THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Three events of pre-eminent importance have occurred in our modern

times; these are the Protestant Reformation, the American War of

Independence, and the French Revolution.

The most complicated and varied of these great movements is the French

Revolution, on which thousands of volumes have been written, so that it

is impossible even to classify the leading events and the ever-changing

features of that rapid and exciting movement. The first act of that

great drama was the attempt of reformers and patriots to destroy

feudalism,--with its privileges and distinctions and injustices,--by

unscrupulous and wild legislation, and to give a new constitution to

the State.

The best representative of this movement was Mirabeau, and I accordingly

select him as the subject of this lecture. I cannot describe the

violence and anarchy which succeeded the Reign of Terror, ending in a

Directory, and the usurpation of Napoleon. The subject is so vast that I

must confine myself to a single point, in which, however, I would unfold

the principles of the reformers and the logical results to which their

principles led.

The remote causes of the French Revolution I have already glanced at, in

a previous lecture. The most obvious of these, doubtless, was the

misgovernment which began with Louis XIV. and continued so disgracefully

under Louis XV.; which destroyed all reverence for the throne, even

loyalty itself, the chief support of the monarchy. The next most

powerful influence that created revolution was feudalism, which ground

down the people by unequal laws, and irritated them by the haughtiness,

insolence, and heartlessness of the aristocracy, and thus destroyed all

respect for them, ending in bitter animosities. Closely connected with

these two gigantic evils was the excessive taxation, which oppressed the

nation and made it discontented and rebellious. The fourth most

prominent cause of agitation was the writings of infidel philosophers

and economists, whose unsound and sophistical theories held out

fallacious hopes, and undermined those sentiments by which all

governments and institutions are preserved. These will be incidentally

presented, as thereby we shall be able to trace the career of the

remarkable man who controlled the National Assembly, and who applied

the torch to the edifice whose horrid and fearful fires he would

afterwards have suppressed. It is easy to destroy; it is difficult to

reconstruct. Nor is there any human force which can arrest a national

conflagration when once it is kindled: only on its ashes can a new

structure arise, and this only after long and laborious efforts and

humiliating disappointments.

It might have been possible for the Government to contend successfully

with the various elements of discontent among the people, intoxicated

with those abstract theories of rights which Rousseau had so eloquently

defended, if it had possessed a strong head and the sinews of war. But

Louis XVI., a modest, timid, temperate, moral young man of twenty-three,

by the death of his father and elder brothers had succeeded to the

throne of his dissolute grandfather at just the wrong time. He was a

gentleman, but no ruler. He had no personal power, and the powers of his

kingdom had been dissipated by his reckless predecessors. Not only was

the army demoralized, and inclined to fraternize with the people, but

there was no money to pay the troops or provide for the ordinary

expenses of the Court. There was an alarming annual deficit, and the

finances were utterly disordered. Successive ministers had exhausted all

ordinary resources and the most ingenious forms of taxation. They made

promises, and resorted to every kind of expediency, which had only a

temporary effect. The primal evils remained. The national treasury was

empty. Calonne and Necker pursued each a different policy, and with the

same results. The extravagance of the one and the economy of the other

were alike fatal. Nobody would make sacrifices in a great national

exigency. The nobles and the clergy adhered tenaciously to their

privileges, and the Court would curtail none of its unnecessary

expenses. Things went on from bad to worse, and the financiers were

filled with alarm. National bankruptcy stared everybody in the face.

If the King had been a Richelieu, he would have dealt summarily with the

nobles and rebellious mobs. He would have called to his aid the talents

of the nation, appealed to its patriotism, compelled the Court to make

sacrifices, and prevented the printing and circulation of seditious

pamphlets. The Government should have allied itself with the people,

granted their requests, and marched to victory under the name of

patriotism. But Louis XVI. was weak, irresolute, vacillating, and

uncertain. He was a worthy sort of man, with good intentions, and

without the vices of his predecessors. But he was surrounded with

incompetent ministers and bad advisers, who distrusted the people and

had no sympathy with their wrongs. He would have made concessions, if

his ministers had advised him. He was not ambitious, nor unpatriotic;

he simply did not know what to do.

In his perplexity, he called together the principal heads of the

nobility,--some hundred and twenty great seigneurs, called the Notables;

but this assembly was dissolved without accomplishing anything. It was

full of jealousies, and evinced no patriotism. It would not part with

its privileges or usurpations.

It was at this crisis that Mirabeau first appeared upon the stage, as a

pamphleteer, writing bitter and envenomed attacks on the government, and

exposing with scorching and unsparing sarcasms the evils of the day,

especially in the department of finance. He laid bare to the eyes of the

nation the sores of the body politic,--the accumulated evils of

centuries. He exposed all the shams and lies to which ministers had

resorted. He was terrible in the fierceness and eloquence of his

assaults, and in the lucidity of his statements. Without being learned,

he contrived to make use of the learning of others, and made it burn

with the brilliancy of his powerful and original genius. Everybody read

his various essays and tracts, and was filled with admiration. But his

moral character was bad,--Was even execrable, and notoriously

outrageous. He was kind-hearted and generous, made friends and used

them. No woman, it is said, could resist his marvellous

fascination,--all the more remarkable since his face was as ugly as

that of Wilkes, and was marked by the small-pox. The excesses of his

private life, and his ungovernable passions, made him distrusted by the

Court and the Government. He was both hated and admired.

