monarchy, but not to the king. He was ready to serve the Count of
Provence, or even the Duke of Orleans, but not a feeble executive; and
he judged that, as things were going, there would soon be no king to
serve. Through his friend La Marck he had attempted to terrify the
Court, and to induce them to accept his services. La Marck had
represented to the queen the immense value of the aid of such a man;
and the queen had replied, decisively, that she hoped they would
never fall so low as to need help from Mirabeau.
He defended the king's answer on the ground he had held before, that
the Declaration ought to follow the Constitution, and ought not to
precede it. Speaking of the scene at the officers' dinner, he said
that the king was inviolable--the king, and no other person. The
allusion was so clear that the royalists were reduced to silence. The
Assembly resolved that the king should be requested to give his
assent, unconditionally. Before the deputation had left, Maillard
entered the Assembly.
Mirabeau had received early notice of the intended attack by a large
body of Parisians, and had advised Mounier to adjourn in time. Mounier
fancied that Mirabeau was afraid, and said that every man must die at
his post. When Maillard appeared with a few women, he allowed him to
speak. As the orator of the women whom he had brought from the Hotel
de Ville, Maillard asked for cheap bread, denounced the artificial
famine and the Royal Guards. When rebuked by Mounier for using the
term "citizens," he made a very effective point by saying that any man
who was not proud to be a citizen ought at once to be expelled. But he
admitted that he did not believe all the imputations that were made by
his followers; and he obtained a cheer for the Royal Guard by
exhibiting a regimental cocked hat with the tricolor cockade.
The Assembly gave way, and sent Mounier at the head of a deputation to
invite the king's attention to the demands of his afflicted subjects.
Whilst the deputies, with some of the women, stood in the rain,
waiting for the gates to be opened, a voice in the crowd exclaimed
that there was no want of bread in the days when they had a king, but
now that they had twelve hundred they were starving. So that there
were some whose animosity was not against the king, but against the
elect of the people.
The king at once conceded all that Mounier asked for his strange
companions, and they went away contented. Then their friends outside
fell upon them, and accused them of having taken bribes; and again it
became apparent that two currents had joined, and that some had
honestly come for bread, and some had not. Those who had obtained the
king's order for provisioning Paris, and were satisfied, went back to
bring it to the Hotel de Ville. They were sent home in a royal
carriage. Maillard went with them. It was fully understood that with
all his violence and crudity he had played a difficult part well.
Mounier remained at the Palace. He was not eager to revisit the scene
of his humiliation, where vociferous women had occupied the benches,
asking for supper, and bent on kissing the President. He wished the
king now to accept the Rights of Man, without waiting for the
appointed deputation from the Assembly. Although they were in part his
work, he was no longer wedded to them as they stood, and thought, like
Mirabeau, that they were an impediment. But a crisis had arrived, and
this point might be surrendered, to save the very existence of
monarchy. He waited during many eventful hours, and returned after ten
at night to find that the bishop of Langres, disgusted with the scene
before him, had adjourned the Assembly. Mounier instantly convoked
them, by beat of drum. He had other things to speak of besides the
Rights of Man; for he knew that an invader more formidable than
Maillard with his Amazonian escort was approaching.
For the later weeks of September Lafayette had cast his influence on
the side of those who designed to strengthen the executive. He had
restrained his men when they threatened to come to support the
National Assembly. To yield to that movement was to acknowledge
defeat, and loss of available popularity and power. When he came to
the Hotel de Ville and found that his army was resolved to go, he
opposed the project, and for many hours held his ground. The men whom
he commanded were not interested on their own account in the daily
allowance of food. Their anger was with the Royal Guards, and their
purpose was to take their place. Then there would be less danger of
resistance to the decrees, or of flight to the provinces.
