History of the Constituent Assembly

Book I

Character of the French Revolution — Coeval with the invention of Printing — Philosophy of the 18th century — The Revolution commenced by the aristocracy — Creation of public opinion — Unison of thought amongst the people — Antagonism of interests — Disinterested enthusiasm of the French — rProcession to invoke the Deity — Various expressions of popular feeling — Great emotion of the Queen — Meeting of the States-General — Description of Louis XVI. — Character of Marie- Antoinette — The King's brothers — Character of Necker — Leading men of the States- General — Lafayette and Mirabeau — -Retrospect of the King's life — First appearance of Necker — Necker as Minister of Finance — Convocation of the Notables — Hostility of the provincial parliaments — Convocation of the States-General

Book II

The coup d'etat not necessary — Marie- Antoinette — Her characteristics as Dauphiness — Her unfortunate position — Neglected by her husband — Fatal consequences — Her ascendancy as Queen — Her first advisers — Her tastes and friendships — Her female favourites — Her private courts — Theatrical amusements— The intrigues about the necklace — Disclosure to the Queen — Her counsellors decide badly — Unfavourable rumours — Cardinal de Rohan implicated — He is examined by the King — The Cardinal is arrested — The papers of the intrigue destroyed — The Cardinal's early character — He is disliked by the Queen — Madame de Lamothe- Valois is the intriguess — Her success in scheming — She mystifies the Cardinal — The pretended correspondence with the Queen — The Jewellers entrapped — Cagliostro involved — The Cardinal CONTENTS.

Page s<t 213 visits Cagliostro — Cagliostro's alchemy — The Cardinal and Cagliostro come to Paris — The Cardinal is led at night to Trianon — He is deceived into delivering up the necklace — His embarrassments — The Queen is to be personated — A friar discovers the plot — A courtesan is employed — The Cardinal is taken to Versailles — His interview with the pretended Queen — The plot is revealed — Escape of the Countess de Lamothe— Egotism of M. Necker — Meeting of the Tiers-Etat — Freedom of the Press decreed — Proposed union of the three orders — First appearance of Mira beau — He rebukes the nobility — His origin and family — His loves, his talents, his misfortunes — He takes a position as a statesman

Book III

Conferences between the Commissioners of the three orders — Public deliberation established — Opposition of Mirabeau to the mediation of the King — Commotions in the provinces — Agitation in the Palais- Royal — The right of insurrection openly discussed — The Clubs of Paris — The Abbe Sieyes — Apathy of the King — The commons verify their powers — A denomination for the Assembly proposed by SieySs — Mirabeau's denomination, more moderate — Several of the clergy and nobility join the commons — Mirabeau eulogises the people — The title of ' ' National Assembly " adopted — Timidity of the King — Versatility of the Queen — The hall of assembly closed to the deputies — The oath of the Jeu de Paume— The clergy join the commons — Second opening of the States-General — The King's speech and declaration — The King orders the States-General to separate — The commons refuse — Mirabeau's defiance — Necker recalled by the King — The Duke of Orleans joins the commons — Marat's incendiary writings — The Assembly declares its determination to establish the constitution — Proposed banishment of the States-General — Resignation and secret departure of M. Necker — Camille Desmoulins— Collision with the military.

Book IV

A revolutionary committee appointed — Paris invaded by bands of brigands — The people of Paris disperse the brigands — The city barricaded and fortified — A popular army embodied — The people misled in searching for arms — Defection of the French Guards — The people seize a quantity of gunpowder — Lists of proscription made out — Excited deliberations in the National Assembly — CONTENTS. 7 Fag, 315 338 Deputation from the Assembly to the King — Its unfavourable reception — Violent decree of the Assembly — Incapacity of the new ministers — Great mental sufferings of the King — He yields to the demands of the Assembly — Consternation of the royal family — Defection at the Hotel-des-lnvalides — Imbecility of an old courtier— Mysterious envoy of the insurgents — Revolutionised state of Paris — Gloomy and threatening aspeot of the people