Mirabeau belonged to a noble family of very high rank in Provence, of

Italian descent. His father, Marquis Mirabeau, was a man of liberal

sentiments,--not unknown to literary fame by his treatises on political

economy,'--but was eccentric and violent. Although his oldest son, Count

Mirabeau, the subject of this lecture, was precocious intellectually,

and very bright, so that the father was proud of him, he was yet so

ungovernable and violent in his temper, and got into so many disgraceful

scrapes, that the Marquis was compelled to discipline him severely,--all

to no purpose, inasmuch as he was injudicious in his treatment, and

ultimately cruel. He procured _lettres de cachet_ from the King, and

shut up his disobedient and debauched son in various state-prisons. But

the Count generally contrived to escape, only to get into fresh

difficulties; so that he became a wanderer and an exile, compelled to

support himself by his pen.

Mirabeau was in Berlin, in a sort of semi-diplomatic position, when the

Assembly of Notables was convened. His keen prescience and profound

sagacity induced him to return to his distracted country, where he knew

his services would soon be required. Though debauched, extravagant, and

unscrupulous, he was not unpatriotic. He had an intense hatred of

feudalism, and saw in its varied inequalities the chief source of the

national calamities. His detestation of feudal injustices was

intensified by his personal sufferings in the various castles where he

had been confined by arbitrary power. At this period, the whole tendency

of his writings was towards the destruction of the _ancien régime_, He

breathed defiance, scorn, and hatred against the very class to which he

belonged. He was a Catiline,--an aristocratic demagogue, revolutionary

in his spirit and aims; so that he was mistrusted, feared, and detested

by the ruling powers, and by the aristocracy generally, while he was

admired and flattered by the people, who were tolerant of his vices and

imperious temper.

On the wretched failure of the Assembly of the Notables, the prime

minister, Necker, advised the King to assemble the States-General,--the

three orders of the State: the nobles, the clergy, and a representation

of the people. It seemed to the Government impossible to proceed longer,

amid universal distress and hopeless financial embarrassment, without

the aid and advice of this body, which had not been summoned for one

hundred and fifty years.

It became, of course, an object of ambition to Count Mirabeau to have a

seat in this illustrious assembly. To secure this, he renounced his

rank, became a plebeian, solicited the votes of the people, and was

elected a deputy both from Marseilles and Aix. He chose Aix, and his

great career began with the meeting of the States-General at Versailles,

the 5th of May, 1789. It was composed of three hundred nobles, three

hundred priests, and six hundred deputies of the third estate,--twelve

hundred in all. It is generally conceded that these representatives of

the three orders were on the whole a very respectable body of men,

patriotic and incorruptible, but utterly deficient in political

experience and in powers of debate. The deputies were largely composed

of country lawyers, honest, but as conceited as they were inexperienced.

The vanity of Frenchmen is so inordinate that nearly every man in the

assembly felt quite competent to govern the nation or frame a

constitution. Enthusiasm and hope animated the whole assembly, and

everybody saw in this States-General the inauguration of a

glorious future.

One of the most brilliant and impressive chapters in Carlyle's "French

Revolution"--that great prose poem--is devoted to the procession of the

three orders from the church of St. Louis to the church of Notre Dame,

to celebrate the Mass, parts of which I quote.

"Shouts rend the air; one shout, at which Grecian birds might drop

dead. It is indeed a stately, solemn sight. The Elected of France and

then the Court of France; they are marshalled, and march there, all in

prescribed place and costume. Our Commons in plain black mantle and

white cravat; Noblesse in gold-worked, bright-dyed cloaks of velvet,

resplendent, rustling with laces, waving with plumes; the Clergy in

rochet, alb, and other clerical insignia; lastly the King himself and

household, in their brightest blaze of pomp,--their brightest and final

one. Which of the six hundred individuals in plain white cravats that

have come up to regenerate France might one guess would become their

king? For a king or a leader they, as all bodies of men, must have. He

with the thick locks, will it be? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and

rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face, there look natural ugliness,

small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,--and burning fire of genius? It is

Gabriel Honoré Riquetti de Mirabeau; man-ruling deputy of Aix! Yes, that

is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch; as Voltaire was of the last. He is

French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues and vices. Mark

him well. The National Assembly were all different without that one;

nay, he might say with old Despot,--The National Assembly? I am that.

"Now, if Mirabeau is the greatest of these six hundred, who may be the

meanest? Shall we say that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man,

under thirty, in spectacles, his eyes troubled, careful; with upturned

face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future time; complexion of a

multiplex atrabilious color, the final shade of which may be pale

sea-green? That greenish-colored individual is an advocate of Arras; his

name is Maximilien Robespierre.

"Between which extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand and mean,

roll on towards their several destinies in that procession. There is

experienced Mounier, whose presidential parliamentary experience the

stream of things shall soon leave stranded. A Pétion has left his gown

and briefs at Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading. A

Protestant-clerical St. Etienne, a slender young eloquent and vehement

Barnave, will help to regenerate France,

"And then there is worthy Doctor Guillotin, Bailly likewise,

time-honored historian of astronomy, and the Abbé Sieyès, cold, but

elastic, wiry, instinct with the pride of logic, passionless, or with

but one passion, that of self-conceit. This is the Sieyès who shall be

system-builder, constitutional-builder-general, and build constitutions

which shall unfortunately fall before we get the scaffolding away.

"Among the nobles are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucauld, and pious Lally,

and Lafayette, whom Mirabeau calls Grandison Cromwell, and the Viscount

Mirabeau, called Barrel Mirabeau, on account of his rotundity, and the

quantity of strong liquor he contains. Among the clergy is the Abbé

Maury, who does not want for audacity, and the Curé Grégoire who shall

be a bishop, and Talleyrand-Pericord, his reverence of Autun, with

sardonic grimness, a man living in falsehood, and on falsehood, yet not

wholly a false man.

