XVI. FORMING THE CONSTITUTION…

XVI. FORMING THE CONSTITUTION

Arming of the Peasants.--Destruction of Feudal Charters.--Sermon of the Abbé Fauchet.--Three Classes in the Assembly.--Declaration of Rights.--The Three Assemblies.--The Power of the Press.--Efforts of William Pitt to sustain the Nobles.--Questions on the Constitution.--Two Chambers in one?--The Veto.--Famine in the City.--The King's Plate melted.--The Tax of a Quarter of each one's Income.--Statement of Jefferson.

An utterly exhausted treasury compelled Louis XVI. and the court of France to call together the States-General. The deputies of the people, triumphing over the privileged classes, resolved themselves into a National Assembly, and then proceeded to the formation of a constitution which should limit the hitherto despotic powers of the crown. Though there were a few individuals of the nobles and of the higher clergy who cordially espoused the popular cause, the great mass of the privileged class clung firmly together in desperate endeavors to regain their iniquitous power. Many of these were now emigrants, scattered throughout Europe, and imploring the interference of foreign courts in their behalf. The old royalist army, some two hundred thousand strong, amply equipped and admirably disciplined, still retained its organization, and was still under its old officers, the nobles; but the rank and file of this army were from the people, and their sympathies were with the popular cause.

The nobles were now prepared for the most atrocious act of treason. They wished to surrender the naval arsenals of France to the English fleet, so that England, in possession of the great magazines of war, could throw any number of soldiers into the kingdom unresisted, while the Prussians and Austrians, headed by the emigrant noblesse, should invade France from the east. The English government, however, which subsequently became an accomplice in the conspiracy of the French nobles, by accepting the surrender of Toulon, was not yet prepared to take the bold step of invading France simply to rivet the chains of despotism upon the French people.

The English embassador, Dorset, who was residing at Versailles, revealed the plot to the ministers of the king. They, however, kept the secret until it was disclosed by an intercepted letter from Dorset to the Count d'Artois (subsequently Charles X). This discovery vastly increased the alarm of the nation. Perils were now multiplying on every side. The most appalling rumors of invasion filled the air. Bands of marauders, haggard, starving, brutal, swept over the country, burning, devouring, and destroying. It was supposed at first that they were the advance battalions of the invaders, sent by the emigrants to chastise France into subjection. Alarm increased to terror. Mothers in almost a delirium of fear sought places of concealment for their children. The peasant in the morning ran to his field to see if it had been laid waste. At night he trembled lest he should awake to behold conflagration and ruin. There was no law. The king's troops were objects of especial dread. The most insolent of the nobles were in command, and with money and wine they sought to bribe especially the Germans and the Swiss to be obedient to their wishes.

It was this peril which armed France. Villages, peasants, all were united to defend themselves against these terrible brigands. The arsenals of the old castles contained arms. Nerved by despair, the roused multitudes simultaneously besieged all these castles, and demanded and seized the weapons necessary for their defense. It was as a movement of magic. A sudden danger, every where menacing, every where worked the same result. In one short week France sprung up armed and ready for war. Three millions of men had come from the furrow and the shop, and fiercely demanded "Where are the brigands? Lead us to meet our foes, whoever and wherever they may be."[201]

The lords in an hour found themselves helpless. The peasants, hitherto so tame and servile, were now soldiers, roused to determination and proud of their newly discovered power. Awful was the retribution. The chateaux blazed--funeral fires of feudality--on every hill and in every valley. One can only be surprised that the hour of retribution should have been delayed for so many ages, and that when it came the infuriated, degraded, brutalized masses did not proceed to even greater atrocities. Though deeds of cruelty were perpetrated which cause the ear that hears to tingle, still, on the whole, mercy predominated.

In many cases lords who had treated their serfs kindly were protected by their vassals, as children would protect a father. The Marquis of Montfermail was thus shielded from harm. In Dauphiné a castle was assailed during the absence of the lord. His lady was at home alone with the children. The peasants left the castle and its inmates unharmed, destroying only those feudal charters which were the title-deeds of despotism.

These titles, engrossed on fine parchment and embellished with gorgeous seals, were the pride of the noble family--the evidence of their antiquity. They were preserved with great reverence, deposited in costly caskets, which caskets, enveloped in velvet, were safely placed in oaken chests, and those chests, iron-ribbed and with ponderous locks, were guarded in a strong part of the feudal tower. The peasants ever gazed with awe upon the tower of the archives. They understood the significancy of those title-deeds--the badges of their degradation, the authority to which the lords appealed in support of their tyranny, insolence, and nameless outrages.

"Our country-people," writes Michelet, "went straight to the tower. For many centuries that tower had seemed to sneer at the valley, sterilizing, blighting, oppressing it with its deadly shadow. A guardian of the country in barbarous times, standing there as a sentinel, it became later an object of horror. In 1789 what was it but the odious witness of bondage, a perpetual outrage to repeat every morning to the man trudging to his labor the everlasting humiliation of his race? 'Work, work on, son of serfs! Earn for another's profit. Work, and without hope.' Every morning and every evening, for a thousand years, perhaps more, that tower had been cursed. A day came when it was to fall.

"O glorious day, how long have you been in coming! How long our fathers expected and dreamed of you in vain! The hope that their sons would at length behold you was alone able to support them, otherwise they would have no longer consented to live. They would have died in their agony. And what has enabled me, their companion, laboring beside them in the furrow of history and drinking their bitter cup, to revive the suffering Middle Ages, and yet not die of grief? Was it not you, O glorious day, first day of liberty? I have lived in order to relate your history!"

Thus far the religious sentiment of France, as expressed by nearly all the pastors and the great proportion of their Christian flocks, was warmly in favor of the Revolution. The higher clergy alone, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, who were usually the younger sons of the nobles, and were thus interested in the perpetuation of abuses, united with the lords. As in the National Assembly so it was in the nation itself, that the working clergy were among the most conspicuous of the sons of freedom. Religious services were held in the churches in grateful commemoration of the fall of the Bastille.[202] The vast cathedral of Nôtre Dame was thronged to listen to a sermon from the Abbé Fauchet, who consecrated to the memory of those who fell on that occasion the homage of his extraordinary eloquence. He selected for his text the words of St. Paul, "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty."--Gal. v. 13.

"The false interpreters of the divine oracle," said the abbé, "have wished, in the name of heaven, to keep the people in subjection to the will of their masters. They have consecrated despotism. They have rendered God an accomplice with tyrants. These false teachers exult because it is written, 'Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's.' But that which is not Cæsar's, is it necessary to render to him that? And liberty does not belong to Cæsar. It belongs to human nature."[203]

The abbé unquestionably read the divine oracles aright. The corner-stone of true democracy can only be found in the word of God. The revelation there presented of God as a common father, and all mankind as his children, made of one blood, brethren--it is that revelation upon which is founded the great fundamental principle of democracy, equality of rights. The very highest attainment of political wisdom is the realization of the divine word, "Whatsoever ye would that others should do unto you, do ye even so unto them."

The whole audience were transported with the clear and eloquent enunciation of the politics of the gospel of Christ. As the orator left the sacred cathedral he was greeted with the loudest plaudits. A civic crown was placed upon his brow, and two companies of the National Guard escorted him home, with the waving of banners and the clangor of trumpets, and through the acclamations of the multitudes who thronged the streets.[204]

While France was in this state of tumult and terror, threatened with invasion from abroad, and harassed by brigands at home, the nobles plotting treason, law powerless, and universal anarchy reigning, the National Assembly was anxiously deliberating to restore order to the country and to usher in the reign of justice and prosperity. The old edifice was destroyed. A new one was to be erected. But there were now three conspicuous parties developing themselves in the Assembly.

The first was composed of the nobles and the higher clergy, who still, as a body, adhered to the court, and who eagerly fomented disorders throughout the kingdom, hoping thus to compel the nation, as the only escape from anarchy, to return to the old monarchy.

The second was composed of the large proportion of the Assembly, sincere, intelligent, patriotic men, earnest for liberty, but for liberty restrained by law. They were almost to a man monarchists, wishing to ingraft upon the monarchy of France institutions similar to those of republican America. The English Constitution was in the main their model.

A third party was just beginning to develop itself, small in numbers, of turbulent, visionary, energetic men, eager for the overthrow of all the institutions and customs of the past, and for the sudden introduction of an entirely new era. Making no allowance for the ignorance of the masses, and for the entire inexperience of the French in self-government, they wished to cut loose from all the restraints of liberty and of law, and to plunge into the wildest freedom.

The first and the third classes, the Aristocrats and the ultra-Democrats, joined hand in hand to overthrow the Moderates, as the middle party were called, each hoping thus to introduce the reign of its own principles. Thus they both were ready to exasperate the masses and to encourage violence. These were the two implacable foes against whom the Revolution, and subsequently the Empire under Napoleon, had ever to contend. Despotism and Jacobinism have ever been the two allied foes against rational liberty in France.

The patriots of the middle, or moderate party, who had not as yet assumed any distinctive name, for the parties in the Assembly were but just beginning to marshal their forces for the fight, earnestly deplored all scenes of violence. Such scenes only thwarted their endeavors for the regeneration of France.

The Assembly now engaged with great eagerness in drawing up a declaration of rights, to be presented to the people as the creed of liberty. It was thought that if such a creed could be adopted, based upon those self-evident truths which are in accordance with the universal sense of right, the people might then be led to rally around this creed with a distinct object in view.

For two months, from the 1st of August till the early part of October, the Assembly was engaged in discussing the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. But it was found that there had now suddenly sprung up three Assemblies instead of one, each potent in its sphere, and that between the three a spirit of rivalry and of antagonism was very rapidly being engendered.

The first was the National Assembly at Versailles, originally consisting of twelve hundred deputies, but now dwindled down by emigration and other absence to about eight hundred.

The second was the municipal government of Paris, consisting of three hundred representatives from the different sections or wards of the city, and which held its sessions at the Hôtel de Ville. As Paris considered itself France, the municipality of Paris began to arrogate supreme power.

The third was the colossal assembly of the Parisian populace, an enormous, tumultuous, excitable mass, every day gathered in the garden of the Palais Royal. This assembly, daily becoming more arrogant, often consisted of from ten to twelve thousand. It was continually in session. Here was the rendezvous for all of the lower orders, men and women. Impassioned orators, of great powers of popular eloquence, but ignorant and often utterly unprincipled, mounted tables and chairs, and passionately urged all their crude ideas.

Reflecting men soon began to look upon this assembly with alarm. Its loud murmurs were echoed through the nation, boding only evil; but emancipated France could not commence its career by prohibiting liberty of speech. La Fayette anxiously looked in upon this portentous gathering, and listened to the falsehood, the exaggerations, and the folly with which its speakers deluded the populace, but he could not interfere. Indeed, it soon became perilous for any one in that assembly to plead the cause of law and order. He was at once accused as an aristocrat, and was in peril of the doom of Berthier and Foulon.

And now suddenly there uprose another power which overshadowed all the rest--the power of a free press. Newspapers and pamphlets deluged the land. They were read universally; for the public mind was so roused that those who could not read themselves eagerly listened to the reading from others, at the corners of the streets, in shops and hovels.[205]

France was now doomed to blood and woe. It is easy to say that if the populace had been virtuous and enlightened all would have gone well; or if the nobles and the higher clergy would have united with the true patriots freedom might have been saved. But the populace were not virtuous and enlightened, and the nobles were so inexorably hostile to all popular rights that they were resolute to whelm France in ruin rather than relinquish their privileges. France, as France then was, could have been saved by no earthly wisdom. The Royalists openly declared that the only chance of restoring the old system of government was to have recourse to civil war, and they were eager to invoke so frightful a remedy.

One of the most popular of the journals was "The Friend of the People," by Marat. This journal already declared that the National Assembly was full of aristocrats, and that it must be dissolved to make way for a better.[206] "We have wrested power," wrote Marat, "from the nobles but to place it in the hands of the moneyed class. What have we gained? The people are still poor and starving. We need another revolution." "Yes," echoed the mob of Paris, "we need another revolution."

The roar from the Palais Royal fell ominously upon the ears of the Assembly at Versailles, and of the municipality at the Hôtel de Ville. And now all the starving trades and employments began to congregate by themselves for discussion and combined action. First came the servants, destitute of place, of shelter, of bread, whose masters had fled from insurgent Paris into the country or had emigrated. The court-yard of the Louvre was their rendezvous. The soldiers debated at the Oratoire, the hair-dressers in the Elysian Fields, and the tailors at the Colonnade.[207] These bodies soon became, as it were, committees of the great central congress of the populace ever gathered at the Palais Royal.

The noblest men in the National Assembly were already beginning to despond. Firmly, however, they proceeded in the endeavor to reconstruct society upon the basis of justice and liberty. The measure to which their attention was now chiefly devoted was to adopt a Constitution, which was to be prefaced by a Bill of Rights. La Fayette was active in this movement, and was unquestionably assisted by Thomas Jefferson, then American minister at Paris.

This celebrated declaration of rights, adopted on the 18th of August, 1789, was a simple enunciation of those principles which are founded in nature and truth and which are engraven on all hearts. They were axioms upon which every intelligent legislator must proceed in forming a just code of laws. It declares that all mankind are born free and equal; that the objects to be gained by human governments are liberty, the security of property, and protection from oppression; that sovereignty resides in the nation and emanates from the people; that law is the expression of the will of the people; that the expenses of government should be assessed upon the governed in proportion to their property; that all the adult male inhabitants are entitled to vote; that freedom consists in the liberty to do any thing which does not injure another, and should have no limits but its interference with the rights of others.[208]

These were noble sentiments nobly expressed; and, though execrated in monarchical Europe, were revered in republican America. These were the principles against which despotic Europe, coalesced by the genius of William Pitt, rose in arms.[209] The battle was long and bloody. Millions perished. The terrible drama was closed, for a season, by the triumph of despots at Waterloo.[210]

The Assembly now turned its attention to the organization of the legislative body of the nation. The all-absorbing question was whether the National Congress or Parliament should meet in one chamber or in two; if in two, whether the upper house should be an aristocratic, hereditary body, like the House of Lords in the British Parliament, or an elective republican Senate, as in the American Congress. The debate was long and impassioned. The people would not consent to an hereditary House of Lords, which would remain an almost impregnable fortress of aristocratic usurpation. They were, however, inclined to assent to an upper house to be composed exclusively of the clergy and the nobles, but to be elected by the people. To this arrangement the haughty lords peremptorily refused their assent. They were equally opposed to an election to the upper house even by the nobles and the clergy, for the high lords and great dignitaries of the Church looked down upon the lower nobility and upon the working clergy with almost as much contempt as they regarded the people. Finding the nobles hostile to any reasonable measure, the masses of the people became more and more irritated. The vast gathering at the Palais Royal soon became unanimous in clamoring for but one chamber. The lords were their enemies, and in a house of lords they could see only a refuge for old and execrable feudality and an insurmountable barrier to reform.[211]

When the vote was taken there were five hundred for a single chamber and but one hundred for two chambers.[212] It was unquestionably a calamity to France that two chambers could not have been organized. But the infatuation of the nobles now for the second time prevented this most salutary check upon hasty legislation.

The next question to be decided was the royal veto. All were united that the laws should be presented to the king for his sanction or refusal. The only question was whether the veto should be absolute or limited. That of the King of England is absolute. That of the President of the United States is limited. All France was agitated by this question. Here the aristocracy made their last desperate stand and fought fiercely. Many of the popular party, alarmed in view of the rapid progress of events, advocated the absolute veto. Its inconsistency, however, with all enlightened principles of liberty was too apparent to be concealed. That the caprice of a single man, and he perhaps weak or dissolute, should permanently thwart the decrees of twenty-seven millions of people appeared so absurd that the whole nation rose against it.

The fate of liberty seemed to depend upon this question, as the absolute veto would enable the court, through the king, to annul every popular measure. The crowds in Paris became turbulent and menacing. Threatening letters were sent to members of the National Assembly. The Parisian mob even declared its determination to march to Versailles, and drive from the Assembly those in favor of the veto. The following letter, addressed to the Bishop of Langres, then president of the Assembly, may be presented as a specimen of many with which the hall was flooded:

"The patriotic assembly of the Palais Royal have the honor to make it known to you, sir, that if the aristocratic faction, formed by some of the nobility and the clergy, together with one hundred and twenty ignorant and corrupt deputies, continue to disturb the general harmony, and still insist upon the absolute veto, fifteen hundred men are ready to enlighten their country seats and houses, and particularly your own."[213]

"I shall never forget," writes Dumont, "my going to Paris one of those days with Mirabeau, and the crowd of people we found waiting for his carriage about Le Say the bookseller's shop. They flung themselves before him, entreating him, with tears in their eyes, not to suffer the absolute veto."

"They were in a phrensy. 'Monsieur le Comte,' said they, 'you are the people's father. You must save us. You must defend us against those villains who are bringing back despotism. If the king gets this veto, what is the use of the National Assembly? We are all slaves! All is undone.'[214] There was as much ability in the tumultuous gathering at the Palais Royal as in the National Assembly, and more of impassioned, fiery eloquence. This disorderly body assumed the name of the Patriotic Assembly, and was hourly increasing in influence and in the boldness of its demands. Camille Desmoulins was one of its most popular speakers. He was polished, keen, witty, having the passions of his ever-varying, ever-excitable audience perfectly at his command. He could play with their emotions at his pleasure, and though not an earnest man, for jokers seldom are, he was eager and reckless."[215]

St. Huruge was, however, the great orator of the populace, the Mirabeau of the Palais Royal. A marquis by birth, he had suffered long imprisonment in the Bastille by lettre de cachet. Oppression had driven him mad, and he was thoroughly earnest. Every day he uttered the most fierce and envenomed invectives against that aristocratic power by whose heel he had been crushed. He was a man of towering stature, impassioned gesticulation, and with a voice like the roar of a bull.

On Monday, August 30th, there was a report at the Palais Royal that Mirabeau was in danger of arrest. St. Huruge immediately headed a band of fifteen hundred men, and set out for Versailles for his protection. It was a mob threatening violence, and La Fayette, at the head of a detachment of the National Guard, stopped them and drove them back. Murmurs now began to arise against La Fayette and the National Guard. Rumors were set in circulation that La Fayette was in league with the aristocrats. Excitement was again rapidly increasing, as the people feared that, after all, they were to be betrayed and again enslaved.

The agitated assembly at the Palais Royal sent a deputation to Versailles to Mounier, one of the most influential and truly patriotic of the deputies, announcing to him that twenty thousand men were ready to march to Versailles to drive the aristocrats out of the Assembly. At the same time an address was received by the president from the citizens of Rennes, declaring that those who should vote for the absolute veto were traitors to their country. Under these circumstances, the king sent a message to the National Assembly, stating that he should be satisfied with a limited, or, as it was then called, a suspensive veto. In taking the question the absolute veto was rejected, and the suspensive veto adopted by a vote of 673 to 355. By this measure the veto of the king would suspend the action of any legislative enactment during two subsequent sessions of the Legislature. If, after this, the Legislature still persisted, the king's veto was overruled and the act went into effect. This was giving the king much greater power than the President of the United States possesses. A two-thirds vote of both houses can immediately carry any measure against the veto of the President. Freedom of opinion, of worship, and of the press were also decreed.

These questions being thus settled, it was now voted that the measures thus far adopted were constitutional, not legislative; and that, consequently, they were to be presented to the king, not for his sanction, but for promulgation. It was also voted by acclaim that the crown should be hereditary and the person of the king inviolable, the ministers alone being responsible for the measures of government. To republican eyes these seem like mild measures of reform, though they have been most severely condemned by the majority of writers upon the French Revolution in monarchical Europe. If the nobles had yielded to these reasonable reforms, the horrors which ensued might have been avoided. If combined Europe had not risen in arms against the Revolution, the regeneration of France might, perhaps, have been peacefully achieved.[216]

In every nation there are thousands of the ignorant, degraded, miserable, who have nothing to lose and something to hope from anarchy. The inmates of the dens of crime and infamy, who are only held in check by the strong restraints of law, rejoice in the opportunity to sack the dwellings of the industrious and the wealthy, and to pour the tide of ruin through the homes of the virtuous and the happy. This class of abandoned men and women was appallingly increasing. They flocked to the city from all parts of the kingdom, and Paris was crowded with spectres, emaciate and ragged, whose hideous and haggard features spoke only of vice and misery. Sièyes expressed to Mirabeau his alarm in view of the portentous aspect of affairs.

"You have let the bull loose," Mirabeau replied, "and now you complain that he butts with his horns."[217]

Much has been said respecting the motives which influenced Mirabeau.

