  I.INTRODUCTION.I now undertake to write the history of a small party of men who, cast by Providence into the very centre of the greatest drama of modern times, comprise in themselves the ideas, the passions, the faults, the virtues of their epoch, and whose life and political acts forming, as we may say, the nucleus of the French Revolution, perished by the same blow which crushed the destinies of their country. This history, full of blood and tears, is full also of instruction for the people. Never, perhaps, were so many tragical events crowded into so short a space of time, never was the mysterious connexion which exists between deeds and their consequences developed with greater rapidity. Never did weaknesses more quickly engender faults,—faults crimes,—crimes punishment. That retributive justice which God has implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism of the ancients Recital animated by the imagination, weighed and judged by wisdom,—such is history as the ancients understood it; and of history conceived and produced in such a spirit, I would, under the Divine guidance, leave a fragment to my country. II.HISTORY OF THE GIRONDISTS.Mirabeau had just died. The instinct of the people led them to press around the house of his tribune, as if to demand inspiration even from his coffin; but had Mirabeau been still living, he could no longer have given it; his star had paled its fires before that of the Revolution; hurried to the verge of an unavoidable precipice by the very chariot he himself had set in motion, it was in vain that he clung to the tribune. The last memorial he addressed to the king, which the Iron Chest has surrendered to us, together with the secret of his venality, testify the failure and dejection of his mind. His counsels are versatile, incoherent, and almost childish:—now he will arrest the Revolution with a grain of sand—now he places the salvation of the Monarchy in a proclamation of the crown and a regal ceremony which shall revive the popularity of the king,—.and now he is desirous of buying the acclamations of the tribune, and believes the nation, like him, to be purchasable at a price. The pettiness of his means of safety are in contrast with the vast increase of perils; there is a vagueness in every idea; we see that he is impelled by the very passions he has excited, and that unable any longer to guide or control them, he betrays, whilst he is yet unable to crush, them. The prime agitator is now but the alarmed courtier seeking shelter beneath the throne, and though still stuttering out terrible words in behalf of the nation and liberty, which are in the part set down for him, has already in his soul all the paltriness and the thoughts of vanity which are proper to a court. We pity genius when we behold it struggling with impossibility. Mirabeau was the most potent man of his time; but the Poets say that clouds assume the form of the countries over which they have passed, and moulding themselves upon the valleys, plains, or mountains, acquire their shapes and move with them over the skies. This resembles certain men, whose genius being as it were acquisitive, models itself upon the epoch in which it lives, and assumes all the individuality of the nation to which it belongs. Mirabeau was a man of this class: he did not invent the Revolution, but was its manifestation. But for him it might perhaps have remained in a state of idea and tendency. He was born, and it took in him the form, the passion, the language which make a multitude say when they see a thing—There it is. He was born a gentleman and of ancient lineage, refugee and established in Provence, but of Italian origin: the progenitors were Tuscan. The family was one of those whom Florence had cast from her bosom in the stormy excesses of her liberty, and for which Dante reproaches his country in such bitter strains for her exiles and persecutions. The blood of Machiavel and the earthquake genius of the Italian republics were characteristics of all the individuals of this race. The proportions of their souls exceed the height of their destiny: vices, passions, virtues are all in excess. The women are all angelic or perverse, the men sublime or depraved, and their language even is as emphatic and lofty as their aspirations. There is in their most familiar correspondence the colour and tone of the heroic tongues of Italy. The ancestors of Mirabeau speak of their domestic affairs as Plutarch of the quarrels of Marius and Sylla, of CÆsar and Pompey. We perceive the great men descending to trifling matters. Mirabeau inspired this domestic majesty and virility in his very cradle. I dwell on these details, which may seem foreign to this history, but explain it. The source of genius is often in ancestry, and the blood of descent is sometimes the prophecy of destiny. III.Mirabeau's education was as rough and rude as the hand of his father, who was styled the friend of man, but Released from gaol, in order, by his father's command, to attempt to form a marriage beset with difficulties with Mademoiselle De Marignan, a rich heiress of one of the greatest families of Provence, he displayed, like a wrestler, all kinds of stratagems and daring schemes of policy in the small theatre of Aix. Cunning, seduction, courage, he used every resource of his nature to succeed, and he succeeded; but he was hardly married, before fresh persecutions beset him, and the stronghold of Pontarlier gaped to enclose him. A love, which his Lettres À Sophie has rendered immortal, opened its gates and freed him. He carried off Madame de Monier from her aged husband. The lovers, happy for some months, took refuge in Holland; they were seized there, separated and shut up, the one in a convent and the other in the dungeon of Vincennes. Love, which, like fire in the veins of the earth, is always detected in some crevice of man's destiny, lighted up in a single and ardent blaze all Mirabeau's passions. In his vengeance it was outraged love that he appeased; in liberty, it was love which he sought and which delivered him; in study, it was love which still illustrated his path. Entering obscure into his cell, he quitted it a writer, orator, statesman, but perverted—ripe for any thing, even to sell himself, in order to buy fortune and celebrity. The drama of life was conceived in his head, he wanted but the stage, and that time was preparing for him. During the few short years which elapsed for him between his leaving the From the moment of his entry into the National Assembly he filled it: he was the whole people. His gestures were commands; his movements coups d'État. He placed himself on a level with the throne, and the nobility felt itself subdued by a power emanating from its own body. The clergy, which is the people, and desires to reconcile the democracy with the church, lends him its influence, in order to destroy the double aristocracy of the nobility and bishops. All that had been built by antiquity and cemented by ages fell in a few months. Mirabeau alone preserved his presence of mind in the midst of this ruin. His character of tribune ceases, that of the statesman begins, and in this he is even greater than in the other. There, when all else creep and crawl, he acts with firmness, advancing boldly. The Revolution in his brain is no longer a momentary idea—it is a settled plan. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, moderated by the prudence of policy, flows easily, and modelled from his lips. His eloquence, imperative as the law, is now the talent of giving force to reason. His language lights and inspires every thing; and though almost alone at this moment, he has the courage to remain alone. He braves envy, hatred, murmurs, supported by the strong feeling of his superiority. He dismisses with disdain the passions which have hitherto beset him. He will no longer serve them when his cause no longer needs them. He speaks to men now only in the name of his genius. This title is enough to cause obedience to him. His power is based on the assent which truth finds in all minds, and his strength again reverts to him. He contests with all parties, and rises superior to one and all. All hate him because he commands; and all seek him because he can serve or destroy them. He does not give himself up to any one, but negotiates with each: he lays down calmly on the tumultuous element of this assembly, the basis of the reformed constitution: legislation, finance, diplomacy, war, religion, political economy, balances of power, every question he approaches and solves, not as an Utopian, but as a politician. The solution he gives is always the precise mean between the theoretical and the practical. He places reason on a level with manners, and the institutions of the land in consonance with its habits. He desires a throne to support the democracy, liberty in the chambers, and in the will of the nation, one and irresistible in the government. The characteristic of his genius, so well defined, so ill understood, was less audacity than justness. Beneath the grandeur of his expression is always to be found unfailing good sense. His very vices could not repress the clearness, the sincerity of his understanding. At the foot of the tribune he was a man devoid of shame or virtue: in the tribune he was an honest man. Abandoned to private debauchery, IV.Grand displays cast a veil of universal mourning over the secret sentiments which his death inspired to all parties. Whilst the various belfries tolled his knell, and minute guns were fired; whilst, in a ceremony that had assembled two hundred thousand spectators, they awarded to a citizen the funeral obsequies of a monarch; whilst the Pantheon, to which they conveyed his remains, seemed scarcely a monument worthy of such ashes,—what was passing in the depths of men's hearts? The king, who held Mirabeau's eloquence in pay, the queen, with whom he had nocturnal conferences, regretted him, perhaps, as the last means of safety: yet still he inspired them with more terror than confidence; and the humiliation of a crowned head demanding succour from a subject must have felt comforted at the removal of that destroying power which itself fell before the throne did. The court was avenged by death for the affronts which it had undergone. He was to the nobility merely an apostate from his order. The climax of its shame must have been to be one day raised by It was on the 6th of April, 1791, that the National Assembly resumed its sittings. Mirabeau's place, left vacant, reminded each gazer of the impossibility of again filling it; consternation was impressed on every countenance in the tribunes, and a profound silence pervaded the meeting. M. de Talleyrand announced to the Assembly a posthumous address of Mirabeau. They would hear him though dead. The weakened echo of his voice seemed to return to his country from the depths of the vaults of the Pantheon. The reading was mournful. Parties were burning to measure their strength free from any counterpoise. Impatience and anxiety were paramount, and the struggle was imminent. The arbitrator who controlled them was no more. V.Before we depict the state of these parties, let us throw a rapid glance over the commencement of the Revolution, the progress it had made, and the principal leaders who were about to attempt directing it in the way they desired to see it advance. It was hardly two years since opinion had opened the breaches against the monarchy, yet it had already accomplished immense results. The weak and vacillating spirit of the government had convoked the Assembly of Notables, whilst public spirit had placed its grasp on power and convoked the States General. The States General being established, the nation had felt its omnipotence, and from this feeling to a legal insurrection there was but a word; that word Mirabeau had uttered. The National Assembly had constituted itself in front of, and higher than, the throne itself. The prodigious popularity of M. Necker was exhausted by concessions, and utterly vanished when he no longer had any of the spoils of monarchy to cast before the people. Minister of a monarch in retirement, his own had been utter defeat. His last step conducted him out of the kingdom. The disarmed king had remained the hostage of the ancient rÉgime in the hands of the nation. The declaration of the rights of VI.There are objects in nature, the forms of which can only be accurately ascertained when contemplated afar off. Too near, as well as too far off, prevents a correct view. Thus it is with great events. The hand of God is visible in human things, but this hand itself has a shadow which conceals what it accomplishes. All that could then be seen of the French Revolution announced all that was great in this world, the advent of a new idea in human kind, the democratic idea, and afterwards the democratic government. This idea was an emanation of Christianity. Christianity finding men in serfage and degraded all over the earth, had arisen on the fall of the Roman Empire, like a mighty vengeance, though under the aspect of a resignation. It had proclaimed the three words which 2000 years afterwards was re-echoed by French philosophy—liberty, equality, fraternity—amongst mankind. But it had for a time hidden this idea in the recesses of the Christian heart. As yet too weak to attack civil laws, it had said to the powers—"I leave you still for a short space of time possession of the political world, confining myself to the moral world. Continue if you can to enchain, class, keep in bondage, degrade the people, I am engaged in the emancipation of souls. I shall occupy 2000 years, perchance, in renewing men's minds before I become apparent in human institutions. But the day will come when my doctrines will escape from the temple, and will enter into the councils of the people; on that day the social world will be renewed." This day had now arrived; it had been prepared by an age of philosophy, sceptical in appearance but in reality replete with belief. The scepticism of the 18th century only affected exterior forms, and the supernatural dogmata of