"So, in stately procession, the elected of France pass on, some to

honor, others to dishonor; not a few towards massacre, confusion,

emigration, desperation."

For several weeks this famous States-General remain inactive, unable to

agree whether they shall deliberate in a single hall or in three

separate chambers. The deputies, of course, wish to deliberate in a

single chamber, since they equal in number both the clergy and nobles,

and some few nobles had joined them, and more than a hundred of the

clergy. But a large majority of both the clergy and the noblesse insist

with pertinacity on the three separate chambers, since, united, they

would neutralize the third estate. If the deputies prevailed, they would

inaugurate reforms to which the other orders would never consent.

Long did these different bodies of the States-General deliberate, and

stormy were the debates. The nobles showed themselves haughty and

dogmatical; the deputies showed themselves aggressive and revolutionary.

The King and the ministers looked on with impatience and disgust, but

were irresolute. Had the King been a Cromwell, or a Napoleon, he would

have dissolved the assemblies; but he was timid and hesitating. Necker,

the prime minister, was for compromise; he would accept reforms, but

only in a constitutional way.

The knot was at last cut by the Abbé Sieyès, a political priest, and one

of the deputies for Paris,--the finest intellect in the body, next to

Mirabeau, and at first more influential than he, since the Count was

generally distrusted on account of his vices. Nor had he as yet

exhibited his great powers. Sieyès said, for the Deputies alone, "We

represent ninety-six per cent of the whole nation. The people is

sovereign; we, therefore, as its representatives, constitute ourselves a

national assembly." His motion was passed by acclamation, on June 17,

and the Third Estate assumed the right to act for France.

In a legal and constitutional point of view, this was a usurpation, if

ever there was one. "It was," says Von Sybel, the able German historian

of the French Revolution, "a declaration of open war between arbitrary

principles and existing rights." It was as if the House of

Representatives in the United States, or the House of Commons in

England, should declare themselves the representatives of the nation,

ignoring the Senate or the House of Lords. Its logical sequence was

revolution.

The prodigious importance of this step cannot be overrated. It

transferred the powers of the monarchy to the Third Estate. It would

logically lead to other usurpations, the subversion of the throne, and

the utter destruction of feudalism,--for this last was the aim of the

reformers. Mirabeau himself at first shrank from this violent measure,

but finally adopted it. He detested feudalism and the privileges of the

clergy. He wanted radical reforms, but would have preferred to gain

them in a constitutional way, like Pym, in the English Revolution. But

if reforms could not be gained constitutionally, then he would accept

revolution, as the lesser evil. Constitutionally, radical reforms were

hopeless. The ministers and the King, doubtless, would have made some

concessions, but not enough to satisfy the deputies. So these same

deputies took the entire work of legislation into their own hands. They

constituted themselves the sole representatives of the nation. The

nobles and the clergy might indeed deliberate with them; they were not

altogether ignored, but their interests and rights were to be

disregarded. In that state of ferment and discontent which existed when

the States-General was convened, the nobles and the clergy probably knew

the spirit of the deputies, and therefore refused to sit with them. They

knew, from the innumerable pamphlets and tracts which were issued from

the press, that radical changes were desired, to which they themselves

were opposed; and they had the moral support of the Government on

their side.

The deputies of the Third Estate were bent on the destruction of

feudalism, as the only way to remedy the national evils, which were so

glaring and overwhelming. They probably knew that their proceedings were

unconstitutional and illegal, but thought that their acts would be

sanctioned by their patriotic intentions. They were resolved to secure

what seemed to them rights, and thought little of duties. If these

inestimable and vital rights should be granted without usurpation, they

would be satisfied; if not, then they would resort to usurpation. To

them their course seemed to be dictated by the "higher law." What to

them were legalities that perpetuated wrongs? The constitution was made

for man, not man for the constitution.

Had the three orders deliberated together in one hall, although against

precedent and legality, the course of revolution might have been

directed into a different channel; or if an able and resolute king had

been on the throne, he might have united with the people against the

nobles, and secured all the reforms that were imperative, without

invoking revolution; or he might have dispersed the deputies at the

point of the bayonet, and raised taxes by arbitrary imposition, as able

despots have ever done. We cannot penetrate the secrets of Providence.

It may have been ordered in divine justice and wisdom that the French

people should work out their own deliverance in their own way, in

mistakes, in suffering, and in violence, and point the eternal moral

that inexperience, vanity, and ignorance are fatal to sound legislation,

and sure to lead to errors which prove disastrous; that national

progress is incompatible with crime; that evils can only gradually be

removed; that wickedness ends in violence.

A majority of the deputies meant well. They were earnest, patriotic, and

enthusiastic. But they knew nothing of the science of government or of

constitution-making, which demand the highest maturity of experience and

wisdom. As I have said, nearly four hundred of them were country

lawyers, as conceited as they were inexperienced. Both Mirabeau and

Sieyès had a supreme contempt for them as a whole. They wanted what they

called rights, and were determined to get them any way they could,

disregarding obstacles, disregarding forms and precedents. And they were

backed up and urged forward by ignorant mobs, and wicked demagogues who

hated the throne, the clergy, and the nobles. Hence the deputies made

mistakes. They could see nothing better than unscrupulous destruction.

And they did not know how to reconstruct. They were bewildered and

embarrassed, and listened to the orators of the Palais Royal.