Book V

Impolitic attack made by the court upon the people — Description and history of the Bastille — Its governor, M. de Launay, and his preparations — Rumoured attack on Paris by the court — Conciliatory negociations with the governor of the Bastille — The first fatal shot — The first victims — The revolutionists of the superior classes — The retreat of the royal army from the Hotel-des-lnvalides — The seizure of the arms there — The conflict at the Bastille — Enthusiasm of the wounded citizens — Dr. Somberbeille — Hoche and Lefebvre join the insurgents — Mademoiselle de Monsigny — Tournay's leap into the Bastille— The Invalides in the Bastille waver — The governor threatens to blow up the fortress — The commandant of the.Swiss soldiers wishes to treat — Capitulation offered by the governor, and accepted by the chief of the insurgents — The gates opened — Garrison spared — The governor and officers first rescued from the vengeance of the besiegers, and then massacred — The state prisoners — The heroic defence of Major de Losme by a former state-prisoner, the Marquis de Pelleport and by the Chevalier de Jean— The massacre of M. de Flesselles— The custody of the Bastille, and its demolition . . . .

CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. (1789.) BOOK FIRST. Character of the French Revolution — Coeval with the invention of Printing — Philosophy of the 18th century — The Revolution commenced by the aristocracy — Creation of public opinion — Unison of thought amongst the people — Antagonism of interests — Disinterested enthusiasm of the French — Procession to invoke the Deity — Various expressions of popular seeling — Great emotion os the Queen — Meeting of the States-General — Description of Louis XVI. — Character of Marie- Antoinette — The King's brothers — Character of Necker — Leading men of the States-General — Lafayette and Mirabeau— Retrospect of the King's life — First appearance of Necker — Necker as Minister of Finance— Convocation of the Notables — Hostility of the provincial parliaments — Convocation of the States-General.

I. Having descended the course of time, even to our own days, in the history of the "Girondists " and that of the "Restoration," I shall now retrace my steps through those years, so full of events and so rapid in their flight, to B Character of the French Revolution. recount the history of the first French national union, which has been especially designated the " Constituent Assembly." This meeting of men, deliberating on the ruins of a worn-out monarchy, was the secular council of reason, the focus of ideas, the echo of speech, the arm of public opinion, brought to the discussion and promulgation of modern creeds with reference to society and the government of nations. Having inhaled the political philosophy of the 1 8th century from the books of her apostles, France embraced that philosophy with a degree of enthusiastic ardour equally irresistible for all others as for herself; and with an explosion, by turns majestic and terrible, accomplished the greatest intellec tual, social, and political transformation that has agitated the western world since the days of Charlemagne.

II. The mind, however strong its conviction, however firm in itself and ripe in experience, cannot avoid trembling at commencing so perilous a narrative. It must feel the necessity of imploring, from Him who can impart to or withdraw from man the light of inspiration, not only the pathetic genius of history — which, through the medium of passion, associates the human heart with the scenes traced by the historian — but the gift still more necessary for one who recounts the revolutions of ideas than for any other — THE SPIRIT OF DISCERNMENT ! It is only by virtue of this spirit of discernment, which is the cool judgment of history, that the writer and the reader, as they contemplate these mighty dramas, can 1789.] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 11 Its mental and social attributes. separate enthusiasm from fanaticism — the truth from chi mera — reform from subversion — moderation from excess — virtue from vice — liberty from anarchy ; and it is only while making this separation with a just mind, with an upright heart, and with a rigid hand, that we can restore the sound principles of the Eevolution, and confer a glory, legitimate because it is pure, upon the human mind.

To palliate a cause for its errors, or its crimes, is not to serve but to retard it. Justice is the sole passion of conscience, and with this the human race is gifted — the most divine of all the organs of humanity. So long as this conscience murmurs at the alloy which the illusions, the passions, or the vices of our nature mix up with any given truth, that truth has not yet conquered the world, for something within us rjrotests against it, and that something is the voice of God ! Let us, then, endeavour to give a narrative of the Ee volution, without flattering its weaknesses or palliating its faults. This is the only method of replacing its truths in the soul, of recalling the nation to faith in itself, of restoring intelligence to principles, and hope to the hearts of all — that finger of flame with which Providence points out the path of nations !