Christianity, whilst it adopted with enthusiasm, morality and the social Three things were then evident to reflecting minds from and after the month of April, 1791; the one, that the march of the revolutionary movement advanced from step to step to the complete restoration of all the rights of suffering humanity—from those of the people by their government, to those of citizens by castes, and of the workman by the citizen; thus it assailed tyranny, privilege, inequality, selfishness, not only on the throne, but in the civil law; in the administration, in the legal distribution of property, in the conditions of industry, labour, family, and in all the relations of man with man, and man with woman: the second,—that this philosophic and social movement of democracy would seek its natural form in a form of government analogous to its principle, and its nature; that is to say, representing the sovereignty of the people; republic with one or two heads: and, finally, that the social and political emancipation would involve in it the intellectual and religious emancipation of the human mind; that the liberty of thought, of speaking and acting, VII.Human thought, like God, makes the world in its own image. Thought was revived by a philosophical age. It had to transform the social world. The French Revolution was therefore in its essence a sublime and impassioned spirituality. It had a divine and universal ideal. This is the reason why its passion spread beyond the frontiers of France. Those who limit, mutilate it. It was the accession of three moral sovereignties:— The sovereignty of right over force; The sovereignty of intelligence over prejudices; The sovereignty of people over governments. Revolution in rights; equality. Revolution in ideas; reasoning substituted for authority. Revolution in facts; the reign of the people. A Gospel of social rights. A Gospel of duties, a charter of humanity. France declared itself the apostle of this creed. In this war of ideas France had allies every where, and even on thrones themselves. VIII.There are epochs in the history of the human race, when the decayed branches fall from the tree of humanity; and when institutions grown old and exhausted, sink and leave space for fresh institutions full of sap, which renew the youth and recast the ideas of a people. Antiquity is replete with this transformation, of which we only catch a glimpse in the relics of history. Each decadence of effete ideas carries with it an old world, and gives its name to a new order of civilisation. The East. China, Egypt, But printing, that unceasing outpouring of the human mind, was to the people a second revelation. Employed at first exclusively for the Church, for the propagation of ruling ideas, it had begun to sap them. The dogmata of temporal power, and spiritual power, incessantly assailed by these floods of light, could not be long without being shaken, first in the human mind and afterwards in things, to the very foundations. Guttemberg; without knowing it, was the mechanist of the New World. In creating the commu The empire of catholic Christianity had undergone extensive dismemberments. Switzerland, a part of Germany, Holland, England, whole provinces of France, had been drawn away from the centre of religious authority, and passed over to the doctrine of free examination. Divine authority attacked and contested in catholicism, the authority of the throne remained at the mercy of the people. Philosophy, more potent than sedition, approached it more and more near, with less respect, less fear. History had actually written of the weaknesses and crimes of kings. Public writers had dared to comment upon it, and the people to draw conclusions. Social institutions had been weighed by their real value for humanity. Minds the most devoted to power had spoken to sovereigns of duties, and to people of rights. The holy boldness of Christianity had been heard even in the consecrated pulpit, in the presence of Louis XIV. Bossuet, that sacerdotal genius of the ancient synagogue, had mingled his proud adulations to Louis XIV. with some of those austere warnings which console persons for their abasement. FÉnÉlon, that evangelical and tender genius, of the new law, had written his instructions to princes, and his Telemachus, in the palace of the king, and in the cabinet of an heir to the throne. The political philosophy of Christianity, that insurrection of justice in favour of the weak, had glided from the lips of Louis XIV. into the ear of his grandson. FÉnÉlon educated another revolution in the Duke of Burgundy. This the king perceived when too late, and expelled the divine seduction from his palace. But the revolutionary policy was born there; there the people read the pages of the holy archbishop: Versailles was destined to be, thanks to Louis XIV. and FÉnÉlon, at once the palace of despotism and the cradle of the Revolution. Montesquieu had sounded the institutions, and analysed Jean Jacques Rousseau, less ingenious, but more eloquent, had studied politics, not in the laws, but in nature. A free but oppressed and suffering mind, the palpitation of his noble heart had made every heart beat that had been ulcerated by the odious inequality of social conditions. It was the revolt of the ideal against the real. He had been the tribune of nature, the Gracchus of philosophy—he had not produced the history of institutions, only its vision—but that vision descended from heaven and returned thither. There was to be seen the design of God and the excess of his love—but there was not enough seen of the infirmity of men. It was the Utopia of government; but by this Rousseau led further astray. To impel the people to passion there must be some slight illusion mingled with the truth; reality alone was too chilling to fanaticise the human mind; it is only roused to enthusiasm by things something out of nature. What is termed the ideal is the attraction and force of religions, which always aspire higher than they mount; this is how fanaticism is produced, that delirium of virtue. Rousseau was the ideal of politics, as FÉnÉlon was the ideal of Christianity. Voltaire had the genius of criticism, that power of raillery which withers all it overthrows. He had made human nature laugh at itself, had felled it low in order to raise it, had laid bare before it all errors, prejudices, iniquities, and crimes of ignorance; he had urged it to rebellion against consecrated ideas, not by the ideal but by sheer contempt. Destiny gave him eighty years of existence, that he might slowly decompose the decayed age; he had the time to combat against time, and when he fell he was the conqueror. His disciples filled courts, academies, and saloons; those of Rousseau grew splenetic and visionary amongst the lower orders of society. The one had been the fortunate and elegant advocate of the aristocracy, the other was the secret consoler and beloved avenger of the democracy. His book was the book of all oppressed and tender souls. Unhappy and Their numerous disciples progressed with their missions, and possessed all the organs of public thought. From the seat of geometry to the consecrated pulpit, the philosophy of the 18th century invaded or altered every thing. D'Alembert, Diderot, Raynal, Buffon, Condorcet, Bernardin Saint Pierre, Helvetius, Saint Lambert, La Harpe, were the church of the new era. One sole thought animated these diverse minds—the renovation of human ideas. Arithmetic, science, history, economy, politics, the stage, morals, poetry, all served as the vehicle of modern philosophy; it ran in all the veins of the times; it had enlisted every genius, it spoke every language. Chance or Providence had decided that this period, which elsewhere was almost barren, should be the age of France. From the end of the reign of Louis XIV. to the commencement of the reign of Louis XVI., nature had been prodigal of men to France. This brilliancy continued by so many geniuses of the first order, from Corneille to Voltaire, from Bossuet to Rousseau, from FÉnÉlon to Bernardin Saint Pierre, had accustomed the people to look on this side. The focus of the ideas of the world shed thence its brilliancy. The moral authority of the human mind was no longer at Rome. The stir, light, direction, were from Paris; the European mind was French. There was, and there always will be, in the French genius something more potent than its potency, more luminous than its splendour; and that is its warmth, its penetrating power of communicating the attraction which it has, and which it inspires to Europe. The genius of the Spain of Charles V. is high and adventurous, that of Germany is profound and severe, that of England skilful and proud, that of France is attractive,—it is in that it has its force. Easily seduced itself, it easily seduces other people. The other great individualities of the world of Conquering by its intelligence, its printing-presses were its army. IX.The parties who divided the country after the death of Mirabeau were thus distributed; out of the Assembly, the Court, and the Jacobins; in the Assembly the right side and the left side, and between these two extreme parties—the one fanatic by its innovations, the other fanatic from its resistance,—there was an intermediate party, consisting of the men of substance and peace belonging to both these parties. Their views moderate, and wavering between revolution and conservatism, desired that the one should conquer without violence, and the other concede without vindictiveness. These were the philosophers of the Revolution,—but it was not the hour for philosophy, it was the hour of victory; the two ideas required champions, not judges; they crushed men in their encounter. Let us enumerate the principal chiefs of the contending parties, and make them known before we bring them into action. King Louis XVI. was then only thirty-seven years of age; his features resembled those of his race, rendered somewhat heavy by the German blood of his mother, a princess of the house of Saxony. Fine blue eyes, very wide open, and clear rather than dazzling, a round and retreating forehead, a Roman nose, the nostrils flaccid and large, and somewhat destroying the energy of the aquiline profile, a X.This young prince had been educated in complete solitude at the court of Louis XV. The atmosphere which had infected the age had not touched his heir. Whilst Louis XV. had changed his court into a place of ill-fame, his grandson, educated in a corner of the palace of Meudon by pious and enlightened masters, grew up in respect for his rank, in awe of the throne, and in a real love for the people whom he was one day to be called upon to govern. The soul of FÉnÉlon seemed to have traversed two generations of kings in the palace where he had brought up the Duke of Burgundy, in order to inspire the education of his descendant. What was nearest the crowned vice upon the throne was perhaps the most pure of any thing in France. If the age had not been as dissolute as the king, it would have directed his love in that direction. He had reached that point of corruption in which purity appears ridiculous, and modesty was treated with contempt. Married at twenty years of age to a daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, the young prince had continued until his accession to the throne in his life of domestic retirement, M. de Montmorin was devoted to the king, but had no credit with the nation. The ministry had neither the initiative nor opposition; the initiative was in the hands of the When we place ourselves in imagination in the position of Louis XVI., and ask what could have saved him? we reply disheartened—nothing. There are circumstances which enfold all a man's movements in such a snare, that, whatever direction he may take, he falls into the fatality of his faults or his virtues. This was the dilemma of Louis XVI. All the unpopularity of royalty in France, all the faults of preceding administrations, all the vices of kings, all the shame of courts, all the griefs of the people, were as it XII.The queen seemed to be created by nature to contrast with the king, and to attract for ever the interest and pity of ages to one of those state dramas, which are incomplete unless the miseries and misfortunes of a woman mingle in them. Daughter of Maria Theresa, she had commenced her life in the storms of the Austrian monarchy. She was one of the children whom the Empress held by the hand when she presented herself as a supplicant before her faithful Hungarians, and the troops exclaimed, "We will die for our king, Maria Theresa." Her daughter, too, had the heart of a king. On her arrival in France, her beauty had dazzled the whole kingdom,—a beauty then in all its splendour. The two children whom she had given to the throne, far from impairing her good looks, added to the attractions of her person that character of maternal majesty which so well becomes the mother of a nation. The presentiment of her misfortunes, the recollection of the tragic scenes of Versailles, the uneasiness of each day somewhat diminished her youthful freshness. She was tall, slim, and graceful,—a real daughter of Tyrol. Her naturally majestic carriage in no way impaired the grace of her movements; her neck rising elegantly and distinctly from her shoulders gave expression to every attitude. The woman was perceptible beneath the queen, the tenderness of heart was not lost in the elevation of her destiny. Her light brown hair was long and silky, her forehead, high and rather projecting, was united to her temples by those fine curves which give so much delicacy and expression to that seat of thought or the XIII.It was enough to form the happiness of a man and the ornament of a court: to inspire a wavering monarch, and be the safeguard of a state under trying circumstances, something more is requisite. The genius of government is required, and the queen had it not. Nothing could have prepared her for the regulation of the disordered elements which were about her; misfortune had given her no time for reflection. Hailed with enthusiasm by a perverse court and an ardent