THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION
 
 flSAAC FOOT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON, 
 FIRST BARON, ACTON 
 
 D.C.L. , LL.D. , ETC. ETC. 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 
 
 EDITED BY 
 JOHN NEVILLE FIGGIS, C.R., Lirr.D. 
 
 HONORARY FELLOW OP ST. CATHARINE'S COLLEGE 
 
 REGINALD VERE LAURENCE, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1910
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 THE following Lectures were delivered by Lord Acton 
 as Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge in 
 the academical years 1895-96, 1896-97, 1897-98, 
 1898-99. The French Revolution, 1789-95, was in 
 those years one of the special subjects set for the His- 
 torical Tripos, and this determined the scope of the 
 course. In addition some discussion of the literature of 
 the Revolution generally took place either in a conversa- 
 tion class or as an additional lecture. Such connected 
 fragments of these as remain have been printed as an 
 appendix. For the titles of the Lectures the editors are 
 responsible. J N F 
 
 R. V. L. 
 
 August 10, 1910
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 LECT. PAGE 
 
 I. THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION . . i 
 
 II. THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA . . 20 
 
 III. THE SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL . 39 
 
 IV. THE MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL . 57 
 V. THE TENNIS-COURT OATH . . .68 
 
 VI. THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE . . -77 
 
 VII. THE FOURTH OF AUGUST . . .94 
 
 VIII. THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES . . .109 
 
 IX. THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES . . .126 
 
 X. MIRABEAU . . . . .141 
 
 XI. SIEVES AND THE CONSTITUTION CIVILE . -159 
 
 XII. THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES . . .174 
 
 XIII. THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR . 193 
 
 XIV. DUMOURIEZ . . . . .210 
 XV. THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY . . 224 
 
 XVI. THE EXECUTION OF THE KING . . . 240 
 
 XVII. THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE . . .256 
 
 XVIII. THE REIGN OF TERROR .... 269 
 
 XIX. ROBESPIERRE ..... 284 
 
 XX. LA VENDEE . . . . .301 
 
 XXI. THE EUROPEAN WAR . . -317 
 
 XXII. AFTER THE TERROR . . . 331 
 
 APPENDIX. : THE LITERATURE OF THE REVOLUTION . 345 
 
 INDEX ....... 375 
 
 vii
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 THE revenue of France was near twenty millions when 
 Lewis XVI., finding it inadequate, called upon the nation 
 for supply. In a single lifetime it rose to far more than 
 one hundred millions, while the national income grew still 
 more rapidly ; and this increase was wrought by a class to 
 whom the ancient monarchy denied its best rewards, and 
 whom it deprived of power in the country they enriched. 
 As their industry effected change in the distribution of 
 property, and wealth ceased to be the prerogative of a 
 few, the excluded majority perceived that their disabilities 
 rested on no foundation of right and justice, and were 
 unsupported by reasons of State. They proposed that 
 the prizes in the Government, the Army, and the Church 
 should be given to merit among the active and necessary 
 portion of the people, and that no privilege injurious to 
 them should be reserved for the unprofitable minority. 
 Being nearly an hundred to one, they deemed that they 
 were virtually the substance of the nation, and they claimed 
 to govern themselves with a power proportioned to their 
 numbers. They demanded that the State should be 
 reformed, that the ruler should be their agent, not their 
 master. 
 
 That is the French Revolution. To see that it is not 
 a meteor from the unknown, but the product of historic 
 influences which, by their union were efficient to destroy, 
 and by their division powerless to construct, we must 
 follow for a moment the procession of ideas that went 
 
 * B
 
 2 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 before, and bind it to the law of continuity and the 
 operation of constant forces. 
 
 If France failed where other nations have succeeded, 
 and if the passage from the feudal and aristocratic forms of 
 society to the industrial and democratic was attended by 
 convulsions, the cause was not in the men of that day, but 
 in the ground on which they stood. As long as the despotic 
 kings were victorious abroad, they were accepted at home. 
 The first signals of revolutionary thinking lurk dimly 
 among the oppressed minorities during intervals of disaster. 
 The Jansenists were loyal and patient ; but their famous 
 jurist Domat was a philosopher, and is remembered as 
 the writer who restored the supremacy of reason in the 
 chaotic jurisprudence of the time. He had learnt from 
 St. Thomas, a great name in the school he belonged to, 
 that legislation ought to be for the people and by the 
 people, that the cashiering of bad kings may be not only 
 a right but a duty. He insisted that law shall proceed 
 from common sense, not from custom, and shall draw its 
 precepts from an eternal code. The principle of the 
 higher law signifies Revolution. No government founded 
 on positive enactments only can stand before it, and it 
 points the way to that system of primitive, universal, and 
 indefeasible rights which the lawyers of the Assembly, 
 descending from Domat, prefixed to their constitution. 
 
 Under the edict of Nantes the Protestants were 
 decided royalists ; so that, even after the Revocation, 
 Bayle, the apostle of Toleration, retained his loyalty in 
 exile at Rotterdam. His enemy, Jurieu, though intolerant 
 as a divine, was liberal in his politics, and contracted in 
 the neighbourhood of William of Orange the temper of 
 a continental Whig. He taught that sovereignty comes 
 from the people and reverts to the people. The Crown 
 forfeits powers it has made ill use of. The rights of the 
 nation cannot be forfeited. The people alone possess an 
 authority which is legitimate without conditions, and 
 their acts are valid even when they are wrong. The 
 most telling of Jurieu's seditious propositions, preserved 
 in the transparent amber of Bossuet's reply, shared the
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 3 
 
 immortality of a classic, and in time contributed to the 
 doctrine that the democracy is irresponsible and must 
 have its way. 
 
 Maultrot, the best ecclesiastical lawyer of the day, 
 published three volumes in 1790 on the power of the 
 people over kings, in which, with accurate research among 
 sources very familiar to him and to nobody else, he 
 explained how the Canon Law approves the principles 
 of 1688 and rejects the modern invention of divine right. 
 His book explains still better the attitude of the clergy 
 in the Revolution, and their brief season of popularity. 
 
 The true originator of the opposition in literature was 
 Fenelon. He was neither an innovating reformer nor a 
 discoverer of new truth ; but as a singularly independent 
 and most intelligent witness, he was the first who saw 
 through the majestic hypocrisy of the court, and knew 
 that France was on the road to ruin. The revolt of 
 conscience began with him before the glory of the 
 monarchy was clouded over. His views grew from an 
 extraordinary perspicacity and refinement in the estimate 
 of men. He learnt to refer the problem of government, 
 like the conduct of private life, to the mere standard of 
 morals, and extended further than any one the plain but 
 hazardous practice of deciding all things by the exclusive 
 precepts of enlightened virtue. If he did not know all 
 about policy and international science, he could always 
 tell what would be expected of a hypothetically perfect 
 man. Fenelon feels like a citizen of Christian Europe, 
 but he pursues his thoughts apart from his country or 
 his church, and his deepest utterances are in the mouth 
 of pagans. He desired to be alike true to his own beliefs, 
 and gracious towards those who dispute them. He 
 approved neither the deposing power nor the punishment 
 of error, and declared that the highest need of the 
 Church was not victory but liberty. Through his friends, 
 Fleury and Chevreuse, he favoured the recall of the 
 Protestants, and he advised a general toleration. He 
 would have the secular power kept aloof from ecclesiastical 
 concerns, because protection leads to religious servitude
 
 4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 and persecution to religious hypocrisy. There were 
 moments when his steps seemed to approach the border 
 of the undiscovered land where Church and State are 
 parted. 
 
 He has written that a historian ought to be neutral 
 between other countries and his own, and he expected the 
 same discipline in politicians, as patriotism cannot absolve 
 a man from his duty to mankind. Therefore no war can 
 be just, unless a war to which we are compelled in the 
 sole cause of freedom. F^nelon wished that France 
 should surrender the ill-gotten conquests of which she was 
 so proud, and especially that she should withdraw from 
 Spain. He declared that the Spaniards were degenerate 
 and imbecile, but that nothing could make that right 
 which was contrary to the balance of power and the 
 security of nations. Holland seemed to him the hope of 
 Europe, and he thought the allies justified in excluding 
 the French dynasty from Spain for the same reason that 
 no claim of law could have made it right that Philip II. 
 should occupy England. He hoped that his country 
 would be thoroughly humbled, for he dreaded the effects 
 of success on the temperament of the victorious French. 
 He deemed it only fair that Lewis should be compelled 
 to dethrone his grandson with his own guilty hand. 
 
 In the judgment of Fnelon, power is poison ; and as 
 kings are nearly always bad, they ought not to govern, 
 but only to execute the law. For it is the mark of 
 barbarians to obey precedent and custom. Civilised 
 society must be regulated by a solid code. Nothing but 
 a constitution can avert arbitrary power. The despotism 
 of Lewis XIV. renders him odious and contemptible, and 
 is the cause of all the evils which the country suffers. 
 If the governing power which rightfully belonged to the 
 nation was restored, it would save itself by its own exertion; 
 but absolute authority irreparably saps its foundations, 
 and is bringing on a revolution by which it will not be 
 moderated, but utterly destroyed. Although F^nelon has 
 no wish to sacrifice either the monarchy or the aristocracy, 
 he betrays sympathy with several tendencies of the move-
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 5 
 
 ment which he foresaw with so much alarm. He admits 
 the state of nature, and thinks civil society not the 
 primitive condition of man, but a result of the passage 
 from savage life to husbandry. He would transfer the 
 duties of government to local and central assemblies ; and 
 he demands entire freedom of trade, and education provided 
 by law, because children belong to the State first and to 
 the family afterwards. He does not resign the hope of 
 making men good by act of parliament, and his belief in 
 public institutions as a means of moulding individual 
 character brings him nearly into touch with a distant 
 future. 
 
 He is the Platonic founder of revolutionary thinking. 
 Whilst his real views were little known, he became a 
 popular memory ; but some complained that his force 
 was centrifugal, and that a church can no more be preserved 
 by suavity and distinction than a state by liberty and 
 justice. Lewis XVI., we are often told, perished in 
 expiation of the sins of his forefathers. He perished, not 
 because the power he inherited from them had been carried 
 to excess, but because it had been discredited and under- 
 mined. One author of this discredit was Fnelon. Until 
 he came, the ablest men, Bossuet and even Bayle, revered 
 the monarchy. Fnelon struck it at the zenith, and 
 treated Lewis XIV. in all his grandeur more severely 
 than the disciples of Voltaire treated Lewis XV. in all 
 his degradation. The season of scorn and shame begins 
 with him. The best of his later contemporaries followed 
 his example, and laid the basis of opposing criticism on 
 motives of religion. They were the men whom Cardinal 
 Dubois describes as dreamers of the same dreams as the 
 chimerical archbishop of Cambray. Their influence fades 
 away before the great change that came over France about 
 the middle of the century. 
 
 From that time unbelief so far prevailed that even 
 men who were not professed assailants, as Montesquieu, 
 Condillac, Turgot, were estranged from Christianity. 
 Politically, the consequence was this : men who did not 
 attribute any deep significance to church questions never
 
 6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 acquired definite notions on Church and State, never 
 seriously examined under what conditions religion may 
 be established or disestablished, endowed or disendowed, 
 never even knew whether there exists any general solution, 
 or any principle by which problems of that kind are 
 decided. This defect of knowledge became a fact of 
 importance at a turning-point in the Revolution. The 
 theory of the relations between states and churches is 
 bound up with the theory of Toleration, and on that 
 subject the eighteenth century scarcely rose above an 
 intermittent, embarrassed, and unscientific view. For 
 religious liberty is composed of the properties both of 
 religion and of liberty, and one of its factors never became 
 an object of disinterested observation among actual leaders 
 of opinion. They preferred the argument of doubt to the 
 argument of certitude, and sought to defeat intolerance by 
 casting out revelation as they had defeated the persecution 
 of witches by casting out the devil. There remained a 
 flaw in their liberalism, for liberty apart from belief is 
 liberty with a good deal of the substance taken out of it. 
 The problem is less complicated and the solution less 
 radical and less profound. Already, then, there were 
 writers who held somewhat superficially the conviction, 
 which Tocqueville made a corner-stone, that nations that 
 have not the self-governing force of religion within them 
 are unprepared for freedom. 
 
 The early notions of reform moved on French lines, 
 striving to utilise the existing form of society, to employ 
 the parliamentary aristocracy, to revive the States-General 
 and the provincial assemblies. But the scheme of standing 
 on the ancient ways, and raising a new France on the 
 substructure of the old, brought out the fact that whatever 
 growth of institutions there once had been had been stunted 
 and stood still. If the mediaeval polity had been fitted 
 to prosper, its fruit must be gathered from other countries, 
 where the early notions had been pursued far ahead. The 
 first thing to do was to cultivate the foreign example ; 
 and with that what we call the eighteenth century began. 
 The English superiority, proclaimed first by Voltaire, was
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 7 
 
 further demonstrated by Montesquieu. For England had 
 recently created a government which was stronger than 
 the institutions that had stood on antiquity. Founded 
 upon fraud and treason, it had yet established the security 
 of law more firmly than it had ever existed under the 
 system of legitimacy, of prolonged inheritance, and of 
 religious sanction. It flourished on the unaccustomed 
 belief that theological dissensions need not detract from 
 the power of the State, while political dissensions are the 
 very secret of its prosperity. The men of questionable 
 character who accomplished the change and had governed 
 for the better part of sixty years, had successfully main- 
 tained public order, in spite of conspiracy and rebellion ; 
 they had built up an enormous system of national credit, 
 and had been victorious in continental war. The Jacobite 
 doctrine, which was the basis of European monarchy, had 
 been backed by the arms of France, and had failed to 
 shake the newly planted throne. A great experiment had 
 been crowned by a great discovery. A novelty that 
 defied the wisdom of centuries had made good its footing, 
 and revolution had become a principle of stability more 
 sure than tradition. 
 
 Montesquieu undertook to make the disturbing fact 
 avail in political science. He valued it because it recon- 
 ciled him with monarchy. He had started with the 
 belief that kings are an evil, and not a necessary evil, and 
 that their time was running short. His visit to Walpolean 
 England taught him a plan by which they might be 
 reprieved. He still confessed that a republic is the reign 
 of virtue ; and by virtue he meant love of equality and 
 renunciation of self. But he had seen a monarchy that 
 throve by corruption. He said that the distinctive 
 principle of monarchy is not virtue but honour, which he 
 once described as a contrivance to enable men of the 
 world to commit almost every offence with impunity. The 
 praise of England was made less injurious to French 
 patriotism by the famous theory that explains institutions 
 and character by the barometer and the latitude. Montes- 
 quieu looked about him, and abroad, but not far ahead.
 
 8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 His admirable skill in supplying reason for every positive 
 fact sometimes confounds the cause which produces with 
 the argument that defends. He knows so many pleas for 
 privilege that he almost overlooks the class that has none ; 
 and having no friendship for the clergy, he approves their 
 immunities. He thinks that aristocracy alone can preserve 
 monarchies, and makes England more free than any 
 commonwealth. He lays down the great conservative 
 maxim, that success generally depends on knowing the 
 time it will take ; and the most purely Whig maxim in 
 his works, that the duty of a citizen is a crime when it 
 obscures the duty of man, is Fe'nelon's. His liberty is of 
 a Gothic type, and not insatiable. But the motto of his 
 work, Prolem sine matre creatam, was intended to signify 
 that the one thing wanting was liberty ; and he had views 
 on taxation, equality, and the division of powers that gave 
 him a momentary influence in 1789. His warning that 
 a legislature may be more dangerous than the executive 
 remained unheard. The Esprit des lots had lost ground 
 in 1767, during the ascendancy of Rousseau. The mind 
 of the author moved within the conditions of society 
 familiar to him, and he did not heed the coming democracy. 
 He assured Hume that there would be no revolution, 
 because the nobles were without civic courage. 
 
 There was more divination in d'Argenson, who was 
 Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1745, and knew politics 
 from the inside. Less acquiescent than his brilliant con- 
 temporary, he was perpetually contriving schemes of 
 fundamental change, and is the earliest writer from whom 
 we can extract the system of 1789. Others before him 
 had perceived the impending revolution ; but d'Argenson 
 foretold that it would open with the slaughter of priests 
 in the streets of Paris. Thirty -eight years later these 
 words came true at the gate of St. Germain's Abbey. 
 As the supporter of the Pretender he was quite uninflu- 
 enced by admiration for England, and imputed, not to 
 the English Deists and Whigs but to the Church and her 
 divisions and intolerance, the unbelieving spirit that 
 threatened both Church and State. It was conventionally
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 9 
 
 understood on the Continent that 1688 had been an 
 uprising of Nonconformists, and a Whig was assumed to 
 be a Presbyterian down to the death of Anne. It was 
 easy to infer that a more violent theological conflict would 
 lead to a more violent convulsion. As early as 1743 his 
 terrible foresight discerns that the State is going to pieces, 
 and its doom was so certain that he began to think of a 
 refuge under other masters. He would have deposed the 
 noble, the priest, and the lawyer, and given their power 
 to the masses. Although the science of politics was in 
 its infancy, he relied on the dawning enlightenment to 
 establish rational liberty, and the equality between classes 
 and religions which is the perfection of politics. The 
 world ought to be governed not by parchment and vested 
 rights, but by plain reason, which proceeds from the 
 complex to the simple, and will sweep away all that inter- 
 poses between the State and the democracy, giving to 
 each part of the nation the management of its own affairs. 
 He is eager to change everything, except the monarchy 
 which alone can change all else. A deliberative assembly 
 does not rise above the level of its average members. It 
 is neither very foolish nor very wise. All might be well 
 if the king made himself the irresistible instrument of 
 philosophy and justice, and wrought the reform. But his 
 king was Lewis XV. D'Argenson saw so little that was 
 worthy to be preserved that he did not shrink from 
 sweeping judgments and abstract propositions. By his 
 rationalism, and his indifference to the prejudice of custom 
 and the claim of possession ; by his maxim that every 
 man may be presumed to understand the things in which 
 his own interest and responsibility are involved ; by his 
 zeal for democracy, equality, and simplicity, and his 
 dislike of intermediate authorities, he belongs to a genera- 
 tion later than his own. He heralded events without 
 preparing them, for the best of all he wrote only became 
 known in our time. 
 
 Whilst Montesquieu, at the height of his fame as the 
 foremost of living writers, was content to contemplate the 
 past, there was a student in the Paris seminary who taught
 
 io THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 men to fix hope and endeavour on the future, and led the 
 world at twenty-three. Turgot, when he proclaimed that 
 upward growth and progress is the law of human life, was 
 studying to become a priest. To us, in an age of science, 
 it has become difficult to imagine Christianity without the 
 attribute of development and the faculty of improving 
 society as well as souls. But the idea was acquired slowly. 
 Under the burden of sin, men accustomed themselves to 
 the consciousness of degeneracy ; each generation confessed 
 that they were unworthy children of their parents, and 
 awaited with impatience the approaching end. From 
 Lucretius and Seneca to Pascal and Leibniz we encounter 
 a few dispersed and unsupported passages, suggesting 
 advance towards perfection, and the flame that brightens 
 as it moves from hand to hand ; but they were without 
 mastery or radiance. Turgot at once made the idea 
 habitual and familiar, and it became a pervading force in 
 thoughtful minds, whilst the new sciences arose to confirm 
 it. He imparted a deeper significance to history, giving 
 it unity of tendency and direction, constancy where there 
 had been motion, and development instead of change. 
 The progress he meant was moral as much as intellectual ; 
 and as he professed to think that the rogues of his day 
 would have seemed sanctified models to an earlier century, 
 he made his calculations without counting the wickedness 
 of men. His analysis left un fathomed depths for future 
 explorers, for Lessing and still more for Hegel ; but he 
 taught mankind to expect that the future would be unlike 
 the past, that it would be better, and that the experience 
 of ages may instruct and warn, but cannot guide or control. 
 He is eminently a benefactor to historical study ; but he 
 forged a weapon charged with power to abolish the product 
 of history and the existing order. By the hypothesis of 
 progress, the new is always gaining on the old ; history is 
 the embodiment of imperfection, and escape from history 
 became the watchword of the coming day. Condorcet, 
 the master's pupil, thought that the world might be 
 emancipated by burning its records. 
 
 Turgot was too discreet for such an excess, and he
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION n 
 
 looked to history for the demonstration of his law. He 
 had come upon it in his theological studies. He renounced 
 them soon after, saying that he could not wear a mask. 
 When Guizot called Lamennais a malefactor, because he 
 threw off his cassock and became a freethinker, Scherer, 
 whose course had been some way parallel, observed : " He 
 little knows how much it costs." The abrupt transition 
 seems to have been accomplished by Turgot without a 
 struggle. The Encyclopedia, which was the largest 
 undertaking since the invention of printing, came out at 
 that time, and Turgot wrote for it. But he broke off, 
 refusing to be connected with a party professedly hostile 
 to revealed religion ; and he rejected the declamatory 
 paradoxes of Diderot and Raynal. He found his home 
 among the Physiocrats, of all the groups the one that 
 possessed the most compact body of consistent views, and 
 who already knew most of the accepted doctrines of 
 political economy, although they ended by making way 
 for Adam Smith. They are of supreme importance 
 to us, because they founded political science on the 
 economic science which was coming into existence. 
 Harrington, a century before, had seen that the art of 
 government can be reduced to system ; but the French 
 economists precede all men in this, that holding a vast 
 collection of combined and verified truths on matters 
 contiguous to politics and belonging to their domain, they 
 extended it to the whole, and governed the constitution 
 by the same fixed principles that governed the purse. 
 They said : A man's most sacred property is his labour. 
 It is anterior even to the right of property, for it is the 
 possession of those who own nothing else. Therefore he 
 must be free to make the best use of it he can. The 
 interference of one man with another, of society with its 
 members, of the state with the subject, must be brought 
 down to the lowest dimension. Power intervenes only to 
 restrict intervention, to guard the individual from oppres- 
 sion, that is from regulation in an interest not his own. 
 Free labour and its derivative free trade are the first 
 conditions of legitimate government. Let things fall into
 
 12 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 their natural order, let society govern itself, and the 
 sovereign function of the State will be to protect nature 
 in the execution of her own law. Government must not 
 be arbitrary, but it must be powerful enough to repress 
 arbitrary action in others. If the supreme power is need- 
 lessly limited, the secondary powers will run riot and 
 oppress. Its supremacy will bear no check. The problem 
 is to enlighten the ruler, not to restrain him ; and one man 
 is more easily enlightened than many. Government by 
 opposition, by balance and control, is contrary to principle ; 
 whereas absolutism might be requisite to the attainment 
 of their higher purpose. Nothing less than concentrated 
 power could overcome the obstacles to such beneficent 
 reforms as they meditated. Men who sought only the 
 general good must wound every distinct and separate 
 interest of class, and would be mad to break up the only 
 force that they could count upon, and thus to throw away 
 the means of preventing the evils that must follow if things 
 were left to the working of opinion and the feeling of 
 masses. They had no love for absolute power in itself, 
 but they computed that, if they had the use of it for 
 five years, France would be free. They distinguished 
 an arbitrary monarch and the irresistible but impersonal 
 state. 
 
 It was the era of repentant monarchy. Kings had 
 become the first of public servants, executing, for the good 
 of the people, what the people were unable to do for them- 
 selves; and there was a reforming movement on foot which 
 led to many instances of prosperous and intelligent adminis- 
 tration. To men who knew what unutterable suffering and 
 wrong was inflicted by bad laws, and who lived in terror 
 of the uneducated and inorganic masses, the idea of reform 
 from above seemed preferable to parliamentary govern- 
 ment managed by Newcastle and North, in the interest of 
 the British landlord. The economists are outwardly and 
 avowedly less liberal than Montesquieu, because they are 
 incomparably more impressed by the evils of the time, and 
 the need of immense and fundamental changes. They 
 prepared to undo the work of absolutism by the hand of
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 13 
 
 absolutism. They were not its opponents, but its advisers, 
 and hoped to convert it by their advice. The indispensable 
 liberties are those which constitute the wealth of nations ; 
 the rest will follow. The disease had lasted too loner for 
 
 O 
 
 the sufferer to heal himself : the relief must come from the 
 author of his sufferings. The power that had done the 
 wrong was still efficient to undo the wrong. Transfor- 
 mation, infinitely more difficult in itself than preservation, 
 was not more formidable to the economists because it 
 consisted mainly in revoking the godless work of a darker 
 age. They deemed it their mission not to devise new 
 laws, for that is a task which God has not committed to 
 man, but only to declare the inherent laws of the existence 
 of society and enable them to prevail. 
 
 The defects of the social and political organisation 
 were as distinctly pointed out by the economists as by 
 the electors of the National Assembly, twenty years later, 
 and in nearly all things they proposed the remedy. But 
 they were persuaded that the only thing to regenerate 
 France was a convulsion which the national character 
 would make a dreadful one. They desired a large 
 scheme of popular education, because commands take no 
 root in soil that is not prepared. Political truths can be 
 made so evident that the opinion of an instructed public 
 will be invincible, and will banish the abuse of power. 
 To resist oppression is to make a league with heaven, 
 and all things are oppressive that resist the natural order 
 of freedom. For society secures rights ; it neither 
 bestows nor restricts them. They are the direct con- 
 sequence of duties. As truth can only convince by the 
 exposure of errors and the defeat of objections, liberty is 
 the essential guard of truth. Society is founded, not 
 on the will of man, but on the nature of man and the 
 will of God ; and conformity to the divinely appointed 
 order is followed by inevitable reward. Relief of those 
 who suffer is the duty of all men, and the affair of all. 
 
 Such was the spirit of that remarkable group of men, 
 especially of Mercier de la Riviere, of whom Diderot said 
 that he alone possessed the true and everlasting secret of
 
 14 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the security and the happiness of empires. Turgot 
 indeed had failed in office ; but his reputation was not 
 diminished, and the power of his name exceeded all 
 others at the outbreak of the Revolution. His policy of 
 employing the Crown to reform the State was at once 
 rejected in favour of other counsels ; but his influence 
 may be traced in many acts of the Assembly, and on two 
 very memorable occasions it was not auspicious. It was 
 a central dogma of the party that land is the true source 
 of wealth, or, as Asgill said, that man deals in nothing 
 but earth. When a great part of France became national 
 property, men were the more easily persuaded that land 
 can serve as the basis of public credit and of unlimited 
 assignats. According to a weighty opinion which we 
 shall have to consider before long, the parting of the 
 ways in the Revolution was on the day when, rejecting 
 .the example both of England and America, the French 
 resolved to institute a single undivided legislature. It 
 was the Pennsylvanian model ; and Voltaire had pro- 
 nounced Pennsylvania the best government in the world. 
 Franklin gave the sanction of an oracle to the constitu- 
 tion of his state, and Turgot was its vehement protagonist 
 in Europe. 
 
 A king ruling over a level democracy, and a 
 democracy ruling itself through the agency of a king, 
 were long contending notions in the first Assembly. 
 One was monarchy according to Turgot, the other was 
 monarchy adapted to Rousseau ; and the latter, for a time, 
 prevailed. Rousseau was the citizen of a small republic, 
 consisting of a single town, and he professed to have 
 applied its example to the government of the world. It 
 was Geneva, not as he saw it, but as he extracted its 
 essential principle, and as it has since become, Geneva 
 illustrated by the Forest Cantons and the Landesgemeinde 
 more than by its own charters. The idea was that the 
 grown men met in the market-place, like the peasants of 
 Glarus under their trees, to manage their affairs, making 
 and unmaking officials, conferring and revoking powers. 
 They were equal, because every man had exactly the
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 15 
 
 same right to defend his interest by the guarantee of his 
 vote. The welfare of all was safe in the hands of all, for 
 they had not the separate interests that are bred by the 
 egotism of wealth, nor the exclusive views that come from 
 a distorted education. All being equal in power and 
 similar in purpose, there can be no just cause why some 
 should move apart and break into minorities. There is 
 an implied contract that no part shall ever be preferred 
 to the whole, and minorities shall always obey. Clever 
 men are not wanted for the making of laws, because 
 clever men and their laws are at the root of all mischief. 
 Nature is a better guide than civilisation, because nature 
 comes from God, and His works are good ; culture from 
 man, whose works are bad in proportion as he is remoter 
 from natural innocence, as his desires increase upon him, 
 as he seeks more refined pleasures, and stores up more 
 superfluity. It promotes inequality, selfishness, and the 
 ruin of public spirit. 
 
 By plausible and easy stages the social ideas latent 
 in parts of Switzerland produced the theory that men 
 come innocent from the hands of the Creator, that 
 they are originally equal, that progress from equality to 
 civilisation is the passage from virtue to vice and from 
 freedom to tyranny, that the people are sovereign, and 
 govern by powers given and taken away ; that an indi- 
 vidual or a class may be mistaken and may desert the 
 common cause and the general interest, but the people, 
 necessarily sincere, and true, and incorrupt, cannot go 
 wrong ; that there is a right of resistance to all govern- 
 ments that are fallible, because they are partial, but 
 none against government of the people by the people, 
 because it has no master and no judge, and decides in the 
 last instance and alone ; that insurrection is the law of 
 all unpopular societies founded on a false principle and a 
 broken contract, and submission that of the only legitimate 
 societies, based on the popular will ; that there is no 
 privilege against the law of nature, and no right against 
 the power of all. By this chain of reasoning, with little 
 infusion of other ingredients, Rousseau applied the
 
 16 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 sequence of the ideas of pure democracy to the govern- 
 ment of nations. 
 
 Now the most glaring and familiar fact in history 
 shows that the direct self-government of a town cannot 
 be extended over an empire. It is a plan that scarcely 
 reaches beyond the next parish. Either one district 
 will be governed by another, or both by somebody 
 else chosen for the purpose. Either plan contradicts 
 first principles. Subjection is the direct negation of 
 democracy ; representation is the indirect. So that an 
 Englishman underwent bondage to parliament as much 
 as Lausanne to Berne or as America to England if it 
 had submitted to taxation, and by law recovered his 
 liberty but once in seven years. Consequently Rousseau, 
 still faithful to Swiss precedent as well as to the logic of 
 his own theory, was a federalist. In Switzerland, when 
 one half of a canton disagrees with the other, or the 
 country with the town, it is deemed natural that they 
 should break into two, that the general will may not 
 oppress minorities. This multiplication of self-governing 
 communities was admitted by Rousseau as a preservative 
 of unanimity on one hand, and of liberty on the other. 
 Helv6tius came to his support with the idea that men 
 are not only equal by nature but alike, and that society 
 is the cause of variation ; from which it would follow that 
 everything may be done by laws and by education. 
 
 Rousseau is the author of the strongest political theory 
 that had appeared amongst men. We cannot say that 
 he reasons well, but he knew how to make his argument 
 seem convincing, satisfying, inevitable, and he wrote with 
 an eloquence and a fervour that had never been seen in 
 prose, even in Bolingbroke or Milton. His books gave 
 the first signal of a universal subversion, and were as 
 fatal to the Republic as to the Monarchy. Although he 
 lives by the social contract and the law of resistance, and 
 owes his influence to what was extreme and systematic, 
 his later writings are loaded with sound political wisdom. 
 He owes nothing to the novelty or the originality of his 
 thoughts. Taken jointly or severally, they are old friends,
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 17 
 
 and you will find them in the school of Wolf that just 
 preceded, in the dogmatists of the Great Rebellion and 
 the Jesuit casuists who were dear to Algernon Sidney, in 
 their Protestant opponents, Duplessis Mornay, and the 
 Scots who had heard the last of our schoolmen, Major of 
 St. Andrews, renew the speculations of the time of schism, 
 which decomposed and dissected the Church and rebuilt 
 it on a model very propitious to political revolution, and 
 even in the early interpreters of the Aristotelian Politics 
 which appeared just at the era of the first parliament. 
 
 Rousseau's most advanced point was the doctrine 
 that the people are infallible. Jurieu had taught that 
 they can do no wrong : Rousseau added that they are 
 positively in the right. The idea, like most others, 
 was not new, and goes back to the Middle Ages. 
 When the question arose what security there is for the 
 preservation of traditional truth if the episcopate was 
 divided and the papacy vacant, it was answered that the 
 faith would be safely retained by the masses. The 
 maxim that the voice of the people is the voice of God is 
 as old as Alcuin ; it was renewed by some of the greatest 
 writers anterior to democracy, by Hooker and Bossuet, 
 and it was employed in our day by Newman to prop his 
 theory of development. Rousseau applied it to the State. 
 
 The sovereignty of public opinion was just then 
 coming in through the rise of national debts and the 
 increasing importance of the public creditor. It meant 
 more than the noble savage and the blameless South Sea 
 islander, and distinguished the instinct that guides large 
 masses of men from the calculating wisdom of the few. 
 It was destined to prove the most serious of all obstacles 
 to representative government. Equality of power readily 
 suggests equality of property ; but the movement of 
 Socialism began earlier, and was not assisted by Rousseau. 
 There were solemn theorists, such as Mably and Morelly, 
 who were sometimes quoted in the Revolution, but the 
 change in the distribution of property was independent 
 of them. 
 
 A more effective influence was imported from Italy ; 
 
 c
 
 1 8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 for the Italians, through Vico, Giannone, Genovesi, had 
 an eighteenth century of their own. Sardinia preceded 
 France in solving the problem of feudalism. Arthur 
 Young affirms that the measures of the Grand Duke 
 Leopold had, in ten years, doubled the produce of Tuscany ; 
 at Milan, Count Firmian was accounted one of the best 
 administrators in Europe. It was a Milanese, Beccaria, 
 who, by his reform of criminal law, became a leader of 
 French opinion. Continental jurisprudence had long been 
 overshadowed by two ideas : that torture is the surest 
 method of discovering truth, and that punishment deters 
 not by its justice, its celerity, or its certainty, but in pro- 
 portion to its severity. Even in the eighteenth century 
 the penal system of Maria Theresa and Joseph II. was 
 barbarous. Therefore no attack was more surely aimed 
 at the heart of established usage than that which dealt 
 with courts of justice. It forced men to conclude that 
 authority was odiously stupid and still more odiously 
 ferocious, that existing governments were accursed, that 
 the guardians and ministers of law, divine and human, 
 were more guilty than their culprits. The past was 
 branded as the reign of infernal powers, and charged with 
 long arrears of unpunished wrong. As there was no 
 sanctity left in law, there was no mercy for its merciless 
 defenders ; and if they fell into avenging hands, their 
 doom would not exceed their desert. Men afterwards 
 conspicuous by their violence, Brissot and Marat, were 
 engaged in this campaign of humanity, which raised a 
 demand for authorities that were not vitiated by the 
 accumulation of infamy, for new laws, new powers, a new 
 dynasty. 
 
 As religion was associated with cruelty, it is at this 
 point that the movement of new ideas became a crusade 
 against Christianity. A book by the Cure Meslier, 
 partially known at that time, but first printed by Strauss 
 in 1864, is the clarion of vindictive unbelief ; and another 
 abbe, Raynal, hoped that the clergy would be crushed 
 beneath the ruins of their altars. 
 
 Thus the movement which began, in Fenelon's time,
 
 THE HERALDS OF THE REVOLUTION 19 
 
 with warnings and remonstrance and the zealous en- 
 deavour to preserve, which produced one great scheme of 
 change by the Crown and another at the expense of the 
 Crown, ended in the wild cry for vengeance and a 
 passionate appeal to fire and sword. So many lines of 
 thought converging on destruction explain the agree- 
 ment that existed when the States-General began, and 
 the explosion that followed the reforms of '89 and the 
 ruins of '93. No conflict can be more irreconcilable 
 than that between a constitution and an enlightened 
 absolutism, between abrogation of old laws and multiplica- 
 tion of new, between representation and direct democracy, 
 the people controlling and the people governing, kings 
 by contract and kings by mandate. 
 
 Yet all these fractions of opinion were called Liberal : 
 Montesquieu, because he was an intelligent Tory ; Voltaire, 
 because he attacked the clergy ; Turgot, as a reformer ; 
 Rousseau, as a democrat ; Diderot, as a freethinker. The 
 one thing common to them all is the disregard for liberty.
 
 II 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 
 
 THE several structures of political thought that arose in 
 France, and clashed in the process of revolution, were not 
 directly responsible for the outbreak. The doctrines hung 
 like a cloud upon the heights, and at critical moments in 
 the reign of Lewis XV. men felt that a catastrophe was 
 impending. It befell when there was less provocation, 
 under his successor ; and the spark that changed thought 
 into action was supplied by the Declaration of American 
 Independence. It was the system of an international 
 extra-territorial universal Whig, far transcending the 
 English model by its simplicity and rigour. It surpassed 
 in force all the speculation of Paris and Geneva, for it 
 had undergone the test of experiment, and its triumph 
 was the most memorable thing that had been seen by men. 
 The expectation that the American colonies would 
 separate was an old one. A century before, Harrington 
 had written : " They are yet babes, that cannot live with- 
 out sucking the breasts of their mother-cities ; but such 
 as I mistake if, when they come of age, they do not wean 
 themselves ; which causes me to wonder at princes that 
 like to be exhausted in that way." When, in 1759, tne 
 elder Mirabeau announced it, he meant that the conquest 
 of Canada involved the loss of America, as the colonists 
 would cling to England as long as the French were 
 behind them, and no longer. He came very near to the 
 truth, for the war in Canada gave the signal. The English 
 colonies had meditated the annexation of the French, and 
 they resented that the king's government undertook the 
 
 20
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 21 
 
 expedition, to deprive them of the opportunity for united 
 action. Fifty years later President Adams said that the 
 treatment of American officers by the British made his 
 blood boil. 
 
 The agitation began in 1761, and by the innovating 
 ideas which it flung abroad it is as important as the 
 Declaration itself, or the great constitutional debate. 
 The colonies were more advanced than Great Britain in 
 the way of free institutions, and existed only that they 
 might escape the vices of the mother country. They 
 had no remnants of feudalism to cherish or resist. They 
 possessed written constitutions, some of them remark- 
 ably original, fit roots of an immense development. 
 George III. thought it strange that he should be the 
 sovereign of a democracy like Rhode Island, where all 
 power reverted annually to the people, and the authorities 
 had to be elected anew. Connecticut received from the 
 Stuarts so liberal a charter, and worked out so finished 
 a scheme of local self-government, that it served as a 
 basis for the federal constitution. The Quakers had 
 a plan founded on equality of power, without oppression, 
 or privilege, or intolerance, or slavery. They declared 
 that their holy experiment would not have been worth 
 attempting if it did not offer some very real advantage 
 over England. It was to enjoy freedom, liberty of 
 conscience, and the right to tax themselves, that they 
 went into the desert. There were points on which these 
 men anticipated the doctrines of a more unrestrained 
 democracy, for they established their government not on 
 conventions, but on divine right, and they claimed to be 
 infallible. A Connecticut preacher said in 1638: "The 
 choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by 
 God's own allowance. They who have the power to 
 appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, 
 to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place 
 unto which they call them." The following words, written 
 in 1736, appear in the works of Franklin : " The judgment 
 of a whole people, especially of a free people, is looked 
 upon to be infallible. And this is universally true, while
 
 22 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 they remain in their proper sphere, unbiassed by faction, 
 undeluded by the tricks of designing men. A body of 
 people thus circumstanced cannot be supposed to judge 
 amiss on any essential points ; for if they decide in favour 
 of themselves, which is extremely natural, their decision 
 is just, inasmuch as whatever contributes to their benefit 
 is a general benefit, and advances the real public good." 
 A commentator adds that this notion of the infallible 
 perception by the people of their true interest, and their 
 unerring pursuit of it, was very prevalent in the provinces, 
 and for a time in the States after the establishment of 
 American independence. 
 
 In spite of their democratic spirit, these communities 
 consented to have their trade regulated and restricted, to 
 their own detriment and the advantage of English 
 merchants. They had protested, but they had ended by 
 yielding. Now Adam Smith says that to prohibit a great 
 people from making all they can of every part of their 
 own produce, or from employing their stock and industry 
 in the way that they judge most advantageous for them- 
 selves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of 
 mankind. There was a latent sense of injury which broke 
 out when, in addition to interference with the freedom of 
 trade, England exercised the right of taxation. An 
 American lately wrote : " The real foundation of the 
 discontent which led to the Revolution was the effort of 
 Great Britain, beginning in 1750, to prevent diversity of 
 occupation, to attack the growth of manufactures and the 
 mechanic arts, and the final cause before the attempt to 
 tax without representation was the effort to enforce the 
 navigation laws." When England argued that the hard- 
 ship of regulation might be greater than the hardship of 
 taxation, and that those who submitted to the one sub- 
 mitted, in principle, to the other, Franklin replied that 
 the Americans had not taken that view, but that, when it 
 was put before them, they would be willing to reject both 
 one and the other. He knew, however, that the ground 
 taken up by his countrymen was too narrow. He wrote 
 to the French economist, Morellet : " Nothing can be
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 23 
 
 better expressed than your sentiments are on this point, 
 where you prefer liberty of trading, cultivating, manu- 
 facturing, etc., even to civil liberty, this being affected but 
 rarely, the other every hour." 
 
 These early authors of American independence were 
 generally enthusiasts for the British Constitution, and pre- 
 ceded Burke in the tendency to canonise it, and to 
 magnify it as an ideal exemplar for nations. John Adams 
 said, in 1766: "Here lies the difference between the 
 British Constitution and other forms of government, 
 namely, that liberty is its end, its use, its designation, 
 drift and scope, as much as grinding corn is the use of 
 a mill." Another celebrated Bostonian identified the 
 Constitution with the law of Nature, as Montesquieu 
 called the Civil Law, written Reason. He said : " It 
 is the glory of the British prince and the happiness of 
 all his subjects, that their constitution hath its founda- 
 tion in the immutable laws of Nature ; and as the 
 supreme legislative, as well as the supreme executive, 
 derives its authority from that constitution, it should seem 
 that no laws can be made or executed that are repugnant 
 to any essential law in Nature." The writer of these 
 words, James Otis, is the founder of the revolutionary 
 doctrine. Describing one of his pamphlets, the second 
 President says : " Look over the declaration of rights and 
 wrongs issued by Congress in 1774 ; look into the declara- 
 tion of independence in 1776 ; look into the writings of 
 Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley ; look into all the French 
 constitutions of government ; and, to cap the climax, look 
 into Mr. Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Crisis, and Rights 
 of Man. What can you find that is not to be found in 
 solid substance in this ' Vindication of the House of 
 Representatives'?" When these men found that the 
 appeal to the law and to the constitution did not avail 
 them, that the king, by bribing the people's representatives 
 with the people's money, was able to enforce his will, 
 they sought a higher tribunal, and turned from the law of 
 England to the law of Nature, and from the king of 
 England to the King of kings. Otis, in 1762, 1764 and
 
 24 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 1 765, says : " Most governments are, in fact, arbitrary, and 
 consequently the curse and scandal of human nature ; yet 
 none are of right arbitrary. By the laws of God and 
 nature, government must not raise taxes on the property 
 of the people without the consent of the people or their 
 deputies. There can be no prescription old enough to 
 supersede the law of Nature and the grant of God 
 Almighty, who has given all men a right to be free. If 
 a man has but little property to protect and defend, 
 yet his life and liberty are things of some importance." 
 About the same time Gadsden wrote : " A confirmation 
 of our essential and common rights as Englishmen may 
 be pleaded from charters clearly enough ; but any further 
 dependence on them may be fatal. We should stand 
 upon the broad common ground of those natural rights 
 that we all feel and know as men and as descendants of 
 Englishmen." 
 
 The primitive fathers of the United States began by 
 preferring abstract moral principle to the letter of the 
 law and the spirit of the Constitution. But they went 
 farther. Not only was their grievance difficult to sub- 
 stantiate at law, but it was trivial in extent. The claim 
 of England was not evidently disproved, and even if it 
 was unjust, the injustice practically was not hard to bear. 
 The suffering that would be caused by submission was 
 immeasurably less than the suffering that must follow 
 resistance, and it was more uncertain and remote. The 
 utilitarian argument was loud in favour of obedience and 
 loyalty. But if interest was on one side, there was a 
 manifest principle on the other a principle so sacred and 
 so clear as imperatively to demand the sacrifice of men's 
 lives, of their families and their fortune. They resolved 
 to give up everything, not to escape from actual oppression, 
 but to honour a precept of unwritten law. That was the 
 transatlantic discovery in the theory of political duty, the 
 light that came over the ocean. It represented liberty 
 not as a comparative release from tyranny, but as a 
 thing so divine that the existence of society must be 
 staked to prevent even the least constructive infraction of
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 25 
 
 its sovereign right. " A free people," said Dickinson, " can 
 never be too quick in observing nor too firm in opposing 
 the beginnings of alteration either in form or reality, 
 respecting institutions formed for their security. The 
 first kind of alteration leads to the last. As violations 
 of the rights of the governed are commonly not only 
 specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the 
 multitude in such a manner as to touch individuals but 
 slightly. Every free state should incessantly watch, and 
 instantly take alarm at any addition being made to the 
 power exercised over them." Who are a free people? 
 Not those over whom government is reasonably and 
 equitably exercised ; but those who live under a govern- 
 ment so constitutionally checked and controlled that proper 
 provision is made against its being otherwise exercised. 
 The contest was plainly a contest of principle, and was 
 conducted entirely on principle by both parties. " The 
 amount of taxes proposed to be raised," said Marshall, the 
 greatest of constitutional lawyers, " was too inconsiderable 
 to interest the people of either country." I will add the 
 words of Daniel Webster, the great expounder of the 
 Constitution, who is the most eloquent of the Americans, 
 and stands, in politics, next to Burke : " The Parliament 
 of Great Britain asserted a right to tax the Colonies in 
 all cases whatsoever ; and it was precisely on this question 
 that they made the Revolution turn. The amount of 
 taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent 
 with liberty, and that was in their eyes enough. It was 
 against the recital of an act of Parliament, rather than 
 against any suffering under its enactment, that they took 
 up arms. They went to war against a preamble. They 
 fought seven years against a declaration. They saw in 
 the claim of the British Parliament a seminal principle of 
 mischief, the germ of unjust power." 
 
 The object of these men was liberty, not independence. 
 Their feeling was expressed by Jay in his address to the 
 people of Great Britain : " Permit us to be as free as 
 yourselves, and we shall ever esteem a union with you to 
 be our greatest glory and our greatest happiness." Before
 
 26 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 1775 there was no question of separation. During all the 
 Revolution Adams declared that he would have given 
 everything to restore things as before with security ; and 
 both Jefferson and Madison admitted in the presence of 
 the English minister that a few seats in both Houses 
 would have set at rest the whole question. 
 
 In their appeal to the higher law the Americans pro- 
 fessed the purest Whiggism, and they claimed that their 
 resistance to the House of Commons and the jurisprudence 
 of Westminster only carried forward the eternal conflict 
 between Whig and Tory. By their closer analysis, and 
 their fearlessness of logical consequences, they transformed 
 the doctrine and modified the party. The uprooted Whig, 
 detached from his parchments and precedents, his leading 
 families and historic conditions, exhibited new qualities ; 
 and the era of compromise made way for an era of principle. 
 Whilst French diplomacy traced the long hand of the 
 English opposition in the tea riots at Boston, Chatham 
 and Camden were feeling the influence of Dickinson and 
 Otis, without recognising the difference. It appears in a 
 passage of one of Chatham's speeches, in 1775 : "This 
 universal opposition to your arbitrary system of taxation 
 might have been foreseen. It was obvious from the 
 nature of things, and from the nature of man, and, above 
 all, from the confirmed habits of thinking, from the spirit 
 of Whiggism flourishing in America. The spirit which 
 now pervades America is the same which formerly opposed 
 loans, benevolences, and ship-money in this country, is the 
 same spirit which roused all England to action at the 
 Revolution, and which established at a remote era your 
 liberties, on the basis of that grand fundamental maxim of 
 the Constitution, that no subject of England shall be taxed 
 but by his own consent. To maintain this principle is the 
 common cause of the Whigs on the other side of the 
 Atlantic, and on this. It is the alliance of God and 
 Nature, immutable, eternal, fixed as the firmament of 
 heaven. Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was 
 just ; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of 
 parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 27 
 
 of submission will be found equally impotent to convince 
 or enslave your fellow-subjects in America." 
 
 The most significant instance of the action of America 
 on Europe is Edmund Burke. We think of him as a man 
 who, in early life, rejected all generalities and abstract 
 propositions, and who became the most strenuous and 
 violent of conservatives. But there is an interval when, 
 as the quarrel with the Colonies went on, Burke was as 
 revolutionary as Washington. The inconsistency is not 
 as flagrant as it seems. He had been brought forward by 
 the party of measured propriety and imperative moderation, 
 of compromise and unfinished thought, who claimed the 
 right of taxing, but refused to employ it. When he urged 
 the differences in every situation and every problem, and 
 shrank from the common denominator and the underlying 
 principle, he fell into step with his friends. As an Irish- 
 man, who had married into an Irish Catholic family, it 
 was desirable that he should adopt no theories in America 
 which would unsettle Ireland. He had learnt to teach 
 government by party as an almost sacred dogma, and 
 party forbids revolt as a breach of the laws of the game. 
 His scruples and his protests, and his defiance of theory, 
 were the policy and the precaution of a man conscious of 
 restraints, and not entirely free in the exertion of powers 
 that lifted him far above his tamer surroundings. As the 
 strife sharpened and the Americans made way, Burke was 
 carried along, and developed views which he never utterly 
 abandoned, but which are difficult to reconcile with much 
 that he wrote when the Revolution had spread to 
 France. 
 
 In his address to the Colonists he says : " We do not 
 know how to qualify millions of our countrymen, con- 
 tending with one heart for an admission to privileges 
 which we have ever thought our own happiness and 
 honour, by odious and unworthy names. On the 
 contrary, we highly revere the principles on which you 
 act. We had much rather see you totally independent of 
 this crown and kingdom, than joined to it by so unnatural 
 a conjunction as that of freedom and servitude. We
 
 28 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 view the establishment of the English Colonies on 
 principles of liberty, as that which is to render this 
 kingdom venerable to future ages. In comparison of 
 this, we regard all the victories and conquests of our 
 warlike ancestors, or of our own times, as barbarous, 
 vulgar distinctions, in which many nations, whom we 
 look upon with little respect or value, have equalled, if 
 not far exceeded us. Those who have and who hold to 
 that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or 
 on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true and 
 the only true Englishmen. Those who depart from it, 
 whether there or here, are attainted, corrupted in blood, 
 and wholly fallen from their original rank and value. 
 They are the real rebels to the fair constitution and just 
 supremacy of England. A long course of war with the 
 administration of this country may be but a prelude to a 
 series of wars and contentions among yourselves, to end 
 at length (as such scenes have too often ended) in a 
 species of humiliating repose, which nothing but the 
 preceding calamities would reconcile to the dispirited few 
 who survived them. We allow that even this evil is 
 worth the risk to men of honour when rational liberty is 
 at stake, as in the present case we confess and lament 
 that it is." 
 
 At other times he spoke as follows : " Nothing 
 less than a convulsion that will shake the globe to 
 its centre can ever restore the European nations to that 
 liberty by which they were once so much distinguished. 
 The Western world was the seat of freedom until another, 
 more Western, was discovered ; and that other will 
 probably be its asylum when it is hunted down in 
 every other part. Happy it is that the worst of times 
 may have one refuge still left for humanity. If the Irish 
 resisted King William, they resisted him on the very 
 same principle that the English and Scotch resisted King 
 James. The Irish Catholics must have been the very 
 worst and the most truly unnatural of rebels, if they had 
 not supported a prince whom they had seen attacked, not 
 for any designs against their religion or their liberties, but
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 29 
 
 for an extreme partiality for their sect. Princes otherwise 
 meritorious have violated the liberties of the people, and 
 have been lawfully deposed for such violation. I know 
 no human being exempt from the law. I consider 
 Parliament as the proper judge of kings, and it is necessary 
 that they should be amenable to it. There is no such 
 thing as governing the whole body of the people contrary 
 to their inclination. Whenever they have a feeling they 
 commonly are in the right Christ appeared in sympathy 
 with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm 
 and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of 
 all government 
 
 " In all forms of government the people is the true 
 legislator. The remote and efficient cause is the consent 
 of the people, either actual or implied, and such consent 
 is absolutely essential to its validity. Whiggism did not 
 consist in the support of the power of Parliament or of 
 any other power, but of the rights of the people. If 
 Parliament should become an instrument in invading 
 them, it was no better in any respect, and much worse 
 in some, than any other instrument of arbitrary power. 
 They who call upon you to belong wholly to the people 
 are those who wish you to belong to your proper home, 
 to the sphere of your duty, to the post of your honour. 
 Let the Commons in Parliament assembled be one and 
 the same thing with the Commons at large. I see no 
 other way for the preservation of a decent attention to 
 public interest in the representatives, but the interposition 
 of the body of the people itself, whenever, it shall appear 
 by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital 
 innovation, that those representatives are going to over- 
 leap the fences of the law and to introduce an arbitrary 
 power. This interposition is a most unpleasant remedy ; 
 but if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some occasion 
 to be used to be used then only when it is evident that 
 nothing else can hold the Constitution to its true principles. 
 It is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for parlia- 
 mentary disorders can be completed ; hardly, indeed, can 
 it begin there. A popular origin cannot therefore be
 
 30 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the characteristic distinction of a popular representative. 
 This belongs equally to all parts of government, and in 
 all forms. The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of 
 Commons consists in its being the express image of the 
 feelings of the nation. It was not instituted to be a 
 control upon the people. It was designed as a control 
 for the people. Privilege of the crown and privilege of 
 Parliament are only privilege so long as they are exercised 
 for the benefit of the people. The voice of the people 
 is a voice that is to be heard, and not the votes and 
 resolutions of the House of Commons. He would preserve 
 thoroughly every privilege of the people, because it is 
 a privilege known and written in the law of the land ; 
 and he would support it, not against the crown or the 
 aristocratic party only, but against the representatives of 
 the people themselves. This was not a government of 
 balances. It would be a strange thing if two hundred peers 
 should have it in their power to defeat by their negative 
 what had been done by the people of England. I have 
 taken my part in political connections and political 
 quarrels for the purpose of advancing justice and the 
 dominion of reason, and I hope I shall never prefer the 
 means, or any feelings growing out of the use of those 
 means, to the great and substantial end itself. Legislators 
 can do what lawyers can not, for they have no other 
 rules to bind them but the great principles of reason and 
 equity and the general sense of mankind. All human 
 laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they may 
 alter the mode and application, but have no power over 
 the substance, of original justice. A conservation and 
 secure enjoyment of our natural rights is the great and 
 ultimate purpose of civil society. 
 
 " The great inlet by which a colour for oppression has 
 entered into the world is by one man's pretending to 
 determine concerning the happiness of another. I would 
 give a full civil protection, in which I include an immunity 
 from all disturbance of their public religious worship, and 
 a power of teaching in schools as well as temples, to Jews, 
 Mahometans, and even Pagans. The Christian religion
 
 itself arose without establishment, it arose even without 
 toleration, and whilst its own principles were not tolerated, 
 it conquered all the powers of darkness, it conquered all 
 the powers of the world. The moment it began to depart 
 from these principles, it converted the establishment into 
 tyranny, it subverted its foundation from that very hour. 
 It is the power of government to prevent much evil ; it can 
 do very little positive good in this, or perhaps in anything 
 else. It is not only so of the State and statesman, but 
 of all the classes and descriptions of the rich : they are 
 the pensioners of the poor, and are maintained by their 
 superfluity. They are under an absolute, hereditary, and 
 indefeasible dependence on those who labour and are 
 miscalled the poor. That class of dependent pensioners 
 called the rich is so extremely small, that if all their 
 throats were cut, and a distribution made of all they 
 consume in a year, it would not give a bit of bread and 
 cheese for one night's supper to those who labour, and who 
 in reality feed both the pensioners and themselves. It is 
 not in breaking the laws of commerce, which are the laws 
 of nature and consequently the laws of God, that we are 
 to place our hope of softening the divine displeasure. It 
 is the law of nature, which is the law of God." 
 
 I cannot resist the inference from these passages that 
 Burke, after 1770, underwent other influences than those 
 of his reputed masters, the Whigs of 1 688. And if we find 
 that strain of unwonted thought in a man who afterwards 
 gilded the old order of things and wavered as to toleration 
 and the slave trade, we may expect that the same causes 
 would operate in France. 
 
 When the Letters of a Pennsylvanian Farmer became 
 known in Europe, Diderot said that it was madness to 
 allow Frenchmen to read such things, as they could not 
 do it without becoming intoxicated and changed into 
 different men. But France was impressed by the event 
 more than by the literature that accompanied it. America 
 had made herself independent under less provocation than 
 had ever been a motive of revolt, and the French Govern- 
 ment had acknowledged that her cause was righteous and
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 had gone to war for it. If the king was right in America, 
 he was utterly wrong at home, and if the Americans acted 
 rightly, the argument was stronger, the cause was a 
 hundredfold better, in France itself. All that justified 
 their independence condemned the Government of their 
 French allies. By the principle that taxation without 
 representation is robbery, there was no authority so 
 illegitimate as that of Lewis XVI. The force of that 
 demonstration was irresistible, and it produced its effect 
 where the example of England failed. The English 
 doctrine was repelled at the very earliest .stage of the 
 Revolution, and the American was adopted. What the 
 French took ftpm the Americans was their theory of 
 revolution, not their theory of govern ment-/ their cutting, 
 not their sewing. Many French nobles served in the war, 
 and came home republicans and even democrats by con- 
 viction. It was America that converted the aristocracy to 
 the reforming policy, and gave leaders to the RevolutioX 
 " The American Revolution," says Washington, " or the 
 peculiar light of the age, seems to have opened the eyes 
 of almost every nation in Europe, and a spirit of equal 
 liberty appears fast to be gaining ground everywhere." 
 When the French officers were leaving, Cooper, of Boston, 
 addressed them in the language of warning : " Do not let 
 your hopes be inflamed by our triumphs on this virgin soil. 
 You will carry our sentiments with you, but if you try to 
 plant them in a country that has been corrupt for centuries, 
 you will encounter obstacles more formidable than ours. 
 Our liberty has been won with blood ; you will have to 
 shed it in torrents before liberty can take root in the old 
 world." Adams, after he had been President of the 
 United States, bitterly regretted the Revolution which 
 made them independent, because it had given the example 
 to the French ; although he also believed that they had 
 not a single principle in common. 
 