Lafayette could not appear before the king at their head without
evident hostility and revolt; for their temper was threatening, and he
was rapidly losing control. By delay and postponement he gained
something. Instead of arriving as an assailant, he came as a
deliverer. When he remonstrated, his soldiers said that they meant no
injury to the king, but that he must obey or abdicate. They would make
their general Regent; but if he refused to put himself at their head,
they would take his life. They told him that he had commanded long
enough, and now he must follow. He did not yield until the tumult had
risen high, and the strain on his authority was breaking.
Early in the afternoon the watchers who followed the march of the
women from the rare church towers reported that they had crossed the
Seine without opposition. It was known, therefore, that the road was
open, that the approach of the army would be under cover of the
contingent that had preceded, that there was no danger of collision.
About four o'clock Lafayette sent word to the Hotel de Ville--for his
men would not allow him out of sight--that it was time to give him his
orders, as he could not prevent the departure. They were brought to
him where he sat in the saddle in the Place de Greve, and he read them
with an expression of the utmost alarm. They contained all that
ambition could desire, for the four points which he was directed to
insist on made him Dictator of France. But it was added that the
orders were given because he demanded them. Lafayette never produced
that document; and he left it to the commissaries sent with him to
urge the one demand in which he was interested, the establishment of
the Court at Paris.
He started about five o'clock, with nearly 20,000 men. From the
barrier by which he left Paris he sent a note in pencil to reassure
the Government as to his intentions. It was a march of seven hours.
At the passage of the Seine, he sent on an officer with further
explanations; and he declared that he was coming under compulsion, and
would have gone back if the bridge had been held in force. Before
Versailles he halted his men, and made them take the oath of fidelity
to the king and the Assembly.
The news of his coming had been received with terror. A man, dressed
like a workman, who had been on the march with him, hurried forward to
the Palace, and was at once admitted. It was the future Duke de
Richelieu, twice, in after years, Prime Minister. What he told of the
mood of the men added to the alarm. Another Council was held, at which
the majority were in favour of flight. "Sir," said St. Priest, "if you
go to Paris, it may cost you your crown." "That advice," said Necker,
"may cost you your head." Nobody doubted that flight signified civil
war. But St. Priest carried his point, and rode off to prepare
Rambouillet for the royal family. As he knew that the decision was the
gravest that could be taken, and that Necker's words were probably
true, he dropped into a walk, and was overtaken by his wife. From her
he learnt that the hazardous decision had been reversed, and that the
king would remain at Versailles. His interview with the deputation of
women had had a momentary success, and provoked cries of "Vive le
Roi!" Thereupon Necker recovered the lost ground, with the aid of
Liancourt, who first brought the king to Paris in the summer. The
carriages, which were ready, were countermanded. Later on, they were
again sent for, but this time they were stopped by the people.
The confusion of counsel was such that one of the ministers afterwards
declared that, if the Duke of Orleans had appeared and pressed his
demands, he would have obtained everything. It is said that the
managers of his party saw this, and showed him his opportunity, during
the panic that preceded Lafayette. It is even stated that they brought
him to the very door of the council chamber, and that he flinched,
with the regency within reach of his hand. When the National Guard
arrived, his chances vanished.
Lafayette never was able to prove the Duke's complicity in the crime
of that night. When the Duke asked him what evidence he had, he
replied that if he had had evidence he would have sent him for trial;
but that he had enough reason for suspicion to require that he should
leave the country. Thrice the Duke, forcibly encouraged by Mirabeau,
refused to go. Thrice the general insisted, and the Duke started for
England. Mirabeau exclaimed that he would not have him for a lackey. A
long inquiry was held, and ended in nothing. The man who knew those
times best, Roederer afterwards assured Napoleon that, if there was an
Orleanist conspiracy, Orleans himself was not in it.