The first thing of note which occurred when they resolved to call

themselves the National Assembly and not the Third Estate, which they

were only, was done by Mirabeau. He ascended the tribune, when Brézé,

the master of ceremonies, came with a message from the King for them to

join the other orders, and said in his voice of melodious thunder, "We

are here by the command of the people, and will only disperse by the

force of bayonets." From that moment, till his death, he ruled the

Assembly. The disconcerted messenger returned to his sovereign. What did

the King say at this defiance of royal authority? Did he rise in wrath

and indignation, and order his guards to disperse the rebels? No; the

amiable King said meekly, "Well, let them remain there." What a king for

such stormy times! O shade of Richelieu, thy work has perished!

Rousseau, a greater genius than thou wert, hath undermined the

institutions and the despotism of two hundred years.

Only two courses were now open to the King,--this weak and kind-hearted

Louis XVI., heir of a hundred years' misrule,--if he would maintain his

power. One was to join the reformers and co-operate in patriotic work,

assisted by progressive ministers, whatever opposition might be raised

by nobles and priests; and the second was to arm himself and put down

the deputies. But how could this weak-minded sovereign co-operate with

plebeians against the orders which sustained his throne? And if he used

violence, he inaugurated civil war, which would destroy thousands where

revolution destroyed hundreds. Moreover, the example of Charles I. was

before him. He dared not run the risk. In such a torrent of

revolutionary forces, when even regular troops fraternized with

citizens, that experiment was dangerous. And then he was

tender-hearted, and shrank from shedding innocent blood. His queen,

Marie Antoinette, the intrepid daughter of Maria Theresa, with her

Austrian proclivities, would have kept him firm and sustained him by her

courageous counsels; but her influence was neutralized by popular

ministers. Necker, the prosperous banker, the fortunate financier,

advised half measures. Had he conciliated Mirabeau, who led the

Assembly, then even the throne might have been saved. But he detested

and mistrusted the mighty tribune of the people,--the aristocratic

demagogue, who, in spite of his political rancor and incendiary tracts,

was the only great statesman of the day. He refused the aid of the only

man who could have staved off the violence of factions, and brought

reason and talent to the support of reform and law.

At this period, after the triumph of the Third Estate,--now called the

National Assembly,--and the paralysis of the Court, perplexed and

uncertain whether or not to employ violence and disband the assembly by

royal decree, a great agitation began among the people, not merely in

Paris, but over the whole kingdom. There were meetings to promote

insurrection, paid declaimers of human rights, speeches without end in

the gardens of the Palais Royal, where Marat, Camille Desmoulins, and

other popular orators harangued the excited crowds. There were

insurrections at Versailles, which was filled with foreign soldiers.

The French guards fraternized with the people whom they were to subdue.

Necker in despair resigned, or was dismissed. None of the authorities

could command obedience. The people were starving, and the bakers' shops

were pillaged. The crowds broke open the prisons, and released many who

had been summarily confined. Troops were poured into Paris, and the old

Duke of Broglie, one of the heroes of the Seven Years' War, now

war-minister, sought to overawe the city. The gun-shops were plundered,

and the rabble armed themselves with whatever weapons they could lay

their hands upon. The National Assembly decreed the formation of a

national guard to quell disturbances, and placed Lafayette at the head

of it. Besenval, who commanded the royal troops, was forced to withdraw

from the capital. The city was completely in the hands of the

insurgents, who were driven hither and thither by every passion which

can sway the human soul. Patriotic zeal blended with envy, hatred,

malice, revenge, and avarice. The mob at last attacked the Bastille, a

formidable fortress where state-prisoners were arbitrarily confined. In

spite of moats and walls and guns, this gloomy monument of royal tyranny

was easily taken, for it was manned by only about one hundred and forty

men, and had as provisions only two sacks of flour. No aid could

possibly come to the rescue. Resistance was impossible, in its

unprepared state for defence, although its guns, if properly manned,

might have demolished the whole Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

The news of the fall of this fortress came like a thunder-clap over

Europe. It announced the reign of anarchy in France, and the

helplessness of the King. On hearing of the fall of the Bastille, the

King is said to have exclaimed to his courtiers, "It is a revolt, then."

"Nay, sire," said the Duke of Liancourt, "it is a revolution." It was

evident that even then the King did not comprehend the situation. But

how few could comprehend it! Only one man saw the full tendency of

things, and shuddered at the consequences,--and this man was Mirabeau.

The King, at last aroused, appeared in person in the National Assembly,

and announced the withdrawal of the troops from Paris and the recall of

Necker. But general mistrust was alive in every bosom, and disorders

still continued to a frightful extent, even in the provinces. "In

Brittany the towns appointed new municipalities, and armed a civic guard

from the royal magazines. In Caen the people stormed the citadel and

killed the officers of the salt-tax. Nowhere were royal intendants seen.

The custom-houses, at the gates of the provincial cities, were

demolished. In Franche-Comté a noble castle was burned every day. All

kinds of property were exposed to the most shameful robbery."

Then took place the emigration of the nobles, among whom were Condé,

Polignac, Broglie, to organize resistance to the revolution which had

already conquered the King.

Meanwhile, the triumphant Assembly, largely recruited by the liberal

nobles and the clergy, continued its sessions, decreed its sittings

permanent and its members inviolable. The sittings were stormy; for

everybody made speeches, written or oral, yet few had any power of

debate. Even Mirabeau himself, before whom all succumbed, was deficient

in this talent. He could thunder; he could arouse or allay passions; he

seemed able to grasp every subject, for he used other people's brains;

he was an incarnation of eloquence,--but he could not reply to opponents

with much effect, like Pitt, Webster, and Gladstone. He was still the

leading man in the kingdom; all eyes were directed towards him; and no

one could compete with him, not even Sieyès. The Assembly wasted days in

foolish debates. It had begun its proceedings with the famous

declaration of the rights of man,--an abstract question, first mooted by

Rousseau, and re-echoed by Jefferson. Mirabeau was appointed with a

committee of five to draft the declaration,--in one sense, a puerile

fiction, since men are not "born free," but in a state of dependence and

weakness; nor "equal," either in regard to fortune, or talents, or

virtue, or rank: but in another sense a great truth, so far as men are

entitled by nature to equal privileges, and freedom of the person, and

unrestricted liberty to get a living according to their choice.

