struggle. On April 1 they assailed the Convention, and were repulsed.
A number of the worst were thrown into prison. A more formidable
attack was made on May 20. For hours the Convention was in the power
of the mob, and a deputy was killed in attempting to protect the
president. Members who belonged to the Mountain carried a series of
decrees which gratified the populace. Late at night the Assembly was
rescued. The tumultuous votes were declared non-existent, and those
who had moved them were sent before a military commission. They had
not prompted the sedition, and it was urged that they acted as they
did in order to appease it, and to save the lives of their opponents.
Romme, author of the republican Calendar, was the most remarkable of
these men; and there is some doubt as to their guilt, and the legality
of their sentence. One of them had been visited by his wife, and she
left the means of suicide in his hands. As they left the court, each
of them stabbed himself, and passed the knife in silence to his
neighbour. Before the guards were aware of anything, three were dead,
and the others were dragged, covered with blood, to the place of
execution. It was the 17th of June, and the Girondins were supreme.
Sixty-two deputies had been decreed in the course of the reaction, and
the domination of the Jacobin mob, that is, government by equality
instead of liberty, was at an end. The middle class had recovered
power, and it was very doubtful whether these new masters of France
were willing again to risk the experiment of a republic. That
experiment had proved a dreadful failure, and it was more easy and
obvious to seek relief in the refuge of monarchy than on the
quicksands of fluttering majorities.
The royalists were wreaking vengeance on their enemies in the south,
by what was afterwards known as the White Terror; and they showed
themselves in force at Paris. For a time, every measure helped them
that was taken against the Montagnards, and people used publicly to
say that 8 and 9 are 17, that is, that the revolution of 1789 would
end by the accession of Lewis XVII. Between Girondin and royalist
there was the blood of the king, and the regicides knew what they must
expect from a restoration. The party remained irreconcilable, and
opposed the idea. Their struggle now was not with the Mountain, which
had been laid low, but with their old adversaries the reforming
adherents of Monarchy. But there were some leading men who, from
conviction or, which would be more significant, from policy began to
compound with the exiled princes. Tallien and Cambaceres of the
Mountain, Isnard and Lanjuinais of the Gironde, Boissy d'Anglas of the
Plain, the successful general Pichegru, and the best negotiator in
France Barthelemy, were all known, or suspected, to be making terms
with the Count of Provence at Verona. It was commonly reported that
the Committee was wavering, and that the Constitution would turn
towards monarchy. Breton and Vendean were ready to rise once more,
Pitt was preparing vast armaments to help them; above all, there was a
young pretender who had never made an enemy, whose early sufferings
claimed sympathy from royalist and republican, and who shared no
responsibility for _emigre_ and invader, whom, for the best of
reasons, he had never seen.
Meantime the Republic had improved its position in the world. Its
conquests included the Alps and the Rhine, Belgium, and Holland, and
surpassed the successes of the Monarchy even under Lewis XIV. The
confederacy of kings was broken up. Tuscany had been the first to
treat. Prussia had followed, bringing with it the neutrality of
Northern Germany. Then Holland came, and Spain had opened
negotiations. But with Spain there was a difficulty. There could be no
treaty with a government which detained in prison the head of the
House of Bourbon. As soon as he was delivered up, Spain was ready to
sign and to ratify. Thus in the spring of 1795, the thoughts of men
came to be riveted on the room in the Temple where the king was slowly
and surely dying. The gaoler had asked the Committee what their
intention was. "Do you mean to banish him?" "No." "To kill him?" "No."
"Then," with an oath! "what is it you want?" "To get rid of him." On
May 3, it was reported to the government that the young captive was
ill. Next day, that he was very ill. But he was an obstacle to the
Spanish treaty which was absolutely necessary, and twice the
government made no sign. On the 5th, it was believed that he was in
danger, and then a physician was sent to him. The choice was a good
one, for the man was capable, and had attended the royal family. His
opinion was that nothing could save the prisoner, except country air.