Whatever his motives may have been, his conduct was consistent. All his words and actions were in favor of liberty sustained by strong law. He wished for the overthrow of aristocratic insolence and feudal oppression, from which he had so severely suffered. He wished to preserve the monarchical form of government, and to establish a constitution which should secure to all the citizens equality of rights.[218]

Feudality was now destroyed, and a free constitution adopted. Still, business was stagnant, the poor destitute of employment and in a state of starvation. As an act of charity, seventeen thousand men were employed by the municipality of Paris digging on the heights of Montmartre at twenty sous a day. The suffering was so great that the office of the municipality was crowded with tradesmen and merchants imploring employment on these terms. "I used to see," writes the mayor, Bailly, "good tradespeople, mercers and goldsmiths, who prayed to be admitted among the beggars employed at Montmartre in digging the ground. Judge what I suffered."

The city government sunk two thousand dollars a day in selling bread to the poor at less than cost; and yet there were emissaries of the court buying up this bread and destroying it to increase the public distress.[219] On the 19th day of August the city of Paris contained food sufficient but for a single day. Bailly and La Fayette were in an agony of solicitude. So great was the dismay in Paris, that all the rich were leaving. Sixty thousand passports were signed at the Hôtel de Ville in three months.[220]

Armed bands were exploring the country to purchase food wherever it could be found, and convey it to the city. Six hundred of the National Guard were stationed by day and by night to protect the corn-market from attack. It is surprising that when the populace were in such distress so few acts of violence should have been committed.[221]

The kind heart of the king was affected by this misery. He sent nearly all his plate to be melted and coined at the mint for the relief of the poor. This noble example inspired others. General enthusiasm was aroused, and the hall of the National Assembly was crowded with the charitable bringing voluntary contributions for the relief of the poor. Rich men sent in their plate, patriotic ladies presented their caskets of jewelry, and the wives of tradesmen, artists, and mechanics brought the marriage gifts which they had received and the ornaments which embellished their dwellings. Farmers sent in bags of corn, and even poor women and children offered their mites. A school-boy came with a few pieces of gold which his parents had sent to him for spending-money. This overflowing of charity presented a touching display of the characteristic magnanimity and impulsiveness of the French people.[222]

But private charity, however profuse, is quite inadequate to the wants of a nation. These sums were soon expended, and still the unemployed poor crawled fasting and emaciated about the streets. Necker's plans for loans were frustrated. No one would lend. To whom should he lend? The old régime was dying; the new not yet born. In this terrible emergency Necker proposed the desperate measure of imposing a tax of one quarter of every man's income, declaring that there was no other refuge from bankruptcy. The interest upon the public debt could no longer be paid, the wages of the soldiers were in arrears, and the treasury utterly empty. The proposal frightened the Assembly, but Mirabeau ascended the tribune, and in one of his most impassioned appeals carried the measure by acclamation.[223] The distracted state of the kingdom, however, prevented the act thus enthusiastically adopted from being carried into effect.[224]

Thomas Jefferson was at this time, as we have before mentioned, the American minister in Paris, and was constantly consulted by the leaders of the Revolution. In his memoirs, speaking of these events, he writes,

"The first question, whether there should be a king, met with no opposition, and it was readily agreed that the government of France should be monarchical and hereditary.

"Shall the king have a negative on the laws? Shall that negative be absolute, or suspensive only? Shall there be two chambers of legislation, or one only? If two, shall one of them be hereditary, or for life, or for a fixed term; and named by the king or elected by the people?

"These questions found strong differences of opinion, and produced repulsive combinations among the patriots. The aristocracy was cemented by a common principle of preserving the ancient régime, or whatever should be nearest to it. Making this their polar star, they moved in phalanx, gave preponderance on every question to the minorities of the patriots, and always to those who advocated the least change. The features of the new constitution were thus assuming a fearful aspect, and great alarm was produced among the honest patriots by these dissensions in their ranks.

"In this uneasy state of things I received one day a note from the Marquis de la Fayette, informing me that he should bring a party of six or eight friends to ask a dinner of me the next day. I assured him of their welcome. When they arrived, they were La Fayette himself, Dupont, Barnave, Alexander Lameth, Blacon, Mounier, Maubourg, and Dagout. These were leading patriots of honest but differing opinions, sensible of the necessity of effecting a coalition by mutual sacrifices; knowing each other, and not afraid therefore to unbosom themselves mutually. This last was a material principle in the selection. With this view the marquis had invited the conference, and had fixed the time and place, inadvertently as to the embarrassment under which he might place me.

"The cloth being removed and wine set on the table, after the American manner, the marquis introduced the objects of the conference by summarily reminding them of the state of things in the Assembly, the course which the principles of the Constitution were taking, and the inevitable result, unless checked by more concord among the patriots themselves. He observed that though he also had his opinion, he was ready to sacrifice it to that of his brethren of the same cause; but that a common opinion must now be formed, or the aristocracy would carry every thing, and that, whatever they should now agree on, he, at the head of the national force, would maintain.

"The discussions began at the hour of four, and were continued till ten o'clock in the evening, during which time I was a silent witness to a coolness and candor of argument unusual in the conflicts of political opinion; to a logical reasoning and chaste eloquence disfigured by no gaudy tinsel of rhetoric or declamation, and truly worthy of being placed in parallel with the finest dialogues of antiquity, as handed to us by Plato, by Xenophon, and Cicero. The result was that the king should have a suspensive veto on the laws, that the Legislature should be composed of a single body only, and that to be chosen by the people. This concordat decided the fate of the Constitution. The patriots all rallied to the principles thus settled, carried every question agreeably to them, and reduced the aristocracy to insignificance and impotence."[225]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 201: "Our Revolution," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "was a natural convulsion, as irresistible in its effects as an eruption of Vesuvius. When the mysterious fusion which takes place in the entrails of the earth is at such a crisis that an explosion follows, the eruption bursts forth. The unperceived workings of the discontent of the people follow exactly the same course. In France the sufferings of the people, the moral combinations which produce a revolution, had arrived at maturity, and an explosion accordingly took place."]

[Footnote 202: Madame de Genlis, who witnessed the demolition of the Bastille, in her gossiping yet very interesting memoirs, writes, "I experienced the most exquisite joy in witnessing the demolition of that terrible monument, in which had been immured and where had perished, without any judicial forms, so many innocent victims. The desire to have my pupils see it led me to take them from St. Leu to pass a few hours in Paris, that they might see from the garden of Beaumarchais all the people of Paris engaged in destroying the Bastille. It is impossible to give one an idea of that spectacle. It must have been seen to conceive of it as it was. That redoubtable fortress was covered with men, women, and children, toiling with inexpressible ardor upon the loftiest towers and battlements. The astonishing number of workmen, their activity, their enthusiasm, the joy with which they saw this frightful monument of despotism crumbling down, the avenging hands which seemed to be those of Providence, and which annihilated with so much rapidity the work of many ages, all that spectacle spoke equally to the imagination and the heart."--Mémoires sur le Dix-huitième Siècle et la Revolution Française de Madame la Comtesse de Genlis, tome iii., p. 261.]

[Footnote 203: Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 18.]

[Footnote 204: "Tyranny," said Fauchet, in reference to the skeletons found in the Bastille, "had sealed them within the walls of those dungeons, which she believed to be eternally impenetrable to the light. The day of revelation is come. The bones have arisen at the voice of French liberty. They depose against centuries of oppression and death, prophesying the regeneration of human nature and the life of nations."--Dussaulx, OEuvre des Sept Jours.]

[Footnote 205: At St. Helena, the subject of conversation one day turned upon the freedom of the press. The subject was discussed with much animation by the companions of the emperor, he listening attentively to their remarks. "Nothing can resist," said one, "the influence of a free press. It is capable of overthrowing every government, of agitating every society, of destroying every reputation." "It is only its prohibition," said another, "which is dangerous. If it be restricted it becomes a mine which must explode; but if left to itself it is merely an unbent bow, that can inflict no wound."

"The liberty of the press," said Napoleon, "is not a question open for consideration. Its prohibition under a representative government is a gross anachronism, a downright absurdity. I therefore, on my return from Elba, abandoned the press to all its excesses, and I am confident that the press in no respect contributed to my downfall."

In Napoleon's last letter to his son he writes, "My son will be obliged to allow the liberty of the press. This is a necessity in the present day. The liberty of the press ought to become, in the hands of the government, a powerful auxiliary in diffusing through all the most distant corners of the empire sound doctrines and good principles. To leave it to itself would be to fall asleep upon the brink of danger. On the conclusion of a general peace I would have instituted a Directory of the Press, composed of the ablest men of the country, and I would have diffused, even to the most distant hamlet, my ideas and my intentions."--Las Casas.]

[Footnote 206: Mirabeau, Camille Desmoulins, Brissot, Condorcet, Mercier, Carra, Gorsas, Marat, and Barrere, all published journals, and some of them had a very extensive circulation. L'Ami du Peuple, by Marat, was a very energetic sheet. Mirabeau printed ten thousand copies of his Courrier de Province. But by far the most popular and influential paper was the Revolutions de Paris, whose unknown editor was Loustalot, a sincere, earnest, laborious young man, who died in 1792, at the age of twenty-nine. Two hundred thousand copies of his paper were frequently sold.--Michelet, vol. i., p. 240.]

[Footnote 207: Miguet, p. 64.]

[Footnote 208: M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, a Christian patriot and one of the most active members of the National Assembly, writes: "It is possible that all the kings of Europe may form a coalition against a humble page of writing; but, after a number of cannon-shots, and when those potentates have destroyed three or four hundred thousand men and laid waste twenty countries, it will not be the less true that men are born free and equal as to their rights, and that the nation is the sovereign. And it is possible that their obstinacy may have occasioned the discovery of other truths which, but for the wrath of those great princes, mankind would never have thought of."--Political Reflections, p. 176.]

[Footnote 209: "All the wars of the European Continent against the Revolution and against the Empire were begun by England and supported by English gold. At last the object was attained; not only was the ancient family restored to the throne, but France was reduced to its original limits, its naval force destroyed, and its commerce almost annihilated."--Encyclopædia Americana, Art. Great Britain.]

[Footnote 210: "William Pitt," said the Emperor Napoleon at St. Helena, "was the master of European policy. He held in his hands the moral fate of nations. He kindled the fire of discord throughout the universe; and his name, like that of Erostratus, will be inscribed in history amid flames, lamentations, and tears. The first sparks of our Revolution, then the resistance that was opposed to the national will, and finally the horrid crimes that ensued, all were his work. Twenty-five years of universal conflagration; the numerous coalitions that added fuel to the flame; the revolution and devastation of Europe; the bloodshed of nations; the frightful debt of England, by which all these horrors were maintained; the pestilential system of loans, by which the people of Europe are oppressed; the general discontent that now prevails--all must be attributed to Pitt.

"Posterity will brand him as a scourge, and the man so lauded in his own time will hereafter be regarded as the genius of evil. Not that I consider him to have been willfully atrocious, or doubt his having entertained the conviction that he was acting right. But St. Bartholomew had also its conscientious advocates. The Pope and cardinals celebrated it by a Te Deum, and we have no reason to doubt their having done so in sincerity. Such is the weakness of human reason and judgment! Whether it be the effect of admiration and gratitude or the result of mere instinct and sympathy, Pitt is, and will continue to be, the idol of the European aristocracy. There was, indeed, a touch of the Sylla in his character. His system has kept the popular cause in check and brought about the triumph of the nobles.

"As for Fox, one must not look for his model among the ancients. He is himself a model, and his principles will sooner or later rule the world. Certainly the death of Fox was one of the fatalities of my career. Had his life been prolonged affairs would have taken a totally different turn. The cause of the people would have triumphed, and we should have established a new order of things in Europe."]

[Footnote 211: The higher nobility of Great Britain consists of 26 dukes, 35 marquises, 217 earls, 65 viscounts, 191 barons. Each of these takes the title of lord and is entitled by birth to a seat in the House of Lords, if we except the peers of Scotland and Ireland, who have a seat with the lords only by deputation, the Scotch peers choosing 16 and the Irish 28. There are, besides, six archbishops and 42 bishops, who, by virtue of their office, are styled lords and have a seat in the House of Lords. The lower nobility, consisting of baronets and knights, have no privileges but the honor of their title. They are somewhere between one and two thousand in number. The higher nobility, including the dignitaries of the Church, six archbishops and 42 bishops, in 1813 amounted to 554 families. The total revenue of the temporal nobility, according to Colquhoun, was $25,000,000, which makes an average of about $48,000 a year for each noble family. According to the same authority, the total revenue of the spiritual lords was $1,200,000, which would average $25,000 a year for each. The English say that those nobles are exceedingly valuable. They ought to be. They cost enough. See Enc. Am., Art. Great Britain.]

[Footnote 212: Michelet. M. Rabaud de St. Etienne says 911 for one, 89 for two. Alison, without giving his authority, states 499 for one, 87 for two.]

[Footnote 213: The French Revolutions from 1789 to 1848, by T.W. Redhead, vol. i., p. 59.]

[Footnote 214: Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 156.]

[Footnote 215: "What will always astonish those who are acquainted with the history of other revolutions is, that in this miserable and famished state of Paris, denuded of all authority, there were, on the whole, but very few serious acts of violence. One word, one reasonable observation, occasionally a jest, was sufficient to check them. On the first days only subsequent to the 14th of July there were instances of violence committed. The people, full of the idea that they were betrayed, sought for their enemies hap-hazard, and were near making some cruel mistakes. M. de la Fayette interposed several times at the critical moment, and was attended to. On these occasions M. de la Fayette was truly admirable. He found in his heart, in his love for order and justice, words and happy sayings above his nature."--Michelet, vol. i., p. 227.]

[Footnote 216: "I hear it sometimes said that the French should have contented themselves with laying down principles for their own particular state, without spreading abroad those principles among other nations. But is it really their fault if their principles are so general as to be adapted to all men, of all times, and of all countries? Nay, is it not a proof of the excellence of their principles, which depend neither upon ages, nor on prejudices, nor on climates? Have they invented them maliciously, and in order to impose on kings and on the great? And is there any man so silly as to scruple to rebuild his shattered dwelling, because others might be tempted to re-edify theirs? If the French language is understood through all Europe, are the French to blame? Ought they, through fear of being listened to and imitated, to observe a strict silence, or speak a language different from their own?"--History of the Revolutions of France, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 180.]

[Footnote 217: Dumont, vol. i., p. 66.]

[Footnote 218: "The particulars of Mirabeau's conduct are not yet thoroughly known, but they are soon likely to be. I have had in my hands several important documents, and especially a paper written in the form of a profession of faith, which constituted his secret treaty with the court. I am not allowed to give the public any of these documents, or to mention the names of the holders. I can only affirm what the future will sufficiently demonstrate, when all these papers shall have been published.

"What I am able to assert with sincerity is, that Mirabeau never had any hand in the supposed plots of the Duke of Orleans. Mirabeau left Provence with a single object, that of combating arbitrary power, by which he had suffered, and which his reason as well as his sentiments taught him to consider as detestable. In his manners there was great familiarity, which originated in a feeling of his strength. Hence it was that he was frequently supposed to be the friend and accomplice of many persons with whom he had no common interest. I have said, and I repeat it, he had no party. Mirabeau remained poor till his connection with the court. He then watched all parties, strove to make them explain themselves, and was too sensible of his own importance to pledge himself lightly."--Hist, of the Fr. Rev., by M.A. Thiers, vol. i., p. 94.]

[Footnote 219: Histoire de la Revolution Française, par Villiaumé, p. 54.]

[Footnote 220: Revolutions de Paris, t. 11, No. 9, p. 8.]

[Footnote 221: "Occasionally loads of flour were seized and detained on their passage by the neighboring localities whose wants were pressing. Versailles and Paris shared together. But Versailles kept, so it was said, the finest part, and made a superior bread. This was a great cause of jealousy. One day, when the people of Versailles had been so imprudent as to turn aside for themselves a supply intended for the Parisians, Bailly, the honest and respectful Bailly, wrote to M. Necker that, if the flour were not restored, thirty thousand men would go and fetch it on the morrow. Fear made him bold. It often happened at midnight that he had but half the flour necessary for the morning market."--Michelet, p. 231.]

[Footnote 222: Even the courtesans came forward with their contributions. The following letter was received by the National Assembly, accompanied by a purse of gold:

"Gentlemen! I have a heart to love. I have amassed some property in loving. I place it in your hands, a homage to the country. May my example be imitated by my companions of all ranks."--Hist. des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 21.]

[Footnote 223: M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, vol. i., 89.]

[Footnote 224: Alison.]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XVII. THE ROYAL FAMILY CARRIED TO PARIS

Waning Popularity of La Fayette.--The King contemplates Flight.--Letter of Admiral d'Estaing.--The Flanders Regiment called to Versailles.--Fête in the Ball-room at Versailles.--Insurrection of the Women; their March to Versailles.--Horrors of the Night of October 5th.--The Royal Family conveyed to Paris.

The press now began to assail Bailly and La Fayette as in league with the aristocrats. The Assembly at the Palais Royal was becoming paramount, a terrific power, threatening ruin to all who should advocate measures of moderation. The most violent harangues roused the populace, and it was evident that they could be easily turned by their leaders into any path of destruction. Threatening letters flooded the National Assembly, and one of great ferocity was signed by St. Huruge. Though he declared it a forgery, he was arrested and imprisoned. The municipal authority also forbade farther meetings in the Palais Royal, and La Fayette, with the National Guard, dispersed the gatherings.

The king now seriously contemplated flight, that, at a safe distance from Paris and surrounded by chosen troops, he might dictate terms to his people, or, if they refused, prepare, by the aid of foreign arms, for war. About one hundred and eighty miles northeast of Paris, on the frontiers of France, was the city of Metz. The city contained about fifty thousand inhabitants, and its fortifications, constructed by Vauban, were of the most extensive and formidable kind. The Marquis de Bouille, one of the most devoted servants of the king, and subsequently one of the most active agents in urging the foreign powers to march against France, commanded, in garrison there, thirty thousand picked troops, resolute Royalists, and who had been taught to regard the popular movement with contempt.

The plan was well matured for the king to escape to Metz. There he was to be joined by the court, the nobles with all their retainers, the ancient parliaments of the provinces, all composed of the aristocratic class, and by all the soldiers whom the Royalist officers could induce to follow them to that rendezvous. Then, by the employment of all the energies of fire and blood, France was to be brought back into subjection to the old régime.

La Fayette knew of this plan, and yet he did not dare to divulge it to the people, for he knew that it would provoke a fierce and terrible outbreak. He saw the peril in which the royal family was involved, and he wished for their protection. He saw the doom with which the liberties of France were menaced, and the liberty for which he was struggling was dearer to him than life. If the king had been either a merciless despot or a reliable friend of liberty, then would La Fayette's path of duty have been plain. But the king was an amiable, kindly-intentioned, weak-minded, vacillating man, quite the tool of the inexorable court.

It is difficult to conceive of a situation more embarrassing than that in which La Fayette was now placed. He was at the head of the National Guard and was informed of all the plots of the court. He wished to be faithful to his sovereign, and wished also to be true to his country. Without the connivance, or at least secret assent of La Fayette, it was hardly possible for the king to escape.

The old admiral D'Estaing was commander of the National Guard at Versailles. He was a man of noble birth, of magnanimous character, and, though with true patriotism he espoused the popular cause, he was, like La Fayette, in favor of a monarchy, and was sincerely friendly to the king. On the 13th of September he dined with La Fayette at Paris. Here the marquis unfolded to the amazed admiral the terrible secret in all its details; that the Baron Breteuil, one of the most implacable enemies of the Revolution, was arranging with the Austrian embassador for the co-operation of Austria; that eighteen regiments had already taken the oath of fidelity to the court; that the Royalists, in large numbers, were already congregating at Metz; that the nobles and the clergy had combined in raising funds, so that fifteen hundred thousand francs ($300,000) a month were secured; that measures were already adopted to besiege Paris, cut off all supplies, and starve the city into subjection; and that more than sixty thousand of the clergy and nobility were pledged to rally around the king.

D'Estaing was appalled by the tidings. He knew that if the populace were informed of the conspiracy it would rouse them to phrensy, that no earthly power could protect the royal family from their fury, and that instantly the fiercest civil war would blaze from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. Aware of the imbecility of the king, and that the queen was the author of every vigorous measure, he immediately addressed a very earnest letter to her. He wrote as follows in a letter long, earnest, and imploring:

"It is necessary--my duty and my loyalty require it--that I should lay at the feet of the queen the account of the visit which I have paid to Paris. I am praised for sleeping soundly the night before an assault or a naval engagement. I venture to assert that I am not timorous in civil matters, but I must confess to your majesty that I did not close my eyes all night.