 Nothing, on the contrary, is more certain than that 
 American principles profoundly influenced France, and 
 determined the course of the Revolution. It is from 
 America that Lafayette derived the saying that created a
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 33 
 
 commotion at the time, that resistance is the most sacred 
 of duties. There also was the theory that political power 
 comes from those over whom it is exercised, and depends 
 upon their will ; that every authority not so constituted is 
 illegitimate and precarious; that the past is more a warning 
 than an example ; that the earth belongs to those who are 
 upon it, not to those who are underneath. /These are 
 characteristics common to both Revolutions,/ 
 
 At one time also the French adopted and acclaimed 
 the American notion that the end of government is liberty, 
 not happiness, or prosperity, or power, or the preservation 
 of an historic inheritance, or the adaptation of national 
 law to national character, or the progress of enlightenment 
 and the promotion of virtue ; that the private individual 
 should not feel the pressure of public authority, and should 
 direct his life by the influences that are within him, not 
 around him. 
 
 And there was another political doctrine which the 
 Americans transmitted to the French. In old colonial 
 days the executive and the judicial powers were derived 
 from a foreign source, and the common purpose was to 
 diminish them. The assemblies were popular in origin 
 and character, and everything that added to their power 
 seemed to add security to rights. James Wilson, one of 
 the authors and commentators of the constitution, informs 
 us that " at the Revolution the same fond predilection, and 
 the same jealous dislike, existed and prevailed. The 
 executive, and the judicial as well as the legislative 
 authority, was now the child of the people, but to the 
 two former the people behaved like stepmothers. The 
 legislature was still discriminated by excessive partiality." 
 This preference, historic but irrational, led up naturally 
 to a single chamber. The people of America and their 
 delegates in Congress were of opinion that a single Assembly 
 was every way adequate to the management of their 
 federal concerns, and when the Senate was invented, 
 Franklin strongly objected. " As to the two chambers," 
 he wrote, " I am of your opinion that one alone would be 
 better ; but, my dear friend, nothing in human affairs and 
 
 D
 
 34 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 schemes is perfect, and perhaps this is the case of our 
 opinions." 
 
 Alexander Hamilton was the ablest as well as the 
 most conservative of the American statesmen. He longed 
 for monarchy, and he desired to establish a national 
 government and to annihilate state rights. The American 
 spirit, as it penetrated France, cannot well be described 
 better than it was by him : " I consider civil liberty, in a 
 genuine, unadulterated sense, as the greatest of terrestrial 
 blessings. I am convinced that the whole human race is 
 entitled to it, and that it can be wrested from no part 
 of them without the blackest and most aggravated guilt. 
 The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged 
 for among old parchments or musty records. They are 
 written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human 
 nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never 
 be erased or obscured by mortal power." 
 
 But when we speak in the gross of the American 
 Revolution we combine different and discordant things. 
 From the first agitation in 1761 to the Declaration of 
 Independence, and then to the end of the war in 1782, 
 the Americans were aggressive, violent in their language, 
 fond of abstractions, prolific of doctrines universally appli- 
 cable and universally destructive. It is the ideas of those 
 earlier days that roused the attention of France, and were 
 imported by Lafayette, Noailles, Lameth, and the leaders 
 of the future revolution who had beheld the lowering of 
 the British flag at Yorktown. The America of their 
 experience was the America of James Otis, of Jefferson, 
 of The Rights of Man. 
 
 A change followed in 1787, when the Convention 
 drew up the Constitution. It was a period of construction, 
 and every effort was made, every scheme was invented, 
 to curb the inevitable democracy. The members of that 
 assembly were, on the whole, eminently cautious and 
 sensible men. They were not men of extraordinary parts, 
 and the genius of Hamilton failed absolutely to impress 
 them. Some of their most memorable contrivances pro- 
 ceeded from no design, but were merely half measures and
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 35 
 
 mutual concessions. Seward has pointed out this dis- 
 tinction between the revolutionary epoch and the con- 
 stituent epoch that succeeded : " The rights asserted by 
 our forefathers were not peculiar to themselves. They 
 were the common rights of mankind. The basis of the 
 Constitution was laid broader by far than the super- 
 structure which the conflicting interests and prejudices of 
 the day suffered to be erected. The Constitution and 
 laws of the Federal Government did not practically extend 
 those principles throughout the new system of govern- 
 ment ; but they were plainly promulgated in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence." 
 
 Now, although France was deeply touched by the 
 American Revolution, it was not affected by the American 
 Constitution. It underwent the disturbing influence, not 
 the conservative. 
 
 The Constitution, framed in the summer of 1787, came 
 into : operation in March 1789, and nobody knew how it 
 worked, when the crisis came in France. The debates, 
 which explain every intention and combination, remained 
 long hidden from the world. Moreover, the Constitution 
 has become something more than the original printed 
 paper. Besides amendments, it has been interpreted by 
 the courts, modified by opinion, developed in some 
 directions, and tacitly altered in others. Some of its most 
 valued provisions have been acquired in this way, and 
 were not yet visible when the French so greatly needed 
 the guiding lessons of other men's experience. Some of 
 the restrictions on the governing power were not fully 
 established at first. 
 
 The most important of these is the action of the 
 Supreme Court in annulling unconstitutional laws. The 
 Duke of Wellington said to Bunsen that by this institu- 
 tion alone the United States made up for all the defects 
 of their government. Since Chief Justice Marshall, the 
 judiciary undoubtedly obtained immense authority, which 
 Jefferson, and others besides, believed to be unconstitu- 
 tional ; for the Constitution itself gives no such power. 
 The idea had grown up in the States, chiefly, I think, in
 
 36 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Virginia. At Richmond, in 1782, Judge Wythe said: 
 " Tyranny has been sapped, the departments kept within 
 their own spheres, the citizens protected, and general 
 liberty promoted. But this beneficial result attains to 
 higher perfection when, those who hold the purse and the 
 sword differing as to the powers which each may exercise, 
 the tribunals, who hold neither, are called upon to declare 
 the law impartially between them. If the whole legis- 
 lature an event to be deprecated should attempt to 
 overleap the boundaries prescribed to them by the people, 
 I, in administering the justice of the country, will meet 
 the united powers at my seat in this tribunal, and, point- 
 ing to the Constitution, will say to them : ' Here is the 
 limit of your authority ; hither shall you go, but no 
 further.'" The Virginian legislature gave way, and re- 
 pealed the act. 
 
 After the Federal Constitution was drawn up, Hamilton, 
 in the seventy-eighth number of the Federalist, argued 
 that the power belonged to the judiciary ; but it was 
 not constitutionally recognised until 1801. "This," said 
 Madison, " makes the judiciary department paramount, 
 in fact, to the legislature, which was never intended, and 
 can never be proper. In a government whose vital 
 principle is responsibility, it never will be allowed that 
 the legislative and executive departments should be com- 
 pletely subjected to the judiciary, in which that character- 
 istic feature is so faintly seen." Wilson, on the other 
 hand, justified the practice on the principle of the higher 
 law : " Parliament may, unquestionably, be controlled by 
 natural or revealed law, proceeding from divine authority. 
 Is not this superior authority binding upon the courts of 
 justice ? When the courts of justice obey the superior 
 authority, it cannot be said with propriety that they 
 control the inferior one ; they only declare, as it is their 
 duty to declare, that this inferior one is controlled by the 
 other, which is superior. They do not repeal an act of 
 Parliament ; they pronounce it void, because contrary to 
 an overruling law." Thus the function of the judiciary 
 to be a barrier against democracy, which, according to
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF AMERICA 37 
 
 Tocqueville, it is destined to be, was not apparent. In 
 the same manner religious liberty, which has become so 
 much identified with the United States, is a thing which 
 grew by degrees, and was not to be found imposed by 
 the letter of the law. 
 
 The true natural check on absolute democracy is the 
 federal system, which limits the central government by 
 the powers reserved, and the state governments by the 
 powers they have ceded. It is the one immortal tribute 
 of America to political science, for state rights are at the 
 same time the consummation and the guard of democracy. 
 So much so that an officer wrote, a few months before 
 Bull Run : " The people in the south are evidently 
 unanimous in the opinion that slavery is endangered by 
 the current of events, and it is useless to attempt to alter 
 that opinion. As our government is founded on the will 
 of the people, when that will is fixed our government is 
 powerless." Those are the words of Sherman, the man 
 who, by his march through Georgia, cut the Confederacy 
 into two. Lincoln himself wrote, at the same time : " I 
 declare that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the 
 states, and especially the right of each state to order and 
 control its own domestic institutions according to its own 
 judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of 
 powers on which the perfection and endurance of our 
 political fabric depend." Such was the force with which 
 state rights held the minds of abolitionists on the eve of 
 the war that bore them down. 
 
 At the Revolution there were many Frenchmen who 
 saw in federalism the only way to reconcile liberty and 
 democracy, to establish government on contract, and to 
 rescue the country from the crushing preponderance of 
 Paris and the Parisian populace. I do not mean the 
 Girondins, but men of opinions different from theirs, and, 
 above all, Mirabeau. He planned to save the throne by 
 detaching the provinces from the frenzy of the capital, 
 and he declared that the federal system is alone capable 
 of preserving freedom in any great empire. The idea did 
 not grow up under American influence ; for no man was
 
 38 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 more opposed to it than Lafayette ; and the American 
 witness of the Revolution, Morris, denounced federalism 
 as a danger to France. 
 
 Apart from the Constitution, the political thought of 
 America influenced the French next to their own. And 
 it was not all speculation, but a system for which men 
 died, which had proved entirely practical, and strong 
 enough to conquer all resistance, with the sanction and 
 encouragement of Europe. It displayed to France a 
 finished model of revolution, both in thought and action, 
 and showed that what seemed extreme and subversive in 
 the old world, was compatible with good and wise govern- 
 ment, with respect for social order, and the preservation 
 of national character and custom. The ideas which 
 captured and convulsed the French people were mostly 
 ready-made for them, and much that is familiar to you 
 now, much of that which I have put before you from 
 other than French sources, will meet us again next week 
 with the old faces, when we come to the States-General.
 
 Ill 
 
 THE SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 
 
 THE condition of France alone did not bring about the 
 overthrow of the monarchy and the convulsion that 
 ensued. For the sufferings of the people were not greater 
 than they had been before ; the misgovernment and oppres- 
 sion were less, and a successful war with England had 
 largely wiped out the humiliations inflicted by Chatham. 
 
 But the confluence of French theory with American 
 example caused the Revolution to break out, not in an 
 excess of irritation and despair, but in a moment of 
 better feeling between the nation and the king. The 
 French were not mere reckless innovators ; they were 
 confiding followers, and many of the ideas with which 
 they made their venture were those in which Burke 
 agreed with Hamilton, and with his own illustrious 
 countrymen, Adam Smith and Sir William Jones. When 
 he said that, compared to England, the government of 
 France was slavery, and that nothing but a revolution 
 could restore European liberty, Frenchmen, saying the 
 same thing, and acting upon it, were unconscious of 
 extravagance, and might well believe that they were 
 obeying precepts stored in the past by high and venerable 
 authority. Beyond that common ground, they fell back 
 on native opinion in which there was wide divergence, 
 and an irrepressible conflict arose. We have to deal 
 with no unlikely motives, with no unheard of theories, 
 and, on the whole, with convinced and average men. 
 
 The States-General were convoked because there was 
 no other way of obtaining money for the public need. 
 
 39
 
 40 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 The deficit was a record of bad government, and the 
 first practical object was the readjustment of taxes. From 
 the king's accession, the revival of the old and neglected 
 institution had been kept before the country as a remedy, 
 not for financial straits only, but for all the ills of France. 
 The imposing corporation of the judiciary had con- 
 stantly opposed the Crown, and claimed to subject its 
 acts to the judgment of the law. The higher clergy had 
 raised objections to Turgot, to Necker, to the emancipa- 
 tion of Protestants ; and the nobles became the most 
 active of all the parties of reform. But the great body 
 of the people had borne their trouble in patience. They 
 possessed no recognised means of expressing sentiments. 
 There was no right of public meeting, no liberty for the 
 periodical press ; and the privileged newspapers were 
 so tightly swaddled in their official character that they 
 had nothing to say even of an event like the oath in the 
 Tennis Court. The feelings that stirred the multitude 
 did not appear, unless they appeared in the shape of 
 disorder. Without it France remained an unknown 
 quantity. The king felt the resistance of the privileged 
 and interested classes which was the source of his necessity, 
 but he was not apprehensive of a national opposition. 
 He was prepared to rely on the Third Estate with 
 hopefulness, if not with confidence, and to pay a very 
 high price for their support. In a certain measure their 
 interest was the same. The penury of the State came 
 from the fact that more than half the property of France 
 was not taxed in its proportion, and it was essential for 
 the government to abolish the exception, and to bring 
 nobles and clergy to surrender their privilege, and pay like 
 the rest. To that extent the object of the king was 
 to do away with privilege and to introduce equality before 
 the law. So far the Commons went along with him. 
 They would be relieved of a heavy burden if they ceased 
 to pay the share of those who were exempt, and rejected 
 the time-honoured custom that the poor should bear 
 taxation for the rich. An alliance, therefore, was indicated 
 and natural. But the extinction of privilege, which for
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 41 
 
 monarchy and democracy alike meant fiscal equality, 
 meant for the democracy a great deal more. Besides 
 the money which they were required to pay in behalf 
 of the upper class and for their benefit and solace, money 
 had to be paid to them. Apart from rent for house or 
 land, there were payments due to them proceeding from 
 the time, the obscure and distant time, when power went 
 with land, and the local landholder was the local govern- 
 ment, the ruler and protector of the people, and was paid 
 accordingly. And there was another category of claims, 
 proceeding indirectly from the same historic source, con- 
 sisting of commutation and compensation for ancient 
 rights, and having therefore a legal character, founded 
 upon contract, not upon force. 
 
 Every thinking politician knew that the first of these 
 categories, the beneficial rights that were superfluous and 
 oppressive, could not be maintained, and that the nobles 
 would be made to give up not only that form of privilege 
 which consisted in exemption from particular taxes, but 
 that composed of superannuated demands in return for 
 work no longer done, or value given. Those, on the 
 other hand, which were not simply mediaeval, but based 
 upon contract, would be treated as lawful property, and 
 would have to be redeemed. Privilege, in the eyes of 
 the state, was the right of evading taxes. To the politician 
 it meant, furthermore, the right of imposing taxes. For 
 the rural democracy it had a wider significance. To them, 
 all these privileges were products of the same principle, 
 ruins of the same fabric. They were relics and remnants 
 of feudalism, and feudalism meant power given to land 
 and denied to capital and industry. It meant class 
 government, the negation of the very idea of the state 
 and of the nation ; it meant conquest and subjugation by 
 a foreign invader. None denied that many great families 
 had won their spurs in the service of their country ; 
 everybody indeed knew that the noblest of all, Mont- 
 morency, bore the arms of France because, at the victory 
 of Bouvines, where their ancestor was desperately wounded, 
 the king laid his finger on the wound and drew with his
 
 42 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 blood the lilies upon his shield. When we come, presently, 
 to the Abb6 Sieyes, we shall see how firmly men believed 
 that the nobles were, in the mass, Franks, Teutonic tyrants, 
 and spoilers of the Celtic native. They intended that 
 feudalism should not be trimmed but uprooted, as the 
 cause of much that was infinitely odious, and as a thing 
 absolutely incompatible with public policy, social interests, 
 and right reason. That men should be made to bear 
 suffering for the sake of what could only be explained 
 by very early history and very yellow parchments was 
 simply irrational to a generation which received its notion 
 of life from Turgot, Adam Smith, or Franklin. 
 
 Although there were three interpretations of feudal 
 privilege, and consequently a dangerous problem in the 
 near future, the first step was an easy one, and consisted 
 in the appeal by the Crown to the Commons for aid in 
 regenerating the State. Like other princes of his time, 
 Lewis XVI. was a reforming monarch. At his accession, 
 his first choice of a minister was Machault, known to have 
 entertained a vast scheme of change, to be attempted 
 whenever the throne should be occupied by a serious 
 prince. Later, he appointed Turgot, the most profound 
 and thorough reformer of the century. He appointed 
 Malesherbes, one of the weakest but one of the most 
 enlightened of public men ; and after having, at the 
 Coronation, taken an oath to persecute, he gave office to 
 Necker, a Protestant, an alien, and a republican. When 
 he had begun, through Malesherbes, to remove religious 
 disabilities, he said to him, " Now you have been a 
 Protestant, and I declare you a Jew " ; and began to 
 prepare a measure for the relief of Jews, who, wherever 
 they went, were forced to pay the same toll as a pig. He 
 carried out a large and complicated scheme of law reform ; 
 and he achieved the independence of revolted America. 
 In later days the Elector of Cologne complained to an 
 tmigrt that his king's policy had been deplorable, and 
 that, having promoted resistance to authority in the 
 Colonies, in Holland, and in Brabant, he had no claim on 
 the support of European monarchs.
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 43 
 
 But the impulse in the direction of liberal improvement 
 was intermittent, and was checked by a natural diffidence 
 and infirmity of purpose. The messenger who was to 
 summon Machault was recalled as he mounted his horse. 
 Turgot was sacrificed to gratify the queen. Necker's 
 second administration would have begun a year and a 
 half earlier, but, at the last moment, his enemies inter- 
 vened. The war minister, Saint Germain, was agreeable 
 to the king, and he wished to keep him. " But what can 
 I do ? " he wrote ; " his enemies are bent on his dismissal, 
 and I must yield to the majority." Maurepas, at his 
 death, left a paper on which were the names of four men 
 whom he entreated his master not to employ. Lewis 
 bestowed the highest offices upon them all. He regarded 
 England with the aversion with which Chatham, and at 
 that time even Fox, looked upon France, and he went to 
 war in the just hope of avenging the disgrace of the Seven 
 Years' War, but from no sympathy with the American 
 cause. When he was required to retrench his personal 
 expenditure, he objected, and insisted that much of the 
 loss should be made to fall on his pensioners. The liberal 
 concessions which he allowed were in many cases made 
 at the expense, not of the Crown, but of powers that were 
 obstructing the Crown. By the abolition of torture he 
 incurred no loss, but curbed the resources of opposing 
 magistrates. When he emancipated the Protestants and 
 made a Swiss Calvinist his principal adviser, he displeased 
 the clergy ; but he cared little for clerical displeasure. 
 The bishops, finding that he took no notice of them, 
 disappeared from his levde. He objected to the appoint- 
 ment of French cardinals. English travellers at Versailles, 
 Romilly and Valpy, observed that he was inattentive at 
 mass, and talked and laughed before all the court. At 
 the Council he would fall asleep, and when the discussion 
 was distasteful, he used to snore louder than when he 
 slept. He said to Necker that he desired the States- 
 General because he wanted a guide. When, in 1788, 
 after skirmishing with magistrates and prelates, he took 
 the memorable resolution to call in the outer people, to
 
 44 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 compel a compromise with the class that filled his court, 
 that constituted society, that ruled opinion, it was the act 
 of a man destitute of energy, and gifted with an uncertain 
 and indistinct enlightenment. And Necker said, " You 
 may lend a man your ideas, you cannot lend him your 
 strength of will." 
 
 The enterprise was far beyond the power and quality 
 of his mind, but the lesson of his time was not lost upon 
 him, and he had learnt something since the days when he 
 spoke the unchanging language of absolutism. He showed 
 another spirit when he emancipated the serfs of the Crown, 
 when he introduced provincial and village councils, when 
 he pronounced that to confine local government to land- 
 owners was to offend a still larger class, when he invited 
 assistance in reforming the criminal code in order that 
 the result might be the work, not of experts only, but of 
 the public. All this was genuine conviction. He was 
 determined that the upper class should lose its fiscal 
 privileges with as little further detriment as possible. 
 And, to accomplish this necessary and deliberate purpose, 
 he offered terms to the Commons of France such as no 
 monarch ever proposed to his subjects. He declared in 
 later days, and had a right to declare, that it was he who 
 had taken the first step to concert with the French people 
 a permanent constitution, the abolition of arbitrary power, 
 of pecuniary privilege, of promotion apart from merit, of 
 taxation without consent. When he heard that the 
 Notables had given only one vote in favour of increased 
 representation of the Third Estate, he said, " You can add 
 mine." Malouet, the most high-minded and sagacious 
 statesman of the Revolution, testifies to his sincerity, and 
 declares that the king fully shared his opinions. 
 
 The tributary elements of a free constitution which were 
 granted by Lewis XVI., not in consultation with deputies, 
 not even always with public support, included religious 
 toleration, Habeas Corpus, equal incidence of taxes, aboli- 
 tion of torture, decentralisation and local self-government, 
 freedom of the press, universal suffrage, election without 
 official candidates or influence, periodical convocation of
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 45 
 
 parliament, right of voting supplies, of initiating legislation, 
 of revising the constitution, responsibility of ministers, 
 double representation of the Commons at the States - 
 General. All these concessions were acts of the Crown, 
 yielding to dictates of policy more than to popular demand. 
 It is said that power is an object of such ardent desire to 
 man, that the voluntary surrender of it is absurd in 
 psychology and unknown in history. Lewis XVI. no 
 doubt calculated the probabilities of loss and gain, and 
 persuaded himself that his action was politic even more 
 than generous. The Prussian envoy rightly described 
 him in a despatch of July 31, 1789. He says that the 
 king was willing to weaken the executive at home, in 
 order to strengthen it abroad ; if the ministers lost by a 
 better regulated administration, the nation would gain by 
 it in resource, and a limited authority in a more powerful 
 state seemed preferable to absolute authority which was 
 helpless from its unpopularity and the irreparable disorder 
 of finance. He was resolved to submit the arbitrary 
 government of his ancestors to the rising forces of the 
 day. The royal initiative was pushed so far on the way 
 to established freedom that it was exhausted, and the 
 rest was left to the nation. As the elections were not 
 influenced, as the instructions were not inspired, the 
 deliberations were not guided or controlled. The king 
 abdicated before the States -General. He assigned so 
 much authority to the new legislature that none remained 
 with the Crown, and its powers, thus practically suspended, 
 were never recovered. The rival classes, that only the 
 king could have reconciled and restrained, were abandoned 
 to the fatal issue of a trial of strength. 
 
 In 1786 the annual deficit amounted to between four 
 and five millions, and the season for heroic remedies had 
 evidently come. The artful and evasive confusion of 
 accounts that shrouded the secret could not be maintained, 
 and the minister of finance, Calonne, convoked the 
 Notables for February 1787. The Notables were a selection 
 of important personages, chiefly of the upper order, with- 
 out legal powers or initiative. It was hoped that they
 
 46 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 would strengthen the hands of the government, and that 
 what they agreed to would be accepted by the class to 
 which they belonged. It was an experiment to avert the 
 evil day of the States-General. For the States-General, 
 which had not been seen for one hundred and seventy-five 
 years, were the features of a bygone stage of political life, 
 and could neither be revived as they once had been, nor 
 adapted to modern society. If they imposed taxes, they 
 would impose conditions, and they were an auxiliary who 
 might become a master. The Notables were soon found 
 inadequate to the purpose, and the minister, having failed to 
 control them, was dismissed. Necker, his rival and obvious 
 successor, was sent out of the way, and the Archbishop of 
 Toulouse, afterwards of Sens, who was appointed in his 
 place, got rid of the Assembly. There was nothing left to 
 fall back upon but the dreaded States-General. Lafayette 
 had demanded them at the meeting of the Notables, and 
 the demand was now repeated far and wide. 
 
 On August 8, 1788, the king summoned the States- 
 General for the following year, to the end, as he proclaimed, 
 that the nation might settle its own government in per- 
 petuity. The words signified that the absolute monarchy 
 of 1788 would make way for a representative monarchy 
 in 1789. In what way this was to be done, and how 
 the States would be constituted, was unknown. The 
 public were invited to offer suggestions, and the press 
 was practically made free for publications that were not 
 periodical. Necker, the inevitable minister of the new 
 order of things, was immediately nominated to succeed the 
 Archbishop, and the funds rose 30 per cent in one day. 
 He was a foreigner, independent of French tradition and 
 ways of thought, who not only stood aloof from the 
 Catholics, as a Genevese, but also from the prevailing 
 freethinkers, for Priestley describes him as nearly the only 
 believer in religion whom he found in intellectual society 
 at Paris. He was the earliest foreign statesman who 
 studied and understood the modern force of opinion ; and 
 he identified public opinion with credit, as we should say, 
 with the city. He took the views of capitalists as the
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 47 
 
 most sensitive record of public confidence ; and as Paris 
 was the headquarters of business, he contributed, in spite 
 of his declared federalism, to that predominance of the 
 centre which became fatal to liberty and order. 
 
 Necker was familiar with the working of republican 
 institutions, and he was an admirer of the British model ; 
 but the king would not hear of going to school to the 
 people whom he had so recently defeated, and who owed 
 their disgrace as much to political as to military incapacity. 
 Consequently Necker repressed his zeal in politics, and 
 was not eager for the States -General. They would 
 never have been wanted, he said, if he had been called 
 to succeed Calonne, and had had the managing of the 
 Notables. He was glad now that they should serve to 
 bring the entire property of the country, on equal terms, 
 under the tax-gatherer, and if that could have been effected 
 at once, by an overwhelming pressure of public feeling, 
 his practical spirit would not have hungered for further 
 changes. 
 
 The Third Estate was invoked for a great fiscal opera- 
 tion. If it brought the upper class to the necessary sense 
 of their own obligations and the national claims, that was 
 enough for the keeper of the purse, and he would have 
 deprecated the intrusion of other formidable and absorbing 
 objects, detrimental to his own. Beyond that was danger, 
 but the course was clear towards obtaining from the 
 greater assembly what he would have extracted from the 
 less if he had held office in 1787. That is the secret of 
 Necker's unforeseen weakness in the midst of so much 
 power, and of his sterility when the crisis broke and it 
 was discovered that the force which had been calculated 
 equal to the carrying of a modest and obvious reform 
 was as the rush of Niagara, and that France was in the 
 resistless rapids. 
 
 Everything depended on the manner in which the 
 government decided that the States should be composed, 
 elected, and conducted. To pronounce on this, Necker 
 caused the Notables to be convoked again, exposed the 
 problem, and desired their opinion. The nobles had been
 
 48 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 lately active on the side of liberal reforms, and it seemed 
 possible that their reply might relieve him of a dreaded 
 responsibility and prevent a conflict. The Notables gave 
 their advice. They resolved that the Commons should 
 be elected, virtually, by universal suffrage without con- 
 ditions of eligibility ; that the parish priests should be 
 electors and eligible ; that the lesser class of nobles should 
 be represented like the greater. They extended the 
 franchise to the unlettered multitude, because the danger 
 which they apprehended came from the middle class, not 
 from the lower. But they voted, by three to one, that 
 each order should be equal in numbers. The Count of 
 Provence, the king's next brother, went with the minority, 
 and voted that the deputies of the Commons should be 
 as numerous as those of the two other orders together. 
 This became the burning question. If the Commons did 
 not predominate, there was no security that the other 
 orders would give way. On the other hand, by the 
 important innovation of admitting the parish clergy, and 
 those whom we should call provincial gentry, a great con- 
 cession was made to the popular element. The antagonism 
 between the two branches of the clergy, and between the 
 two branches of the noblesse, was greater than that 
 between the inferior portion of each and the Third Estate, 
 and promised a contingent to the liberal cause. It turned 
 out, at the proper time, that the two strongest leaders of 
 the democracy were, one, an ancient noble ; the other, a 
 canon of the cathedral of Chartres. The Notables con- 
 cluded their acceptable labours on December 12. On 
 the 5th the magistrates who formed the parliament of 
 Paris, after solemnly enumerating the great constitutional 
 principles, entreated the king to establish them as the 
 basis of all future legislation. The position of the govern- 
 ment was immensely simplified. The walls of the city had 
 fallen, and it was doubtful where any serious resistance 
 would come from. 
 
 Meantime, the agitation in the provinces, and the 
 explosion of pent-up feeling that followed the unlicensed 
 printing of political tracts, showed that public opinion
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 49 
 
 moved faster than that of the two great conservative 
 bodies. It became urgent that the Government should 
 come to an early and resolute decision, and should occupy 
 ground that might be held against the surging democracy. 
 Necker judged that the position would be impregnable if 
 he stood upon the lines drawn by the Notables, and he 
 decided that the Commons should be equal to either order 
 singly, and not jointly to the two. In consultation with 
 a statesmanlike prelate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, he 
 drew up and printed a report, refusing the desired increase. 
 But as he sat anxiously watching the winds and the tide, 
 he began to doubt ; and when letters came, warning him 
 that the nobles would be butchered if the decision went 
 in their favour, he took alarm. He said to his friends, 
 " If we do not multiply the Commons by two, they will 
 multiply themselves by ten." When the Archbishop saw 
 him again at Christmas, Necker assured him that the 
 Government was no longer strong enough to resist the 
 popular demand. But he was also determined that the 
 three houses should vote separately, that the Commons 
 should enjoy no advantage from their numbers in any 
 discussion where privilege was at stake, or the interest of 
 classes was not identical. He hoped that the nobles 
 would submit to equal taxation of their own accord, and 
 that he would stand between them and any exorbitant 
 claim of equal political power. 
 
 On December 27 Necker's scheme was adopted by 
 the Council. There was some division of opinion ; but the 
 king overruled it, and the queen, who was present, showed, 
 without speaking, that she was there to support the 
 measure. By this momentous act Lewis XVI., without 
 being conscious of its significance, went over to the 
 democracy. He said, in plain terms, to the French 
 people : " Afford me the aid I require, so far as we have a 
 common interest, and for that definite and appropriated 
 assistance you shall have a princely reward. For you 
 shall at once have a constitution of your own making, 
 which shall limit the power of the Crown, leaving un- 
 touched the power and the dignity and the property of 
 
 E
 
 50 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the upper classes, beyond what is involved in an equal 
 share of taxation." But in effect he said : " Let us combine 
 to deprive the aristocracy of those privileges which are 
 injurious to the Crown, whilst we retain those which are 
 offensive only to the people." It was a tacit compact, of 
 which the terms and limits were not defined ; and where 
 one thought of immunities, the other was thinking of 
 oppression. The organisation of society required to be 
 altered and remodelled from end to end to sustain a 
 constitution founded on the principle of liberty. It was 
 no arduous problem to adjust relations between the people 
 and the king. The deeper question was between the people 
 and the aristocracy. Behind a political reform there was a 
 social revolution, for the only liberty that could avail was 
 liberty founded on equality. Malouet, who was at this 
 moment Necker's best adviser, said to him : " You have 
 made the Commons equal in influence to the other orders. 
 Another revolution has to follow, and it is for you to 
 accomplish it the levelling of onerous privilege." Necker 
 had no ambition of the kind, and he distinctly guarded 
 privilege in all matters but taxation. 
 
 The resolution of the king in Council was received with 
 loud applause ; and the public believed that everything 
 they had demanded was now obtained, or was at least 
 within reach. The doubling of the Commons was illusory 
 if they were to have no opportunity of making their 
 numbers tell. The Count of Provence, afterwards Lewis 
 XVI 1 1., had expressly argued that the old States-General 
 were useless because the Third Estate was not suffered to 
 prevail in them. Therefore he urged that the three orders 
 should deliberate and vote as one, and that the Commons 
 should possess the majority. It was universally felt that 
 this was the real meaning of the double representation, 
 and that there was a logic in it which could not be resisted. 
 The actual power vested in the Commons by the great 
 concession exceeded their literal and legal power, and it 
 was accepted and employed accordingly. 
 
 The mode of election was regulated on January 24. 
 There were to be three hundred deputies for the clergy,
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 51 
 
 three hundred for the nobles, six hundred for the Commons. 
 There were to be no restrictions and no exclusions ; but 
 whereas the greater personages voted directly, the vote 
 of the lower classes was indirect ; and the rule for the 
 Commons was that one hundred primary voters chose an 
 elector. Besides the deputy, there was the deputy's deputy, 
 held in reserve, ready in case of vacancy to take his place. 
 It was on this peculiar device of eventual representatives 
 that the Commons relied, if their numbers had not been 
 doubled. They would have called up their substitutes. 
 The rights and charters of the several provinces were 
 superseded, and all were placed on the same level. 
 
 A more sincere and genuine election has never been 
 held. And on the whole it was orderly. The clergy 
 were uneasy, and the nobles more openly alarmed. But 
 the country in general had confidence in what was coming ; 
 and some of the most liberal and advanced and out- 
 spoken manifestations proceeded from aristocratic and 
 ecclesiastical constituencies. On February 9 the Venetian 
 envoy reports that the clergy and nobles are ready to 
 accept the principle of equality in taxation. The elections 
 were going on for more than two months, from February 
 to the beginning of May. 
 
 In accordance with ancient custom, when a deputy 
 was a plenipotentiary more than a representative, it was 
 ordained that the preliminary of every election was the 
 drawing up of instructions. Every corner of France was 
 swept and searched for its ideas. The village gave them 
 to its elector, and they were compared and consolidated 
 by the electors in the process of choosing their member. 
 These instructions, the characteristic bequest to its suc- 
 cessors of a society at the point of death, were often 
 the work of conspicuous public men, such as Malouet, 
 Lanjuinais, Dupont, the friend of Turgot and originator 
 of the commercial treaty of 1786 ; and one paper, drawn 
 up by Sieyes, was circulated all over France by the duke 
 of Orleans. 
 
 In this way, by the lead which was taken by eminent 
 and experienced men, there is an appearance of unanimity.
 
 52 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 All France desired the essential institutions of limited 
 monarchy, in the shape of representation and the division 
 of power, and foreshadowed the charter of 1814. There 
 is scarcely a trace of the spirit of departing absolutism ; 
 there is not a sign of the coming republic. It is agreed 
 that precedent is dead, and the world just going to 
 begin. There are no clear views on certain grave matters 
 of detail, on an Upper House, Church and State, and 
 primary education. Free schools, progressive taxation, 
 the extinction of slavery, of poverty, of ignorance, are 
 among the things advised. The privileged orders are 
 prepared for a vast surrender in regard to taxes, and 
 nobody seems to associate the right of being represented 
 in future parliaments with the possession of property. 
 On nine -tenths of all that is material to a constitution 
 there is a general agreement. The one broad division is 
 that the Commons wish that the States-General shall form 
 a single united Assembly, and the other orders wish for 
 three. But on this supreme issue the Commons are all 
 agreed, and the others are not. An ominous rift appears, 
 and we already perceive the minority of nobles and priests, 
 who, in the hour of conflict, were to rule the fate of 
 European society. From all these papers, the mandate 
 of united France, it was the function of true statesmanship 
 to distil the essence of a sufficient freedom. 
 
 These instructions were intended to be imperative. 
 Nine years before, Burke, when he retired from the 
 contest at Bristol, had defined the constitutional doctrine 
 on constituency and member ; and Charles Sumner said 
 that he legislated when he made that speech. But the 
 ancient view, on which instructions are founded, made 
 the deputy the agent of the deputing power, and much 
 French history turns on it. At first the danger was unfelt ; 
 for the instructions were often compiled by the deputy 
 himself, who was to execute them. They were a pledge 
 even more than an order. 
 
 The nation had responded to the royal appeal, and 
 there was agreement between the offer and the demand. 
 The upper classes had opposed and resisted the Crown ;
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 53 
 
 the people were eager to support it, and it was expected 
 that the first steps would be taken together. The com- 
 parative moderation and serenity of the Instructions 
 disguised the unappeasable conflict of opinion and the 
 furious passion that raged below. 
 
 The very cream of the upper and middle class were 
 elected ; and the Court, in its prosperous complacency, 
 abandoned to their wisdom the task of creating the 
 new institutions and permanently settling the financial 
 trouble. It persisted in non-interference, and had no policy 
 but expectation. The initiative passed to every private 
 member. The members consisted of new men, without 
 connection or party organisation. They wanted time 
 to feel their way, and missed a moderator and a guide. 
 The governing power ceased, for the moment, to serve 
 the supreme purpose of government ; and monarchy 
 transformed itself into anarchy to see what would come 
 of it, and to avoid committing itself on either side against 
 the class by which it was always surrounded or the class 
 which seemed ready with its alliance. 
 
 The Government renounced the advantage which the 
 elections and the temperate instructions gave them ; and 
 in the hope that the elect would be at least as reasonable 
 as the electors, they threw away their greatest opportunity. 
 There was a disposition to underrate dangers that were 
 not on the surface. Even Mirabeau, who, if not a deep 
 thinker, was a keen observer, imagined that the entire 
 mission of the States-General might have been accom- 
 plished in a week. Few men saw the ambiguity hidden 
 in the term Privilege, and the immense difference that 
 divided fiscal change from social change. In attacking 
 feudalism, which was the survival of barbarism, the middle 
 class designed to overthrow the condition of society which 
 gave power as well as property to a favoured minority. 
 The assault on the restricted distribution of power 
 involved an assault on the concentration of wealth. The 
 connection of the two ideas is the secret motive of the 
 Revolution. At that time the law by which power 
 follows property, which has been called the most important
 
 54 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 discovery made by man since the invention of printing, 
 was not clearly known. But the underground forces at 
 work were recognised by the intelligent conservatives, and 
 they were assuming the defensive, in preparation for the 
 hour when they would be deserted by the king. It was 
 therefore impossible that the object for which the States- 
 General were summoned should be attained while they 
 were divided into three. Either they must be dissolved, 
 or the thing which the middle-class deputies could not 
 accomplish by use of forms would be attempted by the 
 lower class, their masters and employers, by use of force. 
 
 Before the meeting Malouet once more approached 
 the minister with weighty counsel. He said : " You now 
 know the wishes of France ; you know the instructions, 
 you do not know the deputies. Do not leave all things 
 to the arbitrament of the unknown. Convert at once the 
 demands of the people into a constitution, and give them 
 force of law. Act while you have unfettered power of 
 action. Act while your action will be hailed as the most 
 magnificent concession ever granted by a monarch to a 
 loyal and expectant nation. To-day you are supreme and 
 safe. It may be too late to-morrow." 
 
 In particular, Malouet advised that the Government 
 should regulate the verification of powers, leaving only 
 contested returns to the judgment of the representatives. 
 Necker abided by his meditated neutrality, and preferred 
 that the problem should work itself out with entire freedom. 
 He would not take sides lest he should offend one party 
 without being sure of the other, and forfeit his chance of 
 becoming the accepted arbitrator. Whilst, by deciding 
 nothing, he kept the enemy at bay, the upper classes 
 might yet reach the wise conclusion that, in the midst of 
 so much peril to royalty and to themselves, it was time to 
 place the interest of the state before their own, and to accept 
 the duties and the burdens of undistinguished men. 
 
 Neither party could yield. The Commons could not 
 fail to see that time was on their side, and that, by com- 
 pelling the other orders to merge with them, they secured 
 the downfall of privilege and played the game of the
 
 SUMMONS OF THE STATES-GENERAL 55 
 
 court. The two other orders were, by the imperative 
 mandate of many constituencies, prohibited from voting 
 in common. Their resistance was legitimate, and could 
 only be overcome by the intervention either of the Crown 
 or the people. Their policy might have been justified 
 if they had at once made their surrender, and had ac- 
 complished with deliberation in May what had to be done 
 with tumult in August. With these problems and these 
 perils before them, the States - General met on that 
 memorable 5th of May. Necker, preferring the abode of 
 financiers, wished them to meet at Paris ; and four or five 
 other places were proposed. At last the king, breaking 
 silence, said that it could be only at Versailles, on account 
 of his hunting. At the time he saw no cause for alarm 
 in the proximity of the capital. Since then, the dis- 
 turbances in one or two places, and the open language of 
 some of the electors, had begun to make him swerve. 
 
 On the opening day the queen was received with 
 offensive silence ; but she acknowledged a belated cheer 
 with such evident gladness and with such stately grace that 
 applause followed her. The popular groups of deputies 
 were cheered as they passed all but the Commons of 
 Provence, for they had Mirabeau among them. He alone 
 was hissed. Two ladies who watched the procession from 
 the same window were the daughter of Necker and the 
 wife of the Foreign Minister, Montmorin. One thought 
 with admiration that she was a witness of the greatest 
 scene in modern history ; and the other was sad with evil 
 forebodings. Both were right ; but the feeling of confi- 
 dence and enthusiasm pervaded the crowd. Near relations 
 of my own were at Rome in 1846, during the excitement 
 at the reforms of the new Pope, who, at that moment, was 
 the most popular sovereign in Europe. They asked an 
 Italian lady who was with them why all the demonstra- 
 tions only made her more melancholy. She answered : 
 "Because I was at Versailles in 1789." 
 
 Barentin, the minister who had opposed Necker's plans 
 and viewed the States -General with apprehension and 
 disgust, spoke after the king. He was a French judge,
 
 56 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 with no heart for any form of government but the ancient 
 one enjoyed by France. Nevertheless he admitted that 
 joint deliberation was the reasonable solution. He added 
 that it could only be adopted by common consent ; and 
 he urged the two orders to sacrifice their right of exemp- 
 tion. Necker perplexed his hearers by receding from the 
 ground which the Chancellor had taken. He assured the 
 two orders that they need not apprehend absorption in 
 the third if, while voting separately, they executed the 
 promised surrender. He spoke as their protector, on the 
 condition that they submitted to the common law, and 
 paid their taxes in arithmetical proportion. He implied, 
 but did not say, that what they refused to the Crown 
 would be taken by the people. In his financial statement 
 he under-estimated the deficit, and he said nothing of the 
 Constitution. The great day ended badly. The deputies 
 were directed to hand in their returns to the Master of 
 Ceremonies, an official of whom we shall soon see more. 
 But the Master of Ceremonies was not acceptable to the 
 Commons, because he had compelled them to withdraw, 
 the day before, from their places in the nave of the church. 
 Therefore the injunction was disregarded ; and the 
 verification of powers, which the Government might have 
 regulated, was left to the deputies themselves, and became 
 the lever by which the more numerous order overthrew 
 the monarchy, and carried to an end, in seven weeks, the 
 greatest constitutional struggle that has ever been fought 
 out in the world by speech alone.
 
 IV 
 THE MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL 
 
 THE argument of the drama which opened on May 6, 
 1789, and closed on June 27, is this: The French 
 people had been called to the enjoyment of freedom by 
 every voice they heard by the king ; by the notables, who 
 proposed unrestricted suffrage ; by the supreme judiciary, 
 who proclaimed the future Constitution ; by the clergy 
 and the aristocracy, in the most solemn pledges of the 
 electoral period ; by the British example, celebrated by 
 Montesquieu and Voltaire ; by the more cogent example 
 of America ; by the national classics, who declared, with a 
 hundred tongues, that all authority must be controlled, that 
 the masses must be rescued from degradation, and the 
 individual from constraint. 
 
 When the Commons appeared at Versailles, they 
 were there to claim an inheritance of which, by universal 
 consent, they had been wrongfully deprived. They were 
 not arrayed against the king, who had been already 
 brought to submission by blows not dealt by them. 
 They desired to make terms with those to whom he was 
 ostensibly opposed. There could be no real freedom for 
 them until they were as free on the side of the nobles as 
 on that of the Crown. The modern absolutism of the 
 monarch had surrendered ; but the ancient owners of the 
 soil remained, with their exclusive position in the State, 
 and a complicated system of honours and exactions 
 which humiliated the middle class and pauperised the 
 lower. The educated democracy, acting for themselves, 
 might have been content with the retrenchment of those 
 
 57
 
 58 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 privileges which put them at a disadvantage. But the 
 rural population were concerned with every fragment of 
 obsolete feudalism that added to the burden of their lives. 
 
 The two classes were undivided. Together they had 
 elected their deputies, and the cleavage between the 
 political and the social democrat, which has become so 
 great a fact in modern society, was scarcely perceived. 
 The same common principle, the same comprehensive 
 term, composed the policy of both. They demanded 
 liberty, both in the State and in society, and required 
 that oppression should cease, whether exercised in the 
 name of the king or in the name of the aristocracy. In a 
 word, they required equality as well as liberty, and sought 
 deliverance from feudalism and from absolutism at the 
 same time. And equality was the most urgent and 
 prominent claim of the two, because the king, virtually, 
 had given way, but the nobles had not. 
 
 The battle that remained to be fought, and at once 
 commenced, was between the Commons and the nobles ; 
 that is, between people doomed to poverty by the opera- 
 tion of law, and people who were prosperous at their expense. 
 And as there were men who would perish from want while 
 the laws remained unchanged, and others who would be 
 ruined by their repeal, the strife was deadly. 
 
 The real object of assault was not the living landlord, 
 but the unburied past. It had little to do with socialism, 
 or with high rents, bad times, and rapacious proprietors. 
 Apart from all this was the hope of release from irrational 
 and indefensible laws, such as that by which a patrician's 
 land paid three francs where the plebeian's paid fourteen, 
 because one was noble and the other was not, and it was 
 an elementary deduction from the motives of liberal desire. 
 
 The elections had made it unexpectedly evident that 
 when one part of territorial wealth had been taken by the 
 State, another would be taken by the people ; and that a 
 free community, making its own laws, would not submit 
 to exactions imposed of old by the governing class on a 
 defenceless population. When the notables advised that 
 every man should have a vote, this consequence was not
 
 MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL 59 
 
 clear to them. It was perceived as things went on, and 
 no provision for aristocratic interests was included in the 
 popular demands. 
 
 In the presence of imminent peril, the privileged 
 classes closed their ranks, and pressed the king to resist 
 changes sure to be injurious to them. They became a 
 Conservative party. The court was on their side, with 
 the Count d'Artois at its head, and the queen and her 
 immediate circle. 
 
 The king remained firm in the belief that popularity 
 is the best form of authority, and he relied on the whole- 
 some dread of democracy to make the rich aristocrats 
 yield to his wishes. As long as the Commons exerted 
 the inert pressure of delay, he watched the course of 
 events. When at the end of five tedious and unprofitable 
 weeks they began their attack, he was driven slowly, and 
 without either confidence or sympathy, to take his stand 
 with the nobles, and to shrink from the indefinite change 
 that was impending. 
 
 When the Commons met to deliberate on the morning 
 of the 6th of May, the deputies were unknown to each 
 other. It was necessary to proceed with caution, and to 
 occupy ground on which they could not be divided. 
 Their unanimity was out of danger so long as nothing 
 more complex was discussed than the verification of 
 powers. The other orders resolved at once that each 
 should examine its own returns. But this vote, which 
 the nobles carried by a majority of 141, obtained in the 
 clergy a majority of only 19. It was evident at once 
 that the party of privilege was going asunder, and that 
 the priests were nearly as well inclined to the Commons 
 as to the noblesse. It became advisable to give them 
 time, to discard violence until the arts of conciliation were 
 exhausted and the cause of united action had been 
 pleaded in vain. The policy of moderation was advocated 
 by Malouet, a man of practical insight and experience, 
 who had grown grey in the service of the State. It was 
 said that he defended the slave trade ; he attempted to 
 exclude the public from the debates ; he even offered, in
 
 60 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 unauthorised terms, to secure the claims, both real and 
 formal, of the upper classes. He soon lost the ear of the 
 House. But he was a man of great good sense, as free 
 from ancient prejudice as from modern theory, and he 
 never lost sight of the public interest in favour of a class. 
 The most generous proposals on behalf of the poor after- 
 wards emanated from him, and parliamentary life in 
 France began with his motion for negotiation with the 
 other orders. 
 
 He was supported by Mounier, one of the deepest 
 minds of that day, and the most popular of the deputies. 
 He was a magistrate of Grenoble, and had conducted the 
 Estates of Dauphine with such consummate art and 
 wisdom that all ranks and all parties had worked in 
 harmony. They had demanded equal representation and 
 the vote in common ; they gave to their deputies full 
 powers instead of written instructions, only requiring that 
 they should obtain a free government to the best of their 
 ability ; they resolved that the chartered rights of their 
 province should not be put in competition with the new 
 and theoretic rights of the nation. Under Mounier's 
 controlling hand the prelate and the noble united to 
 declare that the essential liberties of men are ensured to 
 them by nature, and not by perishable title-deeds. 
 Travellers had initiated him in the working of English 
 institutions, and he represented the school of Montesquieu ; 
 but he was an emancipated disciple and a discriminate 
 admirer. He held Montesquieu to be radically illiberal, 
 and believed the famous theory which divides powers 
 without isolating them to be an old and a common 
 discovery. He thought that nations differ less in their 
 character than in their stage of progress, and that a Con- 
 stitution like the English applies not to a region, but to a 
 time. He belonged to that type of statesmanship which 
 Washington had shown to be so powerful revolutionary 
 doctrine in a conservative temper. In the centre of 
 affairs the powerful provincial betrayed a lack of sympathy 
 and attraction. He refused to meet Sieyes, and per- 
 sistently denounced and vilified Mirabeau. Influence and
 
 MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL 61 
 
 public esteem came to him at once, and in the great con- 
 structive party he was a natural leader, and predominated 
 for a time. But at the encounter of defeat, his austere 
 and rigid character turned it into disaster ; and as he 
 possessed but one line of defence, the failure of his tactics 
 was the ruin of his cause. Although he despaired pre- 
 maturely, and was vociferously repentant of his part in 
 the great days of June, parading his sackcloth before 
 Europe, he never faltered in the conviction that the 
 interests of no class, of no family, of no man, can be 
 preferred to those of the nation. Napoleon once said 
 with a sneer : "You are still the man of 1789." Mounier 
 replied : " Yes, sir. Principles are not subject to the law 
 of change." 
 
 He desired to adopt the English model, which meant : 
 representation of property ; an upper house founded 
 upon merit, not upon descent; royal veto and right of 
 dissolution. This could only be secured by active co- 
 operation on the part of all the conservative elements. 
 To obtain his majority he required that the other orders 
 should come over, not vanquished and reluctant, but 
 under the influence of persuasion. Mirabeau and his 
 friends only wished to put the nobles in the wrong, to 
 expose their obstinacy and arrogance, and then to 
 proceed without them. The plan of Mounier depended 
 on a real conciliation. 
 
 The clergy were ready for a conference ; and by their 
 intervention the nobles were induced to take part in it 
 There, on May 23, the Archbishop of Vienne, who was 
 in the confidence of Mounier, declared that the clergy 
 recognised the duty of sharing taxes in equal proportion. 
 The Duke of Luxemburg, speaking for the nobles, made 
 the same declaration. The intention, he said, was 
 irrevocable ; but he added that it would not be executed 
 until the problem of the Constitution was solved. The 
 nobles declined to abandon the mode of separate verifica- 
 tion which had been practised formerly. And when the 
 Commons objected that what was good in times of civil 
 dissension was inapplicable to the Arcadian tranquillity of
 
 62 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 1789, the others were not to blame if they treated the 
 argument with contempt. 
 
 The failure of the conference was followed by an 
 event which confirmed Necker in the belief that he was 
 not waiting in vain. He received overtures from Mirabeau. 
 Until that time Mirabeau had been notorious for the 
 obtrusive scandal of his life, and the books he had written 
 under pressure of need did not restore his good name. 
 People avoided him, not because he was brutal and 
 vicious like other men of his rank, but because he was 
 reputed a liar and a thief. During one of his imprison- 
 ments he had obtained from Dupont de Nemours communi- 
 cation of an important memoir embodying Turgot's ideas 
 on local government. He copied the manuscript, presented 
 it to the minister as his own work, and sold another copy 
 to the booksellers as the work of Turgot Afterwards he 
 offered to suppress his letters from Prussia if the Govern- 
 ment would buy them at the price he could obtain by 
 publishing them. Montmorin paid what he asked for, on 
 condition that he renounced his candidature in Provence. 
 Mirabeau agreed, spent the money on his canvass, and 
 made more by printing what he had sold to the king. 
 During the contest, by his coolness, audacity, and resource, 
 he soon acquired ascendency. The nobles who rejected 
 him were made to feel his power. When tumults broke 
 out, he appeased them by his presence, and he moved 
 from Marseilles to Aix escorted by a retinue of 200 
 carriages. Elected in both places by the Third Estate, 
 he came to Versailles hoping to repair his fortune. There 
 it was soon apparent that he possessed powers of mind 
 equal to the baseness of his conduct. He is described 
 by Malouet as the only man who perceived from the 
 first where the Revolution was tending ; and his enemy 
 Mounier avows that he never met a more intelligent 
 politician. He was always ready to speak, and always 
 vigorous and adroit His renowned orations were often 
 borrowed, for he surrounded himself with able men, 
 mostly Genevese, versed in civil strife, who supplied him 
 with facts, mediated with the public, and helped him in
 
 MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL 63 
 
 the press. Rivarol said that his head was a gigantic 
 sponge, swelled out with other men's ideas. As extempore 
 speaking was a new art, and the ablest men read their 
 speeches, Mirabeau was at once an effective debater 
 probably the best debater, though not the most perfect 
 orator, that has appeared in the splendid record of parlia- 
 mentary life in France. His father was one of the most 
 conspicuous economists, and he inherited their belief in a 
 popular and active monarchy, and their preference for a 
 single chamber. 
 
 In 1784 he visited London, frequented the Whigs, and 
 supplied Burke with a quotation. He did not love England, 
 but he thought it a convincing proof of the efficacy of 
 paper Constitutions, that a few laws for the protection of 
 personal liberty should be sufficient to make a corrupt 
 and ignorant people prosper. 
 
 His keynote was to abandon privilege and to retain 
 the prerogative ; for he aspired to sway the monarchy, and 
 would not destroy the power he was to wield. The king, 
 he said, is the State, and can do no wrong. Therefore he 
 was at times the most violent and indiscreet of men, and 
 at times unaccountably moderate and reserved ; and both 
 parts were carefully prepared. As he had a fixed purpose 
 before him, but neither principle nor scruple, no emergency 
 found him at a loss, or embarrassed by a cargo of con- 
 sistent maxims. Incalculable, and unfit to trust in daily 
 life, at a crisis he was the surest and most available force. 
 From the first moment he came to the front. On the 
 opening day he was ready with a plan for a consultation 
 in common, before deciding whether they should act 
 jointly or separately. The next day he started a newspaper, 
 in the shape of a report to his constituents, and when the 
 Government attempted to suppress it, he succeeded, May 
 1 9, in establishing the liberty of the press. 
 
 The first political club, afterwards that of the Jacobins, 
 was founded, at his instigation, by men who did not know 
 the meaning of a club. For, he said to them, ten men 
 acting together can make a hundred thousand tremble 
 apart from each other. Mirabeau began with caution, for
 
 64 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 his materials were new and he had no friends. He believed 
 that the king was really identified with the magnates, and 
 that the Commons were totally unprepared to confront 
 either the court or the approaching Revolution. He thought 
 it hopeless to negotiate with his own doomed order, and 
 meant to detach the king from them. When the scheme 
 of conciliation failed, his opportunity came. He requested 
 Malouet to bring him into communication with ministers. 
 He told him that he was seriously alarmed, that the nobles 
 meant to push resistance to extremity, and that his reliance 
 was on the Crown. He promised, if the Government 
 would admit him to their confidence, to support their 
 policy with all his might Montmorin refused to see him. 
 Necker reluctantly consented. He had a way of pointing 
 his nose at the ceiling, which was not conciliatory, and he 
 received the hated visitor with a request to know what 
 proposals he had to make. Mirabeau, purple with rage 
 at this frigid treatment by the man he had come to save, 
 replied that he proposed to wish him good morning. To 
 Malouet he said, " Your friend is a fool, and he will soon 
 have news of me." Necker lived to regret that he had 
 thrown such a chance away. At the time, the interview 
 only helped to persuade him that the Commons knew 
 their weakness, and felt the need of his succour. 
 
 Just then the expected appeal reached him from the 
 ecclesiastical quarter. When it was seen that the nobles 
 could not be constrained by fair words, the Commons 
 made one more experiment with the clergy. On May 27 
 they sent a numerous and weighty deputation to adjure 
 them, in the name of the God of peace and of the national 
 welfare, not to abandon the cause of united action. The 
 clergy this time invoked the interposition of Government. 
 
 On the 3Oth conferences were once more opened, and 
 the ministers were present. The discussion was as incon- 
 clusive as before, and, on June 4, Necker produced a plan 
 of his own. He proposed, in substance, separate verifica- 
 tion, the crown to decide in last instance. It was a 
 solution favourable to the privileged orders, one of which 
 had appealed to him. He wanted their money, not
 
 MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL 65 
 
 their power. The clergy agreed. The Commons were 
 embarrassed what to do, but were quickly relieved ; for 
 the nobles replied that they had already decided simply 
 to try their own cases. By this act, on June 9, negotiations 
 were broken off. 
 