nation, she must have believed in the eternity of such sentiments. She was lulled to sleep in the dissipations of the Trianon. She had heard the first threatenings of the tempest without believing in its dangers: she had trusted in the love she inspired, and which she felt in her own heart. The court had become exacting, the nation hostile. The instrument of the intrigues of the court on the heart of the king, she had at first favoured and then opposed all reforms which prevented or delayed the crises that arose. Her policy was but infatuation; her system but the perpetual abandonment of herself to every partisan who promised her the king's safety. The Comte D'Artois, a youthful prince, Her name became for the people the phantom of all counter-revolution. We are apt to calumniate what we fear. She was depicted under the features of a Messalina. The most infamous pamphlets were in circulation; the most scandalous anecdotes were credited. She may be accused of tenderness, but never of depravity. Lovely, young, and adored, if her heart did not remain insensible, her innermost feelings, innocent perhaps, never gave just ground for open scandal. History has its modesty, and we will not violate it. XIV.On the days of the 5th and 6th of October the queen perceived (too late) the enmity of the people; her heart must have been full of vengeance. Emigration commenced, and she viewed it favourably. All her friends were at Coblentz; she was believed to be in close connection with them, and this belief was true. Stories of an Austrian committee were busily spread amongst the people. The queen was accused of conspiring for the destruction of the nation, who at every moment demanded her head. A people in revolt must have some one to hate, and they handed over to her the queen. Her name was the theme of their songs of rage. One woman was the enemy of a whole nation, and her pride disdained to undeceive them. She inclosed herself in her resentment and her terror. Imprisoned in the palace of the Tuileries, she could not put her head out of window without provoking an outrage and hearing insult. Every noise in the city made her apprehensive of an insurrection. Her days were melancholy, her nights disturbed: she underwent hourly XV.The right side in the National Assembly consisted of men, the natural opponents of the movement, the nobility and higher clergy. All, however, were not of the same rank nor the same title. Seditions are found amongst the lower rank, revolutions in the higher. Seditions are but the angry workings of the people—revolutions are the ideas of the epoch. Ideas begin in the head of the nation. The Clermont Tonnerre and Malouet were rather statesmen than orators; their cautious and reflective language weighed only on the reason; they sought for the mean between liberty and monarchy, and believed they had found it in the system of the Two Houses of English Legislature. The modÉrÉs of the two parties listened to them respectfully; like all half parties and half talents, they excited neither hatred nor anger; but events did not listen to them, but thrusting them aside, advanced towards results that were Devoted from his youth to serious studies, endowed with abundant flow of words, striking and vivid in his language, his harangues were perfect treatises on the subjects he discussed. The only rival of Mirabeau, he needed but a cause more natural and more sterling to have become his equal: but sophistry could not deck abuses in colours more specious than those with which Maury invested the ancien rÉgime. Historical erudition and sacred learning supplied him with ample sources of argument. The boldness of his character and language inspired words which even avenge a defeat, and his fine countenance, his sonorous voice, his commanding gesture, the defiance and good temper with which he braved the tribunes, frequently drew down the applauses of his enemies. The people, who recognised his invincible strength, were amused at his impotent opposition. Maury was to them as one of those gladiators whom they like to see fight, although well knowing that they must perish in the strife. One thing was wanting to the AbbÉ Maury,—weight to his eloquence; neither his birth, his faith, nor his life inspired respect in those who listened. The actor was visible in the man, the advocate in the cause, the orator and his language were not identified. Strip the AbbÉ Maury of the habit of his order, and he might have changed sides without a struggle, and have taken his seat amongst the innovators. Such orators grace a party, they never save it. XVI.CazalÈs was one of those men who are themselves ignorant of their own powers until the hour arrives when circumstances call forth their genius, and assign to them a duty. An obscure officer in the ranks of the army, chance, which cast him into the tribune, revealed the orator. He did not inquire which side he should defend; noble, the noblesse; royalist, the king; a subject, the throne. His position made his creed; he bore in the Assembly the character and qualities of his uniform. Language to him was only another sword, and in all the spirit of chivalry, he devoted it to the cause of Monarchy. Indolent and ill-educated, his natural good sense supplied the place of study. His monarchical faith was by no means fanaticism of the past: it admitted the modifications conceded by the king himself, and which were compatible with the inviolability of the throne and the working of the executive power. From Mirabeau to him the difference of the first principle was not wide apart, only one decried it as an aristocrat, and the other as a democrat. The one flung himself headlong into the midst of the people, the other attached himself to the steps of the throne. The characteristic of CazalÈs' eloquence was that of a desperate cause. He protested more than he discussed, and opposed to the triumphs of violence on the cÔtÉ gauche, his ironic defiance, his bursts of bitter indignation, which for the moment acquired admiration, but never led to victory. To him the noblesse owed that it fell with glory; the throne, with majesty: and his eloquence attained something that was heroic. Behind these two men there was only a party, soured by ill-fortune, discouraged by its isolation from the nation, odious to the people, useless to the throne, feeding on vain illusions, and only preserving of its fallen power the resentment of injuries, and that insolence which was perpetually provoking fresh humiliations. The hopes of this party were entirely sustained by their reliance on the armed intervention of foreign powers. Louis XVI. was in their eyes a prisoner king, whom Europe would come and deliver from his thraldom. With them, patriotism and honour were at Coblentz. Overcome by numbers, without skilful leaders who under The left side lost at one blow its leader and controller; in Mirabeau the national man had ceased to exist, and only the men of party remained, and they were Barnave and the two Lameths. These men humbled, rebuked, before the ascendency of Mirabeau, had attempted, long before his death, to balance the sovereignty of his genius by the exaggeration of their doctrines and harangues. Mirabeau was but the apostle—they would fain have been the faction-leaders of the time. Jealous of his influence, they would have crushed his talents beneath the superiority of their popularity. Mediocrity thinks to equal genius by outraging reason. A diminution of thirty or forty votes had taken place in the left side. This was the work of Barnave and the Lameths. The club of the friends of the constitution become the Jacobin Club, responded to them from without. The popular agitation excited by them was restrained by Mirabeau, who rallied against them the left, the centre, and the intelligent members of the right side. They conspired, they caballed, they fomented divisions in opinion all the more that they had not control in the Assembly. Mirabeau was dead, and now the field was open to them. The Lameths—courtiers, educated by the kindness of the royal family, overwhelmed by the favours and pensions of the king, had the conspicuous defection of Mirabeau without having the excuse of his wrongs against the monarchy: this defection was one of their titles to popular favour. Clever men, they carried with them into the national cause the conduct of Courts in which they had been brought up: still their love of the Revolution was disinterested and sincere. Their eminent talents did not equal their ambition. Crushed by Mirabeau, they stirred up against him all those whom the shadow of that great man eclipsed in common with themselves. They sought for a rival to oppose to him, and found only men who envied him. Barnave presented himself, and they surrounded him, applauded him, intoxicated him with his self-importance. They persuaded him for a moment that Mirabeau was great enough not to fear, and just enough not to despise him. Barnave, a young barrister of DauphinÉ, had made his dÉbut with much effect in the struggles between the parliament and the throne which had agitated his province, and displayed on small theatres the eloquence of men of the bar. Sent at thirty years of age to the States General, with Mounier his patron and master, he had soon quitted Mounier and the monarchical party, and made himself conspicuous amongst the democratic division. A word of sinister import which escaped not from his heart, but from his lips, weighed on his conscience with remorse. "Is then the blood that flows so pure?" he exclaimed at the first murder of the Revolution. This phrase had branded him on the brow with the mark of a ringleader of faction. Barnave was not this, or only as much so as was necessary for the success of his discourses; nothing in him was extreme but the orator: the man was by no means so, neither was he at all cruel. Studious, but without imagination; copious, but without warmth, his intellect was mediocre, his mind honest, his will variable, his heart in the right place. His talent, which they affected to compare with Mirabeau's, was nothing more than a power of skilfully rivetting public attention. His habit of pleading gave him, with its power of extempore speaking, an apparent superiority which vanished before reflection, Mirabeau's enemies had created him a pedestal on their hatred, and magnified his importance to make the comparison closer. When reduced to his actual stature, it was easy to recognise the distance that existed between the man of the nation, and the man of the bar. Barnave had the misfortune to be the great man of a mediocre party, and the hero of an envious faction: he deserved a better destiny, which he subsequently acquired. XVII.Still deeper in the shade, and behind the chief of the National Assembly, a man almost unknown began to move, agitated by uneasy thoughts which seemed to forbid him to be silent and unmoved; he spoke on all occasions, and This man was Robespierre. There are abysses that we dare not sound, and characters we desire not to fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too much horror; but history, which has the unflinching eye of time, must not be chilled by these terrors, she must understand whilst she undertakes to recount. Maximilien Robespierre was born at Arras, of a poor family, honest and respectable; his father, who died in Germany, was of English origin. This may explain the shade of Puritanism in his character. The bishop of Arras had defrayed the cost of his education. Young Maximilien had distinguished himself on leaving college by a studious life, and austere manners. Literature and the bar shared his time. The philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau had made a profound impression on his understanding; the philosophy, falling upon an active imagination, had not remained a dead letter; it had become in him a leading principle, a faith, a fanaticism. In the strong mind of a sectarian, all conviction becomes a thing apart. Robespierre was the Luther of politics: and in obscurity he brooded over the confused thoughts of a renovation of the social world, and the religious world, as a dream which unavailingly beset his youth, when the Revolution came to offer him what destiny always offers to those who watch her progress, opportunity. He seized on it. He was named deputy of the third estate in the States General. Alone perhaps among all these men who opened at Versailles the first scene of this vast drama, he foresaw the termination; like the soul, whose seat in the human frame philosophers have Robespierre's figure was small, his limbs feeble and angular, his step irresolute, his attitudes affected, his gestures destitute of harmony or grace; his voice, rather shrill, aimed at oratorical inflexions, but only produced fatigue and monotony; his forehead was good, but small and extremely projecting above the temples, as if the mass and embarrassed movement of his thoughts had enlarged it by their efforts; his eyes, much covered by their lids and very sharp at the extremities, were deeply buried in the cavities of their orbits; they gave out a soft blue hue, but it was vague and unfixed, like a steel reflector on which a light glances; his nose straight and small was very wide at the nostrils, which were high and too expanded; his mouth was large, his lips thin and disagreeably contracted at each corner; his chin small and pointed, his complexion yellow and livid, like that of an invalid or a man worn out by vigils and meditations. The habitual expression of this visage was that of superficial serenity on a serious mind, and a smile wavering betwixt sarcasm and condescension. There was softness, but of a sinister character. The prevailing characteristic of this countenance was the prodigious and continual tension of brow, eyes, mouth, and all the facial muscles; in regarding him it was perceptible that the whole of his features, like the labour of his mind, converged incessantly on a single point with such power XVIII.Robespierre, who had often struggled against Mirabeau with Duport, the Lameths, and Barnave, began to separate himself from them