"I was told--and, gracious heaven! what would be the consequence if this were circulated among the people--I was told that the king was to be carried off to Metz. La Fayette told me so in a whisper at dinner. I trembled lest a single domestic should overhear him. I observed to him that a word from his lips might become the signal of death. I implore your majesty to grant me an audience some day this week."[226]

Such a secret could not long be kept. It soon began to be openly spoken of in the streets as a suspicion, a rumor. Under pretense of protecting the National Assembly from any violence by the mob from Paris, the king called a regiment to Versailles from Flanders. This was a regiment in whose officers and soldiers he could rely, and which was to aid him in his flight. The troops marched into the city with an imposing array of artillery and infantry, exciting increasing suspicion, and were assembled as a guard around the palace.

It was on the 23d of September that this Flanders regiment entered Versailles, and were stationed around the regal chateau, thus doubling the body-guard of the king. It was also observed that a very unusual number of officers crowded the streets of Versailles, estimated at from a thousand to twelve hundred.[227] A dinner was given to these officers on the 1st of October, in the hall of the Opera at the palace. No expense was spared to add splendor to the fête, to which all were invited who could probably be led to co-operate with the court. Wine flowed freely, and, deep in the hours of the night, when all heads were delirious, the king and queen, with the young dauphin, entered the banqueting-hall. They were received with almost phrensied acclaim. The boxes of the Opera were thronged with ladies of the court, adding to the enthusiasm. The king, the queen, the dauphin, were toasted with delirious shouts. When some one proposed "the nation," the toast was scornfully rejected. As the royal family made the tour of the tables, the band struck up the air, "O Richard, O my king, the world is all forsaking thee." The officers leaped upon the chairs and the tables, drew their swords, and vowed eternal fidelity to the king. And now ensued a scene which no language can describe. The officers clambered into the boxes, and received the cordial greetings of the ladies; the revolutionary movement was cursed intensely; the tricolored cockade, the badge of popular rights, was trampled under foot, and the white cockade, the emblem of Bourbon power, was accepted in its stead from the hands of the ladies. The next day there was another similar entertainment in the palace, to which a still larger number of guests were invited, and the convivialities were still more exciting and violent. The courtiers, with that fatuity which ever marked their conduct, were now so encouraged, that they began with insolent menaces to manifest their exultation.

The tidings of these fêtes spread rapidly through Versailles and Paris, exciting intense indignation. The court was feasting; the people starving. Versailles was filled with rejoicing; Paris with mourning. Despotism was exulting in its anticipated triumph, while the nation was threatened with the loss of its newly-acquired rights. The king had thus far delayed giving his assent to the Constitution. Disquietude pervaded the National Assembly, and confused murmurs filled the thoroughfares of Paris--terrible rumors of the approaching war, of the league with the German princes, of the increasing famine, and the threatened blockade of Paris. "We must bring the king to Paris," all said, "or the court will carry him off, and war will immediately be commenced."

The morning of the 5th of October dawned, dark, cold, and stormy. A dismal rain flooded the streets. There were thousands in Paris that morning who had eaten nothing for thirty hours.[228] The women, in particular, of the humbler class, were in an awful state of destitution and misery. The populace of Paris were actually starving. An energetic woman, half delirious with woe, seized a drum, and strode through the streets beating it violently, occasionally shrieking, "Bread! bread!" She soon collected a crowd of women, which rapidly increased from a few hundred to seven or eight thousand. The men gazed with wonder upon this strange apparition, such as earth had, perhaps, never seen before. Like a swelling inundation the living flood rolled through the streets, and soon the cry was heard, "To Versailles!" As by a common instinct, the tumultuous mass rushed along by the side of the Tuileries and through the Elysian Fields toward Versailles. A few of the more fierce and brutal of the women had guns or pistols. Chancing to find a couple of cannon, they seized them, and also horses to drag the ponderous engines, upon which female furies placed themselves astride, singing revolutionary songs.

La Fayette gazed appalled upon the strange phenomenon. The troops of the National Guard refused to arrest their course, declaring that they could not resist starving women, who were going to implore bread of their king. La Fayette was powerless. He had under arms that morning thirty-five thousand troops, cavalry, infantry, and artillery. He could only follow the women, to watch the opening of events. Behind these troops advancing in all the glittering panoply of war, followed a straggling mass of, no one can tell how many thousands of the populace of Paris, of all classes, characters, conditions. The city seemed emptied of its inhabitants, as the road to Versailles, ten or twelve miles in length, was filled with the tumultuous multitude. No one, apparently, had any definite object, but each one was going to see what the others would do.

Couriers were sent forward to warn the king and queen of the impending peril. The good-natured, silly king had gone to Meudon to amuse himself in chasing hares. Nothing can more conclusively show his utter incapacity to govern a great kingdom, than that he should have been so employed at such an hour. The king was sent for, and speedily returned to Versailles. Marie Antoinette had all the energy and heroism of her mother, Maria Theresa. When entreated immediately to secure her escape with her two children, she replied,

"Nothing shall induce me to be separated from my husband. I know that they seek my life; but I am the daughter of Maria Theresa, and have learned not to fear death."

The king was entreated to escape, but he was fearful that his flight might embolden the Assembly to declare the throne vacant, and to place the crown upon the head of the Duke of Orleans, who had, with that object probably in view, vociferously espoused the popular cause. From the windows of Versailles the royal family soon descried the vast multitude plodding along through the mud and the rain as they approached Versailles. It is said that there were some men in the mob, disguised as women, who gave impulse and direction to the mass. A man by the name of Maillard, of gigantic stature, and possessed of wonderful tact, succeeded in obtaining the post of leader. In this alarming state of affairs, the king sent to the Assembly a partial acceptance of the Constitution. As the Assembly were discussing this question, the women arrived at the hall. Maillard entered, and the women crowded after him. Respectfully, but earnestly, on behalf of the women, he represented the starving condition of Paris, and complained of the insult which the nation had received in the fête at the palace.

It was now three o'clock in the afternoon. The rain was still falling. A dark, stormy night was at hand, and the streets of Versailles were filled with countless thousands of the most desperate men and women, utterly destitute of shelter. The Assembly, in alarm, requested their president, M. Mounier, to go to the palace and petition for fresh measures of relief. M. Mounier was compelled to allow twelve women to accompany him. The king received them kindly. The women had adroitly selected, as the leader of their deputation, a very beautiful young flower-girl, but seventeen years of age, of remarkably graceful form and lovely features. The girl, overcome by her sensations, endeavored in vain to speak, and fainted. The king took her in his arms, embraced her as if she had been his child, and was so paternal that he completely won the hearts of all the women. They left the palace with such enthusiastic accounts of the goodness of the king, that the Amazons on the outside accused them of having been bribed, and, in their rage, were ready to tear them in pieces. The poor flower-girl would have been hanged with garters to a lamp-post had not the soldiers rescued her.

The king now summoned a council, which continued in session until ten o'clock. Still, by some unpardonable neglect, no measures were adopted to provide for the wants of the famished mob. It was nearly seven o'clock in the evening before La Fayette arrived with the National Guard.[229] The soldiers of the guard, intelligent citizens, were only to be controlled by the personal influence of their general. Authority is only established by time and consolidated institutions. La Fayette hastened to the palace to assure the royal family that every thing in his power should be done to secure their safety. The king, however, would not intrust the guard of the palace to La Fayette, as he thought he could place more reliance in the Flanders regiment, the Swiss mercenaries, and his own Life-Guard, than in the National Guard, who were all devoted to the popular cause.

In the confusion of those dreadful hours, all the entrances to the palace had not been defended. La Fayette, however, stationed an effectual guard at all the outposts which had been assigned to him. Through all the hours of the night, until five o'clock in the morning, La Fayette was sleeplessly engaged sending out patrols and watching over the public peace. Then, finding all tranquil, he threw himself upon a sofa for rest, having been constantly and anxiously employed for the last twenty-four hours. Groups of shivering, famished people were gathered around large fires, which they had built in the streets, and in one place they were devouring the half-roasted flesh of a horse which they had killed. The queen, worn out with sleeplessness, had retired to her chamber. The king had also gone to his chamber, which was connected with that of the queen by a hall, through which they could mutually pass. Two soldiers guarded the door of the queen's chamber. Some of the mob, prowling around the palace, found a gate unguarded, and, entering the palace without any obstruction, ascended the stairs, and, pressing blindly on, came to the door of the queen's apartment. The soldiers heroically resisted them, and shouted to others to save the queen. She heard the cry, and, springing from her bed, rushed in her night-clothes to the king's room. The brigands pushed resolutely forward, and found the royal bed forsaken. A number of the Life-Guards hastened to the spot, and arrested their farther progress; and the soldiers of La Fayette, who had been stationed at a little distance, hearing the tumult, hastened to their aid.

The noise roused the mob, and a conflict immediately ensued between the soldiers and the phrensied multitude. La Fayette, who had not yet fallen asleep, sprung from his couch, and, hastening to the palace, found several of the king's troops on the point of being slaughtered. One of the brigands aimed a musket at La Fayette, but the mob seized him and dashed out his brains upon the pavement. The Life-Guards and the Grenadiers of La Fayette soon cleared the palace; and the whole court acknowledged that they were indebted to La Fayette for their lives. Madame Adelaide, the queen's aunt, threw her arms around him, exclaiming "General, you have saved us."[230]

The morning of the 6th was now dawning, and the whole multitude, swarming around the palace, demanded as with one voice that the king should go to Paris. A council was held, and it was decided by the court that the king should comply. Slips of paper announcing the decision were thrown to the people from the windows. Loud shouts now rose of "Long live the King!" But threatening voices were raised against the queen, who was hated as an Austrian, and as one who was endeavoring to bring the armies of Austria to crush liberty in France.

"Madame," said La Fayette to the queen, "the king goes to Paris; what will you do?"

"Accompany the king," was the queen's undaunted reply.

"Come with me, then," rejoined the general.

He led the queen upon a balcony, from whence she looked out upon the multitude, agitated like the ocean in a storm. All eyes were speedily fixed upon her as she stood by the side of La Fayette, and held by the hand her little son, the dauphin. The murmurs of the crowd were immediately succeeded by expressions of admiration. La Fayette took her hand, and, raising it to his lips, respectfully kissed it. An almost universal shout of "Long live the Queen!" was the response of the multitude to this graceful and well-timed act. The queen then stepped back into the room, and said to La Fayette, "My guards, can you not do something for them?" "Give me one," said La Fayette, and, leading the soldier to the balcony, he presented him to the people, and handed him the tricolored cockade. The guard kissed it, and placed it on his hat. The people were satisfied, reconciled, and cheered with hearty plaudits. Many of the garde du corps had been taken prisoners, and they all would have been murdered by the mob but for the vigorous efforts of La Fayette to rescue them from their hands.

The Assembly, being apprised of the king's intention to go to Paris, passed a resolution that the Assembly was inseparable from the person of the king, and nominated a hundred deputies to accompany him to the metropolis. Two of the king's body-guard had been killed, and some wretches had cut off their heads, and were parading them about on pikes.[231]

It was one o'clock when the carriages containing the royal family left Versailles.[232] The whole mob of Paris, men and women, a tumultuous, clamorous multitude, went in advance. Following immediately the carriages of the court came the hundred deputies, also in coaches. Then came the National Guard. Carts laden with corn and flour, escorted by Grenadiers, followed the immense train. None were so malignant and merciless as the degraded women who composed so large a part of this throng. "We shall now," they exclaimed, "have bread, for we have with us the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy."

It required seven hours for this unwieldy mass to urge its slow progress to Paris. The king was conducted to the Hôtel de Ville, where he was received by M. Bailly, the mayor. The royal family descended from their carriages by torch-light, and entered the great hall, where they were received with acclamations. After the ceremony of reception by the municipality of Paris was over, the king and his family were conducted to the Tuileries. The vast palace had not been the residence of the royal family for a hundred years, and its spacious and poorly-furnished apartments presented but a cheerless aspect. The National Guard were stationed around the palace, and thus La Fayette was made responsible for the safe-keeping of the person of the king. Thus terminated the eventful days of the 5th and 6th of October, 1789. The king was now virtually a prisoner, and the nobles could no longer avail themselves of his name in enforcing, by the aid of foreign armies, despotism upon France.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 225: Mounier, who was strongly in favor of two chambers and an absolute veto, in his Report to his Constituents, writes, in reference to some private and friendly conferences held at this time:

"These conferences, twice renewed, were unsuccessful. They were recommenced at the house of an American known for his abilities and his virtues, who had both the experience and the theory of the institutions proper for maintaining liberty. He gave an opinion in favor of my principles."

This American was unquestionably Thomas Jefferson. He saw the peril with which the Revolution was menaced, and that freedom needed as strong a guard against the blind impulses of the populace as against the encroachments of the court. Two houses might perhaps have checked the rush to ruin, but could hardly have averted the disaster. For ages the nobles had been "sowing the wind." It was the decree of God that they should "reap the whirlwind." "He visiteth the iniquities of the fathers upon the children."]

[Footnote 226: Brouillon: le Lettre de M. d'Estaing à la Reine (in Histoire Parlementaire, vol. iii., p. 24).]

[Footnote 227: "Le ministre de la guerre multiplia les congés de semestre, afin d'avoir un corps de volontaires royaux, composé de douze cent cents officiers."--Villiaumé, p. 34.]

[Footnote 228: Moniteur, vol. i., p. 568. Histoire de Deux Amis de la Liberté, t. iii.]

[Footnote 229: Thiers, vol. i., p. 106.]

[Footnote 230: "M. de la Fayette has been so calumniated, and his character is nevertheless so pure, so consistent, that it is right to devote at least one note to him. His conduct during the fifth and sixth of October was that of continual self-devotion, and yet it has been represented as criminal by men who owed their lives to it. The spirit of party, feeling the danger of allowing any virtues to a Constitutionalist, denied the services of La Fayette, and then commenced that long series of calumnies to which he has ever since been exposed."--Thiers, vol. i., p. 108.]

[Footnote 231: Thiers, vol. i., p. 111.]

[Footnote 232: "I saw her majesty in her cabinet an instant before her departure for Paris. She could scarcely speak. Tears poured down her face, to which all the blood in her body seemed to have mounted. She did me the favor to embrace me, and gave her hand to M. Campan to kiss, saying to us, Come immediately to take up your abode in Paris. We are utterly lost; dragged probably to death. Captive kings are always very near it."--Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 84.]

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XVIII. FRANCE REGENERATED

Kind Feelings of the People.--Emigration receives a new Impulse.--The National Assembly transferred to Paris.--The Constituent Assembly.--Assassination of François.--Anxiety of the Patriots.--Gloomy Winter.--Contrast between the Bishops and the laboring Clergy.--Church Funds seized by the Assembly.--The Church responsible for the Degradation of the People.--New Division of France.--The Right of Suffrage.--The Guillotine.--Rabaud de St. Etienne.

The royal family was now in Paris. The poor were, however, still perishing of famine. The night of the 6th of October passed without disturbance. It was dark even to blackness, and torrents of rain deluged the streets. Early in the morning of the 7th a vast multitude thronged the garden of the Tuileries, eager to catch a glimpse of the king. They all seemed animated by the kindest feelings toward their sovereign. The king, in response to reiterated calls, showed himself upon the balcony, and was received with universal acclamations. All the members of the royal family appeared to share in this popularity. Madame Elizabeth, sister of the king, a princess of rare loveliness both of person and character, caused her window to be opened, and sat partaking of refreshments in the presence of thousands of spectators. Men, women, and children, a vast multitude, gathered around the window, and words of kindness, love, and joy were on all lips.

"We have now our king restored to us," they said. "He is taken away from his bad advisers, and will now be, as he has always wished to be, our good father."

This generous, confiding spirit had taken such full possession of the public mind--the people, notwithstanding the intolerable wrongs they had endured for so many ages, were so ready to forgive--that not a word of disrespect was uttered, even to the foreign body-guard of the king, or to the haughty lords and aristocratic ladies who had accompanied the court to Paris. The people even cheered these nobles, against whom they had been so long contending, and addressed them in words of kindness.[233]

The nobles were, however, so alarmed by this triumph of the people that emigration received a new impulse. One hundred and fifty of the Royalist deputies of the National Assembly immediately obtained passports and left the kingdom. Some of the nobles repaired to Turin. The Comte d'Artois (Charles X.) took up his residence with his father-in-law, the King of Sardinia. The emigrants, thus scattered through all the courts of Europe, were busy in endeavors to rally the aristocratic courts to crush popular liberty in France. The emigration throughout the country was so extensive that sixty thousand, it was said, went to Switzerland alone.

The king, on the contrary, appeared pleased with the affection of his people. He walked, without guards, through the crowds which thronged the Elysian Fields, and was every where treated with respect. On the 9th of October, three days after his arrival in the city, he sent a letter to the Assembly at Versailles, informing that body that the testimonials of affection and fidelity which he had received from the city of Paris had determined him to fix his ordinary residence there.[234] He accordingly invited the Assembly to transfer its sitting to Paris. Incredible as it may seem, the imbecile king sent for his smith tools, put up his forge, and amused himself with file and hammer tinkering at locks.[235]

The Archbishop of Paris had fled with the emigrants. On the 19th of October the National Assembly left Versailles and held its first sitting in Paris, in a room of the archbishop's palace, from which room it soon removed to the riding-hall of the Tuileries, a much more commodious apartment which had been prepared for its accommodation.[236] As the great object of the Assembly was now to reorganize the government upon the basis of a free constitution, it dropped the name of National Assembly on leaving Versailles, and assumed in Paris the name of Constituent Assembly. Thus the same body in the course of five months was called by three different names. It was first the States-General, from the period of its meeting on the 5th of May until the union of the three orders on the 27th of June. It was then the National Assembly until its removal from Versailles to Paris, on the 19th of October. It then took the name of the Constituent Assembly, and continued in existence for nearly two years, until the 30th of September, 1791, when it expired, and a new body, the Legislative Assembly, commenced its session.

The storm of revolution for a time seemed to lull, and there were but few acts of violence. The people of Paris were still in a state of fearful suffering from famine, and on the 21st of October a few half-starved wretches seized a baker named François, whom they accused of holding back his bread, and in a moment of phrensy, before the police could interfere, strung him up at a lamp-post, and then cut off his head.

The deed was denounced by even the most violent of the revolutionists, and the Assembly took advantage of the feeling which the outrage excited to pass a martial law against tumultuous assemblies of the people. This law, which was almost a repetition of the English riot act, was assailed by many of the journals as a gross infringement of the rights of the people. Robespierre in the Assembly and Marat in his wide-spread journal were conspicuous in denouncing it.

The atrocious murder of François, who was a generous and a charitable man, and entirely innocent of the crime of which he was accused, produced a profound impression. It was indicative of the rapid and fearful rise of mob violence. The king and queen sent to his young widow a letter of condolence, with a gift in money amounting to about twenty-five hundred dollars. The city government of Paris sent a committee of its members to visit and console her. La Fayette, mortified and indignant at the outrage, scoured the faubourgs in search of the miscreants who perpetrated the deed. Two of the ringleaders were arrested and handed over to immediate trial.

They were condemned to death, and the next morning were hanged in the same Place de Grêve which had been the scene of the outrage. This was the only murder, perpetrated by a Parisian mob, during the Revolution, which the law was sufficiently powerful to punish.[237]

In other parts of the kingdom there were occasional acts of violence. Bread was so enormously dear that the corn-dealers were accused of hoarding up immense stores for the sake of speculation. The ignorant mob in some instances seriously maltreated those suspected of this crime. The innocent were thus often punished, for the violence of the mob is as likely to fall upon the innocent as upon the guilty.

Many of the most intelligent friends of reform began now to fear that the nation was going "too fast and too far." The scenes of the 5th of October, and the omnipotence of the mob as evinced on that day, had inspired fearful apprehensions for the future. Even La Fayette felt that the salvation of the cause of liberty depended upon strengthening the power of the king. He induced the king to send the Duke of Orleans from Paris, and when the duke wished to return he sent him word that, the day after his return, he would have to fight a duel with him.

Mirabeau united with La Fayette in these endeavors to stop the nation in its headlong rush, and to secure constitutional liberty by giving strength to the monarchical arm. They were both of the opinion that France, surrounded by powerful and jealous monarchies, and with millions of peasants unaccustomed to self-government, who could neither read nor write, and who were almost as uninstructed as the sheep they tended, needed a throne founded upon a free constitution.[238] Even in the Assembly Mirabeau ventured to urge that it was necessary to restore strength to the executive power.[239] But the court hated both La Fayette and Mirabeau, and were opposed to any diminution of their own exclusive privileges. They would accept of no compromise, and all the efforts of the moderate party were unavailing.

Gloomy winter now commenced, and there was no money, no labor, no bread. The aristocratic party all over the realm were packing their trunks, and sending before them across the frontiers whatever funds they could collect. They wished to render France as weak and miserable as possible, that the people might be more easily again subjugated to the feudal yoke by the armies of foreign despots. Hence there was a frightful increase of beggary. In Paris alone there were two hundred thousand. It is one of the greatest of marvels that such a mass of men, literally starving, could have remained so quiet. The resources of the kingdom were exhausted during the winter in feeding, in all the towns of France, paupers amounting to millions. All eyes were now directed to the National Assembly for measures of relief.