III. The greatness of the French Eevolution consists in this, that it was not merely a revolution of France, but a revolution of the human mind. Without ascending laboriously and by tortuous winding to its origin, we shall describe that origin in twowords — the French Eevo- 1. The Revolution coeval with the invention of Printing. lution came into existence on the same day with the discovery of pi-inting. The press, a material machine, by multiplying the food of intelligence multiplied thought : Guttemberg was the precursor of modern reason. Armed with the mechanical instrument which Providence, con cealed under the appearance of chance and industry, had bestowed upon them, reason and conscience laboured incessantly for their double emancipation. The one sought the Deity in the revelations of nature, the other searched for justice in political institutions.

Both united occasionally to sap together two authorities — the intolerant Church and the oppressive State which the middle ages had coalesced against them. Sometimes victorious, at others vanquished, they marked with their blood every pace they took towards their object of liberty and justice. Martyrised on the burning piles of the Inquisition in Spain, oppressed in Italy, assassinated in France by Saint-Bartholomew, apostatised by Henry IV., proscribed by the revocation of the edict of Nantes under Louis XIV., conscience and reason, immortal in their nature, had still survived! They had increased in strength amidst these tests ; they had filtered — like the drops of their own blood, or like the rays of their funereal lamps — through the walls of their dungeons into the general mind of Europe; they had arrived in the 18th century at a sort of latent majority, under the name of philosophy or rationalism, two words that signify the same thing — the intervention of conscience, free in its belief, and the intervention of reason, free in reform and in the progress of society. 1789.]

CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 13 Philosophy of the 18th eentury. IV. The philosophy of the 18th century, in its most ele vated and moral sense, was therefore the code, not yet drawn up, of civil and religious liberty. It was com posed, in its confused and diversified generality, of all that rational progress which two ages of thought, made still more active and communicative by the discovery of printing, had imparted to the human mind. On analysa tion it was found to contain the scrutinising mind of Bacon, the methodical mind of Descartes, the argumen tative mind of Luther, the evangelical mind of Fenelon, the generalising mind of Montesquieu, the conjectural mind of Buffon, the anti-superstitious and tradition-pro faning mind of Voltaire, and the proletarian mind of Jean-Jacques Eousseau. These great tribunes of the intellectual world, possessors through their books of the ear, the hearts, and the very souls of the people, had, either in succession or simultaneously, imbued them with the elements of a new order of ideas and institutions — the will to think rather than believe ; the example of revolt ing against hearsay truths ; historical facts, to disprove the claims of princes to the divine right of absolute power ; scientific facts, to confound the traditional ignorance of the multitude ; criticism, to extinguish popular credulity ; models, either real or imaginary, of civilisation, to make the nations blush by the comparison of their servile organisation with these historical or fabulous types of perfection, as in " Telemachus" and the " Social Con tract;" the laugh of incredulity and disdain against exist- HISTORV OF THE [

Book 1

The Revolution the offspring of discussion and reasoning. ing institutions, to encourage the age to lay violent hands on old abuses; eloquence, to disgust the people with assumed superiority ; illusion even, and chimera too, inspired them with impatience for the possession, by overturning all obstacles, of that model of reason, of per fection, and of justice, which we are always struggling for but never attain. V. Such was the philosophy of the 18th century, still better designated the revolutionary philosophy. Con trary to the religious or political dogmas of antiquity — which, based on prodigies, had taken root in the multi tude, more accessible to credulity and fanaticism than the small number of enlightened minds — the revolutionary philosophy we have just described, precisely because it was the offspring of discussion and reasoning, had begun by seducing the superior classes of French and European society, more susceptible than the others, by leisure and instruction, of receiving and multiplying the new light that was rising upon Europe.