as soon as they appeared to predominate in the Assembly. He formed, with PÉtion and some others of small note, a small band of opposition, radically democratic, who encouraged the Jacobins without, and menaced Barnave and the Lameths whenever they ventured to pause. PÉtion and Robespierre in the Assembly, Brissot and Danton at the Jacobin Club, formed the nucleus of the new party which was destined to accelerate the movement and speedily to convert it into convulsions and catastrophes. PÉtion was a popular Lafayette: popularity was his aim, and he acquired it earlier than Robespierre. A barrister without talent but upright, he had imbibed no more of philosophy than the Social Contract; young, good looking and a patriot, he was destined to become one of those complaisant idols of whom the people make what they please except a man; his credit in the streets and amongst the Jacobins gave him a certain amount of authority in the Assembly, where he XIX.The constitution was completed, the regal power was but a mere name, the king was but the executive of the orders of the national representation, his ministers only responsible hostages in the hands of the Assembly. The vices of this constitution were evident before it was entirely finished. Voted in the rage of parties, it was not a constitution, it was a vengeance of the people against the monarchy, the throne only existing as the substitute of a unique power which was every where instituted, but which no one yet dared to name. The people, parties, trembled lest on removing the throne they should behold an abyss in which the nation would be engulphed: it was thus tacitly agreed to respect its forms, though they daily despoiled and insulted the unfortunate monarch whom they kept chained to it. Things were at that point where they have no possible termination except in a catastrophe. The army, without discipline, added but another element to the popular ferment: forsaken by its officers, who emigrated in masses, the subalterns seized upon democracy and propagated it in their ranks. Affiliated in every garrison with the Jacobin Club, they received from it their orders, and made of their troops soldiers of anarchy, accomplices of faction. The people to whom they had cast as a prey the feudal rights of the nobility and the tithes of the clergy, feared to have wrested from it what it held with disquietude, and saw in every direction plots which it anticipated by crimes. The sudden burst of liberty, for which it was not prepared, agitated without strengthening it: it evinced all the vices of enfranchised men without having got the virtues of the free man. The whole of France was but one vast sedition: anarchy swayed the state, and in order that it might be, as it were, self-governed, it had created its government in as many clubs as there were large municipalities in the kingdom. The dominant club was that of the Jacobins: this club was the centralisation of anarchy. So soon as a powerful and high passioned will moves a nation, their common impulse brings The sittings took place in the evening, so that the people should not be prevented from attending in consequence of their daily labour: the acts of the National Assembly, the events of the moment, the examination of social questions, frequently accusations against the king, ministers, the cÔtÉ droit; were the texts of the debates. Of all the passions of the people, there hatred was the most flattered; they made it suspicious in order to subject it. Convinced that all was conspiring against it,—king, queen, court, ministers, authorities, foreign powers,—it threw itself headlong into the arms of its defenders. The most eloquent in its eyes was he who inspired it with most dread—it had a parching thirst for denunciations, and they were lavished on it with prodigal hand. It was thus that Barnave, the Lameths, then Danton, Marat, Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, PÉtion, Robespierre, had acquired their authority over the people. These names Mirabeau himself, accused by Lameth on the subject of the law of emigration, came a few days before his death to listen face to face to the invectives of his denouncer, and had not disdained to justify himself. The clubs were the exterior strength, where the factious of the assembly gave the support of their names in order to intimidate the national representation. The national representation had only the laws; the club had the people, sedition, and even the army. XX.This expression of public opinion, thus organised into a permanent association at every point in the empire, gave an electric shock which nothing could resist. A motion made in Paris was echoed from club to club to the extremest provinces. The same spark lighted at once the same passion in millions of souls. All the societies corresponded with one another and with the mother society. The impulse was communicated and the response was felt every day. It was the government of factions enfolding in their nets the government of the law; but the law was mute and invisible, whilst faction was erect and eloquent. Let us imagine one of these sittings, at which the citizens, already agitated by the stormy air of the period, took their places at the close of day in one of those naves recently devoted to another worship. Some candles, brought by the affiliated, scarcely lighted up the gloomy place; naked walls, wooden benches, a tribune instead of an altar. Around this tribune some favoured orators pressed in order to speak. A crowd of citizens of all classes, of all costumes, rich, poor, soldiers, workpeople; women, to create excitement, enthusiasm, tenderness, tears whenever they enter; children, whom they raise in their arms as if to make them inspire, with their earliest breath, the feelings of an irritated people: a gloomy silence interrupted by shouts, applause, or hisses, just as the speaker Thus was the Jacobin Club organised. XXI.The club of the Cordeliers, which is sometimes confounded with that of the Jacobins, even surpassed it in turbulence and demagogism. Marat and Danton ruled there. The moderate constitutional party had also attempted its clubs, but passion is wanting to defensive societies; it is only the offensive that groups in factions; and thus the former expired of themselves until the establishment of the Club of Feuillants. The people drove away with a shower of stones the first meeting of the deputies, at M. De Clermont Tonnerres. Barnave reproached his colleagues in the tribune, and devoted them to public execration with the same voice which had raised and rallied the Friends of the Constitution. Liberty was as yet but a partial arm, which was unblushingly broken in the hands of an opponent. What remained to the king thus pressed between an assembly, which had usurped all the executive functions, and those factious clubs, which usurped to themselves all the rights of representation? Placed without adequate strength between two rival powers, he was only there to receive the blows of each in the struggle, and to be cast as a daily sacrifice to popularity by the National Assembly; one power alone still maintained the shadow of the throne and exterior order, the national guard of Paris. But the national guard, which as a neutral force, whose only law was in public opinion, and was wavering itself between factions and the monarchy, XXII.The marquis de La Fayette was a patrician, possessor of an immense fortune, and allied, through his wife, daughter of the Duc d'Ayen, with the greatest families of the court. Born at Chavaignac in Auvergne on the 6th of September, 1757, married at sixteen years of age, a precocious instinct of renown drove him in 1777 from his own country. It was at the period of the war of Independence in America; the name of Washington resounded throughout the two continents. A youth dreamed the same destiny for himself in the delights of the effeminate court of Louis XV.; that youth was La Fayette. He privately fitted out two vessels with arms and provisions, and arrived at Boston. Washington hailed him as he would have hailed the open succour of France. It was France without its flag. La Fayette and the young officers who followed him assured him of the secret wishes of a great people for the independence of the new world. The American general employed M. de La Fayette in this long war, the least of whose skirmishes assumed in traversing the seas the importance of a great battle. The American war, more remarkable for its results than its campaigns, was more fitted to form republicans than warriors. M. de La Fayette joined in it with heroism and devotion: he acquired the friendship of Washington. A French name was written by him on the baptismal register of a transatlantic nation. This name came back to France like the echo of liberty and glory. That popularity which seizes on all that is brilliant, was accorded to La Fayette on his On the 14th of July M. de La Fayette was ready for elevation on the shields of the bourgeoisie of Paris. A frondeur of the court, a revolutionist of high family, an aristocrat by birth, a democrat in principles, radiant with military renown acquired beyond seas, he united in his own person many qualities for rallying around him a civic militia, and for becoming the natural chief of an army of citizens. His American glory shone forth brilliantly in Paris. Distance increases every reputation—his was immense; it comprised and eclipsed all; Necker, Mirabeau, the Duc d'Orleans, the three most popular men in Paris,—all Paled their ineffectual fires before La Fayette, whose name was the nation's for three years. Supreme arbiter, he carried into the Assembly his authority as commandant of the national guard; his authority, as an influential member of the Assembly. Of these two conjoined titles be made a real dictatorship of opinion. As an orator he was but of slight consideration; his gentle style, though witty and keen, had nothing of that firm and electric manner which strikes the senses, makes the heart vibrate and communicates its vigour and effects to all who listen. Elegant as the language of a drawing room and overwhelmed in the mazes of diplomatic intrigues, he spoke of liberty in court phrases. The only parliamentary act of M. La Fayette was a proclamation of the rights of man, which was adopted by the National Assembly. This decalogue of free men, formed in the forests of America, contained more metaphysical phrases than sound policy. It applied as ill to an old society as the nudity of the savage to the complicated wants of civilised man: but it had the merit of placing man bare for the moment, and, by showing The federation of 1790 was the apogee of M. de La Fayette: on that day he surpassed both king and assembly. The nation armed and reflective was there in person, and he commanded it; he could have done every thing and attempted nothing: the misfortune of that man was in his situation. A man of transition, his life passed between two ideas; if he had had but one he could have been master of the destinies of his country. The monarchy or the republic were alike in his hand; he had but to open it wide, he only half opened it, and it was only a semi-liberty that issued from it. In inspiring his country with a desire for a republic, he defended a constitution and a throne. His principles and his conduct were in opposition; he was honest, and yet seemed to betray; whilst he struggled with regret from duty to the monarchy, his heart was in the republic. Protector of the throne, he was at the same time its bugbear. One life can only be devoted to one cause. Monarchy and republicanism had the same esteem, the same wrongs in his mind, and he served for and against both. He died without having seen either of them triumphant, but he died virtuous and popular. He had, beside his private virtues, a public virtue, which will ever be a pardon to his faults, and immortality to his name; he had before all, more than all, and after all, the feeling, constancy, and moderation of the Revolution. Such was the man and such the army on which reposed the executive power, the safety of Paris, the constitutional throne, and the life of the king. XXIII.Thus on the 1st of June, 1791, were parties situated, such the men and things in the midst of which the irresistible spirit of a vast social renovation advanced with occult and continuous impulse. What but contention, anarchy, crime, and death, could emanate from such elements! No party had The court was venal, selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's person the sources of its vanities,—profitable exactions. The clergy, with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state, its life was apart from the life of the nation, its ecclesiastical establishment seemed to be wholly independent of the monarchical establishment. It had only rallied round the monarchy, on the day it had beheld its own fortune compromised; and then it had appealed to the faith of the people, in order to preserve its wealth; but the people now only saw in the monks mendicants, and in the bishops extortioners. The nobility, effeminate by lengthened peace, emigrated in masses, abandoning their king to his besetting perils, and fully trusting in the prompt and decisive intervention of foreign powers. The third estate, jealous and envious, fiercely demanded their place and their rights amongst the privileged castes; its justice appeared hatred. The Assembly comprised in its bosom all these weaknesses, all this egotism, all these vices. Mirabeau was venal, Barnave jealous, Robespierre fanatic, the Jacobin Club blood-thirsty, the National Guard selfish, La Fayette a waverer, the government a nullity. No one desired the Revolution but for his own purpose, and according to his own scheme; and it must have been wrecked on these shoals a hundred times, if there were not in human crises something even stronger than the men who appear to guide them—the will of the event itself. The Revolution in all its comprehensive bearings was not understood at that period by any one except, perchance, Robespierre and the thorough going democrats. The