REIGN OF GEORGE III. (_continued_).
Unsettled Condition of Europe--Machinations of Russia and
Austria against Turkey--Disasters of the Austrians--Capture
of Oczakoff--Further Designs of Catherine--Intervention
of Pitt--Gustavus of Sweden invades Russia--His Temporary
Check--He remodels the Diet and pursues the War--Joseph renews
the War--Disaffection in Hungary--Revolution in the Austrian
Netherlands--Abolition of the _Joyeuse Entrée_--The Emperor
declared to have forfeited the Crown--The Austrian Troops
retired to Luxembourg--Death of Joseph--Outbreak of the French
Revolution--Efforts of Turgot and his Successors to introduce
Reforms--Loménie de Brienne--Recall of Necker--Assembly of the
States General--The Third Estate becomes the National Assembly--The
Meeting in the Tennis Court--Contemplated _Coup d'État_--Project
of a City Guard--Dismissal of Necker--Insurrection in Paris--The
City Guard--Capture of the Bastille--The Noblesse renounce their
Privileges--Bankruptcy and Famine--"_O Richard, O Mon Roi!_"--The
Women and the National Guard march on Versailles--The King brought
to Paris--Effect of the Revolution in England--Different Views
of Burke and Fox--Rejection of Flood's Reform Bill--The Nootka
Sound Affair--Satisfaction obtained from Spain--Motions of Reform
in the Irish Parliament--Convention of Reichenbach--Continuance
of the War between Sweden and Russia--Renewal of the War with
Tippoo Sahib--Debates in Parliament--Discussions on the Eastern
Question--The Canada Bill--It is made the occasion of speeches
on the French Revolution--Breach between Fox and Burke--Abuse
of Burke by the Whigs--Wilberforce's Notice for Immediate
Emancipation--Colonisation of Sierra Leone--Bill for the Relief
of Roman Catholics--Fox's Libel Bill--Burke's "Reflections on the
French Revolution"--Replies of Mackintosh and Paine--Dr. Price--Dr.
Priestley--The Anniversary of the taking of the Bastille--The
Birmingham Riots--Destruction of Priestley's Library--Suppression
of the Riots--Mildness of the Sentences.
Whilst the war of parties had been raging in England, matters abroad
had been rapidly assuming a shape which threatened the tranquillity of
all Europe. In France the elements of revolution had been fermenting,
and had already burst into open fury with a character which, to
observant eyes, appeared to bode inevitably their spread into every
surrounding country. At the same time, the sovereigns of these
countries, instead of discerning the signs of the times, and taking
measures to guard their people from the contagious influence, were
some of them acting so as certainly to invite the specious anarchy.
In others, they were wasting their strength on schemes of conquest
which only too much enfeebled them for opposition to the dangers thus
preparing. Some of these warlike movements seem, at first sight, to
have little connection with the history of England, but, more or less,
they all are necessary to our comprehension of our own position in the
time of those marvellous subversions which were at hand.
Least of all did the ambitious designs of the Czarina Catherine against
Turkey seem menacing to us; yet these designs speedily drew into
their current the whole power of Austria, endangered our relations
with the countries on the Baltic, and attracted the revolutionary
torrent over the fertile plains of the Netherlands, opposite to our
own shores, menacing the stability of our allies, the Dutch. Catherine
had found the Turks not so easily to be overcome as she imagined,
feeble and tottering as she considered their empire. The absorption
of the Ottoman kingdom and the establishment of the Muscovite throne
at Constantinople had been her confident dream. But the Turks, though
in a condition of decline and disorganisation which promised an easy
subjugation of them, had still their spirit of fanatic fatalism, which
could rouse them to deeds of impetuous valour. The whole organisation
and regulations of their army were in the worst condition. The
janissaries, which had been amongst the finest infantry in the world,
were now thoroughly demoralised and in insolent insubordination towards
their own government. Their cavalry was numerous, but wretchedly
disciplined. The commissariat was in the worst state conceivable, and
their artillery, though it had received the energetic attentions of
the French Baron De Toff, was contemptible. It might have appeared
that nothing was necessary but to enter Turkey and drive the army, as
a disorganised rabble, before the foe. But Catherine had not found
it so. Her favourite, Potemkin, had been repeatedly defeated in his
attempts to advance into Turkey from the Crimea, and Catherine had been
glad to engage Joseph II. of Austria in the enterprise by a promise of
an ample share of the spoil. In fact, the pair contemplated something
like a partition of Europe. In their meeting at Cherson in 1787,
Joseph had engaged to send one hundred thousand men to the campaign
against Turkey. He had no quarrel with the Sultan, and though a zealous
advocate for national reforms, he paid very little regard to national
or international justice. In all his reforms, Joseph, with true
Austrian spirit, showed the despot still. He did not attempt to carry
such reforms as his subjects desired, but such as he thought proper for
them; and he was always ready to force what he deemed liberalism and
improvement upon them at the point of the bayonet. In attacking Turkey,
he did not wait to proclaim war, much less to have a pretence for it,
but he suddenly made a rush upon the neighbouring city and frontier
fortress of Belgrade. The Turks, though taken by surprise, defended the
place victoriously; and Joseph's subsequent assault on the fortress of
Gradiska was equally unsuccessful and equally disgraceful.
In prosecution, however, of his unrighteous engagement to Catherine,
he mustered the large army he had engaged to bring against Turkey, and
in February, 1788, he made a formal proclamation of war, having no
cause of hostility to assign of his own, but merely that his alliance
with Russia demanded that he should support that power in its equally
lawless invasion of Turkey. The Prince of Saxe-Coburg, who commanded
one division of Joseph's army, entered Moldavia, and spent the whole
campaign nearly in the siege and reduction of the fortress of Choczim.
The Emperor himself accompanied another division, the destination of
which was the renewal of the siege of Belgrade. He had been led by
Catherine to hope, as his reward for the co-operation, the recovery
of Bosnia and Servia, the acquisition of Moldavia and Wallachia, and
the extension of his boundaries to the Dnieper. But, having waited
some time for the junction of the Russians, Joseph's army assembled on
the banks of the Danube in February, and occupied itself in securing
the banks of that river and of the Save. Joseph himself joined it in
April, accompanied by his favourite marshal and counsellor, Lacy,
and having also with him, but paying little attention to him or his
advice, the brave and able Laudohn, who had so successfully coped
with Frederick of Prussia in Silesia. On the 24th he took the little
fortress of Szabatch, whilst another part of his army suffered a
defeat from the Turks at Dobitza. He then sat down before Belgrade,
but carried on the siege with such slackness as to disgust his own
troops and astonish all Europe. He was at length roused by the advance
of the vizier, Yussuff, who was coming rapidly down upon him. At his
approach, Joseph precipitately retreated behind the Save, while Yussuff
threw bridges over the Danube at Cladova, broke the Austrian cordon by
the defeat of a portion of the forces of General Wartesleben on the
heights of Meadiha, and swept through the banat of Temeswar, Joseph's
own territory, which he held, and threatened to invade Hungary. Joseph
hastened with forty thousand men to support Wartesleben, leaving
General Laudohn to conduct the war in Croatia. The army was delighted
to have Laudohn at their head instead of the Emperor. He led it on
the very day of his arrival against the fortress of Dobitza, which he
took; he then passed the Save, drove the Turks before him, defeated
seven thousand of the enemy before Novi, and took that place, where his
operations were suspended by the winter. Joseph gained little credit by
his junction with Wartesleben. The Turks attacked him, and, though they
were for the moment repulsed, the Emperor retreated in a dark night,
and Turks and Austrians resumed their former positions. After taking
Verplanka, the campaign ended with a three months' truce. But the
Austrians had suffered more severely from the miasma of the marshes of
the Danube and Save than from the Turks.