The wealth of the clergy was enormous. Almsgiving, which has filled Europe with beggary, has ever been represented by the Catholic Church as the first act of piety. During long ages of superstition, the dying had been induced, as an atonement for godless lives, to bequeath their possessions to the Church, to be dispensed in charity to the people. Thus many a wealthy sinner had obtained absolution, and thus the ecclesiastics held endowments which comprised one fifth of the lands of the kingdom, and were estimated at four thousand millions of francs ($800,000,000).[240]

Notwithstanding this immense opulence of the Church, nearly all the parish pastors, the hard and faithful workers for Christianity--and there were many such, men of true lives and of unfeigned religion--were in the extreme of poverty. The bishops were all nobles, for even Louis XVI. would elect no other. These bishops were often the most dissolute and voluptuous of men, and reveled in incomes of a million of francs ($250,000) a year. The working clergy, on the contrary, who were from the people, seldom received more than two hundred francs ($40) a year. They were so poor as to be quite dependent upon their parishioners for charity.[241]

The Assembly assumed that these treasures had been intrusted to the Church for the benefit of the people; that the luxurious ecclesiastics, by unfaithfulness to their trust, had forfeited the right of farther dispensing the charity. After a very fierce strife, a motion was made by Mirabeau, that the possessions of the Church were at the disposal of the state. Many of the lower clergy voted for the resolution, and it was adopted by a majority of 568 against 346. Forty deputies refused to vote. This measure placed at once immense resources in the hands of the Assembly, and necessarily exasperated tenfold the privileged classes, and rolled a wave of alarm over the whole wide-spread domain of the Pope. It was the signal for Catholic Europe to rise in arms against the Revolution. As it was impossible, under the pressure of the times, to force the sale of the enormous property of the Church without an immense sacrifice, bonds were issued, called assignats, assigned or secured on this church property.

Thus was the haughty Gallican Church deprived of its ill-gotten and worse used wealth. The dignitaries of this Church had ever been the most inveterate foes of popular elevation. Treasure which had been wrested from the poor and extorted from the dying, as a gift to God for the promotion of human virtue, they were using to forge chains for the people, and were squandering in shameless profligacy.

Nearly all the nobles were infidels, disciples of Voltaire. For years, while reveling in wine and debauchery, they had held up religion to contempt. But they now suddenly became very devout, espoused the cause of their boon companions, the bishops, and remonstrated against laying unholy hands upon the treasury of the Lord. All over Europe the two most formidable forces, secular and religious aristocracy, were now combined against popular reform. It was this principle which led the Protestant English noble and the papal Austrian bishop to make common cause against the regeneration of France.

There were some French nobles and French bishops who recognized, whatever may have been their motives, the rights of the people, and espoused their side. Talleyrand, the Bishop of Autun, introduced the measure, and Mirabeau supported it with all the energy of his eloquence.

The degradation of the people is the condemnation of the papal Church. For many centuries the office of elevating the people had devolved upon the clergy. Instead of instructing their congregations, the forms of worship had been converted into a senseless pantomime; the prayers were offered in an unknown tongue; the word of God was excluded from their sight. The rich became infidels and atheists, and by robbing the poor luxuriated in profligacy. The poor became brutalized and savage, and were held under restraint only by the terrors of a soul-hardening superstition.

There is no hope of peace for the world but in that doctrine of Christ which promotes the brotherhood of man. Where this fraternity is recognized and its sympathies circulate, there is peace. The aristocratic Church in France had been the tool of the court in degrading and enslaving the people. The awful day of retribution was but the inevitable progress of the divine law. Man, crushed and trampled upon by his brother man, may endure it for an age, for a century, but the time will come when he will endure it no longer, and the ferocity of his rising will be proportionate to the depth and the gloom of the dungeon in which he has been immured.[242] The progress of the world is toward justice, equality, and nature. If that progress be not peaceful it will be violent and bloody. The vital energies of the soul of man can not forever be repressed.

France had for some time been divided into thirteen large provinces, incorporated at different periods and possessing different immunities and a diversity of customs and laws. The Assembly broke down all these old barriers that a character of unity might be given to the nation. The kingdom was divided into eighty-three departments, each department being about fifty-four miles square. These departments were divided into districts, and the districts into communes. This division somewhat resembled that of the United States, into states, counties, and towns.

The right of suffrage was extended to all male citizens twenty-five years of age, who had resided in the electoral district one year, who had paid a direct tax amounting to the value of three days' labor, about sixty cents, who were not in the condition of servants, and who were enrolled in the National Guard. These were called active citizens. The rest of the population were deemed passive citizens. To be eligible to office either as a magistrate or a representative, it was required that one should pay a direct tax of about ten dollars, and also be a landholder. The aristocrats considered this extension of the right of suffrage as awfully radical and democratic. On the other hand the democracy, from its lower depths, exclaimed with the utmost vehemence and indignation against the restriction of the right of suffrage and of office to tax-payers and property-holders.

"There is but one united voice," cried Camille Desmoulins, "in the city and in the country, against this ten-dollar decree (le décret du marc d'argent). It is constituting in France an aristocratic government, and it is the most signal victory which the aristocrats have yet gained in the Assembly. To demonstrate the absurdity of the decree it is necessary but to mention that Rousseau, Corneille, Mably, under it could not have been eligible. As for you, ye despicable priests, ye lying cheating knaves, do you see that you make even your God ineligible?[243] Jesus Christ, whom you recognize as divine, you thrust out into the ranks of the mob. And do you wish that I should respect you, ye priests of an ignominious God (d'un Dieu proletaire), who is not even an active citizen? Respect that poverty which Jesus Christ has ennobled."[244]

Such fierce appeals produced a profound and exasperating impression upon the army of two hundred thousand beggars in Paris and upon the millions utterly impoverished in France. "We have overthrown the aristocracy of birth," the orators of the populace exclaimed, "only to introduce the still more hateful aristocracy of the purse." The working clergy, who were among the foremost in favor of reform, were almost to a man efficient members of the moderate party, and cordially co-operated with La Fayette in the endeavor to prevent liberty from being whelmed in lawlessness. The clergy had great influence, and hence the venom of the popular speakers and writers was perseveringly directed against them.[245]

The Assembly then abolished the oppressive duty upon salt.[246] The old parliaments of the old provinces, as corrupt bodies as have perhaps ever existed, and the subservient instruments of aristocratic oppression, were suppressed, and new courts of a popular character substituted in their place. All trials were ordered to be public; no punishment, on accusation for crime, could be inflicted unless by a vote of two thirds of the court. The penalty of death required a vote of four fifths. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes was blotted out, and thus some thousands of Protestants who had long been banished from France were permitted to return and to enjoy all their political rights. It was decreed that all citizens, of whatever condition, should be subject to the same laws and judged by the same tribunals. Those accused of crime were to be tried by jury, but not till a court had previously determined that the evidence against them was sufficiently strong to warrant their arrest. It is remarkable that both Robespierre and Marat were most earnest in their endeavors to abrogate the death-penalty. During this discussion Dr. Guillotin urged the adoption, in capital punishment, of a new machine which he had invented.

"With my machine," said the doctor, "I can clip off your head in the twinkling of an eye without your feeling it."

These words, most earnestly uttered, caused a general burst of laughter in the Assembly. But a few months passed ere many of those deputies were bound to the plank and experienced the efficiency of the keen blade. The introduction of the guillotine was intended as a measure of humanity. The unfortunate man doomed to death was thus to be saved from needless suffering.[247]

The measures adopted by the Constituent Assembly seem to republican eyes just and moderate. Experience, it is true, has proved that it is safer to have two houses of legislation, a senate and a lower house, than one, but the subsequent decrees passed by this one house were manifestly dictated, not by passion, but by patriotism and a sense of right.[248]

The clergy now made immense efforts to rouse the peasantry all over the kingdom to oppose the Revolution. Religious fanaticism exhausted all its energies. The parliaments also of the old provinces, composed exclusively of the nobles, roused themselves anew and were vehement in remonstrances and protests. They became active agents in organizing opposition, in maligning the action of the Assembly, and in inciting the credulous multitude to violence. The Assembly punished the parliaments by abolishing them all.

The court bitterly accused the Assembly of a usurpation of power, which called from Mirabeau a reply which electrified France.

"You ask," he said, "how, from being deputies, we have made ourselves a convention. I will tell you. The day when, finding our assembly-room shut, bristling and defiled with bayonets, we hastened to the first place that could contain us, and swore that we would perish rather than abandon the interests of the people--on that day, if we were not a convention, we became one. Let them now go and hunt out of the useless nomenclature of civilians the definition of the words National Convention! Gentlemen, you all know the conduct of that Roman who, to save his country from a great conspiracy, had been obliged to outstep the powers conferred upon him by the laws. A captious tribune required from him the oath that he had respected them. He thought, by that insidious proposal, to leave the consul no alternative but perjury or an embarrassing avowal. 'I swear,' said that great man, 'that I have saved the republic.' Gentlemen, we also swear that we have saved the commonwealth."

This sublime apostrophe brought the whole Assembly to its feet. The charge of usurpation was not repeated.

A great effort was at the same time made to compel the Assembly to adopt the resolution that the "Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion is, and shall ever be, the religion of the nation, and that its worship is the only one authorized." As one of the court party was urging this resolve, and quoting, as a precedent, some intolerant decree of Louis XIV., Mirabeau sent dismay to the heart of the court by exclaiming,

"And how should not every kind of intolerance have been consecrated in a reign signalized by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes?"

Then, pointing to a window of the Louvre, he continued, in deep and solemn tones which thrilled through every heart,

"Do you appeal to history? Forget not that from this very hall I behold the window whence a king of France, armed against his people by an execrable faction that disguised personal interest under the cloak of religion, fired his musket and gave the signal for the massacre of St. Bartholomew!"

The effect was electric, and the spirit of intolerance was crushed.

The true Christian charity which the Assembly assumed was cordially accepted by the mass of the nation. We love to record the fact that the great majority of the Catholic population were delighted to see the Protestants restored to their civil and religious rights. Even Michelet, hostile as he is to all revealed religion, testifies: "The unanimity was affecting, and one of the sights the most worthy to call down the blessing of God upon earth. In many parts the Catholics went to the temple of the Protestants, and united with them to return thanks to Providence together. On the other hand the Protestants attended at the Catholic Te Deum. Far above all the altars, every temple and every church, a divine ray had appeared in heaven."[249] In every place where the Protestants were in the majority they presented the most affecting spectacle of fraternity.

A Protestant, M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, was chosen president of the Assembly--a position at that time higher than that of the throne. He was the son of the celebrated Protestant martyr of Cevennes, who for long years had been hunted like a wild beast, as he hid in dens in the forest, escaping from the ferocity of religious persecution. The venerable parent was still living, and received from his son a letter containing the declaration, "The president of the National Assembly is at your feet."

The higher ecclesiastics were, however, exasperated by this triumph of religious liberty. They succeeded, in Montauban and in Nimes, in exciting a Roman Catholic mob against the Protestants. The ignorant populace, roused by superstition, seized their arms, shouted "Down with the nation!" and fell with the most cruel butchery upon the Protestants. The violent insurrection was, however, soon quelled, and without any acts of retaliatory vengeance.[250] The bishops anathematized every priest friendly to the Revolution, and designated all such to the hatred and contempt of the fanatic populace. The bishop who, under the old régime, had enjoyed an income of eight hundred thousand francs ($160,000), and was rejoicing in his palaces, horses, and concubines, invoked the wrath of God upon the curate who was now receiving twelve hundred francs ($240) from the nation. The power of the papal ecclesiastics was so strong that most of the humble curates were eventually compelled to abandon the Revolution and rally again around the sceptre of the Pope.

The air was still filled with rumors of plots to disperse the Assembly and carry the king off to the protection of the royalist army at Metz, where he could be forced by the nobles to sanction their course, in invading France with foreign armies. On the 25th of December the Marquis of Favrus was arrested, accused of forming a plot to seize the king with an army of thirty thousand men, and to assassinate La Fayette and Bailly. It was said that twelve hundred horse were ready at Versailles to carry off the king, and that a powerful force, composed of Swiss and Piedmontese, was organized to march upon Paris. The king's brother, the Count of Provence, subsequently Louis XVIII., was reported as in the plot, and to have supplied the conspirators with large sums of money. Louis was willing to be abducted as if by violence, but was not willing to assume any responsibility by engaging in measures for escape. He assumed the attitude of contentment, and with such apparent cordiality professed co-operation in the measures of the Assembly for the regeneration of France that many supposed that he had honestly espoused the popular cause.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 233: For overwhelming evidence that such was the state of the public mind, see Weber, vol. i., p. 257; Beaulieu, vol. ii., p. 203; Amis de la Liberté, vol. iv., p. 2-6; Michelet, vol. i., p. 284.]

[Footnote 234: Weber, an eye-witness of the king's reception in Paris, though a zealous Royalist, testifies that the reception was most kind and affectionate on the part of the masses of the people. See Weber, vol. ii., p. 228. See also Arthur Young, vol. i., p. 264-280.]

[Footnote 235: Le Chateau des Tuileries, par Roussel, in Hist. Parl., vol. iv., p. 195.]

[Footnote 236: That hall has since been destroyed. It stood upon the place now occupied by the houses No. 36 and 38 Rue de Rivoli.]

[Footnote 237: Even the most zealous of the revolutionary journals denounced with unmeasured severity the murder of François. Loustalot exclaimed, "Des Français! des Français! non, non de tels monstres n'appartiennent à aucun pays; le crime est leur element, le gibet leur patrie."]

[Footnote 238: On the 15th of March, M. de Lamarck took to Mirabeau the overtures of the court, but found him very cool. When pressed by Lamarck, he said that the throne could only be restored by establishing it upon a basis of liberty; that, if the court wanted any thing else, he would oppose instead of serving it.--Michelet, p. 328.]

[Footnote 239: In attestation of the correctness of these remarks, see the statements of Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Alexander de Lameth.]

[Footnote 240: Michelet, vol. i., p. 290.]

[Footnote 241: In the army there was the same inequality. According to the budget for war in 1784, the officers received forty-six millions of francs, and the whole body of soldiers but forty-four. "It is true," says Michelet, "that, under Louis XVI., another pay was added, settled with the cudgel. This was to imitate the famous discipline of Prussia, and was supposed to contain the whole secret of the victories of Frederick the Great: man driven like a machine, and punished like a child." The soldiers under the Empire knew how to appreciate the change.]

[Footnote 242: "Every body was acquainted with the morals of the prelates and the ignorance of the inferior clergy. The curates possessed some virtues but no information. Wherever they ruled they were an obstacle to every improvement of the people, and caused them to retrograde. To quote but one example, Poitou, civilized in the sixteenth century, became barbarous under their influence; they were preparing for us the civil war of Vendée."--Michelet, p. 222.]

[Footnote 243: Some curious facts were elicited during the progress of this discussion respecting the manner in which a portion of the vast revenues of the Church had been obtained. The clergy of Condom promised the simple, kind-hearted peasants, in consideration for a large quantity of grain, that they would every year conduct two hundred and fifty souls from purgatory directly to Paradise. In some places a regular tariff of prices had been established for the pardon of crimes. Absolution for incest could be purchased for one dollar, arson required one dollar and a quarter, parricide one dollar, and absolution could be obtained for all sins united for about sixteen dollars. These prices seem very moderate. But it must be remembered that the peasants were excessively poor, and could not, even to escape from purgatory, pay large sums.--Villiaumé, p. 52.]

[Footnote 244: Histoire des Montagnards, par Alphonse Esquiros, p. 25.]

[Footnote 245: In the Faubourg St. Antoine, which contained a population of thirty thousand, it is said that there were but two hundred active citizens. Marat, in his addresses to the "unfortunate citizens of the faubourgs," urged them to vote, notwithstanding the decree of the Assembly. "No power under the sun," said he, "can deprive you of the right of suffrage, which is inherent in society itself."]

[Footnote 246: The price of salt immediately fell from fourteen sous a pound to less than one sou.--Villiaumé.]

[Footnote 247: It was not until the month of March, 1792, that the guillotine was first used,]

[Footnote 248: "The government of the Revolution was rapidly becoming established. The Assembly had given to the new régime its monarch, its national representation, its territorial division, its armed force, its municipal and administrative power, its popular tribunals, its currency, its clergy; it had made an arrangement with respect to its debt, and had found means to reconstruct property without injustice."--Miguet, p. 87.]

[Footnote 249: Michelet's French Revolution, p. 358.]

[Footnote 250: "What was the National Assembly doing at this time in Paris? Its more than Christian meekness is a surprising spectacle."--Michelet, p. 365.]

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XIX. THE KING ACCEPTS THE CONSTITUTION

The King visits the Assembly.--His Speech.--The Priests rouse the Populace.--The King's Salary.--Petition of Talma.--Views of Napoleon.--Condemnation and Execution of the Marquis of Favrus.--Spirit of the New Constitution.--National Jubilee.--The Queen sympathizes with the Popular Movement.--Writings of Edmund Burke.

On the 4th of February the king, without any previous announcement, to the surprise of all, entered the hall of the Assembly. A burst of welcome greeted his entrance. The tidings of this movement spread with electric speed through Paris, and thousands of spectators speedily filled all parts of the hall to listen to the king's speech. The king stood upon the platform, and addressed the Assembly with words of dignity and eloquence which seemed above his nature. There was such an air of sincerity pervading every sentence that no one could doubt that he was giving utterance to his real opinions. This remarkable speech contained the following expressions:[251]

"Gentlemen, the critical circumstances in which France is placed bring me among you. A grand goal is presented to your view, but it is requisite that it be attained without any increase of agitation, and without any new convulsions. It was, I must say, in a more agreeable and a more quiet manner that I had hoped to lead you to it, when I formed the design of assembling you, and of bringing together for the public welfare the talents and the opinions of the representatives of the nation; but my happiness and my glory are not the less connected with the success of your labors.

"I think that the time is come when it is of importance to the interests of the state that I should associate myself, in a more express and manifest manner, in the execution and success of all that you have planned for the benefit of France. I can not seize a more signal occasion than when you submit to my acceptance decrees destined to establish a new organization in the kingdom, which must have so important and so propitious an influence on the happiness of my subjects and on the prosperity of this empire.

"You know, gentlemen, it is more than ten years ago, at a time when the wishes of the nation relative to provincial assemblies had not yet been expressed, I began to substitute that kind of administration for the one which ancient and long habit had sanctioned. You have improved upon these views in several ways, and the most essential, no doubt, is that equal and wisely-calculated subdivision which, by breaking down the ancient partitions between province and province, and establishing a general and complete system of equilibrium, more intimately unites all parts of the kingdom in one and the same spirit, in one and the same interest. This grand idea, this salutary design, is all your own. I will promote, I will second, by all the means in my power, the success of that vast organization on which depends the welfare of France.

"Let it be known every where that the monarch and the representatives of the nation are united in the same interest, in the same wish. Some day, I fondly believe, every Frenchman, without exception, will acknowledge the benefit of the total suppression of the differences of order and condition. No doubt those who have relinquished their pecuniary privileges--those who will no longer form, as of old, an order in the state, find themselves subjected to sacrifices, the importance of which I fully appreciate; but I am persuaded that they will have generosity enough to seek an indemnification in all the public advantages of which the establishment of national assemblies holds out a hope.

"I will defend, therefore, I will uphold constitutional liberty, the principles of which the public wish, in accordance with mine, has sanctioned. I will do more, and, in concert with the queen, who shares all my sentiments, I will early adapt the mind and heart of my son to the new order of things which circumstances have brought about. I will accustom him from his very first years to seek happiness in the happiness of the French, and ever to acknowledge that, in spite of the language of flatterers, a wise constitution will preserve him from the dangers of inexperience, and that a just liberty adds a new value to the sentiments of affection and loyalty of which the nation has, for so many ages, given such touching proofs to its kings."

These noble words, which were uttered with as much sincerity as a weak and vacillating mind was capable of cherishing, were received with the most enthusiastic expressions of pleasure and gratitude. Thunders of applause filled the house, in which the galleries tumultuously joined. All past jealousies seemed forgotten forever, and the queen and the dauphin shared in the transporting acclaim. The multitude, with shouts of applause, conducted the king back to the Tuileries, while the Assembly voted thanks to him and to the queen.

The king had thus publicly accepted the Constitution even before it was completed, and promised to support it. Each deputy took the oath to uphold the "Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king." The example was contagious, and the oath was repeated, with festivities and illuminations, in every district of Paris, and through all the cities and villages of France.