The Assembly at last set itself in earnest to the work of legislation.

In one night, the ever memorable 4th of August, it decreed the total

abolition of feudalism. In one night it abolished tithes to the church,

provincial privileges, feudal rights, serfdom, the law of primogeniture,

seigniorial dues, and the _gabelle_, or tax on salt. Mirabeau was not

present, being absent on his pleasures. These, however, seldom

interfered with his labors, which were herculean, from seven in the

morning till eleven at night. He had two sides to his character,--one

exciting abhorrence and disgust, for his pleasures were miscellaneous

and coarse; a man truly abandoned to the most violent passions: the

other side pleasing, exciting admiration; a man with an enormous power

of work, affable, dignified, with courtly manners, and enchanting

conversation, making friends with everybody, out of real kindness of

heart, because he really loved the people, and sought their highest

good; a truly patriotic man, and as wise as he was enthusiastic. This

great orator and statesman was outraged and alarmed at the indecent

haste of the Assembly, and stigmatized its proceedings as "nocturnal

orgies." The Assembly on that memorable night swept away the whole

feudal edifice, and in less time than the English Parliament would take

to decide upon the first reading of any bill of importance.

The following day brought reflection and discontent. "That is just the

character of our Frenchmen," exclaimed Mirabeau; "they are three months

disputing about syllables, and in a single night they overturn the whole

venerable edifice of the monarchy." Sieyès was equally disgusted, and

made a speech of great force to show that to abolish tithes without an

indemnity was spoliating the clergy to enrich the land-owners. He

concluded, "You know how to be free; you do not know how to be just."

But he was regarded as an ecclesiastic, unable to forego his personal

interests. He gave vent to his irritated feelings in a conversation with

Mirabeau, when the latter said, "My dear Abbé, you have let loose the

bull, and you now complain that he gores you." It was this political

priest who had made the first assault on the constitution, when he urged

the Third Estate to decree itself the nation.

The National Assembly had destroyed feudal institutions; but it had not

yet made a constitution, or restored order. Violence and anarchy still

reigned. Then the clubs began to make themselves a power. "Come," said

the lawyer Danton to a friend, in the district of the Cordéliers, "come

and howl with us; you will earn much money, and you can still choose

your party afterwards." But it was in the garden of the Palais Royal,

and in the old church of the Jacobins that the most violent attacks were

made on all existing institutions. "A Fourth Estate (of able editors)

also springs up, increases, multiplies; irrepressible, incalculable."

Then from the lowest quarters of Paris surge up an insurrection of

women, who march to Versailles in disorder, penetrate the Assembly, and

invade the palace. On the 5th of October a mob joins them, of the lowest

rabble, and succeed in forcing their way into the precincts of the

palace. "The King to Paris!" was now the general cry, and Louis XVI.

appears upon the balcony and announces by gestures his subjection to

their will. A few hours after, the King is on his way to Paris, under

the protection of the National Guard, really a prisoner in the hands of

the people. In fourteen days the National Assembly also follows, to be

now dictated to by the clubs.

In this state of anarchy and incipient violence, Mirabeau, whose power

in the Assembly was still unimpaired, wished to halt. He foresaw the

future. No man in France had such clear insight and sagacity as he. He

saw the State drifting into dissolution, and put forth his hand and

raised his voice to arrest the catastrophe which he lamented. "The mob

of Paris," said he, "will scourge the corpses of the King and Queen." It

was then that he gave but feeble support to the "Rights of Man," and

contended for the unlimited veto of the King on the proceedings of the

Assembly. He also brought forward a motion to allow the King's ministers

to take part in the debates. "On the 7th of October he exhorted the

Count de Marck to tell the King that his throne and kingdom were lost,

if he did not immediately quit Paris." And he did all he could to induce

him, through the voice of his friends, to identify himself with the

cause of reform, as the only means for the salvation of the throne. He

warned him against fleeing to the frontier to join the emigrants, as the

prelude of civil war. He advocated a new ministry, of more vigor and

breadth. He wanted a government both popular and strong. He wished to

retain the monarchy, but desired a constitutional monarchy like that of

England. His hostility to all feudal institutions was intense, and he

did not seek to have any of them restored. It was the abolition of

feudal privileges which was really the permanent bequest of the French

Revolution. They have never been revived. No succeeding government has

even attempted to revive them.

On the removal of the National Assembly to Paris, Mirabeau took a large

house and lived ostentatiously and at great expense until he died, from

which it is supposed that he received pensions from England, Spain, and

even the French Court. This is intimated by Dumont; and I think it

probable. It will in part account for the conservative course he

adopted to check the excesses of that revolution which he, more than any

other man, invoked. He was doubtless patriotic, and uttered his warning

protests with sincerity. Still it is easy to believe that so corrupt and

extravagant a man in his private life was accessible to bribery. Such a

man must have money, and he was willing to get it from any quarter. It

is certain that he was regarded by the royal family, towards the close

of his career, very differently from what they regarded him when the

States-General was assembled. But if he was paid by different courts, it

is true that he then gave his support to the cause of law and

constitutional liberty, and doubtless loathed the excesses which took

place in the name of liberty. He was the only man who could have saved

the monarchy, if it were possible to save it; but no human force could

probably have arrested the waves of revolutionary frenzy at this time.