Meanwhile, the Russians had been occupied with the siege of Oczakoff,
near the mouth of the Dnieper. There the Turks had endeavoured to burn
their flotillas and flat-bottomed boats, in the shallows, at the mouth
of the river; but besides Potemkin, they had the able Suvaroff to
contend with. This sagacious general drew the Russian flotilla under
the forts of Kinburn, nearly opposite to Oczakoff, of which they were
in possession. Thus safe himself, he swept the broad liman with his
guns, destroyed many of the boats of the Turks, as they got entangled
in the sands of the shallows, and compelled the admiral, who commanded,
to withdraw his fleet. After several vain attempts, Oczakoff was
stormed on St. Nicholas' Day, the 17th of November. But this success
was only obtained at the last moment, in the very desperation of
despair, and when the campaign had cost Russia twenty thousand men, of
whom five thousand perished in the final assault.
But the Czarina, though mistress of Oczakoff, was far from the end
of her designs. She contemplated nothing but the subjugation of the
Turkish empire. For this purpose she determined to excite insurrection
in all the tributary states of that empire. Her agents had excited
the Montenegrins to an outbreak; they had prepared the Greeks for the
same experiment, and the Mameluke Beys in Egypt. She determined to
send a powerful fleet into the Mediterranean to co-operate with these
insurgents, to seize on the island of Crete, to ravage the coasts of
Thrace and Asia Minor, and to force the passage of the Dardanelles,
or, if that were not practicable, to blockade them. Thus opening the
communication between her forces in the Mediterranean and in the Black
Sea, she considered that Turkey would lie helpless at her feet. To give
the necessary ascendency to her fleet, she had long been encouraging
English naval officers to take commands in it. At the famous battle of
Chesmé, it was the British Admirals Elphinstone, Greig, and others who
had made Potemkin victorious. Greig was now at the head of the fleet
that was being prepared at Cronstadt for this Mediterranean enterprise.
She had also managed to engage eighteen British ships to serve as
transports of troops, artillery, and stores.
If Pitt had possessed the far-seeing genius of his father Chatham, it
was at this moment in his power, as the ally of Turkey, to have stepped
in and given a blow to the ambitious designs of Russia which would
have saved a far more arduous and costly effort for that very purpose
afterwards. Russia had spared no pains to insult Britain, especially
since the unfortunate contest on account of America. It was certain
that if she once obtained Turkey she would become a most troublesome
power in the Mediterranean; and it now required only the dispatch of
a tolerable fleet to the Baltic, and of another to the Black Sea, to
annihilate in a few days every vestige of her maritime force. Such a
check would have caused her to recoil from her Eastern aggressions
for the purpose of defending her very existence at home. Holland was
bound to us by the re-establishment of the Prince of Orange, our fast
friend, whom Pitt, with the assistance of Prussia, had restored to
the throne, whence he had been driven by his democratic subjects, in
spite of the assistance given to the rebels by France; we were at peace
with Prussia; France was engrossed inextricably with her own affairs;
Denmark was in terror of us; and Sweden longed for nothing so much as
to take vengeance for Russian insults and invasions. Catherine's fleets
destroyed, Sweden would have full opportunity to ravage her coasts,
and to seek the recovery of her Finnish dominions. But Pitt contented
himself with diplomacy. Instead of destroying the Russian fleet in the
Baltic, or of attacking it in the Mediterranean the moment it commenced
its operations on the Turkish dependencies, and then clearing the Black
Sea of their ships, he contented himself with issuing a proclamation in
the _London Gazette_, forbidding English seamen to enter any foreign
service, and commanding the owners of the vessels engaged by Russia to
renounce their contracts. Thus the fleet before Oczakoff was left to
operate against the Turks, and the fleet in the Baltic was detained
there.
To insure a powerful diversion, the Sultan had engaged the military
co-operation of Sweden. Sweden had been forcibly deprived of Finland by
Peter the Great, and she longed to recover it. She had a brave army,
but no money. The Grand Turk, to enable her to commence the enterprise,
had sent her a present of about four hundred thousand pounds sterling.
Sweden put her fleet in preparation in all haste, and had Pitt merely
allowed the Russian fleet to quit the Baltic, there was nothing to
prevent the execution of the Swedish design on Finland, nor, indeed, of
marching directly on St. Petersburg in the absence of the army.
But the English measures detained the Russian fleet in the Baltic with
Greig at its head, and Russia was saved from her due chastisement.
The King of Sweden, indeed, landed an army of thirty-five thousand
men in Finland; and his brother, the Duke of Sudermania, appeared
in the Baltic at the head of a strong fleet. Nothing could have
prevented Gustavus from marching directly on the Russian capital, and
St. Petersburg was consequently thrown into the wildest alarm. But
Gustavus was only bent on recovering the provinces which Russia had
reft from Sweden. He advanced successfully for some time, the Russians
everywhere flying before him; but Russian gold and Russian intrigue
soon altered all this. Catherine ordered her fleet, which was in the
Gulf of Finland, with Greig at its head, to bear down on the Swedish
fleet, and, at the same time, emissaries were despatched amongst the
officers of Gustavus's army with plenty of gold, and letters were sent
to the States of Sweden, calling on them to disavow the proceedings of
the king. Before Gustavus had left Sweden with his army, her Minister,
passing over the king himself, had made similar communications to
Gustavus's proud and disaffected nobles, and Gustavus had ordered him
out of the country. The Russian and Swedish fleets now came to an
engagement in the straits of Kalkbaden. The battle was desperate; the
Swedes fought with their wonted valour; and the Russians, under the
management of Greig and the British officers, showed that they were
apt scholars. The two fleets separated, after doing each other great
mischief, each claiming the victory. Catherine immediately rewarded
Greig with a letter of thanks, written by her own hand, and with the
more substantial present of a large sum of money, and a good estate in
Livonia. Moreover, the partial success of Russia by sea had the effect
of encouraging the corrupted officers of Gustavus to refuse to proceed
farther in Finland.
Gustavus despatched the chief mutineers under arrest to Stockholm; but
he found those who remained equally infected. In fact, the whole of
the Swedish aristocracy had long aimed at usurping the entire powers
of the State, and of dictating to the king. Whilst thus suddenly
disabled, the men themselves in a great measure assuming the language
of their officers, Gustavus found that Sweden itself was menaced with
an invasion of the Danes from the side of Norway, at the instigation
of Russia. It was necessary to hurry home, leaving the portion of the
army in Finland, which remained subordinate, under the command of his
brother. On arriving, Gustavus issued an earnest proclamation to his
people to follow him to the defence of their country. But to lose no
time he hastened on to Dalecarlia, the brave inhabitants of which had
first placed his great ancestor, Gustavus Vasa, on the throne. They
speedily mustered to his aid, and he led them directly against the
Danes, who, under the Prince of Hesse, were already in possession of
Strömstad and Uddevalla, and in full march on Gothenburg, the chief
commercial town of Sweden.
His arrival gave great joy and confidence to the people of Gothenburg;
and at this moment, seeing the consequence of their too easy conduct,
the British Government sent a peremptory demand to Copenhagen through
Mr. Elliot, their ambassador there, that Denmark should desist from
this invasion of Sweden, the ally of Britain, or, in default of this,
that a powerful British fleet should be dispatched to the Baltic. The
Danes evacuated Sweden, again retiring into Norway, but Gustavus was
left to continue his contest with Russia. His broken army, under his
brother in Finland, took up their winter quarters at the strong seaport
of Sveaborg; and he himself prepared to make some decisive movement
against his haughty and refractory nobles. Besides the Order of
nobility, three other Orders sat in the General Assembly of the States;
and Gustavus, confident of their affection to him, determined to throw
himself upon them for protection against the nobles. He therefore, in
the first place, sent for the chief magistrates, clergy, and citizens,
and laid before them forcibly his position. He showed them how the
recovery of the ancient Swedish provinces on the other side of the
Baltic had been prevented by the defection of the aristocracy, and how
the country had been invaded by the Danes through this encouragement.
Made certain of their support, he then summoned a Diet, which met on
the 26th of January, 1789.