 The decision had been taken in the apartments of the 
 Duchess of Polignac, the queen's familiar friend, and it 
 made a breach between the court and the -minister at the 
 first step he had taken since the Assembly met. Up to 
 this point the aristocracy were intelligible and consistent. 
 They would make no beginning of surrender until they 
 knew how far it would lead them, or put themselves at 
 the mercy of a hostile majority without any assurance for 
 private rights. Malouet offered them a guarantee, but he 
 was disavowed by his colleagues in a way that warned the 
 nobles not to be too trusting. 
 
 Nobody could say how far the edifice of privilege was 
 condemned to crumble, or what nucleus of feudal property, 
 however secured by contract and prescription, would be 
 suffered to remain. The nobles felt justified in defend- 
 ing things which were their own by law, by centuries of 
 unquestioned possession, by purchase and inheritance, by 
 sanction of government, by the express will of their con- 
 stituents. In upholding the interest, and the very existence, 
 of the class they represented, they might well believe that 
 they acted in the spirit of true liberty, which depends on 
 the multiplicity of checking forces, and that they were 
 saving the throne. From the engagement to renounce 
 fiscal exemption, and submit to the equal burden of 
 taxation, they did not recede, and they claimed the 
 support of the king. Montlosier, who belonged to their 
 order, pronounced that their case was good and their 
 argument bad. Twice they gave the enemy an advantage. 
 When they saw the clergy waver, they resolved, by their 
 usual majority of 197 to 44, that each order possessed 
 the right of nullification ; so that they would no more 
 yield to the separate vote of the three Estates than to 
 their united vote. Evidently the country would support 
 those who denied the veto and were ready to overrule it, 
 
 F
 
 66 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 against those who gave no hope that anything would be 
 done. Again, when they declined the Government pro- 
 posals, they isolated themselves, and became an obstruc- 
 tion. They had lost the clergy. They now repulsed the 
 minister. Nothing was left them except their hopes of 
 the king. They ruined him as well as themselves. It 
 did not follow that, because they supported the monarchy, 
 they were sure of the monarch. And it was a graver 
 miscalculation to think that a regular army is stronger 
 than an undisciplined mob, and that the turbulent Parisians, 
 eight miles off, could not protect the deputies against 
 regiments of horse and foot, commanded by the gallant 
 gentlemen of France, accustomed for centuries to pay the 
 tax of blood, and fighting now in their own cause. 
 
 There was nothing more to be done. The arts of 
 peace were exhausted. A deliberate breach with legality 
 could alone fulfil the national decree. The country had 
 grown tired of dilatory tactics and prolonged inaction. 
 Conciliation, tried by the Commons, by the clergy, and 
 by the Government, had been vain. The point was 
 reached where it was necessary to choose between com- 
 pulsion and surrender, and the Commons must either 
 employ the means at their command to overcome resist- 
 ance, or go away confessing that the great movement had 
 broken down in their hands, and that the people had 
 elected the wrong men. Inaction and delay had not been 
 a policy, but the preliminary of a policy. It was reason- 
 able to say that they would try every possible effort before 
 resorting to aggression ; but it would have been unmean- 
 ing to say that they would begin by doing nothing, and 
 that afterwards they would continue to do nothing, Their 
 enemy had been beforehand with them in making mistakes. 
 They might hazard something with less danger now. 
 
 Victory indeed was assured by the defection among the 
 nobles and the clergy. Near fifty of the one, and certainly 
 more than one hundred of the others, were ready to 
 come over. Instead of being equal, the parties were now 
 two to one. Six hundred Commons could not control 
 the same number of the deputies of privilege. But eight
 
 MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAL 67 
 
 hundred deputies were more than a match for four 
 hundred. Therefore, on June 10, the Commons opened 
 the attack and summoned the garrison. Mirabeau gave 
 notice that one of the Paris deputies had an important 
 motion to submit. The mover was more important 
 than the motion, for this was the apparition of Sieves, 
 the most original of the revolutionary statesmen, who, 
 within a fortnight of this, his maiden speech, laid 
 low the ancient monarchy of France. He was a new 
 member, for the Paris elections had been delayed, the 
 forty deputies took their seats three weeks after the 
 opening, and Sieyes was the last deputy chosen. He 
 objected to the existing stagnation, believing that there 
 was no duty to the nobles that outweighed the duty 
 to France. He proposed that the other orders be formally 
 invited to join, and that the House should proceed to 
 constitute itself, and to act with them if they came, with- 
 out them if they stayed away. The returns were ac- 
 cordingly verified, and Sieyes then moved that they 
 should declare themselves the National Assembly, the 
 proper name for that which they claimed to be. 
 
 In spite of Malouet, and even of Mirabeau, on June 1 7 
 this motion was carried by 491 to 90. All taxes became 
 dependent on the Assembly. The broad principle on 
 which Sieyes acted was that the Commons were really the 
 nation. The upper classes were not an essential part of 
 it. They were not even a natural and normal growth, 
 but an offending excrescence, a negative quantity, to be 
 subtracted, not to be added up. That which ought not 
 to exist ought not to be represented. The deputies of 
 the Third Estate appeared for the whole. Alone they 
 were sufficient to govern it, for alone they were identified 
 with the common interest. 
 
 Sieyes was not solicitous that his invitation should be 
 obeyed, for the accession of the other orders might displace 
 the majority. Those who possessed the plenitude of 
 power were bound to employ it. By axiomatic simplicity 
 more than by sustained argument Sieyes mastered his 
 hearers.
 
 V 
 THE TENNIS-COURT OATH 
 
 WE saw last week that much time was spent in fruitless 
 negotiation which ended in a deadlock the Commons 
 refusing to act except in conjunction with the other 
 orders, and the others insisting on the separate action 
 which had been prescribed by their instructions and by 
 the king. 
 
 The Commons altered their policy under the influence 
 of Sieyes, who advised that they should not wait for the 
 others, but should proceed in their absence. In his 
 famous pamphlet he had argued that they were really the 
 nation, and had the right on their side. And his theory 
 was converted into practice, because it now appeared 
 that they had not only the right, but the power. They 
 knew it, because the clergy were wavering. Thursday, 
 June 1 8, the day after the proclamation of the National 
 Assembly, was a festival. On Friday the clergy divided 
 on the question of joining. The proposal was negatived, 
 but twelve of its opponents stated that they would be on 
 the other side if the vote in common extended only to 
 the verification of returns. The minority at once accepted 
 the condition, and so became the majority. Others 
 thereupon acceded, and by six o'clock in the evening 149 
 ecclesiastics recorded their votes for the Commons. 
 That i Qth of June is a decisive date, for then the priests 
 went over to the Revolution. The Commons, by a 
 questionable and audacious act, had put themselves 
 wrong with everybody when the inferior clergy abandoned 
 the cause of privilege and came to their rescue. 
 
 68
 
 THE TENNIS-COURT OATH 69 
 
 The dauphin had lately died, and the royal family 
 were living in retirement at Marly. At ten o'clock in the 
 evening of the vote, the Archbishops of Paris and Rouen 
 arrived there, described the event to the king, and 
 comforted him by saying that the prelates, all but four, 
 had remained true to their order. They were followed 
 by a very different visitor, whom it behoved the king to 
 hear, for he was a man destined to hold the highest 
 offices of State under many governments, to be the fore- 
 most minister of the republic, the empire, and the 
 monarchy, to predominate over European sovereigns at 
 Vienna, over European statesmen in London, and to be 
 universally feared, and hated, and admired, as the most 
 sagacious politician in the world. 
 
 Talleyrand came to Marly at dead of night, and begged 
 a secret audience of the king. He was not a favourite 
 at court. He had obtained the see of Autun only at 
 the request of the assembled clergy of France, and when 
 the pope selected him for a cardinal's hat, Lewis prevented 
 his nomination. He now refused to see him, and sent 
 him to his brother. The Count d'Artois was in bed, but 
 the bishop was his friend, and was admitted. He said it 
 was necessary that the Government should act with vigour. 
 The conduct of the Assembly was illegal and foolish, and 
 would ruin the monarchy unless the States-General were 
 dissolved. Talleyrand would undertake, with his friends, 
 some of whom came with him and were waiting below, 
 to form a new administration. The Assembly, com- 
 promised and discredited by the recent outbreak, would 
 be dismissed, a new one would be elected on an altered 
 franchise, and a sufficient display of force would prevent 
 resistance. Talleyrand proposed to reverse the policy of 
 Necker, which he thought feeble and vacillating, and 
 which had thrown France into the hands of Sieyes. 
 With a stronger grasp he meant to restore the royal 
 initiative, in order to carry out the constitutional changes 
 which the nation expected. 
 
 The count put on his clothes, and carried the matter 
 to the king. He detested Necker with his concessions,
 
 70 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 and welcomed the prospect of getting rid of him for a 
 minister of his own making taken from his own circle. 
 He came back with a positive refusal. Then Talleyrand, 
 convinced that it was henceforth vain to serve the king, 
 gave notice that every man must be allowed to shift for 
 himself; and the count admitted that he was right. 
 They remembered that interview after twenty-five years 
 of separation, when one of the two held in his hands the 
 crown of France, which the other, in the name of Lewis 
 XVIII., came to receive from him. 
 
 The king repulsed Talleyrand because he had just 
 taken a momentous resolution. The time had arrived 
 which Necker had waited for, the time to interpose with a 
 Constitution so largely conceived, so exactly defined, so 
 faithfully adapted to the deliberate wishes of the people, 
 as to supersede and overshadow the Assembly, with its 
 perilous tumult and its prolonged sterility. He had 
 proposed some such measure early in May, when it was 
 rejected, and he did not insist. But now the policy 
 unwisely postponed was clearly opportune. Secret advice 
 came from liberal public men, urging the danger of the 
 crisis, and the certainty that the Assembly would soon 
 hurry to extremes. Mirabeau himself deplored its action, 
 and Malouet had reason to expect a stouter resistance to 
 the revolutionary argument and the sudden ascendency of 
 Sieyes. The queen in person, and influential men at 
 court, entreated Necker to modify his constitutional 
 scheme ; but he was unshaken, and the king stood by 
 him. It was decided that the comprehensive measure 
 intended to distance and annul the Assembly should be 
 proclaimed from the throne on the following Monday. 
 
 This was the rock that wrecked the Talleyrand ministry, 
 and it destroyed more solid structures than that unsub- 
 stantial phantom. The plan was statesmanlike, and it 
 marks the summit of Necker's career. But he neglected 
 to communicate with men whom he might well have 
 trusted, and the secret was fatal, for it was kept twelve 
 hours too long. As the princes had refused the use of 
 their riding- school, there were only three buildings
 
 THE TENNIS-COURT OATH 71 
 
 dedicated to the States-General, instead of four, and the 
 Commons, by reason of their numbers, occupied the great 
 hall where the opening ceremony was held, and which 
 had now to be made ready for the royal sitting. 
 
 Very early in the morning of Saturday, June 20, the 
 president of the Assembly, the astronomer Bailly, received 
 notice from the master of ceremonies that the hall was 
 wanted, in order to be prepared for Monday, and that the 
 meetings of the Commons were meanwhile suspended for 
 that day. Bailly was not taken by surprise, for a friend, 
 who went about with his eyes open, had warned him of 
 what was going on. But the Assembly had formally 
 adjourned to that day, the members were expecting the 
 appointed meeting, and the message came too late. Bailly 
 deemed that it was a studied insult, the angry retort of 
 Government, and the penalty of the recent vote, and he 
 inferred, most erroneously as we know, that the coming 
 speech from the throne would be hostile. Therefore he 
 gave all the solemnity he could to the famous scene that 
 ensued. Appearing at the head of the indignant deputies, 
 he was denied admission. The door was only opened 
 that he might fetch his papers, and the National Assembly 
 that represented France found itself, by royal command, 
 standing outside on the pavement, at the hour fixed for 
 its deliberations. 
 
 At that instant the doubts and divisions provoked by 
 the overriding logic of Sieyes disappeared. Moderate and 
 Revolutionist felt the same resentment, and had the same 
 sense of being opposed by a power that was insane. There 
 were some, and Sieyes among them, who proposed that 
 they should adjourn to Paris. But a home was found in 
 the empty Tennis Court hard by. There, with a view to 
 baffle dangerous designs, and also to retrieve his own 
 waning influence, Mounier assumed the lead. He moved 
 that they should bind themselves by oath never to separate 
 until they had given a Constitution to France ; and all 
 the deputies immediately swore it, save one, who added 
 " Dissentient " to his name, and who was hustled out by a 
 backdoor, to save him from the fury of his colleagues.
 
 72 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 This dramatic action added little to that which had been 
 done three days earlier. The deputies understood that 
 a Constituent Assembly must be single, that the legislative 
 power had, for the purpose, been transferred to them, and 
 could not be restrained or recalled. Their authority was 
 not to be limited by an upper house, for both upper houses 
 were absorbed ; nor by the king, for they regarded neither 
 his sanction nor his veto ; nor by the nation itself, for they 
 refused, by their oath, to be dissolved. 
 
 The real event of the Tennis Court was to unite all 
 parties against the crown, and to make them adopt the 
 new policy of radical and indefinite change, outdoing what 
 Sieyes himself had done. The mismanagement of the 
 court drove its friends into the van of the movement. 
 The last Royalist defender of safe measures had vanished 
 through the backdoor. 
 
 Malouet had tendered a clause saving the royal power ; 
 but it was decided not to put it, lest it should be refused. 
 Mirabeau, in whose eyes the decree of the 1 7th portended 
 civil war, now voted, reluctantly, with the rest. 
 
 Whilst the Assembly held its improvised and informal 
 meeting at Versailles, the king sat in council at Marly on 
 Necker's magnanimous proposal. After a struggle, and 
 with some damaging concessions, the minister carried his 
 main points. They were gathering their papers, and 
 making ready to disperse, when a private message was 
 brought to the king. He went out, desiring them to wait 
 his return. Montmorin turned to Necker and said, " It is 
 the queen, and all is over." The king came back, and 
 adjourned the council to Monday at Versailles. And it 
 was in this way that the report of what had happened 
 that morning told upon the Government, and the enthusiasm 
 of the Tennis Court frustrated the pondered measures of 
 the most liberal minister in Europe. For it was, in truth, 
 the queen, and in that brief interval it was decreed that 
 France, so near the goal in that month of June, should 
 wade to it through streams of blood during the twenty- 
 five most terrible years in the history of Christian 
 nations.
 
 THE TENNIS-COURT OATH 73 
 
 The council of ministers, which was adjourned in con- 
 sequence of the meeting in the Tennis Court, went over to 
 the noblesse, and restored in their interest the principles 
 of the old regime. It resolved that the king should 
 rescind the recent acts of the Assembly ; should maintain 
 inviolate the division of orders, allowing the option of 
 debate in common only in cases where neither privilege 
 nor the Constitution were affected ; that he should 
 confirm feudal rights and even fiscal immunities, unless 
 voluntarily abandoned, and should deny admission to 
 public employment irrespective of class. Necker's 
 adversaries prevailed, and the ancient bulwarks were set 
 up again, in favour of the aristocracy. 
 
 Still, a portion of the great scheme was preserved, and 
 the concessions on the part of the crown were such that 
 some weeks earlier they would have been hailed with 
 enthusiasm, and the consistent logic of free institutions 
 exercises a coercive virtue that made many think that 
 the King's Speech of June 23 ought to have been accepted 
 as the greater charter of France. That was the opinion 
 of Arthur Young ; of Gouverneur Morris, who had given 
 the final touches to the American Constitution; of Jefferson, 
 the author of the Declaration of Independence ; and after- 
 wards even of Sieyes himself. 
 
 On this account, Necker wavered to the last moment, 
 and on the Tuesday morning prepared to attend the king. 
 His friends, his family, his daughter, the wonder of the 
 age, made him understand that he could not sanction by 
 his presence, at a solemn crisis, an act which reversed one 
 essential half of his policy. He dismissed his carriage, 
 took off his court suit, and left the vacant place to proclaim 
 his fall. That evening he sent in his resignation. His 
 significant absence ; the peremptory language of the king ; 
 the abrogation of their decrees, which was effectual and 
 immediate, while the compensating promises were eventual, 
 and not yet equivalent to laws ; the avowed resolve to 
 identify the Crown with the nobles, struck the Assembly 
 with consternation. The removal of the constitutional 
 question to the list of matters to be debated separately
 
 74 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 was, in the existing conditions of antagonism, the end of 
 free government. And indeed the position occupied by 
 the king was untenable, because the division of orders 
 into three Houses had already come to an end. For 
 on Monday the 22nd, in the Church of St Lewis, 149 
 ecclesiastical deputies, the Archbishops of Bordeaux and 
 Vienne at their head, had joined the Commons. It was 
 a step which they were legally authorised and competent 
 to take, and the Revolution now had a majority not only 
 of individual votes, but of orders. It was a forlorn hope, 
 therefore, to separate them by compulsion. 
 
 Lewis XVI. ended by declaring that he was determined 
 to accomplish the happiness of his people, and that if 
 the deputies refused to co-operate he would accomplish 
 it alone ; and he charged them to withdraw. The 
 Commons were in their own House, and, with the majority 
 of the clergy, they resumed their seats, uncertain of the 
 future. Their uncertainty was all at once auspiciously 
 relieved. Dreux Br6z6, the master of ceremonies, re- 
 appeared, and as he brought a message from the king he 
 wore his plumed hat upon his head. With clamorous 
 outcries he was told to uncover, and he uttered a reply 
 so insolent that his son, describing the scene in public 
 after many years, declined to repeat his words. There- 
 fore, when he asked whether they had heard the king's 
 order to depart, he received a memorable lesson. Mira- 
 beau exclaimed, "Yes, but if we are to be expelled, we 
 shall yield only to force." Br6z answered, correctly, 
 that he did not recognise Mirabeau as the organ of the 
 Assembly, and he turned to the president. But Bailly 
 rose above Mirabeau, and said, " The nation is assembled 
 here, and receives no orders." At these words the master 
 of ceremonies, as if suddenly aware of the presence of 
 majesty, retired, walking backwards to the door. It was 
 at that moment that the old order changed and made 
 place for the new. For Sieyes, who possessed the good 
 gift of putting a keen edge to his thoughts, who had 
 begun his career in Parliament ten days before by saying, 
 " It is time to cut the cables," now spoke, and with superb
 
 THE TENNIS-COURT OATH 75 
 
 simplicity thus defined the position : " What you were 
 yesterday you are now. Let us pass to the order of the 
 day." In this way the monarchy, as a force distinct from 
 a form, was not assailed, or abolished, or condemned, but 
 passed over. Assault, abolition, condemnation were to 
 follow, and already there were penetrating eyes that 
 caught, in the distance, the first gleam of the axe. " The 
 king," said Mirabeau, " has taken the road to the scaffold." 
 
 The abdication of prerogative, which the king offered 
 on June 23, went far ; but the people demanded surrender 
 in regard to privilege. The Assembly, submitting to the 
 geometrical reasoning of Sieyes and to the surprise of the 
 Tennis Court, had frightened him into an alliance with 
 the nobles, and he linked his cause to theirs. He elected 
 to stand or fall with interests not his own, with an order 
 which was powerless to help him, which could make no 
 return for his sacrifice in their behalf, which was unable 
 for one hour to defend itself, and was about to' perish by 
 its own hand. The failure of June 23 was immediately 
 apparent. The Assembly, having dismissed Dreux Brez, 
 was not molested further. Necker consented to resume 
 office, with greatly increased popularity. Under the 
 influence of the royal declaration forty-seven nobles, being 
 a portion only of the Liberal minority, went over to the 
 Commons, and Talleyrand followed at the head of 
 twenty -five prelates. Then the king gave way. He 
 instructed the resisting magnates to join the National 
 Assembly. In very sincere and solemn terms they warned 
 him that by such a surrender he was putting off his 
 crown. The Count d'Artois rejoined that the king's life 
 would be in danger if they persisted. There was one 
 young nobleman rising rapidly to fame as a gracious and 
 impressive speaker, whom even this appeal to loyal hearts 
 failed to move. " Perish the monarch," cried Cazales, 
 " but not the monarchy ! " 
 
 Lewis underwent the humiliation of revoking, on 
 June 27, what he had ceremoniously promulgated on 
 the 23rd, because there was a fatal secret. Paris was 
 agitated, and the people promised the deputies to
 
 76 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 stand by them at their need. But what could they 
 effect at Versailles against the master of so many 
 legions? Just then a mutiny broke out in the French 
 guards, the most disciplined body of troops in the capital, 
 and betrayed the key to the hollow and unstable counsels 
 of the Government. The army could not be trusted. 
 Necker suspected it as early as February. In the last 
 week of June, the English, Prussian, and Venetian envoys 
 report that the crown was disabled because it was dis- 
 armed. The regiments at hand would not serve against 
 the national representatives. It was resolved to collect 
 faithful bands of Swiss, Alsatians, and Walloons. Ten 
 foreign regiments, near 30,000 men in all, were hurried 
 to the scene. They were the last hope of royalism. 
 Trusty friends were informed that the surrender was only 
 to last until the frontier garrisons could be brought to 
 Versailles. D'Artois confided to one of them that many 
 heads must fall. And he uttered the sinister proverb 
 which became historic in another tragedy : If you want 
 an omelette you must not be afraid of breaking eggs.
 
 VI 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 
 
 AFTER the dramatic intervention of the Marquis de Br<ze", 
 the king's speech of June 23 was never seriously con- 
 sidered by the Assembly. Yet the concessions, which it 
 made to the spirit of political progress, satisfied philosophic 
 observers, and there had been no time in English history 
 where changes so extensive, proceeding from the Crown, 
 would have failed to conciliate the people. It was a 
 common belief in those days, expressly sanctioned by the 
 Economists, that secondary liberties, carried far enough, 
 are worth more than formal securities for the principle of 
 self-government One is of daily use and practical 
 advantage ; the other is of the domain of theory, dubiously 
 beneficial, and without assurance of enlightenment and 
 justice. A wise, honest, and intelligent administration 
 gives more to men than the established reign of uncertain 
 opinion. These arguments had more weight with phil- 
 osophers than with the deputies, for it was already 
 decided that they must make the Constitution. All the 
 king offered, and a great deal more, they intended to take. 
 Much that he insisted on preserving they were resolved to 
 destroy. The offer, at its best, was vitiated by the alloy ; 
 for the most offensive privileges, immunities, and emolu- 
 ments of rank were to be perpetuated, and it was against 
 these that the fiercest force of the revolutionary movement 
 was beating. In order that they might be abolished, the 
 nation tendered its indefeasible support, its unconquerable 
 power, to its representatives. 
 
 If the Assembly, content with the advantage gained 
 
 77
 
 78 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 over the king, had surrendered unconditionally to the 
 nobles, and assented, for a few political reforms, to the 
 social degradation of the democracy, they would have 
 betrayed their constituents. On that consideration they 
 were compelled to act. They acted also on the principle, 
 which was not new, which came down indeed from 
 mediaeval divines, but which was newly invested with 
 universal authority, that the law is not the will of the 
 sovereign that commands, but of the nation that obeys. 
 It was the very marrow of the doctrine that obstruction of 
 liberty is crime, that absolute authority is not a thing to 
 be consulted, but a thing to be removed, and that resist- 
 ance to it is no affair of interest or convenience, but of 
 sacred obligation. Every drop of blood shed in the 
 American conflict was shed in a cause immeasurably 
 inferior to theirs, against a system more legitimate by far 
 than that of June 23. Unless Washington was an assassin, 
 it was their duty to oppose, if it might be, by policy, if it 
 must be, by force, the mongrel measure of concession and 
 obstinacy which the Court had carried against the proposals 
 of Necker. That victory was reversed, and the success of 
 the Commons was complete. They had brought the three 
 orders into one ; they had compelled the king to retract 
 his declaration and to restore his disgraced minister ; they 
 had exposed the weakness of their oppressors, and they 
 had the nation at their back. 
 
 On June 27, in the united Assembly, Mirabeau 
 delivered an address of mingled triumph and conciliation, 
 which was his first act of statesmanship. He said that 
 the speech from the throne contained large and generous 
 views that proved the genuine liberality of the king. He 
 desired to receive them gratefully without the drawbacks 
 imposed by unthinking advisers, and to respect the just 
 rights of the noblesse. He took the good without the 
 evil, extricating Lewis from his entanglement, and tracing 
 the line by which he might have advanced to great results. 
 " The past," he said, " has been the history of wild beasts. 
 We are inaugurating the history of men ; for we have no 
 weapon but discussion, and no adversary but prejudice."
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 79 
 
 Their victory brought loss as well as gain to the 
 Commons, and there was reason to think that the counsel 
 of Sieyes, to let the other orders take their own separate 
 course, was founded on wisdom. Their opponents, joining 
 under compulsion, had the means as well as the will of 
 doing them injury. 
 
 For the clergy there was a brief season of popular 
 favour. The country priests, sprung from the peasantry, 
 and poorly off, shared many of their feelings. The 
 patronage of the State went to men of birth ; and one of 
 these, the Archbishop of Aix, had proclaimed his belief 
 that, if anybody was to be exempt from taxation, it ought 
 to be the impoverished layman, not the wealthy ecclesi- 
 astic. When it chanced that the Committee of Constitu- 
 tion was elected without any member of the clergy upon 
 it, the Commons raised a cry that they should be introduced 
 in their proportion. They, in a fraternal spirit, refused. 
 And the second Committee, the one that actually drew 
 up the scheme, was composed of three churchmen to five 
 laymen. The nobles were not reconciled, and refused to 
 unite with men of English views in a Tory party. To 
 them, the separation of orders was a fundamental maxim 
 of security, which they had inherited, which they were 
 bound to hand down. They looked on debate in 
 common as provisional, as an exception, to be rectified 
 as soon as might be. They kept up the practice of also 
 meeting separately. On July 3 there were one hundred 
 and thirty-eight present ; and on the 1 1 th there still were 
 eighty. They refused to vote in the divisions of the joint 
 Assembly, because their instructions forbade. The scruple 
 was sincere, and was shared by Lafayette ; but others 
 meant it as a protest that the Assembly was not lawfully 
 constituted. Therefore, July 7, Talleyrand moved to annul 
 the instructions. They could not be allowed to control 
 the Assembly ; they ought not to influence individuals. 
 The constituencies contribute to a decision ; they cannot 
 resist it Whatever the original wish of the electors, the 
 final act belonged to the legislature. The king himself, 
 on June 27, had declared the imperative mandates uncon-
 
 80 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 stitutional. But the deputies, in declaring themselves per- 
 manent, had cut themselves adrift from their constituents. 
 The instructions had become the sole security that the 
 Constitution would remain within the limits laid down by 
 the nation, the sole assurance against indefinite change. 
 They alone determined the line of advance, and gave 
 protection to monarchy, property, religion, against the 
 headlong rush of opinion, and the exigencies of popular 
 feeling. 
 
 Sieyes, who expected no good from the co-operation 
 of the orders which he condemned, and who thought a 
 nobleman or prelate who did not vote better than one who 
 voted wrong, urged that the question did not affect the 
 Assembly, but the constituencies, and might be left to 
 them. He carried his amendment by seven hundred to 
 twenty-eight. 
 
 Meantime the party that had prevailed on June 23 and 
 had succumbed on the 27th was at work to recover the 
 lost position. Lewis had retained the services of Necker r 
 without dismissing the colleagues who baffled him. He 
 told him that he would not accept his resignation now, 
 but would choose the time for it. Necker had not the 
 acuteness to understand that he would be dismissed as 
 soon as his enemies felt strong enough to do without him. 
 A king who deserted his friends and reversed his accepted 
 policy because there was no force he could depend on, 
 was a king with a short shrift before him. He became 
 the tool of men who did not love him, and who now 
 despised him. 
 
 The resources wanting at the critical moment were, 
 however, within reach, and the scheme proposed to the 
 Count d'Artois by the wily bishop a few nights before 
 was revived by less accomplished plotters. On July I it 
 became known that a camp of 25,000 men was to be 
 formed near Versailles under Marshal de Broglie, a veteran 
 who gathered his laurels in the Seven Years' War, and 
 soon the Terrace was crowded with officers from the 
 north and east, who boasted that they had sharpened 
 their sabres, and meant to make short work of the
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 81 
 
 ambitious lawyers, the profligate noblemen, and unfrocked 
 priests who were ruining the country. 
 
 In adopting these measures the king did not regard 
 himself as the originator of violence. There had been 
 disturbances in Paris, and at Versailles the archbishop of 
 Paris had been assaulted, and compelled to promise that 
 he would go over to the Assembly. The leader on the 
 other side, Champion de Cic, archbishop of Bordeaux, 
 came to him, and entreated him not to yield to faction, 
 not to keep a promise extorted by threats. He replied 
 that he had given his word and meant to keep it. 
 
 Forty years later Charles X. declared that his brother 
 had mounted the scaffold because, at this juncture, he 
 would not mount his horse. In truth Lewis believed that 
 the deputies, cut off from Paris by visible battalions, 
 would be overawed, that the army of waverers would be 
 accessible to influence, to promises, remonstrances, and 
 rewards, that it would be safer to coerce the Assembly by 
 intimidation than to dissolve it. He had refused to listen 
 to Talleyrand ; he still rejected the stronger part of his 
 scheme. By judicious management he hoped that the 
 Assembly might be brought to undo its own usurping 
 and unwarranted work, and that he would be able to 
 recover the position he had taken up on June 23, the last 
 day on which his policy had been that of a free agent. 
 
 Necker knew no more than everybody else of the 
 warlike array. On July 7 thirty regiments were con- 
 centrated ; more were within a few days' march, and the 
 marshal, surrounded by an eager and hurried staff, 
 surveyed his maps of suburban Paris at his headquarters 
 at Versailles. 
 
 The peril grew day by day, and it was time for the 
 Assembly to act. They were defenceless, but they relied 
 on the people of Paris and on the demoralisation of 
 the army. Their friends had the command of money, 
 and large sums were spent in preparing the citizens for 
 an armed conflict. For the capitalists were on their 
 side, looking to them to prevent the national bankruptcy 
 which the Court and the nobles were bringing on. And 
 
 G
 
 82 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the Palais Royal, the residence of the Duke of Orleans, 
 was the centre of an active organisation. Since the king 
 had proved himself incompetent, helpless, and insincere, 
 men had looked to the Duke as a popular prince of 
 the Blood, who was also wealthy and ambitious, and might 
 avail to save the principle of monarchy, which Lewis had 
 discredited. His friends clung to the idea, and continued 
 to conspire in his interest after the rest of the world had 
 been repelled by the defects of his character. For a 
 moment they thought of his son, who was gifted for that 
 dangerous part as perfectly as the father was unfit, but 
 his time was to be in a later generation. 
 
 The leading men in the Assembly knew their position 
 with accuracy, and did not exaggerate the danger they 
 were in. On July 10 their shrewd American adviser, 
 Morris, wrote : " I think the crisis is past without having 
 been perceived ; and now a free Constitution will be the 
 certain result" And yet there were 30,000 men, com- 
 manded by a marshal of France, ready for action ; and 
 several regiments of Swiss, famed for fidelity and valour, 
 and destined, in the same cause, to become still more 
 famous, were massed in Paris itself under Besenval, the 
 trusted soldier of the Court. 
 
 On July 8, breaking through the order of debate, 
 Mirabeau rose and the action began the action which 
 changed the face of the world, and the imperishable 
 effects of which will be felt by every one of us, to the 
 last day of his life. He moved an address to the king, 
 warning him that, if he did not withdraw his troops, 
 the streets of Paris would run blood ; and proposing 
 that the preservation of order should be committed to a 
 civic guard. On the following day the Assembly voted 
 the address, and on the loth the Count de Clermont 
 Tonnerre, at the head of a deputation, read it to the king. 
 On the morning of Saturday, I ith, his reply was communi- 
 cated to the Assembly. He had had three days to hasten 
 his military preparations. At Paris, the agitators and 
 organisers employed the time in arranging their counter 
 measures.
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 83 
 
 The king refused to send away troops which there had 
 been good reason to collect, but he was ready to move, 
 with the Assembly, to some town at a distance from the 
 turbid capital. The royal message was tipped with irony, 
 and the deputies, in spite of Mirabeau, resolved not to 
 discuss it. After this first thrust Lewis flung away the 
 scabbard. That day, at council, it was noticed that he 
 was nervous and uneasy, and disguised his restlessness by 
 feigning sleep. At the end, taking one of the ministers 
 aside, he gave him a letter for Necker, who was absent 
 The letter contained his dismissal, with an order for 
 banishment. 
 
 Necker, who for some days had known that it must 
 come, was at dinner. He said nothing to his company, 
 and went out, as usual, for a drive. Then he made for 
 the frontier, and never stopped till he reached Brussels. 
 Two horsemen who had followed, keeping out of sight, 
 had orders to arrest him if he changed his course. He 
 travelled up the Rhine to his own country, on the way to 
 his home by the lake of Geneva. At the first Swiss 
 hotel he found the Duchess de Polignac. He had left 
 her at Versailles, the Queen's best friend and the heart of 
 the intrigue against him ; and she was now ruined and an 
 exile, and the forerunner of the emigration. From her, 
 and from the letters that quickly followed, forwarded by 
 the Assembly, he learned the events that had happened 
 since his fall, learned that he was, for one delirious moment, 
 master of the king, of his enemies, and of the country. 
 
 The astounding news that Necker heard at " The Three 
 Kings " at Bale was this. His friends had been disgraced 
 with him, and the chief of the new ministry was Breteuil, 
 who had been the colleague of Calonne and Vergennes, 
 and had managed the affair of the Diamond Necklace. 
 He had directed the policy of those who opposed the 
 National Assembly, holding himself in the twilight, until 
 strong measures and a strong man were called for. He 
 now came forward, and proposed that the nobles should 
 depart in a body, protesting against the methods by 
 which the States-General had been sunk in the National
 
 84 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Assembly. In one day he brought round twenty-six of 
 the minority to his views. A few remained, who would 
 make a light day's work for a man of conviction and 
 resource. But resolute as Breteuil was, the Parisian 
 democracy acted with still greater quickness and decision, 
 and with a not less certain aim. On the 1 2th it became 
 known that Necker had been sent out of the country, 
 and that the armaments were in the hands of men who 
 meant to employ them against the people. Paris was in 
 disorder, but the middle class provided a civic guard for 
 its protection. There were encounters with the troops, 
 and some blood was shed. 
 
 New men began to appear who represented the rising 
 classes : Camille Desmoulins, a rhetorical journalist, with 
 literary but not political talent, harangued the people in 
 the garden of the Palais Royal ; and one of the strong 
 men of history, Danton, showed that he knew how to 
 manage and to direct the masses. 
 
 The 1 3th was a day wasted by Government, spent 
 by Paris in busy preparation. Men talked wildly of 
 destroying the Bastille, as a sign that would be understood. 
 Early on July 14 a body of men made their way to the 
 Invalides, and seized 28,000 stand of arms and some 
 cannon. At the other extremity of Paris the ancient 
 fortress of the Bastille towered over the workmen's quarter 
 and commanded the city. Whenever the guns thundered 
 from its lofty battlements, resistance would be over, and 
 the conquered arms would be unavailing. 
 
 The Bastille not only overshadowed the capital, but 
 it darkened the hearts of men, for it had been notorious 
 for centuries as the instrument and the emblem of tyranny. 
 The captives behind its bars were few and uninteresting ; 
 but the wide world knew the horror of its history, the 
 blighted lives, the ruined families, the three thousand 
 dishonoured graves within the precincts, and the common 
 voice called for its destruction as the sign of deliverance. 
 At the elections both nobles and commons demanded 
 that it should be levelled with the ground. 
 
 As early as the 4th of July Besenval received notice
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 85 
 
 that it would be attacked. He sent a detachment of 
 Swiss, that raised the garrison to one hundred and thirty- 
 eight, and he did no more. During the morning hours, 
 while the invaders of the Invalides were distributing the 
 plundered arms and ammunition, emissaries penetrated 
 into the Bastille, under various pretexts, to observe the 
 defences. One fair-spoken visitor was taken to the top 
 of the dreaded towers, where he saw that the guns with 
 which the embrasures had bristled, which were beyond 
 the range of marksmen, and had Paris at their mercy, 
 were dismantled and could not be fired. 
 
 About the middle of the day, when this was known, the 
 attack began. It was directed by the Gardes Frangaises, 
 who had been the first to mutiny, and had been disbanded, 
 and were now the backbone of the people's army. The 
 siege consisted in efforts to lower the drawbridge. After 
 several hours the massive walls were unshaken, and the 
 place was as safe as before the first discharge. But 
 the defenders knew that they were lost. Besenval was 
 not the man to rescue them by fighting his way through 
 several miles of streets. They were not provisioned, and 
 the men urged the governor to make terms before he 
 was compelled. They had brought down above a hundred 
 of their assailants, without losing a man. But it was plain 
 that the loss neither of a hundred nor of a thousand 
 would affect the stern determination of the crowd, whilst it 
 might increase their fury. Delauney, in his despair, seized 
 a match, and wanted to fire the magazine. His men 
 remonstrated and spoke of the dreadful devastation that 
 must follow the explosion. The man who stayed the 
 hand of the despairing commander, and whose name was 
 Bcard, deserved a better fate than he met that day, for 
 he was one of the four or five that were butchered. The 
 men beat a parley, hoisted the white flag, and obtained, 
 on the honour of a French officer, a verbal promise of 
 safety. 
 
 Then the victors came pouring over the bridge, 
 triumphant over a handful of Swiss and invalids 
 triumphant too over thirteen centuries of monarchy and
 
 86 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the longest line of kings. Those who had served in 
 the regular army took charge of as many prisoners as 
 they could rescue, carried them to their quarters, and 
 gave them their own beds to sleep in. The officers who 
 had conducted the unreal attack, and received the piteous 
 surrender, brought the governor to the Hdtel de Ville, 
 fighting their way through a murderous crowd. For it 
 was long believed that Delauney had admitted the people 
 into the first court, and then had perfidiously shot them 
 down. In his struggles he hurt a bystander, who chanced 
 to be a cook. The man, prompted, it seems, less by 
 animosity than by the pride of professional skill, drew 
 a knife and cut off his head. Flesselles, the chief of the 
 old municipality, appointed by the Crown, was shot soon 
 after, under suspicion of having encouraged Delauney 
 to resist. 
 
 Dr. Rigby, an Englishman who was at the Palais 
 Royal, has described what he saw. First came an 
 enormous multitude bearing aloft the keys of the con- 
 quered citadel, with the inscription, " The Bastille is 
 taken." The joy was indescribable, and strangers shook 
 his hand, saying, " We too are free men, and there will 
 never more be war between our countries." Then came 
 another procession, also shouting and rejoicing ; but the 
 bystanders looked on with horror, for the trophies carried 
 by were the heads of murdered men. For the nation 
 had become sovereign, and the soldiers who fired upon 
 it were reckoned rebels and traitors. The foreign envoys 
 were all impressed with the idea that the vengeance 
 wrought was out of all proportion with the immensity 
 of the thing achieved. At nightfall the marshal gave 
 orders to evacuate Paris. Besenval was already in full 
 retreat, and the capital was no longer in the possession 
 of the king of France. 
 
 Meanwhile the National Assembly, aware of the strength 
 of popular feeling around them, were calm in the midst of 
 danger. Theirs was a diminished part, while, almost within 
 sight and hearing, history was being unmade and made by 
 a power superior to their own. On the morning of the
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 87 
 
 1 4th they elected the Committee of Eight who were to 
 draw up the Constitution. Mounier and the friends of the 
 English model still prevailed. By evening their chance 
 had vanished, for the English model includes a king. 
 
 Late in the day Noailles brought authentic news of 
 what he had witnessed ; and the Assembly learned, in 
 agitated silence, that the head of the governor of the impreg- 
 nable Bastille had been displayed on a pike about the 
 streets of Paris. Lafayette took the chair, while the 
 President hurried with Noailles to the palace. They made 
 no impression there. Lewis informed them that he had 
 recalled his troops, and then he went to bed, tranquil, and 
 persistently ignoring what it was that had been done, and 
 what it was that had passed away. 
 
 But in the morning, when the Assembly met in disorder, 
 and were about to send one more deputation, it was found 
 that a change had taken place in the brief hours of that 
 memorable night. At two o'clock the king was roused 
 from sleep by one of the great officers of the household. 
 The intruder, La Rochefoucauld, Duke de Liancourt, was 
 not a man of talent, but he was universally known as the 
 most benevolent and the most beneficent of the titled 
 nobles of the realm. He made his master understand the 
 truth and its significance, and how, in the capital that 
 day, in every province on the morrow, the authority of 
 government was at an end. And when Lewis, gradually 
 awaking, exclaimed, " But this is a great revolt ! " 
 Liancourt replied, " No, sir, it is a great Revolution ! " 
 With those historic words the faithful courtier detached 
 the monarch from his ministers, and obtained control over 
 him in the deciding days that were to follow. Guided by 
 the duke, and attended by his brothers, but without the 
 ceremonious glories of regality, Lewis XVI. went down to 
 the Assembly and made his submission. In the pathetic 
 solemnity of the scene, the deputies forgot for a moment 
 their righteous anger and their more righteous scorn, and 
 the king returned to the palace on foot, in a sudden proces- 
 sion of triumph, amnestied and escorted by the entire body. 
 
 The struggle was over, and the spell was broken ; and
 
 88 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the Assembly had to govern France. To establish order 
 a vast deputation repaired to the Hdtel de Ville, where 
 Lally Tollendal delivered an oration thrilling with brother- 
 hood and gladness, and appeared, crowned with flowers, 
 before the people. 
 
 To cement the compact between Paris and Versailles, 
 Bailly, the first president, was placed at the head of 
 the new elective municipality, and the vice - president, 
 Lafayette, became commander of the National Guard. 
 This was the first step towards that Commune which was 
 to exercise so vast an influence over the fortunes of 
 France. It came into existence of necessity, when the 
 action of Government was paralysed, and the space which 
 it occupied was untenanted. 
 
 The National Guard was an invention of great import, 
 for it was the army of society distinct from the army of 
 the state, opinion in arms apart from authority. It was 
 the middle class organised as a force, against the force 
 above and the force below ; and it protected liberty against 
 the Crown, and property against the poor. It has been 
 ever since the defence of order and the ruin of govern- 
 ments ; for, as it was the nation itself, nobody was bold 
 enough to fight it. Before the altar of Notre Dame 
 Lafayette took the oath of fidelity to the people, and not 
 to the king. He never displayed real capacity for peace 
 or war ; but in the changes of a long life he was true to 
 the early convictions imbibed in Washington's camp. 
 
 On their return from Paris the great deputation 
 reported that the people demanded the recall of Necker. 
 At last the king dismissed Breteuil, and charged the 
 Assembly to take charge of a letter to the banished 
 statesman. His banishment had lasted five days ; it was 
 now the turn of his enemies. On the same night, July 1 6, 
 the baffled intriguers went into exile. Lewis himself sent 
 his brother away, for the safety of himself and of the 
 dynasty. The others followed. The queen was compelled 
 to dismiss Madame de Polignac, whom she had too con- 
 fidently trusted, and she was left alone amongst her 
 enemies. This was the first emigration. The remaining
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 89 
 
 nobles announced that they abandoned resistance, and 
 the Assembly was at last united. The fight was lost and 
 won, and the victor claimed the spoils. 
 
 But the Assembly was not the victor, and had contri- 
 buted little to the portentous change between the 
 dismissal of Necker and the despatch of the fleet 
 messenger with his recall. Whilst the deputies served 
 the national cause by talking, there were plainer men at 
 Paris who had died for it. The force that risked life and 
 conquered was not at Versailles. It was Paris that held 
 the fallen power, the power of governing itself, the 
 Assembly, and France. The predominance of the 
 capital was the new feature that enabled the monarchy to 
 pass into a Republic. 
 
 The king had become a servant of two masters. 
 Having recanted before his master at Versailles, it became 
 necessary that he should submit himself to the new and 
 mysterious authority at the Hdtel de Ville. He had 
 yielded to representative democracy. He had to pay 
 the same recognition to direct democracy. It was not safe 
 to leave the Orleans stronghold entirely in their hands. 
 Between the ministry that was gone and the ministry to 
 come, Lewis acted by the advice of Liancourt. 
 
 Early on July 17 he made his will, heard mass, 
 received communion, and set out to visit his good city. 
 The queen remained behind, with all her carriages ready, 
 in order that, at the first signal, she might fly for her life. 
 At the barrier the king's eye fell, for the first time, on 
 innumerable armed men, who lined the streets for miles, 
 and wore strange colours, and did not own him as their 
 chief. Neither the National Guard, nor the dense crowd 
 behind them, uttered a sound of welcome. Not a voice 
 was raised, except for the nation and its deputies. 
 
 The peace made between the king and the Assembly 
 did not count here. All men had to know that there was 
 a distinct authority, to which a further homage was due, 
 even from the sovereign. At the H6tel de Ville the 
 homage was paid. There the king confirmed the new 
 mayor, and approved what had been done, and he
 
 po THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 showed himself to the people with the new cockade, 
 devised by Lafayette, to proclaim that the royal power 
 which had ruled France since the conversion of Clovis 
 ruled France no more. He made his way home amid 
 acclamations, regulated by the commander of the National 
 Guard, like the gloomy and menacing silence in which he 
 had been received. 
 
 A new reign commenced. The head of the great 
 house of Bourbon, the heir of so much power and glory, 
 on whom rested the tradition of Lewis XIV., was unfit to 
 exert, under jealous control, the narrow measure of 
 authority that remained. For the moment there was 
 none. Anarchy in the capital gave the signal for anarchy 
 in the provinces, and anarchy at that moment had a 
 terrible meaning. 
 
 The deputies who came to Paris, to share the enthusiasm 
 of the moment, failed to notice the fact that the victorious 
 army which gave liberty to France and power to the 
 Assembly was largely composed of assassins. Their 
 crimes disappeared in the blaze of their achievements. 
 Their support was still needed. It seemed too soon to 
 insult the patriot and the hero by telling him that he 
 was also a ruffian. The mixed multitude was thereby 
 encouraged to believe that the slaughter of the obnoxious 
 was a necessity of critical times. The Russian envoy 
 wrote on the igth that the French people displayed the 
 same ferocity as two centuries before. 
 
 On the 22nd, Foulon, one of the colleagues of Breteuil, 
 and his son-in-law Berthier, also a high official, were 
 massacred by premeditation in the streets. Neither 
 Bailly, nor Lafayette with all his cohorts, could protect 
 the life of a doomed man ; but a dragoon who had 
 paraded with the heart of Berthier was challenged, when 
 he came home to barracks, and cut down by a comrade. 
 
 Lally Tollendal brought the matter before the Assembly. 
 His father inherited the feelings of an exiled Jacobite 
 against Hanoverian England. He was at Falkirk with 
 Charles Edward, and charged with the Irish Brigade that 
 broke the English column at Fontenoy. During the
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 91 
 
 Seven Years' War he commanded in India, and held 
 Pondicherry for ten months against Coote. Brought home 
 a prisoner, he was released on parole, that he might stand 
 his trial. He was condemned to death ; and his son, 
 who did not know who he was, was brought to the place 
 of execution, that they might meet once on earth. But 
 Lally stabbed himself, and lest justice should be defrauded, 
 he was brought out to die, with a gag in his mouth to 
 silence protest, some hours before the time. 
 
 The death of Lally is part of the long indictment 
 against the French judiciary, and his son strove for 
 years to have the sentence reversed. He came over to 
 England, and understood our system better than any 
 of his countrymen. Therefore, when Mounier, who was 
 no orator, brought forward his Constitution, it was Lally 
 who expounded it By his emotional and emphatic elo- 
 quence he earned a brief celebrity ; and in the Waterloo 
 year he was a Minister of State, in partibus, at Ghent. 
 He became a peer of France, and when he died, in 1830, 
 the name disappeared. Not many years ago a miserable 
 man, whom nobody knew and who asked help from 
 nobody, died of want in a London cellar. He was the 
 son of Lally Tollendal. 
 
 It is said that when, on July 22, he denounced the 
 atrocities in Paris, he overdid the occasion, speaking of 
 himself, of his father, of his feelings. Barnave, who was 
 a man of honour, and already conspicuous, was irritated 
 to such a pitch that he exclaimed : " Was this blood, that 
 they have shed, so pure ? " 
 
 Long before Barnave expiated his sin upon the 
 scaffold he felt and acknowledged its enormity. But it 
 is by him and men like him, and not by the scourings 
 of the galleys, that we can get to understand the spirit 
 of the time. Two men, more eminent than Barnave, 
 show it still more clearly. The great chemist Lavoisier 
 wrote to Priestley that if there had been some excesses, 
 they were committed for the love of liberty, philosophy, 
 and toleration, and that there was no danger of such 
 things being done in France for an inferior motive. And
 
 92 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 this is the view of Jefferson on the massacres of September : 
 " Many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and 
 with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as 
 anybody. But it was necessary to use the arm of the 
 people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, 
 but blind to a certain degree was ever such a prize 
 won with so little innocent blood ? " There is a work in 
 twelve stout volumes, written to prove that it was all 
 the outcome of the Classics, and due to Harmodius, and 
 Brutus, and Timoleon. 
 
 But you will find that murder, approved and acknow- 
 ledged, is not an epidemic peculiar to any time, or any 
 country, or any opinion. We need not include hot-blooded 
 nations of the South in order to define it as one 
 characteristic of modern Monarchy. You may trace it 
 in the Kings of France, Francis I., Charles IX., Henry 
 III., Lewis XIII., Lewis XIV., in the Emperors Ferdinand 
 I. and II., in Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, in James 
 and William. Still more if you consider a class of men, 
 not much worse, according to general estimate, than their 
 neighbours, that is, the historians. They have praise and 
 hero-worship for nearly every one of these anointed culprits. 
 The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weaker 
 man with the sponge. First, the criminal who slays; then 
 the sophist who defends the slayer. 
 
 The royalists pursued the same tradition through the 
 revolutionary times. Ce"rutti advised that Mirabeau and 
 Target should be removed by poison ; Chateaubriand 
 wished to poniard Condorcet, and Malesherbes admired 
 him for it ; the name of Georges Cadoudal was held in 
 honour, because his intended victim was Napoleon ; La 
 Rochejaquelein entertained the same scheme, and made 
 no secret of it to the general, Se"gur. Adair found them 
 indignant at Vienna because Fox had refused to have the 
 Emperor murdered, and warned him of the plot. 
 
 Those who judge morality by the intention have been 
 less shocked at the crimes of power, where the temptation 
 is so strong and the danger so slight, than at those 
 committed by men resisting oppression. Assuredly, the
 
 THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE 93 
 
 best things that are loved and sought by man are religion 
 and liberty they, I mean, and not pleasure or prosperity, 
 not knowledge or power. Yet the paths of both are 
 stained with infinite blood ; both have been often a plea 
 for assassination, and the worst of men have been among 
 those who claimed to promote each sacred cause. 
 
 Do not open your minds to the filtering of the fallacious 
 doctrine that it is less infamous to murder men for their 
 politics than for their religion or their money, or that the 
 courage to execute the deed is worse than the cowardice 
 to excuse it. Let us not flinch from condemning without 
 respite or remission, not only Marat and Carrier, but also 
 Barnave. Because there may be hanging matter in the lives 
 of illustrious men, of William the Silent and Farnese, of 
 Cromwell and Napoleon, we are not to be turned from 
 justice towards the actions, and still more the thoughts, 
 of those whom we are about to study. 
 
 Having said this, I shall endeavour, in that which is 
 before us, to spare you the spectacles that degrade, and 
 the plaintive severity that agitates and wearies. The 
 judgment I call for is in the conscience, not upon the 
 lips, for ourselves, and not for display. " Man," says Taine, 
 " is a wild beast, carnivorous by nature, and delighting in 
 blood." That cruel speech is as much confirmed by the 
 events that are crowding upon us as it has ever been in 
 royal or Christian history. 
 
 The Revolution will never be intelligibly known to 
 us until we discover its conformity to the common law, 
 and recognise that it is not utterly singular and exceptional, 
 that other scenes have been as horrible as these, and 
 many men as bad.
 
 VII 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 
 
 WE come to-day to the most decisive date in the 
 Revolution, the fall of the social system of historic 
 France, and the substitution of the Rights of Man. 
 
 When the Assembly was fully constituted, it had to 
 regulate its procedure. Sir Samuel Romilly, a friend of 
 Dumont, and occasionally of Mirabeau, sent over an account 
 of the practice of the British Parliament, with the cumbrous 
 forms, the obstacles to prompt action, the contrivances 
 to favour a minority, and to make opposition nearly 
 equal to government. The French required more 
 expeditious methods. They had a single Assembly with 
 a known and well-defined commission, and the gravest 
 danger of the hour was obstruction and delay. Every 
 member obtained the right of initiative, and could submit 
 a motion in writing. The Assembly might, after debate, 
 refuse to consider it ; but if not arrested on the threshold, 
 it might be discussed and voted and passed in twenty-four 
 hours. The security for deliberation was in the Bureaux. 
 The Assembly was divided into thirty groups or com- 
 mittees, of nearly forty members each, who met separately, 
 the Assembly in the morning, the Bureaux in the evening. 
 This plan ensured thorough and sincere discussion, for 
 men spoke their genuine thoughts, where there was no 
 formality, no reporter, no stranger in the gallery. The 
 Bureaux were disliked and suspected by the excluded 
 public. The electorate, experiencing for the first time 
 the sensation of having deputies at work to do their will, 
 desired to watch them, and insisted on the master's right 
 
 94
 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 95 
 
 to look after his man. Representation was new ; and to 
 every reader of Rousseau, of Turgot, or of Mably, it was 
 an object of profound distrust The desire to uphold the 
 supremacy of the deputing power over the deputed, of the 
 constituent over his member, was distinctly part of the 
 great literary inheritance common to them all. As the 
 mandate was originally imperative, the giver of the 
 mandate claimed the right of seeing to its execution. 
 The exercise of powers that were defined and limited, 
 that were temporary and revocable, called for scrutiny and 
 direct control. 
 
 The Bureaux did not last, and their disappearance was 
 a disaster. Party, as the term is used in the constitutional 
 vocabulary, was not yet developed ; and no organisation 
 possessed the alternate power of presenting ministers to 
 the Crown. The main lines that divided opinion came to 
 light in the debates of September, and the Assembly fell 
 into factions that were managed by their clubs. The 
 President held office for a fortnight, and each new election 
 indicated the movement of opinion, the position of parties, 
 the rise of reputations. The united Assembly did honour 
 to the acceding orders. The first presidents were prelates 
 and men of rank. Out of six elections only one fell to a 
 commoner, until the end of September, when the leader 
 of the Liberal Conservatives, Mounier, was chosen, at 
 what proved a moment of danger. In the same way, the 
 thirty chairmen of the Bureaux were, with scarcely an 
 exception, always taken from the clergy or the nobles. 
 
 As Mounier, with his friends, had dominated in the 
 constitutional committee of thirty, and was now paramount 
 in the new committee of eight, there was some prospect 
 of a coalition, by which, in return for their aid in carrying 
 the English model, the nobles would obtain easy terms in 
 the liquidation of privilege. That is the parliamentary 
 situation. That is the starting-point of the transactions 
 that we have now to follow. 
 
 During the days spent in making terms between the 
 king, the Assembly, and the capital, the provinces were 
 depending on Paris for news, for opinions, and direction.
 
 96 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 They were informed that the Parisians had made them- 
 selves masters of the royal fortress, and had expelled the 
 royal authority ; that the king and the Assembly had 
 accepted and approved the action ; that there was no 
 executive ministry, either old or new ; and that the 
 capital was providing for its own security and administra- 
 tion. The towns soon had imitations of the disorders 
 that had been so successful, and quickly repressed them ; 
 for the towns were the seat of the middle class, the 
 natural protectors of acquired property, and defenders of 
 order and safety. In country districts the process of 
 disintegration was immediate, the spontaneous recovery 
 was slow. For the country was divided between the 
 nobles who were rich, and their dependents who were 
 poor. And the poverty of one class was ultimately due 
 to innumerable devices for increasing the wealth of the 
 other. And now there was nobody in authority over 
 them, nobody to keep peace between them. 
 
 The first effect of the taking of the Bastille, the 
 effacement of royalty, the suspension of the ministerial 
 office, was the rising of the cottage against the castle, of 
 the injured peasant against the privileged landlord, who, 
 apart from any fault of his own, by immemorial process 
 of history and by the actual letter of the law, was his 
 perpetual and inevitable enemy. The events of the 
 week between July 1 1 and 1 7 proclaimed that the 
 authorised way to obtain what you wanted was to employ 
 the necessary violence. If it was thorough and quick 
 enough, there would be no present resistance, and no 
 subsequent complaint. And if there was some excess in 
 the way of cruelty and retribution, it was sure of amnesty 
 on the ground of intolerable provocation and of suffering 
 endured too long. The king had accepted his own 
 humiliation as if it had been as good as due to him. He 
 could not do more for others than for himself. His brief 
 alliance with the aristocracy was dissolved. He was 
 powerless for their defence, as they were for their own. 
 By their formal act of submission to the Assembly on 
 July 1 6, they acknowledged that their cause was lost
 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 97 
 
 with the Bastille. They neglected to make terms with 
 the enemy at their homes. 
 