King viewed it only as a vast reform, the Duc d'Orleans as a great faction, Mirabeau but in its political point of view, La Fayette only in its constitutional aspect, the Jacobins as a vengeance, the mob as the abasing of the higher orders, the nation as a display of patriotism. None ventured as yet to contemplate its ultimate consummation. All was thus blind, except the Revolution itself. The virtue of the Revolution was in the idea which forced these men on to accomplish it, and not in those who actually accomplished it; all its instruments were vitiated, corrupt, or personal; but the idea was pure, incorruptible, divine. The vices, passions, selfishness of men were inevitably doomed to produce in the coming crises those shocks, those violences, those perversities, and those crimes which are to human passions what consequences are to principles. If each of the parties or men, mixed up from the first day with these great events had taken their virtue, instead of their impulses as the rule of their actions, all these disasters which eventually crushed them, would have been saved to them and to their country. If the king had been firm and sagacious, if the clergy had been free from a longing for things temporal, and if the aristocracy had been good; if the people had been moderate, if Mirabeau had been honest, if La Fayette had been decided, if Robespierre had been humane, the Revolution would have progressed, majestic and calm as a heavenly thought, through France, and thence through Europe; it would have been installed like a philosophy in facts, in laws, and in creeds. But it was otherwise decreed. The holiest most just and virtuous thought, when it passes through the medium of imperfect humanity, comes out in rags and in blood. Those very persons who conceived it, no longer recognise, disavow it. Yet it is not permitted, even to crime, to degrade the truth, that survives all, even its victims. The blood which sullies men does not stain its idea; and despite the selfishness which debases it, the infamies which trammel it, the crimes which pollute it, the blood-stained Revolution purifies itself, feels its own worth, triumphs, and will triumph. eign assembly between the people and the king—he became the protector of those whose enemy he had been. Royal and suppliant hands met his plebeian touch! He who opposed the popular royalty of talent and eloquence to the royalty of the blood of the Bourbons! He covered with his body the life of those who had been his masters. His very devotion was a triumph; the object of that devotion was in his queen. That queen was young, handsome, majestic; but brought to the level of ordinary humanity by her alarm for her husband and his children. Her tearful eyes besought their safety from Barnave's eyes. He was the leading orator in that Assembly which held the fate of the monarch in his house. He was the favourite of that people whom he controlled by a gesture, and whose fury he averted during the long journey between the throne and death. The queen had placed her son, the young dauphin, between his knees. Barnave's fingers had played with the fair hair of the child. The king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, had distinguished, with tact, Barnave from the inflexible and brutal PÉtion. They had conversed IV.Barnave had found Duport and the Lameths, his friends, in the most monarchical moods, but from other motives than his own. This triumvirate was in terms of good understanding at the Tuileries. Lameths and Duport saw the king. Barnave, who at first dared not venture to visit the chateau, subsequently went there secretly. The utmost precaution and concealment attended these interviews. The king and queen sometimes awaited the youthful orator in a small apartment on the entre sol of the palace, with a key in their hand, so as to open the door the moment his footsteps were heard. When these meetings were utterly impossible, Barnave wrote to the queen. He reckoned greatly on the strength of his party in the Assembly, because he measured the power of their opinions by the talent with which they expressed them. The queen did not feel a similar confidence. "Take courage, madame," wrote Barnave; "it is true our banner is torn, but the word Constitution is still legible thereon. This word will recover all its pristine force and prestige, if the king will rally to it sincerely. The friends of this constitution, retrieving past errors, may still raise and maintain it firmly. The Jacobins alarm public reason; the emigrants threaten our nationality. Do not fear the Jacobins—put no trust in the emigrants. Throw yourself into the national party which now exists. Did not Henry The queen with all sincerity adopted this tardy counsel, and arranged with Barnave all her measures, and all her foreign correspondence. She neither said nor did any thing which could thwart the plans he had conceived for the restoration of royal authority. "A feeling of legitimate pride," said the queen when speaking of him, "a feeling which I am far from blaming in a young man of talent born in the obscure ranks of the third estate, has made him desire a revolution which should smooth the way to fame and influence. But his heart is loyal, and if ever power is again in our hands, Barnave's pardon is already written on our hearts." Madame Elizabeth partook of this regard of the king and queen for Barnave. Defeated at all points, they had ended by believing that the only persons capable of restoring the monarchy were those who had destroyed it. This was a fatal superstition. They were induced to adore that power of the Revolution which they could not bend. V.The first acts of the king were too much imbued with the inspirations of Barnave and the Lameths for the royal dignity. He addressed to the commissioners of the Assembly charged with interrogating him as to the circumstances of the 21st of June, a reply, the bad faith of which called for the smile rather than the indulgence of his enemies. "Introduced into the king's chamber and alone with him," said the commissioners of the Assembly, "the king made to us the following declaration:—The motives of my departure were the insults and outrages I underwent on the 18th of April, when I wished to go to St. Cloud. These insults remained unpunished, and I thereupon believed that there was neither safety nor decorum in my staying any longer in Paris. Unable to quit publicly, I resolved to depart in the night, and without attendants; my intention was never to leave the kingdom. I had no concert with foreign powers, nor with the princes of my family who have emigrated. My residence would have been at MontmÉdy, a place I had chosen because it is fortified, and that being close to the "The king," added the queen, in her declaration, "desiring to depart with his children, I declare that nothing in nature could prevent my following him. I have sufficiently proved, during two years, and under the most painful circumstances, that I will never separate from him." Not content with this inquiry into the motives and circumstances of the king's flight, public opinion, much irritated, demanded that the hand of the nation should be extended even to the paternal authority, and that the Assembly should appoint a governor for the dauphin. Eighty names, for the most part of obscure persons, were found in the division which was openly taken. They were hailed with shouts of general derision. This outrage to the king and father was spared him. The governor subsequently named by Louis XVI., M. de Fleurieu, never entered upon his duties. The governor of the heir to an empire was the gaoler of a prison of malefactors. The Marquis de BouillÉ addressed from Luxembourg a threatening letter to the Assembly, in order to turn from the king all popular indignation, and to assume to himself the projection and execution of the king's departure. "If," he added, "one hair of the head of Louis XVI. fall to the ground, not one stone of Paris shall remain upon another. I know the roads, and will guide the foreign armies thither." A laugh followed these words. The Assembly was sufficiently wise not to require the advice of M. de BouillÉ, and strong enough to despise the threats of a proscribed man. M. de CazalÈs sent in his resignation, in order to go and fight (aller combattre). The most prominent members of the right side, amongst whom were Maury, Montlozier, the abbÉ Montesquieu, the abbÉ de Pradt, Virieu, &c. &c., to the number of two hundred and ninety, took a pernicious resolution, which, by removing all counterpoise from the extreme party of the Revolution, precipitated the fall of, and de These words were the abdication of an entire party, for any party that protests abdicates. On this day there was emigration in the Assembly. This mistaken fidelity, which deplored instead of combating, obtained the applause of the nobility and clergy; it merited the utmost contempt of politicians. Abandoning, in their struggle against the Jacobins, Barnave and the monarchical constitutionalists, it gave the victory to Robespierre, and by assuring the majority to his proposition for the non re-election of the members of the National Assembly to the Legislative Assembly, it sanctioned the convention. The royalists took away the weight of one great opinion from the balance, which consequently then leaned towards the disorders that ensued, and which in their progress carried off the head of the king and their own heads. A great opinion never lays down its arms with impunity for its country. VI.The Jacobins perceived this great error, and rejoiced at it. On seeing so large a body of the supporters of the con The club of Cordeliers sent to the Jacobins a copy of a proposed address to the National Assembly, in which the annihilation of royalty was openly demanded. "We are free and without a king," said the Cordeliers, "as the day after the taking of the Bastille; it is only for us to decide whether or no we shall name another. We are of opinion that the nation should do every thing by itself or by agents removable by her. We think, that the more important an employ, the more temporary should be its tenure. We think that royalty, and especially hereditary royalty, is incompatible with liberty; we anticipate the crowd of opponents such a declaration will create, but has not the declaration of rights produced as many? In leaving his post the king virtually abdicated,—let us profit by the occasion and our right—let us swear that France is a republic." This address, read to the club of Jacobins on the 22d, at first excited universal indignation. On the 23d, Danton mounted the tribune, demanded the positive forfeiture of the throne (la dÉchÉance), and the nomination of a council of regency. "Your king," he said, "is an idiot, or a criminal. It would be a horrid spectacle to present to the world, if, having the option of declaring a king criminal or idiotic, you did not prefer the latter alternative." On the 27th, Girey DuprÉ, a young writer who awaited "Why," asked Brissot "should we divide ourselves into dangerous denominations? we are all of one opinion. What do they want who are here hostile to the republicans? They detest the turbulent assemblies of Athens and Rome; they fear the division of France into isolated federations. They only want the representative constitution, and they are right. What do they want who boast of the name of republicans? They fear, they abhor equally, the turbulent assemblies of Rome and Athens, and equally dread a federated republic. They desire a representative constitution—nothing more, nothing less—and thus, we all concur. The head of the executive power has betrayed his oath,—must we bring him to judgment? This is the only point on which we differ. Inviolability will else be impunity to all crimes, an encouragement for all treason—common sense demands that the punishment should follow the offence. I do not see an inviolable man governing the people, but a God and 25,000,000 of brutes! If the king had on his return entered France at the head of foreign forces, if he had ravaged our fairest provinces, and if, checked in his career, you had made him prisoner, what would you then have done with him? Would you have allowed his inviolability to have saved him? Foreign powers are held up before you as a threat; do not fear them: Europe in arms is impotent against a people who will be free." In the National Assembly Muguer, in the name of the joint committees, brought up the report on the king's flight; he maintained the inviolability of Louis XVI. and the accusation of his accomplices. Robespierre opposed the inviolability; he avoided all show of anger in his language; and was careful to veil all his conclusions beneath the cover of mildness and humanity. "I will not pause to inquire," he said, "whether the king fled voluntarily, of his own act, or if from the extremity of the frontiers a citizen carried him off by his advice: I will not inquire either, whether this flight is a conspiracy against the public liberty. I shall GrÉgoire supported the accusation party. Salles defended the recommendation of the committee. Barnave at length spoke, and in support of Salles' opinion. He said: "The French nation has just undergone a violent shock; but if we are to believe all the auguries which are delivered, this recent event, like all others which have preceded it, will only serve to advance the period, to confirm the solidity of the revolution we have effected. I will not dilate on the advantages of monarchical government: you have proved your conviction by establishing it in your country: I will only say that every government, to be good, should comprise within itself the principles of its stability: for otherwise, instead of prosperity there would be before us only the perspective of a series of changes. Some men, whose motives I shall not impugn, seeking for examples to adduce, have found, in America, a people occupying a vast territory with a scanty population, nowhere surrounded by very powerful neighbours, having forests for their boundaries, and having for customs the feelings of a new