The women who invaded Versailles were followed by groups of men of the
same description as those who committed the atrocities which followed
the fall of the Bastille. As night fell they became formidable,
skirmished with the guard, and tried to make their way into the
Palace. At first, when his captains asked for orders to disperse the
crowd, Lewis, against the advice of his sister, replied that he did
not make war on women. But the men were armed, and evidently
dangerous. The command, at Versailles, was in the hands of d'Estaing,
the admiral of the American war, who at this critical moment showed no
capacity. He refused to let his men defend themselves, and ordered
them to withdraw. St. Priest grew impatient. Much depended on their
having repressed the riot without waiting to be rescued by the army of
Paris. He summoned the admiral to repel force by force. D'Estaing
replied that he waited the king's orders. The king gave none. The
minister then said: "When the king gives no orders, a general must
judge and act for himself." Again the king was silent. Later, the same
day, he adopted the words of St. Priest, and made them his own. He
said that the Count d'Estaing ought to have acted on his own
responsibility. No orders are needed by a man of spirit, who
understands his duty. It was the constant wish of Lewis XVI. to be in
the hands of stronger men, who would know how to save him in spite of
himself.
Mounier had obtained his unqualified assent to the Rights of Man, and
urged him to seize the moment to take refuge in some faithful
province. It was the dangerous, but the honourable course, and there
was hope that the Assembly, standing by him, would prevent an outbreak
of war. He conveyed the royal message to the Assembly, at a night
sitting, much hindered by the continued presence of the visitors from
Paris. Just then Lafayette arrived, with his overwhelming force. He
assured Mounier and his friends that the men he commanded would now be
easy to satisfy. But he said nothing of the real purpose of his
presence there. From the Assembly he passed on to the king. Leaving
his 20,000 men behind him in the darkness, he appeared at the Palace
gate, accompanied only by the commissaries from the Hotel de Ville.
The Swiss behind the bars warned him to reflect what he was about to
do. For he was entering a place crowded with men passionately excited
against the revolutionary general, who, whether he came to save or to
destroy, was no longer a subject, but a master. The general told them
to let him in. As he passed, a voice called out, "There goes
Cromwell." Lafayette stood still and answered, "Cromwell would not
have come alone." Madame de Stael watched him as he entered the royal
presence. His countenance, she says, was calm. Nobody ever saw it
otherwise. Lewis received him with a sensation of relief, for he felt
that he was safe. At that moment the sovereign indeed had perished,
but the man was safe. The language of Lafayette was respectful and
satisfactory. He left to his companions the disagreeable duty of
imposing terms, and they exposed to the king the object of this
strange interposition of the middle class in arms. He replied that he
had already sanctioned the Rights of Man, that the minister would
arrange with the municipality for the provisioning of Paris, that he
himself would trust his person to the custody of the National Guard.
The fourth, and only essential matter, the transfer of the Court to
Paris, was left unsettled. That was to be the work reserved for the
morrow. Word was sent to the Hotel de Ville that all was well.
Lafayette, holding the issue in his hands, betrayed no impatience, and
abstained from needless urging. His men undertook the outer line of
defence, but the Palace itself was left to the Royal Guards. The king
did not at once realise the position, and attempted to combine the old
order with the new. For the remainder of the night there was a divided
command and an uncertain responsibility. Between Lafayette outside and
D'Estaing within, there was an unguarded door.
The general believed that he had done enough, and would easily gather
the ripe fruit in the morning. Having informed the President of the
Assembly, still ostensibly sitting, that order was restored, he went
home to bed. He had had a long and trying day. His rest was destined
to be short. Before daybreak a small band of ruffians, of the kind
which the Revolution furnished as a proper instrument for
conspirators, made their way by the garden entrance into the Palace.
Those who aimed at the life of the king came upon a guard-room full of
sleeping soldiers, and retired. The real object of popular hatred was
the queen, and those who came for her were not so easily turned from
their design. Two men on guard who fired upon them were dragged into
the street and butchered, and their heads were borne as trophies to
the Palais Royal. Their comrades fled for safety to the interior of
the Palace. But one, who was posted at the door of Marie Antoinette,
stood his ground, and his name, Miomandre de Sainte Marie, lives as a
household word. One of the queen's ladies, whose sister has left a
record of the scene, was awakened by the noise and opened the door.