The nobles rose in a body and quitted the Assembly; but Gustavus
continued his speech to the three remaining Orders. He declared it
necessary, for the salvation of the country, for him to assume almost
despotic powers, and he called on the three Estates to support him in
punishing the traitorous nobles, promising to secure the liberties
of the country as soon as this was accomplished. Not only the three
Orders, but the public at large zealously supported him. Stockholm was
in a state of high excitement. Gustavus surrounded the houses of the
chief nobility with his brave Dalecarlians; secured twenty-five of
the principal nobles, including the Counts Brahé, Fersen, Horne, and
others, who were consigned to the castle. He had already arrested nine
of the leaders of the insurrection in the army in Finland, and these
officers were now also confined in the castle; others had escaped
and fled to their patroness in St. Petersburg. To intimidate the
king, nearly all the officers of the army, the fleet, and the civil
department threw up their commissions and appointments, believing that
they should thus completely paralyse his proceedings. But Gustavus
remained undaunted. He filled up the vacancies, as well as he could,
from the other Orders of the State; he brought the nobles and officers
to trial, and numbers of them were condemned to capital punishment,
for treason and abandonment of their sworn duties. Some few examples
were made; the rest, after a short confinement, were liberated, and
they hastened to their estates in the country. But it was found
there, as everywhere else, that rank confers no monopoly of talent.
The three other Orders warmly supported Gustavus, and he remodelled
the Diet, excluding from it almost all the most powerful nobles, and
giving greater preponderance to the other three Orders. In return for
this, these Orders sanctioned an act called the Act of Safety, which
conferred on the king the same power which is attached to the British
Crown, namely, that of making peace or war. They granted him liberal
supplies, and he quickly raised an army of fifty thousand men. As he
considered the reduction of the restless and lawless power of Russia
was equally essential to Britain, Holland, and Prussia, as to Sweden,
Gustavus called on them to second his efforts. But Pitt would do
nothing more than guarantee the neutrality of Denmark; and even this
guarantee he permitted to become nugatory, by allowing the Danish
fleet to give protection to the Russian fleet in the Baltic. A second
Russian squadron, commanded by Dessein, a French admiral, descended
from Archangel, entered the Baltic, menaced Gothenburg, and by the aid
of the Danish ships was enabled to join the other Russian fleet at
Cronstadt.
[Illustration: EXPULSION OF THE PROFESSORS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF
ANTWERP. (_See p._ 355.)]
The Swedes cursed the less than half assistance of their British
allies, and Gustavus endeavoured to fight his way without them. He
continued to win victory after victory on land; but Catherine soon
brought down on his squadron of galleys, which attended his march along
the coast to keep up his supplies, an overwhelming fleet of galleys of
her own. A desperate battle ensued, but the Swedish galley-fleet was at
length overcome. Gustavus was thus greatly embarrassed, and compelled
to stand merely on the defensive, till it was time to go into winter
quarters. He continued for twelve months to do battle with Russia, and,
though with insufficient forces, threatened the very capital of that
country. A little support from Britain, Prussia, and Holland, would
have enabled Sweden to regain its territories on the eastern shores of
the Baltic, to curb the power of Russia, and to assume that station in
the North which is essential to the peace of Europe. These countries,
however, had not the statesmanship to appreciate this point, or the
friendly feeling to effect it, and Gustavus was left to struggle on
alone.
The Emperor Joseph of Austria had returned from the campaign of 1788
against Turkey greatly chagrined, and with fast-failing health. Had he
been wise, he would have accepted the overtures for peace made to him
by the Sultan, and have spent the few remaining days of his existence
in tranquillity. But his ambitious and persuasive ally, Catherine,
prevailed upon him to make another effort. He mustered fresh troops.
A hundred and fifty thousand men were marched against the Turkish
frontier, early in the year of 1789, in different divisions. It was
a circumstance very much in their favour that the able Sultan, Abdul
Hamid, died suddenly in April, and was succeeded by his nephew, Selim,
a young, rash, and unprincipled man. The acts of Selim, in murdering
and dismissing his father's best ministers and commanders, and the
unruly condition of the janissaries, rendered Turkey especially open
to the attacks of its enemies. Marshal Laudohn, supporting his earlier
fame, took the fortress of Gradiska, and stormed Belgrade. But this was
not accomplished till the 8th of October, and an attempt was then made
to reduce Orsova, but this failed. Coburg and Suvaroff having joined,
won a great victory over the new Vizier, Martinitzi, in Wallachia, on
the 22nd of September, and the remains of the Turkish army retired to
the pass of Shumla, on the Balkan mountains. Potemkin, on his part, had
greatly increased his forces after the reduction of Oczakoff, and after
a desperate resistance took Bender, famous as the abode of Charles XII.
of Sweden, after the battle of Pultawa. Before winter, the Russians
had made decided progress in their inroads into the Turkish dominions
on the Black Sea. They had gained possession of Akerman, at the mouth
of the Dniester; of Keglia Nova, on the northern banks of the Danube,
and of other places on the Black Sea. They had also extended their
frontier to the left bank of the Danube, and they had actually reduced
every important place between the Bug and Dniester and that river. Had
Catherine had a sufficient fleet in the Black Sea, Constantinople might
have trembled for its safety.
But Catherine's ally, Joseph, was fast sinking, and his mortal sun was
going down amid storm clouds, all collected by his reckless disregard
of the rights of his subjects, great reformer as he desired to be.
He had wantonly invaded the ancient constitution of Hungary; and on
this the high-spirited and martial Hungarians had expressed their
determination not to submit to it. They insisted that he should restore
the regalia of their ancient kingdom, which he had carried off from
Buda, the old capital, and where the Austrian emperors, as kings of
Hungary, were always expected to be crowned, and to take the oath to
observe the constitution. The Turks, already in possession of the banat
of Temeswar, invited their alliance, offering to assist them in driving
out the Austrians, and establishing their independence. Joseph, alarmed
at this prospect, made haste to avert the danger by conceding the
restoration of the Hungarian constitution and of the regalia, and the
generous Hungarians were at once appeased.
But far different was the issue of the troubles with his Flemish
subjects, which, with an unaccountable folly and absence of good faith,
he had excited. He sent into the Netherlands Count Trautmansdorff
as Governor, and General Dalton, a brutal Irishman, as commander.
The latter ordered the professors of theology at Louvain to give
way to the Emperor's reforms, and, as they refused, Dalton turned
them out by force, shut up the colleges, and Joseph sent back again
the German professors, who had been before recalled, to appease the
popular indignation. But the colleges remained empty; not a student
would attend the classes of the Germans. As the volunteer corps had
disbanded themselves, in reliance on the Emperor's wish, Trautmansdorff
calculated on an easy compulsion of the people, and he called on the
Grand Council at Brussels to enforce the decrees of the Emperor. The
Council paid no regard to the order.
The people having collected in great crowds in the neighbourhood of
the Council House, Dalton ordered out a company of soldiers, under
a young ensign, to patrol the streets, and overawe any attempts at
demonstrations in support of the Council. The young ensign, having a
stone flung at him, without further ceremony ordered his men to fire
into the crowd, and six persons were killed, and numbers of others
wounded. No sooner did Joseph hear of this rash and cruel act, than he
wrote highly approving of it, and promoting the ensign. The people,
greatly enraged, rose in the different towns, and were attacked by the
Imperial troops, and blood was shed in various places. With his usual
disregard of consequences, Joseph was at this moment endeavouring to
raise a loan in the Netherlands, to enable him to carry on the war
against Turkey. But this conduct completely quashed all hope of it;
not a man of money would advance a stiver. Trautmansdorff continued to
threaten the people, and Dalton was ready to execute his most harsh
orders. It was determined to break up the University of Antwerp, and
on the 4th of August, 1789, troops were drawn up, and cannon planted
in the public square, to keep down the populace, whilst the professors
were turned into the streets, and the college doors locked. Here there
occurred an attack on the unarmed people, as wanton as that which took
place at Brussels, and no less than thirty or forty persons were killed
on the spot, and great numbers wounded. This Massacre of Antwerp, as it
was called, roused the indignation of the whole Netherlands, and was
heard with horror by all Europe. The monks and professors who had been
turned out became objects of sympathy, even to those who regarded with
wonder and contempt their bigotry and superstition. But Joseph, engaged
in his miserable and disgraceful war against the Turks, sent to Dalton
his warmest approval of what he called these vigorous measures.