One day he added: "He is lost, but perhaps there are some who will not
be sorry." Three days later Lewis XVII. was living, but the doctor was
dead, and a legend grew up on his grave. It was said that he was
poisoned because he had discovered the dread secret that the boy in
the Temple was not the king. Even Louis Blanc believed that the king
had been secretly released, and that a dying patient from the hospital
had been substituted for him. The belief has been kept alive to this
day. The most popular living dramatist[3] has a play now running at
Paris, in which the king is rescued in a washerwoman's linen basket,
which draws crowds. The truth is that he died on June 8, 1795. The
Republic had gained its purpose. Peace was signed with Spain; and the
friends of monarchy on the Constitutional Committee at once declared
that they would not vote for it.
[3] Sardou.
* * * * *
At the very moment when the Constitution was presented to the Assembly
by Boissy d'Anglas, a fleet of transports under convoy appeared off
the western coast. Pitt had allowed La Vendee to go down in defeat and
slaughter, but at last he made up his mind to help, and it was done on
a magnificent scale. Two expeditions were fitted out, and furnished
with material of war. Each of them carried three or four thousand
_emigres_ armed and clad by England. One was commanded by d'Hervilly,
whom we have already seen, for it was he who took the order to cease
firing on August 10; the other by young Sombreuil, whose father was
saved in September in the tragic way you have heard. At the head of
them all was the Count de Puisaye, the most politic and influential
of the _emigres_, a man who had been in touch with the Girondins in
Normandy, who had obtained the ear of ministers at Whitehall, and who
had been washed in so many waters that the genuine, exclusive,
narrow-minded managers of Vendean legitimacy neither understood nor
believed him. They brought a vast treasure in the shape of forged
_assignats_; and in confused memory of the services rendered by the
titular of Agra, they brought a real bishop who had sanctioned the
forgery.
The first division sailed from Cowes on June 10. On the 23rd Lord
Bridport engaged the French fleet and drove it into port. Four days
later the _emigres_ landed at Carnac, among the early monuments of the
Celtic race. It was a low promontory, defended at the neck by a fort
named after the Duke de Penthievre, and it could be swept, in places,
by the guns of the fleet. Thousands of Chouans joined; but La Vendee
was suspicious and stood aloof. They had expected the fleet to come to
them, but it had gone to Brittany, and there was jealousy between the
two provinces, between the partisans of Lewis XVIII. and those of his
brother the Count d'Artois, between the priests and the politicians.
The clergy restrained Charette and Stofflet from uniting with Puisaye
and his questionable allies, whom they accused of seeking the crown of
France for the Duke of York; and they promised that, if they waited a
little, the Count d'Artois would appear among them. They effectively
ruined their prospects of success; but Pitt himself had contributed
his share. Puisaye declined to bring English soldiers into his
country, and his scruples were admitted. But, in order to swell his
forces, the frugal minister armed between 1000 and 2000 French
prisoners, who were republicans, but who declared themselves ready to
join, and were as glad to escape from captivity as the government was
to get rid of them. The royalist officers protested against this
alloy, but their objections did not prevail, and when they came to
their own country these men deserted. They pointed out a place where
the republicans could pass under the fort at low water, and enter it
on the undefended side. At night, in the midst of a furious tempest,
the passage was attempted. Hoche's troops waded through the stormy
waters of Quiberon bay, and the tricolor was soon displayed upon the
walls.
The royalists were driven to the extremity of the peninsula. Some, but
not many, escaped in English boats, and it was thought that our fleet
did not do all that it might have done to retrieve a disaster so
injurious to the fame and the influence of England. Sombreuil defended
himself until a republican officer called on him to capitulate. He
consented, for there was no hope; but no terms were made, and it was
in truth an unconditional surrender. Tallien, who was in the camp,
hurried to Paris to intercede for the prisoners. Before going to the
Convention, he went to his home. There his wife told him that she had
just seen Lanjuinais, that Sieyes had brought back from Holland, where
he had negotiated peace, proofs of Tallien's treasonable
correspondence with the Bourbons, and that his life was in danger. He
went at once to the Convention, and called for the summary punishment
of the captured _emigres_.