 The appalling thing in the French Revolution is not 
 the tumult but the design. Through all the fire and 
 smoke we perceive the evidence of calculating organisa- 
 tion. The managers remain studiously concealed and 
 masked ; but there is no doubt about their presence from 
 the first. They had been active in the riots of Paris, and 
 they were again active in the provincial rising. The 
 remnant of the upper classes formed a powerful minority 
 at Versailles ; and if they acted as powerful minorities do, 
 if they entered into compacts and combinations, they 
 could compound for the loss of fiscal immunity by the 
 salvation of social privilege. The people would continue 
 to have masters masters, that is, not of their own making. 
 They would be subject to powers instituted formerly, 
 whilst the Government itself obtained its credentials for 
 the day, and there would still be an intermediate body 
 between the nation and the sovereign. Wealth artificially 
 constituted, by means of laws favouring its accumulation 
 in a class, and discouraging its dispersion among all, 
 would continue to predominate. 
 
 France might be transformed after the likeness of 
 England ; but the very essence of the English system 
 was liberty founded on inequality. The essence of the 
 French ideal was democracy, that is, as in America, 
 liberty founded on equality. Therefore it was the 
 interest of the democratic or revolutionary party that the 
 next step should be taken after the manner of the last, 
 that compulsion, which had answered so well with the 
 king, should be tried on the nobles, that the methods 
 applied at Paris should be extended to the Provinces, for 
 there the nobles predominated. A well-directed blow 
 struck at that favoured and excepted moment, when the 
 country was ungoverned, might alter for ever, and from its 
 foundation, the entire structure of society. Liberty had 
 been secured ; equality was within reach. The political 
 revolution ensured the prompt success of the social 
 revolution. Such an opportunity of suppressing com- 
 
 H
 
 98 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 promise, and sweeping the historical ruin away, had 
 never been known in Europe. 
 
 While the local powers were painfully constituting 
 themselves, there was a priceless interval for action. The 
 king had given way to the middle class ; the nobles would 
 succumb to the lower, and the rural democracy would be 
 emancipated like the urban. This is the second phase of 
 that reign of terror which, as Malouet says, began with the 
 Bastille. Experience had shown the efficacy of attacking 
 castles instead of persons, and the strongholds of feudalism 
 were assailed when the stronghold of absolutism had 
 fallen. 
 
 It is said that one deputy, Duport, a magistrate of the 
 parliament of Paris, had 400,000 francs to spend in raising 
 the country against the nobles at the precise moment of 
 their weakness. The money was scarcely needed, for the 
 rioters were made to believe that they were acting in 
 obedience to the law. One of their victims wrote, August 
 3, to Clermont Tonnerre that they were really sorry to 
 behave in that way against good masters, but they were 
 compelled by imperative commands from the king. He 
 adds that seven or eight castles in his neighbourhood were 
 attacked by their vassals, all believing that the king desired 
 it The charters and muniments were the main object of 
 pillage and destruction, for it was believed that claims 
 which could not be authenticated could not be enforced. 
 Often the castle itself was burnt with the parchments it 
 contained, and some of the owners perished. 
 
 The disorders raged in many parts of France. A 
 district east and south-east of the centre suffered most. 
 Those provinces had continued long to be parts of the 
 Empire ; and we shall see hereafter what that implies. 
 The peasants of Eastern France rose up in arms to over- 
 throw the ancient institutions of society, which the peasants 
 of the West gave their lives to restore. 
 
 Rumours of all this desolation soon penetrated to the 
 Assembly, and on August 3 it was officially reported that 
 property was at the mercy of gangs of brigands, that no 
 castle, no convent, no farm-house was safe. A committee
 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 99 
 
 moved to declare that no pretext could justify the refusal 
 to pay the same feudal dues as before. Duport proposed 
 that the motion be sent back to the Bureaux. The 
 Assembly came to no conclusion. In truth, the thing 
 proposed was impossible. The Commons, who now pre- 
 vailed, could not, after sitting three months, re-impose, 
 even provisionally, burdens which were odious, which their 
 Instructions condemned, and which they all knew to be 
 incapable of defence. There had been time to provide : 
 the crisis now found them unprepared. The Court advised 
 the nobles that nothing could save them but a speedy 
 surrender. They also were informed, by Barere, that some 
 of his friends intended to move the abolition of fiscal and 
 feudal privilege. They replied that they would do it 
 themselves. Virieu, who afterwards disappeared in a 
 sortie, during the siege of Lyons, said to a friend : " There 
 are only two means of calming an excited populace, kind- 
 ness and force. We have no force ; we hope to succeed 
 by kindness." They knew that precious time had been 
 lost, and they resolved that the surrender should be so 
 ample as to be meritorious. It was to be not the redress 
 of practical grievances, but the complete establishment of 
 the new principle, equality. 
 
 At a conference held on the evening of August 3 it 
 was agreed that the self-sacrifice of the ancient aris- 
 tocracy of France, and the institution in its place of a 
 society absolutely democratic, should be made by the 
 Duke d'Aiguillon, the owner of vast domains, who was 
 about to forfeit several thousands a year. But on August 
 4 the first to speak was Noailles ; then d'Aiguillon, 
 followed by a deputy from Brittany. You cannot repress 
 violence, said the Breton, unless you remove the injustice 
 which is the cause of it If you mean to proclaim the 
 Rights of Man, begin with those which are most flagrantly 
 violated. They proposed that rights abandoned to the 
 State should be ceded unconditionally, and that rights 
 abandoned to the people should be given up in return for 
 compensation. They imagined that the distinction was 
 founded on principle ; but nobody ever ascertained the
 
 ioo THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 dividing line between that which was property and that 
 which was abuse. The want of definiteness enabled the 
 landlords afterwards to attempt the recovery of much 
 debatable ground, and involved, after long contention, 
 the ultimate loss of all. 
 
 The programme was excessively complicated, and 
 required years to be carried out. The nobles won the 
 day with their demand to be compensated ; but Duport 
 already spoke the menacing words : " Injustice has no 
 right to subsist, and the price of injustice has no right to 
 subsist." The immensity of the revolution, which these 
 changes implied, was at once apparent. For it signified 
 that liberty, which had been known only in the form of 
 privilege, was henceforward identified with equality. The 
 nobles lost their jurisdiction ; the corporation of judges 
 lost their right of holding office by purchase. All classes 
 alike were admitted to all employments. When privilege 
 fell, provinces lost it as well as orders. One after the 
 other, Dauphine", Provence, Brittany, Languedoc, declared 
 that they renounced their historic rights, and shared none 
 but those which were common to all Frenchmen. Servitude 
 was abolished ; and on the same principle, that all might 
 stand on the same level before the law, justice was declared 
 gratuitous. 
 
 Lubersac, bishop of Chartres, the friend and patron of 
 Sieyes, moved the abolition of the game laws, which meant 
 the right of preserving on another man's land. It was 
 a right which necessarily followed the movement of that 
 night ; but it led men to say that the clergy gave away 
 generously what belonged to somebody else. It was then 
 proposed that the tithe should be commuted ; and the 
 clergy showed themselves as zealous as the laity to carry 
 out to their own detriment the doctrine that imposed so 
 many sacrifices. 
 
 The France of history vanished on August 4, and the 
 France of the new democracy took its place. The transfer 
 of property from the upper class to the lower was con- 
 siderable. The peasants' income was increased by about 
 60 per cent. Nobody objected to the tremendous loss,
 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 101 
 
 or argued to diminish it. Each class, recognising what 
 was inevitable, and reconciled to it, desired that it should 
 be seen how willingly and how sincerely it yielded. None 
 wished to give time for others to remind them of incon- 
 sistency, or reserve, or omission, in the clean sweep they 
 had undertaken to make. In their competition there was 
 hurry and disorder. One characteristic of the time was 
 to be unintelligent in matters relating to the Church, and 
 they did not know how far the clergy was affected by the 
 levelling principle, or that in touching tithe they were 
 setting an avalanche in motion. At one moment, Lally, 
 much alarmed, had passed a note to the President begging 
 him to adjourn, as the deputies were losing their heads. 
 The danger arose, as was afterwards seen, when the Duke 
 du Chatelet proposed the redemption of tithe. 
 
 The nobles awoke next day with some misgiving that 
 they had gone too far, and with some jealousy of the 
 clergy, who had lost less, and who had contributed to 
 their losses. On August 7 Necker appeared before the 
 Assembly and exposed the want of money, and the need 
 of a loan, for the redistribution of property on August 4 
 did nothing to the immediate profit of the Exchequer. 
 But the clergy, vying with their rivals in generosity, had 
 admitted the right of the nation to apply Church property 
 to State uses. 
 
 On the following day the Marquis de Lacoste proposed 
 that the new debt should be paid out of the funds of the 
 clergy, and that tithe should be simply abolished. He 
 expressed a wish that no ecclesiastic should be a loser, 
 and that the parish clergy should receive an accession of 
 income. The clergy offered no resistance, and made it 
 impossible for others to resist. They offered to raise a 
 loan in behalf of the State ; but it was considered that 
 this would give them a position of undue influence, and it 
 would not have satisfied the nobles, who saw the way to 
 recover from the clergy the loss they had sustained. In 
 this debate the Abbe" Sieyes delivered his most famous 
 speech. He had no fellow-feeling with his brethren, but 
 he intended that the tithe should enrich the State. Instead
 
 102 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 of that it was about to be given back to the land, and the 
 landowners would receive a sum of nearly three millions a 
 year, divided in such a way that the richest would receive 
 in proportion to his wealth. It would indemnify the laity. 
 Not they, but the clergy, were now to bear the charge of 
 August 4. There was one deputy who would be richer 
 by 30,000 francs a year upon the whole transaction. 
 The landlords who had bought their estates subject to the 
 tithe had no claim to receive it. As all this argument 
 was heard with impatience, Sieyes uttered words that have 
 added no little to his moral stature : " They fancy that 
 they can be free and yet not be just ! " He had been, for 
 three months, the foremost personage in the nation. He 
 was destined in after years, and under conditions strangely 
 altered, to be once more the dictator of France. More 
 than once, without public favour, but by mere power of 
 political thinking, he governed the fortunes of the State. 
 He never again possessed the heart of the people. 
 
 The Assembly deemed it a good bargain to restore 
 the tithe to the land ; and the clergy knew so well that 
 they had no friends that, on August 1 1, they solemnly 
 renounced their claim. In this way the Assembly began 
 the disendowment of the Church, which was the primitive 
 cause of the Reign of Terror and the Civil War. 
 
 All these things are an episode. The business of the 
 Assembly, from the end of July, was the Constitution. 
 The first step towards it was to define the rights for 
 which it exists. Such a declaration, suggested by 
 America, had been demanded by the electors in several 
 of the instructions, and had been faithfully reproduced 
 by Mounier, July 9. It appeared, on the following day, 
 that Lafayette had already got the required document 
 in his pocket. Another text was produced, ten days 
 later, by Sieyes, and another by Mounier, which was 
 a revision of Lafayette's. Several more came out soon 
 after. 
 
 On July 27 the archbishop of Bordeaux, in laying down 
 the outline of the new institutions, observed that it was 
 necessary to found them on principles defined and fixed.
 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 103 
 
 On the same day Clermont Tonnerre brought forward 
 his analysis of the available ideas contained in the 
 instructions. He went at once to the heart of the matter. 
 Some instructions, he said, contemplated no more than 
 the reform of existing institutions, with the maintenance 
 of controlling tradition and the historic chain. Others 
 conceived an entirely new system of laws and government. 
 The distinction between the two was this, that some 
 required a code of principles which must be the guide 
 in preparing the Constitution ; the others wished for no 
 such assistance, but thought it possible to bind past and 
 future together. The main conflict was between the 
 authority of history and the Rights of Man. The 
 Declaration was the signal of those who meant to rescue 
 France from the ancestors who had given it tyranny and 
 slavery as an inheritance. Its opponents were men who 
 would be satisfied with good government, in the spirit 
 of Turgot and the enlightened reformers of his time, who 
 could be happy if they were prosperous, and would never 
 risk prosperity and peace in the pursuit of freedom. 
 
 Those who imagined that France possessed a submerged 
 Constitution that might be extracted from her annals had 
 a difficult task. Lanjuinais desired to sail by a beacon 
 and to direct the politics of 1789 by a charter of 864. 
 There was a special reason, less grotesque than the 
 archaeology of Lanjuinais, which made men averse to the 
 Declaration. Liberty, it was said, consists in the reign 
 of the national will, and the national will is known by 
 national custom. Law ought to spring from custom, 
 and to be governed by it, not by independent, individual 
 theory that defies custom. You have to declare the law, 
 not to make it, and you can only declare what experience 
 gives you. The best government devised by reason is 
 less free than a worse government bequeathed by time. 
 Very dimly, ideas which rose to power in other days 
 and evolved the great force of nationality, were at work 
 against a system which was to be new and universal, 
 renouncing the influence both of time and place. The 
 battle was fought against the men of the past, against
 
 104 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 a history which was an unbroken record of the defeat 
 and frustration of freedom. But the declaration of rights 
 was more needful still against dangers on the opposite 
 side, those that were coming more than those that were 
 going out. People were quite resolved to be oppressed 
 no more by monarchy or aristocracy, but they had no 
 experience or warning of oppression by democracy. The 
 classes were to be harmless ; but there was the new 
 enemy, the State. 
 
 No European knew what security could be needed 
 or provided for the individual from the collected will of 
 the people. They were protected from government by 
 authority or by minority ; but they made the majority 
 irresistible, and the plebiscite a tyranny. 
 
 The Americans were aware that democracy might 
 be weak and unintelligent, but also that it might be 
 despotic and oppressive. And they found out the way 
 to limit it, by the federal system, which suffers it to exist 
 nowhere in its plenitude. They deprived their state 
 governments of the powers that were enumerated, and 
 the central government of the powers that were reserved. 
 As the Romans knew how monarchy would become 
 innocuous, by being divided, the Americans solved the 
 more artful problem of dividing democracy into two. 
 
 Many Frenchmen were convinced that Federalism 
 would be the really liberal policy for them. But the 
 notion was at once pushed aside by Mounier, and obtained 
 no hearing. And the division of powers, which he 
 substituted, was rejected in its turn. They would not 
 admit that one force should be checked and balanced by 
 another. They had no resource but general principles, 
 to abolish the Past and secure the Future. By declaring 
 them, they raised up an ideal authority over the govern- 
 ment and the nation, and established a security against 
 the defects of the Constitution and the power of future 
 rulers. The opponents of the Declaration fought it on 
 the proposal to add a declaration of duties. The idea 
 was put forward by the most learned of the deputies, the 
 Jansenist Camus, and the clergy supported him with
 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 105 
 
 energy. The Assembly decided that a system of rights 
 belonged to politics, and a system of duties to ethics, 
 and rejected the motion, on the morning of the 4th of 
 August, by 570 to 433. 
 
 This was the deciding division on the question of 
 the Rights of Man. After some days, absorbed by the 
 crisis of aristocracy, the distracted and wearied Assembly 
 turned again from the excitement of facts and interests 
 to the discussion of theory. A new committee of five 
 was appointed to revise the work of the committee of 
 eight, which dealt with the entire Constitution. 
 
 On August 17 Mirabeau reported their scheme. His 
 heart was not in it ; and he resented the intrusion of 
 hampering generalities and moralities into the difficult 
 experimental science of government. He advised that 
 the Constitution should be settled first, that the guide 
 should follow instead of preceding. The Assembly rejected 
 the proposals of its committees, and all the plans which 
 were submitted by the celebrities. The most remarkable 
 of these was by Sieyes, and it met with favour ; but the 
 final vote was taken on a less illustrious composition, 
 which bore no author's name. The selected text was 
 less philosophical and profound, and it roused less distant 
 echoes than its rival ; but it was shorter, and more tame, 
 and it was thought to involve fewer doubtful postulates, 
 and fewer formidable consequences. Between the 2Oth 
 and 26th of August it was still further abridged, and 
 reduced from twenty-four propositions to the moderate 
 dimension of seventeen. These omissions from a docu- 
 ment which had been preferred to very remarkable 
 competitors are the key to the intentions of the National 
 Assembly, and our basis of interpretation. 
 
 The original scheme included a State Church. This 
 was not adopted. It distinguished the inequality of men 
 from the equality of rights. This was deemed self-evident 
 and superfluous. It derived the mutual rights of men 
 from their mutual duties ; and this terrestrial definition 
 also disappeared, leaving the way open to a higher cause. 
 The adopted code was meagre and ill-composed, and
 
 106 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Bentham found a malignant pleasure in tearing it to 
 pieces. It is, on the whole, more spiritual than the one 
 on which it was founded, and which it generally follows ; 
 and it insists with greater energy on primitive rights, 
 anterior to the State and aloof from it, which no human 
 authority can either confer or refuse. It is the triumphant 
 proclamation of the doctrine that human obligations are 
 not all assignable to contract, or to interest, or to force. 
 
 The Declaration of the Rights of Man begins with an 
 appeal to heaven, and defines them in the presence, and 
 under the auspices, of Almighty God. The Preamble 
 implies that our duties towards Him constitute our rights 
 towards mankind, and indicates the divine origin of Law, 
 without affirming it. The Declaration enumerates those 
 rights which are universal, which come from nature, not 
 from men. They are four : Liberty, Property, Security, 
 and Self-defence. Authorities are constituted, and laws 
 are made, in order that these original, essential, and 
 supreme possessions of all mankind may be preserved. 
 
 The system of guarantees is as sacred as the rights which 
 they protect. Such are the right of contributing by repre- 
 sentatives to legislation and taxation, religious toleration, 
 the liberty of the press. As the rights are equal, the power 
 of ensuring them must be equal. All men alike have a 
 share in representation, all alike are admissible to office, 
 all must be taxed in the same proportion. The law is 
 the same for all. The principle of equality is the idea on 
 which the Declaration most earnestly insists. Privilege 
 had just been overthrown, and the duty of providing 
 against indirect means for its recovery was the occupation 
 of the hour. That this may be secured, all powers must 
 be granted by the people, and none must be exercised by 
 the people. They act only through their agents. The 
 agent who exercises power is responsible, and is controlled 
 by the sovereign authority that delegates it. Certain 
 corollaries seem to follow : restricted suffrage, progressive 
 taxation, an established church, are difficult to reconcile 
 with equality so profoundly conceived. But this is not 
 explicit. Questions regarding education, poverty, revision,
 
 THE FOURTH OF AUGUST 107 
 
 are not admitted among the fundamentals and are left to 
 future legislation. The most singular passage is that 
 which ordains that no man may be molested for his 
 opinions, even religious. It would appear that Toleration 
 was that part of the liberal dogma for which the deputies 
 were least prepared. 
 
 The Declaration passed, by August 26, after a hurried 
 debate, and with no further resistance. The Assembly, 
 which had abolished the past at the beginning of the 
 month, attempted, at the end, to institute and regulate the 
 future. These are its abiding works, and the perpetual 
 heritage of the Revolution. With them a new era 
 dawned upon mankind. 
 
 And yet this single page of print, which outweighs 
 libraries, and is stronger than all the armies of Napoleon, 
 is not the work of superior minds, and bears no mark of 
 the lion's claw. The stamp of Cartesian clearness is upon 
 it, but without the logic, the precision, the thoroughness 
 of French thought. There is no indication in it that 
 Liberty is the goal, and not the starting-point, that it is 
 a faculty to be acquired, not a capital to invest, or that it 
 depends on the union of innumerable conditions, which 
 embrace the entire life of man. Therefore it is justly 
 arraigned by those who say that it is defective, and that 
 its defects have been a peril and a snare. 
 
 It was right that the attempt should be made ; for 
 the extinction of privilege involved a declaration of rights. 
 When those that were exclusive and unequal were 
 abandoned, it was necessary to define and to insist on 
 those that were equal and the property of all. After 
 destroying, the French had to rebuild, and to base their 
 new structure upon principles unknown to the law r 
 unfamiliar to the people, absolutely opposed to the lesson 
 of their history and to all the experience of the ages 
 in which France had been so great. It could not rest 
 on traditions, or interests, or any persistent force of 
 gravitation. Unless the idea that was to govern the future 
 was impressed with an extreme distinctness upon the minds 
 of all, they would not understand the consequences of so-
 
 io8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 much ruin, and such irrevocable change, and would drift 
 without a compass. The country that had been so proud 
 of its kings, of its nobles, and of its chains, could not learn 
 without teaching that popular power may be tainted with 
 the same poison as personal power.
 
 VIII 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 
 
 WHEN the Assembly passed the Rights of Man, they 
 acted in harmony for the last time. Agreement on first 
 principles did not involve agreement in policy, and in 
 applying them to the Constitution, a week later, the 
 division of parties appeared. 
 
 From the tennis court to the great constitutional debate, 
 the Moderates, who may be called the Liberals, were pre- 
 dominant. Mounier was their tactician, Clermont Tonnerre 
 and Lally Tollendal were their orators, Malouet was their 
 discreet adviser. They hoped, by the division of powers 
 and the multiplication of checks, to make their country as 
 free as England or America. They desired to control the 
 Representatives in three ways : by a Second Chamber, the 
 royal veto, and the right of dissolution. Their success 
 depended on the support of Ministers and of reconciled 
 Conservatives. Whilst the Constitution for them was a 
 means of regulating and restraining the national will, it 
 was an instrument for accomplishing the popular will for 
 their rivals rising to power on the crest of the wave. 
 
 The Democrats refused to resist the people, legitimately 
 governing itself, either by the English or the American 
 division of power. There was little concentration yet of 
 the working class in towns, for the industrial age had hardly 
 dawned, and it was hard to understand that the Third 
 Estate contained divergent interests and the material of a 
 coming conflict. The managers of the democratic party 
 were Duport, Lameth, and Barnave, aided sometimes by 
 
 109
 
 no THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Sieyes, sometimes by Talleyrand, and by their sworn 
 enemy Mirabeau. 
 
 The nobles, weak in statesmanship, possessed two 
 powerful debaters : Cazales, who reminded men of Fox, 
 but who, when not on his legs, had little in him ; and 
 Maury, afterwards Cardinal and Archbishop of Paris, a 
 man whose character was below his talents. Numbering 
 nearly a third of the Assembly, and holding the balance, 
 it was in their power to make a Constitution like that of 
 1814. 
 
 How these three parties acted in that eventful 
 September, and what in consequence befell, we have now 
 to consider. 
 
 The five weeks from August 27 to October i were 
 occupied with the constitutional debates. They were 
 kept within narrow limits by the Rights of Man, which 
 declared that the nation transmits all powers and exercises 
 none. On both sides there were men who were impatient 
 of this restriction, and by whom it was interpreted in con- 
 trary ways. Some wished for security that the national 
 will should always prevail, through its agents ; the others, 
 that they should be able to obstruct it They struggled 
 for an enlarged construction, and strove to break the 
 barrier, in the republican or the royalist direction. 
 
 The discussion opened by a skirmish with the clergy. 
 They observed the significant omission of a State church 
 in the Declaration of Rights, and feared that they would 
 be despoiled and the Church disestablished. The enthusiasm 
 of the first hour had cooled. One after another, ecclesi- 
 astics attempted to obtain the recognition of Catholicism. 
 Each time the attempt was repulsed. The clergy drifted 
 fast into the temper which was confessed by Maury 
 when he said, " The proposed measure would enable the 
 Constitution to live : we vote against it." 
 
 The scheme of the Committee was produced on 
 August 31, and was explained by Lally in a speech 
 which is among the finest compositions of the time. 
 He insisted on the division of the legislative, and the 
 unity of the executive, as the essentials of a free
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES in 
 
 government On the following day Mirabeau spoke on 
 the same side. He said that the danger was not from the 
 Crown, but from the representatives ; for they may 
 exclude strangers and debate in secret, as the English 
 law allows, and these may declare themselves permanent, 
 and escape all control. Through the king, the public 
 possesses the means of holding them in check. He is 
 their natural ally against usurping deputies, and the 
 possible formation of a new aristocracy. The legislature 
 enjoys a temporary mandate only. The perpetual repre- 
 sentative of the people is the king. It is wrong to deny him 
 powers necessary for the public interest. It is the partial 
 appearance of a view that was expanded by Napoleon. 
 
 Mounier defended his plan on September 4. On 
 several points there was no large variety of opinion. 
 It was practically admitted that there could be no 
 governing without Parliament, that it must meet annually, 
 that its acts require the royal assent, that it shall be 
 elected indirectly, by equal districts, and a moderate 
 property franchise. Mounier further conceded that the 
 Constitution was not subject to the royal veto, that 
 Ministers should not be members of the Assembly, that 
 the Assembly, and not the king, should have the initiative 
 of proposing laws, and that it should have the right of 
 refusing supplies. The real question at issue was whether 
 the representatives of the people should be checked by an 
 Upper House, by the king's power of dissolution, and by 
 an absolute or a temporary veto. 
 
 Mounier had private friends among his opponents, and 
 they opened a negotiation with him. They were prepared 
 to accept his two Houses and his absolute veto. They 
 demanded in return that the Senate should have only a 
 suspensive veto on the acts of the representatives, that 
 there should be no right of Dissolution, that Conventions 
 should be held periodically, to revise the Constitution. 
 These offers were a sign of weakness. The Constitu- 
 tional party was still in the ascendant, and on August 3 1 
 the Bishop of Langres, the chief advocate of a House of 
 Lords, was chosen President by 499 to 328. If the
 
 112 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 division of the legislature into two was sure of a majority, 
 then the proposed bargain was one-sided, and the Demo- 
 crats would have taken much more than they gave. 
 Mounier, counting on the support of those whose interest 
 was that he should succeed, rejected the offer. He had 
 already been forced, by the defection of friends, to 
 abandon much that he would have wished to keep ; and 
 the plan which he brought forward closely resembled that 
 under which France afterwards prospered. 
 
 Nevertheless, the failure of that negotiation is a fatal 
 date in constitutional history. With more address, and 
 a better knowledge of the situation, Mounier might have 
 saved half of the securities he depended on. He lost the 
 whole. The things he refused to surrender at the con- 
 ference were rejected by the Assembly ; and the offers 
 he had rejected were not made again. When the legis- 
 lature was limited to two years, the right of dissolution 
 lost its value. The right of revision would have caused 
 no more rapid changes than actually ensued ; for there 
 were fourteen Constitutions in eighty-six years, or a funda- 
 mental revision every six or seven years. Lastly, the 
 veto of the Senate had no basis of argument, until it was 
 decided how the Senate should be composed. 
 
 The disastrous ruin of the cause was brought on by 
 want of management, and not by excess of conservatism. 
 Mounier inclined to an hereditary House of Peers ; and 
 that, after August 4, was not to be thought of. But he 
 knew the difficulty, and, however reluctantly, gave way. 
 And he attached undue importance to the absolute veto ; 
 but that was not the point on which the conference broke 
 up. He was supported by Lafayette, who dreaded as 
 much as he did the extinction of the royal power ; at 
 times by Mirabeau, whom he detested. Even Sieyes was 
 willing to have two Houses, and even three, provided they 
 were, in reality, one House, deliberating in three divisions, 
 but counting all the votes in common. He also proposed 
 that there should be a renewal of one-third at a time ; 
 so that there would be three degrees of the popular 
 infusion and of proximity to Mother Earth.
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 113 
 
 Mounier, with some of his friends, deserves to be 
 remembered among the men, not so common as they say, 
 who loved liberty sincerely ; I mean, who desired it, not 
 for any good it might do them, but for itself, however 
 arduous, or costly, or perilous its approach might be. 
 They subordinated the means to the end, and never 
 regarded conditional forms as an emanation of eternal 
 principles. Having secured the Rights of Man, they 
 looked with alarm at future legislation, that could not 
 improve, and might endanger them. They wished the 
 Constituent Assembly to bind and bar its successors as 
 far as possible ; for none would ever speak with so much 
 authority as the genuine voice of the entire people. 
 
 By an extraordinary fortune, the nation, this time, had 
 responded wisely. It was certain that it would not always 
 do so well. It had passions ; it had prejudices ; it was 
 grossly ignorant ; it was not disinterested ; and it was 
 demoralized by an evil tradition. The French were accus- 
 tomed to irresponsible power. They were not likely to 
 consent that the power in their hands should be inferior to 
 that which had been exercised over them, or to admit 
 that an entire people is not above the law which it obeys. 
 It was to be expected that they would endeavour by legis- 
 lation to diminish those securities for the minority and 
 the weaker cause which were appointed by the Rights of 
 Man. Opinion was changing rapidly, and had become 
 more favourable to violence, more indulgent to crime. A 
 draft project of the Rights of Man had appeared, in which 
 the writer avowed that, by the law of nature, a man may 
 do what he likes in the pursuit of happiness, and, to elude 
 oppression, may oppress, imprison, and destroy. 
 
 The man who wrote thus quickly acquired a dread 
 ascendancy over the people, and was able to defy police 
 and governments and assemblies, for it was the begin- 
 ning of Marat. Lists of proscription were circulated ; 
 threatening letters poured in on the deputies ; and Paris, 
 at the end of August, was preparing to march upon 
 Versailles, to expel obnoxious members, and, when they 
 ceased to be inviolable, to put them on their trial. These 
 
 I
 
 H4 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 were first-fruits of liberty, and the meed and reward of 
 Liberals. No man can tell in what country such things 
 would remain without effect. In France it was believed 
 that civic courage was often wanting. De Serre, the 
 great orator of the Restoration, once affirmed, from the 
 tribune, that the bulk of the representatives had always 
 been sound. He was interrupted by a furious outcry, 
 and challenged by his legitimist audience to say whether 
 he included the Convention, which, by a majority, con- 
 demned the king to death. His answer, very famous in 
 parliamentary history, was, " Yes, even the Convention. 
 And if it had not deliberated under poniards, we should 
 have been spared the most terrible of crimes." 
 
 The opposition presented a united front, but was rent 
 by many stages of gravitation towards Democracy. They 
 also were generally anxious to establish political freedom, 
 even by the greatest sacrifices. By freedom they meant, 
 first, deliverance from known and habitual causes of 
 oppression. True, there might be others ; but they were 
 less clear and less certain. All European experience 
 proclaimed that the executive constantly masters the 
 legislative, even in England. It was absurd to suppose 
 that every force that, for centuries, had helped to build 
 up absolutism, had been destroyed in two months. They 
 would rise again from the roots, and the conflict would 
 be constantly renewed. 
 
 The salvation seemed to lie in the principle that all 
 power is derived from the people, and that none can exist 
 against the people. The popular will may be expressed 
 by certain forms ; it cannot be arrested by obstacles. Its 
 action may be delayed ; it cannot be stopped. It is the 
 ultimate master of all, without responsibility or exemption, 
 and with no limit that is not laid down in the Rights of 
 Man. The limits there defined are sufficient, and individual 
 liberty needs no further protection. Distrust of the nation 
 was not justified by the manner in which it had chosen 
 and instructed its deputies. 
 
 In studying this group of public men, men to whom 
 the future belonged, we are forced to admit the element
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 115 
 
 of national character. No philosophy is cheaper or more 
 vulgar than that which traces all history to diversities of 
 ethnological type and blend, and is ever presenting the 
 venal Greek, the perfidious Sicilian, the proud and indolent 
 Spaniard, the economical Swiss, the vain and vivacious 
 Frenchman. But it is certainly true that in France the 
 liberty of the press represents a power that is not familiar 
 to those who know its weakness and its strength, who 
 have had experience of Swift and Bolingbroke and 
 Junius. Maury once said, " We have a free press : we 
 have everything." In 1812, when Napoleon watched the 
 grand army crossing the Niemen to invade Russia, and 
 whistled the tune of Malbrook, he interrupted his tune to 
 exclaim, " And yet all that is not equal to the songs of 
 Paris ! " Chateaubriand afterwards said that, with the 
 liberty of the press, there was no abuse he would not 
 undertake to destroy. For he wrote French as it had 
 never been written, and the magnificent roll of his sentences 
 caught the ear of his countrymen with convincing force. 
 When, in 1824, he was dismissed from the Foreign Office, 
 his friend, the editor of the Journal des Debats, called on 
 the Prime Minister Villele and warned him, "We have 
 overthrown your predecessor, and we shall be strong 
 enough to overthrow you." Villele replied, " You suc- 
 ceeded against him by aid of royalism : you cannot 
 succeed against me but by aid of revolution." Both 
 prophecies came true. The alliance of Chateaubriand 
 with the newspaper turned out the Ministry in 1827, and 
 the Monarchy in 1830. 
 
 In September 1789, the liberty of the press was only 
 four months old, and the reign of opinion was beginning 
 on the Continent. They fancied that it was an invincible 
 force, and a complete security for human rights. It was 
 invaluable if it secured right without weakening power, 
 like the other contrivances of Liberalism. They thought 
 that when men were safe from the force above them, 
 they required no saving from the influence around them. 
 Opinion finds its own level, and a man yields easily and 
 not unkindly to what surrounds him daily. Pressure
 
 n6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 from equals is not to be confounded with persecution by 
 superiors. It is right that the majority, by degrees, should 
 absorb the minority. The work of limiting authority 
 had been accomplished by the Rights of Man. The work 
 of creating authority was left to the Constitution. In this 
 way men of varying opinions were united in the conclusion 
 that the powers emanating from the people ought not to 
 be needlessly divided. 
 
 Besides Sieyes, who found ideas, and Talleyrand, who 
 found expedients, several groups were, for the time, 
 associated with the party which was managed by Duport. 
 There were some of the most eminent jurists, eager to 
 reform the many systems of law and custom that pre- 
 vailed in France, who became the lawgivers of successive 
 Assemblies, until they completed their code under Napoleon. 
 Of all the enemies of the old monarchical regime, they 
 were the most methodical and consistent. The leader of 
 the Paris Bar, Target, was their most active politician. 
 When he heard of a plan for setting the finances in order 
 he said, " If anybody has such a plan, let him at once 
 be smothered. It is the disorder of the finances that puts 
 the king in our power." The Economists were as syste- 
 matic and definite as the lawyers, and they too had much 
 to destroy. Through Dupont de Nemours their theories 
 obtained enduring influence. 
 
 There were two or three of the future Girondins who 
 taught that the people may be better trusted than repre- 
 sentatives, and who were ready to ratify the Constitution, 
 and even to decide upon the adoption of laws, by the 
 popular vote. And there were two men, not yet distinctly 
 divided from these their future victims, who went farther 
 in opposition to the Rights of Man, and towards the 
 confusion of powers. In their eyes, representation and 
 delegation were treason to true democracy. As the people 
 could not directly govern itself, the principle exacted that 
 it should do so as nearly as possible, by means of a 
 perpetual control over the delegates. The parliamentary 
 vote ought to be constantly brought into harmony with 
 the wish of the constituency, by the press, the galleries
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 117 
 
 and the mob. To act consciously in opposition to the 
 delegating power was a breach of trust. The population 
 of Paris, being the largest collected portion of sovereign 
 power, expresses its will more surely than deputies at 
 second hand. Barere, who was one of these, proposed 
 an ingenious plan by which every law that passed re- 
 mained suspended until after the next elections, when 
 the country pronounced upon it by imperative mandate. 
 Thus he disposed of royal ,veto and dissolution. 
 
 Robespierre would not suspend the law, but left it to 
 the next legislature to rectify or revoke the errors of the 
 last. He argued that powers require to be checked in 
 proportion to the danger they present Now the danger 
 from a power not representative exceeds that from a 
 power that represents, and is better acquainted with the 
 needs and wishes of the mass. A nation governs itself, 
 and has a single will, not two. If the whole does not 
 govern the part, the part will govern the whole. Robes- 
 pierre conceived that it was time to constitute powers 
 sufficient to conquer the outward foe, and also the inward ; 
 one for national safety, and one for national progress, and 
 the elevation of the poor at the expense of the minorities 
 that have oppressed them. He stands at the end of the 
 scale, and the idea of liberty, as it runs through the various 
 sets of thought, is transformed into the idea of force. 
 From Sieyes to Barnave, from Barnave to Camus, from 
 Camus to Buzot, and from Buzot the Girondin to Robes- 
 pierre the Jacobin who killed the Girondins, we traverse 
 the long line of possible politics ; but the transitions are 
 finely shaded, and the logic is continuous. 
 
 In the second week of September the Constitution of 
 Mounier was defeated by the union of these forces. The 
 main question, the institution of a Senate, was not seriously 
 debated. It was feared as the refuge of the defeated 
 classes, and was not defended by those classes themselves. 
 They were not willing that a new aristocracy should be 
 raised upon their ruins ; and they suspected that Govern- 
 ment would give the preference to that minority of the 
 nobles who went over in time, and who were renegades in
 
 n8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the eyes of the rest. It was felt that a single Chamber is 
 stronger in resistance to the executive than two, and that 
 the time might come for a senate when the fallen 
 aristocracy had ceased to struggle, and the Crown was 
 reconciled to its reduced condition. 
 
 On September 9 the President of the Assembly, La 
 Luzerne, bishop of Langres, was driven by insult to resign. 
 The next day the Assembly adopted the single Chamber 
 by 499 to 89, the nobles abstaining. 
 
 On September 1 1 the decisive division took place. 
 Mounier had insisted on the unlimited right of veto. The 
 debate went against him. It was admitted on his own 
 side that the king would, sooner or later, have to yield. 
 The others agreed that the king might resist until two 
 elections had decided in favour of the vetoed measure. 
 He might reject the wish of one legislature, and even of 
 two ; he would give way to the third. The Ministers 
 themselves were unable to insist on the absolute veto 
 in preference to the suspensive thus defined. A letter 
 from the king was sent to the Assembly, to inform them 
 that he was content with the temporary veto. Mounier 
 did not allow the letter to be read, that it might not 
 influence votes. He was defeated by 673 to 325. The 
 Conservatives had deserted him when he defended the 
 Upper House ; and now the king deserted him when 
 he defended the rights of the Crown. It was a crush- 
 ing and final disaster. For he fell, maintaining the 
 cause of aristocracy against the nobles, and the cause 
 of prerogative against the monarch. The Democrats 
 triumphed by 410 votes one day, and 350 the next. 
 The battle for the Constitution on the English model 
 was fought and lost. 
 
 On September 12 Mounier and his friends retired 
 from the Committee. A new one was at once elected 
 from the victorious majority. At this critical point a 
 secret Council was held, at which the royalists advised 
 the king to take refuge in the provinces. Lewis refused 
 to listen to them. The majority, elated with success, now 
 called on him to sanction the decrees of August 4. His
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 119 
 
 reply, dated September 1 8, is drawn up with unusual 
 ability. He adopted the argument of Sieyes on the 
 suppression of tithe. He said that a large income would 
 be granted to the land, and that the rich, who ought 
 to contribute most, would, on the contrary, receive most. 
 Small holders would profit little, while those who possessed 
 no land at all would now be mulcted for payment of the 
 clergy. Instead of relieving the nation, it would relieve 
 one class at the expense of another, and the rich at the 
 expense of the poor. 
 
 The Assembly insisted that the abolition of feudalism 
 was part of the Constitution, and ought to receive an 
 unconditional sanction. But they promised to give most 
 respectful attention to the remarks of the king, whenever 
 the decrees came to be completed by legislation. The 
 royal sanction was accordingly given on the following day. 
 Thereupon the Assembly made a considerable concession. 
 They resolved, on September 21, that the suspensive veto 
 should extend over two legislatures. The numbers were 
 728 to 224. 
 
 The new Committee, appointed on the I 5th, took a fort- 
 night to complete their scheme, on the adopted principles 
 that there should be one Chamber, no dissolution, and a 
 power of retarding legislation without preventing it. On 
 the 2 Qth it was laid before the Assembly by their reporter, 
 Thouret. The voice was the voice of Thouret, but the 
 hand was the hand of Sieyes. At that juncture he augured 
 ill of the Revolution, and repented of his share in it. His 
 Declaration of Rights had been passed over. His proposal 
 to restore the national credit by the surrender of tithe had 
 been rejected. His partition of the Assembly, together 
 with partial renewal, which is favourable to the executive, 
 by never allowing the new parliament to rise, like a giant 
 refreshed, from a general election, had encountered no 
 support. It remained that he should compose the working 
 machinery for his essential doctrine, that the law is the will 
 of him that obeys, not of him that commands. To do this, 
 the Abb Sieyes abolished the historic Provinces, and 
 divided France into departments. There were to be eighty,
 
 120 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 besides Paris ; and as they were designed to be as nearly as 
 possible equal to a square of about forty-five miles, they 
 differed widely in population and property. They were to 
 have an average of nine deputies each : three for the super- 
 ficial area, which was invariable ; three, more or less, for 
 population ; and again three, more or less, according to the 
 amount which the department contributed to the national 
 income. In this way territory, numbers and wealth were 
 represented equally. 
 
 Deputies were to be elected in three degrees. The 
 taxpayers, in their primary assemblies, chose electors for 
 the Commune, which was the political unit, and a square 
 of about fifteen miles ; the communal electors sent their 
 representatives to the department, and these elected the 
 deputy. Those who paid no taxes were not recognized 
 as shareholders in the national concern. Like women and 
 minors, they enjoyed the benefit of government ; but as 
 they were not independent, they possessed no power as 
 active citizens. By a parallel process, assemblies were 
 formed for local administration, on the principle that the 
 right of exercising power proceeds from below, and the 
 actual exercise of power from above. 
 
 This is mainly the measure which has made the 
 France of to-day ; and when it became law, in December, 
 the chief part of the new Constitution was completed. It 
 had been the work of these two months, from August 4 
 to September 29. The final promulgation came two years 
 later. No legislative instrument ever failed more help- 
 lessly than this product of the wisdom of France in its first 
 parliamentary Assembly, for it lasted only a single year. 
 
 Many things had meanwhile occurred which made the 
 constructive design of 1789 unfit to meet the storms of 
 1792. The finances of the State were ruined ; the clergy 
 and the clerical party had been driven into violent 
 opposition ; the army was almost dissolved, and war 
 broke out when there was not a disciplined force at the 
 command of Government. After Varennes, the king was 
 practically useless in peace, and impossible in times of 
 danger and invasion ; not only because of the degrada-
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 121 
 
 tion of his capture and of his imprisonment on the throne, 
 but because, at the moment of his flight, he had avowed 
 his hostility to the institutions he administered. 
 
 The central idea in the plan of September 29, the idea 
 of small provinces and large municipalities, was never 
 appreciated and never adopted. Sieves placed the unit in 
 the Commune, which was the name he gave to each of the 
 nine divisions of a department. He intended that there 
 should be only 720 of these self-governing districts in 
 France. Instead of 720, the Assembly created 44,000, 
 making the Commune no larger than the parish, and 
 breaking up the administrative system into dust. The 
 political wisdom of the village was substituted for that of 
 a town or district of 35,000 inhabitants. 
 
 The explanation of the disastrous result is as much in 
 the Court as in the Legislature, and as much in the 
 legislation that followed as in the policy of the moment 
 in which the great issues were determined, and with which 
 we are dealing. No monarchical constitution could 
 succeed, after Varennes ; and the one of which we are 
 speaking, the object of the memorable conflict between 
 Mounier and Sieyes, is not identical with the one that 
 failed. The repudiation of the English model did not 
 cause the quick passage from the Constitution of 1791 to 
 the Republic. Yet the scheme that prevailed shows 
 defects which must bear their portion of blame. Political 
 science imperatively demands that powers shall be 
 regulated by multiplication and division. The Assembly 
 preferred ideas of unity and simplicity. 
 
 The old policy of French parliaments nearly suggested 
 a court of revision ; but that notion, not yet visible in the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, occurred to Sieyes 
 long after. An effective Senate might have been founded 
 on the provincial assemblies ; but the ancient provinces 
 were doomed, and the new divisions did not yet exist, or 
 were hidden in the maps of freemasonry. 
 
 Power was not really divided between the legislative 
 and the executive, for the king possessed no resource 
 against the majority of the Assembly. There was no
 
 122 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Senate, no initiative, no dissolution, no effective veto, no 
 reliance on the judicial or the Federal element. These 
 are not defects of equal importance ; but taken together, 
 they subverted that principle of division which is useful 
 for stability, and for liberty is essential. 
 
 The reproach falls not only on those who carried the 
 various measures, but also on the minority that opposed 
 them. Mounier encouraged the suspicion and jealousy 
 of Ministers by separating them from the Assembly, and 
 denying to the king, that is to them, the prerogative of 
 proposing laws. He attributed to the absolute veto an 
 importance which it does not possess ; and he frustrated 
 all chance of a Second Chamber by allowing it to be 
 known that he would have liked to make it hereditary. 
 This was too much for men who had just rejoiced over 
 the fall of the aristocracy. In order to exclude the inter- 
 vention of the king in favour of a suspensive veto, he 
 accepted the argument that the Constitution was in the 
 hands of the Assembly alone. When Lewis raised a just 
 objection to the decrees of August 4, this argument was 
 turned against him, and the Crown suffered a serious 
 repulse. 
 
 The intellectual error of the Democrats vanishes before 
 the moral error of the Conservatives. They refused a 
 Second Chamber because they feared that it would be used 
 as a reward for those among them to whose defection they 
 partly owed their defeat. And as they did not wish the 
 Constitution to be firmly established, they would not vote 
 for measures likely to save it. The revolutionists were 
 able to count on their aid against the Liberals. 
 
 The watchword came from the Palace, and the shame 
 of their policy recoils upon the king. Late in September 
 one of his nobles told him that he was weary of what he 
 saw, and was going to his own country. " Yes," said the 
 king, taking him aside ; " things are going badly, and 
 nothing can improve our position but the excess of evil." 
 On this account Royer Collard, the famous Doctrinaire, 
 said, in later times, that all parties in the Revolution were 
 honest, except the Conservatives.
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 123 
 
 From the end of August the Paris agitators, who 
 managed the mob in the interest of a dynastic change 
 directed a sustained pressure against Versailles. Thouret, 
 one of the foremost lawyers in the Assembly, who was 
 elected President on August I, refused the honour. He 
 had been warned of his unpopularity, and gave way to 
 threats. Yielding to the current which, as Mirabeau 
 said, submerges those who resist it, he went over to 
 the other side, and soon became one of their leaders. 
 The experience of this considerable man is an instance 
 of the change that set in, and that was frequent among 
 men without individual conviction or the strength of 
 character that belongs to it. 
 
 The downward tendency was so clearly manifest, the 
 lesson taught by successful violence against the king and 
 the aristocracy was so resolutely applied to the Assembly, 
 that very serious politicians sought the means of arresting 
 the movement. Volney, who was no orator, but who was 
 the most eminent of the deputies in the department of 
 letters, made the attempt on September 1 8. He proposed 
 that there should be new elections for a parliament that 
 should not consist of heterogeneous ingredients, but in 
 which class interests should be disregarded and unknown. 
 He moved that it should represent equality. They 
 reminded him of the oath not to separate until France 
 was a constitutional State, and the protest was ineffectual. 
 But in intellectual France there was no man more perfectly 
 identified with the reigning philosophy than the man who 
 uttered this cry of alarm. 
 
 On October 2 the first chapters of the Constitution 
 were ready for the royal assent. They consisted of the 
 Rights of Man, and of the fundamental measures adopted 
 in the course of September. Mounier, the new President, 
 carried to the king the articles by which his cause had 
 been brought to its fall. Lewis undertook to send his 
 reply ; and from Mounier came no urging word. They 
 both fancied that delay was possible, and might yet serve. 
 The tide had flowed so slowly in May, that they could not 
 perceive the torrent of October. On the day of that
 
 124 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 audience of the most liberal of all the royalists, the respite 
 before them was measured by hours. 
 
 All through September, at Paris, Lafayette at the head 
 of the forces of order, and the forces of tumult controlled 
 by the Palais Royal had watched each other, waiting for 
 a deadly fight. There were frequent threats of marching 
 on Versailles, followed by reassuring messages from the 
 General that he had appeased the storm. As it grew 
 louder, he made himself more and more the arbiter of the 
 the State. The Government, resenting this protectorate, 
 judged that the danger of attack ought to be averted, not 
 by the dubious fidelity and the more dubious capacity of 
 the commander of the National Guard, but by the direct 
 resources of the Crown. They summoned the Flanders 
 regiment, which was reputed loyal, and on October I it 
 marched in, a thousand strong. The officers, on their 
 arrival, were invited by their comrades at Versailles to a 
 festive supper in the theatre. The men were admitted, 
 and made to drink the health of the king ; and in the 
 midst of a scene of passionate enthusiasm the king and 
 queen appeared. The demonstration that ensued meant 
 more than the cold and decent respect with which men 
 regard a functionary holding delegated and not irrevocable 
 powers. It was easy to catch the note of personal devotion 
 and loyalty and the religion of the Cavalier, in the cries 
 of these armed and excited royalists. The managers at 
 Paris had their opportunity, and resolved at once to execute 
 the plot they had long meditated. 
 
 Whilst the Executive, which alone upheld the division 
 of powers and the principle of freedom, was daily losing 
 ground at the hands of its enemies, of its friends, and at 
 its own, a gleam of hope visited the forlorn precincts of 
 the Court. Necker had informed the Assembly that he 
 could not obtain a loan, and he asked for a very large 
 increase of direct taxation. He was heard with impatience, 
 and Mirabeau, who spoke for him, made no impression. 
 On September 26 he made another effort, and gained 
 the supreme triumph of his career. In a speech that was 
 evidently unprepared, he drew an appalling picture of the
 
 THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEBATES 125 
 
 coming bankruptcy ; and as he ended with the words 
 " These dangers are before you, and you deliberate ! " 
 the Assembly, convulsed with emotion, passed the vote 
 unanimously, and Necker was saved. None knew that 
 there could be such power in man. 
 
 In the eighteen months of life that remained to him, 
 Mirabeau underwent many vicissitudes of influence and 
 favour ; but he was able, in an emergency, to dominate 
 parties. From that day the Court knew what he was, 
 and what he could do ; and they knew how his imperious 
 spirit longed to serve the royal cause, and we shall 
 presently see who it was that attempted to flatter and to 
 win him when it was too late, and who had repelled him 
 when it might yet have been time. 
 
 We have reached the point at which the first part 
 of the Revolution terminates, and the captivity of the 
 monarch is about to begin. The events of the next two 
 days, October 5 and 6, form a complete and coherent 
 drama, that will not bear partition, and must occupy the 
 whole of our attention next week.
 
 IX 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 
 
 THE French Revolution was approved at first by 
 the common judgment of mankind. Kaunitz, the most 
 experienced statesman in Europe, declared that it would 
 last for long, and perhaps for ever. Speaking less 
 cautiously, Klopstock said : " I see generations crushed in 
 the struggle ; I see perhaps centuries of war and desolation ; 
 but at last, in the remote horizon, I see the victory of 
 liberty." Even at St. Petersburg the fall of the Bastille 
 was hailed with frantic joy. Burke began by applauding. 
 He would not listen to Tom Paine, who had been the 
 inspirer of a revolution himself, and who assured him that 
 the States -General would lead to another. He said, 
 afterwards, that the Rights of Man had opened his eyes ; 
 but at Holland House they believed that the change came 
 a few days earlier, when the Church was attacked. The 
 Americans were not far from the opinion of Burke. By 
 the middle of the summer Jefferson thought that all that 
 was needful had been obtained. Franklin took alarm at 
 the events of July. Washington and Hamilton became 
 suspicious soon after. 
 
 For the September decrees were directed not only 
 against the English model, but still more against the 
 American. The Convention of 1787 had constructed a 
 system of securities that were intended to save the Union 
 from the power of unchecked democracy. The National 
 Assembly resolutely swept every security away. Nothing 
 but the Crown was left that could impede the direct 
 operation of the popular will, or that could make the 
 
 126
 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 127 
 
 division of powers a reality. Therefore the Liberal party 
 looked to the king as much as the Conservative, and 
 wished as much as they, and even more than they, 
 to strengthen his hands. Their theory demanded a 
 divided legislature. Having lost that, they fell back on 
 Montesquieu, and accepted the division of legislative, 
 executive, and judicial powers. These theoretic subtleties 
 were unintelligible to the people of France. Men who were 
 as vehement for the king in October as they had been 
 vehement against him in June appeared to them to be 
 traitors. They could not conceive that the authority 
 which had so long oppressed them, and which it had 
 required such an effort to vanquish, ought now to be 
 trusted and increased. They could not convince themselves 
 that their true friends were those who had suddenly gone 
 over to the ancient enemy and oppressor, whose own 
 customary adherents seemed no longer to support him. 
 
 Public opinion was brought to bear on the Assembly, 
 to keep up the repression of monarchy which began on 
 June 23. As the Crown passed under the control of the 
 Assembly, the Assembly became more dependent on the 
 constituencies, especially on that constituency which had 
 the making of French opinion, and in which the democratic 
 spirit was concentrated. After the month of August the 
 dominant fact is the growing pressure of Paris on Versailles. 
 In October Paris laid its hand on its prey. For some 
 weeks the idea of escaping had been entertained. Thirty- 
 two of the principal royalists in the Assembly were con- 
 sulted, and advised that the king should leave Versailles 
 and take refuge in the provinces. The late minister, 
 Breteuil, the Austrian ambassador, Mercy, were of the 
 same opinion, and they carried the queen with them. But 
 Necker was on the other side. 
 
 Instead of flight they resolved upon defence, and 
 brought up the Flanders regiment, whose Colonel was a 
 deputy of the Left. In the morning the Count d'Estaing, 
 who held command at Versailles, learnt with alarm that 
 it had been decided to omit the health of the nation. The 
 Prussian envoy writes that the officers of the Guards, who
 
 128 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 had not yet adopted the Tricolor, displayed the utmost 
 contempt for it. It required no exaggeration to represent 
 the scene in a light odious to the public. When Madame 
 Campan came home and described with admiration what 
 she had just beheld, Beaumetz, a deputy, and friend of 
 Talleyrand, became very grave, and took his leave, that he 
 might make up his mind whether he should not emigrate 
 at once. Hostile witnesses reported the particulars to the 
 press next day, and it was stated, figuratively or literally, 
 that the Royal Guards had trampled the national colours 
 under foot. Marat came over to inquire, and Camille 
 Desmoulins says that he hurried back to Paris making 
 as much noise as all the trumpets of the Last Day. 
 
 The feast had been held on a Thursday. On the 
 Sunday, October 4, Paris was in a ferment. The insult 
 to the nation, the summoning of troops, the projected 
 flight, as was now supposed, to the fortress of Metz, were 
 taken to mean civil war, for the restoration of despotism. 
 At the Palais Royal the agitators talked of going out to 
 Versailles, to punish the insolent guards. On the evening 
 of Sunday, one district of the city, the Cordeliers, who 
 were governed by Danton, were ready to march. The 
 men of other districts were not so ready for action, or so 
 zealous to avenge the new cockade. To carry the entire 
 population more was required than the vague rumour of 
 Metz, or even than the symbolical outrage. 
 
 There was hunger among the 800,000 inhabitants of 
 Paris, between last year's corn that was exhausted, and 
 the new harvest that was not yet ground. Nobody, says 
 Dumont, could wonder if so much suffering led to tumult. 
 The suffering was due to poverty more than to scarcity ; 
 but Lafayette asserted that above 2000 a week were 
 paid to bakers, or to millers, to create discontent by 
 shortening supplies. There were people who thought 
 that money spent in this way would rouse indignation 
 against the incompetent and inactive Assembly. Upon 
 sixteen days in the course of September the bakers' shops 
 had to be guarded by troops. The reduced noble families 
 were putting down their establishments ; and 200,000
 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 129 
 
 passports were issued to intending emigres in the two 
 months following the fall of the Bastille. 
 
 The primary offender, responsible for subsistence, was 
 the municipality of the capital ; and their seat of office 
 was the first object of attack. Early on the Monday 
 morning a multitude of excited women made their way 
 into the Hdtel de Ville. They wanted to destroy the 
 heaps of papers, as all that writing did them no good. 
 They seized a priest, and set about hanging him. They 
 rang the tocsin, bringing all the trained battalions and all 
 the ragged bands of the city to the Place de Greve. They 
 carried away several hundreds of muskets, and some 
 useless cannon ; and they fetched torches, that they might 
 burn the building to the ground. It was the headquarters 
 of the elected municipality ; but the masses were becoming 
 conscious that they were not the Third Estate, that there 
 was a conflict of interest between property and labour, 
 and they began to vent their yet inarticulate rage upon 
 the middle class above them. It presently appeared that 
 these revolutionary heroines, knitting companions of the 
 future guillotine, were not all infuriated or implacable. 
 Parcels of banknotes that they took away were brought 
 back ; the priest was left unhung ; the torches that were 
 to have lighted the conflagration were extinguished without 
 difficulty. They were easily persuaded that their proper 
 sphere of action was Versailles, with its Assembly, that 
 was able to do everything, and did nothing for the poor. 
 They played the genuine part of mothers whose children 
 were starving in their squalid homes, and they thereby 
 afforded to motives which they neither shared nor under- 
 stood the aid of a diamond point that nothing could 
 withstand. It was this first detachment of invading 
 women that allowed Stanislas Maillard to lead them away. 
 
 Maillard was known to all the town as a conqueror of 
 the Bastille. Later, he acquired a more sinister celebrity. 
 But on that 5th of October, as the calculating controller 
 of dishevelled tumult, he left on those who saw him an 
 impression of unusual force. Whilst he mustered his army 
 in the Champs Elysees, and recruiting parties were sent 
 
 K
 
 130 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 through the streets, an emissary from the Hdtel de Ville 
 hastened to warn the Government at Versailles. He was 
 able to announce that the National Guard were coming. 
 
 Lafayette appeared late upon the scene, and did 
 nothing to hinder the expedition of Maillard. He thought 
 the danger contemptible, and believed that there were 
 resources at Versailles enough to stop it, although there 
 were seven or eight thousand women and some hundreds 
 of men among them. Both Necker and Mounier, the 
 President of the Assembly, confirm the fact. 
 