Joseph, in the face of these things, passed an edict sequestrating all
the abbeys in Brabant. The States of Brabant therefore refused the
voting of any subsidies, and Joseph, irritated to deeper blindness,
determined to abolish the Great Charter entitled the _Joyeuse Entrée_,
so called because granted on the entry of Philip the Good into
Brussels, and on which nearly all their privileges rested. To compel
them to vote a permanent subsidy, the military surrounded the States
of Hainault, forcibly dissolved their sitting, and then calling an
extraordinary meeting of the States of Brabant, Trautmansdorff ordered
them to pass an Act sanctioning such a subsidy. But the deputies
remained firm, and thereupon the _Joyeuse Entrée_ was annulled by
proclamation, and the House of Assembly dissolved. Joseph vowed that he
would extinguish the rebellion in blood, and reduce the Netherlands to
the same despotism which ruled all his other states, except Hungary and
the Tyrol.
Trautmansdorff declared that, if necessary, forty thousand troops
should be marched into the country; but this was an empty boast, for
Joseph had so completely engaged his army against Turkey, that he could
only send a thousand men into the Netherlands. On the contrary, the
French Revolutionists offered the oppressed Netherlands speedy aid,
and the Duke d'Aremberg, the Archbishop of Malines, and other nobles
and dignitaries of the Church, met at Breda on the 14th of September,
and proclaimed themselves the legitimate Assembly of the States of
Brabant. They sent the plainest remonstrances to the Emperor, declaring
that unless he immediately repealed his arbitrary edicts, and restored
their Great Charter, they would assert their rights by the sword. In
proof that these were no empty vaunts, the militia and volunteers
again flew to arms. Scarcely a month had passed after the repeal of
the _Joyeuse Entrée_ before a number of collisions had taken place
between these citizen soldiers and the Imperial troops. In Tirlemont,
Louvain, Antwerp, and Mons blood was shed. At Diest, the patriots, led
on by the monks, drove out the troops and the magistrates. Dalton and
Trautmansdorff, instead of fulfilling their menace, appeared paralysed.
Numbers of persons fled from the different towns to the frontiers of
Holland, trade became stagnant, manufactories stood empty; the whole
country began to assume a melancholy and ruinous aspect. Many of the
refugees, formed into revolutionary clubs by French emissaries, were
prepared not merely to oppose Joseph's despotism, but all monarchical
government whatever. A powerful body of these placed themselves under
the leadership of Van der Noot, a lawyer, who assumed the title of
plenipotentiary agent of the people of Brabant; and of Van der Mersch,
an officer who had served in the Seven Years' War, who was made
their commander-in-chief. These two men were in league with the new
Assembly of Breda, and issued their proclamations. These Trautmansdorff
caused to be burnt by the executioner. The patriots in Brussels who
sympathised with those in arms were, many of them, arrested; the
citizens were disarmed, the fortifications strengthened by palisades,
and every means of defence was resorted to.
But in October the patriots of Breda surprised the forts of Lillo and
Liefkenshoek, on the Scheldt. Dalton dispatched General Schröder with
a strong force, who retook the forts; but on Schröder's venturing to
enter Turnhout after the insurgents, a body of three thousand of them,
under Van der Mersch, armed with pitchforks, bludgeons, and staves,
attacked and drove him out. General Bender, who had been dispatched
against the insurgents at Tirlemont, was driven out in the same manner.
General Arberg was compelled to retreat behind the Scheldt, and the
people were victorious in Louvain, Ghent, Bruges, Ostend, and most
towns of the district. Both Joseph and his Governor and Commander in
the Netherlands now fell into the utmost alarm. The news which Marie
Antoinette sent from Paris to her Imperial brother only rendered
this consternation the greater. Joseph, with that sudden revulsion
which he had manifested on other occasions, after equally astonishing
rashness, now issued a conciliatory proclamation, offering to redress
all grievances on the condition of the Netherlanders laying down their
arms. But they were not likely, after former experience, to trust any
such promises of Joseph. On the 20th of November the States of Flanders
assumed the title of the High and Mighty States; they declared the
Emperor to have forfeited the Crown by tyranny and injustice; they
proclaimed their entire independence, and ordered a levy of twenty
thousand men.
Trautmansdorff now hastened to conciliate in earnest. He issued
two-and-twenty separate proclamations, made all kinds of fair promises,
restored the arms of the citizens, and liberated the imprisoned
patriots. But it was too late. The insurgents, under Van der Mersch,
were fast advancing towards Brussels, and Dalton marched out to meet
them; but he was confounded by the appearance of their numbers, and
entered into an armistice of ten days. But this did not stop the
progress of insurrection in Brussels. There the people rose, and
resolved to open the gates to their compatriots. Women and children
tore up the palisades, and levelled the entrenchments. The population
assumed the national cockade, and the streets resounded with cries of
"Long live the Patriots!" "Long live Van der Noot!" Dalton retreated
into Brussels, but found no security there. The soldiers began to
desert. The people attacked those who stood to their colours, and
Dalton was glad to secure his retreat by a capitulation. In a few days
the insurgents from Breda entered, Trautmansdorff having withdrawn
at their approach, and the new federal union of the Netherlands was
completely established. The State of Luxembourg was the only one
remaining to Joseph, and thither Dalton retired with his forces, five
thousand in number.
But Joseph did not live to see the full extent of the alienation of
the Netherlands. He had despatched Count Cobentzel to Brussels on the
failure of Trautmansdorff's efforts. Cobentzel was an able diplomatist,
but all his offers were treated with indifference. On the last day of
1789 the States of Brabant, in presence of the citizens of Brussels,
swore to stand by their new freedom--an act which was received by the
acclamations of the assembled crowds. They soon afterwards ratified
their league with the other States, and entered into active negotiation
with the revolutionists of France for mutual defence. On the 20th of
February, 1790, Joseph expired, leaving a prospect full of trouble to
his brother Leopold, the new Emperor.
At the period at which we have now arrived France was in a state of
the wildest and most awful convulsion. A revolution had broken out,
more terrible and furious than had ever yet appeared in the history
of nations. The French people, so long trodden down by their princes,
their aristocracy, and their clergy, and reduced to a condition of
wretchedness and of ignorant brutality, almost unparalleled, seizing
the opportunity of the distresses of the impoverished Government, and
encouraged by a new race of philosophers who preached up the equality
of the human race, had broken through their ancient subserviency,
and were pulling down all the old constituted powers, ranks, and
distinctions, with a rapidity which electrified the whole world.
The people might have dragged on a considerable time still in their
misery; but the Government was in its death-throes for want of revenue,
and Louis XVI., who ascended the throne in 1774, had but little
political sagacity. The administration groaned beneath a mountain
of debts; the mass of the people were exhausted in their resources;
trade was ruined by these causes; and the nobility and clergy clung
convulsively to their prescriptive exemptions from taxation. Long
before the American war the State was in reality bankrupt. The Prime
Minister of Louis XVI., the Count de Maurepas, was never of a genius
to extricate the nation from such enormous difficulties; but now he
was upwards of eighty years of age; and, besides that, steeped in
aristocratic prejudices. Still, he had the sense to catch at the wise
propositions of Turgot, who was made Comptroller-General, and had
he been permitted to have his way, might have effected much. Turgot
insisted that there must be a rigid and inflexible economy introduced
into all departments of the State, in order gradually to discharge
the debts. The excellent Malesherbes being also appointed Minister of
Justice, these two able and good men recommended a series of reforms
which must have struck the old and incorrigible courtiers and nobility
with consternation. They prevailed in having the Parliament restored,
and they recommended that the king should himself initiate the business
of reform, thus preventing it from falling into less scrupulous hands,
and so attaching the body of the people to him by the most encouraging
expectations. Turgot presented his calculations and his enlightened
economic plans, and Malesherbes drew up his two memoirs "On the
Calamities of France, and the Means of Repairing them;" but they had
not a monarch with the mind and the nerve to carry out the only reforms
which could save the monarchy. Turgot, who was of the modern school of
philosophy himself, and well knew the heads of the school, recommended
that they should be employed by Government. Had this been done, the
voices that were raised so fatally against the king and Crown might
have been raised for them, and the grand catastrophe averted. But Louis
could not be brought to listen to any measures so politic; indeed, he
was listening, instead, to the cries of fierce indignation which the
privileged classes were raising against all reform. Turgot succeeded
in abolishing the _corvées_, the interior custom-houses between one
province and another, and some other abuses, but there the great plan
was stopped. Both Louis and his Minister, Maurepas, shrank from the
wrath of the noblesse and the clergy, and desisted from all further
reform.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, PARIS.]
