trees of the palace gardens.
"Are not the air and the sunshine free to all? Well, these are refused
to me; I dare not put my head out of window, either on the street or
the gardens. Yesterday I did look out on the yard, when a Guards gunner
hailed me with an insulting nickname, and said: 'How I should like to
carry your head on a bayonet-point.' This morning, I opened the garden
window. A man standing on a chair was reading infamous stuff against
me; a priest was dragged to a fountain to be ducked; and meanwhile,
as though such scenes were matters of course, children were sailing
their balloons and couples were strolling tranquilly. What times we are
living in--what a place to live in--what a people! And would you have
me still believe myself a queen, and even feel like a woman?"
She threw herself on a sofa, and hid her face in her hands.
Dumouriez dropped on one knee, and taking up the hem of her dress
respectfully, he kissed it.
"Lady," he said, "from the time when I undertake this struggle, you
will become the mighty queen and the happy woman once more, or I shall
leave my life on the battle-field."
Rising, he saluted the lady and hurried out. She watched him go with a
hopeless look, repeating:
"The mighty queen? Perhaps, thanks to your sword--for it is possible;
but the happy woman--never, never, never!"
She let her head fall between the sofa cushions, muttering the name
dearer every day and more painful:
"Charny!"
The Dumouriez Cabinet might be called one of war.
On the first of March, the Emperor Leopold died in the midst of his
Italian harem, slain by self-compounded aphrodisiacs. The queen, who
had read in some lampoon that a penny pie would settle the monarchy,
and who had called Dr. Gilbert in to get an antidote, cried aloud that
her brother was poisoned. With him passed all the halting policy of
Austria.
Francis II., who mounted the throne, was of mixed Italian and German
blood. An Austrian born at Florence, he was weak, violent, and tricky.
The priests reckoned him an honest man; his hard and bigoted soul
hid its duplicity under a rosy face of dreadful sameness. He walked
like a stage ghost; he gave his daughter to a conqueror rather than
part with his estate, and then stabbed him in the back at his first
retreating step in the snows. Francis II. remains in history the tyrant
of the Leads of Venice and the Spitzberg dungeons, and the torturer of
Andryane and Silvio Pellico.
This was the protector of the French fugitives, the ally of Prussia
and the enemy of France. He held Embassador Noailles as a prisoner at
Vienna.
The French embassador to Berlin, Segur, was preceded by a rumor that he
expected to gain the secrets of the King of Prussia by making love to
his mistresses--this King of Prussia was a lady-killer! Segur presented
himself at the same time as the envoy from the self-exiled princes at
Coblentz.
The king turned his back on the French representative, and asked
pointedly after the health of the Prince of Artois.
These were the two ostensible foes; the hidden ones were Spain, Russia,
and England. The chief of the coalition was to be the King of Sweden,
that dwarf in giant's armor whom Catherine II. held up in her hand.
With the ascension of Francis, the diplomatic note came: Austria was to
rule in France, Avignon was to be restored to the pope, and things in
France were to go back to where they stood in June, 1789.
This note evidently agreed with the secret wishes of the king and the
queen. Dumouriez laughed at it. But he took it to the king.
As much as Marie Antoinette, the woman for extreme measures, desired
a war which she believed one of deliverance for her, the king feared
it, as the man for the medium, slowness, wavering, and crooked policy.
Indeed, suppose a victory in the war, he would be at the mercy of the
victorious general; suppose a defeat, and the people would hold him
responsible, cry treason, and rush on the palace!
In short, should the enemy penetrate to Paris, what would it bring?
The king's brother, Count Provence, who aimed to be regent of the
realm. The result of the return of the runaway princes would be the
king deposed, Marie Antoinette pronounced an adulteress, and the royal
children proclaimed, perhaps, illegitimate.
The king trusted foreigners, but not the princes of his own blood and
kingdom.
On reading the note, he comprehended that the hour to draw the sword
for France had come, and that there was no receding.
Who was to bear the flag of the revolution? Lafayette, who had lost his
fame by massacring the populace on the Paris parade-ground; Luckner,
who was known only by the mischief he wrought in the Seven Years' War,
and old Rochambeau, the French naval hero in the American Revolution,
who was for defensive war, and was vexed to see Dumouriez promote young
blood over his head without benefiting by his experience.
It was expected that Lafayette would be victorious in the north; when
he would be commander-in-chief, Dumouriez would be the Minister of War;
they would cast down the red cap and crush Jacobins and Girondists with
the two hands.
The counter-revolution was ready.
But what were Robespierre and the Invisibles doing--that great secret
society which held the agitators in its grasp as Jove holds the
writhing thunder-bolts? Robespierre was in the shade, and many asserted
that he was bribed by the royal family.
At the outset all went well for the Royalists; Lafayette's lieutenants,
two Royalists, Dillon and Biron, headed a rout before Lille; the
scouts, dragoons, still the most aristocratic arm of the service,
turned tail and started a panic. The runaways accused the captains of
treachery, and murdered Dillon and other officers. The Gironde accused
the queen and Court party of organizing the flight.
The popular clamor compelled Marie Antoinette to let the Constitutional
Guard be abolished--another name for a royal life-guard--and it was
superseded by the Paris National Guards.
Oh! Charny, Charny, where were you?--you who, at Varennes, nearly
rescued the queen with but three hundred horsemen--what would you not
have done at Paris with six thousand desperadoes?
Charny was happy, forgetting everything in the arms of his countess.