Thus far the reforms adopted had been, on the whole, most eminently wise, and such as the welfare of the nation imperiously demanded. Had the privileged classes acceded, as they ought to have done, to these measures of justice, and contributed their influence in favor of law and order, all might have been well, and the Iliad of woes which succeeded might never have been known. But the nobles and the higher clergy did every thing in their power to stimulate the mob to violence, to fill France with lawlessness and blood, that they might more effectually appeal to religious fanaticism at home and to despotism abroad to forge chains and rivet them anew upon the enfranchised people.

Every effort was now made to combine the clergy against the Revolution--to rouse the ignorant and superstitious masses with the cry that religion was in danger, and to march the armies of surrounding monarchies in a war of invasion upon France. The nobles of the Church and the State were responsible for that terrific outburst of the mob, which might easily have been repressed if they would have united with the true patriots in favor of liberty and of law.[252]

In many of the rural districts the priests roused the fanatic populace to forcible resistance. Many of the priests had been in a condition of almost compulsory subservience to the higher clergy. Trained to obedience as the primal law of the Church, they combined their efforts with those of the exasperated nobility, and thus, in several of the remote sections of France, mobs were instigated against the Revolution. Here commenced the conflict between the people and the clergy. Pure democracy and true Christianity meet and embrace. They have but one spirit--fraternity, charity. Despotism and ecclesiasticism are also natural congenial allies. The pope and the king, the cardinal and the duke, all over Europe became accomplices.

The Assembly, with much delicacy, invited the king himself to fix the income necessary for the suitable support of the crown. He fixed it at twenty-five millions of francs ($5,000,000). This enormous salary, two hundred times as much as the President of the United States receives, was instantly voted by acclamation. There were but four votes in opposition. Nothing can more conclusively show than this the kindly feelings of the people toward the monarch, and the then desire merely to ingraft the institutions of liberty upon the monarchy.

The Revolution had humanely extended its helping hand to all the debased and defrauded classes, to the Protestants, the Jews, the negroes, the slaves, the play-actors. The relentless proscription of play-actors is one of the most remarkable of the contradictions and outrages of the old régime. They were doubtless a very worthless set of men and women; but that the Church should have refused them either marriage or burial is indeed extraordinary. "Oh, barbarous prejudices!" exclaimed Michelet. "The two first men of England and France, the author of Othello and of Tartufe, were they not comedians?"

Notwithstanding the general decree of democratic enfranchisement pronounced by the Assembly, the world-renowned Talma, having applied to the Church for the rite of marriage, which the Church alone could solemnize, met with a peremptory refusal. He sent the following characteristic petition to the National Assembly:

"I implore the succor of the constitutional law, and claim the rights of a citizen, from which rights the Constitution does not exclude me because I am a member of the theatrical profession. I have chosen a companion to whom I wish to be united by the ties of marriage. My father has given his consent. I have called upon the curé of St. Sulpice for the publication of the banns. After a first refusal I have served upon him a judicial summons. He replies to the sheriff that he has referred the matter to his ecclesiastical superiors, and is instructed by them that the Church refuses to perform the rites of marriage for a play-actor unless he first renounces that profession. I can, it is true, renounce my profession, be married, and resume my profession again the next day. But I do not wish to show myself unworthy of that religion which they invoke against me, and unworthy of the Constitution in thus accusing your decrees of error and your laws of powerlessness."[253]

It was in such ways as these that the Romish Church began to throw every possible obstacle in the way of liberty, and to exasperate the people, rejoicing in their new enfranchisement.

It was a long stride which Napoleon took when he subsequently conferred the Cross of the Legion of Honor upon an illustrious tragedian. "My object," says Napoleon, "was to destroy the whole of the feudal system as organized by Charlemagne. I sought for true merit among all ranks of the great mass of French people, and was anxious to organize a true and general system of equality. I was desirous that every Frenchman should be admissible to all the employments and dignities of the state, provided he was possessed of talents and character equal to the performance of the duties, whatever might be his family. In a word, I was eager to abolish to the last trace the privileges of the ancient nobility, and to establish a government which, at the same time that it held the reins of government with a firm hand, should still be a popular government. The oligarchs of every country in Europe soon perceived my design, and it was for this reason that war to the death was carried on against me by England. The noble families of London, as well as those of Vienna, think themselves prescriptively entitled to the occupation of all the important offices in the state. Their birth is regarded by them as a substitute for talents and capacities."

Soon after Napoleon's attainment of the consulship he restored to France the Christian religion, which revolutionary fury had swept away. In consistency with his unvarying principles, he established perfect freedom of opinion and of worship. Some of the reinstated priests began to assume much of their former arrogance. A celebrated actress died in Paris. A priest, adopting the intolerance of the old régime, refused her remains Christian burial. Napoleon caused the following article to be inserted the next day in the Moniteur, expressive of his emphatic denunciation:

"The curate of St. Roche, in a moment of hallucination, has refused the rites of burial to Mademoiselle Cameroi. One of his colleagues, a man of sense, received the procession into the church of St. Thomas, where the burial service was performed with the usual solemnities. The Archbishop of Paris has suspended the curate of St. Roche for three months, to give him time to recollect that Jesus Christ commanded us to pray even for our enemies. Being thus called by meditation to a proper sense of his duties, he may learn that all these superstitious observances, the offspring of an age of credulity or of crazed imaginations, tend only to the discredit of true religion, and have been proscribed by the recent Concordat of the French Church."

The trial of Marquis Favrus was continued. On the 18th of February he was adjudged guilty of plotting the crime of assassinating Bailly and La Fayette, of seizing and abducting the king, and of exciting insurrection and civil war. He was sentenced to be taken by the executioner to the principal door of the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, in a tumbrel, barefooted, bareheaded, and dressed simply in his night-robe, with a rope round his neck, a blazing torch in his hands, and with a label on his breast and back inscribed with the words "Conspirator against the State." After having on his knees asked pardon of God, the nation, the king, and justice, he was to read aloud his own death-warrant, and then to be taken to the Place de Grève and hanged. This cruel sentence was immediately executed, the court, conscious of its powerlessness, making no attempts to save him.

This was the first time that a nobleman had been hanged, and the mob, deeming him an infamous conspirator against the rights of the people, rejoiced in his execution. They witnessed with delight this indication that the reign of equality had really commenced; that the sword of retribution would hereafter fall as surely upon the head of the high-born as upon that of the low-born offender.

It was now nearly a year since the fall of the Bastille, and France, even in the midst of famine, and almost starvation, had passed from the reign of the most execrable despotism to the reign of constitutional liberty. Never before had so vast a revolution been effected so peaceably. The enslaved people had broken and thrown away their fetters, and were enfranchised. Instead of falling upon their past oppressors in indiscriminate massacre, they had spared them, wresting from them only the exclusive privileges of tyranny. The Assembly sought only constitutional liberty and peace with all the world. The decrees enacted by the Constituent Assembly were essentially the same with those adopted by republican America.

Free principles had been infused into the government; lettres de cachet, the most infamous instruments of oppression the world has ever known, abolished; feudal impediments and oppressions of every kind removed; the right of suffrage established and made almost universal; the offices of honor and emolument in the state thrown open to merit, with but the slightest limitations; religious liberty proclaimed, the Protestant, the Jew, the negro, and the play-actor enfranchised; law made uniform, criminal jurisprudence reformed, monasteries, those haunts of indolence and vice, abolished, and the military force of the country intrusted to the citizens of the country. Such a transformation from the slavery, corruption, and horror of the old régime was translation from the dungeon to the blaze of day. All this was done almost without violence. The court here and there shot down a few hundred, some chateaux were burned, and there were a few acts of mob violence; but that a nation of twenty millions of people should have been able to accomplish so vast a change so bloodlessly must ever be a marvel.

But the armies of aristocratic opposition were gathering to crush this liberty, which threatened to spread to other states. Despotic Europe combined, and with all her accumulated armies fell upon the people of France. The recently emancipated people fought to protect themselves from new chains with all the blind fury and ferocity of despair. Then ensued scenes of blood and woes which appalled the world.[254]

The French people, unconscious of the terrific storm which was gathering, prepared for a great national jubilee. It was to be held on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. All France was to be represented at the festival. The Field of Mars, a vast parade-ground in Paris, a mile in length and half a mile in width, extending from the military school to the banks of the Seine, was the selected theatre for this national festivity. The centre was made smooth as a floor, and the removed earth was placed on the sides so as to create slopes in the form of an amphitheatre capable of accommodating nearly half a million of spectators. But so immense was the work to be performed, that at length apprehensions were felt that the field could not be in readiness in season for the appointed fête. No sooner was this idea suggested than all Paris, in a flame of enthusiasm, volunteered to aid in the toil.

A more extraordinary scene of enthusiasm earth has never witnessed. All heads and hearts were electrified. Men, women, and children, of all ages and ranks, spread over the field and shared in the toil. The Carthusian monk and the skeptical philosopher, the hooded nun and the brawny fish-woman, merchants, lawyers, students, scholars, gray-haired patriots, and impetuous boys, matrons and maidens, delicate ladies and the rugged daughters of toil, blended harmoniously together in immense groups, ever varied, incessantly moving, yet guided by engineers with almost military order and precision. Moving tents and portable restaurants, decorated with tricolored ribbons, added to the gayety of the spectacle. Trumpets sounded the charge against banks of earth, and willing hands wielded energetically all the potent enginery of wheel-barrows, hoes, and spades. Bands of music animated and enlivened the scene, blended with shouts of joy and songs of fraternal sympathy. Three hundred thousand persons were thus seen at once laboring upon this spacious arena to rear an altar for the great sacrament of French liberty. It was a work of love. The long twilight allowed them to labor until the clock struck nine. Then the groups separated. Each individual repaired to the station of his section, and marched in procession, accompanied by triumphal music and with the illumination of torches, to his home. Even the Marquis of Ferrières, inveterate Royalist as he was, can not withhold his tribute of admiration in view of this astonishing drama. "The mind felt sinking," says he, "under the weight of a delicious intoxication at the sight of a whole people who had descended again to the sweet sentiments of a primitive fraternity."

The field was thus prepared, and the long-expected day arrived. Numerous delegates from all the eighty-three departments of France had come up to Paris to share in the celebration of the nation's enfranchisement. The morning of the 14th dawned dark and stormy. Heavy clouds curtained the sky and the rain fell in torrents. Regardless of the unpropitious weather, at an early hour four hundred thousand spectators had taken their seats in the vast amphitheatre three miles in circuit.

The delegates, twenty thousand in number, ranged beneath eighty-three banners, emblematic of the departments of France, formed in line on the site of the demolished Bastille, and, with a very magnificent array of troops of the line, sailors of the royal navy, and the National Guard, marched through the thronged and garlanded streets of St. Martin, St. Denis, and St. Honoré, and by the Cours la Reine to a bridge of boats constructed across the river. All the way they were greeted with acclamations, and the ladies regaled them sumptuously by letting down in baskets from the windows wine, ham, and fruits. The country members shouted "Long live our Parisian brothers!" and the Parisians responded with accordant greetings and with exuberant hospitality and loving-kindness.

To the patriot La Fayette this was an hour of inexpressible triumph. As he rode along the lines on a noble charger he was every where greeted with shouts of heartfelt affection. A man whom nobody knew pressed through the crowd, and, approaching the general, with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, said,

"General, you are hot. Take a glass."

Raising the bottle he filled the tumbler and presented it to La Fayette. The marquis took the glass, fixed his eye for a moment upon the stranger, and drank the wine at a draught. This confidence of La Fayette in the multitude gave rise to a burst of applause.[255]

Just as the procession had entered the field, and the shouts of the congregated thousands were ringing through the air, the rain ceased to fall, the clouds broke, and the sun came out in glorious brilliance. The spectacle now assumed an aspect of unparalleled sublimity. Near the centre of the field there was constructed an immense altar of imposing and antique architecture, upon whose spacious platform, twenty-five feet high, three hundred priests were assembled, in white surplices and broad tricolored sashes. Near this altar a majestic throne was reared, where the king sat, the acknowledged sovereign of France, attended by the queen, the court, and all the deputies of that Constituent Assembly which had conferred the inestimable boon of a free constitution upon France.

An awning, decorated with golden fleurs de lis, embellished and protected the throne. Fifty thousand of the National Guard, in new and brilliant uniform, with waving banners, martial bands, glittering arms, and richly-caparisoned horses, filled the spaces around the altar and the throne. Then four hundred thousand spectators crowded the ascending seats which, in thirty concentric rows, encircled this vast inclosure. Every house-top and steeple in the vicinity swarmed with the rejoicing multitude; and even the distant heights of Montmartre, St. Cloud, Meudon, and Sevres, seemed alive with the masses assembled to witness the magnificent spectacle. Tear-drops from the passing storm, pendent from the leaves, and trembling on every blade of grass, glittered in the sun, as if betokening that the day of darkness and sorrow had passed, and that light had dawned, in which tears were to be dried from every eye.

All hearts thrilled with emotion. Mass was performed, and the oriflamme, the national banner of France, and the banners of the eighty-three departments, were blessed by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun. Gratitude to God was then expressed in the majestic Te Deum, chanted by twelve hundred musicians. A peal of thunder from the assembled cannon uttered the national Amen to these solemn services.

La Fayette, as the representative of the military forces of the kingdom, both by land and sea, now ascended the altar, and, in the presence of more than half a million of spectators, in behalf of the army and of the navy, took the oath of allegiance. Breathless silence pervaded the assembly, and every eye was riveted upon this patriot of two continents, while he uttered the solemn words,

"We swear eternal fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king; to maintain, to the utmost of our power, the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by the king, and to remain united with every Frenchman by the indissoluble ties of fraternity."

When he closed, every banner waved, every sabre gleamed, and sixty thousand voices shouted, as with thunder peal, "We swear it!"

The president of the National Assembly then repeated the oath, and all the deputies and the four hundred thousand spectators responded, "We swear it."

The king then rose in front of his throne. In a loud, distinct voice, which seemed to vibrate through the still air to the remotest part of the vast and thronged amphitheatre, he repeated the solemn oath,

"I, King of the French, swear to the nation to employ all the powers delegated to me by the constitutional law of the state in maintaining the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by me."

A more sublime moment never occurred in a nation's history. Every heart throbbed, and thousands of eyes were dimmed with tears. Even the queen was roused by the enthusiasm of the scene. Inspired by the impulse which glowed in every bosom, she rose, stepped forward into the presence of the people, and, raising her beautiful boy, the little dauphin, in her arms, said, in a loud voice,

"See my son! he joins, as well as myself, in the same oath."

Every eye beheld the act, and the words she uttered were repeated with electric speed along the lines. Enthusiasm burst all bounds. The spectators rose from their seats, and the air was filled with the roar of five hundred thousand voices, as every man, woman, and child shouted, "Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! Vive le Dauphin!" The crowds on Montmartre, St. Cloud, Sevres, and Meudon caught the shout, and re-echoed it in tumultuous reverberations. And then came another peal still louder, as battery after battery of artillery, on the field, on the bridges, in the streets, and on the heights, simultaneously mingled their majestic voices with the clash of martial bands and the acclaim of regenerated France.

God seemed to smile upon this jubilee of his enfranchised children. The clouds had all disappeared. The sun shone brilliantly, and the Majesty of heaven apparently condescended to take a prominent part in the ceremonies of the eventful day. In conclusion, the Te Deum was again chanted by the vast choir, and the deep-voiced cannon proclaimed "Peace to the nation and praise to the Lord."

At the same hour all France, assembled in the eighty-three departments, took the same oath of fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king. Discord seemed to have passed away. No murmurs were heard. No man raised a voice of opposition. The general tide of rejoicing swept resistlessly over the land. From mountain to mountain the roar of cannon transmitted the tidings, from valley to valley chimes from the church bells caught and re-echoed the joyful sound, and from central Paris to the ocean, to the Rhine, to the Alps, and to the Pyrenees, twenty-four millions of people in one hour raised the shout of emancipation. Such a shout never before or since has ascended from earth to the ear of God.

For a week these rejoicings were continued in Paris. The Field of Mars was converted into an immense ball-room, where thousands listened to enchanting music, and with the overflowings of fraternal love engaged in feasting, dancing, and all manner of games. At night the city blazed with illuminations, and the flame of fireworks turned darkness into day. The trees of the Elysian Fields were festooned with brilliant lamps, shedding a mild light upon the most attractive of scenes. There was no intoxication, no tumult, no confusion. All classes intermingled, with kind words on every lip and kind looks beaming from every face. No carriages were permitted to enter these avenues, that the rich and the poor might share the festivities alike. Pyramids of fire were placed at intervals in the midst of the mass of foliage. The white dresses of the ladies who were sauntering through those umbrageous alleys, the music, the dances, the games, the shouts of laughter, led almost every one to the delusive hope that the old world of care and sorrow had vanished to give place to a new era of universal love and joy.[256]

The site of the Bastille was converted into an open square, and at the entrance of the inclosure was an inscription "Ici l'on danse" (Dancing here). For centuries the groans of the captive had resounded through the vaults of that odious prison. The groans had now ceased, and happy hearts throbbed with the excitement of the song and the dance.

La Fayette gave a splendid review of the National Guard. The king, the queen, and the dauphin attended the review, and were warmly greeted by the people. The queen assumed the attitude of reconciliation, and graciously presented her hand to the delegates to kiss.

The delegates from the departments, before they left Paris, went in a body to present their homage to the king. With one voice they expressed to him their respect, gratitude, and affection. The chief of the Bretons dropped on his knee and presented to the monarch his sword.

"Sire," said he, "I deliver to you, pure and sacred, the sword of the faithful Bretons. It shall never be stained but with the blood of your enemies."

The heart of the kind-hearted king was touched. He returned the sword, and, throwing his arms around the neck of the chief of the Bretons, said, in tones broken with emotion,

"That sword can not be in better hands than those of my dear Bretons. I have never doubted their fidelity and affection. Assure them that I am the father, the brother, the friend of all the French."

For a moment there was silence, and all alike were moved by the affecting scene. The chief of the Bretons then rejoined,

"Sire, all the French, if I may judge from our hearts, love and will love you because you are a citizen-king."

Many of the most influential men in England contemplated with admiration this immense reform, in which, to use the language of Professor William Smyth, one of the most candid of English writers, "the Constituent Assembly was supposed to have freed the country from temporal and spiritual thraldom; the government had been rested on free principles; the Bastille had been destroyed, lettres de cachet abolished, feudal impediments and oppressions of every kind removed, religious liberty established, the system of law made uniform, the criminal jurisprudence reformed, monasteries abolished; and by making the military force consist of the citizens of the country, freedom, and all those new and weighty advantages, seemed to be forever secured from the machinations of arbitrary power."

The aristocracy, however, of England and Europe were struck with alarm. The emancipation of the people in France threatened their emancipation throughout the civilized world. Edmund Burke espoused the cause of the aristocracy. With eloquence quite unparalleled he roused England and Europe to war. In view of his fierce invectives Michelet exclaims, in language which will yet be pronounced by the world as not too severe,

"Mr. Pitt, feeling sure of the European alliance, did not hesitate to say in open parliament that he approved of every word of Burke's diatribe against the Revolution and against France--an infamous book, full of calumny, scurrilous abuse, and insulting buffoonery; in which the author compares the French to galley-slaves breaking their chains, treads under foot the declaration of the rights of man, tears it in pieces and spits upon it. Oh! what a cruel, painful discovery. Those whom we thought our friends are our most bitter enemies."[257]

Thirty thousand copies of Burke's memorable "Reflections" were sold almost in a day. The sovereigns of Europe were so highly elated that they transmitted to him their thanks. The nobles and the higher clergy of France wrote to him letters of acknowledgment, and the nobility of England lavished upon him their applause. These "Reflections" combined aristocratic Europe against popular rights, and the people had no resource left them but to defend their liberties with the sword.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 251: For the speech in full, see Thiers, vol. i., p. 126.]

[Footnote 252: M. Fromont, in his memoirs entitled "Recueil de divers Ecrits relatifs à la Revolution," very frankly writes, "I repaired secretly to Turin (January, 1790), to the French princes, to solicit their approbation and their support. In a council which was held on my arrival, I demonstrated to them that, if they would arm the partisans of the altar and of the throne, and make the interests of religion go hand in hand with those of royalty, it would save both. The real argument of the revolutionists being force, I felt that the real answer was force. Then, as at present, I was convinced of this great truth--that religious zeal alone can stifle the Republican mania.

"In consequence of this dread (of the new order of things), they secretly set at work the most efficacious means for ruining the internal resources and for thwarting the proposed plans, several of which were calculated to effect the re-establishment of order, if they had been wisely directed and supported."]

[Footnote 253: "There is no country in the world," says Voltaire, "where there are so many contradictions as in France. The king gives the actors wages, and the curé excommunicates them."]

[Footnote 254: "The whole of Europe--on the one hand Austria and Russia, on the other England and Prussia--were gradually gravitating toward the selfsame thought, the hatred of the Revolution. However, there was this difference, that liberal England and philosophical Prussia needed a little time in order to pass from one pole to the other--to prevail upon themselves to give themselves the lie, to abjure and disown their principles, and avow that they were the enemies of liberty."--Michelet, p. 327.]