She saw the sentry, his face streaming with blood, holding a crowd at
bay. He called to her to save the queen and fell, with the lock of a
musket beaten into his brain. She instantly fastened the lock, roused
the queen, and hurried her, without stopping to dress, to the king's
apartment.
The National Guard from Paris, who were outside, had not protected the
two first victims; but then they interfered, and the Gardes
Francaises, who had been the first mutineers, and had become the solid
nucleus of the Parisian army, poured into the Palace. As they had made
their expedition of the day before for no other purpose than to drive
the royal troops away and to take their place, none could tell what
the meeting of the two corps would be, and the king's men barricaded
themselves against the new comers. But an officer reminded the Gardes
Francaises of the day when the two regiments had withstood the
English, side by side, and theirs had been rescued by the Gardes du
Corps. So they called out, "Remember Fontenoy"; and the others
answered the challenge and unbarred the door.
By the time that Lafayette appeared, roused from untimely slumber, his
men were masters of the Palace, and stood between the royal family and
the raging mob of baffled murderers. He made the captured guardsmen
safe; but although he was in supreme command, he did not restore order
outside. The last of the four points he had been instructed to obtain,
the removal of the Court to his custody at the Tuileries and his own
permanent elevation to a position superior to the throne, was not yet
conceded. Until that was settled, the loyalty of his forces was
restrained. Nobody was arrested. Men whose hands were red with the
blood of Varicourt and Miomandre were allowed to defy justice, and a
furious crowd was left for hours without molestation under the windows
of the king. The only cry left for them to raise was "Paris," and it
was sure in time to do its work. The king could not escape, for
Lafayette held every gate. He could not resist, for Lafayette
commanded every soldier. The general never pressed the point. He was
too cautious to attend the council where the matter was considered, as
if the freedom of choice was left. This time Necker had his way, and
he came forward and announced to the assembled people that the Court
was about to move to Paris. Lewis, who had wandered, helpless and
silent, between his chair and the balcony, spoke at last, and
confirmed it.
In that moment of triumph Lafayette showed himself a man of instinct
and of action. The multitude had sufficiently served his purpose; but
their own passions were not appeased, and the queen personified to
them all the antagonistic and unpopular forces. The submission of the
king was a foregone conclusion: not so the reconciliation of the
queen. He said to her, "What are your Majesty's intentions?" She
answered, "I know my fate, I mean to die at the feet of the king."
Then Lafayette led her forward, in the face of the storm, and, as not
a word could be heard, he respectfully kissed her hand. The populace
saw and cheered. Under his protectorate, peace was made between the
Court and the democracy.
In all these transactions, which determined the future of France, the
Assembly had no share. They had had no initiative and no counsel.
Their President had not known how to prevent the irruption of the
women; he had supplied them with bread, and had been unable to turn
them out until the National Guard arrived. After two in the morning,
when he heard that all was quiet at the Palace, he adjourned the
sitting. Next day he proposed that they should attend the king in a
body; but Mirabeau would not allow it to be done. One hundred deputies
gave a futile escort to the royal family, and the Assembly followed
soon after. The power was passing from them to the disciplined people
of Paris, and beyond them and their commander to the men who managed
the masses. Their reign had lasted from July 16 to October 6.
It took seven hours to bring the royal family from Versailles to
Paris, at a foot pace, surrounded by the victorious women, who cried:
"We bring the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy." And they
were right. Supplies became abundant; and the sudden change encouraged
many to believe that the scarcity had not been due to economic causes.
X
MIRABEAU
The transfer of the Government to Paris, which degraded and obscured
the king, at once made the queen the foremost person in the State.