By a still greater fatality, Louis was persuaded to comply with the
solicitations of the American colonists, to assist them in throwing off
their allegiance to Britain. To rend these colonies from Britain, which
had deprived France of Canada and Nova Scotia, was too flattering to
French vanity and French desire of revenge. Turgot in vain protested
that the first cannon that was fired would insure revolution; Louis
consented to the American alliance, and thus set the seal to his own
destruction. Bitterly did he rue this afterwards, still more bitterly
was it rued by his queen when they both saw the fatal infection of
Republicanism brought back from America by the army. When Turgot saw
that this fatal war was determined upon, he retired before the wild
rage of the noblesse and clergy, and from the ruinous weakness of the
king. Minister after minister rapidly succeeded each other in the
vain endeavour to keep up the old partial laws and privileges, the
old extravagance and encumbrances, at the command of the king, and
yet avert revolution. In turn Clugny, Necker, and Calonne withdrew
discomfited.
The next person to attempt the impossible in the vain endeavour to
keep the vessel of the old French monarchy afloat with all its leaks
and rottenness, was the Archbishop of Toulouse, Loménie de Brienne. He
had vigorously opposed Calonne; but there was no way of raising the
necessary revenue but to adopt some of the very proposals of Calonne,
and tax the privileged classes, or to attempt to draw something still
from the exhausted people. As the less difficult experiment of the two,
he was compelled to cast his eyes towards the property of the nobles
and the Church; but he found the nobles and the clergy as ready to
sacrifice him as they had been to sacrifice Calonne. When one or two of
the more pliant or more enlightened members of those classes ventured
to remark on the vast amount of untaxed property, and particularly
of tithes, there was an actual tempest of fury raised. Tithes were
declared to be the voluntary offerings of the piety of the faithful,
and therefore not to be touched. As further loans were out of the
question, some one ventured to assert that the only means of solving
the difficulty was to assemble the States General. "You would convoke
the States General?" said the Minister in consternation. "Yes," replied
Lafayette, who was bent on revolutionising France, as he had helped
to revolutionise America--"yes, and something more than that!" These
words were taken down as most exceptionable and dangerous. All that
the Assembly of Notables could be brought to do was to confirm the
abolition of the _corvée_, and to pass a stamp act. They would not move
a step further, and they were dismissed by the king on the 25th of May,
1787. The Parliament, or Chief Court of Justice, adopted a similar
course, and it also was dismissed. The king then promulgated a new
constitution, but it fell hopelessly to the ground.
Events now rushed on with accumulating force and accelerated pace.
There had been a long drought, withering up the prospects of the
harvest, and now, in July, came a terrible hailstorm, which extended
one hundred and fifty miles round Paris, destroying the nearly ripe
corn, the fruit on the trees, and leaving all that extent of country a
desert, and the inhabitants the prey of famine. In such circumstances
the people could not, those in other quarters would not, pay taxes; the
Treasury was empty, and the king was compelled to promise to convoke
the States General in the following May; Brienne endeavoured to amuse
the active reformers by calling on men of intelligence to send in plans
for the proper conduct of the States General, as none had been held for
one hundred and seventy-two years. The public was impatient for a much
earlier summons, but probably they would not have been much listened
to, had Loménie de Brienne known how to keep things going. His empty
exchequer, however, and the pressing demands upon him, drove him to
solicit the king to recall Necker and appoint him once more Comptroller
of the Finances. He imagined that the popularity of Necker would at
least extend the public patience. The queen energetically opposed the
reinstatement of Necker; the position of affairs was, however, too
desperate, and Necker was recalled. His triumphant return was speedily
followed by the meeting of the States.
On the 4th of May, 1789, Versailles was crowded by immense masses of
people from Paris and the country round, to see the grand procession
of the deputies of the three Orders advancing from the church of Notre
Dame to that of St. Louis. The whole of the costumes, the order of
march, and the spectacle had been carefully studied by the Court, so
as to impress deeply the distinctions of the three Orders, and to
humiliate the Tiers État. The evening before, the deputies had waited
on the king, and even then he had greatly incensed those of the Tiers
État who came most favourably disposed to him. Even whilst he hoped
to obtain essential advantages from the people against the presumption
of the privileged orders, Louis or his advisers could not refrain from
humiliating the Third Estate. Instead of receiving the deputies in
one body, they had been carefully separated; the clergy were received
first, the nobles next, and then, not till after a considerable
pause, the Tiers État. Now, on the great morning, all Paris and the
vicinity--thousands from distant towns--was astir. The streets of
Versailles were lined with French and Swiss guards and made gay with
garlands of flowers, and from the windows hung rich tapestries. The
balconies and windows were crowded with spectators of all ages and both
sexes--the handsomest ladies gorgeously attired. The deputies, instead
of one thousand, amounted to one thousand two hundred. First marched
the members of the Tiers État, six hundred in number, all clad in plain
black mantles, white cravats, and slouched hats. Next went the nobles
in black coats, but the other garments of cloth of gold, silk cloak,
lace cravat, plumed hat turned up _à la_ Henry IV.; then the clergy,
in surplice, with mantle, and square cap; the bishops in their purple
robes, with their rochets. Last came the Court, all ablaze with jewels
and splendid robes; the king in good spirits, the queen anxious, and
dimly conscious even then of the miseries that were to follow. Her
eldest son, the Dauphin, was lying at the point of death in the palace,
and her reputation was being daily murdered by atrocious calumnies.
Yet still Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the great Maria Theresa,
the once light-hearted, always kind and amiable woman, was the perfect
queen in her stately beauty. Two things were remarked--the absence of
Siéyès, and the presence of Mirabeau, two men who had already become
popular leaders. Siéyès had not yet arrived; Mirabeau drew all eyes.
His immense head of hair; his lion-like appearance, marked by an
ugliness quite startling, almost terrifying; the spectators seemed
fascinated by his look. He marched on visibly a man; the rest, compared
with him, were mere shadows.
It was not long before the Third Estate was discovered to be in
hopeless antagonism with the Court and privileged Orders, and they
resolved to act separately. They must act for themselves and for the
people at large, or, by further delays, lose all the advantages of the
moment. They resolved to assume the character of the representatives of
the entire nation. Siéyès declared that the Commons had waited on the
other Orders long enough. They had given in to all the conciliations
proposed; their condescensions had been unavailing; they could delay no
longer, without abandoning their duty to the country. A great debate
arose regarding the name that the body of deputies which resolved to
become the real legislative power should choose. Mirabeau proposed,
the "Representatives of the People;" Mounier, "The Deliberative
Majority in the absence of the Minority;" and Legrand, "The National
Assembly." The proposal of Mounier was soon disposed of; but there
was a strong inclination in favour of "The National Assembly," and
Mirabeau vehemently opposed it. The name of "National Assembly" had,
it is said, been recommended to Lafayette by Jefferson, the American
Minister, and as Lafayette had not yet ventured to move before his
Order, and join the Tiers État, Legrand, an obscure member, and lately
a provincial advocate, was employed to propose it. But Siéyès had,
in his famous _brochure_ on the "Rights of Man," long before thrown
out these words:--"The Tiers État alone, it will be said, cannot form
a States General. So much the better; it will constitute a National
Assembly!" On the 15th of June, Siéyès proposed that the title should
be "The National Assembly of Representatives, known and verified by the
French Nation." Mirabeau indignantly repelled the title in any shape.