[Footnote 255: Memoirs of the Marquis of Ferrières.]

[Footnote 256: No one familiar with the writings of that day will affirm that this description is too highly drawn. Upon this point Patriots and Royalists agree. See Ferrières, t. ii., p. 89, on the part of the Royalists, and Alphonse Esquiros, p. 38, on the part of the Revolutionists.]

[Footnote 257: Michelet's French Revolution, p. 415.]

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XX. FLIGHT OF THE KING

Riot at Nancy.--Prosecution of Mirabeau.--Issue of Assignats.--Mirabeau's Interview with the Queen.--Four political Parties.--Bishops refuse to take the Oath to the Constitution.--Character of the Emigrants.--The King's Aunts attempt to leave France.--Debates upon Emigration.--Embarrassment of the Assembly.--Death of Mirabeau.--His Funeral.--The King prevented from visiting St. Cloud.--Duplicity of the King.--Conference of the Allies.--Their Plan of Invasion.--Measures for the Escape of the King.--The Flight.

The grand gala days, in the Field of Mars, celebrating the formation of the Constitution, soon passed. The twenty thousand delegates, having been fêted even to satiety, returned to their homes; the Constituent Assembly resumed its labors.[258] The cares and toils of life again pressed heavily upon the tax-exhausted and impoverished millions of France.

The Belgians, in imitation of France, had commenced a struggle for freedom. The King of France permitted Austria to send her troops across the French territory into Belgium to crush the patriots. Many of the most influential of the opponents of the Revolution were still leaving France and uniting with the armed emigrants on the frontiers. England, Austria, Sardinia, and Prussia were manifestly forming an alliance to punish the French patriots, and to restore the tyranny of the execrable old régime. The court, emboldened by these proceedings, were boasting of the swift destruction which was to overwhelm the advocates of reform, and commenced a prosecution of Mirabeau, the Duke of Orleans, and others of the popular party, for instigating the movement of the 5th and 6th of October, when the royal family were taken from Versailles to Paris. These movements created much alarm, and even the royal troops at Metz and Nancy, who were mostly composed of Swiss and Germans, fraternized with the populace.

A new issue of eight hundred millions of bonds or assignats was decreed, which quite abundantly replenished the treasury. There was never a paper currency created upon so valuable a pledge, or sustained by security more ample and undoubted. The assignats represented the whole public domain, and could at any time be exchanged for the most valuable landed property. Still, Talleyrand with singular precision predicted the confusion which eventually resulted from these issues.

In the majestic march of events, Necker had for some time been passing into oblivion. The king had been forced to recall him. Hated by the court, neglected by the Assembly, forgotten by the people, he soon found his situation insupportable, and, sending in his resignation, retired to Switzerland, from which safe retreat he watched the terrific gatherings of the revolutionary storm.

Civil war was sure to break out the moment the court could obtain possession of the person of the king. The pliant nature of the monarch would immediately yield to the influences which surrounded him, and the court, under such circumstances, could find no difficulty in inducing him to sanction any acts of violence to regain their power. But while the king was in Paris, in the hands of the Assembly, he would sanction the decrees of the Assembly, and thus the aristocrats could not wage war against the patriots without at the same time waging war against the king. Foreign monarchies could not be induced to take this step. Thus the retention of the king was peace; his escape, civil war. The court were plotting innumerable plans to effect his escape. La Fayette, at the head of the National Guard, was fully awake to the responsibility of guarding him with the utmost vigilance. The king was apparently left at perfect liberty, but he was continually watched. The queen was exceedingly anxious for flight. The king was ever vacillating, but generally, influenced by such advisers as Mirabeau and La Fayette, inclined to accept the Revolution. He was also haunted with the idea that his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, wished to frighten him into flight, that the Assembly might declare the throne vacant, and place the sceptre in the duke's hand as the sworn friend and supporter of the Revolution.

Mirabeau had commenced his career as one of the most ardent advocates of reform, but he now wished to arrest the progress of the revolutionary chariot, as he affirmed that it had passed beyond its proper goal. His course was attributed by some to bribery on the part of the court. His friends say that he was only influenced by his own patriotic intelligence. At St. Cloud there is a retired summer-house, embowered in foliage, at the summit of a hill which crowns the highest part of the park. The queen appointed an interview with Mirabeau at this secluded spot.

The statesman of gigantic genius, who seemed to hold in his hand the destinies of France, left Paris on horseback one evening, under pretense of visiting a friend. Avoiding observation, he turned aside into a by-path until he reached a back gate of the park. Here he was met in the dark by a nobleman, who conducted him to the retreat of the queen, who was waiting to receive him. His constitution was already undermined by dissipation and unintermitted labors. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes inflamed, his complexion sallow, and a flabby corpulency announced the ravages of disease; but, notwithstanding all these defects, his genial spirit and courtly bearing made him one of the most fascinating of men.[259]

The queen was then thirty-five years of age. Care and grief had sadly marred her marvelous beauty. Her proud spirit was chagrined in being compelled to look for support to one of the leaders of the people. But little is known respecting what passed at this private interview. At its close Mirabeau said to the queen,

"Madam, when your august mother admitted one of her subjects to the honor of her presence, she never dismissed him without allowing him to kiss her hand."

The queen, responding to the gallantry, graciously presented her hand. Mirabeau, bowing profoundly, kissed it, and then, raising his head, said proudly,

"Madam, the monarchy is saved."[260]

Suddenly Mirabeau became rich, set up a carriage, furnished his house sumptuously, and gave magnificent entertainments. He immediately commenced a course of cautious but vigorous measures to overthrow the Constitution and establish one less democratic, which should give more stability and efficiency to the royal power. He affirmed that this was essential to the peace and prosperity of France, and that, instead of being bought over by the court, he had bought the court over to his views.

"But suppose the court refuses," said one of his friends, "to adopt your plans?"

"They have promised me every thing," Mirabeau replied.

"But suppose they should not keep their word?" it was rejoined.

"Then," said Mirabeau, "I will overthrow the throne and establish a republic."

It can hardly be denied that the Constitution was too democratic for a monarchy and hardly democratic enough for a republic. In the natural course of events public opinion would sway either to strengthening the throne or to diminish still more its prerogatives. There were now four parties in France. The first consisted of the old aristocratic classes of the clergy and the nobles, now mostly emigrants, and busy in effecting a coalition of surrounding monarchies to quell the Revolution, and by fire and sword to reinstate the rejected despotism of the Bourbons.

The second class was composed of the king and Mirabeau, with the queen reluctantly assenting to its principles, and others of the nobles and priests who were disposed, some from choice and others from the consciousness of necessity, partially to accept the Revolution. They were willing to adopt a constitution which should seriously limit the old prerogatives of the crown. But they wished to repudiate the constitution now adopted, and to form one less democratic, which would still grant many prerogatives to the king.

The third party consisted of the great majority of the Assembly, headed by sincere and guileless patriots like La Fayette, and sustained probably by the great majority of the purest and best men in the kingdom, who were in favor of the constitution which the nation had accepted. While they did not regard it as perfect, they felt that it was a noble advance in the right direction, and that the salvation of the liberties of France now depended upon allegiance to this constitution.

There was a fourth class, restless, tumultuous, uninformed, composed of the lowest portion of the populace, who could ever be roused to phrensy by the cry of "Aristocracy," who were ripe for any deeds of violence, and who regarded that firmness of law which protected order, property, and life as tyranny. They occupied the lowest possible platform of democracy.

Such was the condition of France as the Constituent Assembly now endeavored to consolidate the new institutions and to bring harmony from the chaos into which the nation had been plunged. While in these circumstances of unparalleled peril, combined Europe was watching for an opportunity to pounce upon the distracted nation.

All public functionaries were required to take oath to the new constitution. The clergy, as bound by the laws of the Romish Church, appealed to the Pope for instructions. At the same time the opposing bishops and nobles wrote to the Pope urging him to withhold his assent.[261] The king had sanctioned the decrees. The Pope, under various pretexts, postponed an answer. Many of the bishops and curates consequently refused to take the oath. The Assembly was not disposed to wait for the decision of a foreign potentate, and, accepting those bishops and curates who took the oath, immediately nominated new bishops and curates to take the place of those who refused. Justly and frankly the Assembly declared that it wished to do no violence to conscience, but that it could not appoint as public functionaries those men who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the kingdom. This increased exasperation, and enabled many of the bishops to appeal to the fanatic populace to rise in defense of the endangered Church.

The emigrants now made a general rendezvous at Coblentz, in the territory of the Elector of Treves, and at other points of the frontier.[262] These men, composing what was called the court, consisted mainly of the higher nobles who had long been pampered with the favors of the monarchy, and who looked with contempt upon the nobles of the rural districts. Haughty, dissolute, and frivolous, they scorned any appeal to the popular arm, even to popular fanaticism for support. The only recourse to which they would condescend were the armies of England, Austria, and Prussia. The rural nobles, on the other hand, and the rural bishops, were secretly organizing their friends within the kingdom to fall fiercely in civil war upon the patriots so soon as the solid battalions of the allies should cross the frontiers.[263]

In this state of things the king's aunts decided to leave France. They had proceeded in their carriage on the way to Rome as far as Arnay-le-Duc, when they were arrested. The feverish state of the public mind led to suspicions that their emigration might accelerate impending perils. The Assembly took the matter into deliberation whether the ladies should be permitted to depart. The question was settled by a keen sally of Menou.

"All Europe," said he, "will be astonished to learn that a great Assembly has spent several days in deciding whether two old ladies shall hear mass at Paris or at Rome."

The worthy ladies continued the journey without interruption. The king's next elder brother, usually called Monsieur, subsequently Louis XVIII., remained with the king in Paris. The next brother, however, the Count d'Artois, subsequently Charles X., was actively participating with the emigrants at Coblentz. The very difficult question respecting emigration was now brought forward in the Assembly. It seemed to be a gross act of tyranny to prohibit French citizens from withdrawing from or entering France at their pleasure. On the other hand the enemies of regenerated France were daily leaving the kingdom with all the resources they could collect; and from the frontier, where they were plotting foreign and civil war, they were continually entering the kingdom to make preparations for the invasion.

Mirabeau, who was at this time conspiring for the escape of the king, with his accustomed vehemence and his overpowering audacity, opposed any law against emigration.[264]

"I admit," said he, "that a bad use is made of this liberty at the present moment. But that by no means authorizes this absurd tyranny. I beg you to remember that I have all my life combated against tyranny, and that I will combat it wherever I find it. That popularity to which I have aspired, and which I have enjoyed, is not a feeble reed. I will thrust it deep into the earth, and will make it shoot up in the soil of justice and of reason. And I now solemnly swear, if a law against emigration is voted, I swear to disobey you."[265]

The Assembly was truly in a dilemma. They could not prohibit emigration without grossly violating that declaration of rights which they had just adopted with solemnities which had arrested the attention of the world. They could not permit this flood of emigration without exposing France to ruin; for it was well known that the nobles, with all the wealth they could accumulate, were crossing the frontiers merely to organize themselves into armies for the invasion of France.

Mirabeau never displayed more power than on this occasion, in overawing and commanding the Assembly. He succeeded in arresting the measure. This, however, was his last triumph. Disease was making rapid ravages, his frame was exhausted, and death approached. A sudden attack of colic confined him to his chamber, and soon all hope of recovery was relinquished. He was still the idol of the people, and crowds, in breathless silence, thronged around his abode, anxious to receive bulletins of his health. The king and the people alike mourned, for both were leaning upon that vigorous arm.

He could not repress an expression of satisfaction in view of his labors and his accomplishments. To his servants he said, "Support this head, the greatest in France." "William Pitt," he remarked, "is the minister of preparations. He governs with threats. I would give him some trouble if I should live."[266] On the morning of his death he said to an attendant,

"Open the window. I shall die to-day. All that can now be done is to envelop one's self in perfumes, to crown one's self with flowers, to surround one's self with music, that one may sink quietly into everlasting sleep."

Soon, in a paroxysm of extreme agony, he called for opium, saying, "You promised to save me from needless suffering."

To quiet him a cup was presented, and he was deceived with the assurance that it contained the desired fatal opiate. He swallowed the draught, and in a moment expired, in the forty-second year of his age. It was the 2d of April, 1791. His death caused profound grief. All parties vied alike in conferring honor upon his remains. The nation went into mourning, a magnificent funeral was arranged, and the body was deposited in the tomb with pomp surpassing that which had accompanied the burial of the ancient kings of France. Suspicions are still cherished that Mirabeau died the victim of poison.[267]

The funeral of Mirabeau was the most imposing, popular, and extensive of any recorded in history, always excepting that unparalleled display of a nation's gratitude and grief which accompanied the transfer of the remains of Napoleon from St. Helena to the Invalides. It is estimated that four hundred thousand men took a part in the funeral pageant of Mirabeau. The streets were draped in mourning, and pavements, windows, balconies, and house-tops were thronged with sad and silent spectators.

La Fayette headed the immense procession, and was followed by the whole Constituent Assembly, and by the whole club of Jacobins, who, in a dense mass, assumed to be chief mourners on the occasion, though Mirabeau had for some time held himself aloof from their tumultuous meetings. It was eight o'clock in the evening before the procession arrived at the Church of Saint Eustache, where a funeral oration was pronounced by Cérutti. The arms of twenty thousand of the National Guard were then discharged at once. The crash caused the very walls of the church to rock, shivering to atoms every pane of glass.

It was now night, and, by the light of a hundred thousand torches, the procession resumed its course. New instruments of music had been invented, which were then heard for the first time--the trombone and the tamtam. As the vast procession traversed the streets through the gloomy shades of night, illumined by the glare of flickering torches, with the tolling of bells, blending, now with the wail of the chant and now with the pealing requiems of martial bands, all the elements of sublimity seemed combined to affect the heart and overawe the soul. It was near midnight when the sarcophagus was deposited in its tomb at the Church of Saint Geneviève, over whose portal was inscribed these words,

"AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE."

Mirabeau was the master-spirit of the Revolution. After his death there were multitudes struggling for the leadership, with no man of sufficient prominence to attain and retain it. The funeral of Mirabeau was the funeral of emancipated France. From that hour the Revolution was on the rush to ruin.

"Time," writes Michelet, "which reveals every thing, has revealed nothing that really proves the reproach of treason to be well founded. Mirabeau's real transaction was an error, a serious, fatal error, but one that was then shared by all in different degrees. At that time all men, of every party, from Cazalès and Maury down to Robespierre, and even to Marat, believed France to entertain Royalist opinions. All men wanted a king. The number of Republicans was truly imperceptible. Mirabeau believed that it was necessary to have a king with power, or no king at all. It is true that Mirabeau appears to have received sums to defray the expense of his immense correspondence with the Departments--a sort of ministry that he was organizing at his own house. He makes use of this subtle expression--this excuse which does not excuse him--that he had not been bought; that he was paid, not sold."[268]

The death of Mirabeau seemed to paralyze the hopes of the king, and he now resolved to spare no endeavors to secure his escape. On the 18th of April the king took his carriage at Versailles, intending to ride to St. Cloud. A rumor spread through the city that he was contemplating flight. The populace collected and stopped the horses. La Fayette immediately hastened to the spot with a company of the guards, dispersed the mob, who offered no other violence than to obstruct the departure of the king, and cleared a passage. The king, however, who now wished to have it appear that he was held a prisoner, as most certainly he virtually was, refused to go, and returned indignantly into the palace.

By the advice of his ministers he repaired to the Assembly, and complained warmly of the insult he had encountered. The king was received with the utmost kindness by the Assembly, cordially greeted, and was assured that every thing should be done to prevent the possible occurrence of another similar outrage.

To disarm suspicion and appease the public mind the king, on the 23d of April, sent a letter to the foreign embassadors declaring that he had no intention of leaving France, that he was resolved to be faithful to the oath which he had taken to the Constitution, and that all those who intimated any thing to the contrary were his enemies and the enemies of the country. He soon after, however, declared to an envoy sent to him from the Emperor Leopold, that this letter by no means contained his real sentiments, but that it was wrung from him by the peril of his situation.[269]

A conference of the foreign powers was held on the 20th of May, 1791, at Mantua, in Italy, where Leopold, Emperor of Austria, and brother of Marie Antoinette, then chanced to be. At this conference Count d'Artois appeared in behalf of the emigrants. Prussia was represented by Major Bischofverder, England by Lord Elgin, and Louis XVI. by the Count de Durfort. Several other of the kingdoms and principalities of Europe were represented on the occasion. The Count de Durfort returned from this conference to Louis XVI. in Paris, and brought him the following secret declaration in the name of the Emperor Leopold:[270]

Austria engaged to assemble thirty-five thousand men on the frontiers of Flanders. At the same time fifteen thousand men from the smaller German States would attack Alsace. Fifteen thousand Swiss troops were to be marched on Lyons, and the King of Sardinia, whose daughter the Count d'Artois had married, was to assail Dauphiné. The king of Spain, cousin of Louis XVI., was to gather twenty thousand troops upon the slopes of the Pyrenees, to fall like an avalanche down upon southern France. Prussia engaged to co-operate cordially. The King of England, notwithstanding the eloquence of Burke's pamphlet, could not yet venture to call upon the liberty-loving English to engage in this infamous crusade against the independence and the liberty of a sister kingdom. But the king, as Elector of Hanover, engaged to take an active part in the war. A protest against the Revolution was to be drawn up in the name of the whole house of Bourbon, whose divine right to despotism in France had been questioned by the French people, and this protest was to be signed by those branches of the Bourbons who were occupying the thrones of Spain, Naples, and Parma.[271]

Plans for the invasion having been thus arranged, Louis XVI. resolved immediately to effect his escape to the frontier. He could then place himself at the head of these foreign armies, and lash France into obedience, and consign those patriots who had been toiling for liberty to the dungeon and the scaffold.

Never was the condition of a nation more full of peril, or apparently more hopeless. This impending destruction was enough to drive any people into the madness of despair. It is hard to wear the fetters of bondage even when one has never known any thing better. But, after having once broken those chains and tasted the sweets of liberty, then to have the shackles riveted anew is what few human spirits can endure.

It was not the intention of the king immediately to leave France. He arranged to go to Montmedy, about two hundred miles from Paris, taking the very retired Chalons road through Clermont and Varennes. The Marquis of Bouillé, a general entirely devoted to the court party, formed a camp at Montmedy to receive the king, under the pretense of watching hostile movements on the frontiers. Small detachments of cavalry were also very quietly posted at different points on the road to aid in the flight. All the arrangements were made for starting on the 20th of June.[272]

The king, though on the whole a worthy man, and possessing some excellent traits of character, was in some points weak almost to imbecility. All the energy of the family was with the queen, and she, with the Marquis of Bouillé, planned the escape. They were often thwarted, however, in their wishes by the obstinacy of the king. La Fayette was entirely deceived, and but few even of the court were intrusted with the secret. Still, rumors of flight had been repeatedly circulated, and the people were in a state of constant anxiety lest the court should carry off the king. They hardly believed that the king himself wished to join the emigrants, and to urge war against the Constitution which he had sworn to accept.

The Swiss Guards still surrounded the Tuileries. They were stationed, however, only at the exterior posts. The interior of the palace, the staircases, and the communications between the rooms were occupied by the National Guard, in whom the nation could place more reliance. It was a long-established custom that troops should be thus stationed throughout the palace, that the royal family might be protected from impertinence or from any irruption of popular violence. Since the terrible scenes of the 5th and 6th of October it became more important than ever that a strong guard should encircle the royal family. But while the ostensible duty of this guard was only to protect the king from insult, it had also a secret mission to prevent the king's escape.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 258: "I have read many histories of revolutions, and can affirm what a Royalist avowed in 1791, that never had any great revolution cost less bloodshed and weeping. In reality, only one class, the clergy, was able, with any appearance of truth, to call itself robbed; and, nevertheless, the result of that spoliation was, that the great bulk of the clergy, starved under the old system for the emolument of a few prelates, had at length a comfortable livelihood."--Michelet, p. 417.]

[Footnote 259: "If I had never lived with Mirabeau," says Dumont, "I should never have known what a man can make of one day--what things may be placed within the interval of twelve hours. A day for this man is more than a week or a month is for others. The mass of things he guided on together was prodigious; from the scheming to the executing, not a moment lost."--Dumont, p. 311.]

[Footnote 260: Michelet, p. 333.]

[Footnote 261: Thiers, vol. i., p. 166. Ferrières, t. ii., p. 198.]

[Footnote 262: "Many of the emigrants had joined the army in a state of complete destitution. Others were spending improvidently the last relics of their fortunes. All were in good spirits, for the camp life was free and joyous. They confidently believed that the end of autumn would find them restored to their splendid homes, to their groves, to their forests, and to their dove-cots."--Chateaubriand's Memoirs of the Duke de Berri.]

