The French Revolution Part 5

The opportunity for completing the Const.i.tution might never recur, and was eagerly seized. Louis, a necessary prop to the elaborate structure devised by the wisdom of the deputies, was deliberately made use of.

Discredited, a virtual prisoner, finished as a monarch, he was converted into a const.i.tutional fiction, and was compelled by his circ.u.mstances to resume the farce of kings.h.i.+p, and to put his signature to the Const.i.tution which, on the 3rd of September, was sent to him.

The Const.i.tution of 1791 was compounded partly of political theory, partly of revolutionary effort, of desire to pull down the prerogatives of the monarchy in favour of the middle cla.s.s. It was prefaced by a declaration of the rights of man that stamps the whole as a piece of cla.s.s legislation. By this all Frenchmen were guaranteed certain fundamental rights of justice, of opinion, of speech, of opportunity,--these were pa.s.sive rights. There were, however, active rights as well; and those were reserved for a privileged cla.s.s.[1]

{126} Only those paying taxes equivalent to three days' labour had active political rights, that is, the right to vote. In primary and secondary a.s.semblies they were to elect the 750 deputies who were to const.i.tute the sole representative chamber. This chamber was to sit for two years, the King having no authority to dissolve or prorogue it; and it was to possess full legislative power subject to the King's suspensive veto.

The King was chief executive official, with a large power of appointment, and general control of matters of foreign policy. He was not to choose his ministers from among the deputies, and he lost all direct administrative control in the local sense. The intendants, and the provinces, and the generalites were gone; instead of them was a new territorial division into departments, in which local elective self-government was established. Communes and departments were to choose their own governing {127} committees, and the old centralized administration of the Bourbons had for the moment to make way for an opposite conception of government.

The signing of the const.i.tution by the King brought it into effect, and thereby an election became necessary for const.i.tuting the new representative body, a body that was to be known as the _Legislative_.

Before leaving its parent body, however, that began as States-General, became a national a.s.sembly and was later known as the _Const.i.tuante_, a word or two may be added to emphasize points not yet sufficiently indicated. The a.s.sembly changed in opinion and att.i.tude during the course of its history, and was vastly different in September 1791 from what it had been in May 1789. It did achieve the purpose of translating a large part of the demands of the cahiers into legislative enactments; yet it did not learn the meaning of the word toleration, and it did not pave the way for liberty, but only for a doctrine of liberty.

The elections to the _Legislative_ took place in September, under the influence of several cross currents of opinion. There was a slight reaction among certain cla.s.ses in Paris in favour of the King, and several demonstrations took {128} place which an abler and more active monarch might have turned to advantage. On the other hand, the Jacobin Club attempted to use its machinery to influence the action of the electoral meetings. As a result, when the deputies met on the 1st of October, it was calculated that about 400 belonged to the floating central ma.s.s, 136 to the Jacobins, that is, Jacobins in the new Robespierre-Danton sense, 264 to the _Feuillants_. Among the latter there was a general inclination towards a policy of rehabilitating the royal power.

The personnel of the new a.s.sembly differed totally from that of its predecessor, because of a self-denying ordinance whereby the members of the _Const.i.tuante_ had excluded themselves from the new a.s.sembly. Yet there were many notable men among the new deputies, nearly all, however, Jacobins:--Brissot, the journalist, soon to be leader of a wing of the party that detaches itself from the one that follows Robespierre; Vergniaud, great as an orator; Isnard, Guadet, Gensonne; Condorcet, marquis and mathematician, philosopher, physicist and republican, n.o.ble mind and practical thinker; Cambon, stalwart in politics as in finance; Couthon, hostile to Brissot, later to be one of the Robespierre triumvirate.

{129} This Jacobin group nearly at once established its influence over the more flaccid part of the a.s.sembly. Through its club organization it packed the public galleries of the house, and from that point directed the current of opinion by the judicious application of applause or disapproval. This was reinforced by the _appel nominal_, the manner of voting whereby each individual deputy could be compelled to enter the speaker's rostrum and there declare and explain his vote.

To check the efforts of this dominating party, there was little but the inertia of the Court, and what the _Feuillants_ might accomplish.