He declared that such a title, by denying the rights and existence of
the other two Orders, would plunge the nation into civil war. Legrand
proposed to modify the name by making it "The General Assembly." Siéyès
then came back to his original title of simply "The National Assembly,"
as devoid of all ambiguity, and Mirabeau still more violently opposed
it. But it was soon seen that this name carried the opinion of the mob
with it; the deputies cried out loudly for it; the galleries joined
as loudly in the cries. Mirabeau in a fierce rage read his speech,
said to have been written by his friend Dumont, before the president
Bailly, and withdrew, using violent language against the people who
had hooted him down, declaring that they would soon be compelled to
seek his aid. He had protested in his speech that the veto, which some
of the deputies wished to refuse to the king, must be given to him;
that without the royal veto he would rather live in Constantinople
than in France; that he could conceive nothing more dreadful than the
sovereignty of six hundred persons; that they would very soon declare
themselves hereditary, and would finish, like all other aristocracies
that the world had ever seen, by usurping everything. These words, only
too prophetic, had brought down upon him a tempest of execration; and
writhing under it he had hastened to the Court and had an interview
with Necker, warning him of the danger of the crisis, and offering to
use his influence in favour of the king's authority. Necker received
him coldly, and thus Mirabeau was thrown back on the people. Siéyès's
motion was carried by a majority of four hundred and ninety-one
against ninety; and the National Assembly was proclaimed amid loud
acclamations, mingled with cries of "_Vive le Roi!_"
[Illustration: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: COSTUME OF LADY OF THE PERIOD.]
This alarming event produced an instant and zealous union of the Court
and the nobles. The heads of the aristocracy and of the dignified
clergy threw themselves at the feet of the king, declaring the
monarchy lost if he did not at once dismiss the States. The utmost
confusion reigned in the palace. The unhappy Louis, never able to
form a resolution of his own, was made to sway to and fro like a
pendulum between opposite recommendations. The Assembly had adjourned
on the 19th to the next day, and Bailly, on reaching the door of the
hall, attended by many other deputies found it not only closed, but
surrounded by soldiers of the French Guard, who had orders to refuse
admittance to every one. Some of the fiercer young spirits amongst the
deputies proposed to force their way in; but the officer in command
ordered his men to stand to their arms, and showed that he would make
use of them. Bailly induced the young men to be patient, and obtained
leave from the officer to enter a court and write a protest. A brisk
conference was then held, while standing in the Avenue de Paris, in the
midst of pouring rain, as to whither they should betake themselves. The
deputy Guillotin recommended that they should go to Old Versailles, to
the Jeu de Paume, or Tennis Court, and this plan was adopted.
[Illustration: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: COSTUME OF 1790.]
Before leaving, the courteous officer permitted Bailly and about
half-a-dozen deputies to enter and bring out their papers. The
carpenters were already at work making preparations for the royal
séance, which was intended for a counter-manifestation, and as the
body of the deputies, now nearly completing their six hundred, marched
through the streets, they heard the heralds proclaiming it for Monday,
the 22nd. Bailly felt that there was more indignity intended than even
that of turning them so unceremoniously out of their house, for a
message had been sent to him from the king, announcing the séance, but
it had not been delivered to him, as etiquette required, at the hall,
but at his private house, and not by a written dispatch, but verbally
by De Brézé, the master of ceremonies. When the deputies, with their
president at their head, reached the Tennis Court, they found it a very
spacious apartment, but naked, unfurnished, and desolate. There were no
seats for the deputies, and a chair being offered to Bailly he declined
it, saying he would not sit whilst the other members were standing.
A wooden bench was brought, and served for a desk, two deputies were
stationed as doorkeepers, and the keeper of the Court appeared and
offered them his services. Great numbers of the populace crowded in,
and the deliberations commenced. There were loud complaints of the
interruption of their sitting, and many proposals to prevent such
accidents in future. It was proposed to adjourn to Paris, where they
would have the support of the people, and this project was received
with enthusiasm; but Bailly feared that they might be attacked on
the way, and, moreover, that such a measure would give an advantage
to their enemies, looking like a desertion of their ground. Mounier
then proposed that the deputies should bind themselves by an oath
never to separate till they had completed the Constitution. This was
hailed with enthusiasm. The oath was drawn up, and Bailly, standing
on the bench, read it aloud:--"You solemnly swear never to separate,
and to re-assemble whenever circumstances shall require it, until the
Constitution of the kingdom is founded and established on a solid
basis." As he read this all the deputies held up their right hands,
and repeated after him the words, "We swear!" The formula was read so
loud that not only the spectators within but numbers without heard it,
and all joined in the cry, "We swear!" Then followed loud acclaims of
"_Vive l'Assemblée!_" "_Vive le Roi!_"
[Illustration: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: COSTUME "À LA ROBESPIERRE."]
[Illustration: TRICOTEUSE, OR KNITTING WOMAN, OF THE NATIONAL
CONVENTION.]
After this the royal sitting was useless, as the king's authority was
disregarded by the Third Estate. The Court had to learn that the Tiers
État had remained in their seats after the king and the nobles had
retired. The Assembly then, on the motion of Mirabeau, declared its
members inviolable, and that whoever should lay a hand on any one of
them was a traitor, infamous, and worthy of death.
"Thus," says Thiers, "was effected the first revolution. The Tiers
État had recovered the Legislature, and its adversaries had lost it
by attempting to keep it entirely to themselves. In a few days this
legislative revolution was completely consummated." But it was not
consummated without a violent fermentation of the populace.
The Court and the nobles were greatly alarmed, and secretly preparing
for war. The nobles had joined the Assembly with the utmost repugnance,
and many only on the assurance that the union would not continue. The
members of that Order continued to protest against the proceedings of
the Assembly, rather than join in its deliberations. The king himself
had consented to the union, in the hope that the nobles would be able
to put a check on the Tiers État. King and nobles saw now that all such
hopes were vain. And whilst Necker was retained to satisfy the people
for the present, and whilst Mounier, Lally Tollendal, and Clermont
Tonnerre were consulting with him on establishing a Constitution
resembling that of Britain, the Court was preparing to put down the
insurrection and the Assembly by force. Marshal Broglie was placed at
the head of the troops which surrounded both Paris and Versailles.
He judged of both soldiers and citizens by the recollections of the
Seven Years' War, and assured the king that a little grape-shot would
soon disperse the rioters. Fifteen regiments, chiefly foreign, had
been gradually drawn round the capital. The headquarters of Broglie
were at Versailles, where he had a brilliant staff and a formidable
train of artillery, some of which commanded the very hall in which the
Assembly sat. There was a battery at the bridge of Sèvres, commanding
the road to Paris, and in Paris itself there were strong batteries
on Montmartre, which overlooked the city, and which, moreover, were
carefully entrenched. Besides these preparations, there were French
regiments quartered at St. Germain, Charenton, St. Cloud, and other
places. Altogether, fifty thousand troops were calculated to be
collected. The old noblesse were impatient for the king to give the
order to disperse the people both in Paris and Versailles; to surround
the Assembly, seize the chief members, put them in prison, and send
the rest adrift; to treat the ringleaders of the electors in the same
manner; to dissolve formally the States General, and restore the old
order of things. Had the reins of government been in the hands of a
Bonaparte, the whole plan would have been executed, and would for the
time, without doubt, have succeeded. But Louis XVI. was not the man
for a _coup-d'état_ of that rigorous nature. He shuddered at the idea
of shedding his subjects' blood; and instead of doing that for which
the troops had been assembled, he now listened to Necker, who reminded
him that when the people were put down or shot down, and the States
General dispersed, the old debts and difficulties would remain, and
without States General or Parliament there would be no authority to
impose or collect taxes. To Necker's arguments, the more timid and
liberal nobles added that the excitement would soon wear itself out;
that nothing serious could be done in the presence of such forces, and
that the Constitution, once completed, all would right itself, and
that he would have to congratulate himself on his bloodless patience
in a new and happier reign. This was humane but fatal advice in the
circumstances. The soldiers, allowed to remain inactive in the very
midst of the hotbed of sedition, were sure to become infected with
the spirit of revolution. The debates in the National Assembly were
actively distributed in print, and the soldiers read them eagerly.