Kings and courts, the nobibty, the clergy, the citizens, the literary and artistic classes, the women — who constitute the imagination and enthusiasm of all epochs — had been the first adepts in this philosophy. It imparted to some a feeling of enjoyment in the superiority of their intelligence over the prejudices of the multitude, and to others the secret hope of speedily dethroning all conventional superiority, to inaugurate in its stead the natural superiority of merit and of virtue ; some it won over by reasoning, others through imagination ; some, again, through pride, others through feeling; 1789.] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 15 Commenced by the upper classes of society. and all, through the involuntary fascination that attracts man to novelties in which he thinks he can behold a truth, even should this truth — by whose splendour he is dazzled — set in a blaze that social order whose credulity, privileges, and abuses have actually constituted his own proper patrimony.

This disinterested and even suicidal devotion to a ruinous but irresistible truth, was one of the most inexplicable and most glorious traits of the revolutionary philosophy amongst the upper classes of French society in the 1 8th century. The reformation of both State and Church was there premeditated and accomplished by the conspiracy of the court, of the higher orders of the clergy, of the nobdity, and of the magistracy — classes who must inevitably lose by their subversion or perish under their ruins. It was the coalition of the aristocracies which gave the idea, the passion, the signal, and the power to the people to accomplish, in conjunction with them, the work of regeneration, in which justice alone was to conquer, and the people alone to gather the spoils. There is in the human race a secret virtue, superior to all its vices and to all its interests — it is a passionate love of justice and of truth for their own sake.

This constituted the virtue of the French Eevolution. France in 1789 possessed the heroism of truth. But this passion for truth, for justice, and for national regeneration was as yet only a thought in common — in majority amongst thinkers, and in minority, or merely as an instinct, amongst the multitude. This thought, still inert and dormant, might remain inactive for many ages, amidst sterile hopes and wishes, for want of a lever to HISTORY OF THE [

BOOK 1.

Creation of public opinion. stir up the inveterate institutions which oppressed it, in the exclusive altar, in the absolute throne, in the aristocracies, in the privileges, inthe inequalities of the social position, in legislation, and in the fetters of conscience and of civil liberty with which preceding ages had bound the world. The Eevolution was but an idea : to become an act, an executive force was required. Printing and the 18th century created this power, which was no other than publie opinion ! VI. Public opinion, a new power under modern monar chies, with the exception of the republican monarchy of England, was still invisible, impalpable, and mute in Europe. Its voice was nowhere heard but in the pulpit; the law even interdicted its appearance in books, without the authority of the ecclesiastic, the parliamentarian, and the police-censorship.

These were the three seals set upon mind. Public opinion was legally condemned to silence ; or at least it was bound to speak only through the will of kings and pontiffs. But the invention of printing — which condenses, on a page of paper that may be con cealed in the hand of a child, thoughts sufficient to explode a world; which circulates like the air; which illuminates like light ; which speaks amidst silence ; and which participates, as it were, in the immateriality and invisibility of thought itself — had deceived these precau tions of the priesthood, of the magistracy, of the aristocracy, and of despotism. Nay, more than this, priests, magistrates, courtiers, princes, princesses, and kings them selves, had been the accomplices of these subterfuges of 1789.] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 17 Unison of thought amongst the people. thought to spread itself under every form in literary com merce.

M. de Malesherbes and M. Lenoir, magistrates appointed to close the frontiers against the works of the philosophers, had been the confidential propagators of such of their labours as were most officially proscribed. Both church and state promulgated with one hand the writings they feigned to repel with the other, and France, through its whole extent, swam as it were in a deluge of written thoughts. These books became, either by their genius or the scandal they caused, the perpetual subject of conversation in a nation where talk is the second ne cessity of existence, and actually, so to speak, a social institution. While talking of forbidden works, which were more sought after the more they were prohibited, people agitated, loudly or in an undertone, the religious, philosophical, political, or social questions mooted by the writers.

They questioned and replied to each other, and became enthusiastic or indignant together : no tyranny was so universal, no police so omnipresent, as to interpose between the disputants : one common impression was formed, evinced, and concerted, at the theatre, in the academies, the saloons, the public gardens, and the cafes, as at Athens. People applauded or were excited in unison; they revealed themselves to each other by the contact of similar sentiments ; they calculated and mu tually felt their power, they reckoned up their numbers, and exulted in their unanimity. The feeling of one thought pervading the mass imparted boldness to individual thought, confidence to the innovators, and timidity to the government. Public opinion may be thus defined — the certainty [

BOOK 1.