Bailly, La Fayette, Lameth, La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, Clermont Tonnerre were among the conspicuous men of the club, but whatever their worth most of them were a.s.sociated with a too narrow, unyielding att.i.tude to obtain any wide support. The popular force was not behind them, but, for the moment, behind the Jacobins, and the instant the Jacobins became engaged in a struggle against the _Feuillants_, it pushed against the latter and presently toppled them over. Had the _Feuillants_ and the Court come together, there was yet a chance that the tide would be stemmed. But that proved impossible. To the royal {130} family foreign help, foreign intervention, appeared the only chance of relief, and Marie Antoinette had long been urging her brother Leopold to come to her a.s.sistance. No course could have been more fatal, and the more probable intervention became, the more the democratic party appeared a patriotic party, and the more the King and Queen seemed traitors to the national cause.

It was the foreign question that immediately engrossed the chief attention of the _Legislative_, and the foreign question always led back to the great internal one represented by the King. At Coblenz, in the dominions of the Archbishop of Trier, the Comte de Provence had set up what was virtually a government of his own. The _emigres_ had 3,000 or 4,000 men under arms, and a royal council organized, all that was necessary to administer France if she could be regained. The _Legislative_ now aimed a blow at them; the _emigres_ were to return to France before the 1st of January 1792, and those failing to do this were to be punishable by death. The decree was sent to the King who, unwilling to sign a.s.sent to the death of his brother and n.o.bles, used his const.i.tutional right of veto.

This was the beginning of a conflict between {131} the a.s.sembly and the King, a struggle that showed the determination of the former not to recognise the right of veto prescribed by the Const.i.tution. The _Legislative_ followed its attack on the _emigres_ by one on the priests. The clergy was discontented and, in the west, showed signs of inciting the peasantry to revolt; it was therefore decreed that every member of the clergy might be called on to take the oath to the civil const.i.tution. This, again, the King vetoed, encouraged in his att.i.tude by the _Feuillants_. The old struggle was being renewed; Jacobins and _Feuillants_ were fighting one another over the person of the King.

There was one question, however, on which the _Feuillants_ and Brissot's wing of the Jacobins agreed; both wanted war. La Fayette, chief figure among the _Feuillants_, had sunk rapidly in popularity since his repression of the mob in July. In October he had resigned his command of the national guard. In November he had been defeated by the Jacobin Petion for the mayoralty of Paris. He now hoped for a military command, and saw in war the opportunity for consolidating a victorious army by means of which the King and Const.i.tution might be imposed on Paris.

Brissot, ambitious and self-confident, his {132} head turned at the prospect of a conflagration, saw in a European war a field large enough in which to develop his untried statesmans.h.i.+p. The pretexts for war lay ready to hand. There was not only the tense situation arising between Austria and France because of the relation between the two reigning families, but there was also acute friction over certain territories belonging to German sovereign princes, such as those of Salm or Montbeliard, that were enclaved within the French border.

Could the extinction of the feudal rights hold over such territory as German princes held within the borders of France? Such was the vexatious question which those princes were carrying to their supreme tribunal, that of the Emperor at Vienna.

The opposition to the war was not so weighty. Louis realized the danger clearly enough, and knew that Austrian success would be visited on his head. Yet he was so helpless that he had to call the _Feuillant_ nominee, Count Louis de Narbonne, his own natural cousin, to the ministry of war. The King was not alone in his opposition to the war,--Robespierre and Marat, nearly in accord, both stood for peace. Robespierre, from the first, had foreseen the course of the Revolution, had {133} prophetically feared the success of some soldier of fortune,--he was at this moment that unknown lieutenant of artillery, Napoleone Buonaparte,--who should with a stroke of the sword convert the Revolution to his purposes. Marat, in his more hectic, malevolent, uncertain way, was haunted by the same presentiment, and what he saw in war was this: "What afflicts the friends of liberty is that we have more to fear from success than from defeat . . . the danger is lest one of our generals be crowned with victory and lest . . . he lead his victorious army against the capital to secure the triumph of the Despot. I invoke heaven that we may meet with constant defeat . . . and that our soldiers . . . drown their leaders in their own blood."--This Marat wrote on the 24th of April 1792, in his little pamphlet newspaper _l'Ami du peuple_.

During the first part of 1792 the popular agitation grew. France was now throwing all the enthusiasm, the vital emotion of patriotism into her internal upheaval. Rouget de Lisle invented his great patriotic hymn, christened in the following August the _Ma.r.s.eillaise_. Men who could get no guns, armed themselves with pikes. The red Phrygian cap of liberty was adopted. The magic word, citizen, became {134} the cherished appellation of the mult.i.tude. And in the a.s.sembly the orators declaimed vehemently against the traitors, the supporters of the foreigner in their midst. Vergniaud, from the tribune of the a.s.sembly menacing the Austrian princess of the Tuileries, exclaimed: "Through this window I perceive the palace where perfidious counsels delude the Sovereign. . . . Terror and panic have often issued from its portals; this day I bid them re-enter, in the name of the Law; let all its inmates know that it is the King alone who is inviolable, that the Law will strike the guilty without distinction, and that no head on which guilt reposes can escape its sword."