Those days of October are an epoch in her character as well as in her
life, and we must turn our thoughts to her, who had so much influence
and so much sorrow, and who beyond all women in European history,
excepting one, has charmed and saddened mankind. She had proved
inferior to her position during the years of her prosperity, and had
disgraced herself, even in her mother's eyes, by her share in the
dismissal of Turgot. The Court was filled with stories injurious to
her good name, and the calumny of the diamond necklace showed so
clearly what a Prince of the Church thought her capable of, staking
his existence on his belief, that her own sister suspected her, and
they remained long estranged. Her frivolity was unchecked by religion;
but a year or two before her misfortunes began, she became more
serious; and when they were about to end, a priest found his way into
the prison, and she was prepared to die. At first, she was dreaded as
the most illiberal influence near the throne, and the Parliament of
Paris denounced her as the occult promoter of oppression. In the
decisive days of June 1789 she induced Lewis to sacrifice to the cause
of aristocracy the opportune reforms that might have retrieved his
fortunes. The emigration left her to confront alone the vengeance of
the people. The terrific experience of October, when she saw death so
near, and was made to feel so keenly the hatred she inspired, sobered
in a moment the levity of her life, and brought out higher qualities.
It was on that day that she began to remind those around her whose
daughter she was. Ignorant as she was and passionate, she could never
become a safe adviser. But she acquired decision, vigour, and
self-command, and was able sometimes to strengthen the wavering mind
of her husband. Too brave to be easily frightened, she refused at
first the proffered aid of Mirabeau; and when, too late, she bent her
pride to ask for it, she acted with her eyes open, without confidence
or hope. For the surging forces of the day, for the idea that might
have saved her, the idea of a government uniting the best properties
of a monarchy with the best properties of a republic, she had neither
sympathy nor understanding. Yet she was not wedded to the maxims that
had made the greatness of her race, and the enmity of the princes and
the _emigres_ saved her from the passions of the old _regime_. Conde
spoke of her as a democrat; and she would have been glad to exchange
the institutions of 1791 for something like the British constitution
as it existed in those Tory days. She perished through her insincerity
more than through the traditional desire for power. When the king was
beheaded, the Prince Bishop of Bamberg and Wuerzburg, reputed the most
sagacious and enlightened among the prelates of the empire, was heard
to say, "It ought to have been the queen." We who see farther may
allow the retribution that befell her follies and her errors to arrest
our judgment.
Marie Antoinette's negotiation with Mirabeau, and the memorable
endeavour of Mirabeau to restore the constitutional throne, is the
central feature in the period now before us.
By the compulsory removal to Paris the democracy became preponderant.
They were strengthened by the support of organized anarchy outside,
and by the disappearance of their chief opponents within. Mounier was
the first to go. The outrage at Versailles had occurred while he
presided, and he resigned his seat with indignation. He attempted to
rouse his own province against the Assembly, which had betrayed its
mandate, and renounced its constituents; but Dauphine, the home and
basis of his influence, rejected him, and he went into exile. His
example was followed by Lally Tollendal and a large number of moderate
men, who despaired of their country, and who, by declining further
responsibility, helped to precipitate the mischief they foresaw.
The constitutional cause, already opposed by Conservatives, was now
deserted by the Liberals. Malouet remained at his post. He had been
less prominent and less eager than Mounier, and he was not so easily
discouraged. The Left were now able to carry out in every department
of the State their interpretation of the Rights of Man. They were
governed mainly by two ideas. They distrusted the king as a
malefactor, convicted of the unpardonable sin of absolutism, whom it
was impossible to subject to too much limitation and control; and they
were persuaded that the securities for individual freedom which are
requisite under a personal government are superfluous in a popular
community conducting its affairs by discussion and compromise and
adjustment, in which the only force is public opinion. The two views
tended to the same practical result--to strengthen the legislative
power, which is the nation, and weaken the executive power, which is
the king. To arrest this tendency was the last effort that consumed
the life of Mirabeau. The danger that he dreaded was no longer the
power of the king, but the weakness of the king.