race, and who are wholly ignorant of those factitious passions and impulses which effect revolutions of government. They have seen a republican government established in that land, and have thence drawn the conclusion that a similar government was suitable for us. These men are the same who at this moment are contesting the inviolability of the king. But, if it be true that in our territory there is a vast population spread, VII.Whilst these men, exclusively political, each measuring the advance of the Revolution, step by step, with their eyes, desired courageously to stop it, or checked their own views, the Revolution was continually progressing. Its own thought was too vast for any head of public man, orator, or statesman to contain. Its breath was too powerful for any one breast to respire it solely. Its end was too comprehensive to be included in any of the successive views that the ambition of certain factions, or the theories of certain statesmen could propound. Barnave, the Lameths, and La Fayette, like Mirabeau and Necker, endeavoured, in vain, to oppose to it the power and influence they had derived from it. It was destined, before it was appeased or relaxed in its onward career, to frustrate many other systems, make many other breasts pant in vain, and outstrip a multitude of other aims. Independent of the national assemblies it had given to The press, in the half century which had preceded the Revolution, had been the echo, well organised and calm, of the thoughts of sages and reformers. From the time when the Revolution burst forth, it had become the turbulent and frequently cynical echo of the popular excitement. It had itself transformed the modes of communicating ideas; it no longer produced books—it had not the time: at first it expended itself in pamphlets, and subsequently in a multitude of flying and diurnal sheets, which, published at a low price amongst the people, or gratuitously placarded in the public thoroughfares, incited the multitude to read and discuss them. The treasury of the national thought, whose pieces of gold were too pure, or too bulky, for the use of the populace, it was, if we may be allowed the expression, converted into a multitude of smaller coins, struck with the impress of the passions of the hour, and often tarnished with the foulest oxides. Journalism, like an irresistible element of the life of a people in revolution, had made its own place, without listening to the law which had been made to restrain it. Mirabeau, who required that his speeches should echo throughout the departments, had given birth to this speaking trumpet of the Revolution, (despite the orders in council) in his Letters to my Constituents, and in the Courrier de Provence. At the opening of the States General, and at the taking of the Bastille, other journals had appeared. At each new insurrection there was a fresh inundation of news VIII.Marat was born in Switzerland. A writer without talent, a savant without reputation, with a desire for fame without having received from society or nature the means of acquiring either, he revenged himself on all that was great not only in society but in nature. Genius was as hateful to him as aristocracy. Wherever he saw any thing elevated or striking he hunted it down as though it were a deadly enemy. He would have levelled creation. Equality was his mania, because superiority was his martyrdom; he loved the Revolution because it brought down all to his level; he loved it even to blood, because blood washed out the stain of his long-during obscurity; he made himself a public denouncer by the popular title; he knew that denouncement is flattery to all who tremble, and the people are always trembling. A real prophet of demagogueism, inspired by insanity, he gave his nightly dreams to daily conspiracies. The Seid of the people, he interested it by his self-devotion to its interests. He affected mystery like all oracles. He lived in obscurity, and only went out at night; he only communicated with his fellows with the most sinistrous precautions. A subterranean cell was his residence, and there he took refuge safe from poignard and poison. His journal affected the imagination like something supernatural. Marat was wrapped in real fanaticism. The confidence reposed in him nearly amounted to worship. The fumes of the blood he incessantly demanded had mounted to his brain. He was the delirium of the Revolution, himself a living delirium! IX.Brissot, as yet obscure, wrote Le Patriote FranÇais. A politician, and aspiring to leading parts, he only excited revolutionary passions in proportion as he hoped one day to govern by them. At first a constitutionalist and friend of Necker and Mirabeau, a hireling before he became a doctrinaire, he saw in the people only a sovereign more suitable to his own ambition. The republic was his rising sun; he approached it as to his own fortune, but with prudence, and frequently looking behind him to see if opinion followed his traces. Condorcet, an aristocrat by genius, although an aristocrat by birth, became a democrat from philosophy. His passion was the transformation of human reason. He wrote La Chronique de Paris. Carra, an obscure demagogue, had created for himself a name of fear in the Annales Patriotiques. FrÉron, in the Orateur du Peuple, rivalled Marat. Fauchet, in the Bouche de Fer, elevated democracy to a level with religious philosophy. The "last not least," Laclos, an officer of artillery, author of an obscene novel, and the confidant of the Duc d'Orleans, edited the Journal des Jacobins, and stirred up through France the flame of ideas and words of which the focus was in the clubs. All these men used their utmost efforts to impel the people beyond the limits which Barnave had prescribed to the event of the 21st June. They desired to avail themselves of the instant when the throne was left empty to obliterate it from the constitution. They overwhelmed the king with insults and objurgations, in order that the Assembly might not dare to replace at the head of their institutions a prince whom they had vilified. They clamoured for interrogatory, sentence, forfeiture, abdication, imprisonment, and hoped to degrade royalty for ever by degrading the king. The republic saw its hour for the first moment, and trembled to allow it to escape. All these hands at once urged men's minds towards a decisive movement. Articles in the journals provoked motions, motions petitions, and petitions riots. The altar of the country in the Champ-de-Mars, which remained erected for a new federation, was the place which was already pointed out for the assemblies of the people. It was the Mons Aventinus, whither it was to retire, and whence it was to dictate to a timid and corrupt senate. "No more king,—let us be republicans," wrote Brissot in the Patriote. "Such is the cry at the Palais Royal, and it does not gain ground fast enough; it would seem as though it were blasphemy. This repugnance for assuming the name of the condition in which the state actually is is very extraordinary in the eyes of philosophy." "No king! no protector! no regent! Let us have done with man-eaters of every sort and kind," re-echoed the Bouche de Fer. "Let the eighty-three departments enter into a federation, and Provoked by this reference to the regency, which appeared to point to him, the Duc d'Orleans wrote to the journals that he was ready to serve his country by land or by sea; but in respect to any question of regency, he from that moment renounced, and for ever, any pretensions to that title which the constitution might give him. "After having made so many sacrifices to the cause of the people," he said, "I am no longer in a condition to quit my position as a simple citizen. Ambition in me would be an inexcusable inconsistency." Already discredited by all parties, this prince, henceforth incapable of serving the throne, was equally incapable of serving the republic. Odious to the royalists, put aside by the demagogues, suspected by the constitutionalists, there only remained to him the stoical attitude in which he took refuge. He had abdicated his rank, abdicated his own faction; he had abdicated the favour of the people. His life was all that remained to him. At the same moment Camille Desmoulins was thus satirically apostrophising La Fayette, the first idol of the Revolution:—"Liberator of two worlds, flower of Janissaries, phoenix of Alguazils-major, Don Quixotte of Capet and the two chambers, constellation of the white horse Such was the general tone of the press, such the exhaustless laughter which this young man diffused, like the Aristophanes of an irritated people. He accustomed it to revile men, majesty, misfortune, and worth. The day came when he required for himself and for the young and lovely woman whom he adored, that pity which he had destroyed in the people. He found, in his turn, only the brutal derision of the multitude, and he himself then became sad and sorry for the first and last time. The people, all whose political idea is from the senses, could not at all comprehend why the statesmen of the Assembly should impose upon them a fugitive king, out of respect for abstract royalty. The moderation of Barnave The crowd betook itself from the HÔtel-de-Ville to the Jacobins, from the Jacobins to the National Assembly, clamorous for the forfeiture of the crown and the republic. This popular gathering had no other leader than the uneasiness that excited it. A spontaneous and unanimous instinct assured it that the Assembly would be found wanting at the hour of great resolutions. This mob desired to compel it again to seize the opportunity. Its will was the more potent as it was wholly impossible to trace it to its source—no chief gave it any visible impetus. It advanced of itself, spake of itself, and wrote with its own hand in the streets—on the corner stone—its threatening petitions. The first that the people presented to the Assembly, on the 14th, and which was escorted by 4000 petitioners, was signed "The People." The 14th of July and the 6th of October had taught it its name. The Assembly, firm and unmoved, passed to the order of the day. On quitting the Assembly, the crowd went to the Champ-de-Mars, where it signed, in greater numbers, a second petition in still more imperative terms. "Entrusted with the representation of a free people, will you destroy the work we have perfected? Will you replace liberty by a reign of tyranny? If, indeed, it were so, learn that the French people, which has acquired its rights, will not again lose them." On quitting the Champ-de-Mars, the people thronged round the Tuileries, the Assembly, and the Palais Royal. Of their own accord they shut up the theatres, and proclaimed the suspension of all public entertainments, until Robespierre next spoke, and demonstrated to the people that Barnave and the Lameths were playing the same game as Mirabeau. "They concert with our enemies, and then they call us factious!" More timid than Laclos and Danton, he did not give any opinion as to the petition. A man of calculation rather than of passion, he foresaw that the disorderly movement would split against the organised resistance of the bourgeoisie. He reserved to himself the power of falling back upon the legality of the question, and kept on terms with the Assembly. Laclos pressed his motion, and the people carried it. At midnight they separated, after having agreed to meet the next day in the Champ-de-Mars, there to sign the petition. The day following was lost to sedition, by disputes between the clubs as to the terms of the petition. The Republicans negotiated with La Fayette, to whom they offered the presidency of an American government. Robespierre and Danton, who detested La Fayette—Laclos, who urged on the Duc d'Orleans, concerted together, and impeded the XI.On the 17th, very early in the morning, the people, without leaders, began to collect in the Champ-de-Mars, and surround the altar of the country, raised in the centre of the large square of the confederation. A strange and melancholy chance opened the scenes of murder on this day. When the multitude is excited, every thing becomes the occasion of crime. A young painter, who, before the hour of meeting, was copying the patriotic inscriptions engraved in front of the altar, heard a slight noise at his feet; astonished, he looked around him and saw the point of a gimlet, with which some men, concealed under the steps of the altar, were piercing the planks of the pedestal. He hastened to the nearest guard-house, and returned with some soldiers. They lifted up one of the steps and found beneath two invalids, who had got under the altar in the night, with no other design, as they declared, than a childish and obscene curiosity. The report instantly spread that the altar of the country was undermined, in order to blow up the people; that a barrel of gunpowder had been discovered beside the conspirators; that the invalids, surprised in the preliminaries to their criminal design, were well known satellites of the aristocracy; that they had confessed their deadly design, and the amount of reward promised on the success of their wickedness. The mob mustered, and raging with fury, surrounded the guard-house of the Gros-Caillou. The two XII.The news of these murders, confusedly spread and variously interpreted in the city, in the Assembly, among various groups, excited various feelings, according as it was viewed as a crime of the people or a crime of its enemies. The truth was only made apparent long after. The agitation increased from the indignation of some and the suspicions of others. Bailly, duly informed, sent three commissaries and a battalion. Other commissaries traversed the quarters of the capital, reading to the people the proclamation of the magistrates and the address of the National Assembly. The ground of the Bastille was occupied by the national guard and the patriotic societies, which were to go thence to the field of the Federation. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, FrÉron, Brissot, and the principal ringleaders of the people had disappeared; some said in order to concert insurrectional measures, at Legendre's house in the country; others, in order to escape the responsibility of the day. The former version was the more generally accredited, from Robespierre's known hatred to Danton, to whom Saint Just said, in his accusation—"Mirabeau, who meditated a change of dynasty, appreciated the force of thy audacity, and laid hands upon it. Thou didst startle him from the laws of stern principle; we heard nothing more of thee until the massacres of the Champ-de-Mars. Thou didst support that false measure of the people, and the proposition of the law, which had no other object than to serve for a pretext for unfolding the red banner, and an attempt at tyranny. The patriots, not initiated in this treachery, had opposed thy perfidious advice. Thou wast named in conjunction with Brissot to draw up this petition. You both escaped the prey of La Fayette, who caused the slaughter of ten thousand patriots. Brissot re Camille Desmoulins thus justifies the absence of Danton, himself, and FrÉron, by asserting that Danton had fled from proscription and assassination to the house of his father-in-law, at Fontenay, on the previous night, and was tracked thither by a band of La Fayette's spies; and that FrÉron, whilst crossing the Pont Neuf, had been assailed, trampled under foot, and wounded by fourteen hired ruffians; whilst Camille himself, marked for the dagger, only escaped by a mistake in his description. History has not put any faith in these pretended assassinations of La Fayette. Camille, invisible all day, repaired in the evening to the Jacobins. XIII.In the mean while the crowd began to congregate in vast masses in the Champ-de-Mars—agitated, but inoffensive—the national guard, every battalion of whom La Fayette had ordered out, were under arms. One of the detachments which had arrived that morning in the Champ-de-Mars, with a train of artillery, withdrew by the quays, in order that the appearance of an armed force might not irritate the people. At twelve o'clock the crowd assembled round the "altar of the country" (autel de la patrie), not seeing the commissioners of the Jacobin club, who had promised to bring the petition to be signed, of their own accord chose four commissioners of their number to draw up one. One of the commissioners took the pen, the citizens crowded round him, and he wrote as follows:— "On the altar of the country, July 13th, in the year III. Representatives of the people, your labours are drawing to a close. A great crime has been committed; Louis flies, and has unworthily abandoned his post—the empire is on the This petition was laid on the altar of the country, and quires of paper, placed at the four corners of the altar, received six thousand autographs. This petition is still preserved in the archives of the Municipality, and bears on it the indelible imprint of the hand of the people. It is the medal of the Revolution struck on the spot in the fused metal of popular agitation. Here and there on it are to be traced those sinister names that for the first time emerged from obscurity. These names are like the hieroglyphics of the ancient monuments. The acts of men now famous, who signed names then unknown and obscure, give to these signatures a retrospective signification, and the eye dwells with curiosity on these characters that seem to contain in a few marks the mystery of a long life—the whole horror of an epoch. Here is the name of Chaumette, then a medical student, Rue Mazarine, No. 9. There Maillard, the president of the fearful massacres of September. Further on, HÉbert; underneath it, Hanriot, Inspector Warden of the condemned prisoners (GÉnÉral des SuppliciÉs) during the reign of terror. The small and scrawled signature of HÉbert, who was afterwards the "PÈre Duchesne," or le Peuple en colÈre, is like a spider that extends its arms to seize its prey. Santerre has signed lower down: this is the last name of note, the rest are alone those of the populace. It is easy to discern how many a hasty and tremulous hand has traced the witness of its fury or ignorance on this document. Many were even unable to write. A circle of ink with a cross in the centre marks their anonymous adhesion to the petition. Some female names are to be seen, and numerous names of children are discernible, from the inac XIV.The municipal body had been informed at two o'clock of the murders committed at the Champ-de-Mars, and of the insults offered to the body of national guards sent to disperse the mob. M. de La Fayette himself, who headed this detachment, had been struck by several stones hurled at him by the populace. It was even reported that a man in the uniform of the national guard had fired a pistol at him, and that he had generously pardoned and released this man, who had been seized by the escort. This popular report cast a halo of heroism around M. de La Fayette, and animated anew the national guard, who were devoted to him. At this recital Bailly did not hesitate to proclaim martial law, and to unfurl the red flag, the last resource against sedition. On their side, the mob, alarmed at the aspect of the red flag floating from the windows of the HÔtel-de-Ville, despatched twelve of their number as a deputation to the municipality. These commissioners with difficulty made their way to the audience-hall, through a forest of bayonets, and demanded that three citizens who had been arrested should be given up to them. No attention was paid to them, however, and the resolution of employing force was adopted. The mayor and authorities descended the steps of the HÔtel-de-Ville, uttering threats of their intentions. At the sight of Bailly preceded by the red flag a cry of enthusiasm burst from the ranks, and the national guards clashed the butts of their muskets loudly against the stones. The public force, indignant with the clubs, was in a state of that nervous excitement that occasionally takes possession of large bodies as well as individuals. La Fayette, Bailly, and the municipal authorities commenced their march preceded by the red flag, and followed by 10,000 national guards, the paid battalions of grenadiers of this army of citizens formed the advanced guard. An immense concourse of people followed by a natural impulse On his arrival at the glacis of the Champ-de-Mars, La Fayette divided his forces into three columns; the first debouched by the avenue of the Ecole Militaire, the second and third by the two successive openings that intersect the glacis between the Ecole Militaire and the Seine. Bailly, La Fayette, and the municipal body with the red flag, marched at the head of the first column. The pas de charge beaten by 400 drums, and the rolling of the cannon over the stones, announced the arrival of the national army. These sounds drowned for an instant the hollow murmurs and the shrill cries of 50,000 men, women, and children, who filled the centre of the Champ-de-Mars, or crowded on the glacis. At the moment when Bailly debouched between the glacis, the populace, who from the top of the bank looked down on the mayor, the bayonets, and the artillery, burst into threatening shouts and furious outcries against the national guard. "Down with the red flag! Shame to Bailly! Death to La Fayette!" The people in the Champ-de-Mars responded to these cries with unanimous imprecations. Lumps of wet mud, the only arms at hand, were cast at the national guard, and struck La Fayette's horse, the red flag, and Bailly himself; and it is even said that several pistol shots were fired from a distance; this however was by no means proved,—the people had no intention of resisting, they wished only to intimidate. Bailly summoned them to disperse legally, to which they replied by shouts of derision; and he then, with the grave dignity of his office, and the mute sorrow that formed part of his character, ordered them to be dispersed by force. La Fayette first ordered the guard to fire in the air; but the people, encouraged by this vain demonstration, formed into line before the national guard, who then fired a The columns of the national guard, and particularly the cavalry, pursued the fugitives into the neighbouring fields, and made two hundred prisoners. Not a man was killed on the side of the national guard; the loss of the people is unknown. The one side diminished it, in order to extenuate the odium of an execution without resistance; the others augmented it, in order to rouse the people's resentment. At night, which was already fast approaching, the bodies were cast into the Seine. Opinions were divided as to the nature and details of this execution, some terming it a crime, and others a painful duty; but this day of unresisting butchery still retains the name given it by the people, The Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars. XV.The national guard, headed by La Fayette, marched victorious, but mournful, again into Paris: it was visible by their demeanour that they hesitated between self-congratulation and shame, as though undecided on the justice of what they had done. Amidst a few approving acclamations that saluted them on their passage, they heard smothered imprecations; and the words murderers and vengeance were substituted for patriotism and obedience to the law. They passed with a gloomy air beneath the windows of that As Such was this "Day of the Champ-de-Mars," which gave a reign of three months to the Assembly, by which they did not profit; which intimidated the clubs for a few days, but which did not restore to the monarchy or to the public tranquillity the blood it had cost. La Fayette had on this day the destiny of the monarchy and the republic in his hands: he merely re-established order. XVI.The next morning Bailly appeared before the Assembly to report to them the triumph of the law. He displayed the heartfelt sorrow of his mind, and the masculine energy that formed part of his duty. "The conspiracy had been formed," said he; "it was necessary to employ force, and severe punishment has overtaken the crime." The president approved, in the name of the Assembly, of the mayor's conduct, and Barnave thanked the national guard in cold and weak language, whilst his praises seemed near akin to excuses. The enthusiasm of the victors had already subsided, and PÉtion perceiving this, rose and said a few words concerning a projet de dÉcret that had just been proposed, against those who should assemble the people in numbers. These words, in the mouth of PÉtion, who was well known to be the friend of Brissot and the conspirators, were at first received with sarcastic cries by the cÔtÉ droit, and then with loud applause from the cÔtÉ gauche and the tribunes. The victory of the Champ-de-Mars was already contested in the Assembly, and the clubs re-opened that evening. Robespierre, Brissot, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Marat, who had for some XVII."See," wrote Desmoulins, "see how the furious satellites of La Fayette rush from their barracks, or rather from their taverns,—see, they assemble and load their arms with ball, in the presence of the people, whilst the battalions of aristocrates mutually excite each other to the massacre. It is chiefly in the eyes of the cavalry that you behold the love of blood aroused by the double influence of wine and vengeance. It was against women and babes that this army of butchers chiefly directed their fury. The altar of the country is strewn with dead bodies,—it is thus that La Fayette has dyed his hands in the gore of citizens: those hands which, in my eyes, will ever appear to reek with this innocent blood—this very spot where he had raised them to heaven to swear to defend them. From this moment, the most worthy citizens are proscribed; they are arrested in their beds, their papers are seized, their presses broken, and lists of the names of those proscribed are signed; the modÉrÉs sign these lists, and then display them. 'Society must be purged,' is their cry, 'of such men as Brissot, Carra, PÉtion, Bonneville, FrÉron, Danton, and Camille.' Danton and I found safety in flight alone from our assassins. The patriots are timid factions." "And," added FrÉron, "there are men to be found, who venture to justify these cowardly murders—these informations—these lettres de cachet—these seizures of papers—these confiscations of Whilst the revolutionary press thus infused the spirit of resentment into the people, the clubs, reassured by the indolence of the Assembly, and by the scrupulous legality of La Fayette, suffered but slightly the effects of this body blow of the victory of the Champ-de-Mars. A schism took place in the assembly of the Jacobins between the intolerant members and its first founders, Barnave, Duport, and the two Lameths. This schism took its rise in the great question of the non-re-eligibility of the members of the National Assembly for the Legislative Assembly which was so soon to succeed. The pure Jacobins, together with Robespierre, wished that the National Assembly should abdicate, en masse, and voluntarily sentence themselves to a political ostracism, in order to make room for men of newer ideas and more imbued with the spirit of the time. The moderate and constitutional Jacobins looked upon this abdication as equally fatal to the monarch, as it dealt a mortal blow to their ambition, for they wished to seize on the direction of the power they had just created; they deemed themselves alone competent to control the movement that they had excited, and they sought to rule in the name of those laws of which they were the framers. Robespierre, on the contrary, who felt his own weakness in an assembly composed of the same This question, at the time of the events of the Champ-de-Mars, agitated, and already tended to dissolve the Jacobins. The rival club of the Feuillants, composed almost entirely of constitutionalists and members of the National Assembly, had a more legal and monarchical appearance. The irritation caused by the popular excesses, and their hatred for Robespierre and Brissot, induced the ancient founders of the club to join the Feuillants. The Jacobins trembled lest the empire of the factions should escape them, and that division would weaken them. "It is the court," said Camille Desmoulins, the friend of Robespierre, "it is the court that foments this schism amongst us, and has invented this perfidious stratagem to destroy the popular party. It knows the two Lameths, La Fayette, Barnave, Duport, and the others who first figured in the Jacobin assembly. 