The thunders of Vergniaud and the other Jacobin orators rolled not in vain. By March the Drissotins dominated the situation. They frightened the King into acquiescence in their war policy and they drove Narbonne and the Fayettists, their temporary allies, from office, installing a new ministry made up of their own adherents. That new ministry included Roland, Claviere and Dumouriez;--Roland, a hard-headed, hard-working man of business, whose young wife with her beauty and enthusiasm was to be the soul of the unfortunate Girondin party; Claviere, a banker, speculator, {135} friend of Mirabeau, and generally doubtful liberal; Dumouriez, a soldier, able, adventurous, of large instincts political and human, ambitious and forceful beyond his colleagues.

The Brissotin ministry was well equipped with talent, and was intended to carry through the war, which was voted by the a.s.sembly on the 20th of April. This step had been gradually led up to by an acrimonious exchange of diplomatic votes. The war, now that it had broken out, was found to involve more powers than Austria. The king of Prussia, unwilling to let Austria pose as the sole defender of the Germanic princes of the Rhineland, had in August 1791 joined the Emperor in the declaration of Pillnitz, threatening France with coercion. He now acted up to this, and joined in the war as the ally of the Emperor.

Leopold died in March, and was succeeded by his son, Marie Antoinette's nephew, Francis II.

Three armies were formed by France for the conflict, and were placed under the orders of Rochambeau, La Fayette, and Luckner. They were weak in numbers, as the fortresses soaked up many thousands of men, and unprepared for war. The allies concentrated their troops in the neighbourhood of Coblenz. The {136} Duke of Brunswick was placed in command, and by the end of July perfected arrangements for marching on Paris with an Austro-Prussian army of 80,000 men.

The breaking out of war inflamed still further the political excitement of France. In April a festival, or demonstration, was held in honour of the soldiers of Chateauvieux' Swiss regiment, now released from the galleys. Angry protests arose from the moderates, an echo of the a.s.sembly's vote of thanks to Bouille for repressing the mutineers six months before. These protests, however, went unheeded, for the Jacobins were now virtually masters of Paris. Not only did they control the public galleries of the a.s.sembly but they had gained a majority on the Commune and had secured for Manuel and Danton its legal executive offices of _procureur_ and _subst.i.tut_.

In May difficulties arose between the King and his ministers, arising partly from the exercise of the power of veto once more. On the 12th of June the ministers were forced from office and were replaced by moderates or Fayettists, Dumouriez going to the army to replace Rochambeau. The Brissotin party, furious at this defeat, decided on a monster {137} demonstration against the King for the 20th of June.

The 20th of June 1792 was one of the great days of the Revolution, but, on the whole, less an insurrection than a demonstration. Out of the two great faubourgs of the working cla.s.ses, St. Antoine and St.

Marceaux, came processions of market porters, market women, coal heavers, workmen, citizens, with detachments of national guards here and there. Santerre, a popular brewer and national guard commander, appeared the leader; but the procession showed little sign of having recourse to violence. Bouquets were carried, and banners with various inscriptions such as: "We want union!" "Liberty!" One of the most extreme said: "Warning to Louis XVI: the people, weary of suffering, demand liberty or death!"

Proceeding to the a.s.sembly a pet.i.tion was tumultuously presented wherein it was declared that the King must observe the law, and that if he was responsible for the continued inactivity of the armies he must go. The mob then flowed on to the palace, was brought up by some loyal battalions of national guards; but presently forced one of the gates and {138} irresistibly poured in. A disorderly scene followed.

The King maintained his coolness and dignity. For four long hours the mob pushed through the palace, jostling, apostrophising, the King and Queen. A few national guards, a few members of the a.s.sembly, attempted to give Louis some sort of protection. But he was practically surrounded and helpless. What saved him was his coolness, his good sense, and the fact that there was no intent to do him bodily harm save among some groups too unimportant to make themselves felt. To please the men of the faubourgs Louis consented to place a red liberty cap on his head, and to empty a bottle of wine as a sign of fraternization.