Whilst the Court had been conspiring, the people had conspired too. The
electors at the Hôtel de Ville listened with avidity to a suggestion
of Mirabeau, thrown out in the National Assembly, which passed at the
time without much notice. This was for organising the citizens into a
City Guard. The plan had originated with Dumont and his countryman,
Duroverai, both Genevese. Mirabeau had adopted and promulgated it.
Fallen unnoticed in the Assembly, on the 10th of July Carra revived
it at the Hôtel de Ville. He declared that the right of the Commune
to take means for the defence of the city was older than the Monarchy
itself. The Parisian people seconded, in an immense multitude, this
daring proposition, and desired nothing more than a direct order to
arm themselves and to maintain their own safety. Thus encouraged,
Mirabeau renewed his motion in the National Assembly. He demanded that
the troops should be withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Versailles
and Paris, and a burgher guard substituted. He also moved that the
"discussion on the Constitution should be suspended till the security
of the capital and the Assembly were effected." He moved for an
address to the king, praying him to dismiss the troops, and rely on
the affections of his people. The motion was carried, and a committee
appointed to draw up the address. The address was presented by a
deputation of twenty-four members. The king replied that the troops
had been assembled to preserve public tranquillity and to protect the
National Assembly; but that if the Assembly felt any apprehension, he
would send away the troops to Noyon or Soissons and would go himself to
Compiègne. This answer was anything but satisfactory, for this would
be to withdraw the Assembly much farther from Paris, and the movement
would thus weaken the influence of the Assembly, and at the same time
place the king between two powerful armies--the one under Broglie, at
Soissons, and another which lay on the river Oise, under the Marquis
de Bouillé, a most determined Royalist. The Assembly was greatly
disconcerted when this reply was reported.
At this very moment Necker was receiving his dismissal. His situation
at Court had been most painful. The people surrounded the palace,
crying, "Vive Necker!" "Vive le Ministre du Peuple!" He was more
popular than ever, because he had had no part in the insult to the
Tiers État on the 23rd of June. At the same time, when the queen
appeared on the balcony with a child in her arms, the fiercest
execrations were uttered amid curses on the aristocrats. This made
Necker all the more unpopular within the palace. He was accused of
having produced all the mischiefs by advising the king to summon the
States General. He retorted that the nobles and bishops were the cause,
by preventing the king from following the plans he had laid down.
Necker, therefore, begged to resign; but he had been always desired to
remain, for the Court apprehended an outbreak if he were dismissed. But
now, matters being deemed sufficiently safe--the army being in grand
force--the king, on the 11th of July, took him at his word. Necker
was just sitting down to dinner when he received the king's note,
which begged him to keep his retirement secret, and to get across the
frontier as expeditiously as possible.
On the morning of the next day, Sunday, the 12th of July, the news
was all over Paris that Necker was dismissed. The alarm was intense.
Paris was in an uproar. The Palais Royal was choked with people in
a frenzy of excitement. All at once a young man leaped upon a table
and shouted, "To arms! to arms! Whilst we are talking, foreign troops
are gathering round us to massacre us!" This orator, whose loud voice
and dramatic action stopped in a moment the buzz of tongues and the
voices of lesser orators, mounted on chairs and tables, was Benoit
Camille Desmoulins, already a favourite orator of the people on this
spot. This fanatic revolutionist now held up a brace of pistols; and,
snatching a green twig from a tree, stuck it into his hat as a cockade.
There was an instantaneous imitation of the act by the whole mass of
people. The trees were all stripped, and a woman brought out a great
roll of green ribbon, and cut off cockades for the patriots as far as
it would go. The mob, armed with pistols, clubs, swords, and axes,
continued their procession along the Rue Richelieu; then turning on the
Boulevard, along the Rues St. Martin, St. Denis, St. Honoré, to the
Place Vendôme. There a German squadron was drawn up before the hotel of
the farmers of the taxes, and attacked the crowd, destroyed the busts,
and killed a soldier of the French Guard who stood his ground. The
commandant, Besenval, remained inactive in the École Militaire; he was
without orders from Broglie; and, besides, dared not trust the French
Guard, but kept them close in their barracks. But he had three foreign
regiments at his disposal, one of Swiss and two of German cavalry.
Towards afternoon, seeing the disorder increase, he sent the Swiss
into the Champs Elysées with four pieces of cannon, and the German
cavalry into the Place Louis Quinze, adjoining. As Prince Lambesc,
with the Germans, was marching along the Chaussée d'Antin, he was met
by a body of the French Guard, who had escaped from their barracks
to avenge their slain comrade. They fired on him and killed three of
the German cavalry, and wounded numbers more. They then advanced with
fixed bayonets to the Place Louis Quinze, where the Swiss Guard were
posted. There they and the Swiss remained facing each other under arms
all night, the people feasting and encouraging the French Guard; who,
however, did not come to blows with the Swiss. Lambesc had continued
his route to St. Cloud, leaving the city all night in the hands of
the mob, who burnt the barriers at the different entrances, so as to
allow free access to the people from the country; and broke open the
gunsmiths' shops, and carried off the arms. During the whole of the
next day the city was in the hands of the mob.
Whilst these scenes were going on all around, and the city was
menaced every moment by troops, by the raving multitude, and by whole
squadrons of thieves and assassins, the electors were busily employed
in organising a City Guard. But, previous to entering on this task,
it was necessary to establish some sort of municipal authority more
definite and valid than that of the electors at large. A requisition
was then presented to the provost of trades (prévôt des marchands) to
take the head. A number of electors were appointed his assistants. Thus
was formed a municipality of sufficient powers. It was then determined
that this militia, or guard, should consist of forty-eight thousand
men furnished by the districts. They were to wear not the green, but
the Parisian cockade, of red and blue. Every man found in arms, and
wearing this cockade, without having been enrolled in this body by his
district, was to be apprehended, disarmed, and punished. And thus arose
the National Guard of Paris.
During these proceedings, the National Assembly was sitting at
Versailles in the utmost agitation. On the morning of the 13th, Mounier
had risen and censured the dismissal of the Ministers, and had been
seconded by Lally Tollendal, who had pronounced a splendid panegyric
on Necker, and recommended an address to the king for his recall. M.
de Virieu, a deputy of the noblesse, proposed to confirm by oath the
proceedings of the 17th of June; but Clermont Tonnerre declared that
unnecessary, as the Assembly had sworn to establish a constitution, and
he exclaimed, "The Constitution we will have, or we will perish!" In
the midst of this discussion came the news of the rising of the people
of Paris, on the morning of the 13th, and an address was immediately
voted to the king, beseeching him to withdraw the foreign troops,
and authorise the organisation of the Civic Guards. The Duke de la
Rochefoucauld said, the foreign troops in the hands of despotism were
most perilous to the people, who were not in any one's hands. The
address was sent, and the king returned a curt answer, that Paris was
not in a condition to take care of itself. The Assembly then assumed a
higher tone, asserted that the present counsellors of the king would be
responsible for all the calamities which might take place, and declared
itself in permanent session, that is, that it would sit day and night
till the crisis was over. It appointed M. de Lafayette vice-president,
in the place of the aged Bishop of Vienne, who was not capable of much
exertion.
But the Court had hesitated too long. The people had taken the start
of them, and now came sounds which paralysed the Court party with
consternation. Scarcely was midnight passed on this eventful 14th of
July, when the throngs increased rapidly around the Bastille, and the
cries grew fiercer, "Down with it!" "Let us storm it!" De Launay, the
governor, had made all necessary preparations, charged a dozen long
guns on the towers with balls of a pound and a half each, and disposed
his little force to the best advantage. While the democratic leaders
were negotiating with the garrison, the crowd grew first impatient,
then furious. They advanced impetuously against the first drawbridge.