Hoche was a magnanimous enemy, both by character and policy, and he
had a deep respect for Sombreuil. He secretly offered to let him
escape. The prisoner refused to be saved without his comrades; and
they were shot down together near Auray, on a spot which is still
known as the field of sacrifice. They were six or seven hundred. The
firing party awakened the echoes of Vendee, for Charette instantly put
his prisoners to death; and the Chouans afterwards contrived to cut
down every man of the four battalions charged with the execution.
The battle of Quiberon took place on July 21, and when all that ensued
was over on August 25, another expedition sailed from Portsmouth with
the Count d'Artois on board. He landed on an island off La Vendee, and
Charette, with fifteen thousand men, marched down to the coast to
receive him, among the haggard veterans of the royal cause. There, on
October 10, a message came from the Prince informing the hero that he
was about to sail away, and to wait in safety for better times. Five
days earlier the question had been fought out and decided at Paris,
and a man had been revealed who was to raise deeper and more momentous
issues than the obsolete controversy between monarchy and republic.
That controversy had been pursued in the constitutional debates under
the fatal influence of the events on the coast of Brittany. The
royalists had displayed their colours, sailing under the British flag,
and the British alliance had not availed them. And they had displayed
a strange political imbecility, contrasting with their spirit and
intelligence in war.
* * * * *
The constitutional committee had been elected on April 23 under
different auspices, when the Convention was making terms with Charette
and Cormatin, as well as with the foreign Powers. Sieyes, of
necessity, was the first man chosen; but he was on the governing
committee, and he declined. So did Merlin and Cambaceres, for the same
reason, and the three ablest men in the assembly did not serve.
Eleven moderate but not very eminent men were elected, and the draft
was made chiefly by Daunou, and advocated by Thibaudeau. Daunou was an
ancient oratorian, a studious and thoughtful if not a strong man, who
became keeper of the archives, and lived down to 1840 with a somewhat
usurped reputation for learning. Thibaudeau now began to exhibit great
intelligence, and his writings are among our best authorities for
these later years of the Republic and for the earlier years of the
Empire. The general character of their scheme is that it is influenced
more by experience than by theory, and strives to attach power to
property. They reported on June 23; the debate began on July 4; and on
the 20th Sieyes intervened. His advice turned mainly on the idea of a
constitutional jury, an elective body of about one hundred, to watch
over the Constitution, and to be guardians of the law against the
makers of the law. It was to receive the plaints of minorities and of
individuals against the legislature, and to preserve the spirit of
the organic institutions against the omnipotence of the national
representatives. This memorable attempt to develop in Europe something
analogous to that property of the Supreme Court which was not yet
matured in America, was rejected on August 5, almost unanimously.
The Constitution was adopted by the Convention on August 17. It
included a declaration of duties, founded on confusion, but defended
on the ground that a declaration of rights alone destroys the
stability of the State. And in matters touching religion it innovated
on what had been done hitherto, for it separated Church and State,
leaving all religions to their own resources. The division of powers
was carried farther, for the legislative was divided into two, and the
executive into five. Universal suffrage was restricted; the poorest
were excluded; and after nine years there was to be an educational
test. The law did not last so long. The electoral body, one in two
hundred of the whole constituency, was to be limited to owners of
property. The directors were to be chosen by the legislature.
Practically, there was much more regard for liberty, and less for
equality, than in the former constitutions. The change in public
opinion was shown by the vote on two Houses which only one deputy
opposed.
At the last moment, that there might be no danger from royalism in the
departments, it was resolved that two-thirds of the legislature must
be taken from the Convention. They thus prolonged their own power, and
secured the permanence of the ideas which inspired their action. At
the same time they showed their want of confidence in the republican
feeling of the country, and both exasperated the royalists and gave
them courage to act for themselves. On September 23 the country
accepted the scheme, by a languid vote, but with a large majority.