 When the news of what they must be prepared for 
 reached ministers, the king was out shooting, some miles 
 away, and nothing could be done without him. The 
 queen was found at the Trianon, which she never saw 
 again. An officer who came on foot from Paris told the 
 king of his danger. He refused his name, but stated 
 that there was no man in the service who had greater 
 reason to complain. A mounted messenger arrived from 
 the Minister of the Interior, and Lewis took horse 
 and galloped to Versailles. The streets were already 
 crowded with disorderly people, and shots were fired as 
 he rode by. 
 
 The roads from Paris to Versailles cross the Seine at 
 three points, and the general officers who were in the 
 ministry declared that they might be defended with the 
 troops that were at hand. St. Priest, the Minister of the 
 Interior, advised the king to meet the army of Paris at 
 Sevres, and order it to retire. If they refused, he 
 thought that they could be beaten. 
 
 Necker was against giving battle, and two important 
 colleagues were with him. He was ready to take the 
 king to Paris, seeing the objections, as he always did to 
 every proposal, but hoping that public opinion, stimulated 
 by the presence of the Court, which had not been seen 
 there for generations, would sustain the Crown against the 
 Assembly. He had held that opinion from the first, and 
 he refused to be answerable for civil war. Lewis, unable 
 to decide, went to consult the queen. She would be sent 
 away, with her children, if there was a fight. She
 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 131 
 
 declared that she would remain if the king remained, and 
 would not allow him to incur dangers which she did not 
 share. This resolution made it impossible for him to 
 adopt a manly or spirited course. The Council broke up 
 without deciding anything. 
 
 Whilst this was going on, between three and four in 
 the afternoon Maillard reached Versailles with his column 
 of women. Their quality had deteriorated by the recruits 
 made on the way, and there had been a large accession of 
 ferocity. Besides the women who followed Maillard from 
 the Hotel de Ville, some of whom believed that hunger is 
 caused by bad government, and can be appeased by good, 
 others displayed the aprons in which they meant to carry 
 the queen to Paris, bit by bit. And there was a group, 
 more significant than either, who were well supplied with 
 money, to be distributed among the soldiers of the Flemish 
 regiment, and who effectually performed their office. 
 
 Maillard, who had prevented depredation by the way, 
 made straight for the Assembly, and was admitted with 
 a deputation of his followers. They arrived at a moment 
 of excitement. The king had accepted the nineteen 
 paragraphs of the Constitution, with the proviso that he 
 retained the executive power undiminished. He had put 
 off the Rights of Man until it should be seen how they 
 were affected by the portions of the constitution yet to 
 pass. The reply was not countersigned by a minister ; 
 and the deputies saw in it an attempt to claim the right 
 of modifying the fundamental laws. They brought up 
 the imprudences of the dinner of welcome, and argued 
 that there must be a plot. 
 
 Mirabeau had never stood in a more difficult position. 
 He clung to the monarchy, but not to the king. He was 
 ready to serve the Count of Provence, or even the Duke 
 of Orleans, but not a feeble executive ; and he judged 
 that, as things were going, there would soon be no king 
 to serve. Through his friend La Marck he had attempted 
 to terrify the Court, and to induce them to accept his 
 services. La Marck had represented to the queen the 
 immense value of the aid of such a man ; and the queen
 
 132 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 had replied, decisively, that she hoped they would never 
 fall so low as to need help from Mirabeau. 
 
 He defended the king's answer on the ground he had 
 held before, that the Declaration ought to follow the 
 Constitution, and ought not to precede it. Speaking of 
 the scene at the officers' dinner, he said that the king was 
 inviolable the king, and no other person. The allusion 
 was so clear that the royalists were reduced to silence. 
 The Assembly resolved that the king should be requested 
 to give his assent, unconditionally. Before the deputation 
 had left, Maillard entered the Assembly. 
 
 Mirabeau had received early notice of the intended 
 attack by a large body of Parisians, and had advised 
 Mounier to adjourn in time. Mounier fancied that 
 Mirabeau was afraid, and said that every man must die 
 at his post. When Maillard appeared with a few women, 
 he allowed him to speak. As the orator of the women 
 whom he had brought from the H6tel de Ville, Maillard 
 asked for cheap bread, denounced the artificial famine and 
 the Royal Guards. When rebuked by Mounier for using 
 the term "citizens," he made a very effective point by saying 
 that any man who was not proud to be a citizen ought at 
 once to be expelled. But he admitted that he did not 
 believe all the imputations that were made by his 
 followers ; and he obtained a cheer for the Royal Guard by 
 exhibiting a regimental cocked hat with the tricolor 
 cockade. 
 
 The Assembly gave way, and sent Mounier at the 
 head of a deputation to invite the king's attention to the 
 demands of his afflicted subjects. Whilst the deputies, 
 with some of the women, stood in the rain, waiting for 
 the gates to be opened, a voice in the crowd exclaimed 
 that there was no want of bread in the days when they 
 had a king, but now that they had twelve hundred they 
 were starving. So that there were some whose animosity 
 was not against the king, but against the elect of the 
 people. 
 
 The king at once conceded all that Mounier asked for 
 his strange companions, and they went away contented.
 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 133 
 
 Then their friends outside fell upon them, and accused 
 them of having taken bribes ; and again it became 
 apparent that two currents had joined, and that some had 
 honestly come for bread, and some had not. Those who 
 had obtained the king's order for provisioning Paris, and 
 were satisfied, went back to bring it to the Hotel de Ville. 
 They were sent home in a royal carriage. Maillard went 
 with them. It was fully understood that with all his 
 violence and crudity he had played a difficult part well. 
 
 Mounier remained at the Palace. He was not eager 
 to revisit the scene of his humiliation, where vociferous 
 women had occupied the benches, asking for supper, and 
 bent on kissing the President He wished the king now 
 to accept the Rights of Man, without waiting for the 
 appointed deputation from the Assembly. Although 
 they were in part his work, he was no longer wedded 
 to them as they stood, and thought, like Mirabeau, 
 that they were an impediment. But a crisis had arrived, 
 and this point might be surrendered, to save the very 
 existence of monarchy. He waited during many eventful 
 hours, and returned after ten at night to find that the 
 bishop of Langres, disgusted with the scene before him, 
 had adjourned the Assembly. Mounier instantly con- 
 voked them, by beat of drum. He had other things to 
 speak of besides the Rights of Man ; for he knew that 
 an invader more formidable than Maillard with his 
 Amazonian escort was approaching. 
 
 For the later weeks of September Lafayette had cast 
 his influence on the side of those who designed to 
 strengthen the executive. He had restrained his men 
 when they threatened to come to support the National 
 Assembly. To yield to that movement was to acknow- 
 ledge defeat, and loss of available popularity and power. 
 When he came to the Hotel de Ville and found that his 
 army was resolved to go, he opposed the project, and 
 for many hours held his ground. The men whom he 
 commanded were not interested on their own account 
 in the daily allowance of food. Their anger was with 
 the Royal Guards, and their purpose was to take their
 
 134 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 place. Then there would be less danger of resistance to 
 the decrees, or of flight to the provinces. 
 
 Lafayette could not appear before the king at their 
 head without evident hostility and revolt ; for their 
 temper was threatening, and he was rapidly losing control. 
 By delay and postponement he gained something. Instead 
 of arriving as an assailant, he came as a deliverer. When 
 he remonstrated, his soldiers said that they meant no 
 injury to the king, but that he must obey or abdicate. 
 They would make their general Regent ; but if he refused 
 to put himself at their head, they would take his life. 
 They told him that he had commanded long enough, and 
 now he must follow. He did not yield until the tumult 
 had risen high, and the strain on his authority was 
 breaking. 
 
 Early in the afternoon the watchers who followed the 
 march of the women from the rare church towers reported 
 that they had crossed the Seine without opposition. It 
 was known, therefore, that the road was open, that the 
 approach of the army would be under cover of the 
 contingent that had preceded, that there was no danger 
 of collision. 
 
 About four o'clock Lafayette sent word to the Hdtel 
 de Ville for his men would not allow him out of sight 
 that it was time to give him his orders, as he could not 
 prevent the departure. They were brought to him where 
 he sat in the saddle in the Place de Greve, and he read 
 them with an expression of the utmost alarm. They 
 contained all that ambition could desire, for the four 
 points which he was directed to insist on made him 
 Dictator of France. But it was added that the orders 
 were given because he demanded them. Lafayette 
 never produced that document ; and he left it to the 
 commissaries sent with him to urge the one demand in 
 which he was interested, the establishment of the Court 
 at Paris. 
 
 He started about five o'clock, with nearly 20,000 men. 
 From the barrier by which he left Paris he sent a note in 
 pencil to reassure the Government as to his intentions.
 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 135 
 
 It was a march of seven hours. At the passage of the 
 Seine, he sent on an officer with further explanations ; 
 and he declared that he was coming under compulsion, 
 and would have gone back if the bridge had been held 
 in force. Before Versailles he halted his men, and 
 made them take the oath of fidelity to the king and the 
 Assembly. 
 
 The news of his coming had been received with terror. 
 A man, dressed like a workman, who had been on the 
 march with him, hurried forward to the Palace, and was 
 at once admitted. It was the future Duke de Richelieu, 
 twice, in after years, Prime Minister. What he told of 
 the mood of the men added to the alarm. Another 
 Council was held, at which the majority were in favour of 
 flight " Sir," said St. Priest, " if you go to Paris, it may 
 cost you your crown." " That advice," said Necker, " may 
 cost you your head." Nobody doubted that flight 
 signified civil war. But St. Priest carried his point, and 
 rode off to prepare Rambouillet for the royal family. As 
 he knew that the decision was the gravest that could be 
 taken, and that Necker's words were probably true, he 
 dropped into a walk, and was overtaken by his wife. 
 From her he learnt that the hazardous decision had been 
 reversed, and that the king would remain at Versailles. 
 His interview with the deputation of women had had a 
 momentary success, and provoked cries of " Vive le Roi ! " 
 Thereupon Necker recovered the lost ground, with the aid 
 of Liancourt, who first brought the king to Paris in the 
 summer. The carriages, which were ready, were counter- 
 manded. Later on, they were again sent for, but this 
 time they were stopped by the people. 
 
 The confusion of counsel was such that one of the 
 ministers afterwards declared that, if the Duke of Orleans 
 had appeared and pressed his demands, he would have 
 obtained everything. It is said that the managers of his 
 party saw this, and showed him his opportunity, during 
 the panic that preceded Lafayette. It is even stated that 
 they brought him to the very door of the council chamber, 
 and that he flinched, with the regency within reach of his
 
 136 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 hand. When the National Guard arrived, his chances 
 vanished. 
 
 Lafayette never was able to prove the Duke's com- 
 plicity in the crime of that night. When the Duke asked 
 him what evidence he had, he replied that if he had had 
 evidence he would have sent him for trial ; but that he 
 had enough reason for suspicion to require that he should 
 leave the country. Thrice the Duke, forcibly encouraged 
 by Mirabeau, refused to go. Thrice the general insisted, 
 and the Duke started for England. Mirabeau exclaimed 
 that he would not have him for a lackey. A long inquiry 
 was held, and ended in nothing. The man who knew 
 those times best, Roederer afterwards assured Napoleon 
 that, if there was an Orleanist conspiracy, Orleans 
 himself was not in it. 
 
 The women who invaded Versailles were followed by 
 groups of men of the same description as those who 
 committed the atrocities which followed the fall of the 
 Bastille. As night fell they became formidable, skirmished 
 with the guard, and tried to make their way into the Palace. 
 At first, when his captains asked for orders to disperse 
 the crowd, Lewis, against the advice of his sister, replied 
 that he did not make war on women. But the men 
 were armed, and evidently dangerous. The command, at 
 Versailles, was in the hands of d'Estaing, the admiral 
 of the American war, who at this critical moment 
 showed no capacity. He refused to let his men defend 
 themselves, and ordered them to withdraw. St. Priest 
 grew impatient. Much depended on their having re- 
 pressed the riot without waiting to be rescued by the 
 army of Paris. He summoned the admiral to repel 
 force by force. D'Estaing replied that he waited the 
 king's orders. The king gave none. The minister then 
 said: "When the king gives no orders, a general must judge 
 and act for himself." Again the king was silent. Later, 
 the same day, he adopted the words of St. Priest, and 
 made them his own. He said that the Count d'Estaing 
 ought to have acted on his own responsibility. No 
 orders are needed by a man of spirit, who understands his
 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 137 
 
 duty. It was the constant wish of Lewis XVI. to be in 
 the hands of stronger men, who would know how to save 
 him in spite of himself. 
 
 Mounier had obtained his unqualified assent to the 
 Rights of Man, and urged him to seize the moment to 
 take refuge in some faithful province. It was the 
 dangerous, but the honourable course, and there was hope 
 that the Assembly, standing by him, would prevent an 
 outbreak of war. He conveyed the royal message to the 
 Assembly, at a night sitting, much hindered by the 
 continued presence of the visitors from Paris. Just then 
 Lafayette arrived, with his overwhelming force. He 
 assured Mounier and his friends that the men he com- 
 manded would now be easy to satisfy. But he said 
 nothing of the real purpose of his presence there. From 
 the Assembly he passed on to the king. Leaving his 
 20,000 men behind him in the darkness, he appeared at 
 the Palace gate, accompanied only by the commissaries 
 from the Hdtel de Ville. 
 
 The Swiss behind the bars warned him to reflect what 
 he was about to do. For he was entering a place crowded 
 with men passionately excited against the revolutionary 
 general, who, whether he came to save or to destroy, was 
 no longer a subject, but a master. The general told them 
 to let him in. As he passed, a voice called out, " There 
 goes Cromwell." Lafayette stood still and answered, 
 " Cromwell would not have come alone." Madame de 
 Stae'l watched him as he entered the royal presence. His 
 countenance, she says, was calm. Nobody ever saw it 
 otherwise. Lewis received him with a sensation of 
 relief, for he felt that he was safe. At that moment the 
 sovereign indeed had perished, but the man was safe. 
 The language of Lafayette was respectful and satisfactory. 
 He left to his companions the disagreeable duty of 
 imposing terms, and they exposed to the king the object 
 of this strange interposition of the middle class in arms. 
 He replied that he had already sanctioned the Rights of 
 Man, that the minister would arrange with the municipality 
 for the provisioning of Paris, that he himself would trust
 
 138 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 his person to the custody of the National Guard. The 
 fourth, and only essential matter, the transfer of the 
 Court to Paris, was left unsettled. That was to be the 
 work reserved for the morrow. Word was sent to the 
 H6tel de Ville that all was well. 
 
 Lafayette, holding the issue in his hands, betrayed no 
 impatience, and abstained from needless urging. His men 
 undertook the outer line of defence, but the Palace itself 
 was left to the Royal Guards. The king did not at once 
 realise the position, and attempted to combine the old 
 order with the new. For the remainder of the night there 
 was a divided command and an uncertain responsibility. 
 Between Lafayette outside and D'Estaing within, there 
 was an unguarded door. 
 
 The general believed that he had done enough, and 
 would easily gather the ripe fruit in the morning. Having 
 informed the President of the Assembly, still ostensibly 
 sitting, that order was restored, he went home to bed. 
 He had had a long and trying day. His rest was destined 
 to be short. Before daybreak a small band of ruffians, 
 of the kind which the Revolution furnished as a proper 
 instrument for conspirators, made their way by the garden 
 entrance into the Palace. Those who aimed at the life 
 of the king came upon a guard-room full of sleeping 
 soldiers, and retired. The real object of popular hatred 
 was the queen, and those who came for her were not so 
 easily turned from their design. Two men on guard who 
 fired upon them were dragged into the street and 
 butchered, and their heads were borne as trophies to the 
 Palais Royal. Their comrades fled for safety to the 
 interior of the Palace. But one, who was posted at the 
 door of Marie Antoinette, stood his ground, and his name, 
 Miomandre de Sainte Marie, lives as a household word. 
 One of the queen's ladies, whose sister has left a record 
 of the scene, was awakened by the noise and opened the 
 door. She saw the sentry, his face streaming with blood, 
 holding a crowd at bay. He called to her to save the 
 queen and fell, with the lock of a musket beaten into his 
 brain. She instantly fastened the lock, roused the queen,
 
 THE MARCH TO VERSAILLES 139 
 
 and hurried her, without stopping to dress, to the king's 
 apartment. 
 
 The National Guard from Paris, who were outside, 
 had not protected the two first victims ; but then they 
 interfered, and the Gardes Franchises, who had been the 
 first mutineers, and had become the solid nucleus of the 
 Parisian army, poured into the Palace. As they had 
 made their expedition of the day before for no other 
 purpose than to drive the royal troops away and to take 
 their place, none could tell what the meeting of the two 
 corps would be, and the king's men barricaded themselves 
 against the new comers. But an officer reminded the 
 Gardes Frangaises of the day when the two regiments had 
 withstood the English, side by side, and theirs had been 
 rescued by the Gardes du Corps. So they called out, 
 " Remember Fontenoy " ; and the others answered the 
 challenge and unbarred the door. 
 
 By the time that Lafayette appeared, roused from 
 untimely slumber, his men were masters of the Palace, 
 and stood between the royal family and the raging mob 
 of baffled murderers. He made the captured guardsmen 
 safe ; but although he was in supreme command, he did 
 not restore order outside. The last of the four points he 
 had been instructed to obtain, the removal of the Court to 
 his custody at the Tuileries and his own permanent 
 elevation to a position superior to the throne, was not yet 
 conceded. Until that was settled, the loyalty of his forces 
 was restrained. Nobody was arrested. Men whose hands 
 were red with the blood of Varicourt and Miomandre 
 were allowed to defy justice, and a furious crowd was left 
 for hours without molestation under the windows of the 
 king. The only cry left for them to raise was " Paris," and 
 it was sure in time to do its work. The king could not 
 escape, for Lafayette held every gate. He could not 
 resist, for Lafayette commanded every soldier. The 
 general never pressed the point. He was too cautious to 
 attend the council where the matter was considered, as if 
 the freedom of choice was left. This time Necker had 
 his way, and he came forward and announced to the
 
 140 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 assembled people that the Court was about to move to Paris. 
 Lewis, who had wandered, helpless and silent, between his 
 chair and the balcony, spoke at last, and confirmed it. 
 
 In that moment of triumph Lafayette showed himself 
 a man of instinct and of action. The multitude had 
 sufficiently served his purpose ; but their own passions 
 were not appeased, and the queen personified to them all 
 the antagonistic and unpopular forces. The submission 
 of the king was a foregone conclusion : not so the recon- 
 ciliation of the queen. He said to her, " What are your 
 Majesty's intentions ? " She answered, " I know my fate. 
 I mean to die at the feet of the king." Then Lafayette 
 led her forward, in the face of the storm, and, as not a 
 word could be heard, he respectfully kissed her hand. 
 The populace saw and cheered. Under his protectorate, 
 peace was made between the Court and the democracy. 
 
 In all these transactions, which determined the future 
 of France, the Assembly had no share. They had had 
 no initiative and no counsel. Their President had not 
 known how to prevent the irruption of the women ; he 
 had supplied them with bread, and had been unable to 
 turn them out until the National Guard arrived. After 
 two in the morning, when he heard that all was quiet at 
 the Palace, he adjourned the sitting. Next day he 
 proposed that they should attend the king in a body ; 
 but Mirabeau would not allow it to be done. One 
 hundred deputies gave a futile escort to the royal family, 
 and the Assembly followed soon after. The power was 
 passing from them to the disciplined people of Paris, and 
 beyond them and their commander to the men who 
 managed the masses. Their reign had lasted from July 
 1 6 to October 6. 
 
 It took seven hours to bring the royal family from 
 Versailles to Paris, at a foot pace, surrounded by the 
 victorious women, who cried : " We bring the baker, the 
 baker's wife, and the baker's boy." And they were right. 
 Supplies became abundant ; and the sudden change 
 encouraged many to believe that the scarcity had not 
 been due to economic causes.
 
 X 
 
 MIRABEAU 
 
 THE transfer of the Government to Paris, which degraded 
 and obscured the king, at once made the queen the 
 foremost person in the State. Those days of October 
 are an epoch in her character as well as in her life, and 
 we must turn our thoughts to her, who had so much 
 influence and so much sorrow, and who beyond all 
 women in European history, excepting one, has charmed 
 and saddened mankind. She had proved inferior to her 
 position during the years of her prosperity, and had 
 disgraced herself, even in her mother's eyes, by her share 
 in the dismissal of Turgot. The Court was filled with 
 stories injurious to her good name, and the calumny of 
 the diamond necklace showed so clearly what a Prince of 
 the Church thought her capable of, staking his existence 
 on his belief, that her own sister suspected her, and they 
 remained long estranged. Her frivolity was unchecked by 
 religion ; but a year or two before her misfortunes began, 
 she became more serious ; and when they were about to 
 end, a priest found his way into the prison, and she was 
 prepared to die. At first, she was dreaded as the most 
 illiberal influence near the throne, and the Parliament of 
 Paris denounced her as the occult promoter of oppression. 
 In the decisive days of June 1789 she induced Lewis to 
 sacrifice to the cause of aristocracy the opportune reforms 
 that might have retrieved his fortunes. The emigration 
 left her to confront alone the vengeance of the people. 
 The terrific experience of October, when she saw death so 
 near, and was made to feel so keenly the hatred she inspired, 
 
 141
 
 142 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 sobered in a moment the levity of her life, and brought out 
 higher qualities. It was on that day that she began to re- 
 mind those around her whose daughter she was. Ignorant 
 as she was and passionate, she could never become a safe 
 adviser. But she acquired decision, vigour, and self- 
 command, and was able sometimes to strengthen the 
 wavering mind of her husband. Too brave to be easily 
 frightened, she refused at first the proffered aid of 
 Mirabeau ; and when, too late, she bent her pride to ask 
 for it, she acted with her eyes open, without confidence or 
 hope. For the surging forces of the day, for the idea that 
 might have saved her, the ideaof a government uniting 
 the best properties of a monarchy with the best properties 
 of a republic, she had neither sympathy nor understand- 
 ing. Yet she was not wedded to the maxims that had 
 made the greatness of her race, and the enmity of the 
 princes and the dmigrts saved her from the passions of 
 the old regime. Conde" spoke of her as a democrat ; and 
 she would have been glad to exchange the institutions 
 of 1791 for something like the British constitution as it 
 existed in those Tory days. She perished through her 
 insincerity more than through the traditional desire for 
 power. When the king was beheaded, the Prince Bishop 
 of Bamberg and Wiirzburg, reputed the most sagacious and 
 enlightened among the prelates of the empire, was heard 
 to say, " It ought to have been the queen." We who 
 see farther may allow the retribution that befell her 
 follies and her errors to arrest our judgment. 
 
 Marie Antoinette's negotiation with Mirabeau, and the 
 memorable endeavour of Mirabeau to restore the con- 
 stitutional throne, is the central feature in the period now 
 before us. 
 
 By the compulsory removal to Paris the democracy 
 became preponderant. They were strengthened by the 
 support of organized anarchy outside, and by the dis- 
 appearance of their chief opponents within. Mounier was 
 the first to go. The outrage at Versailles had occurred 
 while he presided, and he resigned his seat with indignation. 
 He attempted to rouse his own province against the
 
 MIRABEAU 143 
 
 Assembly, which had betrayed its mandate, and renounced 
 its constituents ; but Dauphin^, the home and basis of his 
 influence, rejected him, and he went into exile. His 
 example was followed by Lally Tollendal and a large 
 number of moderate men, who despaired of their country, 
 and who, by declining further responsibility, helped to 
 precipitate the mischief they foresaw. 
 
 The constitutional cause, already opposed by Conserva- 
 tives, was now deserted by the Liberals. Malouet remained 
 at his post. He had been less prominent and less eager than 
 Mounier, and he was not so easily discouraged. The 
 Left were now able to carry out in every department of 
 the State their interpretation of the Rights of Man. 
 They were governed mainly by two ideas. They dis- 
 trusted the king as a malefactor, convicted of the un- 
 pardonable sin of absolutism, whom it was impossible 
 to subject to too much limitation and control ; and they 
 were persuaded that the securities for individual freedom 
 which are requisite under a personal government are 
 superfluous in a popular community conducting its affairs 
 by discussion and compromise and adjustment, in which 
 the only force is public opinion. The two views tended 
 to the same practical result to strengthen the legislative 
 power, which is the nation, and weaken the executive 
 power, which is the king. To arrest this tendency was 
 the last effort that consumed the life of Mirabeau. The 
 danger that he dreaded was no longer the power of the 
 king, but the weakness of the king. 
 
 The old order of things had fallen, and the customary 
 ways and forces were abolished. The country was about 
 to be governed by new principles, new forms, and new 
 men. All the assistance that order derives from habit 
 and tradition, from local connection and personal credit, 
 was lost. Society had to pass through a dangerous and 
 chaotic interval, during which the supreme need was a 
 vigorous administration. That is the statesmanlike idea 
 which held possession of Mirabeau, and guided him 
 consistently through the very tortuous and adventurous 
 course of his last days. He had no jealousy of the Executive.
 
 144 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Ministers ought to be chosen in the Assembly, ought to lead 
 the Assembly, and to be controlled by it ; and then there 
 would be no motive to fear them and to restrict their action. 
 That was an idea not to be learnt from Montesquieu, 
 and generally repudiated by theorists of the separation of 
 powers. It was familiar to Mirabeau from his experience 
 of England, where, in 1784, he had seen the country 
 come to the support of the king against the parliament. 
 Thence he gathered the conception of a patriot king, of a 
 king the true delegate and mandatory of the nation, in 
 fact of an incipient Emperor. If his schemes had come to 
 anything, it is likely that his democratic monarch might 
 have become as dangerous as any arbitrary potentate could 
 be, and that his administration would have proved as great 
 an obstacle to parliamentary government as French admini- 
 stration has always been since Napoleon. But his purpose 
 at the time was sincerely politic and legitimate, and he 
 undertook alone the defence of constitutional principles. 
 During the month of September Mirabeau raised the 
 question of a parliamentary Ministry, both in the press 
 and in the Assembly. He prepared a list of eminent men for 
 the several offices, assigning to himself a seat in the Cabinet 
 without a portfolio. It was a plan to make him and 
 Talleyrand masters of the Government. The Ministers of 
 the day did not trust him, and had no wish to make way 
 for him, and when, on November 6, he proposed that 
 Ministers be heard in the National Assembly, the Arch- 
 bishop of Bordeaux instigated Montlosier and Lanjuinais 
 to oppose him. Both were men of high character, and 
 both had some attainments ; and in their aversion for him, 
 and for his evident self-seeking, they carried a motion for- 
 bidding deputies to take office. By this vote, of November 7, 
 which permanently excluded Mirabeau from the councils 
 of the king, the executive was deprived of authority. It is 
 one of the decisive acts of the Constituent Assembly, for 
 it ruined the constitutional monarchy. 
 
 Mirabeau was compelled to rely on a dissolution as the 
 only prospect of better things. He knew that the vote 
 was due as much to his own bad name as to a deliberate
 
 MIRABEAU 145 
 
 dislike of the English practice. The question for him 
 now was whether he could accomplish through the Court 
 what was impossible through the Assembly. He at once 
 drew up a paper, exhorting the king to place himself at 
 the head of the Revolution, as its moderator and guide. 
 The Count of Provence refused to submit his plans to the 
 king, but recommended him for the part of a secret 
 adviser. Just then an event occurred, which is mysterious 
 to this day, but which had the effect of bringing Mirabeau 
 into closer relations with the king's brother. At Christ- 
 mas, the Marquis de Favras was arrested, and it was 
 discovered that he was a confidential agent of the Prince, 
 who had employed him to raise a loan for a purpose 
 that was never divulged some said, to carry off the 
 king to a frontier fortress, others suspected a scheme of 
 counter-revolution. For the electoral law excluded the 
 ignorant and the indigent from the franchise, limiting the 
 rights of active citizenship to those who paid a very 
 moderate sum in taxes. It was obvious that this exclu- 
 sion, by confining power to property, created the raw 
 material for Socialism in the future. Some day a dex- 
 terous hand might be laid on the excluded multitude 
 congregated at Paris, to overthrow the government of the 
 middle class. The Constituent Assembly was in danger of 
 being overtrumped, and was necessarily suspicious. 
 
 By Mirabeau's advice, the Count of Provence at once 
 made a public declaration of sound revolutionary senti- 
 ments, and disavowed Favras. His speech, delivered at 
 the H6tel de Ville, was well received and he rose in 
 popular favour. Meantime, his unhappy confederate was 
 tried for treason against the nation, and found guilty. 
 Favras asked whether, on a full and explicit confession, 
 his life would be spared. He was told that nothing could 
 save him. The judge exhorted him to die in silence, like 
 a brave man. The priest who assisted him afterwards pro- 
 fessed that he had saved the life of the Count of Provence. 
 Favras underwent his fate with fortitude, keeping his secret 
 to the end. The evidence which would have compromised 
 the prince was taken away, and no historian has seen it. 
 
 L
 
 146 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 The fatal documents were restored to him when he became 
 king by the daughter of the man who had concealed them. 
 
 For some weeks the Count of Provence was ambitious 
 of power, and allowed Mirabeau to put him forward as a 
 kind of Prime Minister, or for a position analogous to 
 that of the Cardinal-nephew in seventeenth-century Rome. 
 He had ability, caution, and, for the moment, popularity ; 
 but he was irresolute, indolent, and vain. If anything 
 could be made of him, it was clear that the active partner 
 would be Mirabeau. He was neither loved nor trusted 
 by the king and queen, and with such a confederate at 
 his elbow he might become formidable. Necker devised 
 a plan by which his scheming was easily frustrated. The 
 king appeared before the Assembly, without preliminaries, 
 and delivered an unexpected statement of policy, adopting 
 the entire work of the Revolution, as far as it had gone, 
 and praising in particular the recent division of Provinces 
 into departments. 
 
 Every step, until that day, had been taken reluctantly, 
 feebly, under compulsion. Every concession had been a 
 defeat and a surrender. On February 4, under no im- 
 mediate pressure, Lewis deliberately took the lead of the 
 movement. It was an act, not of weakness, but of policy, 
 not a wound received and acquiesced in, but a stroke 
 delivered. The Assembly responded by at once taking 
 the civic oath to maintain the Constitution. As that 
 instrument did not yet exist, none could say what the 
 demonstration would involve. It was adopted for the 
 sake of committing the remnant of the privileged orders 
 who yielded under protest. 
 
 Mirabeau's aristocratic brother threw away his sword, 
 saying that there was nothing else for a gentleman to do, 
 when the king abandoned his sceptre. Mirabeau himself 
 was indignant with what he called a pantomime ; for he 
 said that Ministers had no right to screen their own re- 
 sponsibility behind the inviolate throne. He saw that his 
 patron was ingeniously set aside and stranded, and he 
 conceived that his own profound calculations were baffled. 
 Yet the perspicacity that he seldom wanted failed him at
 
 MIRABEAU 147 
 
 that moment. For the reconciliation of the people with 
 the king, the executive triumphing in its popularity, guiding 
 the Revolution to its goal, was the exact reproduction of 
 his proposals, and was borrowed from his manifestoes. 
 
 The significance of this was at once felt by the foreign 
 advisers of the queen. Mercy Argenteau, who had been 
 Austrian ambassador throughout the reign, and who was 
 a faithful and intelligent friend, suggested that if they 
 sincerely accepted the policy, they would do well to take 
 the politician with it, that the Count of Provence could 
 be best disabled by depriving him of his prompter, that 
 the magic is not in the wand but in the hand that waves 
 it. The queen hesitated, for Mirabeau had threatened her 
 in the last days at Versailles, and it was not yet proved 
 that he was not concerned in the attempt to murder her. 
 She declared that nothing would induce her to see him, 
 and she wished for somebody who could undertake to 
 manage him, and who would be responsible for his 
 conduct. Mercy, regardless of her scruples, sent for 
 La Marck, who was at his Belgian home, opposing the 
 Emperor, and fostering a Federal republic, and who in 
 consequence was not in favour with Marie Antoinette. 
 La Marck was intimate with Mirabeau, and kept him in 
 pocket money. He undertook the negotiation, with little 
 hope of a profitable result ; and at his house Mercy and 
 Mirabeau had a secret meeting. They parted, well pleased 
 with each other. Mirabeau advised that the king should 
 leave Paris, and the advice bore fruit. Mercy did not 
 declare the intentions of the Court, and Mirabeau continued 
 to act in his own way, treating with Lafayette for money 
 or an embassy, and attacking the clergy, with whose cause 
 Lewis was more and more identified. To this interval 
 belongs the famous scene where he exclaimed that from 
 the place where he stood he could see the window from 
 which a king of France fired on his Protestant subjects. 
 Maury, not perceiving the snare, bounded from his seat, 
 and cried out, " Nonsense ! it is not visible from here." 
 
 When he made that speech it is clear that Mirabeau 
 was not exerting himself to secure confidence at Court ;
 
 148 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 and for some weeks in spring the negotiation hung fire. 
 At length, La Marck convinced the queen that his friend 
 had been falsely accused of the crime of October, and the 
 king proposed that he should be asked to write down his 
 views. He peremptorily rejected La Marck's advice that 
 the Ministers should be admitted to the secret. He 
 avowed to Mercy that he intended soon to change them 
 for men who could co-operate with Mirabeau ; but he 
 was resolved not to place himself at once irrevocably in 
 the power of a man in whom he had no confidence, and 
 who was only the subject of an experiment. Consequently, 
 Mirabeau's first object of attack was the Ministry, and the 
 king's forces were divided. The position was a false one 
 from end to end ; but this hostility to Necker served to 
 disguise the reality. On the loth of May, 1790, he drew 
 up a paper which La Marck carried to the queen, and 
 which at once had the effect of making the Court zealous 
 to complete the bargain. La Marck asked Mirabeau what 
 were his conditions. He replied that he would be happy 
 on 1000 a year, if his debts could be paid ; but he feared 
 that they were too heavy for him to expect it. On inquiry, 
 it turned out that they were a little over ^8000. Lewis 
 XVI. offered to clear them off, to give him 3000 a year 
 while the Assembly lasted, and a million francs down 
 whenever it came to an end. 
 
 In this way both parties were secure. Mirabeau could 
 not play false, without losing, not only his income, but 
 an eventual sum of ^40,000. The king could not cast 
 him off without wasting the considerable sum paid to his 
 creditors. The Archbishop of Toulouse undertook the deli- 
 cate task of dealing with them ; and meeting his debtor 
 constantly, a strange intimacy arose between the two men. 
 
 Mirabeau, wild with the joy of his deliverance, forgot 
 all prudence and precaution. He took a town house and 
 a country house ; he bought books and pictures, carriages 
 and horses, and gave dinner-parties at which six servants 
 waited on his guests. After a few months he wanted 
 money, and more was given without question. The 
 Government proposed at last to buy him an annuity, with
 
 MIRABEAU 149 
 
 one-fourth of the capital which was to fall due at the 
 dissolution ; but the intention was not carried out. The 
 entire sum that Mirabeau received, up to his death, 
 from the king amounted to about 12,000. In return, 
 between June I and February 16 he wrote fifty-one 
 notes for the Court discussing the events of the day, 
 and exposing by degrees vast schemes of policy. When 
 they came to be known, half a century ago, they added 
 immeasurably to his fame, and there are people who 
 compare his precepts and prescriptions with the last ten 
 years of Mazarin and the beginning of the Consulate, 
 with the first six years of Metternich or the first eight 
 of Bismarck, or, on a different plane, with the early 
 administration of Chatham. 
 
 Mirabeau himself was proud of his new position, and 
 relied on this correspondence to redeem his good name. 
 He was paid to be of his own opinion. The king had 
 gone over to him ; he had changed nothing in his views 
 to meet the wishes of the king. His purpose throughout 
 had been the consolidation of representative monarchy 
 on the ruins of absolutism. To the king in league with 
 privilege he was implacably opposed. To the king 
 divested of that complicity he was a convinced and 
 ardent friend. 
 
 The opportunity of proving his faith was supplied by 
 Captain Cook. In his last voyage the navigator visited 
 the island since named after his lieutenant Vancouver, 
 and sailed into Nootka Sound, to which, in his report, he 
 drew the attention of the Government. Three or four 
 years before, the Spaniards had been there, and had taken 
 formal possession ; and the Russians, spreading southward 
 along the coast, acknowledged their right, and withdrew. 
 But the place was far north of the regions they actually 
 occupied ; and English adventurers, with the sanction of 
 the Government, settled there, and opened a trade in 
 peltry with China. After a year or two, the Spaniards 
 came in force, and carried them off, with their ships and 
 their cargoes ; and claiming the entire Pacific seaboard, 
 from Cape Horn to Alaska, they called on the English
 
 ISO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Ministers to punish their intruding countrymen. They 
 also equipped a fleet of forty sail of the line, assuring 
 the British charge d'affaires that it was only to protect 
 themselves against the Revolution. Pitt was not lulled 
 by these assurances, or by the delivery of the confiscated 
 ships. He had authorised the proceedings of the traders 
 with the intention of resisting the Spanish claim beyond 
 the limits of effective occupation. He now demanded 
 reparation, and fitted out a fleet superior to that with 
 which Nelson crushed the combined navies of France and 
 Spain. Under the treaty of 1761 Spain demanded the 
 support of France. If the French armed, as the Spaniards 
 were arming, there was reason to hope that England, in so 
 very dubious a question, would listen to terms ; and if 
 France refused to stand by a manifest engagement, Spain 
 would be free to seek new friends. The Emperor sus- 
 tained the appeal. It would be well for him if England 
 was diverted from the concerns of Eastern Europe, and if 
 France was occupied in the West. The French Ministers 
 admitted their obligation and began to arm. 
 
 On May 14, just after the first negotiation between 
 Mirabeau and the Court, the matter came before the 
 Assembly. It was a common belief that war would 
 strengthen the executive. The democratic leaders re- 
 pudiated the Family Compact, and resented an alliance 
 which was not national but dynastic and of the essence 
 of those things which they were sweeping away. They 
 sent pacific messages to the British embassy, and claimed 
 for the representative assembly the right of pronouncing 
 on peace and war. 
 
 Mirabeau, unlike many others, regarded a European 
 war as a danger to the throne. But he was preparing 
 for civil war, and meant to secure the army and navy on 
 the royal side. He demanded for the king the exclusive 
 right of declaring war and making peace. That is the 
 principle under a constitution where the deputies make 
 the Ministers. In France, Ministers were excluded from 
 parliament and the principle did not apply. Barnave 
 answered Mirabeau, and defeated him. On May 22, in the
 
 MIRABEAU 151 
 
 most powerful constitutional argument he ever delivered, 
 Mirabeau insisted that, if the ultimate decision rested 
 with the Assembly, it could act only on the proposition 
 of the Crown. In legislation, the king had no initiative. 
 Mirabeau established the royal initiative in peace and war. 
 It was the first-fruit of the secret compact. The new 
 ally had proved not only that he was capable and strong, 
 but that he was faithful. For by asking more than he 
 could obtain he had incurred, for the moment, a great 
 loss of credit. The excess of his unwonted royalism made 
 him an object of suspicion from that day. To recover 
 the ground, he issued an amended version of his first 
 speech ; but others printed the two texts in parallel 
 columns, and exposed the fraud. He had rendered an 
 important service, and it was done at serious cost to 
 himself. The event cemented the alliance, and secured 
 his position with the king. 
 
 The Assembly voted a solemn declaration, that France 
 would never make war for conquest, or against freedom. 
 After that, Spain had little to hope for, and Pitt became 
 defiant Negotiations lasted till October. The Assembly 
 appointed a Committee on Foreign Affairs, in which 
 Mirabeau predominated, casting all his influence on the 
 side of peace, and earning the gratitude and the gold of 
 England. At last, the mutinous temper of the Brest 
 fleet settled the question. 
 
 The great Bourbon alliance was dissolved, and Pitt 
 owed a signal triumph to the revolutionary spirit and the 
 moderating influence of Mirabeau. His defence of the 
 prerogative deserved a reward, and he was received in a 
 secret audience by Marie Antoinette. The interview took 
 place at St. Cloud, July 3. The statesman did not trust 
 his new friends, and he instructed the nephew who drove 
 him, in disguise, to the back door, to fetch the police if 
 he did not reappear in three-quarters of an hour. The 
 conversation was satisfactory, and Mirabeau, as he kissed 
 the queen's hand, declared with chivalrous fervour that 
 the monarchy was saved. He spoke sincerely. The 
 comedian and deceiver was not the wily and unscrupulous
 
 152 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 intriguer, but the inexperienced daughter of the Empress- 
 queen. She never believed in his truth. When he 
 continued to thunder against the Right, the king and 
 queen shook their heads, and repeated that he was 
 incorrigible. The last decision they came to in his life- 
 time was to reject his plans in favour of that which brought 
 them to Varennes. But as the year wore on, they could 
 not help seeing that the sophistical free-lance and giver 
 of despised advice was the most prodigious individual 
 force in the world, and that France had never seen his like. 
 Everybody now perceived it, for his talent and resource 
 increased rapidly, since he was steadied by a definite 
 purpose, and a contract he could never afford to break. 
 The hostile press knew of his visit to St. Cloud three days 
 after it occurred, and pretended to know for how many 
 millions he had sold himself. They were too reckless to 
 obtain belief, but they were very near the truth ; and the 
 secret of his correspondence was known or guessed by at 
 least twenty persons. 
 
 With this sword hanging over him, with this rope round 
 his neck, in the autumn and winter of 1790, Mirabeau 
 rose to an ascendancy in which he outweighed all parties. 
 He began his notes by an attempt to undermine the two 
 men who stood in his way. Lafayette was too strong for 
 him. On the first anniversary of the Bastille he received an 
 ovation. Forty thousand National Guards assembled from 
 all parts of France for the feast of Federation. At an altar 
 erected in the Champ de Mars, Talleyrand celebrated his 
 last Mass, and France sanctioned the doings of Paris. The 
 king was present, but all the demonstration was for the 
 hero of two hemispheres, on his white charger. In 
 November a new Ministry took office, composed of his 
 partisans. Mirabeau attempted a coalition, but Lafayette 
 did not feel the need of his friendship. He said, " I have 
 resisted the king of England in his power, the king of 
 France in his authority, the people in its rage ; I am not 
 going to yield to Mirabeau." 
 
 Necker was less tenacious of office, and rather than 
 consent to an increased issue of assignats, resigned, much
 
 MIRABEAU 153 
 
 to his honour, and retired obscurely. Mirabeau triumphed. 
 He had opposed the assignats at first, although Claviere 
 defended them in his newspaper. He now changed his 
 attitude. He not only affirmed that the Church lands 
 would be adequate security for paper, making it equivalent 
 to gold, but he was willing that the purchase money should 
 be paid in assignats, doing away with bullion altogether. 
 But the cloven hoof appeared when he assured the king 
 that the plan which he defended would fail, and would 
 involve France in ruin. He meant that it would ruin the 
 Assembly, and would enable the king to dissolve. The same 
 Machiavellian purpose guided him in Church questions. He 
 was at heart a Liberal in matters of conscience, and thought 
 toleration too weak a term for the rights inseparable from 
 religion. But he wished the constitutional oath to be im- 
 posed with rigour, and that the priests should be encouraged 
 to refuse it. He declined to give a pledge that the Assembly 
 would not interfere with doctrine, and he prepared to raise 
 the questions of celibacy and of divorce in order to aggravate 
 the irritation. He proposed to restore authority by civil 
 war ; and the road to civil war was bankruptcy and persecu- 
 tion. Meantime, the court of inquiry vindicated him from 
 aspersions connected with the attack on Versailles ; as 
 chairman of the Diplomatic Committee, he was the arbiter 
 of foreign policy ; Necker and all his colleagues save one 
 had gone down before him ; he was elected President of 
 the Jacobins in November, and when he asked for leave 
 of absence, the Assembly, on the motion of Barnave, 
 requested him not to absent himself. Montmorin, the only 
 member of Necker's Ministry who remained at his post, 
 made overtures to him, and they came to an understanding. 
 The most remarkable of all the notes to the king is the 
 one that records their conversation. They agreed on a 
 plan of united action. Mirabeau thereupon drew up the 
 47th note, which is a treatise of constitutional management 
 and intrigue, and discloses his designs in their last phase 
 but one, at Christmas 1790. 
 
 Mirabeau never swerved from the fundamental con- 
 victions of 1789, and he would have become a republican
 
 154 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 if Lewis had gone over to the reactionary Emigres, But 
 he wished him to retire to some provincial town, that he 
 might not be in the power of the Assembly, and might 
 be able to disperse it, backed by the growing anger of the 
 country. Meantime, opinion was to be worked and roused 
 by every device. He set himself strenuously to form a 
 central party out of the various groups of deputies. Mont- 
 morin was in friendly touch with some of them, and he had 
 the command of money. Mirabeau laboured to gain over 
 others. Late one night he had a long conference with 
 Malouet, whom he dazzled, and who influenced a certain 
 number of votes. 
 
 On the other hand, the action of Montmorin extended 
 to Barnave. It seemed reasonable to suppose that a 
 combination which reached from Barnave on the Left to 
 Malouet on the Right would be strong enough either to 
 retrieve its errors, or to break it up, in conjunction with 
 the Court. 
 
 At the end of January, 1791, Mirabeau became 
 President for the first time, and he occupied the chair 
 with unforeseen dignity and distinction. He had attained 
 the summit of his career. Just then, the king's aunts 
 announced their departure for Rome. There was much 
 discontent, because, if they could be detained, it would be 
 more easy to keep the king at Paris. Mirabeau made the 
 Assembly feel that interference with the princesses would 
 be contemptible. Twice they were stopped on their way, 
 and twice released. Everybody saw what this implied, 
 and Paris was agitated. A tumult broke out in the 
 Tuileries garden, which Mirabeau, summoned from table, 
 at once appeased. He was confident in his strength, and 
 when the Assembly discussed measures against emigration, 
 he swore that he would never obey a body guilty of in- 
 quisitorial dictation. He quelled the murmurs of the Left 
 by exclaiming, " Silence aux trente voix ! " This was the 
 date of his breach with the Democrats. It was February 
 28, and he was to dine with the Duke d'Aiguillon. When 
 he came, the door was shut in his face. By La Marck's 
 advice, he went that night to the Jacobins, hoping to detach
 
 MIRABEAU 155 
 
 the club from the leaders. But he had shown his hand, 
 and his enemies knew how to employ their opportunity. 
 Duport and Lameth attacked him with extreme violence, 
 aiming at his expulsion. The discussion is not reported. 
 But three of those who were present agree that Mirabeau 
 seemed to be disconcerted and appalled by the strength of 
 the case against him, and sat with the perspiration stream- 
 ing down his face. His reply was, as usual, an oratorical 
 success ; but he did not carry his audience with him, and 
 he went home disheartened. The Jacobin array stood 
 unbroken. 
 
 On March 4, Lord Gower wrote that the governing 
 power was passing to Mirabeau. But on the same day 
 he himself avowed to La Marck that he had miscalculated, 
 and was losing courage. On the 2 5 th there was a debate 
 on the Regency, in which he spoke with caution, and 
 dissembled. That day the ambassador again wrote that 
 Mirabeau had shown that he alone was fit for power. Then 
 the end came. Tissot, meeting him soon after the scene 
 at the Jacobins, thought that he looked like a dying man. 
 He was sinking under excess of work combined with excess 
 of dissipation. When he remonstrated with his brother 
 for getting drunk, the other replied, " Why grudge me the 
 only vice you have not appropriated ? " It was remembered 
 afterwards, when suspicion arose, that he had several attacks 
 of illness during that month of March. On the 26th he 
 was brought in to Paris from his villa in an alarming con- 
 dition. La Marck's interests were concerned in a debate 
 on mineral property which was fixed for the following day. 
 Fortified with a good deal of Tokay, Mirabeau spoke 
 repeatedly. It was the last time. He came back to his 
 friend and said, " Your cause is won, but I am lost." 
 When his danger became known, it seemed that nothing 
 had occurred to diminish public confidence, or tarnish the 
 lustre of his fame. The crowd that gathered in the street 
 made it almost impossible to approach his door. He was 
 gratified to know that Barnave had called, and liked to 
 hear how much feeling was shown by the people of Paris. 
 After a consultation, which was held on April I, he made
 
 156 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 up his mind to die, and signed his will. Talleyrand paid 
 him a long visit, and took away a discourse on the law 
 of Inheritance, which he read in the Assembly before the 
 remains of his friend were cold, but which did not deserve 
 the honour, being, like about thirty of his speeches, the 
 work of a stranger. The presence of Talleyrand, with 
 whom he had quarrelled, was welcome to Mirabeau, who, 
 though not a believer, did not wish it to be thought that 
 he had rejected the consolations of religion. The parish 
 priest came, but, being told of the prelate's presence, went 
 away ; and a report spread that the dying sinner had 
 received the ministrations of a more spiritual ecclesiastic 
 than the Bishop of Autun. 
 
 Mirabeau never knew how little the royal personages 
 whom he served esteemed his counsels ; and he died 
 believing that he alone could have saved the monarchy, 
 and that it would perish with him. If he had lived, he 
 said that he would have given Pitt trouble, for there was 
 a change in his foreign policy. On January 28 he still 
 spoke of the eternal fraternity of England ; but in March 
 he was ready to call out the fleet, in the interest of 
 Russia, and was only prevented by the attack of which he 
 died. Whether he supported England against Spain, or 
 Russia against England, his support was paid for in gold. 
 To his confederates, his illness was a season of terror. If 
 an enemy disguised as a creditor caused seals to be set 
 upon his papers, a discovery must have ensued that would 
 ruin many reputations and imperil many lives. He clung 
 to the secret documents on which he intended that his 
 fame should rest. On the day of his death, when they 
 were deposited with La Marck, the secretary who had 
 transcribed them stabbed himself. On the morning of 
 Saturday, April 2, there was no hope, and Mirabeau asked 
 for opium. He died before the prescription was made up. 
 Several doctors who made the post-mortem examination 
 believed that there were marks of poison ; but when they 
 were warned that they would be torn to pieces, and the 
 king also, they held their peace. 
 
 Odious as he was, and foredoomed to fail, he was yet
 
 MIRABEAU 157 
 
 the supreme figure of the time. Tocqueville, who wrote 
 the best book, or one of the two best books, on the subject, 
 looking to the permanent result, describes the Revolution 
 as having continued and completed the work of the 
 monarchy by intensifying the unity of power. It is more 
 true to say that the original and essential spirit of the 
 movement was decentralisation to take away from the 
 executive government, and to give to local authorities. 
 The executive could not govern, because it was obliged to 
 transmit orders to agents not its own, whom it neither 
 appointed nor dismissed nor controlled. The king was 
 deprived of administrative power, as he had been deprived 
 of legislative power. That distrust, reasonable in the 
 old regime, ought to have ceased, when the Ministers 
 appointed by the king were deputies presented by the 
 Assembly. That was the idea by which Mirabeau 
 would have preserved the Revolution from degenerating 
 through excess of decentralisation into tyranny. As a 
 Minister, he might have saved the Constitution. It is 
 not to the discredit of the Assembly that the horror 
 which his life inspired made his genius inefficient, and 
 that their labours failed because they deemed him too 
 bad for power. 
 
 If Mirabeau is tried by the test of public morals, the 
 only standard of political conduct on which men may be 
 expected to agree, the verdict cannot be doubtful. His 
 ultimate policy was one vast intrigue, and he avowedly 
 strove to do evil that good might come. The thing is 
 hardly less infamous in the founder of the Left Centre 
 than in Maury and his unscrupulous colleagues of the 
 Right. There was at no time a prospect of success, for 
 he never had the king or the queen for one moment 
 with him. 
 
 The answer is different if we try him by a purely 
 political test, and ask whether he desired power for the 
 whole or freedom for the parts. Mirabeau was not only 
 a friend of freedom, which is a term to be defined, but a 
 friend of federalism, which both Montesquieu and Rousseau 
 regarded as the condition of freedom. When he spoke
 
 158 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 confidentially, he said that there was no other way in 
 which a great country like France could be free. If in 
 this he was sincere, and I believe that he was sincere, he 
 deserves the great place he holds in the memory of his 
 countrymen.
 
 XI 
 SIEVES AND THE CONSTITUTION CIVILE 
 
 BEFORE coming to the conflict between Church and 
 State, with which the legislation of 1790 closes, I must 
 speak of a man memorable far beyond Mirabeau in the 
 history of political thought and political action, who is 
 the most perfect representative of the Revolution. I 
 mean the Abb Sieyes. As a priest without a vocation, 
 he employed himself with secular studies, and mastered 
 and meditated the French and the English writers of the 
 age, politicians, economists, and philosophers. Learning 
 from many, he became the disciple of none, and was 
 thoroughly independent, looking beyond the horizon of 
 his century, and farther than his own favourites, Rousseau, 
 Adam Smith, and Turgot He understood politics as the 
 science of the State as it ought to be, and he repudiated 
 the product of history, which is things as they are. No 
 American ever grasped more firmly the principle that 
 experience is an incompetent teacher of the governing 
 art He turned resolutely from the Past, and refused to 
 be bound by the precepts of men who believed in slavery 
 and sorcery, in torture and persecution. He deemed 
 history a misleading and useless study, and knew little 
 of its examples and its warnings. But he was sure that 
 the Future must be different, and might be better. In 
 the same disdainful spirit he rejected Religion as the 
 accumulated legacy of childhood, and believed that it 
 arrested progress by depreciating terrestrial objects. 
 Nevertheless he had the confidence of Lubersac, Bishop 
 of Tr^guier, and afterwards of Chartres, who recommended 
 him to the clergy of Montfort as their deputy.
 
 160 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Sieyes preferred to stand for the Third Estate at Paris, 
 where he was elected last of all the candidates. One of 
 his preliminary tracts circulated in 30,000 copies, and 
 had promptly made him famous, for it was as rich in con- 
 sequences as the ninety-five theses of Wittenberg. His 
 philosophy of history consisted in one idea. Barbarians 
 had come down from Germany on the people of civilised 
 and imperial Gaul, and had subjugated and robbed them, 
 and the descendants of the invading race were now the 
 feudal nobles, who still held power and profit, and 
 continued to oppress the natives. This identification of 
 privileged noble with conquering Frank was of older 
 date ; and in this century it has been made the master-key 
 to modern history. When Thierry discovered the secret 
 of our national development in the remarks of Wamba 
 the Witless to Gurth, under the Sherwood oaks, he applied 
 to us a formula familiar to his countrymen ; and Guizot 
 always defined French history as a perpetual struggle 
 between hostile nations until the eighteenth century made 
 good the wrong that was done in the fifth. 
 
 Right or wrong, the theory of Sieyes was adopted by 
 his most learned successors, and must not be imputed 
 to ignorance. His argument is that the real nation 
 consisted of the mass of men enjoying no privilege, and 
 that they had a claim for compensation and reprisal 
 against those who had been privileged to oppress and to 
 despoil them. The Third Estate was equal to the three 
 Estates together, for the others had no right to be re- 
 presented. As power exercised otherwise than by consent, 
 power that does not emanate from those for whose use 
 it exists, is a usurpation, the two first orders must be 
 regarded as wrongdoers. They ought to be repressed, and 
 the means of doing harm taken from them. 
 
 Although Sieyes neither wrote well nor spoke well, 
 yet within a fortnight of his maiden speech he had 
 vanquished the ancient order of things in France. The 
 Court, the Church and the Noblesse had gone down before 
 the imposing coherence of his ideas. He soon lost 
 confidence in the Assembly, as it fell under the control
 
 SIEVES AND CONSTITUTION CIVILE 161 
 
 of intruding forces, and he drew back into an attitude 
 of reserve and distrust. Many of his measures were 
 adopted, but he deemed that they were spoilt in the 
 process, and that men who sought popular applause were 
 averse from instruction. 
 
 Sieyes was essentially a revolutionist, because he held 
 that political oppression can never be right, and that 
 resistance to oppression can never be wrong. And he 
 was a royalist, not as believing in the proprietary right 
 of dynasties, but because monarchy, justly limited and 
 controlled, is one of many forces that secure the liberty 
 which is given by society and not by nature. He was a 
 Liberal, for he thought liberty the end of government, 
 and defined it as that which makes men most completely 
 masters of their faculties, in the largest sphere of in- 
 dependent action. He was also a democrat, for he 
 would revise the constitution once in a generation ; and 
 he described the law as the settled will of those who are 
 governed, which those who govern have no share in 
 making. But he was less a democrat than a Liberal, 
 and he contrived scientific provision against the errors of 
 the sovereign nation. He sacrificed equality by refusing 
 the vote to those who paid no taxes, and he preferred an 
 elaborate system of indirect and filtered election. He 
 broke the direct tide of opinion by successive renewals, 
 avoiding dissolution. According to his doctrine, the 
 genuine national will proceeds from debate, not from 
 election, and is ascertained by a refined intellectual 
 operation, not by coarse and obvious arithmetic. The 
 object is to learn not what the country thinks, but what 
 it would think if it was present at the discussion carried 
 on by men whom it trusted. Therefore there is no im- 
 perative mandate, and the deputy governs the constituent. 
 He mitigated democracy by another remarkable device. 
 The Americans have made the guardians of the law into 
 watchers on the lawgiver, giving to the judiciary power to 
 preserve the Constitution against the legislature. Sieyes 
 invented a special body of men for the purpose, calling 
 them the constitutional jury, and including not judges, 
 
 If
 
 162 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 for he suspected those who had administered the ancient 
 law of France, but the elite of veteran politicians. 
 