On the removal of the Assembly to Paris, the all-absorbing questions

related to finance. The State was bankrupt. It was difficult to raise

money for the most pressing exigencies. Money must be had, or there

would be universal anarchy and despair. How could it be raised? The

credit of the country was gone, and all means of taxation were

exhausted. No man in France had such a horror of bankruptcy as Mirabeau,

and his eloquence was never more convincing and commanding than in his

finance speeches. Nobody could reply to him. The Assembly was completely

subjugated by his commanding talents. Nor was his influence ever greater

than when he supported Necker's proposal for a patriotic loan, a sort of

income-tax, in a masterly speech which excited universal admiration.

"Ah, Monsieur le Comte," said a great actor to him on that occasion,

"what a speech: and with what an accent did you deliver it! You have

surely missed your vocation."

But the finances were in a hopeless state. With credit gone, taxation

exhausted, and a continually increasing floating debt, the situation was

truly appalling to any statesman. It was at this juncture that

Talleyrand, a priest of noble birth, as able as he was unscrupulous,

brought forth his famous measure for the spoliation of the Church, to

which body he belonged, and to which he was a disgrace. Talleyrand, as

Bishop of Autun, had been one of the original representatives of the

clergy on the first convocation of the States-General; he had advocated

combining with the Third Estate when they pronounced themselves the

National Assembly, had himself joined the Assembly, attracted notice by

his speeches, been appointed to draw up a constitution, taken active

part in the declaration of Rights, and made himself generally

conspicuous and efficient. At the present apparently hopeless financial

crisis, Talleyrand uncovered a new source of revenue, claimed that the

property of the Church belonged to the nation, and that as the nation

was on the brink of financial ruin, this confiscation was a supreme

necessity. The Church lands represented a value of two thousand millions

of francs,--an immense sum, which, if sold, would relieve, it was

supposed, the necessities of the State. Mirabeau, although he was no

friend of the clergy, shrank from such a monstrous injustice, and said

that such a wound as this would prove the most poisonous which the

country had received. But such was the urgent need of money, that the

Assembly on the 2d of November, 1789, decreed that the property of the

Church should be put at the disposal of the State. On the 19th of

December it was decreed that these lands should be sold. The clergy

raised the most piteous cries of grief and indignation. Vainly did the

bishops offer four hundred millions as a gift to the nation. It was like

the offer of Darius to Alexander, of one hundred thousand talents. "Your

whole property is mine," said the conqueror; "your kingdom is mine."

So the offer of the bishops was rejected, and their whole property was

taken. And it was taken under the sophistical plea that it belonged to

the nation. It was really the gift of various benefactors in different

ages to the Church, for pious purposes, and had been universally

recognized as sacred. It was as sacred as any other rights of property.

The spoliation was infinitely worse than the suppression of the

monasteries by Henry VIII. He had some excuse, since they had become a

scandal, had misused their wealth, and diverted it from the purposes

originally intended. The only wholesale attack on property by the State

which can be compared with it, was the abolition of slavery by a stroke

of the pen in the American Rebellion. But this was a war measure, when

the country was in most imminent peril; and it was also a moral measure

in behalf of philanthropy. The spoliation of the clergy by the National

Assembly was a great injustice, since it was not urged that the clergy

had misused their wealth, or were neglectful of their duties, as the

English monks were in the time of Henry VIII. This Church property had

been held so sacred, that Louis XIV. in his greatest necessities never

presumed to appropriate any part of it. The sophistry that it belonged

to the nation, and therefore that the representatives of the nation had

a right to take it, probably deceived nobody. It was necessary to give

some excuse or reason for such a wholesale robbery, and this was the

best which could be invented. The simple truth was that money at this

juncture was a supreme necessity to the State, and this spoliation

seemed the easiest way to meet the public wants. Like most of the

legislation of the Assembly, it was defended on the Jesuit plea of

expediency,--that the end justifies the means; the plea of unscrupulous

and wicked politicians in all countries.

And this expediency, doubtless, relieved the government for a time, for

the government was in the hands of the Assembly. Royal authority was a

mere shadow. In reality, the King was a prisoner, guarded by Lafayette,

in the palace of the Tuileries. And the Assembly itself was now in fear

of the people as represented by the clubs. There were two hundred

Jacobin clubs in Paris and other cities at this time, howling their

vituperations not only on royalty but also on everything else which was

not already destroyed.

The Assembly having provided for the wants of the government by the

confiscation of two thousand millions,--which, however, when sold, did

not realize half that sum,--issued their _assignats_, or bonds

representing parcels of land assigned to redeem them. These were mostly

100-franc notes, though there were also issues of ten and even five

francs. The national credit was thus patched up by legislators who took

a constitution in hand,--to quote Burke--"as savages would a

looking-glass." Then they proceeded to other reforms, and abolished the

parliaments, and instituted the election of judges by the people, thus

stripping the King of his few remaining powers.

In the mean time Mirabeau died, worn out with labors and passions, and

some say by poison. Even this Hercules could not resist the

consequences of violated natural law. The Assembly decreed a magnificent

public funeral, and buried him with great pomp. He was the first to be

interred in the Pantheon. For nearly two years he was the leading man in

France, and he retained his influence in the Assembly to the end. Nor

did he lose his popularity with the people. It is not probable that his

intrigues to save the monarchy were known, except to a few confidential

friends. He died at the right time for his fame, in April, 1791. Had he

lived, he could not have arrested the tide of revolutionary excesses and

the reign of demagogues, and probably would have been one of the victims

of the guillotine.