18 HISTORY OF THE Definition of public opinion. which everyone feels of finding his own sentiment the sentiment of all ; the mutual support which minds that are dubious so long as they are isolated imbibe from a contiguity of ideas. From this common thought to the general expression of all-powerful will there is but the intervention of an instant, a signal, a single cry. VII. But in order that public opinion — that executive power of the philosophy of the 18th century — should become will, and acquire the necessary energy for the subversion of the old edifice and the construction of the new plans, two other conditions were especially requisite. In the first place, that public opinion should become a passion : And then, that government should afford an oppor tunity for its own overthrow. The youth, the inexperience, the awkwardness, the in decision, even the virtues of the young King, Louis XVI., prompted by turns by a giddy court, by an adored but frivolous wife, by superannuated old men, or by speculators in ideas, were not tardy in producing occasions for agitation.

And with respect to the popular passions, they natu rally sprang from the antagonism of interests and vanities, which the reciprocal position of the classes of French society must bring face to face in the first crisis of the institutions — the interest which the King had in freeing himself from the controul of the parliaments, in order to regain a paternal but absolute power over his people ; the interest which the provincial nobility had in dispossessing 1789.]

CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 19 Antagonism of interests. the nobility of the court, who by their domestic services monopolised all royal favours and humbled the landed aristocracy ; the interest which the parliaments* had in keeping the sovereignty of hereditary justice, in control ing the crown in the administration of the finances, and acquiring for themselves a popularity which was often factious, by putting themselves forward as the avengers of the people and the guardians of royalty; the interest which the higher orders of the clergy had in prompting the King, in possessing the soil, in governing the popular belief, and in preserving a monopoly of worship and the unity of faith ; the interest which the inferior clergy had in rising in their turn to the high dignities and great emoluments of the church, which were reserved for the disinherited nobility, whom these riches and dignities depraved sometimes to a scandalous degree ; the interest which the mass of the nobility had in continuing the first body in the state, the exclusively military caste of the kingdom, an imperium in imperio ; the interest which the rich plebeians had in sapping these privileges of the nobility, of the clergy, and of the parliaments, in enfran chising their professions, their estates, their commerce, their commonalty, and in elevating themselves by equality to the rank of citizens ; finally, the interest which the people had, whether proprietors or labourers, in breaking down the servitude and exactions of the court, of the nobility, of the parliaments, of the wealthy possessors of privileges or local tyrannies, and of having no longer over them any but one chief, one law, one king. • The provincial parliaments, at that period the chief courts of civil judicature.— TRANSLATOR.

L 20 Disinterested enthusiasm of the French. VIII. Such were the opposing and envenomed interests which, by their close and direct collision in a national assembly, were about to light up public opinion. Eight, privilege, justice, injustice, possession, covetousness, the anxiety to preserve, the thirst of acquisition, envy in the mass, pride in the aristocracy, predominance in the church, ambition in the commons, avidity in the court, repining in the people, popularity in the tribune in face of all these opposing interests, imparted to the revolutionary philosophy a host of passions, enough to level down the old world, and to make room for a new generation of ideas. But, overall these selfish or perverse passions, it must be said, to the glory of the nation and of humanity, one grand and unanimous passion prevailed in the souls of all and in every condition of life — this was a passion for the public weal.

An enthusiasm for the future had taken possession of France, and plunged her, with all the joy and disinterestedness of public virtue, into the crucible where she was going to consume and regenerate herself — a voluntary victim, regarding as nothing her sacrifices, her agitations, her dangers, her chastisements even, pro vided those agitations, those dangers, and those sacrifices should contribute, after her demise, to the triumph of reason, of justice, and of humanity. Such was the state of public opinion in France on the day of the convocation of the States- General. We shall presently state how Louis XVI. had been induced to convoke them. 1789.] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 21 Procession to invoke the Deity. IX. The 5th May, 1789, was the day fixed for the opening of the States-General at Versailles.