[Footnote 263: See Recueil de divers Ecrits relatif à la Revolution, p. 62; also Chateaubriand's Memoirs of the Duke de Berri.

In reference to England Michelet remarks, with much truth: "The first power is aristocracy, the second aristocracy, and the third aristocracy. This aristocracy goes on incessantly recruiting its body with all those who grow rich. To be rich in order to be noble is the absorbing thought of the Englishman. Property, specially territorial and feudal, is the religion of the country."--Michelet's French Revolution, p. 432.]

[Footnote 264: "The meeting ended at half past five, and Mirabeau went to the house of his sister, his intimate and dear confidante, and said to her, 'I have pronounced my death-warrant. It is now all over with me, for they will kill me.'"--Michelet, p. 461.]

[Footnote 265: The peculiar character of Mirabeau is illustrated by the following well-authenticated anecdote. He was, on one occasion, reading a report to the Assembly upon some riots in Marseilles, which he affirmed were fomented by the partisans of the court. He was incessantly interrupted by the aristocratic party with such abusive epithets as "calumniator, liar, assassin, scoundrel." He stopped a moment, looked at them with an imperturbable smile, and, in his most honeyed tones, said, "Gentlemen, I wait till these amenities be exhausted."--Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 278.]

[Footnote 266: The English people were at this time generally in sympathy with the Revolution. The aristocratic government of England was in deadly hostility to it. In 1792, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then head scholar in Jesus College, Cambridge, wrote an Ode to France, commencing with the words,

"When France, in wrath, her giant limbs upreared, And, with that oath which smote air, earth, and sea, Stamped her strong foot, and said she would be free, Bear witness for me how I hoped and feared."

In consequence of this ode, and his avowed attachment to the principles of the Revolution, he became so obnoxious to his superiors that he was constrained to leave the college abruptly, without a degree.--Cyclopædia of English Literature, Article S.T. Coleridge.]

[Footnote 267: M. Thiers, in the impetuosity of his narrative, is not always accurate in details. He gives the 20th of April as the date of Mirabeau's death. Mignet assigns it to the 2d of March. Nearly all other authorities agree upon the 2d of April. It is indeed wonderful that upon such a subject there should be such a diversity of statement. The event at the time was deemed so momentous, that the Jacobin Club voted that the anniversary of his death should, through all future time, be celebrated with funereal pomp.]

[Footnote 268: Mirabeau claims, and his friends claim for him, and probably with justice, that he wished to be the mediator between the Revolution and the monarchy--to save royalty and liberty, believing that, under the circumstances, royalty was essential to liberty. But the folly of the court thwarted every endeavor. They would not accede to any measure of justice and moderation. The court wished only to make him unpopular. Mirabeau saw his position, from which no struggles could extricate him, and he died of disappointment and grief. Had he not then died, he would, in a few months, have inevitably perished upon the scaffold. See Mémoires de Mirabeau, vol. viii.]

[Footnote 269: Bertrand de Moleville.]

[Footnote 270: Mignet, p. 101. Villiaumé, p. 91.]

[Footnote 271: Fox and others of the most illustrious of the English commoners had in the parliament expressed their sympathy for the French patriots. A very strenuous effort was made to unite the Whig party in opposition to liberty in France. A meeting was held at Burlington House. Mr. Burke was the organ of the aristocracy. The animated discussion was continued from ten o'clock at night until three in the morning. But the differences of opinion were found irreconcilable, and only resulted in the permanent alienation of Fox and Burke.--See Lectures on the French Revolution, by Prof. Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 84.]

La Fayette, to whom the whole business was intrusted, oppressed with the responsibility of his office, was continually, by night and by day, visiting the posts. To the officers who had charge of the night-watch he had given secret orders that the king was not to be permitted to leave the palace after midnight. Thus the king was truly a prisoner, and he was fully conscious of it, though every possible effort was adopted to conceal from him the humiliating fact.

M. Bouillé and the queen were compelled to yield to the whims of the king, and to adopt measures which threatened to frustrate the plan. The king insisted upon having an immense carriage constructed which could take the whole party, though the unusual appearance of the carriage would instantly attract all eyes; he insisted upon traveling a very unfrequented route, which would excite the curiosity of every one who should see the carriage pass; he insisted upon stationing military detachments along the route, though Bouillé urged that such detachments if small could render no service, and if large would excite suspicion; he insisted upon taking the governess of the children, because the governess said that she loved the children too much to be separated from them, though Bouillé urged that instead of the incumbrance of a governess they should take in the carriage an officer accustomed to traveling, and who could aid in any unexpected emergency. The king, though fickle as the wind upon questions of great moment, was, like all weak men, inflexible upon trifles.[273]

At midnight of the 20th of June, the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the sister of the king, the two royal children, and Madame Tourzel their governess, carefully disguised themselves in one of the interior rooms of the Tuileries. Creeping cautiously down, in three successive parties, an obscure flight of stairs, and emerging by a gate which was contrived to be left unguarded, the fugitives, mingling with the groups of people who ever at that time were leaving the chateau, crossed the Carrousel, and, taking different streets, groped along through the darkness until they all met on the Quai des Théatins, where two hackney-coaches awaited them. In breathless silence they took their seats. The Count de Fersen, a Prussian noble, young, handsome, enthusiastic, who was inspired with a chivalric admiration of Marie Antoinette, had made all the arrangements for the escape from the city. Disguised as a coachman, he conducted the king, who led the young dauphin by the hand. The count immediately mounted the box of the coach which contained the royal family, and drove rapidly some twelve miles to the little town of Bondy, where the capacious carriage constructed for the king was waiting before the door of an Englishman, Mr. Crawford. At the same hour in a similar manner the king's brother, Monsieur the Count of Provence, subsequently Louis XVIII., left the Palace of the Luxembourg, and with his family traveled all night toward Flanders, where he crossed the frontiers in safety.

At Bondy the king, the queen, Madame Elizabeth, the two children, Maria Theresa being about ten years of age and Louis seven, with their governess, took their seats in the large carriage. One of the body-guard of the king, disguised as a servant, sat on the box, and another, as footman, sat behind. M. de Vallory rode on horseback, that he might gallop forward and order the relays of horses. The waiting women of the queen, who, by the strangest infatuation, had been included in the party, took the other carriage.

The Marquis of Bouillé, an energetic, heroic man, finding that he could not control the arrangements of the king, did every thing in his power to avert the suspicion which the strange-looking cortège would be likely to excite. He had a passport prepared, in which the governess was represented as a German baroness, Madame de Korff, traveling with her two children. The king was her valet-de-chambre, the queen her waiting-maid. The proverbial wealth of the German barons and the peculiar style of the equipage to which they were accustomed happily favored this idea.[274]

The morning was just beginning to dawn as Count Fersen kissed the hands of the king and queen and left them to prosecute their perilous journey, while he took flight for the frontier through Flanders. The coach was drawn by six horses, who were driven at the utmost speed, relays of horses having been established at short stages. The sun at length rose bright and cheerful. The country was smiling in all the verdure of blooming June. Every revolution of the wheels was bearing them farther from Paris. It was hardly possible that their flight could be discovered until a late hour in the morning. There were no telegraphs in those days to send intelligence with lightning speed to arrest their flight. Having six or eight hours the start of their pursuers, and being abundantly supplied with fresh horses, escape seemed now almost certain. Hope began to cheer their hearts.

Some slight interruptions had retarded their progress, and it was about three o'clock in the afternoon when they entered Chalons, some ninety miles from Paris. The queen, with an exultant smile, exclaimed, "All goes well. If we were to have been stopped at all it would have been before now."

At Chalons they exchanged horses. The king now felt that he was safe, for the Marquis of Bouillé had posted detachments of troops at every important point between Chalons and Montmedy. With characteristic imprudence, as the carriage was surrounded with idlers at Chalons, the king put his head out of the window, showing his well-known face to the crowd. The postmaster instantly recognized the king, but, being himself an ardent Royalist, divulged not his secret, but aided in putting in the fresh horses, and ordered the postillions to drive on.

About ten miles from Chalons is the bridge of Sommeville, which crosses a narrow stream, where the Duke of Choiseul and M. Goguelat were stationed with fifty hussars. They were to secure the king's passage, and then to remain and block up the road against all pursuers. Faithful to the plan, they were at the bridge, with the mounted hussars, at the appointed hour. The strange assemblage of a military force at that spot excited the curiosity of the peasants, and a great crowd was gathered. Every mind throughout France was then in a very sensitive state. The crowd increased, and in the adjoining villages the alarm-bells were beginning to ring. As the royal carriages did not appear for five or six hours later than they were expected, the Duke of Choiseul, to appease the ferment, left the spot, and the people then dispersed.

Soon after the detachment had left the king arrived, and was surprised to find no troops. It was then between four and five o'clock in the evening. In great perplexity and anxiety he drove rapidly on two hours farther to St. Menehould, where he was to find another detachment of troops; but the Duke of Choiseul had sent forward to St. Menehould and Chalons, informing the detachments there that he had waited six hours for the arrival of the king; that the plan had probably miscarried; that excitement was rapidly rising among the people; and that the detachments had better retire.

The king, unaware of all this, was astonished and bewildered in still finding no troops, and naturally, but imprudently, again looked out of the window. The excited crowd which was gathered around the carriages suspected that they contained the royal family. A young man named Drouet, son of the postmaster, instantly recognized the king, from his resemblance to the imprint on the coins in circulation. Without communicating his discovery to any one, he mounted a horse, and, taking a cross road, galloped some twelve or fifteen miles to Varennes, to inform the municipality and cause the arrest of the party.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 272: "The princes," writes M. Fromont, "conceived the plan of forming legions of all the loyal subjects of the king. Desiring to be at the head of those Royalists whom I had commanded in 1789, I wrote to Count d'Artois, begging his royal highness to grant me the commission of colonel, worded so that every Royalist who would raise a legion might hope for a like favor. The members of his council thought it so strange that a commoner should aspire to a military commission, that one of them said to me angrily, 'Why did you not ask for a bishopric?'"--Recueil de divers Ecrits relatifs à la Revolution, p. 62.]

[Footnote 273: "What grieves us, moreover, among other things, in this journey to Varennes, and lessens the idea we would like to entertain of the king's goodness of heart, is the indifference with which he sacrificed, by his departure, and abandoned to death men who were sincerely attached to him. By the force of circumstances La Fayette found himself to be the involuntary guardian of the king, and responsible to the nation for his person. He had shown in various ways, and sometimes even in compromising the Revolution, that he desired, beyond every thing else, the restoration of the kingly power, as the guarantee of order and tranquillity. There was every reason to suppose that, at the startling news of the king's departure, La Fayette would be torn to pieces.

"La Fayette, receiving warnings from several quarters, would believe nobody but the king himself. He went to him and asked him whether there was any truth in the reports. Louis XVI. gave such a decided, simple answer, and in such a good-natured manner, that La Fayette went away completely satisfied, and it was merely to calm the anxiety of the public that he doubled his guard."--Michelet, p. 573.]

[Footnote 274: The passport was made out as follows: "De par le roi. Mandons de laisser passer Madame le Baron de Korff, se rendant à Franckfort avec ses deux enfants, une femme de chambre, un valet de chambre, et trois domestiques."]

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XXI. ARREST OF THE ROYAL FUGITIVES

Arrival at Varennes.--The Party arrested.--Personal Appearance of the King.--The Guards fraternize with the People.--Indignation of the Crowd.--The Captives compelled to return to Paris.--Dismay of M. de Bouillé.--Excitement in Paris.--The Mob ransack the Tuileries.--Acts of the Assembly.--Decisive Action of La Fayette.--Proclamation of the King.--The Jacobin Club.--Unanimity of France.

The carriages were driven rapidly forward, while the royal family sat perplexed and silent, yet quite unprepared for the doom which was impending. An hour's drive brought them to Clermont. Here the king found two squadrons of horse, under Count de Dumas. But the detachments of dragoons moving to and fro had excited suspicion, and the populace of Clermont had been roused, and gathered alarmingly around the carriages.

The municipal authorities examined the passports of the travelers, and, finding all apparently correct, allowed them to proceed, but, calling out a detachment of the National Guard, forbade the Dragoons to leave the town. The Dragoons, whose sympathies were with the people, and who knew not on what mission they had been led by their officers, immediately fraternized with the Guards, and their commander, Count Dumas, was indebted to the fleetness of his horse for his escape from arrest. It was midnight when the carriages arrived at Varennes. This little town is situated on both banks of a narrow stream united by a bridge. A tower is at one end of the bridge, supported by a massive and gloomy arch, which arch must be traversed with care to enter upon the bridge, and where a very slight obstacle would prevent any advance; "a relic," says Lamartine, "of the feudal system, in which the nobles captured the serfs, and where, by a strange retribution, the people were destined to capture the monarchy."

The royal family, entirely exhausted with sleeplessness, anxiety, and the travel of twenty-four hours, were all asleep, when the few scattering lights of the town were perceived. They were to change horses here, and the king was distinctly informed that they would find the horses before crossing the river. It was, however, afterward decided, without communicating the change to the king, that the fresh horses should be stationed on the other side of the bridge. Thus the carriages could cross the bridge at full speed, and, in case of any popular tumult, could more easily effect a change of horses and departure on the other side.

The king and queen, greatly alarmed in finding no relay of horses, themselves left the carriage, and groped about through the darkened streets seeking for them in vain. A few lights burned dimly here and there in the houses, but all else was the silence and gloom of midnight. The king even knocked at a few doors where lights were seen, and inquired for the relays. The half-roused sleepers could give him no intelligence.

In thus traveling by relays of horses in Europe, each relay has its postillions, who go their appointed stage only. The postillions who had drawn the carriage from the last post-house, entirely unconscious of the dignity of their passengers, having fulfilled their appointed task, weary of waiting, threatened to unharness their horses and leave the carriage in the street until the relay should arrive. By dint of bribes the king induced them to cross the bridge and continue the journey.

Just as they entered the arch beneath the tower to cross the bridge, and when enveloped in almost Egyptian darkness, the horses were stopped by a cart which obstructed the way. Some men seized the bridles of the leaders, and one man on horseback shouted at the window of the carriage the appalling words,

"In the name of the nation, stop! You are driving the king."

Drouet had effectually accomplished his design. Taking a shorter road than that which the carriage pursued, he rode directly to a stable, communicated his secret to the inn-keeper and sent him to give the alarm, while he, with a few comrades whom he hastily gathered, barricaded the bridge with the cart and such other heavy articles as they could lay their hands upon. The delay upon the other side just gave them time to do this before the carriage entered the vaulted archway.

The king and queen were thunderstruck, and their hearts sank in dismay. Immediately they perceived the signs of a great tumult. The village bells were ringing. Lights were flashing through the gloom. An undefined uproar seemed to increase in the streets, while crowds were collecting on the bridge. One man with a lantern in his hand half entered the carriage and cast the light full upon the faces of each one of the inmates. The travelers were then commanded to alight and exhibit their passports. Drouet, taking the passports, conducted the captives in their carriage back again from the bridge to the door of the mayor of the little town, a grocer by the name of Sausse.

Here there was quite a debate. The passports were made out correctly. The party corresponded with the description. They all declared that they were the Baroness de Korff with her attendants. Sausse appeared to be satisfied. But Drouet, a young man of unusual intelligence and energy, demanded,

"Why is not the passport signed by the President of the National Assembly? And if you are foreigners, how is it that you have influence to procure fifty dragoons to escort you at St. Menehould, and as many more at Clermont? And why is there a detachment of hussars waiting for you at Varennes?"

In the eagerness of the altercation it became very evident that the counterfeit servants were not menials, and that the assumed baroness was not accustomed to exercise authority over her pretended maid-servant and valet de chambre. By this time a sufficient number of the National Guard had assembled to prevent the possibility of the rescue of the captives by the Hussars. The queen, seeing that all farther attempts at deception were useless, and indignant at the disrespect with which her husband was treated, exclaimed,

"Since you acknowledge him to be your king, speak to him with the respect which you owe him!"

The whole party had thus far remained in the carriage. The tumult was rapidly increasing. The bells were ringing, guns firing, drums beating, and a crowd of men and women, in disordered dresses and eagerly vociferating, was fast gathering around the captives. Lights in the distance were seen hurrying to and fro, and armed men in tumultuous bands of excitement and consternation were rushing from all directions. Respectfully Sausse, who appears to have been a very humane man, urged them to alight, and for their own protection to enter the door of the grocery. They did so, and sat down upon the boxes, barrels, and bags which were scattered around. The king now, to save himself from farther insults, appealed to the loyalty of his subjects. He rose, and with dignity said to the crowd,

"Yes! I am your king. Behold the queen and my children. We entreat you to treat us with the respect which the French have always shown to their sovereigns."

With the exception of that courtliness of manners which is almost the inheritance of high birth, there was nothing in the king's personal appearance to inspire deference. Though a somewhat educated and accomplished man, he was totally destitute of any administrative skill or of any initiative powers. He would have embellished almost any situation in private life, as a kind-hearted, conscientious, exemplary man. The costume of a servant, a steward, a tutor, a clerk, was far more in accordance with his abilities and his character than the insignia of royalty. His figure was swollen by a flabby obesity, the result of a ravenous appetite and indolent habits. His legs were too short for his body; the expression of his countenance unintellectual and stolid.

As he appeared before the peasants and townsmen of Varennes that night, exhausted with fatigue and terror, in the mean dress of a valet, in a disordered wig, his fat cheeks pale and shrunken, with livid lips aghast and speechless, he excited first emotions of surprise, then of contempt, then of unfeigned pity. "What, that the king! that the queen!" the crowd exclaimed in amazement. The piteous spectacle brought tears into the eyes even of many of the most hostile and obdurate.

Varennes was but thirty miles from Montmedy, which, though in France, was directly on the Germanic frontier. Thus the citizens of Varennes were at but a few hours' march from those terrible armies of the Continent which were threatening to sweep over France with flame and blood. Knowing that their town might be one of the first to encounter the horrors of war, they had been living in the midst of the most terrific alarms. They had hoped that the king was, in heart, in sympathy with the nation, and would place himself at the head of the nation to resist the invaders. Surprise, grief, and indignation struggled in their hearts as they found that the king was actually endeavoring to escape from France to join their enemies. None but those who live on the frontier at such a time can fully realize the terrible significance of the words the enemy.

"What!" exclaimed the multitude, "the king running away, abandoning us, his children, and becoming a traitor to the nation; going over to the enemy, to aid them to burn our homes and massacre us all!"

Some wept; others execrated; others threatened to shoot the king upon the spot. The simple-hearted peasants were, in intelligence, mere children. They had been educated to regard the monarchy as paternal and the king as their father. Choiseul and Goguelat, who, it will be remembered, were stationed at the bridge of Sommeville with fifty hussars, now came clattering into the streets of Varennes with their detachment. At the same time Count Dumas arrived, who had escaped alone from his dragoons, they having abandoned him at St. Menehould.

The grocer's shop was surrounded with a crowd armed with muskets, pitchforks, and axes. Notwithstanding many fierce threats, the officers forced their way through the crowd and entered the shop. There they found the royal family in a deplorable condition. The little boy, Louis, the dauphin, was happily asleep on a low cot bed. His sister, Maria Theresa, three years older, in great terror, was sitting on a bench between her governess and her aunt Elizabeth, clinging tremblingly to their hands. The king and queen were standing by the side of M. Sausse, imploring him to permit them to continue on their way.

Choiseul, grasping significantly the hilt of his sword, said boldly to the king, "Sire, please give immediate orders to depart. I have forty hussars. No time is to be lost. In one hour they will be gained over by the people."

This was true. The hussars were Germans. Blindly obeying their officers, they had no idea of the commission upon which they had been sent. They were now surrounded by the populace, and were listening, with surprise and sympathy, to their narrative of the events. At this critical moment the municipality of Varennes, accompanied by the officers of the National Guard in that place, entered the shop. Accustomed as they had long been to revere and almost to adore royalty, for the rural districts had by no means kept pace with Paris in disregard of the throne, the officers threw themselves upon their knees before the king and said,

"In God's name, sire, do not forsake us; do not quit the kingdom."

"It is not my intention," the king replied, "to leave France. The insults I have suffered force me to leave Paris. I am going only to Montmedy, and I invite you to accompany me thither; only give orders, I pray you, for my carriages to be got ready."

The municipal authorities departed to deliberate, begging the king to wait till the light should dawn. It was now two o'clock in the morning. The chances of escape were every moment diminishing. The crowd, armed with such weapons as they could on the moment seize, had become formidable; the bridge was so barricaded that it could not be passed; and but little reliance could be placed in the fidelity of the hussars. There was, however, a ford near by, where the stream could be passed on horseback. Choiseul and Goguelat entreated the king and queen, with the ladies, immediately to mount on horseback, the king holding the dauphin on the saddle, and, protected by the forty hussars, to cross the stream, and attempt to effect their escape.