As an author Mirabeau does not rank high. His fame rests on his

speeches. His eloquence was transcendent, so far as it was rendered

vivid by passion. He knew how to move men; he understood human nature.

No orator ever did so much by a single word, by felicitous expressions.

In the tribune he was immovable. His self-possession never left him in

the greatest disorders. He was always master of himself. His voice was

full, manly, and sonorous, and pleased the ear; always powerful, yet

flexible, it could be as distinctly heard when he lowered it as when he

raised it. His knowledge was not remarkable, but he had an almost

miraculous faculty of appropriating whatever he heard. He paid the

greatest attention to his dress, and wore an enormous quantity of hair

dressed in the fashion of the day. "When I shake my terrible locks,"

said he, "no one dares interrupt me." Though he received pensions, he

was too proud to be dishonest, in the ordinary sense. He received large

sums, but died insolvent. He had, like most Frenchmen, an inordinate

vanity, and loved incense from all ranks and conditions. Although he was

the first to support the Assembly against the King, he was essentially

in favor of monarchy, and maintained the necessity of the absolute veto.

He would have given a constitution to his country as nearly resembling

that of England as local circumstances would permit. Had he lived, the

destinies of France might have been different.

But his death gave courage to all the factions, and violence and crime

were consummated by the Reign of Terror. With the death of Mirabeau,

closed the first epoch of the Revolution. Thus far it had been earnest,

but unscrupulous in the violation of rights and in the destruction of

ancient abuses. Yet if inexperienced and rash, it was not marked by

deeds of blood. In this first form it was marked by enthusiasm and hope

and patriotic zeal; not, as afterwards, by fears and cruelty and

usurpations.

Henceforth, the Revolution took another turn. It was directed, not by

men of genius, not by reformers seeking to rule by wisdom, but by

demagogues and Jacobin clubs, and the mobs of the city of Paris. What

was called the "Left," in the meetings of the Assembly,--made up of

fanatics whom Mirabeau despised and detested,--gained a complete

ascendency and adopted the extremest measures. Under their guidance, the

destruction of the monarchy was complete. Feudalism and the Church

property had been swept away, and the royal authority now received its

final blow; nay, the King himself was slain, under the influence of

fear, it is true, but accompanied by acts of cruelty and madness which

shocked the whole civilized world and gave an eternal stain to the

Revolution itself.

It was not now reform, but unscrupulous destruction and violence which

marked the Assembly, controlled as it was by Jacobin orators and infidel

demagogues. A frenzy seized the nation. It feared reactionary movements

and the interference of foreign powers. When the Bastille had fallen, it

was by the hands of half-starved people clamoring for bread; but when

the monarchy was attacked, it was from sentiments of fear among those

who had the direction of affairs. The King, at last, alarmed for his own

safety, contrived to escape from the Tuileries, where he was virtually

under arrest, for his power was gone; but he was recaptured, and brought

back to Paris, a prisoner. Robespierre called upon the Assembly to

bring the King and Queen to trial. Marat proposed a military

dictatorship, to act more summarily, which proposal produced a temporary

reaction in favor of royalty. Lafayette, as commander of the National

Guard, declared, "If you kill the King to-day, I will place the Dauphin

on the throne to-morrow." But the republican party, now in fear of a

reaction, was increasing rapidly. Its leaders were at this time the

Girondists, bent on the suppression of royalty, and headed by Brissot,

who agitated France by his writings in favor of a republic, while Madame

Roland opened her _salons_ for intrigues and cabals,--a bright woman,

"who dreamed of Spartan severity, Roman virtue, and Plutarch heroes."

The National Assembly dissolved itself in September, and appealed to the

country for the election of a National Convention; for, the King having

been formally suspended Aug. 10, there was no government. The first act

of the Convention was to proclaim the Republic. Then occurred the more

complete organization of the Jacobin club, to control the National

Convention; and this was followed by the rapid depreciation of the

_assignats_, bread-riots, and all sorts of disturbances. Added to these

evils, foreign governments were arming to suppress the Revolution, and

war had been declared by the Girondist ministry, of which Dumouriez was

war-minister. At this crisis, Danton, of the club of the Cordéliers,

who found the Jacobins too respectable, became a power,--a coarse,

vulgar man, but of indefatigable energy and activity, who wished to do

away with all order and responsibility. He attacked the Gironde as not

sufficiently violent.

It was now war between the different sections of the revolutionists

themselves. Lafayette resolved to suppress the dangerous radicals by

force, but found it no easy thing, for the Convention was controlled by

men of violence, who filled the country with alarm, not of their

unscrupulous measures, but of the military and of foreign enemies. He

even narrowly escaped impeachment at the hands of the National

Convention.

The Convention is now overawed and controlled by the Commune and the

clubs. Lafayette flies. The mob rules Paris. The revolutionary tribunal

is decreed. Robespierre, Marat, and Danton form a triumvirate of power.

The September massacres take place. The Girondists become conservative,

and attempt to stay the progress of further excesses,--all to no

purpose, for the King himself is now impeached, and the Jacobins control

everything. The King is led to the bar of the Convention. He is

condemned by a majority only of one, and immured in the Temple. On the

20th of January, 1793, he was condemned, and the next day he mounted the

scaffold. "We have burned our ships," said Marat when the tragedy was

consummated.

With the death of the King, I bring this lecture to a close. It would

be interesting to speculate on what might have been averted, had

Mirabeau lived. But probably nothing could have saved the monarchy

except civil war, to which Louis XVI. was averse.