 Thus, although all power emanates from the nation 
 alone, and very little can be delegated to an hereditary 
 and irresponsible monarch, he intended to restrict its 
 exercise at every point, and to make sure that it would 
 never be hasty, or violent, and that minorities should be 
 heard. In his sustained power of consistent thinking, 
 Sieyes resembles Bentham and Hegel. His flight is low, 
 and he lacks grace and distinction. He seems to have 
 borrowed his departments from Harrington, the distilled 
 unity of power from Turgot, the rule of the mass of 
 taxpayers over the unproductive class above them, from 
 the notion that labour is the only source of wealth, which 
 was common to Franklin and Adam Smith. But he 
 is profoundly original, and though many modern writers 
 on politics exceed him in genius and eloquence and 
 knowledge, none equal him in invention and resource. 
 When he was out of public life, during the Legislative 
 Assembly, he acted as adviser to the Girondins. There- 
 fore he became odious to Robespierre who, after the fall 
 of Danton, turned against him, and required Barere to 
 see what he could be charged with. For, he said, Sieyes 
 has more to answer for as an enemy to freedom than 
 any who have fallen beneath the law. 
 
 The Abbess nerves never quite recovered from the 
 impressions of that time. When he fell ill, forty years 
 later, and became feverish, he sent down to tell the 
 porter that he was not at home, if Robespierre should call. 
 He offered some ideas for the Constitution of 1795, which 
 found no support. He patiently waited till his time 
 came, and refused a seat on the Directory. In 1799, 
 when things were at the worst, he came back from the 
 embassy at Berlin, took the command, and rendered 
 eminent service. He had no desire for power. " What I 
 want," he said, " is a sword." For a moment he had thought 
 of the Duke of Brunswick and the Archduke Charles ; at 
 last he fixed on Joubert, and sent him to fight Suworow 
 in Italy. If he had come home crowned with victory,
 
 SIEYES AND CONSTITUTION CIVILE 163 
 
 the remnant of the National Assembly was to have been 
 convoked, to place the daughter of Lewis on her father's 
 throne. 
 
 At Novi, in the first action, Joubert fell, and Moreau 
 commanded the retreat. Sieyes now applied to him. 
 Moreau was not yet the victor of Hohenlinden. His 
 ascendancy was doubtful, and he hesitated. They were 
 conferring together when news came that Bonaparte had 
 escaped from Egypt, and would soon be at Paris. Sieyes 
 exclaimed, rather impudently, " Then France is saved ! " 
 Moreau retorted, " I am not wanted. That is the man 
 for you." At first Bonaparte was reserved, and took so 
 much time to feel his way that Sieyes, who was the head 
 of the government, called him an insolent fellow who 
 deserved to be shot. Talleyrand brought them together, 
 and they soon came to an understanding. The conspiracy 
 of Brumaire would have failed at the deciding moment 
 but for the Abbe 1 . For Bonaparte, when threatened with 
 outlawry, lost his head, and Sieyes quietly told him to 
 drive out the hostile deputies. Thereupon the soldier, 
 obeying the man of peace, drew his sword and expelled 
 them. 
 
 Everybody now turned to the great legislator of 1789 
 for the Constitution of the hour. With incomparable 
 opportunities for observation, he had maturely revolved 
 schemes for the government of France on the lines of that 
 which was rejected in 1795. He refused to write any- 
 thing ; but he consented to dictate, and his words were 
 taken down by Boulay de la Meurthe, and were published 
 long after, in a volume of which there is no copy at Paris 
 or in London. 
 
 What I have just said will give you a more favour- 
 able view of Sieyes than you may find in books. The 
 Abbe" was not a high-minded man, and he has no friends 
 in his own country. Some dislike him because he was a 
 priest, some because he was an unfrocked priest. He is 
 odious to royalists as a revolutionist, and to republicans 
 as a renegade. I have spoken of him as a political 
 thinker, not as a writer, an orator, or an administrator.
 
 164 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Mr. Wentworth Dilke and Mr. Buckle 1 have pointed out 
 something more than specks in the character of Burke. 
 Even if much of what they say is true, I should not 
 hesitate to acknowledge him as the first political intellect 
 of his age. Since I first spoke of Sieyes, certain papers 
 have come to light tending to show that he was as wicked 
 as the rest of them. They would not affect my judgment 
 on his merit as a thinker. 
 
 In this oracular manner the Constitution of 1799 came 
 into existence, and it was not his fault that it degenerated 
 in the strong hands of Napoleon. He named the three 
 Consuls, refusing to be one himself, and he passed into 
 ceremonious obscurity as president of the Senate. 
 
 When the Emperor had quarrelled with his ablest 
 advisers he regretted that he had renounced the aid of 
 such an auxiliary. He thought him unfit to govern, for 
 that requires sword and spurs ; but he admitted that Sieyes 
 often had new and luminous ideas, and might have been 
 useful to him beyond all the ministers of the Empire. 
 Talleyrand, who disliked Sieyes, and ungenerously re- 
 proached him with cupidity, spoke of him to Lord 
 Brougham as the one statesman of the time. The best 
 of the political legacy of the Revolution has been his 
 work. Others pulled down, but he was a builder, and he 
 closed in 1799 the era which he had opened ten years 
 before. In the history of political doctrine, where almost 
 every chapter has yet to be written, none will be more 
 valuable than the one that will show what is permanent 
 and progressive in the ideas that he originated. 
 
 It was the function of the constituent Assembly to 
 recast the laws in conformity with the Rights of Man, to 
 abolish every survival of absolutism, every heirloom of 
 inorganic tradition, that was inconsistent with them. In 
 every department of State they were obliged to make 
 ruins, to remove them, and to raise a new structure from 
 the foundation. The transition from the reign of force to 
 
 1 Dilke, Papers of a Critic, vol. ii. pp. 309-384 ; Buckle, History of Civilisa- 
 tion, ed. J. M. Robertson, pp. 258-269.
 
 SIEVES AND CONSTITUTION CIVILE 165 
 
 the reign of opinion, from custom to principle, led to a 
 new order through confusion, uncertainty, and suspense. 
 The efficacy of the coming system was nowhere felt at 
 first. The soldiers, who were so soon to form the finest 
 army ever known, ran away as soon as they saw a shot 
 fired. The prosperous finances of modern France began 
 with bankruptcy. But in one division of public life the 
 Revolution not only made a bad beginning, but went on, 
 step by step, to a bad end, until, by civil war and anarchy 
 and tyranny, it had ruined its cause. The majority of the 
 clergy were true to the new ideas, and on some decisive 
 occasions, June 19 and August 4, promoted their victory. 
 Many prelates were enlightened reformers, and even 
 Robespierre believed that the inferior clergy were, in the 
 bulk, democratic. Nevertheless the Assembly, by a series 
 of hostile measures, carefully studied, and long pursued, 
 turned them into implacable enemies, and thereby made the 
 Revolution odious to a large part of the French people. 
 
 This gradual but determined change of front, improb- 
 able at first, and evidently impolitic, is the true cause of 
 the disastrous conflict in which the movement of 1789 
 came to ruin. Had there been no ecclesiastical establish- 
 ment to deal with, it may be that the development of 
 Jacobin theory, or the logic of socialism, would have led 
 to the same result. As it was, they were secondary 
 causes of the catastrophe that was to follow. That there 
 was a fund of active animosity for the church, in a genera- 
 tion tutored by Voltaire, Diderot, Helvdtius, Holbach, 
 Rousseau and Raynal, none could doubt. But in the men 
 of more immediate influence, such as Turgot, Mirabeau 
 and Sieyes, contempt was more visible than resentment ; 
 and it was by slow degrees that the full force of aversion 
 predominated over liberal feeling and tolerant profession. 
 But if the liberal tendency had been stronger, and tolerant 
 convictions more distinct, there were many reasons which 
 made a collision inevitable between the Church and the 
 prevailing ideas. The Gallican Church had been closely 
 associated with the entire order of things which the 
 Assembly, at all costs, was resolved to destroy. For three
 
 1 66 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 centuries from the time when they became absolute the 
 French kings had enjoyed all the higher patronage. 
 No such prerogative could be left to the Crown when it 
 became constitutional, and it was apparent that new 
 methods for the appointment of priest and prelate, that a 
 penetrating change in the system of ecclesiastical law, 
 would be devised. 
 
 Two things, chiefly, made the memory of monarchy 
 odious : dynastic war and religious persecution. But 
 the wars had ended in the conquest of Alsace, and in the 
 establishment of French kings in Spain and Naples. The 
 odium of persecution remained ; and if it was not always 
 assignable to the influence of the clergy, it was largely due 
 to them, and they had attempted to renew it down to the 
 eve of the Revolution. The reduction of the royal power 
 was sure to modify seriously the position of men upon 
 whom the royal power, in its excess, had so much relied, 
 and who had done so much to raise up and to sustain it. 
 People had come to believe that the cause of liberty 
 demanded, not the emancipation, but the repression of 
 the priesthood. These were underlying motives ; but the 
 signal was given by financial interests. The clergy, being 
 a privileged order, like the nobles, were involved in the 
 same fate. With the nobles, at the same night sitting of 
 August 4, they surrendered the right of taxing, and of 
 not being taxed. 
 
 When the principle of exemption was rejected, the 
 economists computed that the clergy owed 100 millions 
 of arrears. Their tithes were abolished, with a promise of 
 redemption. But this the landowners would not suffer, 
 and they gained largely by the transaction. It followed 
 that the clergy, instead of a powerful and wealthy order, 
 had to become salaried functionaries. Their income was 
 made a charge on the State ; and as the surplice fees went 
 with the abolished tithe, the services of the parish priest to 
 his parishioners were gratuitous. It was not intended that 
 the priests should be losers, and the bargain was a bad 
 one for the public. It involved an expenditure of at 
 least two millions a year, at a time when means were
 
 SIEVES AND CONSTITUTION CIVILE 167 
 
 wanting to pay the national creditor. The consequences 
 were obvious. The State, having undertaken to remunerate 
 the inferior clergy out of a falling revenue, had a 
 powerful motive to appropriate what remained of the 
 Church property when the tithes were lost That resource 
 was abundant for the purpose. But it was concentrated 
 in the hands of the higher clergy and of religious orders 
 both under the ban of opinion, as nobles or as corpora- 
 tions. Their wealth would clear off the debts of the 
 clergy, would pay all their salaries and annuities, and 
 would strengthen the public credit. After the first 
 spoliation, in the month of August, these consequences 
 became clear to all, and the secularisation of Church 
 property was a foregone conclusion. 
 
 On October 10 Talleyrand moved that it be appro- 
 priated by the State. He computed that after ample 
 endowment of the clergy, there would be a present and 
 increasing surplus of 2,000,000 a year. It was difficult 
 for the clergy to resist the motion, after the agreement of 
 August, that the State should make provision for them. 
 The Archbishop of Paris had surrendered the tithe to be 
 disposed of by the nation ; and he afterwards added the 
 gold and silver vessels and ornaments, to the value of 
 several millions. Be"thizy, Bishop of Usez, had declared 
 the Church property a gift of the nation, which the nation 
 alone could recall. Maury, loosely arguing, admitted that 
 property is the product of law ; from which it followed 
 that it was subject to modification by law. It was urged 
 in reply that corporate property is created by law, but not 
 private, as the individual has his rights from nature. The 
 clergy complained that the concessions of August were 
 applied to their destruction in November, but they suffered 
 by their change of front. Boisgelin, Archbishop of Aix, 
 proposed a practical and statesmanlike arrangement As 
 the credit of the Church stood better than the credit of 
 the State, he offered to advance 16,000,000 as a loan 
 to the Government on the security of Church property, 
 which it would thus become impossible for the Assembly 
 to tamper with. The State would be rescued from its
 
 1 68 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 present difficulties ; the Church would secure the enjoy- 
 ment of its wealth for the future. 
 
 By restoring the finances, and the authority of govern- 
 ment, it was believed that this plan would ensure the 
 success of the Revolution, and would prevent the collapse 
 that was already threatening. Necker, for a moment, was 
 fascinated. But his wife reminded him that this compact 
 would establish Catholicism for ever as the State Church 
 in France, and he broke off the conference. Talleyrand's 
 motion was altered and reproduced in a mitigated form ; 
 and on November 26, 1789, 568 votes to 346 decided 
 that the possessions of the clergy were at the disposal of 
 the nation. On December 1 9 it was resolved that the sum 
 of 1 6 millions should be raised by the sale of the new 
 national property, to be the basis for an issue of paper money. 
 That was the beginning of the assignats that rendered 
 signal service at first, and fell rapidly after two years. It 
 was made apparent that more was at work below the 
 surface than the financial purpose. There was the desire 
 to break up a powerful organisation, to disarm the aristo- 
 cratic episcopate, and to bind the individual priest to the 
 Revolution. Therefore Malouet made no impression 
 when he urged that they were taking on themselves the 
 maintenance not only of the priesthood, but of the poor ; 
 and that no surplus would be available as long as there 
 was a Frenchman starving. 
 
 In August, 1789, a committee on Church questions had 
 been appointed, and in February, as it did not agree, its 
 numbers were increased, and the minority was swamped. 
 Thereupon they reported against the religious orders. 
 Monasticism for some time had been declining, and the 
 monks fell, in a few years, from 26,000 to 17,000. Nine 
 religious orders disappeared in the course of twelve years. 
 On February 1 3, 1 790, the principle that the civil law 
 supported the rule against the monk was abandoned. 
 Members of monastic orders were to depart freely if they 
 liked, and to remain if they liked. Those who elected to 
 leave were to receive a pension. The position of those 
 who remained was regulated in a series of decrees, adverse
 
 SIEYfiS AND CONSTITUTION CIVILE 169 
 
 to the system, but favourable to the inmate. It was 
 not until after the fall of the throne that all monastic 
 orders were dissolved, and all their buildings were seized. 
 
 When the property of the Church became the property 
 of the State, the committee drew up a scheme of distri- 
 bution. They called it the Civil Constitution of the 
 Clergy, meaning the regulation of relations between 
 Church and State under the new Constitution. 
 
 The debate began on May 29, and the final vote was 
 taken on July 1 2. The first object was to save money. 
 The bishops were rich, they were numerous, and they 
 were not popular. Those among them who had been 
 chosen by the Church itself for its supreme reward, the 
 Cardinal's hat Rohan, Lom^nie de Brienne, Bernis, 
 Montmorency and Talleyrand were men notoriously of 
 evil repute. Here then the Committee proposed to 
 economise, reducing the number by fifty, and their income to 
 a thousand a year. Each of the departments, just created, 
 was to become a diocese. There were no archbishops. 
 This was not economy, but theory. By putting all bishops 
 on the same level, they lowered the papacy. For the 
 Jansenists influenced the Assembly, and the Jansenists 
 had, for a century, borne persecution, and had learnt to 
 look with aversion both on papacy and prelacy, under 
 which they had suffered, and they had grown less averse 
 to presbyterianism. As they took away the patronage 
 from the king, and did not transfer it to the Pope who 
 was a more absolute sovereign than the king, and besides 
 was a foreigner, they met the difficulty by the principle 
 of election, which had been upheld by high authorities, 
 and had played a great part in earlier times. The bishop 
 was to be chosen by the departmental electors, the parish 
 priest by the district electors ; and this was to be done in 
 the Church after Mass. It was assumed, but not ordained, 
 that electors of other denominations would thereby be 
 excluded. But at Strasburg a bishop was elected by a 
 Protestant majority. In conformity with the opinion of 
 Bossuet, the right of institution was taken away from 
 Rome.
 
 170 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 It was the office of the king to negotiate with the Pope, 
 and he might have saved the Revolution, the limited 
 monarchy, and his own life, if he had negotiated wisely. 
 The new dioceses, the new revenues, were afterwards 
 accepted. The denial of papal institution was in the 
 spirit of Gallicanism ; and the principle of election had 
 a great tradition in its favour, and needed safeguards. 
 Several bishops favoured conciliation, and wished the 
 measure to be discussed in a National Council. Others 
 exhorted the Pope to make no concession. Lewis barely 
 requested him to yield something ; and when it became 
 clear that Rome wished to gain time, on August 24 he 
 gave his sanction. At the same time he resolved on flight, 
 relying on provincial discontent and clerical agitation to 
 restore his throne. 
 
 On November 27 the Assembly determined to enforce 
 acceptance of the Civil Constitution. Every ecclesiastic 
 holding preferment or exercising public functions was 
 required to take an oath of fidelity to the Constitution of 
 France, sanctioned by the king. The terms implicitly 
 included the measure regarding the Church, which was 
 now part of the Constitution, and which a large majority 
 of the bishops had rejected, but Rome had not Letters 
 had come from Rome which were suppressed ; and after 
 the decree of November and its sanction by the king on 
 December 26, the Pope remained officially silent. 
 
 On the 4th of January 1791 the ecclesiastical deputies 
 were summoned to take the prescribed oath. No con- 
 ditions or limitations were allowed, Mirabeau specially 
 urging rigour, in the hope of reaction. When the Assembly 
 refused to make a formal declaration that it meant no 
 interference with the exclusive domain of religion, the 
 great majority of clerical deputies declined the oath. 
 About sixty took it unconditionally, and the proportion 
 out of doors was nearly the same. In forty-five depart- 
 ments we know that there were 13,426 conforming clergy. 
 It would follow that there were about 23,000 in the whole 
 of France, or about one-third of the whole, and not enough 
 for the service of all the churches. The question now was
 
 SIEVES AND CONSTITUTION CIVILE 171 
 
 whether the Church of France was to be an episcopal or a 
 presbyterian Church. Four bishops took the prescribed 
 oath ; but only one of them continued to act as the bishop 
 of one of the new sees. Talleyrand refused his election 
 at Paris, and laid down his mitre and the ecclesiastical 
 habit. Before retiring, he consecrated two constitutional 
 bishops, and instituted Gobel at Paris. He said, afterwards, 
 that but for him the French constitutional Church would 
 have become presbyterian, and consequently democratic, 
 and hostile to the monarchy. 
 
 Nobody could be more violently opposed to royalism 
 than some of the elected prelates, such as Fauchet, Bishop 
 of Calvados, who acted with the Girondins and perished 
 with them, or Gr6goire, the Bishop of Blois. Gre"goire 
 was the most conspicuous, and is still the best known of 
 the constitutional clergy. He was a man of serious con- 
 victions, and as much sincerity as is compatible with 
 violence. With much general information, he was an 
 inaccurate writer, and in spite of the courage which he 
 manifested throughout the Reign of Terror, an unimpressive 
 speaker. He held fast to the doctrines of an elementary 
 liberalism, and after the fall of the Terrorists he was 
 active in the restoration of religion and the establishment 
 of toleration. He was absent on a mission, and did not 
 vote for the death of the king ; but he expressed his 
 approval, and dishonoured his later years by dissembling 
 and denying it. Gobel, the Bishop of Paris, was far 
 inferior to Gre"goire. Hoping to save his life, he renounced 
 his office under the Convention, after having offered his 
 retractation to the Pope for ; 12,000. For a time it 
 was believed that the clergy of the two churches could 
 co-exist amicably, and a moderate pension was granted to 
 the nonjurors. But there was disorder and bloodshed 
 at Nimes, and in other parts of France, and it was seen 
 that the Assembly, by its ecclesiastical legislation, had 
 created the motive and the machinery for civil war. The 
 nonjuring clergy came to be regarded as traitors and rebels, 
 and the mob would not suffer them to celebrate mass in 
 the only church that remained to them at Paris. Bailly
 
 172 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 said that when the law has spoken conscience must be 
 silent. But Talleyrand and Sieyes insisted on the 
 principle of toleration, and succeeded in causing the 
 formula to be adopted by the Assembly. It was not 
 observed, and was entirely disregarded by the second 
 legislature. 
 
 The Civil Constitution injured the Revolution not 
 only by creating a strong current of hostile feeling in the 
 country, but by driving the king to seek protection from 
 Europe against his people. The scheme of negotiation 
 which led to the general war in 1792, having been 
 delayed by disunion among the powers and the extreme 
 caution of the Emperor Leopold, began in the midst of 
 the religious crisis in the autumn of 1790. The problem 
 for us is to discover why the National Assembly, and the 
 committee that guided it, did not recognise that its laws 
 were making a breach in the established system of the 
 Church, whether Gallican or Roman, that they were in 
 flagrant contradiction with the first principles of the 
 Revolution ; and why, in that immense explosion of 
 liberal sentiment, there was no room for religious freedom. 
 They believed that there was nothing in the scheme to 
 which the Pope would not be able to consent, to avoid 
 greater evils, if the diplomacy of the king was conducted 
 wisely. What was conceded by Pius VII. to Bonaparte 
 might have been conceded by Pius VI. to Lewis XVI. 
 The judgment of Italian divines was in many instances 
 favourable to the decree of the National Assembly, and 
 the College of Cardinals was not unanimous against it 
 Their opinions found their way to Paris, and were bought 
 up by Roman agents. When the Concordat of 1801 was 
 concluded, Consalvi rejoiced that he had done so well, 
 for he was empowered, if necessary, to make still greater 
 concessions. The revolutionary canonists were persuaded 
 that the Pope, if he rejected the king's overtures, would 
 be acting as the instrument of the aristocratic party, and 
 would be governed by calculated advantage, not by 
 conscience. Che"nier's tragedy of Charles IX. was being 
 played, and revived the worst scenes of fanatical intolerance.
 
 SIEVES AND CONSTITUTION CIVILE 173 
 
 The hatred it roused was not allayed by the language of 
 Pius VI. in the spring of 1791, when, too late to influence 
 events, he condemned the Civil Constitution. For he 
 condemned liberty and toleration ; and the revolutionists 
 were able to say that there could be no peace between 
 them, and that Rome was the irreconcilable adversary 
 of the first principles on which they stood. The annexa- 
 tion of the papal dominions in France was proposed, in 
 May 1791, when the rejection of the Civil Constitution 
 became known. It was thrown out at first, and adopted 
 September 1 4. We shall see, later on, that the conflict thus 
 instituted between the Revolution and the Church hastened 
 the fall of the throne, and persecution, and civil war. 
 
 I have repeatedly pointed to the jealousy of the 
 executive as a source of fatal mischief. This is the 
 greatest instance of the harm it did. That the patronage 
 could not be left in the hands of the king absolutely, as 
 it was by the Concordat of Leo X., was obvious ; but if 
 it had been given to the king acting through responsible 
 ministers, then much of the difficulty and the danger 
 would have been overcome, and the arrangement that 
 grew out of the Concordat of Napoleon would have been 
 anticipated. That idea was consistently rejected, and, 
 stranger still, the idea of disestablishment and separation 
 was almost unperceived. A whole generation later, under 
 the influence of American and Irish examples, a school of 
 Liberals arose among French Catholics who were as 
 distinct from the Gallicans as from the Ultramontanes, 
 and possessed the solution for the perpetual rivalry of 
 Church and State. For us, the great fact is that the 
 Revolution produced nothing of the sort, and went to 
 ruin by its failure in dealing with the problem.
 
 XII 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 
 
 THE direct consequence of the ecclesiastical laws was the 
 flight of the king. From the time of his removal to Paris, 
 in October 1789, men began to study the means by 
 which he might be rescued, and his ministers were ready 
 with the necessary passports. During the summer of 
 1790, which he spent at St. Cloud, various plans were 
 proposed, and constantly rejected. The queen was 
 opposed to them, for she said : " What can the king do, 
 away from Paris, without insight, or spirit, or ascendancy ? 
 Say no more about it" But a change came over them on 
 August 24, when the Civil Constitution was sanctioned. 
 As soon as it was voted in July, Mirabeau informed 
 Lewis that he undertook to convey him, publicly, to 
 Rouen, or Beauvais, or Compiegne, where he would be 
 out of reach, and could dissolve the Assembly and 
 proclaim a better system of constitutional laws. Civil 
 war would inevitably follow ; but Mirabeau believed that 
 civil war would lead to the restoration of authority, if the 
 king put himself in the hands of the Marquis de Bouille", 
 the general commanding at Metz. Bouill had acquired 
 a high reputation by his success against the English in 
 the West Indies, and he increased it at this moment by 
 the energy with which he suppressed a mutiny in the 
 garrison of Nancy. For the service thereby rendered to 
 the State and the cause of order, he received, under 
 pressure from Mirabeau, the thanks of the Assembly. 
 The king begged him to nurse his popularity as he was 
 reserved for greater things. This is the first intimation
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 175 
 
 of the secret ; and it is confirmed by the Princess 
 Elizabeth, within a week of the sanction given to the 
 Civil Constitution. But although, in that month of 
 September, Lewis began to meditate departure from Paris, 
 and accepted the general proposed to him, he did not adopt 
 the rest of the scheme which would have made him 
 dependent on Mirabeau. At that moment his strongest 
 motive was the desire to be released from the religious 
 entanglement ; and he hoped to restore the Church to its 
 lost position on condition of buying up the assignats 
 with the property of the suppressed orders. It had been 
 computed that the Church would be able to save the 
 public credit by a sacrifice of forty millions, or to ruin the 
 revolutionary investor by refusing it Therefore the king 
 would not entertain the proposals of Mirabeau, who was 
 not the man to execute a policy favourable to the influence 
 of the priesthood. It was committed to a different 
 politician. 
 
 Breteuil, the rival of Necker, was the man preferred 
 to Mirabeau. He was living at Soleure as the acknow- 
 ledged head of the Royalists who served the king, and 
 who declined to follow the princes and the Emigres and 
 their chief intriguer Calonne. Breteuil was now consulted. 
 He advised the king to depart in secret and to take 
 refuge in a frontier fortress among faithful regiments, 
 within reach of Austrian supports. In this way Breteuil, 
 not Mirabeau, would be master, and the restoration would 
 have been in favour of the old rgime> not of the con- 
 stitutional monarchy. On one point only the two 
 advisers agreed : Breteuil, like Mirabeau, recommended 
 Bouill as the man of action. His reply was brought by 
 the Bishop of Pamiers, an eighteenth -century prelate of 
 the worldly sort, who was afterwards selected to be the 
 minister of finance if Brunswick had conquered. On 
 October 23 the bishop was sent to Metz to initiate 
 Bouilte. 
 
 In point both of talent and renown, Bouill6 was the 
 first man in the army as the emigration had left it He 
 served reluctantly under the new order, and thought of
 
 176 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 making himself a new career in Russia. But he was 
 ambitious, for he had been always successful, and the 
 emissary from the king and from Breteuil opened a 
 tempting future. He proposed three alternatives. The 
 king was to choose between Valenciennes, which would be 
 the safest and swiftest journey ; Besangon, within reach 
 of the friendly Swiss who were under agreement to 
 supply a large force on demand ; and Montme"dy, a small 
 fortified town close to the frontier, and not far from 
 Luxemburg which was the strongest of the imperial 
 fortresses. All this meant plainly Montme"dy. Besangon 
 was so far that there was time to be overtaken, and 
 Valenciennes was not in Bouille"'s territory. Nothing 
 could be done before the spring, for the emperor was 
 not yet master of his revolted provinces ; and a long 
 correspondence was carried on between the general at 
 Metz, and Count Fersen at Paris, who acted for Lewis 
 XVI. and controlled the whole. At Christmas, Bouille" 
 sent his eldest son to Paris to arrange details with him. 
 
 During the first months of 1791, which were the last 
 of his life, the ascendancy of Mirabeau rose so rapidly 
 that the king wavered between him and Breteuil. In 
 February, La Marck appeared at Metz, to lay Mirabeau's 
 bolder plan before the soldier on whose sword its execution 
 was to depend. Bouille" at once preferred it to Breteuil's, 
 and was ready to carry it out. But Fersen was so 
 confident in pledging himself to contrive the departure 
 from Paris at night and in secret, he was so resolute and 
 cool, that he dispelled all doubts, and early in March he 
 announced that the king had finally decided for Montmddy. 
 His hesitation was over, and Mirabeau was rejected. 
 Lewis could not have taken his advice without surrender- 
 ing his own main object, the restoration of the Gallican 
 Church. It was the essence of Mirabeau's policy to 
 sacrifice the priesthood. His last counsels were given on 
 February 23, five weeks before he died. He advised that 
 the king, when driving out, should be forced by the people 
 to go home ; or better still, that a mob should be gathered 
 in the court of the Tuileries to prevent him from going
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 177 
 
 out. He hoped that such an outrage would cause the 
 Assembly to secure greater liberty of movement, which 
 would serve his purpose at the proper time. 
 
 The opportunity was found on April 18, when it 
 became known that the royal family were moving to 
 St. Cloud. Easter was at hand ; and at Easter, the king 
 of France used to receive communion in public. But 
 Lewis could not receive communion. He was responsible 
 for the Civil Constitution which he had sanctioned, and 
 for the schism that was beginning. With that on his 
 conscience he was required to abstain, as people would 
 otherwise infer that neither he nor the priest who absolved 
 him saw anything to regret in the rising storm. There- 
 fore to avoid scandal it was well to be out of the way 
 at the time. The royal family were stopped at their very 
 door, as Mirabeau had desired. For more than an hour 
 they sat in the carriage, hooted and insulted by the mob, 
 Lafayette vainly striving to clear the way. As they 
 returned to the palace, the queen indiscreetly said to those 
 about them : " You must admit now, gentlemen, that we 
 are not free." The case for flight was strengthened by the 
 events of that day, except in the eyes of some who, 
 knowing the suggestion of Mirabeau, suspected a comedy, 
 and wondered how much the king had paid that a 
 howling mob might call him a fat pig to his face. 
 
 The emperor could no longer refuse aid to his sister 
 without the reproach of cruelty. He was now requested 
 to move troops near enough to the frontier to justify 
 Bouille" in forming a camp in front of Montme"dy, and 
 collecting supplies sufficient for the nucleus of a royal 
 army. He was also asked to advance a sum of money 
 for first expenses. Leopold, who scarcely knew Marie 
 Antoinette, showed extreme reserve. His hands were not 
 free in the East. He sympathised with much of the 
 work of the Revolution ; and he was not sorry to see 
 France weakened, even by measures which he disapproved. 
 His language was discouraging throughout He would 
 promise nothing until they succeeded in escaping ; and he 
 believed they could not escape. The queen resolved to 
 
 N
 
 i;8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 discover whether the gross indignity to which she had 
 been subjected had made some softening impression on 
 her brother ; and the Count de Durfort was sent to seek 
 him in his Italian dominions, with ample credentials. 
 The agent was not wisely chosen. He found Leopold at 
 Mantua, conferring with the Count d'Artois, and he fell 
 into the hands of Calonne. On his return he produced a 
 paper in twenty-one paragraphs, drawn up by Calonne, 
 with the emperor's replies, showing that Leopold would 
 invade France in the summer, with 100,000 men, that 
 the royal family were to await his coming, and that, in 
 effect, he had accepted the programme of the Emigre's. 
 
 The queen was persuaded that she would be murdered 
 if she remained at Paris while her brother's forces entered 
 France. She believed that the Emigres detested her ; 
 that they were prepared to sacrifice her husband and 
 herself to their own cause ; and that if their policy 
 triumphed, the new masters would be worse than the old. 
 She wrote to Mercy that it would become an intolerable 
 slavery. She resolved to incur the utmost risk rather 
 than owe her deliverance to d'Artois and his followers. 
 Marie Antoinette was right in her estimate of feeling in 
 the emigre camp. Gustavus III. spoke for many when 
 he said, " The king and queen, personally, may be in 
 danger ; but that is nothing to a danger that threatens 
 all crowned heads." 
 
 After their arrest at Varennes, Fersen was amazed at 
 the indecent joy of the French in Brussels, of whom many 
 avowed their satisfaction that the king and queen were 
 captured. For the plan concerted with Bouille" was to 
 serve monarchy, not aristocracy. In her passionate 
 resistance to the party of d'Artois, Cond6, and Calonne, 
 the queen felt herself the champion of popular royalism. 
 In the language of the day, she was for a counter- 
 constitution, they for a counter-revolution. There was 
 a personal question also. The queen relied on Breteuil 
 to save her from Calonne, whom she suspected of having 
 tampered with the king's confessor to learn Court secrets. 
 When she saw the answer from Mantua, she at once knew
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 179 
 
 his hand. If that was her brother's policy, it was time to 
 make a rush for freedom. The Jacobin yoke could be 
 borne, not the yoke of the Emigres. Breteuil warned 
 them to lose no time, if they would escape from thraldom 
 to their friends. When Marie Antoinette resolved that 
 flight with the risk of capture would be better than rescue 
 by such hands, she knew but half the truth. The 
 document brought back from Mantua by Durfort was a 
 forgery. It governed history for 100 years; and the 
 genuine text was not published until 1894. And we 
 know now that Calonne, behind the back of the Count 
 d'Artois, fabricated the reply which lured the king and 
 queen to their fate. On June 9 Mercy wrote that they 
 were deceived. In their terror and uncertainty, they fled. 
 The first motive of Lewis had been the horror of injuring 
 a religion which was his own. When he signed the 
 decree imposing the oath on the clergy, which began the 
 persecution, he said, " At least, it is not for long." 
 
 The elections to the next Assembly were appointed 
 for July 5. If the first Assembly was allowed to 
 accomplish its work, all that had been done to discredit 
 one party and to conciliate another, all the fruit of 
 Mirabeau's expensive intrigues, would be lost. The final 
 determination that sent them along the road to Varennes 
 was the treason hatched at Mantua. They ran the 
 gauntlet to the Argonne in the cause of limited monarchy, 
 to evade revolution and reaction. That was the spirit in 
 which Mirabeau urged departure, and in which Bouille" 
 came to the rescue ; and it is that which made the queen 
 odious to the expatriated nobles. But it was not the 
 policy of Breteuil. He refused to contemplate anything 
 but the restoration of the unbroken crown. The position 
 was ambiguous. Contrary forces were acting for the 
 moment in combination. Between the reactionary states- 
 man and the constitutional general, there was no security 
 in the character of the king. 
 
 The calculation on which the flight to Montmdy was 
 undertaken was not, in itself, unreasonable. There was a 
 strong party in the Assembly with which it was possible
 
 1 8o THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 to negotiate. In the Rhone district, along the Loire, 
 in parts of western and southern France, hundreds of 
 thousands of the most intrepid men on earth were ready 
 to die for the altar and the throne. But they were not 
 willing to expose themselves for a prince in whose hands 
 the best cause was doomed to fail, and whose last act as 
 king was to betray his faithful defenders. Instigated by 
 Bouille", the queen asked her brother to lend some 
 regiments to act with the royal forces as auxiliaries in 
 case of resistance. She wished for 30,000 men. That 
 is the significant fact that justifies the postmaster of St. 
 Me'nehould and the patriots of Varennes. The expedition 
 to Montmdy was a first step towards civil war and foreign 
 invasion. That is what these men vaguely understood 
 when they stopped the fugitives. 
 
 For the management of the journey the best advice 
 was not always taken. Instead of two light carriages, the 
 royal party insisted on travelling in one large one, which 
 Fersen accordingly ordered. The route by Rheims would 
 have been better, because Varennes was off the post road. 
 But Varennes was preferred on the ground that Rheims was 
 the coronation city, and the king might be recognised. 
 The shortest way to Montme'dy passed through Belgian 
 territory ; but it was thought dangerous to cross the 
 frontier. It was urged that a military display on the 
 road would lead to trouble, but it was decided that it 
 was necessary beyond Chalons. Bouill's advice was not 
 always sound, but there was one point on which it proved 
 fatal to reject it. He wished the travellers to be accom- 
 panied by an experienced officer, whom he knew to be 
 masterful, energetic, and quick in an emergency. The 
 king thought of several, but the queen was disinclined to 
 have a stranger in the carriage. But she asked for three 
 able-bodied officers, to be employed as couriers, adding 
 that they need not be unusually intelligent In those 
 words the coming story is told. The three couriers 
 answered too faithfully the specified qualification. 
 
 The departure had been fixed for the second week of 
 June. Bouille" still hoped for a movement among the
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 181 
 
 imperialists, and he requested a delay. On the i6th he 
 was informed that the royal family would start at midnight 
 on the 2Oth. He had sent one of his colonels, the Duke 
 de Choiseul, to Paris for the last instructions. Choiseul's 
 horses were to fetch the king at Varennes, and he was to 
 entertain him in his house at Montme'dy. He had the 
 command of the farthest detachment of cavalry on the 
 road from Montme'dy to Chalons, and it was his duty to 
 close up behind the royal carriage, to prevent pursuit, and 
 to gather all the detachments on the road, as the king 
 passed along. He would have arrived at the journey's 
 end with at least 400 men. His last orders were to 
 convey the king across the frontier, if Bouille" should fall. 
 The great abbey of Orval was only a few miles away, and 
 it was thought that, at the last moment, rt might be found 
 safer than the hostile soil of France. 
 
 Choiseul was not equal to the difficult part he had to 
 perform. He set out for his post on the Monday afternoon, 
 carrying with him a marshal's baton, which had belonged 
 to his uncle, and the queen's hairdresser, Leonard. For 
 Thursday was the solemn festival of Corpus Christi, when a 
 military mass would be celebrated in the camp, and, in the 
 presence of the assembled army, Bouille" was to be made 
 a marshal of France. The queen could not be allowed 
 to appear at such a function without the artist's help, and 
 he was hurried away, much against his will, without a 
 word of explanation. The king's sister learned the same 
 day what was before her. There had been an idea of 
 sending her on with the children, or with the Countess of 
 Provence. The Princess, who was eminently good, and 
 not always gracious, did not enjoy the confidence of the 
 queen. She was one of those who regarded concession as 
 surrender of principle, and in the rift between the Princes 
 and Marie Antoinette she was not on the side of com- 
 promise. Provence came to supper, and the brothers met 
 for the last time. That night their ways parted, leading 
 the one to the guillotine, and the other to the throne 
 which had been raised by Napoleon above every throne 
 on earth. The Count and Countess of Provence both
 
 182 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 started at the same time as the rest, and reached Belgium 
 in safety. 
 
 Fersen, directing matters with skill and forethought, 
 made one mistake. Two attendants on the royal children 
 were taken, in a hired carriage, to Claye, the second stage 
 on the eastern road ; and it was their driver who made 
 known, on his return, which way the fugitives had 
 taken. 
 
 When everybody was in bed, and the lights were out, 
 the royal family went out by a door that was not in use, 
 and got into a hackney coach. The last to come was the 
 queen, who had been frightened by meeting Lafayette. 
 Afterwards she asked him whether he had recognised her. 
 He replied that if he had met her not once but thrice, he 
 could never have recognised her, after what she had told 
 him the day before ; for she had said that they were not 
 going away. Bailly, who was at home, ill, had taken 
 alarm at the persistent rumours of departure, and urged 
 Lafayette to redouble his precautions. After a last in- 
 spection the general assured the mayor that Gouvion was 
 on guard, and not a mouse could escape. The journalists, 
 Marat and Fre"ron, had also been warned. Frron went 
 to the Tuileries late at night, and satisfied himself that all 
 was quiet. Nobody took notice of a coachman, chatting 
 and taking snuff with a comrade, or guessed that it was 
 the colonel of Royal Swedes, who in that hour built 
 himself an everlasting name. It was twelve when the 
 queen arrived ; and the man, who had made her heart 
 beat in happier years, mounted the box and drove away 
 into the darkness. Their secret was known, and their 
 movements had been observed by watchful eyes. The 
 keeper of the wardrobe was intimate with General Gouvion. 
 She had warned him in good time, and had given notice 
 to persons about the queen that she knew what was 
 going on. The alarm was given at two in the morning, 
 but that she might not be compromised it was given by 
 devious ways. A traveller from Marseilles was roused at 
 his lodgings by a friendly voice. He refused to get up, 
 and went to sleep again. Some hours later the visitor
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 183 
 
 returned, and prevailed with the sleeper. He came from 
 the palace, and reported that the king was gone. They 
 took the news to one of the deputies, who hastened to 
 Lafayette, while the man from the palace disappeared. 
 Lafayette, as soon as he was dressed, conferred with the 
 mayor and with the president of the Assembly, Beau- 
 harnais, the first husband of the Empress Josephine, and 
 they persuaded him that nothing could avert civil war 
 but the capture of the king. Thereupon Lafayette wrote 
 an order declaring that Lewis had been carried oflf, and 
 calling on all good citizens to bring him back. He believed 
 that too much time had been lost ; but nothing less than 
 this, which was a warrant for arrest, would have appeased 
 the rage of the people at his lack of vigilance. He 
 despatched his officers, chiefly towards Lille. One of 
 them, Romeuf, whom he directed to follow the road to 
 Valenciennes, was stopped by the mob, and brought before 
 the Assembly. There he received a new commission, with 
 authority to make the king a prisoner. As he rode out, 
 after so much delay, he learned that the fugitives had 
 been seen on the road to Meaux, and that they had twelve 
 hours' start. 
 
 There is much in these transactions that is strangely 
 suspicious. Lafayette did not make up his mind that 
 there was anything to be done until others pressed him. 
 He sent off all his men by the wrong roads, while Baillon, 
 the emissary of the Commune, struck the track at once. 
 He told Romeuf that it was too late, so that his heavy 
 day's ride was only a formality. Romeuf, who was the son 
 of one of his tenants, got into many difficulties, and did 
 not give his horse the spur until the news was four hours 
 old. At Varennes he avowed that he had never meant 
 to overtake them, and the king's officers believed him. 
 Gouvion, second in command of the guard, knew by which 
 door the royal party meant to leave, and he assured the 
 Assembly that he had kept watch over it, with several 
 officers, all night. Lewis had even authorised Mme. de 
 Tourzel to bring Gouvion with her, if she met him on her 
 way to the carriage. Burke afterwards accused Lafayette
 
 1 84 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 of having allowed the departure, that he might profit by 
 the arrest. Less impassioned critics have doubted whether 
 the companion of Washington was preparing a regency, 
 or deemed that the surest road to a republic is by a vacant 
 throne. 
 
 The coach that was waiting beyond the gates had 
 been ordered for a Russian lady, Madame de Korff, 
 who was Fersen's fervent accomplice. She supplied not 
 only the carriage, but .12,000 in money, and a passport. 
 As she required another for her own family, the Russian 
 minister applied to Bailly. The mayor refused, and he 
 was obliged to ask Montmorin, pretending that the pass- 
 port he had just given had been burnt by mistake. The 
 numbers and description tallied, but the destination was 
 Frankfort. As the travellers quitted the Frankfort road 
 at Clermont, the last stage before Varennes, this was a 
 transparent blunder. Half an hour had been lost, but 
 the first stage, Bondy, was reached at half-past one. Here 
 Fersen, who had sat by his coachman, flourishing the whip, 
 got down, and the family he had striven so hard to save 
 passed out of his protection. He wished to take them all 
 the way, and had asked Gustavus for leave to travel in 
 the uniform of the Swedish Guard. But Lewis would not 
 allow him to remain, and underrated the value of such an 
 escort. Fersen took the north road, and reached Belgium 
 without difficulty. In the following winter he was again 
 at the Tuileries. As a political adviser he was unfortunate, 
 for he was one of those concerned in the Brunswick pro- 
 clamation which cost the king his crown. 
 
 The travellers pursued their way without molestation 
 to Chalons, and there, as they were about to meet their 
 faithful soldiery, they fancied that the danger was over. 
 In reality the mischief was already done, and by their own 
 fault their fate was sealed. As they were sure to be 
 pursued, safety depended on celerity. The point of peril 
 was Varennes, for a good horseman at full speed might 
 ride 146 miles in less than thirteen hours, and would 
 arrive there about nine at night, if he started at the first 
 alarm. It was calculated that the royal family, at 7-^-
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 185 
 
 miles an hour, would reach Varennes between 8 and 9. 
 The margin was so narrow that there was no time to lose. 
 The king thought it sufficient to reach Bouille"'s outposts 
 before he could be overtaken, and they would be met 
 a stage beyond Chalons. To secure the meeting it was 
 necessary to keep time. The hours were exactly deter- 
 mined ; and as the agreement was not observed, the troopers 
 were useless. Before Chalons four hours had been lost 
 not by accident, as the royalist legend tells, for Valory 
 the outrider testifies that it took but a few minutes to 
 repair. Bouill knew the ignoble cause of his own ruin 
 and of so much sorrow, but never revealed it. When he 
 came to England he misled questioners, and he exacted 
 an oath from his son that he would keep the miserable 
 secret for half a century. The younger Bouilld was true 
 to his word. In 1841 he confided to a friend that the 
 story whispered at the time was true, and that the king 
 stopped a couple of hours at Etoges, over an early dinner 
 at the house of Chanilly, an officer of his household, whose 
 name appears in his will. When people saw what came 
 of it, there was a generous conspiracy of concealment, 
 which bewildered posterity, until Bouille"'s tale was told. 
 
 At Pont de Somme-Vesle, 8 or 9 miles beyond Chalons, 
 Choiseul was in command. His men had been badly 
 received at St Me"nehould, and their presence perturbed 
 the country people. Nobody believed the pretence that 
 so many horsemen were required to protect the passage 
 of treasure, and they began to suspect that the treasure 
 was the queen herself, flying to Austria. Choiseul took 
 alarm ; for if the king arrived in the midst of sedition, the 
 worst might be expected. He had been positively 
 instructed that the king would pass at half- past two. 
 Fersen had said that he might rely on it, and there was 
 to be a courier riding an hour ahead. When three o'clock 
 came, without any sign of king or courier, Choiseul 
 resolved to move away, hoping that his departure would 
 allay the ferment and secure safe passage. He sent 
 Leonard forward, with instructions to the officers in 
 command at St. Me"nehould, Clermont, and Varennes, that
 
 1 86 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 all seemed to be over for the day, and that he was starting 
 to join Bouill6 ; and after some further watching, he 
 withdrew with all his men. For this Bouill6 afterwards 
 demanded that he should be tried by court-martial. 
 
 It had been settled that if the king did not appear at 
 Bondy by half-past two in the morning, the courier who 
 had preceded him was to push on, and warn the officers 
 that there was no more to be done. As no courier made 
 his appearance in the afternoon, it was certain that the 
 fugitives had got out of Paris, where the danger lay. If 
 Choiseul found it necessary to move his men, he was to 
 leave a staff officer, Goguelat, to wait the king's coming, 
 and to be his guide. But Choiseul took Goguelat with 
 him, leaving no guide ; and instead of keeping on the high 
 road, to block it at a farther point, he went off into byways, 
 and never reappeared until all was over at Varennes. His 
 error is flagrant, but it was due to the more tragic folly 
 of his master. Not long after he had abandoned his post 
 the king arrived, and passed unhindered. Again he 
 changed horses without resistance at the next post-town, 
 which was St. M^nehould, and went on to Clermont en 
 Argonne. Some of the bystanders thought they had 
 recognised him under his disguise, and the loudest of them 
 was Drouet, who, as postmaster, had just had a quarrel 
 with one of the officers, and was in the dangerous mood 
 of a man who has his temper to recover. The town 
 council assembled, and on hearing the grounds of his 
 suspicion, commissioned him to follow the travellers and 
 stop their flight. They did not doubt that Lewis was 
 about to throw himself into the arms of Austria. It was 
 not his first intention, for he hoped to make a stand at 
 Montme'dy ; but the prospect of effective action on French 
 soil had diminished. 
 
 Bouill's command was narrowed. He could not trust 
 his men ; and Leopold did not stir. The basis of the 
 scheme had crumbled. Whether within the frontier or 
 beyond it, success implied an Austrian invasion. Bouill6's 
 plan, from its inception, had no other meaning ; and it 
 was executed under conditions which placed Lewis more
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 187 
 
 completely in the hands of the calculating emperor. It 
 became more and more apparent that his destination was 
 not the camp of Montme"dy, but the abbey of Orval in 
 Luxemburg. The men of St Mnehould who resolved to 
 prevent his escape acted on vague suspicion, but we can- 
 not say that, as Frenchmen, they acted wrongly. They 
 had no certainty, and no authority ; but while they 
 deliberated a pursuing horseman rode into the town, 
 bringing what they wanted. An officer of the National 
 Guard, Baillon, had got away from Paris early in the day, 
 with orders from Bailly and Lafayette, and took the right 
 road. He was delayed for two hours by an encounter 
 with M. de Briges, one of the king's men, whom he 
 succeeded in arresting. To save time he sent forward 
 a fresh rider, on a fresh horse, to stop the fugitives ; 
 and this messenger from Chalons brought the news 
 to St. Me"nehould, not long after the coach had rolled 
 away. 
 
 When Drouet started on the ride that made his fortune, 
 he knew that it was the king, and that Paris did not mean 
 him to escape. An hour had been lost, and he met his 
 postboys returning from Clermont. From them he learnt 
 that the courier had given the word Varennes, and not 
 Verdun. By a short cut, through the woods, he arrived 
 just in time. Meantime St. Menehould was seething ; 
 the commanding officer was put under arrest, and his 
 troops were prevented from mounting. One man, 
 Lagache, warned by the daughter of his host that the 
 treasure for the army chest had evaporated and the 
 truth was out, sprung on his horse and opened a way 
 through the crowd with a pistol in each hand. 
 
 Drouet told the story to the National Assembly more 
 to his own advantage, claiming to have recognised the 
 queen whom he had seen at Paris, and the king by his 
 likeness on an assignat. On a later day he declined all 
 direct responsibility, and said that he followed the coach 
 in consequence of orders forwarded from Chalons, not on 
 his own initiative or conjecture. When he gave the 
 second version he was a prisoner among the Austrians,
 
 1 88 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 and the questioner before whom he stood was Fersen. 
 At such a moment even a man of Drouet's fortitude 
 might well have stretched a point in the endeavour to 
 cast off odium. Therefore the account recorded by 
 Fersen has not supplanted the popular tradition. But it 
 is confirmed by Romeuf, who says, distinctly, that the 
 postmaster of St. Mnehould was warned by the message 
 sent on by Baillon. Romeufs testimony, contained in 
 the protocols of the Assembly, where I have seen it, was 
 omitted in the Moniteur, in order that nothing might deface 
 the legend of the incautious traveller, the treacherous 
 banknote, and the vigilant provincial patriot, who was the 
 idol of the hour as the man who had preserved his 
 country from invasion and civil war. 
 
 Clermont, like the other post towns, was agitated by 
 the presence of cavalry ; and after the king had pursued 
 his journey, the authorities despatched a messenger to 
 rouse Varennes. Passing the royal party at full speed, 
 he shouted something which they did not understand, but 
 which made them think that they were detected. He was 
 superseded by the superior energy and capacity of Drouet, 
 and plays no part in the adventure. There was an officer 
 at Clermont who knew his business ; but his men deserted 
 him, and he reached Varennes alone. At Varennes the 
 two men in the secret, Bouill's younger son and Raige- 
 court, were with the horses, at the farther end of the town, 
 over the bridge, keeping no look-out. They relied on 
 Goguelat, on Choiseul, on d'Andouins who commanded 
 at St. Menehould, on Damas at Clermont, and above all 
 on the promised courier, who was to ride an hour ahead to 
 warn them in time. But they expected no warning that 
 night. If there was any watchfulness in them, it was 
 put to sleep by Leonard, who had gone through an hour 
 before with Choiseul's fatal letter. The king was arrested 
 a few hundred yards from their inn, and they were aware 
 of nothing. When they heard, they galloped away on 
 the road to Stenay, where they knew that the general was 
 keeping anxious vigil. Drouet passed the carriage near the 
 entrance of the town, where the couriers were wrangling
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 189 
 
 with the postilions and looking about in the dark for 
 the relays. With the help of half a dozen men who 
 were finishing their wine at the inn, he barricaded the 
 bridge. 
 
 There the king's passport betrayed him, for it was made 
 out for Frankfort, and Varennes was not on the road to 
 Frankfort. The party were therefore detained and had 
 to spend the night at the house of Sauce, municipal 
 officer and grocer, while the drums beat, the tocsin rang, 
 the town was roused with the cry of fire, and messengers 
 were sent to bring in national guards from the country 
 round. At first Sauce beguiled the king over a bottle 
 of wine, and then introduced a travelled fellow -towns- 
 man who identified him. A scene of emotion followed, 
 and loyal citizens pressed their sovereign in their arms. 
 They talked of escorting him to Montmdy, a hundred 
 strong, and Lewis, ready to believe them, declared he 
 would be content with fifty. As night wore on, a number 
 of officers collected : Choiseul and Goguelat, after their 
 long ride from Pont de Somme -Vesle ; the Count de 
 Damas from Clermont ; and at last Deslon, a captain of 
 the German horse that Bouill6 chiefly trusted. Choiseul's 
 men, and some of those quartered at Varennes, were 
 faithful, and it was thought possible to clear the street. 
 Urged by the queen, Damas wished to attempt it, and 
 long after he assured an English friend that he regretted 
 that he did not lead the charge, in defiance of the king's 
 optimism, and of his reluctance to be saved by the sword. 
 He said to Deslon in German, " Mount and attack ! " 
 But Deslon saw that it was too late. Goguelat threatened 
 to cut his way out, and was unhorsed by a pistol shot. 
 
 Drouet was master of the situation. It was he who 
 managed the hesitating soldiers and the hesitating towns- 
 men. At five in the morning Romeuf and Baillon arrived, 
 with Lafayette's order, and the decree of the sovereign 
 Assembly. There was no more illusion then about pur- 
 suing the journey, and all the king's hope was that he 
 might gain time for Bouill to deliver him. Bouille was 
 at Stenay, twenty miles off. He spent the night watching
 
 190 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the road, with his arm through his horse's bridle. Long 
 after every possible allowance for delay, his son came up 
 with the tidings of Varennes. The trumpets roused the 
 Royal Germans, but their colonel was hostile, and precious 
 hours were lost. Bouille gave all his money to his men, 
 told them what manner of expedition they were on, told 
 them that their king was a prisoner, and led them to the 
 rescue. It was past nine when he reached the height that 
 looks down on the valley of the Aire. The horses were 
 tired, the bridge was barricaded, the fords were unknown. 
 All was quiet at Varennes, and the king was already miles 
 away on the road to Clermont. It was the end of a 
 bright dream, and of a career which had been noted for 
 unvarying success. 
 
 As the unhappy man, who had so narrowly missed 
 the prize, turned his horse's head in the direction of exile, 
 he said to his son, " Do you still praise my good fortune ? " 
 That evening he rode across the frontier with a group of 
 officers, and his men fired on him as he passed. He issued 
 an angry declaration, and composed a defence of his con- 
 duct, saying that nobody had remained at his post except 
 himself. But he knew that king and constitution were 
 lost because he was not on the spot, and had posted 
 inexperienced men where his own presence was needed. 
 He could not recover his balance, and became as unwise 
 and violent as the rest. The emigres did not trust him, 
 and assigned him no active part in the invasion of the 
 following year. His fame stood high among the English 
 who had fought him in the West Indies, and Pitt offered 
 him the command in San Domingo, which the Duke of 
 Portland obliged him to relinquish. 
 
 Lewis XVI. was brought back to Paris by an insolent 
 and ferocious crowd, and looked back with gratitude to 
 the equivocal civilities of Sauce. The journey occupied 
 four days, during which the queen's hair turned grey. 
 Three deputies, sent by the Assembly, met the dolorous 
 procession half way, and took charge of the royal family. 
 The king at once assured them that he had intended to 
 remain at Montme'dy, and there to revise the Constitution.
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES 191 
 
 " With those words," said Barnave, " we shall save the 
 monarchy." Latour Maubourg refused his turn in the 
 royal carriage, on the plea that his legs were too long for 
 comfort, and advised the king to employ the time in 
 domesticating his companions. The advice partly suc- 
 ceeded, for Barnave was made a friend. Nothing could 
 be made of Potion, who states in his narrative that the 
 princess fell in love with him. General Dumas assumed 
 command, and, by posting cavalry on one of the bridges, 
 managed to bring the horses to a trot, and left the crowd 
 behind. 
 
 When they came to the forest of Bondy, the Hounslow 
 Heath of France, a band of ruffians from the capital made 
 a determined attack, and were with difficulty beaten oft 
 At last, Lefebvre, the future Marshal Duke of Dantzick, 
 met them with a company of grenadiers. As there was 
 danger in the narrow streets of Paris, Lafayette took them 
 round through the Champs Elyse"es. Word had been 
 passed that not a sign of hatred or of honour should be 
 given, and a horseman rode in front, commanding silence. 
 The order was sullenly obeyed. The day before this 
 funereal scene the Prussian envoy wrote home that the 
 king might be spared, from motives of policy, but that 
 nothing could save the queen. They had reached the 
 terrace of the Tuileries when there was a rush and a 
 struggle, in which Dumas lost his hat and his belt and 
 his scabbard, and nearly had his clothes torn from his 
 back. A group of deputies came to his assistance, and 
 no blood was shed. A carriage came after, with Drouet 
 conspicuous on high and triumphant. He received a 
 grant of 1200, and was elected to the Convention in 
 the following year. Taken prisoner by the Prussians, he 
 impressed Goethe by his coolness in adversity. The 
 Austrians took him at the siege of Maubeuge, and he was 
 exchanged for the king's daughter. In the communistic 
 conspiracy of Babeuf he nearly lost his life, and for a time 
 he lived in a cavern, underground. Napoleon gave him 
 the Legion of Honour, made him subprefect of St. Me"ne- 
 hould, and was his guest when he visited Valmy. In
 
 I 9 2 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the Hundred Days Drouet was again a deputy, and then 
 vanished from sight and changed his name. When he 
 died, in 1824, his neighbours learned with surprise that 
 they had lived with the sinister contriver of the tremendous 
 tragedy.
 