The new Constitution afforded securities for order and for liberty
such as France had never enjoyed. The Revolution had begun with a
Liberalism which was a passion more than a philosophy, and the first
Assembly endeavoured to realise it by diminishing authority,
weakening the executive, and decentralising power. In the hour of
peril under the Girondins the policy failed, and the Jacobins governed
on the principle that power, coming from the people, ought to be
concentrated in the fewest possible hands and made absolutely
irresistible. Equality became the substitute of liberty, and the
danger arose that the most welcome form of equality would be the equal
distribution of property. The Jacobin statesmen, the thinkers of the
party, undertook to abolish poverty without falling into Socialism.
They had the Church property, which served as the basis of the public
credit. They had the royal domain, the confiscated estates of
emigrants and malignants, the common lands, the forest lands. And in
time of war there was the pillage of opulent neighbours. By these
operations the income of the peasantry was doubled, and it was deemed
possible to relieve the masses from taxation, until, by the immense
transfer of property, there should be no poor in the Republic. These
schemes were at an end, and the Constitution of the year III. closes
the revolutionary period.
The royalists and conservatives of the capital would have acquiesced
in the defeat of their hopes but for the additional article which
threatened to perpetuate power in the hands of existing deputies,
which had been carried by a far smaller vote than that which was given
in favour of the organic law itself. The alarm and the indignation
were extreme, and the royalists, on counting their forces, saw that
they had a good chance against the declining assembly. Nearly thirty
thousand men were collected, and the command was given to an
experienced officer. It had been proposed by some to confer it on the
Count Colbert de Maulevrier, the former employer of Stofflet. This was
refused on the ground that they were not absolutists or _emigres_, but
Liberals, and partisans of constitutional monarchy, and of no other.
The army of the Convention was scarcely six thousand, and a large body
of Jacobin roughs were among them. The command was bestowed on Menou,
a member of the minority of nobles of 1789. But Menou was disgusted
with his materials, and felt more sympathy with the enemy. He
endeavoured to negotiate, and was deposed, and succeeded by Barras,
the victor in the bloodless battle of Thermidor.
Bonaparte, out of employment, was lounging in Paris, and as he came
out of the theatre he found himself among the men who were holding the
parley. He hurried to headquarters, where the effect of his defining
words upon the scared authorities was such that he was at once
appointed second in command. Therefore, when morning dawned, on
October 5, the Louvre and the Tuileries had become a fortress, and the
gardens were a fortified camp. A young officer who became the most
brilliant figure on the battlefield of Europe--Murat--brought up
cannon from the country. The bridge, and the quay, and every street
that opened on the palace, were so commanded by batteries that they
could be swept by grape-shot. Officers had been sent out for
provisions, for barrels of gunpowder, for all that belongs to hospital
and ambulance. Lest retreat should be cut off, a strong detachment
held the road to St. Cloud; and arms were liberally supplied to the
Convention and the friendly quarter of St. Antoine. The insurgents,
led by dexterous intriguers, but without a great soldier at their
head, could not approach the river; and those who came down from the
opulent centre of the city missed their opportunity. After a sharp
conflict in the Rue St. Honore, they fled, pursued by nothing more
murderous than blank cartridge; and Paris felt, for the first time,
the grasp of the master. The man who defeated them, and by defeating
them kept the throne vacant, was Bonaparte, through whose genius the
Revolution was to subjugate the Continent.
APPENDIX
THE LITERATURE OF THE REVOLUTION
Before embarking on the stormy sea before us, we ought to be provided
with chart and compass. Therefore I begin by speaking about the
histories of the Revolution, so that you may at once have some idea
what to choose and what to reject, that you may know where we stand,
how we have come to penetrate so far and no farther, what branches
there are that already bear ripe fruit and where it is still ripening
on the tree of knowledge. I desire to rescue you from the writers of
each particular school and each particular age, and from perpetual
dependence on the ready-made and conventional narratives that satisfy
the outer world.