Two men mounted the roof of the guard-house, and, with axes, cut the
chains of the bridge, which fell down. The mass of assailants rushed
forward towards the second bridge, but were met by a discharge of
musketry, which did deadly execution amongst them and brought them to
a stand. The firing proceeded at once from the towers and from the
loop-holes below. A number of the assailants fell, whilst only two
of the muskets fired by the people during the whole day took effect.
De Launay now gave orders to fire on the assailants with grape. This
drove them back to some distance, but they soon came on more furious
than ever. De Launay looked in vain for the promised succour from
Besenval or Broglie, and seeing the ever-increasing and ever more
raging thousands around, he lost his head, was seized with despair, and
resolved to blow up the prison and a great part of the old town near
it. Six hundred and thirty-five barrels of gunpowder were deposited in
the magazine. Seizing a match, he ran to cast it into an open barrel,
and thus send into the air the horrible old fortress, himself, and
garrison. With it must inevitably have been destroyed all the quarter
of the Bastille, all the Marais, and a great part of the Faubourg St.
Antoine. Two uncommissioned officers stopped him by crossing their
bayonets. He then attempted to kill himself, but was secured. His head
was wholly gone--he was no longer capable of issuing an order.
The Bastille surrendered almost immediately after the governor had been
seized with despair. The French Guard began to cannonade the fortress;
the captain of the Swiss, who might undoubtedly have held out much
longer, saw that no rescue came, and that prolonged resistance would
only lead in the end to sanguinary vengeance, he therefore hoisted
a white flag. The captain of the Swiss demanded to be allowed to
capitulate, and to march out with the honours of war; but the furious
mob cried out, "No capitulation! no quarter! The rascals have fired
upon the People!" The Swiss captain then said that they would lay
down their arms, on condition that their lives should be spared. Then
the gates of the old prison were thrown open, and the furious and
triumphant mob burst in. The news of the fall of the Bastille came as a
thunder-clap. The king, who had not been so confident, was gone to bed.
The Duke de Liancourt, Grand Master of the Wardrobe, by virtue of his
office went to his bedside, awoke him, and told him the amazing fact.
"What!" exclaimed Louis, "is it, then, really a revolt?" "Say, rather,
sire," replied the Duke, "a revolution!"
[Illustration: THE CONQUERORS OF THE BASTILLE. (_After the Picture by
François Flameng._)]
The king agreed to visit the Assembly in the morning; and he went,
attended by his two brothers. He addressed them in a kind and
conciliatory tone. He said, "You have been afraid of me; but, for my
part, I put my trust in you." This avowal was received with applause,
in one of those bursts of sentiment, so sudden and so soon over, which
mark French history one moment with tearful emotions and the next with
savage bloodshed. The deputies surrounded the monarch, and escorted him
back to the palace with tears in their eyes. The queen, from a balcony,
saw this enthusiastic procession. She stood with the little dauphin in
her arms, and her daughter holding by her dress; and herself, greatly
moved, was hailed for the moment also by the senators. For the time all
seemed to be forgotten. The king consented to the recall of Necker.
The Duke de Liancourt was appointed president of the Assembly, in the
place of Bailly; and the nobles, who had hitherto absented themselves
from the sittings, now attended and voted. Thus was the Assembly
apparently amalgamated, and the revolution completed. A sudden fit
of generosity seemed to seize the nobles in the Assembly--which, in
fact, was a fit of terror--for they had come to the conclusion that no
protection was to be expected from the Assembly against the fury and
cupidity of the people. They saw that the Assembly was the slave of the
people; that the army had fraternised with the people; and that they
were at the mercy of the merciless populace. The Viscount de Noailles
and the Duke d'Aiguillon declared that it would be wicked and absurd
to employ force to quiet the people. They must destroy the cause of
their sufferings, and all would be accomplished. The nobles hastened to
renounce their privileges. They crowded round the table to enumerate
what they surrendered. The Commons, having nothing of their own to give
up, surrendered the privileges and charters of towns and provinces.
Some offered up their pensions; and one deputy, having nothing else,
surrendered his personal convenience, pledging himself to devote his
energies to the public welfare. The whole Assembly was in a ferment and
fever-heat paroxysm of renunciation, such as could only be witnessed
in France. Lally Tollendal, unable to approach the tribunal, sent
up a note to the President--"Everything is to be apprehended, from
the enthusiasm of the Assembly. Break up the sitting!" Lally moved
that the king should be proclaimed the restorer of French liberty,
which was carried by acclamation; that a Te Deum should be performed
for this joyful event; and the Assembly broke up about midnight in a
bewilderment of rapture and wonder at its own deed.
The Assembly had, on this memorable night of the 4th of August,
decreed nothing less than--the abolition of all serfdom; the right
of compounding for the seignorial dues, and the abolition of
seignorial jurisdictions; the suppression of exclusive rights of
hunting, shooting, keeping warrens, dovecotes, etc.; the abolition
of tithes; the equality of taxes; the admission of all citizens to
civil and military employments; the abolition of the sale of offices;
the suppression of all the privileges of towns and provinces; the
reformation of wardenships; and the suppression of pensions obtained
without just claims. The Assembly then continued the work of the
constitution.
In the midst of this constitution-making, famine was stalking through
the country, and bankruptcy was menacing the exchequer. The first loan
of thirty millions had proved a total failure; a second of eighty,
according to a fresh plan of Necker's, was equally a blank. With the
necessities of the Government, the necessities of the people kept pace.
The whole country was revolutionising instead of working; destroying
estates instead of cultivating them. Farmers were afraid of sowing
what they might never reap; trade and manufactures were at an end, for
there was little money and no confidence. The country was not become
unfruitful, but its people had gone mad, and the inevitable consequence
was an ever-increasing famine. This, instead of being attributed to the
true causes, was ascribed by the mob orators to all kinds of devilish
practices of the Court and the aristocracy.
The Court was soon alarmed by the report that the National Guard
intended to march from Paris to Versailles, and, after removing the
Bodyguard, to do duty at the palace themselves, in order to prevent
the royal family from escaping abroad. Lafayette, now head of the
National Guard, on the 17th of September wrote to St. Priest, one of
the Ministers, to assure him that there was no truth in the report,
and therefore no danger. D'Estaing, the commander of the Bodyguard,
however, to whom Lafayette's letter was communicated by St. Priest,
did not feel satisfied, and proposed to bring the regiment of Flanders
to Versailles, and the Assembly being applied to for its sanction,
declared it was no business of theirs; and thus, neither encouraging
nor discouraging the measure, the regiment was sent for. It arrived on
the 23rd of September; and, at the sight of the long train of waggons
that followed, alarm seized both the people of Versailles and the
Assembly. Mirabeau, who, by a word, could have prevented the coming of
the regiment, now denounced it as dangerous. News flew to Paris that
a counter-revolution was preparing, and that the foreigners would be
marched on the city. All this terror of one single regiment showed
a disposition to feign alarm, rather than the real existence of it;
but the Court committed the great folly of creating fresh reasons for
jealousy. The officers of the Life Guard showed a most lively desire
to fraternise with those of the Flanders regiment, and the courtiers
were equally attentive to them. The officers of the Flanders regiment
were not only presented at the king's levee, but invited to the queen's
drawing-room, and treated in the most flattering manner. The Gardes du
Corps gave a grand dinner to welcome them; and, what was extraordinary,
they were allowed to give it in the theatre of the palace. This took
place on the 2nd of October. The boxes were filled by people belonging
to the Court. The officers of the National Guard were amongst the
guests. After the wine had circulated some time amongst the three
hundred guests, the soldiers, both of the Flanders regiment and of the
other corps, the company, with drawn swords, and heated by champagne,
drank the health of the royal family; the toast of the nation was
rejected or omitted. The grenadiers in the pit demanded to be allowed
to drink the royal healths, and goblets of wine were handed to them,
and they drank the health of the king, the queen, the dauphin, and the
rest of the royal family amid mutual shaking of hands and loud shouts
of "_Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine!_" The band of the Flanders regiment
then struck up the very expressive and celebrated song of Blondel when
seeking his captive king, Cœur de Lion--
"O Richard! o mon Roi!
L'univers t'abandonne--"