 XIII 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 
 
 TUESDAY, June 21, the day on which the departure of the 
 king became known, was the greatest day in the history 
 of the Assembly. The deputies were so quick to meet 
 the dangers of the situation, they were so calm, their 
 measures were so comprehensive, that they at once 
 restored public confidence. By the middle of the day the 
 tumult in the streets was appeased, and the ambassadors 
 were astonished at the tranquillity of Paris. They wrote 
 home that all parties put aside their quarrels, and com- 
 bined in a sincere endeavour to save the State. That 
 was the appearance of things on the surface and for the 
 moment. But the Right took no share in acts which they 
 deemed a usurpation of powers calculated to supersede 
 monarchy, and to make the crisis serve as the transition 
 to a Republic. To the number of almost 300 they signed 
 a protest, declaring that they would take no further part 
 in the deliberations. Their leader, Cazales, went away to 
 Coblenz, and was coldly received as a man who had 
 yielded too much to parliamentary opinions, whose services 
 had been unavailing, and who repented too late. 
 
 The king's flight, while it broke up the Conservative 
 party, called the Republican party into existence. For 
 Lewis had left behind him a manifesto, meditated during 
 many months, urging the defects of the Constitution, and 
 denouncing all that had been effected since he had suffered 
 violence at Versailles. Many others besides Lewis were 
 aware of the defects, and desired their amendment. But 
 the renunciation of so much that he had sanctioned, so 
 
 193 O
 
 194 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 much that he had solemnly and repeatedly approved, 
 exposed him to the reproach of duplicity and falsehood. 
 He not only underwent the ignominy of capture and 
 exposure ; he was regarded henceforth as a detected 
 perjurer. If the king could never be trusted again, the 
 prospects of monarchy were hopeless. The Orleans party 
 offered no substitute, for their candidate was discredited. 
 Men began to say that it was better that what was 
 inevitable should be recognised at once than that it should 
 be established later on by violence, after a struggle in 
 which more than monarchy would be imperilled, and 
 which would bring to the front the most inhuman of the 
 populace. To us, who know what the next year was to 
 bring, the force and genuineness of the argument is 
 apparent ; but it failed to impress the National Assembly. 
 Scarcely thirty members shared those opinions, and neither 
 Barere nor Robespierre was among them. The strong- 
 hold of the new movement was the Club of the Cordeliers. 
 The great body of the constitutional party remained true 
 to the cause, and drew closer together. Lameth and 
 Lafayette appeared at the Jacobins arm in arm ; and 
 when the general was attacked for negligence in guarding 
 the Tuileries, Barnave effectually defended him. This 
 was the origin of the Feuillants, the last organisation 
 for the maintenance of monarchy. They were resolved 
 to save the Constitution by amending it in the direction 
 of a strengthened executive, and for their purpose it was 
 necessary to restore the king. If his flight had succeeded, 
 it was proposed to open negotiations with him, for he 
 would have it in his power to plunge France into foreign 
 and domestic war. He was more formidable on the 
 frontier than in the capital. Malouet, the most sensible 
 and the most respected of the royalists, was to have been 
 sent to treat, in the name of the Assembly, that, by 
 moderating counsels, bloodshed might be averted, and 
 the essentials of the Revolution assured. But, on the 
 second evening, a tired horseman drew rein at the 
 entrance, and the joyous uproar outside informed the 
 deputies before he could dismount that he came with news
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 195 
 
 of the king. He was the Varennes doctor, and he had 
 been sent at daybreak to learn what the town was to do 
 with its prisoners. 
 
 The king, ceasing to be a danger, became an 
 embarrassment. He could not at once be replaced on 
 the throne. Without prejudging the future, it was 
 resolved that he be detained at the Tuileries until the 
 Constitution, completed and revised, was submitted to him 
 for his free assent. Thus, for ten weeks, he was sus- 
 pended. The Assembly governed and legislated, without 
 reference to his sanction ; and the interregnum was so 
 prolonged that the monarchy could never recover. When, 
 in September, Lewis resumed his royal function, he was 
 no longer an integral element in the State, but an innova- 
 tion and an experiment On the day when, standing 
 uncovered before the legislators, he promised fidelity to 
 their Constitution, it seemed natural to them, in the 
 presence of tarnished and diminished majesty, to sit down 
 and put their hats on. The triumvirs, who had foiled 
 Mirabeau, began immediately after his death to sustain 
 the royal cause in secret. Montmorin called on Lameth 
 before he was up, and began the negotiation. Barnave 
 frequented the house of Montmorin, but took care always 
 to come accompanied, in order to prevent a bribe. His 
 two days' journey in the royal company confirmed him in 
 his design. Having reduced the prerogative when it was 
 excessive, they revived it when it had become too weak, 
 and the king could no longer inspire alarm. They 
 undertook to devise props for the damaged throne. "If 
 not Lewis XVI.," said Lafayette, "then Lewis XVII." 
 " If not this king," said Sieyes, " find us another." This 
 was the predominant feeling. 
 
 When an attack was made on the king at the Jacobins, 
 all the deputies present, excepting six, seceded in a body, 
 and founded a new club at the Feuillants. On July 1 5, in 
 a speech which was considered the finest heard in France 
 since Mirabeau, Barnave carried an overwhelming vote in 
 favour of monarchy. He said that the revolutionary 
 movement could go no farther without carrying away
 
 196 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 property. He dreaded the government of the poor over 
 the rich ; for Barnave's political philosophy consisted in 
 middle- class sovereignty government by that kind of 
 property which depends on constant labour, integrity, 
 foresight, and self-denial, excluding poverty and opulence. 
 Defeated at the Jacobins and in the Assembly, the 
 republicans prepared a demonstration on the Champ de 
 Mars, where a petition was signed for the dethronement 
 of the king. The Assembly, fearing a renewal of the 
 scenes at Versailles, commissioned Bailly and Lafayette 
 to disperse the meeting. On July 173 collision ensued, 
 shots were fired, and several petitioners were killed. The 
 Jacobins, for the moment, were crushed. Robespierre, 
 Marat, even Danton, effaced themselves, and expected 
 that the Feuillants would follow up their victory. It 
 seemed impossible that men who had the resolution to 
 shoot down their masters, the people of Paris, and were 
 able to give the law, should be so weak in spirit, or so 
 short of sight, as to throw away their advantage, and 
 resume a contest on equal terms with conquered and 
 injured adversaries. 
 
 The Feuillants were thenceforward predominant, and 
 held their ground until the Girondins overthrew them on 
 March 18. It was the rule at their club to admit none 
 but active citizens, paying taxes and possessing the 
 franchise. The masses were thus given over to the 
 Jacobins. By their energy at the Champ de Mars, 
 July 17, Lafayette and his new friends had aroused the 
 resentment of a vindictive party ; and when they took no 
 advantage of the terror they inspired, the terror departed, 
 and the resentment remained. It was agreed that 
 Malouet should move amendments to the Constitution. 
 The Feuillants were to oppose, and then to play into his 
 hands. But Malouet was deserted by his friends, the 
 agreement was not carried out, and the revision failed in 
 the Assembly. The Committees proposed that the famous 
 decree of November 7, by which no deputy could accept 
 office, should be revoked. The exclusion was maintained, 
 but ministers were allowed to appear and answer for their
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 197 
 
 departments. No other important amendment was carried, 
 and no serious attempt was made to adjust and harmonise 
 the clauses voted during two hurried years. Various 
 reforms were vainly brought forward ; and they indicate, 
 as well as the sudden understanding between Malouet 
 and Barnave, that the deputies had little faith in the 
 work they had accomplished. They were tired of it 
 They were no longer on the crest of the wave, and their 
 power had passed to the clubs and to the press. They 
 were about to disappear. By an unholy alliance between 
 Robespierre and Cazales the members of the National 
 Assembly were ineligible to the Legislature that was to 
 follow. None of those who drew up the Constitution 
 were to have a share in applying it. The actual rulers 
 of France were condemned to political extinction. There- 
 fore the power which the Feuillants acquired by their very 
 dexterous management of the situation produced by the 
 king's flight could not last ; their radical opponents had 
 time on their side, and they had logic. 
 
 Lewis, after his degradation, was an impossible king. 
 And the republicans had a future majority in reserve, 
 whenever the excluded class was restored to the right of 
 voting which it had enjoyed in 1789 before equality was 
 a fundamental law, and which the Rights of Man enabled 
 them to claim. And now the incident of Varennes 
 supplied the enemies of the throne with a new argument. 
 The wretched incompetence of Lewis had become evident 
 to all, and to the queen herself. She did not hesitate 
 to take his place, and when people spoke of the Court, 
 it was the queen they meant The flight, and the 
 policy that led to it, and that was renewed by the failure, 
 was the policy of relying on foreign aid, especially that 
 of the emperor. The queen was the connecting link, 
 and the chief negotiator. And the object she pursued 
 was to constrain the French people, by means of the 
 emperor's influence on the Powers, either by the humiliat- 
 ing parade of power at a congress, or by invasion. That 
 is what she was believed to be contriving, and the sense 
 of national independence was added to the motive of
 
 ip8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 political liberty to make the Court unpopular. People 
 denounced the Austrian cabal, and the queen as its centre. 
 It was believed that she wished to govern not only 
 through the royal authority restored, but through the 
 royal authority restored by foreign oppressors. The 
 Revolution was confronted with Europe. It had begun 
 its work by insurrection, and it had to complete its work 
 by war. The beginning of European complications was 
 the flight to Varennes. 
 
 Early in September the Constitution was presented to 
 Lewis XVI. The gates were thrown open. The guards 
 who were his gaolers were withdrawn. He was ostensibly 
 a free man. If he decided to accept, his acceptance 
 would be voluntary. The Emperor, Kaunitz, Malesherbes, 
 advised him to accept. Malouet preferred, as usual, a 
 judicious middle course. Burke was for refusal. He said 
 that assent meant destruction, and he thought afterwards 
 that he was right, for the king assented and was destroyed. 
 Burke was not listened to. He had become the adviser 
 of Coblenz, and great as his claims were upon the gratitude 
 of both king and queen, he was counted in the ranks of 
 their enemies. Mercy, who transmitted his letter, still 
 extant in the archives of France, begged that it might 
 not influence the decision. After ten days of leisurely 
 reflection, but without real hesitation, for everything had 
 been arranged with Lameth and Barnave, the leaders of 
 the majority, Lewis gave his sanction to the Constitution 
 of 1791, which was to last until 1792, and the National 
 Assembly was dissolved. Political delinquents, including 
 the accomplices of Varennes, received an amnesty. 
 
 By right of the immense change they made in the 
 world, by their energy and sincerity, their fidelity to reason 
 and their resistance to custom, their superiority to the 
 sordid craving for increase of national power, their idealism 
 and their ambition to declare the eternal law, the States- 
 General of 1789 are the most memorable of all political 
 assemblies. They cleared away the history of France, 
 and with 2500 decrees they laid down the plan of a 
 new world for men who were reared in the old. Their
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 199 
 
 institutions perished, but their influence has endured ; and 
 the problem of their history is to explain why so genuine 
 a striving for the highest of earthly goods so deplorably 
 failed. The errors that ruined their enterprise may be 
 reduced to one. Having put the nation in the place of 
 the Crown, they invested it with the same unlicensed 
 power, raising no security and no remedy against oppres- 
 sion from below, assuming, or believing, that a government 
 truly representing the people could do no wrong. They 
 acted as if authority, duly constituted, requires no check, 
 and as if no barriers are needed against the nation. The 
 notion common among them, that liberty consists in a 
 good civil code, a notion shared by so famous a Liberal 
 as Madame de Stael, explains the facility with which so 
 many revolutionists went over to the Empire. But the 
 dreadful convulsion that ensued had a cause for which 
 they were not responsible. In the violent contradiction 
 between the new order of things in France and the in- 
 organic world around it, conflict was irrepressible. Between 
 French principles and European practice there could be 
 neither conciliation nor confidence. Each was a constant 
 menace to the other, and the explosion of enmity could 
 only be restrained by unusual wisdom and policy. 
 
 The dissolution of the Whig party in England indicates 
 what might be expected in the continental monarchies 
 where there were no Whigs. We shall presently see that 
 it was upon this rock, in the nature of things, that the 
 Revolution went to pieces. The wisest of the statesmen 
 who saw the evil days, Royer Collard, affirmed long after 
 that all parties in the Revolution were honest, except the 
 Royalists. He meant that the Right alone did wrong 
 with premeditation and design. In the surprising revulsion 
 that followed the return from Varennes, and developed 
 the Feuillants, it was in the power of the Conservatives 
 to give life to constitutional monarchy. That was the 
 moment of their defection. They would have given much 
 to save an absolute king: they deliberately abandoned 
 the constitutional king to his fate. 
 
 The 1150 men who had been the first choice of France
 
 200 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 now pass out of our sight. The 720 deputies of the Legis- 
 lative Assembly were new and generally obscure names. 
 Nobles, clergy, conservatives did not reappear, and their 
 place was taken by the Feuillants, who, in the former 
 Assembly, would have belonged to the Left. The centre 
 of gravity shifted far in the revolutionary direction. The 
 Constitution was made. The discussion of principles was 
 over, and the dispute was not for doctrines but for power. 
 The speakers have not the same originality or force ; 
 they are not inventors in political science ; they are not the 
 pioneers of mankind. In literary faculty, if not in political, 
 they surpass their predecessors, and are remembered for 
 their eloquence if not for statecraft. 
 
 Reinhard, a German traveller who fell in with a group 
 of the new deputies on their way to Paris, fell under their 
 charm, and resolved to cast his lot with a country about 
 to be governed by such men. Whilst he rose to be an 
 ambassador and minister of foreign affairs, his friends 
 were cut off in their prime, for they were the deputies who 
 came from Bordeaux, and gave the name of their depart- 
 ment to the party of the Gironde. By their parliamentary 
 talents they quickly obtained the lead of the new Assembly ; 
 and as they had few ideas and no tactics, they allowed 
 Sieyes to direct their course. 
 
 Robespierre, through the Jacobin Club, which now 
 recovered much of the ground it had lost in July, became 
 the manager of the Extreme Left, which gradually separ- 
 ated from Brissot and the Girondins. The ministry was 
 in the hands of the Feuillants, who were guided by Lameth, 
 while Barnave was the secret adviser of the queen. She 
 followed his counsels with aversion and distrust, looking 
 upon him as an enemy, and longing to throw off the 
 mask, and show him how he had been deceived. As 
 she could not understand how the same men who had 
 depressed monarchy desired to sustain it, she played a 
 double and ignoble part. The tactics of the Feuillant 
 advisers brought a revival of popular feeling in favour of 
 the Court, which seeme< I inconceivable at the epoch of the 
 arrest. King and queen were applauded in the streets,
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 201 
 
 and at the theatre the cry " Long live the king ! " silenced 
 the cry " Long live the nation ! " This was in October 
 1791, before the Legislative Assembly had divided into 
 parties, or found a policy. 
 
 When the Assembly summoned the emigres to return 
 by the month of January, the king fully agreed with the 
 policy though not with the penalty. But when a Com- 
 mission reported on the temper of the clergy, and described 
 the mischief that was brewing in the provinces between 
 the priests of the two sections, and severe measures of 
 repression were decreed against nonjurors, he interposed 
 a veto. The First Assembly had disendowed the clergy, 
 leaving them a pension. The Second, regarding them as 
 agitators, resolved to proceed against them as against the 
 emigres. Lewis, in resisting persecution, was supported 
 by the Feuillants. But the Assembly was not Feuillant, 
 and the veto began its estrangement from the king. A 
 new minister was imposed on him. The Count Narbonne 
 de Lara was the most brilliant figure in the noblesse of 
 France, and he lived to captivate and dazzle Napoleon. 
 Talleyrand, who thought the situation under the Constitu- 
 tion desperate, put forward his friend ; and Madame de 
 Stael, the queen of constitutional society, obtained for him 
 the ministry of war. The appointment of Narbonne was 
 a blow struck at the Feuillants, who still desired to reform 
 the institutions, and who were resolute in favour of peace. 
 At the same time, Lafayette laid down his command of 
 the National Guard, and stood as a candidate to succeed 
 Bailly in the office of mayor. But Lafayette had ordered 
 the capture of the royal family, and could not be forgiven. 
 The queen obtained the election of Potion instead of 
 Lafayette ; and behind Potion was Danton. What the 
 Feuillants lost was added to the Girondins, not yet distinct 
 from the Jacobins ; and as the Feuillants were for two 
 chambers, for peace, and for an executive independent of 
 the single Assembly and vetoing its decrees, the policy 
 of its opponents was to bring the king into subjection to 
 the Legislature, to put down the discontented clergy, and 
 to make the emigration a cause for war.
 
 202 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 The new minister, Narbonne, was accepted as a war 
 minister, while his Feuillant colleague at the Foreign Office, 
 Delessart, was obstinately pacific. On December 14 
 Lewis came down to the Legislature, and announced that 
 he would insist that the emigres should receive no 
 encouragement beyond the frontier. It was the first act 
 of hostility and defiance, and it showed that the king was 
 parting with his Feuillant friends. But Delessart spoilt 
 the effect by keeping back the note to the emperor for 
 ten days, and communicating it then with precautions. 
 
 Leopold II. was one of the shrewdest and most cautious 
 of men. He knew how to wait, and how to give way. 
 He had no wish that his brother-in-law should again be 
 powerful, and he was not sorry that France should be 
 disabled by civil dissension. But he could not abandon 
 his sister without dishonour ; and he was afraid of the 
 contagion of French principles in Belgium, which he had 
 reconciled and pacified with difficulty. Moreover, a 
 common action in French affairs, action which might 
 eventually be warlike, was a means of closing the long 
 enmity with Prussia, and obtaining a substitute for the 
 family alliance with France, which had become futile. 
 Therefore he was prepared, if they had escaped, to risk 
 war for their restoration, and induced the Prussian agent 
 to sign an undertaking which went beyond his instructions. 
 
 When the disastrous news reached him from Varennes, 
 Leopold appealed to the Powers, drew up an alliance with 
 Prussia, and joined in the declaration of Pilnitz, by which 
 France was threatened with the combined action of all 
 Europe unless the king was restored to a position worthy 
 of kings. The threat implied no danger, because it was 
 made conditional on the unanimity of the Powers. There 
 was one Power that was sure not to consent. England 
 was waiting an opportunity to profit by French troubles. 
 It had already been seriously proposed by Bouill^, with 
 the approval of Lewis, to purchase aid from George III. 
 by the surrender of all the colonies of France. Therefore 
 Leopold thought that he risked nothing by a demonstration
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 203 
 
 which the emigres made the most of to alarm and irritate 
 the French people. But when the king freely accepted 
 the Constitution, the manifesto of Pilnitz fell to the ground. 
 If he was content with his position, it could not be the 
 duty of the Powers to waste blood and treasure in attempt- 
 ing to alter it. The best thing was that things should 
 settle down in France. Then there would be no excite- 
 ment spreading to Belgium, and no reason why other 
 princes should be less easily satisfied than Lewis himself. 
 " The king," said Kaunitz, " the king, good man, has 
 helped us out of our difficulty himself." Still more, when 
 he obtained a revival of popularity which seemed a marvel 
 after the events of June, when he freely vetoed acts which 
 he disapproved, and appeared to be acting in full agree- 
 ment with a powerful and still dominant party, the imperial 
 government hoped that the crisis was over. And this 
 was the state of things in October and November. 
 
 The emigres, conscious of their repulse at Pilnitz, made 
 it their business to undeceive the emperor, and to bring 
 him back to the scheme of intervention. The Spanish 
 Bourbons were with them, and had recalled their ambas- 
 sador, and fitted out a fleet in the Mediterranean. Gustavus 
 of Sweden was eager to invade France with a Swedish 
 army to be conveyed in Russian ships, and paid for in 
 Mexican piastres, and with Bouilte by his side. Catherine 1 1. 
 gave every encouragement to the German Powers to embroil 
 themselves with France, and to leave her to deal uncon- 
 trolled with Poland and Turkey. The first to emigrate 
 had been the Comte d'Artois and his friends, who had con- 
 spired against Necker and the new Constitution. They 
 fled, because their lives were in danger. Others followed, 
 after the rising of the peasants and the spoliation of 
 August. As things grew more acute, and the settlement 
 of feudal claims was carried out with unsparing hostility, 
 the movement spread to the inferior noblesse. After the 
 breach with the clergy and the secularisation of Church 
 property, the prelates went into exile, and were followed 
 by their friends. In the winter of 1790-1791 they began 
 to organise themselves on the Rhine, and to negotiate
 
 204 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 with some of the smaller Powers, especially Sardinia, for 
 an invasion. The later arrivals were not welcomed, 
 for they were men who had accepted constitutional 
 government The purpose of the true Emigres was the 
 restoration of the old order, of the ancient principles and 
 institutions, not without reform, but without subversion. 
 That was the bond between them, and the basis on which 
 they sought the aid of absolute princes. They denied 
 that the king himself, writhing in the grip of democracy, 
 had the right to alter the fundamental laws. Some of 
 the best and ablest and most honourable men had joined 
 their ranks, and they were instructed and inflamed by 
 the greatest writer in the world, who had been the best 
 of Liberals and the purest of revolutionary statesmen, 
 Edmund Burke. It was not as a reactionist, but as a 
 Whig who had drunk success to Washington, who had 
 dressed in blue and buff, who had rejoiced over the British 
 surrender at Saratoga, who had drawn up the address to 
 the Colonists, which is the best State paper in the language, 
 that he told them that it was lawful to invade their own 
 country, and to shed the blood of their countrymen. 
 
 The emigres of every grade of opinion were united in 
 dislike of the queen and in depreciation of the king, and 
 they wished to supersede him by declaring his brother 
 Regent. They hoped to save them both ; but they thought 
 more of principles than of persons, and were not to be 
 diverted from their projects by consideration of what might 
 happen at Paris. When the emperor spoke of the danger 
 his sister and her husband were running, Castelnau replied, 
 " What does it matter, provided the royal authority is 
 preserved in the person of d'Artois ? " They not only 
 refused obedience to Lewis, but they assiduously com- 
 promised him, and proclaimed that he meant the contrary 
 of what he said, making a reconciliation between him and 
 his people impossible. Even his brothers defied him when, 
 in this extremity, he entreated them to return. It was the 
 emigre policy to magnify the significance of what was 
 done at Pilnitz ; and as they have convinced posterity 
 that it was the announcement of an intended attack, it
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 20$ 
 
 was easy to convince their contemporaries at home. The 
 language of menace was there, and France believed itself 
 in danger. How little the Princes concerned meant to 
 give effect to it remained a secret. 
 
 The French democracy might have found its advantage 
 in the disappearance of so many nobles ; but as they 
 were working, with apparent effect, to embroil the country 
 with its neighbours, attempts were made to compel their 
 return, first by a threefold taxation, then by confiscation, 
 and at last, November 9, by threatening with death those 
 who did not return. The nonjuring clergy were asso- 
 ciated with the emigres in the public mind as enemies and 
 conspirators who were the more dangerous because they 
 remained at home. The First Assembly had provoked the 
 hostility on the frontier ; the Second provoked hostilities at 
 home. The First had left nonjuring priests with a pension, 
 and the use of parish churches where successors had 
 not been appointed. The Legislative Assembly decreed, 
 November 29, that in all cases where it seemed good to 
 the authorities, they might be deprived of their pensions 
 and sent away. The great insurrection of the West was 
 caused by this policy. It was religious rather than 
 political, and was appeased by the return of the priests. 
 
 The head of the war party in the Assembly was Brissot, 
 who was reputed to know foreign countries, and who 
 promised certain success, as no really formidable Power was 
 ready to take the field. Meantime he endeavoured to 
 isolate Austria, and Segur was sent to Berlin, Talleyrand 
 to London, to surround France with her natural allies. 
 Brissot's text was the weakness and division of other 
 countries ; the first man who divined the prodigious 
 resources and invincible energy of France was the de- 
 clamatory Provengal Isnard. He spoke on November 29, 
 and this was his prophetic argument : the French people 
 exhibited the highest qualities in war when they were 
 treated as slaves by despotic masters ; there was no fear 
 that they had degenerated in becoming free men ; only 
 let them fight for principle, not for State policy, and 
 the force that was in them would transform the world.
 
 206 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 HeVault de S6chelles divulged the political motive of the 
 war party. He said a foreign conflict would be desirable 
 for internal reasons. It would lead to measures of pre- 
 caution stronger than peace time would admit, and changes 
 otherwise impossible would then be justified by the plea of 
 public safety. It is the first shadow cast by the coming 
 reign of terror. But neither Girondin violence nor Emigre 
 intrigue was the cause that plunged France into the war 
 that was to be the most dreadful of all wars. The true 
 cause was the determination of Marie Antoinette not to 
 submit to the new Constitution. At first she wished that 
 France should be intimidated by a congress of the united 
 Powers. She warned her friends abroad not to be taken 
 in by the mockery of her understanding with the Feuillant 
 statesmen ; and when Leopold treated the accepted Con- 
 stitution seriously, as a release from his engagements, she 
 accused him of betraying her. On September 8, just before 
 accepting, Lewis, in confidence, wrote that he meant to 
 tolerate no authority in France besides his own, and that 
 he desired to recover it by foreign aid. 
 
 The idea of an armed Congress persisted until the end 
 of November. But during the week from the 3rd to the 
 I oth of December the king and queen wrote to the Powers, 
 desiring them not to regard their official acts, beseeching 
 them to resist the demands they made in public and to 
 make war, and assuring them that France would be easily 
 subdued and cowed. They hoped, by this treason, to 
 recover their undivided power. All these letters were 
 inspired, were almost dictated, by Fersen. 
 
 As Leopold began to see more clearly what it was his 
 sister meant, he modified his pacific policy. On the 25th 
 of October he speaks of increasing the royal authority by 
 a counter-revolution in France. On the 1 7th of November 
 he invites Prussia to help him with 20,000 men. On the 
 i oth of December he denounces the annexation by France 
 of the German domains in Alsace. In conformity with 
 this gradual change, Kaunitz became more rigid, and he 
 made known that any assault on the Elector of Treves, 
 for the protection he gave to the warlike emigr^s^ would
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 207 
 
 be resisted by the imperial forces. Each step was as 
 short as possible. The transition from peace to war, from 
 pointless remonstrance to vigorous defiance, was slow and 
 gradual. It began late in October, when the real meaning 
 of the acceptance of the Constitution became known, but 
 down to the month of January the change was not decisive, 
 and the tone was still ambiguous. On the 3rd of January 
 a letter from the queen at length carried the emperor 
 over. On the way this appeal had converted Mercy, and 
 Mercy, on January 7, wrote a letter which compelled 
 Kaunitz to give way. Kaunitz had grown grey in the 
 idea of the French alliance and of rivalry with Prussia. 
 He laughed at Mr. Burke and the theory of contagion. 
 He desired to perpetuate a state of things which paralyzed 
 France, by the rivalry between the king and the democracy. 
 To restore the king's power at home was to increase it 
 abroad. Kaunitz was willing that it should be kept in 
 check by the legislature ; but a moment came when he per- 
 ceived that the progress of the opposition, of the Jacobins 
 as men indiscriminately called them, more properly of the 
 Girondins, had transferred the centre of gravity. What 
 had been cast down in the Monarch rose again in the 
 Second Assembly, and the power of the nation, the nation 
 united with its representatives, began to appear, 
 
 Kaunitz, though he had no eye for such things, took 
 alarm at last, and resolved that the way to depress France 
 was to assist the king of France. On January 5, after 
 the queen's letter of December 16 had been received, he 
 declared that Austria would support the elector of Treves, 
 and would repel force by force, if he was attacked for the 
 harbouring of emigres. At the same moment Leopold 
 resolved on an offensive alliance with Prussia. He ex- 
 plained his change of policy by the letters which showed 
 him the true mind of the queen. On January 1 6 Kaunitz 
 still believed that the other Powers would refuse to co- 
 operate. But Prussia was willing to accept the new 
 alliance, if Austria abandoned the new Polish Constitution 
 of May 3. Leopold paid the stipulated price. On 
 February 7 he gave up the Poles, that he might be strong
 
 208 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 against France. Already, January 25, Kaunitz had taken 
 the deciding step, passing over from the defensive to attack. 
 He speaks no more of the king's liberty of action. He 
 demands restitution of the papal territory at Avignon, 
 annexed in consequence of the Pope's action against the 
 ecclesiastical laws. He requires that the German princes 
 shall have their Alsatian domains given back to them, and 
 that there shall be no trespass on the imperial dominions. 
 And in general terms he requires the restoration of 
 monarchy. Again he wrote, in the same warlike and 
 defiant spirit, on February 1 7, when the Prussian signature 
 had been received, and when he expected English aid for 
 the preservation of Belgium. Meantime Simolin, the 
 Russian minister who had been helpful in procuring the 
 fatal passport, arrived at Vienna with a last appeal from 
 the queen. At that time she did not feel that their lives 
 were in jeopardy, but their power. To the faithful Fersen 
 she wrote that she hoped the enemy would strike home, 
 so that the French, in their terror, might pray the king 
 to intercede. 
 
 Kaunitz, having despatched his ultimatum on the inter- 
 national grounds of quarrel, declined to interfere in internal 
 affairs. But Simolin saw Leopold on the 25th, and then 
 the emperor admitted what his chancellor denied, that 
 the cause was the common cause of all crowned heads. 
 With those significant words he quits the stage. Five 
 days later he was dead. 
 
 Each step forward taken by Austria aggravated the 
 warlike feeling in the French legislature. But Delessart, 
 through whom the government communicated with foreign 
 powers, mitigated everything, and avoided provocation. 
 Even the note of the i/th, which was delivered at Paris 
 on the 27th, produced no immediate commotion. But 
 Narbonne thought the time had come to carry into effect 
 his policy of war, for the majority was now with him. He 
 threatened to resign unless Bertrand retired, who was the 
 king's nominee among the six ministers ; and he only 
 withdrew his threat at the instance of Lafayette and the 
 other generals who were to be in command. Lewis,
 
 THE FEUILLANTS AND THE WAR 209 
 
 indignant at this intrigue, dismissed not Bertrand, but 
 Narbonne. The Girondins, in reply, impeached Delessart, 
 who was sent to prison, March 10, and perished there in 
 September. The Feuillant minister resigned. Robespierre, 
 who divined the calculations of the Court, and feared that 
 war might strengthen the arm that bore the banner, resisted 
 the warlike temper, and carried the Jacobins with him. 
 On this issue Girondins and Jacobins separated into dis- 
 tinct parties. The Girondins inclined to an inevitable 
 Republic, because they distrusted the king ; but they 
 accepted the Constitution, and did not reject a king at 
 low pressure, such as had been invented by the Whigs. 
 They were persuaded that, in case of war, Lewis would 
 intrigue with the enemy, would be detected, and would 
 be at their mercy. " It is well that we should be betrayed," 
 said Brissot, "because then we shall destroy the traitors." 
 And Vergniaud, whose dignity and elevation of language 
 have made him a classic, pointed to the Tuileries and said, 
 " Terror has too often issued from that palace in the name 
 of a despot. Let it enter, to-day, in the name of the law." 
 They suspected, and suspected truly, that the menacing 
 note from Vienna was inspired at Paris. They formed 
 a new ministry, with Dumouriez at the Foreign Office. 
 Dumouriez gave Austria a fixed term to renounce its 
 policy of coercing France by a concert of Powers ; and 
 as Kaunitz stood his ground, and upheld his former state- 
 ments of policy, on April 20 Lewis declared war against 
 his wife's nephew, Francis, king of Hungary. Marie 
 Antoinette triumphed, through her influence on her own 
 family. Formally it was not a war for her deliverance, 
 but a war declared by France, which might be turned to 
 her advantage. To be of use to her, it must be unsuccess- 
 ful ; and in order to ensure defeat, she betrayed to the 
 Court of Vienna the plan of operations adopted in Council 
 the day before.
 
 XIV 
 DUMOURIEZ 
 
 As the war was more often a cause of political events 
 than a consequence, it will be convenient to follow up the 
 progress of military affairs to the fall of Dumouriez, 
 postponing the catastrophe of monarchy to next week. 
 
 On the I /th of February 1792 Pitt informed the House 
 of Commons that the situation of Europe had never 
 afforded such assurance of continued peace. He did not 
 yet recognise the peril that lay in the new French Con- 
 stitution. Under that Constitution, no government could 
 be deemed legitimate unless it aimed at liberty, and derived 
 its powers from the national will. All else is usurpation ; 
 and against usurped authority, insurrection is a duty. The 
 Rights of Man were meant for general application, and 
 were no more specifically French than the multiplication 
 table. They were not founded on national character and 
 history, but on Reason, which is the same for all men. 
 The Revolution was essentially universal and aggressive ; 
 and although these consequences of its original principle 
 were assiduously repressed by the First Assembly, they 
 were proclaimed by the Second, and roused the threatened 
 Powers to intervene. Apart from this inflaming cause the 
 motives of the international conflict were indecisive. The 
 emperor urged the affair of Avignon, the injury to German 
 potentates who had possessions in Alsace, the complicity of 
 France in the Belgian troubles, and the need of European 
 concert while the French denied the foundations of 
 European polity. 
 
 Dumouriez offered to withdraw the French troops from
 
 DUMOURIEZ 211 
 
 the frontier, if Austria would send no more reinforcements, 
 but at that moment the queen sent word of an intended 
 attack on Lie"ge. The offer seemed perfidious, and en- 
 venomed the quarrel. Marie Antoinette despatched 
 Goguelat, the man who was not at his post on the flight 
 to Varennes, to implore intervention. She also gave 
 Mercy her notions as to an Austrian manifesto ; and in 
 this letter, dated April 30, there is no sign of alarm, and 
 no suggestion yet that France might be cowed by the use 
 of exorbitant menaces. Dumouriez, who desired war with 
 Austria, endeavoured to detach Prussia from the alliance. 
 He invited the king to arbitrate in the Alsatian dispute, 
 and promised deference to his award. He proposed that 
 the prerogative should be enlarged, the princes indemnified, 
 the emigres permitted to return. Frederic William was 
 unmoved by these advances. He relied on the annexation 
 of Alsace and Lorraine to compensate both allies, and he 
 expected to succeed, because his army was the most 
 illustrious of all armies in Europe. He wished to restore 
 the 6migres y who would support him against Austria, and 
 the tmigrts looked to him to set up the order of society 
 that had fallen. " Better to lose a province," they said, 
 " than to live under a constitution." 
 
 The allied army was commanded by the Duke of 
 Brunswick, the most admired and popular prince of his 
 time. His own celebrity disabled him. Many years ago 
 Marshal Macmahon said to an officer, since in high command 
 at Berlin, that an army is best when it is composed of 
 soldiers who have never smelt gunpowder, of experienced 
 non-commissioned officers, and of generals with their 
 reputation to make. Brunswick had made his reputation 
 under the great king, and he feared to compromise it 
 Want of enterprise made him unfit for his position, although 
 nobody doubted his capacity. In France, they thought of 
 him for the command of their armies, and even for a still 
 higher post. In spite of the disasters I am about to describe, 
 the Prussians believed in him, and he was again their leader 
 when they met Napoleon. The army which he led across 
 the Rhine fell short of the stipulated number by 3 5,000 men.
 
 212 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Francis, the new emperor, did not fulfil his engagements, 
 and entered on the expedition with divided counsels. 
 
 Kaunitz, who was eighty-two years of age, and knew 
 the affairs of Europe better than any other man, condemned 
 the policy of his new master. He represented that they 
 did not know what they were going to fight for ; that 
 Lewis had never explained what changes in the Constitu- 
 tion would satisfy him ; that nothing could be expected 
 from disaffection, and nothing could be done for a system 
 which was extinct On August 2 he resigned office, and 
 made way for men who speculated on the dismemberment 
 of France, and expected to see a shrunken monarchy in the 
 north and a confederate republic in the south. 
 
 The entire force brought together for the invasion 
 amounted to about 80,000 men, of which half were 
 Prussians. When they were assembled on the Rhine, it 
 became necessary to explain to the French people why 
 they were coming, and what they meant to do. Head- 
 quarters were at Frankfort, when a confidential emissary 
 from Lewis XVI., Mallet du Pan, appeared on the scene. 
 Mallet du Pan was neither a brilliant writer like Burke 
 and De Maistre and Gentz, nor an original and constructive 
 thinker like Sieyes ; but he was the most sagacious of all 
 the politicians who watched the course of the Revolution. 
 As a Genevese republican he approached the study of 
 French affairs with no prejudice towards monarchy, aris- 
 tocracy, or Catholicism. A Liberal at first, like Mounier 
 and Malouet, he became as hostile as they ; and his testi- 
 mony, which had been enlightened and wise, became 
 morose and monotonous when his cause was lost, until 
 the Austrian statesmen with whom he corresponded grew 
 tired of his narrowing ideas. He settled in England, and 
 there he died. As he was not a man likely to propose a 
 foolish thing, he was heard with attention. He proposed 
 that the allies should declare that they were warring on 
 Jacobinism, not on liberty, and would make no terms 
 until the king regained his rightful power. If he was 
 injured, they would inflict a terrible vengeance. 
 
 Whilst Mallet's text was being manipulated by
 
 DUMOURIEZ 213 
 
 European diplomacy at Frankfort, Marie Antoinette, 
 acting through Fersen, disturbed their counsels. The 
 queen understood how to control her pen, and to repress 
 the language of emotion. But after June 20 she could 
 not doubt that another and a more violent outrage was 
 preparing, and that the republicans aimed at the death of 
 the king. The terms in which she uttered her belief 
 outweighed the advice of the sober Genevese. " Save us," 
 she wrote, " if it is yet time. But there is not a moment 
 to lose." And she required a declaration of intention so 
 terrific that it would crush the audacity of Paris. Mont- 
 morin and Mercy were convinced that she was right 
 Malouet alone among royalist politicians expected that 
 the measure she proposed would do more harm than good. 
 Fersen, to whom her supplications were addressed, employed 
 an Emigre named Limon to draw up a manifesto equal to 
 the occasion, and Limon, bearing credentials from Mercy, 
 submitted his composition to the allied sovereigns. He 
 announced that the Republicans would be exterminated, 
 and Paris destroyed. Already Burke had written : " If 
 ever a foreign prince enters into France, he must enter it 
 as into a country of assassins. The mode of civilised war 
 will not be practised ; nor are the French, who act on the 
 present system, entitled to expect it." Mallet du Pan 
 himself had declared that there ought to be no pernicious 
 mercy, and that humanity would be a crime. In reality, 
 the difference between his tone and the fanatic who 
 superseded him was not a wide one. 
 
 The manifesto, which proceeded from the queen, which 
 had the sanction of Fersen, of Mercy, of Bouille", was 
 accepted at once by the emperor. The Prussians intro- 
 duced some alterations, and Brunswick signed it on 
 July 25. His mind misgave him at the time, and he 
 regretted afterwards that he had not died before he set 
 his hand to it. Mercy, when it was too late, wished to 
 put another declaration in its place. The Prussian ministers 
 would not suffer the text to be published at Berlin. They 
 allowed the author to fall into poverty and obscurity. He 
 had acted in the spirit of the emigres.
 
 214 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 On July 27 the Princes issued a declaration of their 
 own, to the effect that not Paris only should suffer the 
 extremity of martial law, but every town to which the 
 king might be taken if he was removed from the capital. 
 Breteuil, although he complained that the invaders exhibited 
 an intolerable clemency, disapproved the second proclama- 
 tion. But Limon demanded the destruction of Varennes, 
 and the emigres expected that severities should be inflicted 
 on the population as they went along. The idea of 
 employing menaces so awful as to inspire terror at a 
 distance of 300 miles was fatal to those who suggested 
 it ; but the danger was immediate, and the consequences 
 of inaction were certain, for the destined assailants of the 
 Tuileries were on the march from Toulon and Brest. It 
 was not so certain that the king would be unable to defend 
 himself. The manifesto was a desperate resource in a 
 losing cause, and it is not clear that wiser and more 
 moderate words would have done better. The text was 
 not published at Paris until August 3. The allies were 
 too far away for their threats to be treated seriously, and 
 they are not answerable for consequences which were 
 already prepared and expected. But their manifesto 
 strengthened the hands of Danton, assured the triumph 
 of the violent sections, and suggested the use to which 
 terror may be put in revolutions. It contributed to the 
 fall of the monarchy, and still more to the slaughter of the 
 royalists three weeks later. The weapon forged by men 
 unable to employ it was adopted by their enemies, and 
 served the cause it was intended to destroy. 
 
 The Declaration united the French people against its 
 authors. The Republicans whom it threatened and de- 
 nounced became the appointed leaders of the national 
 defence, and the cause of the Republic became identified 
 with the safety of the nation. In order to withstand 
 the invasion, and to preserve Paris from the fate of 
 Jerusalem, the army gave itself to the dominant faction. 
 The royalist element vanished from its ranks. Lafayette 
 made one last attempt to uphold the Constitution, but his 
 men repulsed him. He went over to imperial territory,
 
 DUMOURIEZ 215 
 
 and was detained in prison as the guilty author of the 
 Revolution. Dumouriez succeeded to his command, and 
 adhered to the new government. Out of 9000 officers 
 in the- king's service, 6000 had resigned, and, for the 
 most part, had emigrated. Their places were filled by 
 new men. In 1791, 100,000 volunteers had been 
 enrolled, and enjoyed the privilege of electing their own 
 officers. This became the popular force, and recruits 
 preferred it to the line, where discipline was sterner and 
 elected commanders were unknown. The men who now 
 rose from the ranks proved better professional soldiers 
 than the fine gentlemen whom they replaced. Talent 
 could not fail to make its way. Those volunteer officers 
 of 1791 and 1792 included most of the men whom the 
 long war raised to eminence. Seventeen of the twenty -six 
 marshals of Napoleon were among them. 
 
 On the 1 9th of August, four months after war had been 
 declared, the allies entered France by the line of the 
 Moselle. There was one French army to their left at 
 Metz, and another to their right along Vauban's chain of 
 fortresses, with an undefended interval between. To widen 
 the gap they laid siege to Longwy, the nearest fortified 
 place, and took it, after a feeble resistance, on August 24. 
 When the news spread there was a moment of alarm, 
 and the Council of Defence proposed to retire from the 
 capital. Danton declared that he would burn Paris to 
 the ground rather than abandon it to the enemy. Lavergne, 
 who made so poor a defence at Longwy, was afterwards 
 condemned to death. He was disheartened by disaster, 
 but his wife cried out that she would perish with him, and 
 the judges granted her prayer. She strove to give him 
 comfort and courage along the way, and they were guillo- 
 tined together. 
 
 From Longwy the Prussians advanced upon Verdun, 
 which surrendered September 2, after one day's bombard- 
 ment, and there was not a rampart between them and the 
 capital. A few miles beyond Verdun the roads to the 
 west traversed the Argonne, a low wooded range of hills
 
 216 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 pierced in five places by narrow defiles, easy to defend. 
 Then came the open country of Champagne, and the valley 
 of the Marne, leading, without a natural or artificial 
 obstacle, to Paris. 
 
 On the 7th of September Pitt wrote that he expected 
 Brunswick soon to reach his goal. There was no enemy 
 in his front, while on his flank Dumouriez clung to his 
 frontier strongholds, persuaded that he would arrest the 
 invasion if he threatened the Austrians at Brussels, where 
 they were weakened by recent insurrection and civil war. 
 The French government rejected his audacious project, 
 and ordered him to move on Chalons, and cover the heart 
 of France. At Sedan, Dumouriez could hear heavy firing 
 at a distance, and knew that Verdun was attacked, and 
 could not hold out. He quickly changed his plan, post- 
 poning Belgium, but not for long, and fell back on the 
 passes of the forest that he was about to make so famous. 
 "They are the Thermopylae of France," he said, "but I mean 
 to do better than Leonidas." 
 
 Brunswick, delaying his cumbrous march for ten days, 
 while Breteuil organised a new administration at Verdun, 
 gave time for the French to strengthen their position. 
 Before moving forward, he pointed out on the map the 
 place where he intended to halt on the i6th, and men 
 heard for the first time the historic name, Valmy. On 
 the 1 4th Clerfayt, with the Austrians, forced one of 
 the passes, and turned the French left. At nightfall, 
 Dumouriez evacuated his Thermopylae more expeditiously 
 than became a rival Leonidas, and established himself 
 across the great road to Chalons, opposite the southern 
 defile of the Argonne, which extends between Clermont 
 and St. Mnehould, where Drouet rode in pursuit of the 
 king. His infantry encountered Prussian troopers and 
 ran away. Ten thousand men, he wrote, were put to flight 
 by fifteen hundred hussars. 
 
 Napoleon said, at St. Helena, that he believed himself 
 to be bolder than any general that ever lived, but he would 
 never have dared to hold the position that Dumouriez took 
 up. He was outnumbered, three to one. He had been
 
 DUMOURIEZ 217 
 
 outmanoeuvred, and driven from his fastness by the most 
 enterprising of the allied generals ; and his recruits refused 
 to face the enemy. He never for a moment lost confidence 
 in himself, for the time wasted at Verdun had given him 
 the measure of his opponents. He summoned Kellermann, 
 with the army of Metz, and Beurnonville, with 10,000 
 men, from Lille, and they arrived, just in time, on the iQth. 
 Beurnonville, when his telescope showed him a regular 
 army in order of battle, took alarm and fell back, thinking 
 it must be Brunswick. It proved to be Dumouriez ; and 
 on the morning of September 20 he was at the head of 
 53,000 men, with the allies gathering in his front. The 
 Prussians had come through the woods by the pass he had 
 abandoned, and as they turned to face him, they stood 
 with their backs to the great Catalaunian plain, which 
 was traversed by the high road to Paris. They had been 
 for a month in France, and had met with no resistance. 
 Lafayette had deserted. The military breakdown was so 
 apparent that the colonel of infantry, as he marched out 
 of Longwy, threw himself into the river, and the governor 
 of Verdun blew out his brains. 
 
 Clerfayt's success on the I4th and the rout of the 
 following day raised the hopes of the Germans, and they 
 wrote on the 1 9th that they were turning the enemy, and 
 were sure of destroying him, if he was rash enough to wait 
 their attack. From his prison at Luxemburg Lafayette 
 urged them onward, and hinted that Dumouriez might 
 be induced to unite with them for the rescue of the king. 
 
 Therefore, on the morning of September 20, when the 
 mist rose over the French army drawn up on the low 
 hills before them, there was joy in the Prussian camp, and 
 the battalions that had been trained at Potsdam, under 
 the eye of the great king, to the admiration of Europe, 
 received for the first time the republican fire. They were 
 34,000. Kellermann opposed them with 36,000 men, and 
 40 guns against 58. It soon appeared that things were 
 not going as the invaders had expected. The French 
 soldiers were not frightened by the cannonade. Beurnon- 
 ville rode up to one of his regiments and told them to lie
 
 2i8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 down, to make way for shot. They refused to obey whilst 
 he exposed himself on horseback. After time had been 
 allowed for artillery to produce its effect on republican 
 nerve, the Prussian infantry made ready to attack. Gouvion 
 St Cyr, the only general of his time whom Napoleon 
 acknowledged as his equal, believed that the French would 
 not have stood at close quarters. But the word to advance 
 was never given. 
 
 The secret of war, said Wellington, is to find out what 
 is going on on the other side of the hill. When Brunswick 
 rode over the field some days later, a staff officer asked 
 him why he had not moved forward. He answered, 
 " Because I did not know what was behind the hill." 
 There was Dumouriez's reserve of 16,000 men. He had 
 sent to the front as many as were needed to fill Kellermann's 
 line, and left to his colleague the part for which he was 
 fitted. For his conduct that day Kellermann was named 
 a marshal of the Empire and duke of Valmy ; but the 
 whole world was aware that the event was due to the 
 brain of the man in the background. When the French 
 had lost 300 men without wavering, the Prussians ceased 
 firing, and broke off the engagement. Their loss was 
 only 184. Yet this third-rate and mediocre action is 
 counted, with Waterloo and Gettysburg, among the decisive 
 battles of history ; and Goethe was not the only man there 
 who knew that the scene before him was the beginning of 
 a new epoch for mankind. With 36,000 men and 40 
 guns the French had arrested the advance of Europe, not 
 by skilful tactics or the touch of steel, but by the moral 
 effect of their solidity when they met the best of existing 
 armies. The nation discovered that the Continent was at 
 its mercy, and the war begun for the salvation of monarchy 
 became a war for the expansion of the Republic. It was 
 founded at Paris, and consolidated at Valmy. Yet no 
 military event was less decisive. The French stood their 
 ground because nobody attacked them, and they were not 
 attacked because they stood their ground. The Prussians 
 suffered a strategic, though not a tactical defeat. By 
 retiring to their encampment they renounced the purposes
 
 DUMOURIEZ 219 
 
 for which they went to war, the province they occupied, 
 and the prestige of Frederic. They no longer possessed 
 the advantage of numbers, and without superior numbers 
 there could be no dash for Paris. 
 
 The object of the invasion was unattainable by force, 
 but something might be got by negotiation, if it was 
 undertaken before force had definitely failed. They were 
 losing heavily, by disease and want, while French recruits 
 were pouring in. Therefore Dumouriez wished for time. 
 The king's secretary had been captured, and he sent him 
 with overtures, representing that the intended advance 
 upon Paris was hopeless, and that Prussia had more 
 interests in common with France than with Austria. 
 Frederic William at once surrendered the original demands. 
 He made no stipulations now regarding the future govern- 
 ment of France or the treatment of the Emigres. He only 
 demanded that Lewis should be restored, in such manner 
 as might seem good to France, and that the propaganda 
 of revolution should be put an end to. That propaganda 
 was one of the weapons by which the French checked and 
 embarrassed the champions of European absolutism, and 
 it was obvious that it would receive encouragement from 
 their success at Valmy. And it was a point of honour to 
 speak for the imprisoned monarch. But it had become a 
 vain thing. Dumouriez produced a newspaper with the 
 decree of the new Assembly abolishing monarchy. It 
 was hard to say what the allies were now doing on French 
 soil. " Only do something for the king," said Brunswick, 
 " and we will go." The Austrians would be satisfied if he 
 was only a stadtholder. Kellermann promised that peace 
 might be obtained if he was sent back to the Tuileries. 
 It was all too late. The Prince, in whose behalf the allies 
 invaded France, was now a hostage in the power of their 
 enemies ; all that they could obtain was a pledge not to 
 carry the revolution into foreign countries. Their position 
 grew more dangerous every day, and Dumouriez grew 
 stronger. 
 
 At the end of September Frederic William aban- 
 doned Lewis to his fate. He had contributed to his
 
 220 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 dethronement by entering France, and he contributed to 
 his execution by leaving it. He did not feel that he had 
 deserved so prodigious a humiliation. If the Austrians 
 had joined as they promised with 100,000 men, the 
 march upon the capital would have been conceivable with 
 energetic commanders. And the king could justly say 
 that he had favoured spirited schemes, and had been 
 baffled by the faltering commander-in-chief. He attempted, 
 by throwing out hints of neutrality, to escape without 
 further loss. Dumouriez calculated that every attack 
 would weld the allies more closely together, and refrained 
 from molesting them. Early in October they evacuated 
 the conquered province, and retreated to the Rhine, pursued 
 by a few random shots, while Dumouriez hastened to Paris, 
 to be hailed as the saviour of his country. 
 
 The invasion of 1792 roused a crouching lion ; and the 
 French, after their easy and victorious defence, went over 
 to the attack. Whilst the invaders were standing still, 
 too weak to advance and too proud to withdraw, the 
 conquest of Europe began. The king of Sardinia, as the 
 father-in-law of the Comte d'Artois, had thrown himself 
 into the counter-revolutionary policy, and the scheme for 
 attacking Lyons. Of all European monarchs, since the 
 murder of Gustavus, he was the most hostile. An army 
 under Montesquieu occupied Savoy and Nice without 
 resistance, and the people readily adopted the new system. 
 A week later Custine seized the left bank of the Rhine, 
 where diminutive secular and ecclesiastical territories, 
 without cohesion, were an easy prey. The Declaration 
 of Rights, said Gouverneur Morris, proved quite as effectual 
 as the trumpets of Joshua. Mentz fell, October 21, and 
 Custine occupied Frankfort and replenished his military 
 chest. This excursion into the middle of the Empire was 
 not authorised by State policy. The idea was already 
 taking shape that the safety of France required the defen- 
 sible and historic, or, as they unscientifically called it, the 
 natural frontier of the Rhine, and that the grand conflict 
 with Austria should be transferred to Italy. Germany
 
 DUMOURIEZ 221 
 
 was a nation of armed men, and was best let alone. In 
 Italy, the Austrians would have only their own resources 
 for war. Their most vulnerable point was the outlying 
 principality of Belgium, so distant from Vienna and so 
 near to Paris. 
 
 Dumouriez was now at liberty to deliver the stroke 
 by which he had hoped to stop the invasion, as Scipio 
 drove Hannibal from Italy by landing in Africa. By 
 carrying the war in that direction he would occupy the 
 Imperialists, and would not excite the resentment of 
 Prussia. The country had not long been pacified, and 
 it presented the unusual feature that Conservatives and 
 Liberals alike were patriotic and rebellious. As a place 
 where disaffection would assist war, it was there that the 
 process of European revolution would properly begin. On 
 October 19 Dumouriez assumed the command of 70,000 
 men, in the region he had held before his flank march to 
 the Argonne. One of his lieutenants was the Peruvian 
 adventurer Miranda, whose mission it was to apply the 
 movement in Europe to the rescue of Spanish America. 
 The other was known as Prince Egalite", senior, whose 
 wonderful future was already foreseen both by Dumouriez 
 and Danton. 
 
 During the operations in Champagne the Austrians 
 had begun the siege of Lille, and at the turning of the 
 tide they withdrew across the frontier, and took up a 
 strong position at Jemmapes, in front of Mons, with 
 13,000 men. Clerfayt, again, was at their head ; and 
 when, on November 6, he saw the French army approach- 
 ing, nearly 40,000 strong, like Nelson in the hour of death 
 he appeared in all his stars and gold lace, that his men, 
 seeing him, might take heart. He was defeated, and 
 the next evening, at the theatre of Mons, Dumouriez was 
 acclaimed by the Flemish patriots. A week later he 
 was at Brussels, and before the end of the month he was 
 master of Belgium. Holland was undefended, and he 
 proposed to conquer it ; but Antwerp was already in the 
 power of the French, and his government feared that 
 England would come to the defence of the Dutch. They
 
 222 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 directed him to march upon Cologne and complete the 
 conquest of the Rhine. 
 
 By a decree of November 1 9 the Convention proffered 
 sympathy and succour to every people that struck a blow 
 for freedom ; but the cloven hoof of annexation soon 
 appeared, and it was avowed that the war would be 
 carried on, that the financial needs of France might be 
 supplied, at the expense of the populations which the 
 French arms delivered. These things offended the 
 political, if not the moral sense of Dumouriez. He 
 became alienated from the Convention ; and as England 
 went to war on the death of the king, there was no con- 
 sideration of policy protecting Holland. The invasion 
 was undertaken, and immediately failed. The Austrians, 
 under the duke of Coburg, who on that day founded the 
 great fortunes of his house, came back in force, and gave 
 battle at Neerwinden, close to the fields of Landen and of 
 Ramillies. Here, March 1 8, Clerfayt crushed Dumouriez's 
 left wing, and recovered the Belgic provinces as suddenly 
 as he had lost them four months earlier. 
 
 Dumouriez had already resolved to treat with the 
 Imperialists for common action against the Regicides. 
 Five days after his defeat he informed Coburg that, with 
 his support, he would lead his army against Paris, disperse 
 the Convention, and establish a constitutional monarchy 
 without the emigres. He promised that the better part 
 of his force would follow him. The volunteers were 
 Jacobinical ; but the regulars were jealous of the volunteers, 
 and would obey their general. As he felt his way, hostile 
 officers watched him, and reported what was going on in 
 the camp of the new Wallenstein. Twice the Jacobins 
 attempted to avert the peril. They invited Dumouriez 
 to Paris, that he might place himself at their head and 
 overpower the Girondin majority, and they employed 
 men to assassinate him. At last they sent the minister 
 of war, accompanied by four deputies, to arrest him. 
 There was to have been a fifth, but he did not arrive in 
 time, and his absence saved France. For Dumouriez 
 seized the envoys of the Convention, and handed them
 
 DUMOURIEZ 223 
 
 over to Coburg, to be hostages for the life of the queen. 
 The deputy who failed to appear was Carnot. After that, 
 Dumouriez was deserted by his men, and fled to the 
 Austrian camp. He survived for thirty years. He became 
 one of the shrewdest observers of Napoleon's career, and 
 was the confidential correspondent of Wellington on the 
 art they understood so well. The future " king of the 
 French," who went over with him, remained true to his 
 chief during the strange vicissitudes of their lives ; and 
 at the Restoration he asked that he should be made a 
 marshal. " How could you think," was the proud comment 
 of Dumouriez, " that they have forgotten the Argonne ? " 
 
 On the 2Oth of June in the following year Louis 
 Philippe drove into town from Twickenham to learn the 
 news from the Low Countries. His sons still know the 
 spot where he found his old commander gesticulating on 
 the pavement at Hammersmith, and learned from him 
 how the great war, which began with their victory at 
 Valmy, had ended under Napoleon at Waterloo.
 
 XV 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 
 
 THE calculations of the Girondins were justified by the 
 event. Four months after the declaration of war the 
 throne had fallen, and the king was in prison. Next to 
 Dumouriez the principal members of the new ministry 
 were the Genevese Claviere, one of Mirabeau's advisers, 
 and the promoter of the assignats, Servan, a meritorious 
 officer, better known to us as a meritorious military 
 historian ; and Roland, whose wife shared, on a lower 
 scale, the social influence and intellectual celebrity of 
 Madame de Stae'l. 
 