'What,' the court asked itself, 'is the aim of all these men? their aim was to be elevated to rank and station, by the voice of the people, and by the gales of popularity, of command of the ministers, of gold: what they needed was court favour to serve as the sails of their ambition; and, wanting these sails, they use the oars of the people. Let us prove to Lameth and Barnave that they will not be re-elected, that they cannot fill any important place before four years have passed away. They will be indignant, and return to our party. I saw Alexandre and Theodore Lameth the evening of the day on which Robespierre's motion of the non-re-eligibility was carried. The Lameths were then patriots, but the next day they were no longer the same. 'It is impossible to submit to this,' said they,—'in concert with Duport—we must quit France.' What! shall those who have been the PÉtion, alarmed at these symptoms of discord, addressed the tribune of the Jacobins in conciliatory terms—"You are lost" said he, "should the members of the Assembly quit your party, and betake themselves en masse to the Feuillants. The empire of public opinion is deserting you; and these countless affiliated societies, imbued with your spirit, will sever the bonds of fraternity, and unite them to you. Forestall the designs of your enemies. Publish an address to the affiliated societies, and reassure them of your constitutional intentions; tell them that you have been belied to them, and that you are no promoters of faction. Tell them that far from wishing to disturb public tranquillity, your sole design is to avert those troubles entailed on you by the king's departure. Tell them that we submit to the rapid and imposing influence of opinion, and that respect for the Assembly, fidelity to the constitution, devotion to the cause of your country and of liberty, form your principles." This address, dictated by the hypocrisy of fear, was adopted and sent to all the societies in the kingdom. This measure was followed by a remodelling of the Jacobins; the primitive nucleus alone was suffered to remain, which re-organised the rest by the ballot over which PÉtion presided. On their side the Feuillants wrote to the patriotic societies of the provinces, and for a brief space there was an interregnum of the factions; but the societies of the provinces speedily declared en masse, and with an almost unanimous and revolutionary enthusiasm, in favour of the Jacobins. "Free and sincere union with our brothers in Paris:" such was the rallying cry of the clubs. Six hundred clubs sent in their adherence to the Jacobins; eighteen alone de Such were PÉtion's words, and from that hour he became the idol of the people. He possessed neither the abilities nor the audacity of Robespierre; but he had hypocrisy, that shameless veil of doubtful positions. The people believed him to be sincere, and his speeches had the same influence over them as his reputation. XVIII.The coalition which he denounced to the people was true. Barnave had an understanding with the court. Malouet, an eloquent and able member of the right, had an understanding with Barnave: a plan for modifying the constitution had been concerted between these two men—yesterday foes, to-day allies. The moment was come for uniting in one general measure all these scattered laws valid during a revolution of thirty months. In separating, on this review of the acts of the Assembly, what was integral from that which was not, the occasion must arise for a revision of every act of the constitution. It was, therefore, the moment to profit (in order to amend them in a sense more monarchical), by the reaction produced by La Fayette's victory. What impulse and anger had too violently taken from the prerogatives of the crown, reason and reflection could restore to it. The same men who had placed the executive power in the hands of the Assembly, hoped to be able to withdraw it from them. They believed they could effect every thing by their eloquence and popularity. Like all who are descending the XIX.But the members of the right refused to give their unanimous concurrence to this plan. "To amend the constitution was to sanction revolt. To unite themselves with the factious, was to become factious themselves. To restore royalty by the hands of a Barnave, was to degrade the king even to gratitude towards a member of a faction. Their hopes had not fallen so low that it was thus they had but the option of accepting a character in a comedy of startled revolutionists. Their hopes were not in any amelioration of present ill, but in its progress towards worse. The very excess of disorder would punish disorder itself. The king was at the Tuileries, but royalty was not there—it was at Coblentz, it was on all the thrones of Europe. Monarchies were all in connection; they knew very well how to restore the French monarchy without the fellowship of those who had overturned it." Thus reasoned the members of the right. Feelings and resentments closed their ears to the counsels of moderation and wisdom, and the monarchy was not less systematically pushed towards its catastrophe by the hand of its friends than that of its enemies. The plan was abortive. Whilst the captive king kept up a twofold understanding with his emigrant brothers to learn the strength and inclination of foreign powers, and with Barnave to attempt the conquest of the Assembly, the Assembly itself lost its power; and the spirit of the Revolution, quitting the place in which it had no longer any hopes, went to excite the clubs and municipalities, and bestow its energies on the elections. The Assembly had committed the fault of declaring its members not re-eligible for the new legislature. This act of renunciation of itself, which resembled the heroism of disinterestedness, was in reality the sacrifice of the country; it was the ostracism of superior power, and an assurance of triumph to mediocrity. A nation how rich soever in genius and virtue, never possesses more than a XX.The principal names discussed in the public newspapers in Paris, were those of Condorcet, Brissot, Danton;—in the departments, those of Vergniaud, Guadet, Isnard, Louvet,—who were afterwards Girondists; and those of Thuriot, Merlin, Carnot, Couthon, Danton, Saint Just, who, subsequently united with Robespierre, were, by turns, his instruments or his victims. Condorcet was a philosopher, "Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm." Real anarchists are those who are impatient of having always obeyed, and feel themselves impotent to command. Condorcet had edited the Chronique de Paris from 1789. It was a journal of constitutional doctrines, but in which the throbbings of anger were perceivable beneath the cool and polished hand of the philosopher. Had Condorcet been endowed with warmth and command of language, he might have been the Mirabeau of another assembly. He had his earnestness and constancy, but had not the resounding and energetic tone which made his own soul and feelings felt by another. The club of electors of Paris, who met at La Sainte XXI.Danton, whom the Revolution had found an obscure barrister at the ChÂtelet, had increased with it in influence. He had already that celebrity which the multitude easily assigns to him whom it sees every where, and always listens to. He was one of those men who seem born of the stir of revolutions, and which float on its surface until it swallows them up. All in him was like the mass—athletic, rude, coarse. He pleased them because he resembled them. His eloquence was like the loud clamour of the mob. His brief and decisive phrases had the martial curtness of command. His irresistible gestures gave impulse to his plebeian auditories. Ambition was his sole line of politics. Devoid of honour, principles, or morality, he only loved democracy because it was exciting. It was his element, and he plunged into it. He sought there not so much command as that voluptuous sensuality which man finds in the rapid movement which bears him away with it. He was intoxicated with the revolutionary vertigo as a man becomes drunken with wine; yet he bore his intoxication well. He had that superiority of calmness in the confusion he created, which enabled him to control it: preserving sangfroid in his excitement and his temper, even in a moment of passion, he jested with the clubs in their stormiest moods. A burst of laughter interrupted bitterest imprecations; and he amused the people even whilst he impelled them to the uttermost pitch of fury. Satisfied with his two-fold ascendency, he did not care to respect it himself, and neither spoke to it of principles nor of virtue, but solely of force. Himself, he adored force, and force only. His sole genius was contempt for honesty; and he esteemed himself above all the world, because he had trampled under foot all scruples. Every thing was to him a means. He was a statesman of materialism, playing the popular game, with no end but the terrible game itself, with no stake but his life, and with no responsibility beyond nonentity. Such a man must be profoundly indifferent either to despotism or to liberty. His contempt of the people must XXII.Brissot de Warville was another of these popular candidates for the representation. As this individual was the root of the Girondist party, the first apostle and first martyr of the republic, we ought to know him. Brissot was the Returning to France at the first symptoms of the Revolution, he watched its successive phases, with the ambition of an impatient man, and with the indecision of one not knowing what part to take. He was frequently wrong. He compromised himself by his devotion, too early displayed, towards certain men who had seemed to him for a moment to be all powerful, especially towards La Fayette. Editor of the Patriote FranÇais, he had occasionally put forth revolutionary feelers, and flattered the future by going even faster than the factions themselves. He had even been disowned by Robespierre. "Whilst I content myself," said Robespierre, referring to him, "with defending the principles of liberty, without opening any other question, what are you doing, Brissot and Condorcet? Known until now by your great moderation and your connection with La Fayette, for a long time followers of the aristocratic club of '89, you suddenly blazon forth the word Republic. You issue a journal entitled the Republican! Then minds become in a ferment. The mere word Republic throws division amongst patriots, and affords to our enemies a pretext which they seek for announcing that there exists in France a party which conspires against the monarchy and the constitution. Under this title we are persecuted, and peaceable citizens are sacri So spake Robespierre, jealous by anticipation, and yet just, on Brissot's presenting himself as a candidate. The Revolution rejected him, the Counter-revolution repudiated him no less. Brissot's old allies in London, especially Morande, returned to Paris under cover of the troublous times, revealed to the Parisians in the Argus, and in placards, the secret intrigues and the disgraceful literary career of their former associate. They quoted actual letters, in which Brissot had lied unblushingly as to his name, the condition of his family, and his father's fortune, in order to acquire Swinton's confidence, to gain credit, and make dupes in England. The proofs were damning. A considerable sum had been extorted from a man named Desforges, under pretence of erecting an institution in London, and this sum had been expended by Brissot on himself. This was but a trifle: Brissot, on quitting England, had left in the hands of this Desforges twenty-four letters, which but too plainly established his participation in the infamous trade of libels carried on by his allies. It was proved to demonstration that Brissot had connived at the sending into France, and the propagation of, odious pamphlets by Morande. The journals hostile to his election seized on these scandalous facts, and held them up to public obloquy. He was, besides, accused of having extracted from the funds of the district of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, of which he was president, a sum for his own purse, long forgotten. His defence was laboured and obscure; yet it was held by the club of the Rue de la Micho Marat, in his Ami du Peuple, wrote thus ambiguously of Brissot:—"Brissot," says the Friend of the People, "was never, in my eyes, a thorough-going patriot. Either from ambition or baseness, he has up to this time betrayed the duties of a good citizen. Why has he been so tardy in leaving a system of hypocrisy? Poor Brissot, thou art the victim of a court valet, of a base hypocrite!—why lend thy paw to La Fayette? Why, thou must expect to experience the fate of all men of indecision. Thou hast displeased every body; thou canst never make thy way. If thou hast one atom of proper feeling left, hasten, and scratch out thy name from the list of candidates for the approaching general election." Thus appeared on the scene for the first time, in the midst of the hootings of both parties, this man, who attempted in vain to escape from the general contempt accumulated on his name from the faults of his youth, in order to enter on the gravity of his political career—a mingled character, half intrigue, half virtue. Brissot, destined to serve as the centre of a rallying point to the party of the Gironde, had, by anticipation in his character, all there was in after days, of destiny in his party, of intrigue and patriotism, of faction and martyrdom. The other marked candidates in Paris, were, Pastoret, a man of the South, prudent and skilful as a Southron |
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