With the growing experience of mankind, the larger curiosity and the
increased resource, each generation adds to our insight. Lesser events
can be understood by those who behold them, great events require time
in proportion to their greatness.
Lamartine once said that the Revolution has mysteries but no enigmas.
It is humiliating to be obliged to confess that those words are no
nearer truth now than when they were written. People have not yet
ceased to dispute about the real origin and nature of the event. It
was the deficit; it was the famine; it was the Austrian Committee; it
was the Diamond Necklace, and the humiliating memories of the Seven
Years' War; it was the pride of nobles or the intolerance of priests;
it was philosophy; it was freemasonry; it was Mr. Pitt; it was the
incurable levity and violence of the national character; it was the
issue of that struggle between classes that constitutes the unity of
the history of France.
Amongst these interpretations we shall have to pick our way; but there
are many questions of detail on which I shall be forced to tell you
that I have no deciding evidence.
* * * * *
After the contemporary memoirs, the first historian who wrote with
authority was Droz. He was at work for thirty years, having begun in
1811, when Paris was still full of floating information, and he knew
much that otherwise did not come out until long after his death. He
had consulted Lally Tollendal, and he was allowed to use the memoirs
of Malouet, which were in manuscript, and which are unsurpassed for
wisdom and good faith in the literature of the National Assembly. Droz
was a man of sense and experience, with a true if not a powerful mind;
and his book, in point of soundness and accuracy, was all that a book
could be in the days when it was written. It is a history of Lewis
XVI. during the time when it was possible to bring the Revolution
under control; and the author shows, with an absolute sureness of
judgment, that the turning-point was the rejection of the first
project of Constitution, in September 1789. For him, the Revolution is
contained in the first four months. He meant to write a political
treatise on the natural history of revolutions, and the art of so
managing just demands that unjust and dangerous demands shall acquire
no force. It became a history of rejected opportunities, and an
indictment of the wisdom of the minister and of the goodness of the
king, by a constitutional royalist of the English school. His service
to history is that he shows how disorder and crime grew out of
unreadiness, want of energy, want of clear thought and definite
design. Droz admits that there is a flaw in the philosophy of his
title-page. The position lost in the summer of 1789 was never
recovered. But during the year 1790 Mirabeau was at work on schemes
to restore the monarchy, and it is not plain that they could never
have succeeded. Therefore Droz added a volume on the parliamentary
career of Mirabeau, and called it an appendix, so as to remain true to
his original theory of the fatal limit. We know the great orator
better than he could be known in 1842, and the value of Droz's
excellent work is confined to the second volume. It will stand
undiminished even if we reject the idea which inspired it, and prefer
to think that the cause might have been won, even when it came to
actual fighting, on the 10th of August. Droz's book belongs to the
small number of writings before us which are superior to their fame,
and it was followed by one that enjoyed to the utmost the opposite
fate.
For our next event is an explosion. Lamartine, the poet, was one of
those legitimists who believed that 1830 had killed monarchy, who
considered the Orleans dynasty a sham, and set themselves at once to
look ahead of it towards the inevitable Republic. Talleyrand warned
him to hold himself ready for something more substantial than the
exchange of a nephew for an uncle on a baseless throne. With the
intuition of genius he saw sooner than most men, more accurately than
any man, the signs of what was to come. In six years, he said, we
shall be masters. He was mistaken only by a few weeks. He laid his
plans that, when the time came, he should be the accepted leader. To
chasten and idealise the Revolution, and to prepare a Republic that
should not be a terror to mankind, but should submit easily to the
fascination of a melodious and sympathetic eloquence, he wrote the
_History of the Girondins_. The success was the most instantaneous and
splendid ever obtained by a historical work. People could read nothing
else; and Alexandre Dumas paid him the shrewd compliment of saying
that he had lifted history to the level of romance. Lamartine gained
his purpose. He contributed to institute a Republic that was pacific
and humane, responsive to the charm of phrase, and obedient to the
master hand that wrote the glories of the Gironde. He always believed
that, without his book, the Reign of Terror would have been renewed.