On the eve of this day, the King and the people were to implore the benediction of Divine Providence on the great act of deliberation they were about to accomplish. The religious ceremonies consecrated to this invocation of Divine favour were to be celebrated on the evening of the 4 th May, 1789, with all the solemnity that sanctifies human enterrmses, and associates religion with politics. The inhabitants of Paris, of Versailles, and of the neighbour ing towns and country, attracted by the grandeur and the novelty of the spectacle, crowded the streets and the gardens of the royal residence. The deputies of the three orders of the state— the nobility, the clergy, and the plebeians — assembled, in the first instance, with habitual deference for majesty, in the cathedral of Notre-Dame, to await the arrival of the King.

They afterwards issued from it in procession, and advanced in three distinct groups, representing the three social classes which still divided the nation, towards the church of Saint-Louis, an edifice specially appropriated to the King's devotions. The lower classes marched first, the nobility next, and the clergy after them, in the inverse order of their importance in the state. The King, surrounded by his family and his court, walked on foot, with his head bare, behind the golden canopy, under which the pontiff bore the Host. The Count de Provence (subsequently Louis XVIII.) and the 1. Characteristic appearance of the royal family. Count d'Artois (afterwards Charles X.) each held one of the tassels that depended from the canopy. Innumerable multitudes — crowding the streets, or grouped at the windows, and even upon the roofs of the houses — gazed on this procession, half national half religious, in which a people were conducting their king, and a king was conducting his people, to the source of those inspirations of which both the king and the people felt an equal want, prior to touching the social edifice which they were going to reform.

A pious and confiding collectedness beamed on the coun tenance of the King; an inquietude, but ill-disguised under a lofty look, on the majestic but thoughtless features of the Queen ; a provoking assurance on the brow of the young Count dArtois ; and a pensive gravity, full of gloomy pre sages, in the eyes of the Count de Provence. The Duke of Orleans, the first prince of the blood, seemed to connect himself negligently, and only as a duty of his rank, with this cortege ; his features bore an expression of disdain for the ceremonial, under the mask of whichhe directed his thoughts and his encouragement towards the people. The antique costume, the uniform of social inequality, was worn with equal ostentation by the representatives of the three orders of the nation ; the clergy in their pontifical robes,— the nobility with gold embroidered coats, hats decorated with white plumes, and swords, the symbol of their military vocation,— the lower classes, then called the Tiers Etat, in simple black coats, of a rustic cut, with a small silk mantle upon the shoulder.

But the passion for equality of condi tions and for national unity, which was already evincing itself in the multitude, produced respect and popularity in 1789.] CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 23 Great emotion of the Queen. an inverse ratio to the brilliancy of costume and the pre eminence of rank. The people, falling away with diffi culty before the procession, frantically applauded the commons, were silent before the nobility, murmured in presence of the clerical dignitaries, received the King with acclamations, as if to attract him by their caresses to the popular side, treated the Count d'Artois with disdain, smiled on the Count de Provence, looked icy cold on the Queen, and saluted with looks of intelligence the Duke of Orleans, as a budding favourite or a future accomplice. The artificial applause which broke forth at sight of this prince, and its evident intention to insult the Queen, affected her so deeply that she turned ljale, tottered, and almost fainted with emotion in the arms of her attendants, which occasioned a momentary halt in the procession.

To a spectator, influenced by credulity and a belief in omens, this attitude of the people and these symptoms of popular opinion might have foreshown, even at this very first step, all the events of the Eevolution. When the cortege had taken its place in the church of Saint-Louis to join in the service, M. de la Fare, the Bishop of Nancy, and a prelate of the court, desirous of indicating the superiority of his order and the distinction of classes, even while he flattered the people, commenced his discourse by praying the King to receive the homage of the clergy, the respect of the nobility, and the most humble supplications of the commons. A slight mur mur, stifled by respect for the sacred precinct, arose at this opening; but the orator redeemed it by a sympathetic lamentation on the miseries endured by the people in the country, on the inexorable harshness of the tax- 1.