Finally Vergniaud and Petion succeeded in having the palace evacuated; and the a.s.sa.s.sination of Louis, which many had feared and a few hoped, had been averted.

[1] There is no opportunity here for discussing adequately the clause in the declaration to the effect that every citizen is ent.i.tled to concur in making laws. That clause apparently conflicts with what I have said above. My explanation of the discrepancy is based on this: that the declaration is a much tinkered, composite doc.u.ment, made up over a period of many months, and not logical at every point. The clause here mentioned I explain as a direct echo of the elections to the States-General; it was one of the first drafted; its precise significance was soon lost sight of and its inconsistency remained unnoticed.

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CHAPTER X

THE Ma.s.sACRES

The event of the 20th of June was like lightning flas.h.i.+ng in darkness.

Instantly people saw where they were. Moderate, loyal, reasonable men, startled at the danger of the King, smarting at the indignity he had suffered, fearful of mob rule and mob violence, rallied to the throne, signed pet.i.tions protesting against the event. Louis himself, realizing that his life was in jeopardy, made appeals both to the a.s.sembly and to his people.

The first reply to the King's appeal, unsolicited and unappreciated, came from La Fayette. On receiving news of the event of the 20th he left his headquarters and reached Paris on the 28th. He appealed to the a.s.sembly and rallied the centre, still responsive if a leader could be found. He then began to concert measures for getting control of the city by means of the national guards. At this point, however, his scheme failed. The Court {140} would not support him, the King too prudent, the Queen too impolitic. Marie Antoinette herself, it is said, in her rancorous dislike of La Fayette, gave Petion the secret as to his contemplated use of the national guards; and this proved fatal. Checked by the action of the mayor and the Jacobins, unsupported by the Tuileries, La Fayette had to abandon his efforts.

Another attempt followed. The Department of the Seine, presided by La Rochefoucauld, tried to a.s.sert its const.i.tutional authority over the great city situated within its limits. It voted the suspension of Petion, mayor of Paris, and of Manuel, his procureur, for dereliction of duty in failing to maintain order on the 20th of June.

The action of La Rochefoucauld in suspending Petion took place on the 7th of July, a moment at which the advance of the Duke of Brunswick was momentarily expected and at which the national excitement was tending to overpower the royalist reaction. This reaction was now checked. The Jacobins were resolved to use mob pressure to whatever extent was necessary for accomplis.h.i.+ng their purpose. On the 11th they pa.s.sed through the a.s.sembly a declaration that the country was in danger, and two days later imposed a vote quas.h.i.+ng the {141} action of the Department and reinstating Petion.

The ferment now blended inextricably the war fever and the action against the King. Volunteers were enrolling for the army. National guards were being summoned from the provinces to renew the federation of 1791, and the violent section of the agitators saw in these national guards the means for pus.h.i.+ng over the royal authority. A demonstration better organized than that of the 20th of June, and armed, could rid France of the Bourbon incubus. Preparations for such a demonstration were at once taken in hand.

Among the provincial troops now a.s.sembled in or marching towards Paris, there was no body more remarkable than the battalion of the 300 Ma.r.s.eillais. Like a whirlwind of patriotic emotion they swept through France, dragging the cannon with which they meant to knock at the gates of the Tuileries, chanting Rouget's new song forever to be a.s.sociated with the name of their own city. These Ma.r.s.eillais were red-hot republicans, and in judging the political situation of that moment this const.i.tutes one of the salient points. The Parisian patriots were on the whole far less republican than those of the provinces. {142} Among the men who were organizing the new demonstration the greater part meant nothing more than ridding themselves of Louis, of an executive officer whom they regarded as treacherous and as secretly in league with the enemy. What should come after him they did not much consider. In the forming of this state of opinion the individual action of Robespierre had played a great part. Robespierre, who feared in war the opportunity for the soldier, saw in republicanism merely the triumph of a Cromwell; to him La Fayette was a tangible danger, the word _republic_ an empty formula. And so, with an influence still widening, despite his opposition to the war, he steadily preached the doctrine that the form of government was nothing so long as civil, social and political equality were secured.

At the parade held on the 14th of July,--the Ma.r.s.eillais had not yet arrived,--there were no cries of _Vive le roi_, and none of, _Vive la republique_, but _Vive la nation_ was the adopted formula. Yet at the same moment Billaud-Varennes, one of the most advanced of the Jacobins, was addressing the Club in favour of a republic; and the _federes_ formed a central committee which on the 17th pet.i.tioned the {143} a.s.sembly for the suspension of the King. To support the movement further the section committees were decreed in continuous session, and came under the control of the organization.