Nor can I dwell on the second part of the Revolution, when the

government was in the hands of those fiends and fanatics who turned

France into one vast slaughter-house of butchery and blood. I have only

to say, that the same unseen hand which humiliated the nobles,

impoverished the clergy, and destroyed the King, also visited with

retribution those monsters who had a leading hand in the work of

destruction. Marat, the infidel journalist, was stabbed by Charlotte

Corday. Danton, the minister of justice and orator of the revolutionary

clubs, was executed on the scaffold he had erected for so many innocent

men. Robespierre, the sentimental murderer and arch-conspirator, also

expiated his crimes on the scaffold; as did Saint-Just, Lebas, Couthon,

Henriot, and other legalized assassins. As the Girondists sacrificed the

royal family, so did the Jacobins sacrifice the Girondists; and the

Convention, filled with consternation, again sacrificed the Jacobins.

After the work of destruction was consummated, and there was nothing

more to destroy, and starvation was imminent at Paris, and general

detestation began to prevail, in view of the atrocities committed in

the name of liberty, the crushing fact became apparent that the nations

of Europe were arming to put down the Revolution and restore the

monarchy. In a generous paroxysm of patriotism, the whole nation armed

to resist the invaders and defend the ideas of the Revolution. The

Convention also perceived, too late, that anything was better than

anarchy and license. It put down the clubs, restored religious worship,

destroyed the busts of the monsters who had disgraced their cause and

country, intrusted supreme power to five Directors, able and patriotic,

and dissolved itself.

Under the Directory, the third act of the drama of revolution opened

with the gallant resistance which France made to the invaders of her

soil and the enemies of her liberties. This resistance brought out the

marvellous military genius of Napoleon, who intoxicated the nation by

his victories, and who, in reward of his extraordinary services, was

made First Consul, with dictatorial powers. The abuse of these powers,

his usurpation of imperial dignity, the wars into which he was drawn to

maintain his ascendency, and his final defeat at Waterloo, constitute

the most brilliant chapter in the history of modern times. The

Revolution was succeeded by military despotism. Inexperience led to

fatal mistakes, and these mistakes made the strong government of a

single man a necessity. The Revolution began in noble aspirations, but

for lack of political wisdom and sound principles in religion and

government, it ended in anarchy and crime, and was again followed by the

tyranny of a monarch. This is the sequence of all revolutions which defy

eternal justice and human experience. There are few evils which are

absolutely unendurable, and permanent reforms are only obtained by

patience and wisdom. Violence is ever succeeded by usurpation. The

terrible wars through which France passed, to aggrandize an ambitious

and selfish egotist, were attended with far greater evils than those

which the nation sought to abolish when the States-General first met at

Versailles.

But the experiment of liberty, though it failed, was not altogether

thrown away. Lessons of political wisdom were learned, which no nation

will ever forget. Some great rights of immense value were secured, and

many grievous privileges passed away forever. Neither Louis XVIII., nor

Charles X., nor Louis Philippe, nor Louis Napoleon, ever attempted to

restore feudalism, or unequal privileges, or arbitrary taxation. The

legislative power never again completely succumbed to the decrees of

royal and imperial tyrants. The sovereignty of the people was

established as one of the fixed ideas of the nineteenth century, and the

representatives of the people are now the supreme rulers of the land. A

man can now rise in France above the condition in which he was born,

and can aspire to any office and position which are bestowed on talents

and genius. Bastilles and _lettres de cachet_ have become an

impossibility. Religious toleration is as free there as in England or

the United States. Education is open to the poor, and is encouraged by

the Government. Constitutional government seems to be established, under

whatever name the executive may be called. France is again one of the

most prosperous and contented countries of Europe; and the only great

drawback to her national prosperity is that which also prevents other

Continental powers from developing their resources,--the large standing

army which she feels it imperative to sustain.

In view of the inexperience and fanaticism of the revolutionists, and

the dreadful evils which took place after the fall of the monarchy, we

should say that the Revolution was premature, and that substantial

reforms might have been gained without violence. But this is a mere

speculation. One thing we do know,--that the Revolution was a national

uprising against injustice and oppression. When the torch is applied to

a venerable edifice, we cannot determine the extent of the

conflagration, or the course which it will take. The French Revolution

was plainly one of the developments of a nation's progress. To

conservative and reverential minds it was a horrid form for progress to

take, since it was visionary and infidel. But all nations are in the

hands of God, who is above all second causes. And I know of no modern

movement to which the words of Carlyle, when he was an optimist, when he

wrote the most original and profound of his works, the "Sartor

Resartus," apply with more force: "When the Phoenix is fanning her

funeral pyre, will there not be sparks flying? Alas! some millions of

men have been sucked into that high eddying flame, and like moths

consumed. In the burning of the world-Phoenix, destruction and creation

proceed together; and as the ashes of the old are blown about do new

forces mysteriously spin themselves, and melodious death-songs are

succeeded by more melodious birth-songs."

Yet all progress is slow, especially in government and morals. And how

forcibly are we impressed, in surveying the varied phases of the French

Revolution, that nothing but justice and right should guide men in their

reforms; that robbery and injustice in the name of liberty and progress

are still robbery and injustice, to be visited with righteous

retribution; and that those rulers and legislators who cannot make

passions and interests subservient to reason, are not fit for the work

assigned to them. It is miserable hypocrisy and cant to talk of a

revolutionary necessity for violating the first principles of human

society. Ah! it is Reason, Intelligence, and Duty, calm as the voices of

angels, soothing as the "music of the spheres," which alone should

guide nations, in all crises and difficulties, to the attainment of

those rights and privileges on which all true progress is based.