The queen, whose personal heroism never forsook her, looked at her children, thought of the bullets which might be showered upon them, and, yielding to a mother's love, hesitated. The king also, who never dishonored himself by an act of cowardice, thought only of the peril of those who were dearer to him than life, and said,

"But can you assure me that in this struggle a shot may not strike the queen, my sister, or the children? Besides, the municipality does not forbid to let us pass; it merely requests me to wait till daybreak. Moreover, the Marquis de Bouillé is at Stenay, but twenty-four miles distant. He can not fail to learn of my detention, and he will be here with his troops in the morning."

Another weary hour of agitation, tumult, and gathering excitement passed away, and the clock struck three. The hussars were now completely gained over by the people, and were drinking with them "To the Nation."

The municipal authorities, having briefly deliberated, returned to the king with this short but terrible announcement,

"The people, being absolutely opposed to the king continuing his journey, have resolved to dispatch a courier to the National Assembly in order to be informed of its intentions."

M. de Goguelat now went out into the surging crowd to judge if it were possible to fight their way through. Mounting his horse he rode slowly around, when Drouet approached him and said, "You want to carry off the king, but you shall not have him alive."

The carriage was surrounded by a body of the National Guard. Goguelat approached the carriage with a few hussars who still hesitatingly obeyed his orders, when the major in command of the detachment of the National Guard said to him, "One step farther, and I shoot you."

Goguelat spurred his horse on, when a pistol was discharged. Two bullets struck him, and he fell bleeding to the ground. He was, however, able to rise and enter the shop, but the hussars immediately with acclaim avowed themselves the soldiers of the nation. Goguelat had observed also that at the end of the street there were two cannons planted which seemed ready to fire upon them. There was no longer the possibility of escape by force, unless M. de Bouillé should chance to arrive in season with his well-trained dragoons.

As Goguelat, wounded and covered with blood, again entered the presence of the royal family, they presented a heart-rending spectacle. The queen was sitting upon a bench between two boxes of candles, piteously pleading with the grocer's wife to intercede with her husband in their behalf.

"You are a mother, madame," said the queen; "you are a wife; the fate of a wife and mother is in your hands. Think what I must suffer for these children, for my husband. At one word from you I shall owe them to you. The Queen of France will owe you more than her kingdom, more than life."

There is an instinct, unreflecting, in the human heart, which says that it would have been noble in the woman to have periled every thing to save the queen. The universal heart does homage to disinterested benevolence, even when it is unthinking and mistaken. But in this case the good woman, with very natural and prosaic common sense, said,

"I wish it were in my power to help you. But bless me! you are thinking of your husband and I am thinking of mine. Every woman for her own husband."

This speech certainly did not indicate a heroic nature. But it is obvious that M. Sausse had now no power to save the king. Matters had proceeded far beyond his control. If he could by any stratagem have facilitated the flight, his own life would have been the inevitable forfeit. It would have been treason to the nation. Humanity also seemed imperiously to demand that the king should be stopped. His escape would place him at the head of foreign and hostile armies to ravage France with the horrors of war, and to quench the kindling flame of liberty in blood.

The queen, whose energetic mind foresaw the awful future, was overwhelmed and burst into tears. The king had now lost all self-possession, and was bewildered as a child. The people, who began to be apprehensive that the troops of Bouillé might come to the rescue, were crowding the door and shouting, "Back, back to Paris."

The king was urged to show himself, that he might tranquilize the people. He went to a window and looked out upon the excited multitude, over whom a few torches shed a lurid light. The sight of the king at first produced profound silence. The people then, as versatile as children, were so affected by the appearance of the king in his servile dress, and with his woe-worn countenance, that many wept; and while not one word of insult was heard, many cried out, in compassionate tones, Vive le Roi!

The day was then just beginning to dawn. Gradually the sun rose, and shone upon a strange spectacle. The guns, the drums, the alarm-bells had roused the whole country around. Ten thousand men had already assembled in Varennes, choking the narrow street where the grocery stood. From all directions the country people were seen hurrying to the town, as the strange tidings of the attempted flight and arrest were spreading far and wide. As the crowd increased in the streets, and the gloom of night was dispelled by the bright blaze of day, the tumult rose higher and higher. All sympathy for the royal family seemed to give place to a feeling of indignation, that they should be stealing away to lead foreign armies to make war upon the liberties of France.

At seven o'clock the door opened, and the king beheld, to his surprise, an officer of the National Guard of Paris. His dress was disordered, and he was dusty and worn with hurried travel. The man was greatly agitated when he found himself in the presence of the king, and could only stammer, in broken and almost incoherent phrase, the words,

"Sire, all Paris is being murdered; our wives and children are perhaps assassinated; you shall not go any farther; sire, the interests of the state; yes, sire, our wives and our children."

The queen seized the hand of the officer, and, leading him to a humble bed in the corner, where the two royal children, Maria and Louis, utterly exhausted, were sleeping, said to him, as she pointed to the children,

"Am I not a mother also?"[275]

The king, interrupting her, turned abruptly to the officer, and said,

"What do you want?"

"Sire," he replied, "I have a decree of the Assembly."

"Where is it?" inquired the king.

"My comrade has it," was the reply.

Just then the door opened, and M. de Romeuf entered. He was an aide-de-camp of the Marquis de la Fayette and a true patriot, while at the same time he was well known by the royal family as a friend of the king. He entered, holding the decree in his hand, greatly agitated; and, as he beheld the humiliating condition of the sovereign of France, and was conscious of the most painful duty devolving upon himself, he could not restrain his emotions, but bowed his head and wept bitterly. There is not a generous heart on earth which will not be in sympathy with that grief.

As the queen raised her eyes and saw M. de Romeuf enter, she exclaimed, with surprise and indignation,

"What, sir, is it you? Oh! I could never have believed it possible." Romeuf replied sadly, "We have done only our duty; but we hoped not to have overtaken your majesties."[276]

The king took from the hand of Romeuf the decree of the Assembly and hastily read it. It was an order enjoining upon all public functionaries "to stop, by all the means in their power, the abduction of the king, and to prevent the continuance of the journey."

The king indignantly threw the decree upon the bed where the children were sleeping, and exclaimed, in words whose truth he then by no means fully realized,

"There is no longer any King in France."

The queen, with pardonable but very injudicious passion, picked up the decree of the National Assembly and threw it upon the floor, saying vehemently,

"It shall not defile my children."

"Madame," said Romeuf sorrowfully to the queen, to whom he was much attached, "in the name of your safety, your glory, I entreat you to control your grief. Would you rather have any one but me witness these passions?"

The gentle reproach recalled the queen to herself, and she nerved herself to endurance, calmness, and dignity. The mental agony of that dreadful night had already turned her hair from auburn into the whiteness of snow.

It was greatly feared that the troops of Bouillé might come and rescue the king. Preparations for the departure were therefore hastened. Six horses were harnessed into the carriage, and the royal family, notwithstanding they did every thing in their power to cause delay, were forced to take their seats. The queen would not allow any one to touch her son, but carried him in her own arms to the carriage.

The melancholy cortège now commenced its slow progress toward Paris, escorted by four thousand of the National Guard.

M. de Bouillé, as we have mentioned, was at Stenay, at but the distance of eight leagues from Varennes, with several regiments of soldiers under his command, waiting the arrival of the king. Had the king but reached that stage he would have been safe. Bouillé was in a state of great anxiety, and during the night had rode forward to within six miles of Varennes, hoping to meet the king. Perplexed by the delay, and anxious lest he should be abandoned by his soldiers, in whom he could place but little confidence, he rode back to Stenay, and had just arrived there, at half past four in the morning, when he received the intelligence that the king was arrested, that the alarm-bells were ringing, that the whole country was aroused, and the National Guard in Stenay, Metz, and Verdun were rapidly forming in defense of the Nation.

Under these circumstances there was but one regiment in whom M. Bouillé could repose any confidence--the Royal German--and but one officer, his own son, in whom he could confide.

Bouillé was an energetic and brave man. He immediately called out the German regiment, and by the influence of impassioned language and enormous bribes to every man induced them to start for the rescue. Almost with the speed of the whirlwind these strongly mounted dragoons swept the space intervening between Stenay and Varennes. It was a quarter of nine o'clock before they reached the town. The National Guard, anticipating this movement, was strongly posted to repel them. As Bouillé was reconnoitring in preparation for an attack, he was informed that the king had been gone more than an hour and a half; that the bridge was broken down, the streets barricaded; that M. de Choiseul, M. de Goguelat, and M. de Dumas were prisoners; that their hussars had fraternized with the people; that the garrisons of Metz and Verdun were rapidly approaching to attack him, and that the whole country around was swarming with troops and National Guards roused by the peril of the nation.

The horses of the dragoons were entirely exhausted by the forced drive of twenty-four miles; the soldiers themselves gave manifest symptoms of hesitation. All hope was gone. Bouillé slowly, sadly, silently retraced his steps. At Stenay popular enthusiasm had gained all hearts. His soldiers abandoned him, and he narrowly escaped with his life across the frontier to Luxembourg.

We must now return to Paris to record the scenes which transpired there after the flight of the king. At seven o'clock in the morning of the 21st of June the servants at the Tuileries, on entering the apartments of the king and queen, found the beds undisturbed and the rooms deserted. The alarm was speedily spread through the palace, and flew from the chateau like wild-fire through the streets and into the faubourgs. "The king has escaped!" was upon all lips. The crowd, in countless thousands, rushed to the Tuileries. They pressed in at the doors and up the stairs, and explored all the mysterious interior of the palace. The most vile and degraded of the population of the city are always foremost on such occasions. The awe which they at first felt soon gave place to derision.

A portrait of the king was taken from his bed-chamber and hung up at the gate of the chateau. A fruit-woman emptied her basket of cherries upon the queen's bed, and sat down upon the bed to sell her venture, saying "It is the Nation's turn to-day to take their ease." Some one placed a cap from the queen's wardrobe upon the head of a young girl. She threw it contemptuously on the floor and trampled upon it, saying "It will sully my forehead."

For several hours the whole city was in a state of intense consternation. The departure of the king was associated in all minds with the approach of foreign armies, the bombardment of Paris, the sweep of dragoons through the streets, the assassination of the patriots, and the extinction of liberty. The alarm-bells rang, drums beat to arms, minute-guns were fired, and the National Guard rallied at all their rendezvous. But in the midst of these alarms there appeared an apparition which excited intense alarm in the bosoms of all the friends of enlightened liberty and order.

It consisted of vast gatherings of haggard, wretched-looking men, the most worthless and abandoned of the population of a great city, under their own fierce leaders, armed with pikes and all wearing a red cap, the bonnet rouge. Santerre, a brewer, an uneducated man, of vast energies, and of great power to lead the passions of the populace, led a band of two thousand of these red-caps through the streets. The indignation of the people was now roused to the highest pitch against the king, and against all who were supposed to have connived at his flight. La Fayette was loudly accused of treason in having allowed the king to escape. His coolness and presence of mind alone saved him from the fury of the mob.

At nine o'clock the Constituent Assembly met, calm, yet fully conscious of the momentous state of affairs. The president immediately informed them that M. Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, had come to acquaint them that the king and royal family had been carried off, during the night, by some enemies of the nation. These noble men conducted, in this crisis, with their accustomed moderation and dignity. Hesitating to assume that the king had perjured himself by violating the oath he had so solemnly taken to sustain the Constitution, they adopted the more generous idea of his abduction.

La Fayette, at eight o'clock, had been informed of the escape, and immediately hastened to the Tuileries, where he found M. Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, and M. Beauharnais, President of the National Assembly. They were both oppressed in view of the momentous posture of affairs, and were lamenting the hours which must elapse before the Assembly could be convoked and a decree issued authorizing pursuit. The course pursued by La Fayette upon this occasion was worthy of his heroic and noble nature. He proved himself a consistent disciple of his great friend and model, Washington.

"Is it your opinion," inquired La Fayette, "that the arrest of the king and royal family is absolutely essential to the public safety, and can alone preserve us from civil war?"

"No doubt can be entertained upon that subject," both replied.

"Well, then," returned La Fayette, "I take upon myself all the responsibility of this arrest."

He immediately issued an order to the National Guard throughout France for the arrest of the king.[277] It was placed in the hands of two of his officers, who set out instantly on the pursuit.

Leaving the Tuileries, La Fayette hastened on horseback to the Hôtel de Ville. He passed excited crowds, who inveighed bitterly against him, accusing him of traitorous complicity in the king's flight. Arriving at the Place de Grève, in front of the Hôtel de Ville, he found one of his officers, the Duke d'Aumont, in the hands of the infuriate mob, who were on the point of massacring him.

La Fayette instantly plunged into the crowd, by his authoritative voice and gesture overawed them, and at the imminent peril of his own life rescued his friend. A moment's hesitation, an emotion of cowardice, and both would inevitably have perished. An infuriate man, almost delirious with rage, approached La Fayette, and, shaking his fist in his face, exclaimed,

"You are a traitor. You have permitted the king to escape, and now France is ruined."

"How ruined?" La Fayette replied, serenely smiling. "France has twenty-five millions of inhabitants; the salary of the king is twenty-five millions of francs. Every one of us gains twenty sous by Louis XVI. relieving us of this payment."

This pleasantry created a general laugh, and the words, repeated through the crowd, soon restored good-nature. The heroism of La Fayette also struck their imaginations, and he was greeted with applause as he rode away.

He then hastened to the Assembly, which was now convened. Some of the deputies had suspected him as conniving at the flight, and as he entered a few murmurs arose. He, however, ascended the tribune and gained a hearing. He proposed that his second officer in command, M. de Gouvion, to whom had been especially intrusted the guard of the Tuileries, should be examined by the Assembly.

"I will answer for this officer," said he, "and take upon myself the responsibility of his acts."

M. de Gouvion was summoned to their bar, and testified that all the ordinary outlets from the palace were carefully guarded. The king could only have escaped in disguise and through some unusual mode of egress. M. Bailly confirmed this testimony, and La Fayette was reinstated in the confidence of the patriots.

The people, who had suspected La Fayette, refused to allow the aides whom he had dispatched to pass the barriers. The Assembly immediately issued an order sanctioning the measures of La Fayette, and the officers were permitted to depart. The ministers of the king were then summoned, and a decree passed that all orders were to be received from the Assembly alone. With calmness truly majestic, and with unanimity which apparently pervaded every act, thought, and resolution, preparations were adopted to meet the fearful invasion which was impending.

It was decreed at every hazard to defend the Constitution. The Assembly assumed the Regency. Couriers were dispatched on every road toward the frontiers to arrest every individual leaving the kingdom. Guns were ordered from the arsenals more effectually to arm the National Guard. These measures were so manifestly just and vital, that the most interested partisans of the old despotism ventured no opposition.

While engaged in passing these decrees, M. de la Porte, superintendent of the civil list, entered, bringing with him a private note and a memorial which he had received from the king. The memorial was dated the 20th of June, and was written and signed by the king. It was entitled "Proclamation of the King to all the French upon his Departure from Paris."

In this long recital of his grievances the king complained that he had only a suspensive veto; that his salary was cut down to five millions of dollars annually, which was not sufficient to support him comfortably; that he was very badly lodged in the palace of the Tuileries; that he had been incessantly annoyed by the National Assembly, the clubs, and the journals, and that he was not properly applauded when he appeared in public. He bitterly censured the decrees of the National Assembly, and avowed that of his own free will he left Paris, that he might at a safe distance from Paris regain his lost power.[278]

M. de la Porte placed this memorial and the private note to him, which accompanied it, upon the table, stating, however, his wish that the private note might not be read. With delicacy and honor worthy of commemoration it was returned to him unopened. The memorial was read and was listened to in respectful silence. The Assembly pitying the weakness of the king took no action upon it whatever.

When the National Assembly was in session at Versailles there was a club organized by the deputation from Bretaigne, called the Breton Club. It was composed of the patriotic members of the Assembly. After the removal of the Assembly to Paris this club held its meetings in an old smoky convent of the Jacobin monks, and was hence called the Jacobin Club. It rapidly increased, admitting members not belonging to the Assembly, until it numbered twelve hundred members in Paris alone. Its affiliated clubs were established all over the kingdom, and were filled with the most ardent advocates of reform. In less than two years they numbered two thousand four hundred societies in as many towns.

The Jacobin Club soon became so intensely and fiercely democratic, that La Fayette, who was one of its original members, and others of the more conservative of the patriots, withdrew from its tumultuous gatherings. This club was now rapidly assuming the reins of government, and marshaling the mob as its resistless and terrific arm of defense, a weapon wielded by the Revolution of incalculable and terrible power. It soon became the relentless and despotic sovereign of France, more relentless and more despotic than any single sovereign who ever sat upon a throne.

La Fayette, upon leaving the Assembly, hastened to the club of the Jacobins, which already in numbers and influence rivaled the Assembly. He was here also successful in stemming the torrent of obloquy which was beginning to roll against him. As he left the club he met, on the Quai Voltaire, Camille Desmoulins. The impetuous journalist, in a state of intense excitement, hastened toward the white horse on which La Fayette rode, and exclaimed:

"Monsieur de la Fayette, for more than a year I have constantly spoken ill of you. This is the moment to convict me of falsehood. Prove that I am a calumniator. Cover me with infamy by saving the state."

La Fayette grasped the hand of Desmoulins, whose patriotism he respected, and replied,

"I have always recognized you as a good citizen. You will see that you have been deceived. Our common oath is to live free or to die. All goes well. There is but one feeling in the Assembly. The common danger has united all parties."

"But why," rejoined Desmoulins, "does the Assembly affect to speak of the carrying off (enlévement) of the king in its decrees, when the king himself writes that he escaped of his own free will? What baseness or what treason in the Assembly to use such language, when we are threatened by three millions of bayonets!"

"The word carrying off," La Fayette replied, "is a mistake in dictation, which the Assembly will correct. This conduct of the king is infamous."

The news of the flight of the king created consternation through all the departments of France. It was regarded as the signal for both foreign and civil war, and all expected immediately to hear the tramp of hostile legions. With singular unanimity the people of France rallied to meet the crisis. From the Gironde a message was sent to the Assembly, saying,

"We have eighty thousand men enrolled in the National Guard, who are all ready to march. But we have not as many guns as we have intrepid and patriotic men. Send us arms."

The municipality of Villepaux sent word, "We are all ready to be torn into ribbons rather than allow the integrity of the Constitution to be violated."

"Our fields," wrote the citizens of Allier and Nivernais, "are covered with harvests and men. Men and harvests are alike at the service of the country, if she needs them."

"We are but few, but we are determined," wrote the inhabitants of a little town in Normandy. "We have but two hundred men capable of bearing arms, but they are young, strong, and courageous. They are all ready to rush upon any foe who shall invade the soil of France."

Bordeaux assured the Assembly that it would immediately send two thousand four hundred men to meet the foe. The whole kingdom was in this blaze of patriotic enthusiasm. The ladies, ever participating in devotion to a noble cause, sent in their jewelry to the Assembly, saying,

"Change these ornaments into arms. It is not in our power to combat for our country; but we can at least aid in arming our brave defenders."

Merchants left their shops, artisans their benches, and laborers the fields, to toil as volunteers in throwing up fortifications around the exposed towns. All hearts seemed to vibrate with the same hopes and fears, and all hands united in the same patriotic toils. The partisans of the court, few in numbers, were silent, waiting for the approach of foreign armies before they should throw off the mask and avow their treason.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 275: Mirabeau, after his interview with Marie Antoinette, remarked in confidence to a friend, "You know the queen. Her force of mind is prodigious. She is a man for courage."--Dumont, p. 211.]

[Footnote 276: Napoleon, at St. Helena, speaking in the light of subsequent events, said, "The National Assembly never committed so great an error as in bringing back the king from Varennes. A fugitive, and powerless, he was hastening to the frontier, and in a few hours would have been out of the French territory. What should they have done in these circumstances? Clearly have facilitated his escape, and declared the throne vacant by his desertion. They would thus have avoided the infamy of a regicide government, and attained their great object of republican institutions. Instead of which, by bringing him back, they encumbered themselves with a sovereign whom they had no just reason for destroying, and lost the inestimable advantage of getting quit of the royal family without an act of cruelty."]

[Footnote 277: Our readers will not generally sympathize with Lamartine in the exclamation, "This was a dictatorship, and the most personal of all dictatorships, that a single man, taking the place of the Assembly and the whole nation, thus assumed. He, on his private authority and the right of his civic foresight, struck at the liberty and perhaps at the life of the lawful ruler of the nation. This order led Louis XVI. to the scaffold, for it restored to the people the victim who had just escaped their clutches."--History of the Girondists, by Alphonse de Lamartine, vol. i., p. 75.]

[Footnote 278: Histoire de la Rev. Fr., par Villiaumé, p. 13.]

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