On the 30th of July, Brunswick crossed the frontier; the advance of his columns was heralded by a proclamation or manifesto. In this doc.u.ment he announced to the people of France that he entered the country as the ally of their sovereign, and with the purpose of visiting on Paris an "exemplary and never-to-be-forgotten vengeance . . . military execution and total subversion," and of bringing "the guilty rebels to the death they have deserved." Copies of the manifesto reached Paris on the 3rd of August, with immediate effect. To Louis the Prussian general's utterances appeared so incredible that they were promptly disavowed as a forgery. To the people they confirmed the suspicion that had been rankling for three long years, that had been envenomed by all the poison of Marat. A howl of execration arose, a howl not against Brunswick but against the inmates of the Tuileries; and in that howl the voices of the Ma.r.s.eillais, who had just reached the city, were raised loudest.

{144} The inevitable result followed in just one week, a week spent in preparations by the popular leaders. At one o'clock in the morning of the 10th of August delegates from the sections met at the Hotel de Ville and a.s.sumed control of the city. This body was joined by Danton, Marat and Hebert, among others, and of these Danton more than anyone else represented the driving power. Orders were given for ringing the tocsin.

All Paris knew the movement was coming, and understood the signal.

At the Tuileries preparations for resistance had been made. The Marquis de Mandat took charge of the defence. He had about 1,500 well-disposed national guards from the western or middle cla.s.s districts, and about 1,000 excellent Swiss infantry of the King's household troops. These he posted to good advantage, guarding the palace and the bridges over the Seine to the south. For a while all went well. The insurrection began slowly; and when it did roll up as far as the bridges Mandat's musketry held it easily at bay.

The insurrectional Commune now realized that Mandat was a considerable obstacle and set to work to remove him. In his official station as a national guard commander he was {145} under the jurisdiction of the mayor, so Petion was made to write, ordering him to report at the Hotel de Ville. Mandat declined to obey. The attack still hung fire. The order was repeated. Mandat, this time, weakly allowed himself to be persuaded into compliance. He proceeded to the Hotel de Ville,--and was butchered on the stairs by a band of insurgents.

After the defence had lost its general, and with daylight over the scene, events moved fast. The national guards at the palace could not be kept to their posts in the absence of their chief and in presence of the swelling numbers of the attackers. The defence of the bridges had to be given up and the Swiss withdrew into the palace. A lull followed while the insurrection gathered up its strength for the attack on the Tuileries itself.

During that lull, at half past eight, Louis, with his family, left the palace. He believed resistance useless; he feared a ma.s.sacre might occur; he was averse as ever to bloodshed; and so was persuaded that his best course would be to seek refuge in the a.s.sembly.

Just as Louis left, the real attack was delivered on the palace. The Swiss replied with musketry, sallied out, charged the insurgents {146} and drove them across the Carrousel; then they returned, and presently received a written order from the King bidding them not to fire. This momentarily paralyzed the defence. The insurgents, led by the provincial _federes_, were not yet beaten, but flowed back once more to the attack.

Some field pieces which they had, breached the palace doors, a sharp struggle followed, and soon the insurgents had got a foothold. What followed was a ma.s.sacre. Many of the Swiss were cut down in the corridors and rooms of the palace. Others were mown down by musketry trying to escape across the Tuileries gardens. A few got away and sought refuge in a near-by church, but were there overtaken by the popular fury, and butchered. The rage of the people was unbridled, and success turned it into ferocity, even b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. The bodies of the Swiss were mutilated in an atrocious fas.h.i.+on.

While the triumphant insurgents were sacking the palace and committing their barbarities on the unfortunate Swiss, Louis and his family remained unmolested in the a.s.sembly. They were to remain there for three days while their fate was being decided, temporary accommodation being found for them. The situation was really this, that no party was yet {147} quite prepared for the destruction of the King himself, only of the royal power. The a.s.sembly which, a year earlier, had a.s.sumed the position that the King was necessary to the const.i.tution had now virtually abandoned it, and the Commune, while going much further than the a.s.sembly, was not yet ready to strike Louis. But it did claim the custody of the royal family, and that, after a three days' struggle, the a.s.sembly conceded.

On the 13th of August the royal family went to imprisonment in the Temple, a small mediaeval dungeon in the central quarter of Paris.

Only about three hundred members of the a.s.sembly were present to face the storm when Louis sought refuge in its midst. Vergniaud was president.