 Dumouriez, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is one of 
 the great figures of the Revolution. He was excessively 
 clever rather than great, agreeable, and abounding in 
 resource, not only cool in danger, as a commander should 
 be, but steadfast and cheerful when hope seemed lost, and 
 ready to meet the veterans of Frederic with undisciplined 
 volunteers, and officers who were the remnant of the royal 
 army. Without principle or conviction or even scruple, 
 he had none of the inhumanity of dogmatic revolutionists. 
 To the king, whom he despised, he said, " I shall often 
 displease you, but I shall never deceive you." He was 
 not an accomplice of the conspiracy to compromise him 
 and to ruin him by war, and would have saved him if the 
 merit and the reward had been his own. He did not begin 
 well, in the arts either of war or peace. He employed all 
 his diplomacy, all his secret service money, in the endeavour 
 to make Prussia neutral. Nothing availed against the 
 indignation of the Prussians at French policy, and their 
 
 224
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 225 
 
 contempt for French arms. The officers received orders 
 to make ready for a march to Paris, and were privately 
 told that it would be a mere parade. The first encounter 
 with Austrians on Belgian soil confirmed this persuasion, 
 for the French turned and fled, and murdered one of their 
 generals. 
 
 Dumouriez's credit was shaken, and the Girondin leaders, 
 who could not rely on him to make the coming campaign 
 turn towards the execution of their schemes, revived the 
 question of the clergy. On May 27 Vergniaud carried a 
 decree placing nonjurors at the mercy of local authorities, 
 and threatening them with arbitrary expulsion as public 
 enemies in time of national peril. If the king sanctioned, 
 he would be isolated and humiliated. If the king vetoed, 
 they would have the means of raising Paris against him, 
 without waiting for the vicissitudes of war or the co-opera- 
 tion of Dumouriez. Madame Roland wrote a letter to the 
 king, and her husband signed it, on June 10, representing 
 that it was for the safety of the priests themselves that 
 they should be sent out of the way of danger. Roland, 
 proud of the composition, sent it to the papers. The 
 Girondin ministry was at once dismissed. Dumouriez 
 remained, attempted to form an administration without the 
 Girondin colleagues, but could not overcome the king's re- 
 sistance to the act of banishment. On June 1 5 he resigned 
 office, and took a command on the frontier. The majority 
 in the Assembly was still faithful to the Constitution of 
 1791, and opposed to further change ; but the rejection 
 of their decree against the royalist clergy alienated them 
 at the critical moment. Lewis had lost ground with his 
 friends ; he had angered the Girondins ; and he had lost 
 the services of the last man who was strong enough to 
 save him. 
 
 On June 1 5 a high official in the administration of 
 the department was at Maubeuge, on a visit to Lafayette. 
 His name was Roederer, and we shall meet him again. 
 He rose high under Napoleon, and is one of those to 
 whom we owe our knowledge of the Emperor's character, 
 as well as of the events I am about to relate. His inter- 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 view with the general was interrupted by a message from 
 Paris. Lafayette was called away ; and Roederer, from 
 the next room, heard the joyful exclamations of the officers. 
 The news was the fall of the Girondin ministry ; and 
 Lafayette, to strengthen the king's hands, wrote to the 
 Assembly remonstrating against the illiberal and unconsti- 
 tutional tendencies of the hour. His letter was read on 
 the 1 8th. A new ministry had been forming, consisting 
 of Feuillants and men friendly to Lafayette, one of whom, 
 Terrier de Montciel, enjoyed the confidence of the king. 
 On the opposition side were the Girondins angry and 
 alarmed at their fall from power, the more uncompro- 
 mising Jacobins, Potion at the head of the Commune, 
 and behind Petion, the real master of Paris, Danton, sur- 
 rounded by a group of his partisans, Panis and Sergent in 
 the police, Desmoulins and Fre"ron in the press, leaders of 
 the populace, such as Santerre and Legendre, and above 
 them all, the Alsatian soldier, Westermann. 
 
 With Danton and his following we reach the lowest 
 stage of what can still be called the conflict of opinion, and 
 come to bare cupidity and vengeance, to brutal instinct and 
 hideous passion. All these elements were very near the 
 surface in former phases of the Revolution. At this point 
 they are about to prevail, and the man of action puts him- 
 self forward in the place of contending theorists. Robes- 
 pierre and Brissot were politicians who did not shrink from 
 crime, but it was in the service of some form of the demo- 
 cratic system. Even Marat, the most ghastly of them all, 
 who demanded not only slaughter but torture, and whose 
 ferocity was revolting and grotesque, even Marat was 
 obedient to a logic of his own. He adopted simply the 
 state of nature and the primitive contract, in which 
 thousands of his contemporaries believed. The poor had 
 agreed to renounce the rights of savage life and the pre- 
 rogative of force, in return for the benefits of civilisation ; 
 but finding the compact broken on the other side, finding 
 that the upper classes governed in their own interest, and left 
 them to misery and ignorance, they resumed the conditions 
 of barbaric existence before society, and were free to take
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 227 
 
 what they required, and to inflict what punishment they 
 chose upon men who had made a profit of their sufferings. 
 Danton was only a strong man, who wished for a strong 
 government in the interest of the people, and in his own. 
 In point of doctrine, he cared for little but the relief of 
 the poor by taxing the rich. He had no sympathy with 
 the party that was gathering in the background, whose 
 aim it was not only to reduce inequalities, but to institute 
 actual equality and the social level. There was room 
 beyond for more extreme developments of the logic of 
 democracy ; but the greatest change in the modern world 
 was wrought by Danton, for it was he who overthrew the 
 Monarchy and made the Republic. 
 
 When Lewis dismissed his ministers, Danton ex- 
 claimed that the time had come to strike terror, and on 
 June 20 he fulfilled his threat. It was the anniversary of the 
 Tennis Court. A monster demonstration was organised, to 
 plant a tree of liberty or to present a petition in reality 
 to overawe the Assembly and the king. There was an 
 expectation that the king would perish in the tumult, but 
 nothing definite was settled, and no assassin was designated. 
 It was enough that he should give way, abandon his priests, 
 and receive his ministers from the populace. That was all 
 the Girondins required, and they would assent to no more. 
 The king would have to choose between them and their 
 temporary confederates, the Cordeliers. If he gave way, 
 he would be spared ; if he resisted, he would be slain. 
 It was not to be apprehended that he would resist and 
 would yet come out alive. The king understood the alter- 
 native before him, made his choice, and prepared to die. 
 After putting his house in order, he wrote, on the I9th, 
 that he had done with this world. 
 
 Lewis XVI. had not ability to devise a policy or vigour 
 to pursue it, but he had the power of grasping a principle. 
 He felt at last that the ground beneath his feet was firm. 
 He would drift no longer, sought no counsel, and admitted 
 no disturbing inquiries. If he fell, he would fall in the 
 cause of religion and for the rights of conscience. The 
 proper name for the rights of conscience is liberty, and
 
 228 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 therefore he was true to himself, and was about to end as 
 he had begun, in the character of a liberal and reforming 
 king. When the morning came, there was a moment of 
 hesitation. The pacific rioters asked what would happen 
 if the guards fired upon them. Santerre, who was at 
 their head, replied, " March on, and don't be afraid ; P6tion 
 will be there." They presented their petition, defiled 
 before the Assembly, and made their way to the palace. 
 It was not to be thought of that, after they had been 
 admitted by the representatives of the nation, an inferior 
 power should deny them access. One barrier after another 
 yielded, and they poured into the room where the king 
 awaited them, in the recess of a window, with four or five 
 guards in front of him. They shielded him well, for 
 although there were men in the crowd who struck at him 
 with sword and pike, he was untouched. Their cry was 
 that he should restore Roland and revoke his veto, for 
 this was the point in common between the Girondins and 
 their violent associates. Legendre read an insulting 
 address, in which he called the king a traitor. The scene 
 lasted more than two hours. Vergniaud and Isnard 
 appeared after some time, and their presence was a 
 protection. At last Potion came in, borne aloft on the 
 shoulders of grenadiers. He assured the mob that the 
 king would execute the will of the people, when the 
 country had shown that it agreed with the capital ; he 
 told them that they had done their duty, and then, with 
 lenient arts, turned them out. 
 
 That trying humiliation marks the loftiest moment in 
 the reign of Lewis XVI. He had stood there, with the 
 red cap of liberty on his powdered head, not only fearless, 
 but cheerful and serene. He had been in the power of 
 his enemies and had patiently defied them. He made no 
 surrender and no concession while his life was threatened. 
 The Girondins were not recalled, and the movement failed. 
 For the moment the effect was injurious to the revolu- 
 tionary party, and useful to the king. It was clear that 
 menace and outrage would not move him, and that more 
 was wanted than the half-hearted measures of the Gironde.
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 229 
 
 The outrage of June 20 was a contumelious reply to 
 Lafayette's letter of the i6th, and the time had come for 
 more than the writing of letters. His letter had been 
 well received, and the Assembly had ordered it to be 
 printed. The Girondins, by pretending that it could not 
 be authentic, had prevented a vote on the question of 
 sending it to the departments. He could count on the 
 Feuillant majority, on the ministry composed of his 
 partisans, on his popularity with the National Guard. As 
 he was at the head of an army, his advice to the king to 
 adopt a policy of resistance implied that he would support 
 him in it. He now wrote once more, that he could never 
 maintain his ground against the Prussians unless there 
 was a change in the state of things in the capital. On 
 the morning of June 28, immediately after his letter, he 
 appeared in the Assembly, and denounced the sowers 
 of disorder who were disorganising the State. Having 
 obtained a vote of approval, by 339 to 234, he appealed 
 to the National Guard to stand by him against his Jacobins. 
 He summoned a meeting of his friends, but the influence 
 of the Court caused it to fail, and he was compelled to 
 return to his camp, having accomplished nothing. He 
 imagined one chance more. He now put forward his 
 colleague, General Luckner, who was incompetent but, not 
 being a politician, was not distrusted, and they were 
 jointly to rescue the king, and bring him to a city of refuge. 
 
 The revolutionists could now lay their plans without 
 fear of the army. They summoned federes from the 
 departments for the anniversary of July 14, and it was 
 arranged that sturdy men should be sent from Brest and 
 Marseilles to be at their orders when they struck the final 
 blow. Paris could not be relied on. The failure there 
 had been complete. On June 21, and on the 25th, the 
 Cordeliers attempted to renew, with better effect, the attack 
 which had been baffled by a divided purpose on the 2Oth. 
 But their men would not move. The minister, Montciel, 
 gave orders that the departments should not send federes 
 to Paris, and he succeeded in stopping all but a couple of 
 thousand. Nothing could be done until the contingents
 
 230 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 from the seaports arrived. The crisis was postponed, and 
 some weeks of July were spent in parliamentary warfare. 
 Here the Girondins had the lead ; but the Feuillants 
 were the majority in the Assembly, while the Jacobins 
 were supreme in Paris. The Girondins were driven into 
 a policy both tortuous and weak. The Republic would 
 give power to one of their enemies as the Monarchy gave 
 it to the other. All they could do was to increase hostile 
 pressure on the king, in the hope of bringing him to terms 
 with them. They oscillated between open attack and 
 secret negotiation and offers of defence. 
 
 Lewis was inclined to accept a scheme for his deliver- 
 ance which was arranged by his ministers in conjunction 
 with the generals. He was to have been taken to Com- 
 pie"gne, within reach of the army. But the army meant 
 Lafayette, and Lafayette would only consent to restore 
 the king as the hereditary chief of a commonwealth, who 
 should reign, but should not govern. The queen refused 
 to reign under such conditions, or to be saved by such 
 hands. The security for her was in power, not in limita- 
 tions to power. The sacred thing was the ancient Crown, 
 not the new Constitution. Lally Tollendal came over 
 from England, conferred with Malouet and Clermont 
 Tonnerre, and exhorted her to consent. Morris, whose 
 ready pen had put the American Constitution into final 
 shape five years before, aided them in drawing up an 
 amended scheme of government to be proclaimed when 
 they should be free. But the strong will and stronger 
 passion of the queen prevailed. When all was accurately 
 combined, and the Swiss troops were on the march to the 
 rendezvous, the king revoked his orders, and on July 10 
 the Feuillant ministry resigned, and the Girondins saw 
 power once more within their grasp. They had vehemently 
 denounced the king as the cause of all the troubles of the 
 State, and on July 6 the assault had been interrupted for 
 a moment by a scene of emotion, when the bishop of 
 Lyons obtained a manifestation of unanimous feeling in 
 the presence of the enemy. 
 
 On July 1 1 the Assembly passed a vote declaring the
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 231 
 
 country in danger, and on the 22nd it was proclaimed, to 
 the sound of cannon. It was a call to arms, and placed 
 dictatorial power in the hands of government. Different 
 plans were proposed to keep that power distinct from the 
 executive, and the idea which afterwards developed into 
 the Committee of Public Safety now began to be familiar. 
 On July 14 the anniversary of the Bastille and of the 
 Federation of 1790 was celebrated on the Champ de 
 Mars ; the king went up to the altar, where he swore 
 fidelity to the Constitution, with a heavy heart ; and the 
 people saw him in public for the last time until they saw 
 him on the scaffold. It was near the end of July when 
 the Girondins saw that the king would not take them 
 back, and that the risk of a Jacobin insurrection, as much 
 against them as against the throne, was fast approaching. 
 Their last card was a regency, to be directed by them in 
 the name of the Dauphin. Vergniaud suggested that 
 the king should summon four conspicuous members of the 
 Constituent Assembly to his Council, without office, to 
 make up for the obscurity of his new ministers. At that 
 moment Brunswick's declaration became known, some of 
 the forty -eight sections in which the people of Paris 
 deliberated demanded the dethronement of the king, and 
 the Marseillais, arriving on the 3Oth, five or six hundred 
 strong, made it possible to accomplish it. 
 
 These events, coinciding almost to a day, conveyed 
 power from the Assembly to the municipality, and from 
 the Girondins to the Jacobins, who had the municipality 
 in their hands, and held the machinery that worked the 
 sections. In a letter written to be laid before the king, 
 Vergniaud affirmed that it was impossible to dissociate 
 him from the allies who were in arms for his sake, and 
 whose success would be so favourable to his authority. 
 That was the argument to which no royalist could reply. 
 The country was in danger, and the cause of the danger 
 was the king. The Constitution had broken down on 
 June 20. The king could not devote himself to the 
 maintenance of a system which exposed him to such 
 treatment, and enabled his adversaries to dispose of all
 
 232 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 forces in a way that left him at the mercy of the most 
 insolent and the most infamous of the rabble. He had 
 not the instincts of a despot, and would easily have been 
 made content with reasonable amendments. But the 
 limit of the changes he sought was unknown, unsettled, 
 unexplained, and he was identified simply with the 
 reversal of the Constitution he was bound by oath to 
 carry out. 
 
 The queen, a more important person than her husband, 
 was more openly committed to reaction. The failure of 
 the great experiment drove her back to absolutism. As 
 she repudiated the Emigres in 1791, so she now repudiated 
 the constitutionalists, and chose rather to perish than to 
 owe her salvation to their detested aid. She looked for 
 deliverance only to the foreigners slowly converging on 
 the Moselle. Her agents had excluded a saving allusion 
 to constitutional liberty in the manifesto of the Powers ; 
 and she had dictated the threats of vengeance on the 
 inhabitants of Paris. 
 
 The king himself had called in the invaders. His 
 envoy, concealed in the uniform of a Prussian major, rode 
 by the side of Brunswick. His brothers were entering 
 France with the heavy baggage of the enemies, and 
 Breteuil, the agent whom he trusted more than his brothers, 
 was preparing to govern, and did in September govern, 
 the provinces they occupied, under the shelter of their 
 bayonets. For him the blow was about to fall not for 
 his safety, but for his plenary authority. The purpose of 
 the allied sovereigns, and of the emigres who prompted 
 them, stood confessed. They were fighting for un- 
 conditional restoration, and both as invaders and as 
 absolutists the king was their accomplice. The country 
 could not make war with confidence, if the military power 
 was in the hands of traitors. The king could protect 
 them from the horrors with which they were threatened 
 on his account, not as the head of the executive, but as a 
 hostage. He was a danger in his palace ; he would be a 
 security in prison. All this was obvious at the time, and 
 the effect it had was to disable and disarm the friends of
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 233 
 
 the constitutional king, so that no resistance was offered 
 when the attack came, although it was the act of a very 
 small part of the population. The Girondins no longer 
 displayed a distinct policy, and scarcely differed from 
 their former associates, of June, except by their wish to 
 suspend the king, and not to dethrone him. The final 
 question, as to monarchy, regency, or republic, was to be 
 left to the Convention that was to follow. Petion was 
 persuaded that he would soon be the Regent of France. 
 He received a large sum of money from the Court ; and 
 it was in reliance on him, and on some less conspicuous 
 men, that the king and queen remained obstinately in 
 Paris. At the last moment Liancourt offered them a 
 haven in Normandy ; but Liancourt was a Liberal of the 
 Constituante, and therefore unforgiven. Marie Antoinette 
 preferred to trust to Potion and Santerre. 
 
 Early in August the most revolutionary section of 
 Paris decided that the king should be deposed. The 
 Assembly rescinded the vote. Then the people of that 
 section and some others made known that they would 
 execute their own decree, unless the Assembly itself made 
 it unnecessary and accomplished legally what would 
 otherwise be done by the act of the sovereign people, 
 superseding all powers and standing above law. Time 
 was to be allowed until August 9. If the king was still 
 on the throne upon the evening of that day, the people of 
 Paris would sound the tocsin against him. 
 
 On August 8 the Assembly came to a vote on the 
 conduct of Lafayette, in abandoning his army in time of 
 war to threaten his enemies at home. He was justified 
 by 406 votes to 224. It was the last appearance of 
 the Liberal party. Four hundred deputies, a majority of the 
 entire body, kept out of the way in the moment of danger, 
 and allowed the Girondin and republican remnant to 
 proceed without them. The absolution of Lafayette 
 proclaimed the resolve not to dethrone the king. The 
 Gironde had no constitutional remedy for its anxieties. 
 The next step would be taken by the democracy of Paris, 
 and their victory would be a grave danger to the Gironde
 
 234 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 and a triumph for the extreme revolutionary faction. Up 
 to this time they had struggled for mastery ; they would 
 now have to struggle for existence. They accepted what 
 was inevitable. After the flight of the Feuillants, the 
 Gironde, now supreme in the legislature, capitulated to 
 the revolution which they dreaded, and appeared without 
 initiative or policy. 
 
 On August 9 the Jacobin leaders settled their plan of 
 action. Their partisans in each section were to elect 
 three commissaries to act with the Commune for the 
 public good, and to strengthen, and, if necessary, eventually 
 to supersede, the existing municipality. About one-half 
 of Paris sent them, and they assembled in the course of 
 the night at the H6tel de Ville, apart from the legal 
 body. In the political science of the day, the constituency 
 suspended the constituted authorities and resumed all 
 delegated powers. The revolutionary town -councillors, 
 who now came to the front, are the authors of the 
 atrocities that afflicted France during the next two years. 
 They were creatures of Danton. And as we now enter 
 the company of malefactors and the Chamber of Horrors, 
 we must bear this in mind, that our own laws punish the 
 slightest step towards absolute government with the same 
 supreme penalty as murder ; so that morally the difference 
 between the two extremes is not serious. The agents are 
 ferocious ruffians, and the leaders are no better ; but 
 they are at the same time influenced by republican con- 
 victions, as respectable as those of the Emigres. The 
 function of this supplementary Commune was not to lead 
 the insurrection or direct the attack, but to disable the 
 defence ; for the commander of the National Guard received 
 his orders from the Hdtel de Ville, and he was a loyal 
 soldier. 
 
 The forces of the Revolution were not overwhelming. 
 The men from Marseilles and Brest were intent on 
 fighting, and so were some from the departments. But 
 when the tocsin rang from the churches soon after 
 midnight, the Paris combatants assembled slowly, and 
 the event might be doubtful. Ammunition was supplied
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 235 
 
 to the insurgent forces from the Hdtel de Ville, but not 
 to the National Guard. It is extremely dangerous, said 
 Potion, to oppose one public force to another. At the 
 Tuileries there were less than a thousand Swiss mercenaries, 
 who were sure to do their duty ; one or two hundred 
 gentlemen, come to defend the king ; and several thousand 
 National Guards of uncertain fidelity and valour. Potion 
 showed himself at the palace, and at the Assembly, and 
 then was seen no more. By a happy inspiration he 
 induced Santerre to place him under arrest, with a guard 
 of four hundred men to protect him from the dangers of 
 responsibility. He himself tells the story, and is mean 
 enough to boast of his ingenuity. But if the mayor was 
 a traitor and a coward, the commanding general, Mandat, 
 knew his duty, and was resolved to do it. He prepared 
 for the defence of the palace, and there was great 
 probability that his men would fight. If they did, they 
 were strong enough to repulse attack. Therefore, early 
 in the morning of August 10, Mandat was summoned by 
 his lawful superiors to the Hdtel de Ville. He appeared 
 before them, made his report, and was then taken to the 
 revolutionary committee sitting separately. He declared 
 that he had orders to repel force by force, and that it 
 would be done. They required him to sign an order 
 removing half of the National Guard from the place they 
 were to defend. Mandat refused to save his life by an 
 act of treachery, and by Danton's order he was shot 
 dead. He was in flagrant insurrection against the people 
 themselves and abetting constituted authorities in resist- 
 ance to their master. By this first act of bloodshed the 
 defence of the palace was deprived of half its forces. 
 The National Guards were without a commander, and, 
 left to themselves, it was uncertain how many would fire 
 on the people of Paris. 
 
 Having disposed of the general commanding, the new 
 Commune appointed Santerre to succeed him, and then 
 took the place of the former Commune. There was no 
 obstacle now to the concentration and advance of the 
 insurgents, and they appeared in the space between the
 
 236 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Louvre and the Tuileries, which was crowded with private 
 houses. It was between seven and eight in the morning. 
 All night long the royal family expected to be attacked, 
 and the king did nothing. Some thousands of Swiss were 
 within reach, at Courbevoie, and were not brought up in 
 time. At last, surrounded by his family, the king made 
 a forlorn attempt to rouse his guards to combat. It was 
 an occasion memorable for all time, for it was the last 
 stand of the monarchy of Clovis. His wife, his children, 
 his sister were there, their lives depending on the spirit 
 which, by a word, by a glance, he might infuse into the 
 brave men before him. The king had nothing to say, 
 and the soldiers laughed in his face. When the queen 
 came back, tears of rage were bursting from her eyes. 
 " He has been deplorable," she said, " and all is lost." 
 Others soon came to the same conclusion. Roederer 
 went amongst the men, and found them unwilling to 
 fight in such a cause. He was invested with authority 
 as a high official ; and although the ministers were present, 
 it was he who gave the law. The disappearance of 
 Mandat and the hesitation of the artillery convinced him 
 that there was no hope for the defenders. 
 
 There was a looker-on who lived to erect a throne in 
 the place of the one that fell that day, and to be the 
 next sovereign who reigned at the Tuileries. In 1813 
 Napoleon told Roederer that he had watched the scene 
 from a window on the Carrousel, and assured him that 
 he had made a fatal mistake. Many of the National 
 Guard were staunch, and the royal forces were superior 
 to those with which he himself conquered in Vende"miaire. 
 He thought that the defence ought to have been victorious. 
 I do not suppose he seriously resented the blunder to 
 which he owed so much. Roederer was a clever man, and 
 there is some reason to doubt whether he was single- 
 minded in desiring to prevent the uncertain conflict. 
 The queen was eager to fight, and spoke brave words to 
 every one. Afterwards, when she heard the cannonade 
 from her refuge in the reporter's box, she said to 
 d'Hervilly: "Well, do you think now that we were
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 237 
 
 wrong to remain in Paris ? " He answered, " God grant, 
 madam, that you may not repent of it ! " Roederer had 
 detected what was passing in her mind. Defeat would 
 be terrible, for nothing could save the royal family. But 
 victory would also be a perilous thing for the revolution, 
 for it would restore the monarchy in its power, and the 
 old nobles collected in the palace would gain too much 
 by it. They were indeed but a residue : 7000 had been 
 expected to appear at the supreme moment ; there were 
 scarcely 120. Charette, the future hero of Vende'e, was 
 among them, unconscious yet of his extraordinary gifts 
 for war. 
 
 Roederer, vigorously backed by his colleagues of the 
 department, informed the king of what he had seen and 
 heard, assured him that the Tuileries could not be defended 
 with the forces present, and that there was no safety 
 except in the Assembly, the only authority that was 
 regarded. It was but two days since the deputies, by 
 an immense majority, had approved the act of Lafayette. 
 He thought they might be trusted to protect the king. 
 As there was nothing left to fight for, he affirmed that 
 those who remained behind would be in no danger. He 
 would not allow the garrison to retire, and he left the 
 Swiss, without orders, to their fate. Marie Antoinette 
 resisted vehemently, and Lewis was not easy to convince. 
 At last he said that there was nothing to be done, and 
 gave orders to set out. But the queen in a fury turned 
 upon him, and exclaimed : " Now I know you for what 
 you are ! " Lewis told his valet to wait his return ; but 
 as they crossed the garden, where the men were sweeping 
 the gravel, he remarked : " The leaves are falling early 
 this year." Roederer heard, and understood. 
 
 A newspaper had said that the throne would not last 
 to the fall of the leaf; and it was by those trivial but 
 significant words that the fallen monarch acknowledged the 
 pathetic solemnity of the moment, and indicated that the 
 footsteps which took him away from his palace would 
 never be retraced. A deputation met him at the door of 
 the Assembly, and he entered, saying that he came there
 
 238 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 to avert a great crime. The Feuillants were absent. 
 The Girondins predominated, and the president, Vergniaud, 
 received him with stately sentences. From his retreat in 
 the reporter's box he placidly watched the proceedings. 
 Vergniaud also moved that he be suspended, as he had 
 been before, and that a Convention should be convoked, 
 to pronounce on the future government of France. It 
 was decided that the elections should be held without a 
 property qualification. Roland and the other Girondin 
 ministers returned to their former posts, and Danton was 
 appointed Minister of Justice by 222 votes. For Danton 
 was the victor. While Potion kept out of the way, it 
 was he who issued commands from the H6tel de Ville, 
 and when Santerre faltered, it was Danton's friend 
 Westermann who brought up his men to the tryst at 
 the Carrousel. After the king was gone they made their 
 way into the Tuileries, holding parley with the defenders. 
 If there had been anybody left to give orders, bloodshed 
 might have been averted. But the tension was extreme ; 
 the Swiss refused to surrender their arms ; a shot was 
 fired, and then they lost patience and fell upon the 
 intruders. In ten minutes they cleared the palace and 
 the courtyard. But the king heard the fusillade, and sent 
 orders to cease firing. The bearer of the order was 
 d'Hervilly ; but he had the heart of a soldier ; and 
 finding the position by no means desperate, he did not at 
 once produce it. When he did, it was too late. The 
 insurgents had penetrated by the long gallery of the 
 Louvre, near the river, and then there was no escape for 
 the Swiss. They were killed in the palace, and in the 
 gardens, and their graves are under the tall chestnuts. 
 Of the women, some were taken to prison, and some to 
 their homes. The conquerors slaked their thirst in the 
 king's wine, and then flooded the cellars, lest some 
 fugitive aristocrat should be lurking underground. Their 
 victims were between 700 and 800 men, and about 140 
 of the assailants had fallen. 
 
 The royalists did not at first perceive that the monarchy 
 was at an end. They imagined that the king was again
 
 THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY 239 
 
 in the same condition as after Varennes, only occupying 
 the Luxembourg instead of the Tuileries, and that he would 
 be again restored, as the year before. The majority of 
 the Legislature was loyal, and it was hoped that France 
 would resent the action of the capital. But Paris, repre- 
 sented by the intruding municipality, held its prey. The 
 allowance promised by the Assembly was suppressed, and 
 the Temple was substituted for the Luxembourg which 
 was deemed unsafe because of the subterranean galleries. 
 A sum of 20,000 was voted for expenses, until the 
 Convention in September disposed of the king. 
 
 With no severer effort than the signing of an order, 
 Lewis might have called up other regiments of Swiss, 
 who would have made the stronghold of monarchy im- 
 pregnable. And it would have been in his power, before 
 sunset that day, to march out of Paris at the head of a 
 victorious army, and at once to proclaim reforms which 
 enlightened statesmen had drawn up. His queen was 
 active and resolute ; but she had learnt, in adversity, to 
 think more of the claims of authority and the historic 
 right of kings. She shared Burke's passionate hatred 
 for men whose royalism was conditional. At every step 
 downward they were the authors of their own disaster. 
 The French Republic was not a spontaneous evolution 
 of social elements. The issue between constitutional 
 monarchy, the richest and most flexible of political forms, 
 and the Republic one and indivisible (that is, not federal), 
 which is the most rigorous and sterile, was decided by 
 the crimes of men, and by errors more inevitably fatal 
 than crime. There is another world for the expiation of 
 guilt ; but the wages of folly are payable here below.
 
 XVI 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 
 
 THE constitutional experiment, first tried on the Continent 
 under Lewis XVI., failed mainly through distrust of the 
 executive and a mechanical misconstruction of the division 
 of power. Government had been incapable, the finances 
 were disordered, the army was disorganised ; the monarchy 
 had brought on an invasion which it was now the mission 
 of the Republic to repel. The instinct of freedom made 
 way for the instinct of force, the Liberal movement was 
 definitely reversed, and the change which followed the 
 shock of the First European Coalition was more significant, 
 the angle more acute, than the mere transition from royal 
 to republican forms. Unity of power was the evident 
 need of the moment, and as it could not be bestowed 
 upon a king who was in league with the enemy, it had 
 to be sought in a democracy which should have con- 
 centration and vigour for its dominant note. Therefore 
 supremacy was assured to that political party which was 
 most alert in laying its grasp on all the resources of the 
 State, and most resolute in crushing resistance. More 
 than public interests were at stake. Great armies were 
 approaching, guided by vindictive Emigres, and they had 
 announced the horrors they were prepared to inflict on 
 the population of Paris. 
 
 Beyond the rest of France the Parisians were interested 
 in the creation of a power equal to the danger, and were 
 ready to be saved even by a dictatorship. The need was 
 supplied by the members of the new municipality who 
 expelled the old on the night of August 9. They were 
 
 240
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 241 
 
 instituted by Danton. They appointed Marat their organ 
 of publicity. Robespierre was elected a member of the 
 body on August 1 1. It was the stronghold of the Revolu- 
 tion. Strictly, they were an illegal assembly, and their 
 authority was usurped ; but they were masters of Paris, 
 and had dethroned the king. The Legislative, having 
 accepted their action, was forced to obey their command- 
 ments, and to rescind its decrees at their pleasure. By 
 convoking the constituencies to elect a Convention, it had 
 annulled itself. It was no more than a dying assembly 
 whose days were exactly numbered, and whose credit and 
 influence were at an end. 
 
 Between a king who was deposed and an assembly 
 that abdicated, the Commune alone exhibited the energy 
 and force that were to save the country. Being illegitimate, 
 they could quell opposition only by violence ; and they 
 made it clear what violence they meant to use when they 
 gave an office to Marat. This man had been a writer on 
 science, and Goethe celebrates his sagacity and gift of 
 observation in a passage which is remarkable for the 
 absence of any allusion to his public career. But he 
 considered that the rich have no right to enjoyments of 
 which the masses are deprived, and that the guilt of 
 selfishness and oppression could only be expiated by 
 death. A year before he had proposed that obnoxious 
 deputies should be killed by torture, and their quarters 
 nailed to the walls as a hint to their successors. He now 
 desired to reconcile mercy with safety, and declared him- 
 self satisfied if the Assembly was decimated. For royalists, 
 and men who had belonged to privileged orders, he had 
 no such clemency. If, he said, the able-bodied men 
 become soldiers and are sent to guard the frontier, who is 
 to protect us from traitors at home ? Either thousands 
 of fighting men must be kept away from the army in the 
 field, or the internal enemy must be put out of the way. 
 On August 19 Marat began to employ this argument, 
 and a company of recruits protested against being sent to 
 the front whilst their families were at the mercy of the 
 royalists. The cry became popular that France would be 
 
 R
 
 242 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 condemned to fight her enemies with one arm, if she had 
 to guard the traitors with the other. And this was the 
 plea provided to excuse the crimes that were about to 
 follow. It was the plea, but not the motive. If the 
 intended destruction of royalists could be represented as 
 an act of war, as a necessity of national defence, moderate 
 men would be unable to prevent it without incurring 
 reproach as unpatriotic citizens. 
 
 When the Jacobins prepared the massacre in the prisons, 
 their purpose was to fill France with terror and to secure 
 their majority in the Convention. That is the controlling 
 idea that governed the events of the next few weeks. 
 After the decree which assigned the Luxemburg palace as 
 a residence to the king, the Commune claimed him ; and 
 he was delivered up to them, and confined in the Temple, 
 the ancient fortress in which the Valois kept their treasure. 
 They proceeded to suppress the newspapers that were 
 against them, disfranchised the voters who had signed 
 opposing or reactionary petitions, and closed the barriers. 
 They threw their enemies into prison, erected a new tribunal 
 for the punishment of crimes against the Revolution, and 
 supplied it with a new and most efficient instrument which 
 executed its victims painlessly, expeditiously, and on terms 
 conforming to the precept of equality. From the moment 
 of his appearance at the Hdtel de Ville, the day after the 
 fight was over, Robespierre became the ruling spirit and 
 the organiser, and it was felt at once that, behind the 
 declamations and imprecations of Marat, there was a 
 singularly methodical, consistent, patient, and systematic 
 mind at work, directing the action of the Commune. 
 
 The fall of Longwy was known at Paris on August 26. 
 On that day the Minister of Justice, Danton, revised the 
 list of prisoners ; domiciliary visits were carried out, all 
 over the city, to search for arms, and for suspected persons. 
 Nearly 3000 were arrested by the 28th, and a thing still 
 more ominous was that many prisoners were released. 
 Nobody doubted, nobody seriously denied, the significance 
 of these measures. The legislature, seeing that this was 
 not the mere frenzy of passion, but a deliberate and settled
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 243 
 
 plan, dissolved the Commune, August 30, and ordered 
 that it should be renewed by a fresh election. They also 
 restored the governing body of the department, as a check 
 on the municipality. They had the law and constitution 
 on their side, and their act was an act of sovereignty. It 
 was the critical and deciding moment in the struggle 
 between the Girondins and the Hdtel de Ville. On the 
 following day, August 31, the Assembly revoked the 
 decree. Tallien read an address, drawn up by Robespierre, 
 declaring that the Commune, just instituted by the people 
 of Paris, with a fresh and definite mandate, could not 
 submit to an assembly which had lost its powers, which 
 had allowed the initiative to pass away from it. The 
 Assembly was entirely helpless, and was too much com- 
 promised by its complicity since the loth of August to 
 resist its master. Robespierre, at the Commune, threatened 
 the Girondins with imprisonment, and, to complete their 
 discomfiture, Brissot's papers were examined, and Roland, 
 Minister of the Interior, was subjected to the same indignity. 
 In the last days of August, whilst every house was 
 being searched for fugitives, the primary elections were 
 held. The Jacobins were much opposed to the principle 
 of indirect election, but they did not succeed in abolishing 
 it. They instituted universal suffrage for the first stage, 
 and they gave to the primary assemblies a veto on the 
 choice of the second. For the rest, they relied on 
 intimidation. The 800 electors met at the bishop's 
 palace on September 2. But here there was no stranger's 
 gallery, and it was requisite that the nominees of the 
 people should act in the presence of the public that 
 nominated them to do its work. Robespierre proposed 
 that the electoral body should hold its sittings at the 
 Jacobin Club, in the full enjoyment of publicity. On the 
 following day they met at the same place, and proceeded 
 to the Jacobins. Their way led them over the bridge, 
 where a spectacle awaited them which was carefully 
 calculated to assist their deliberations. They found 
 themselves in the presence of a great number of dead 
 men, deposited from the neighbouring prison.
 
 244 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 For this is what had happened. On the 2nd of 
 September Verdun had fallen. This was not yet known 
 at Paris ; but it was reported that the Prussians had 
 appeared before the fortress, and that it could not hold 
 out. Verdun was the last barrier on the road to Paris, 
 and the first scene of the war in Belgium made it doubtful 
 whether the new levies would stand their ground against 
 battalions that had been drilled by Frederic. Alarm guns 
 were fired, the tocsin sounded, the black flag proclaimed 
 that the country was in danger, and the men of Paris 
 were summoned by beat of drum to be enrolled for the 
 army of national defence. 
 
 Danton, who knew English, and read English books, 
 seems to have remembered a passage in Spenser, when 
 he declared that France must be saved at Paris, and told 
 his terrified hearers to be bold, to be bold, and again to 
 be bold. Then he went off to see to the enrolments, 
 and left the agents of the Commune to accomplish the 
 work appointed for the day. Twenty-four prisoners at 
 the Mairie were removed to the Abbaye, which was the 
 old Benedictine monastery of St. Germain, in hackney 
 coaches ; twenty-two of them were priests. Lewis XVI. 
 had fallen because he refused to proscribe the refractory 
 clergy who were accused of spreading discontent Beyond 
 all men they were identified with the lost cause, and it 
 had been decided that they should be banished. They 
 were imprisoned in large numbers, as a first step towards 
 their expulsion. That group, escorted by Marseillais from 
 the Mairie to the Abbaye, were the first victims. The 
 people, who did not love them, let them pass through the 
 streets without injury ; but when they reached their 
 destination, the escorting Marseillais began to plunge their 
 swords into the carriages, and all but three were killed. 
 Two made their way into a room where a commission 
 was sitting, and, by taking seats among the rest, escaped. 
 Sicard, the teacher of the deaf and dumb, was recognised 
 and saved ; and it is through him that we know the 
 deeds that were done that day. They were directed by 
 Maillard who proceeded from the abbey to the Carmelites,
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 245 
 
 a prison filled with ecclesiastics, where he sent for the 
 Register, and had them murdered orderly and without 
 tumult There was a large garden, and sixteen of the 
 prisoners climbed over the wall and got away ; fourteen 
 were acquitted ; 1 20 were put to death, and their bones 
 are collected in the chapel, and show the sabre cuts by 
 which they died. 
 
 During the absence of Maillard, which lasted three 
 hours, certain unauthorised and self-constituted assassins 
 appeared at the Abbaye and proposed to go on with the 
 work of extermination which he had left unfinished. The 
 gaolers were obliged to deliver up a few prisoners, to save 
 time. When Maillard returned, he established a sort of 
 tribunal for the trial of prisoners, while the murderers, in 
 all something under 200, waited outside and slaughtered 
 those that were given up to them. In the case of the 
 clergy, and of the Swiss survivors of the 4th of August, 
 little formality was observed. At the Abbaye, and at 
 La Force, there were many political prisoners, and of 
 these a certain number were elaborately absolved. Several 
 prisons were left unvisited ; but at Bicetre and the 
 Saltpetriere, where only the most ignoble culprits were 
 confined, frightful massacres took place. 
 
 As this was utterly pointless and unmeaning, it has 
 given currency to the theory that all the horrors of that 
 September were the irrational and spontaneous act of 
 some hundreds of gaolbirds, whose eyes were stained with 
 the vision of blood, and who ran riot in their impunity. 
 So that criminal Paris, not revolutionary Paris, was to 
 blame. In reality, the massacres were organised by the 
 Commune, paid for by the Commune, and directed by its 
 emissaries. We know how much the various agents 
 received, and what was the cost of the whole, from the 
 2nd of September to the 5th. At first, all was deliberate 
 and methodical, and the women were spared. Several 
 were released at the last moment ; some were dismissed 
 by the tribunal before which they appeared. The excep- 
 tion is the Princess de Lamballe, who was the friend of 
 the queen. But as Madame de Tourzel was spared, the
 
 246 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 cause of her death remains unexplained. Her life had 
 not been entirely free from reproach ; and it has been 
 supposed that she was in possession of secrets injurious 
 to the duke of Orleans. 
 
 But the problem is not to know why murderers were 
 guilty of murder, but how they allowed many of their 
 captives to be saved. One man made friends with a 
 Marseillais by talking in his native patois. When asked 
 what he was, he replied, " A hearty royalist ! " Thereupon 
 Maillard raised his hat and said, " We are here to judge 
 actions, not opinions," and the man was received with 
 acclamation outside by the thirsty executioners. Bertrand, 
 brother of the royalist minister, had the same reception. 
 Two men interrupted their work to see him home. They 
 waited outside whilst he saw his family, and then went 
 away, thanking him for the sight of so much happiness, 
 and refusing a reward. Another prisoner was taken to 
 his house in a cab, with half a dozen dripping patriots 
 crowded on the roof, and hanging on behind. They would 
 accept nothing but a glass of spirits. Few men were in 
 greater danger than Weber, the foster-brother of the 
 queen. He had been on guard at the Tuileries, and was 
 by her side on the funereal march across the gardens from 
 palace to prison. As he well knew what she was leaving, 
 and to what she was going, he was so overcome that 
 Princess Elizabeth whispered to him to control his feelings 
 and be a man. Yet he was one of those who lived to 
 tell the tale of his appearance before the dread tribunal 
 of Maillard. When he was acquitted, the expectant cut- 
 throats were wild with enthusiasm. They cheered him ; 
 they gave him the fraternal accolade ; they uncovered as 
 he passed along the line ; and a voice cried, " Take 
 care where he walks ! Don't you see he has got white 
 stockings on ? " 
 
 One acquittal is remembered beyond all the rest. In 
 every school and in every nursery of France the story 
 continues to be told how Sombreuil, the governor of the 
 Invalides, was acquitted by the judges, but would have 
 been butchered by the mob outside if his daughter had not
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 247 
 
 drunk to the nation in a glass filled with the warm blood 
 of the last victim. They were taken home in triumph. 
 Sombreuil perished in the Reign of Terror. His daughter 
 married, and died at Avignon in 1823, at the height of 
 the royalist reaction. The fame of that heroic moment 
 in her life filled the land, and her heart was brought to 
 Paris, to be laid in the consecrated ground where she had 
 worshipped as a child, and it rests under the same gilded 
 canopy that covers the remains of Napoleon. Many 
 people believe that this is one of the legends of royalism 
 which should be strung with the mock pearls of history. 
 No contemporary mentions it, and it does not appear 
 before 1801. Mile, de Sombreuil obtained a pension 
 from the Convention, but this was not included in the 
 statement of her claims. An Englishman, who witnessed 
 the release of Sombreuil, only relates that father and 
 daughter were carried away swooning from the strain of 
 emotion. I would not dwell on so well-worn an anecdote 
 if I believed that it was false. The difficulty of disbelief 
 is that the son of the heroine wrote a letter affirming it, 
 in which he states that his mother was never afterwards 
 able to touch a glass of red wine. The point to bear in 
 mind is that these atrocious criminals rejoiced as much in 
 a man to save as in a man to kill. They were servants 
 of a cause, acting under authority. 
 
 Robespierre, among the chiefs, seems to have aimed 
 mainly at the destruction of the priests. Others proposed 
 that the prisoners should be confined underground, and 
 that water should be let in until they were drowned. 
 Marat advised that the prisons should be burnt, with 
 their inmates. " The 2nd of September," said Collot 
 d'Herbois, " is the first article of the creed of Liberty. 
 Without it there would be no National Convention." 
 "France," said Danton, in a memorable conversation, " is not 
 republican. We can only establish a Republic by the 
 intimidation of its enemies." They had crushed the Legis- 
 lature, they had given warning to the Germans that they 
 would not save the king by advancing on the capital when 
 it was in the hands of men capable of such deeds, and they
 
 248 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 had secured a Jacobin triumph at the Paris election. 
 Marat prepared an address exhorting the departments to 
 imitate their example, and it was sent out under cover 
 from the Ministry of Justice. Danton himself sent out 
 the same orders. Only one copy seems to have been 
 preserved, and it might have been difficult to determine 
 the responsibility of Danton, if he had not avowed to 
 Louis Philippe that he was the author of the massacres of 
 September. 
 
 The example of Paris was not widely followed, but the 
 State prisoners at Orleans were brought to Versailles, and 
 there put to death. The whole number killed was between 
 thirteen and fourteen hundred. We have touched low- water 
 mark in the Revolution, and there is nothing worse than this 
 to come. We are in the company of men fit for Tyburn. 
 I need spend no words in impressing on you the fact 
 that these republicans began at once with atrocities as 
 great as those of which the absolute monarchy was justly 
 accused, and for which it justly perished. What we have 
 to fix in our thoughts is this, that the great crimes of the 
 Revolution, and crimes as great as those in the history of 
 other countries, are still defended and justified in almost 
 every group of politicians and historians, so that, in 
 principle, the present is not altogether better than the past. 
 
 The massacre was successful at Paris, but not in the 
 rest of France. Under its influence none but Jacobins 
 were elected in the capital. President and vice-president 
 of the Electoral Assembly were Robespierre and Collot 
 d'Herbois, with Marat for secretary. Robespierre was 
 the first deputy returned, Danton was second, Collot third, 
 Manuel fourth, Billaud-Varennes fifth, Camille Desmoulins 
 sixth, and Marat seventh, with a majority over Priestley, 
 who was chosen in two departments, but refused the seat. 
 The twentieth and last of the deputies for Paris was the 
 duke of Orleans. 
 
 While the people of Paris sanctioned and approved 
 the murders, it was not the same in the country. In 
 many places the proceedings began with mass, and 
 concluded with a Te Deum. Seventeen bishops were sent
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 249 
 
 to the Convention, and thirty-one priests. Tom Paine, 
 though he could not speak French, was elected in four 
 places. Two-thirds were new members, who had not sat 
 in the previous assemblies. Four-fifths of the primary 
 electors abstained. 
 
 The Convention began its sittings, September 20, in 
 the Riding School, where the Legislative had met ; in the 
 month of May 1793 it adjourned to the Tuileries. There 
 were about fifty or sixty Jacobins. The majority, without 
 being Girondins, were prepared generally to follow, if 
 the Girondins led. Potion was at once elected president, 
 and all the six secretaries were on the same side. The 
 victory of the Gironde was complete. It had the game 
 in its hands. The party had little cohesion and, in spite 
 of the whispered counsels of Sieyes, no sort of tactics. 
 Excepting Buzot, and perhaps Vergniaud, they scarcely 
 deserve the interest they have excited in later literature, 
 for they had no principles. Embarrassed by the helpless 
 condition of the Legislative, they made no resistance to 
 the massacres. When Roland, Condorcet, Gorsas, spoke 
 of them in public, they described them as a dreadful 
 necessity, an act of rude but inevitable justice. Roland, 
 Minister of the Interior, had some of the promoters to 
 dine with him while the bloodshed was going on, and he 
 proposed to draw a decent veil over what had passed. 
 Such men were unfit to compete with Robespierre in ruth- 
 less villainy, but they were equally unfit to denounce and 
 to expose him. That was the policy which they attempted, 
 and by which they perished. 
 
 The movement towards a permanent Republic was not 
 pronounced, beyond the barrier of Paris. The constitu- 
 encies made no demand for it, except the Jura. Two 
 others declared against monarchy. Thirty-four departments 
 gave no instructions ; thirty-six gave general or unlimited 
 powers. Three, including Paris, required that constitu- 
 tional decrees should be submitted to popular ratification. 
 The first act of the Convention was to adopt that new 
 principle. By a unanimous vote, on the motion of Danton, 
 they decided that the Constitution must be accepted by
 
 250 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the nation in its primary assemblies. But some weeks 
 later, October 16, when Manuel proposed to consult 
 the people on the question of a Republic, the Conven- 
 tion refused. The abolition of monarchy was carried, 
 September 21, without any discussion ; for the history 
 of kings, said Bishop Grgoire, is the martyrology of 
 nations. On the 22nd the Republic was proclaimed, 
 under the first impression of the news from Valmy, 
 brought by the future king of the French. The repulse 
 of the invasion provoked by the late government coincided 
 with the establishment of the new. 
 
 The Girondins, who were in possession, began with a 
 series of personal attacks on the opposite leaders. They 
 said, what everybody knew, that Marat was an infamous 
 scoundrel, that Danton had not made his accounts clear 
 when he retired from office on entering the Convention, 
 that Robespierre was a common assassin. Some suspicion 
 remained hanging about Danton, but the assailants used 
 their materials with so little skill that they were worsted 
 in the encounter with Robespierre. The Jacobins expelled 
 them from their Club, and Louvet's motion against Robes- 
 pierre was rejected on November 5. Thus they were 
 weakened already when, on the following day, the question 
 of the trial of the king came on. It was not only the 
 first important stage in the strife of the parties, but it was 
 the decisive one. The question whether Lewis should live 
 or die was no other than the question whether Jacobin or 
 Girondin should survive and govern. 
 
 A mighty change occurred in the position of France 
 and in the spirit of the nation, between the events we have 
 just contemplated and the tragedy to which we are coming. 
 In September the German armies were in France, and 
 at first met with no resistance. The peril was evidently 
 extreme, and the only security was the life of the king. 
 Since then the Prussians and Austrians had been igno- 
 miniously expelled ; Belgium had been conquered ; Savoy 
 had been overrun ; the Alps and the Rhine as far as Mentz 
 were the frontiers of the Republic. From the German 
 Ocean to the Mediterranean not an army or a fortress had
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 251 
 
 been able to resist the revolutionary arms. The reasonable 
 alarm of September had made way for an exorbitant 
 confidence. There was no fear of all the soldiery of 
 Europe. The French were ready to fight the world, and 
 they calculated that they ran no graver risk than the loss 
 of the sugar islands. It suited their new temper to slay 
 their king, as it had been their policy to preserve him as 
 a hostage. On the ipth of November they offered aid 
 and friendship to every people that determined to be free. 
 This decree, really the beginning of the great war, was 
 caused by remonstrances from Mentz where the French 
 party feared to be abandoned. But it was aimed against 
 England, striking at the weakest point, and reducing its 
 warlike power by encouraging Irish disaffection. 
 
 On the 1 2th of August Rebecqui had proposed that 
 the king should be tried by the Convention that was to 
 meet, and that there should be an appeal to the people. 
 On October I the question was brought before the Conven- 
 tion, and a Commission of twenty-four was appointed to 
 examine the evidence. They reported on the 6th of 
 November ; and from that moment the matter did not 
 rest. On the following day, Mailhe, in the name of the 
 jurists, reported that there was no legal obstacle, from the 
 inviolability acknowledged by the Constitution. Mousson 
 replied that since Lewis was deposed, he had no further 
 responsibility. A very young member sprang suddenly 
 into notoriety, on the 1 3th, by arguing that there was no 
 question of justice and its forms : a king deserved death 
 not for what he did, but for what he was. The speaker's 
 name was St. Just. On November 20, before the debate 
 had gone either way, Roland appeared, with news of an 
 important discovery. The king had an iron safe in his 
 palace, which the locksmith had betrayed. Roland had 
 found that it contained 625 documents. A committee of 
 twelve was directed to examine them, and they found the 
 proofs of a great scheme of corruption, and of the venality 
 of Mirabeau. On December 3 it was resolved that the 
 king should be tried by the Convention ; the order of 
 proceedings was determined on the 6th, and on the loth
 
 252 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 the indictment was brought in. On the next day Lewis 
 appeared before his judges, and was interrogated by the 
 President He said, in his replies, that he knew nothing 
 of an iron safe, and had never given money to Mirabeau, 
 or to any deputy. When he got back to prison the 
 unhappy man exclaimed, " They asked questions for 
 which I was so little prepared that I denied my own 
 hand." Ten days were allowed to prepare the defence. 
 He was assisted by Malesherbes, by the famous jurist 
 Tronchet, and by Deseze, a younger man, who made the 
 speech. It was unconvincing, for the advocates perceived, 
 no better than their client, where the force and danger of 
 the accusation lay. 
 
 Everybody believed that Lewis had brought the invader 
 into the country, but it was not proved in evidence. If 
 the proofs since published had been known at the time, 
 the defence must have been confined to the plea that the 
 king was inviolable ; and the answer would have been 
 that he is covered by the responsibility of ministers, but 
 responsible for what he does behind their back. At the 
 last moment several Girondins proposed that sentence 
 should be pronounced by the nation, in primary assemblies 
 an idea put forward by Faure on November 29. This 
 was contrary to the spirit of representative democracy, 
 which consults the electors as to men, and not as to 
 measures properly the result of debate. It was consistent 
 with the direct action of Democracy, which was the theory 
 of Jacobinism. But the Jacobins would not have it. By 
 compelling the vote on the capital question, they would 
 ruin their adversaries. If the Girondins voted for death, 
 they would follow the train of the party that resolutely 
 insisted on it. If they voted against, they could be 
 accused of royalism. When the question " Guilty or not 
 guilty ? " was put, there was no hesitation; 683 voted guilty, 
 one man, Lanjuinais, answering that he was a legislator, 
 not a judge. The motion, to leave the penalty to the 
 people, which was made in the interest of the Girondins, 
 not of the king, failed by 423 to 281, and ruined the party 
 that contrived it The voting on the penalty began on
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 253 
 
 the evening of January 17, and as each man gave his 
 voice from the tribune, it lasted far into the following day. 
 Vergniaud declared the result ; he said that there was 
 a majority of five for death. Both parties were dis- 
 satisfied, and suspected fraud. A scrutiny was held, and 
 it then appeared that those who had voted simply for the 
 capital penalty were 361, and that those who had voted 
 otherwise were 360. Majority, i. But when the final 
 vote was taken on the question of delay, there was a 
 majority of 70 for immediate execution. 
 
 That the decision was the result of fear has been stated, 
 even by Brissot and Carnot. The duke of Orleans had 
 written to the President that he could not vote at the 
 trial of his kinsman. The letter was returned to him. 
 He promised his son that he would not vote for death, 
 and when they met again exclaimed, " I am not worthy 
 to be your father ! " At dinner, on the fatal day, Vergniaud 
 declared that he would defend the king's life, even if he 
 stood alone. A few hours later he voted for death. Yet 
 Vergniaud was soon to prove that he was not a man whom 
 intimidation influenced. The truth is, that nobody had 
 a doubt as to guilt. Punishment was a question rather 
 of policy than of justice. 
 
 The army was inclined to the side of mercy. Custine 
 had offered, November 23, to save Lewis, if Prussia would 
 acknowledge the Republic. The offer was made in vain. 
 Dumouriez came to Paris in January, and found that there 
 was nothing to be done. He said afterwards, " It is true 
 he was a perfidious scoundrel, but it was folly to cut his 
 head off." The Spanish Bourbons made every effort to 
 save the head of the house. They offered neutrality and 
 mediation, and they empowered their agent to spend 
 hundreds of thousands of pounds in opportune bribery. 
 They promised, if Lewis was delivered up to them, that 
 they would prevent him from ever interfering in French 
 affairs, and would give hostages for his good behaviour. 
 They entreated George III. to act with them in a cause 
 which was that of monarchy and of humanity. Lansdowne, 
 Sheridan, and Fox urged the government to interpose.
 
 254 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Grenville made known that peace would be preserved if 
 France gave up her conquests, but he said not a word 
 for the king. Information was brought to Pitt, from a 
 source that could be trusted, that Danton would save him 
 for ^40,000. When he made up his mind to give the 
 money, Danton replied that it was too late. Pitt explained 
 to the French diplomatist Maret, afterwards Prime Minister, 
 his motive for hesitation. The execution of the king of 
 France would raise such a storm in England that the 
 Whigs would be submerged. 
 
 Lewis was resigned to his fate, but he expected that 
 he would be spared, and he spoke of retiring to the Sierra 
 Morena, or of seeking a retreat for his old age among the 
 faithful republicans of Switzerland. When his advocates 
 came to tell him that there was no hope, he refused to 
 believe them. " You are mistaken," he said ; " they would 
 never dare." He quickly recovered his composure, and 
 declined to ask permission to see his family. " I can wait," 
 he said ; " in a few days they will not refuse me." A priest 
 who applied for leave to attend him was sent to prison. 
 As a foreigner was less likely to be molested, the king 
 asked for the abbe Edgeworth, of Firmount, who had 
 passed his life in France, but might be considered an 
 Irishman. Garat, the Minister of the Interior, went to 
 fetch him. On their way he said, " He was weak when 
 in power ; but you will see how great he is, now that he 
 is in chains." 
 
 On the following day Lewis was taken through a vast 
 parade of military and cannon to the scaffold in the Place 
 de la Concorde, a little nearer to the Champs Elyses than 
 the place where the obelisk of Luxor stands. He was 
 nearly an hour on the way. The Spanish envoy had not 
 made terms with the agents who were attracted by the 
 report of his unlimited credit, and he spent his doubloons 
 in a frantic attempt at rescue as the prisoner passed, at a 
 foot pace, along the Boulevard. An equivocal adventurer, 
 the Baron de Batz, who helped to organise the rising of 
 Vend6miaire, which only failed because it encountered 
 Bonaparte, had undertaken to break the line, with four
 
 THE EXECUTION OF THE KING 255 
 
 or five hundred men. They were to make a rush from a side 
 street. But every street was patrolled and every point 
 was guarded as the coach went by carrying the prisoner. 
 De Batz was true to the rendezvous, and stood up, waving 
 a sword and crying, " Follow me and save the king ! " It 
 was without effect ; he vanished in the crowd ; one com- 
 panion was taken and guillotined, but the police were able 
 to report that no incident had occurred on the way. 
 
 Not the royalists but the king served the royal cause 
 on that 2 ist of January. Unequal to his duties on the 
 throne, he found, in prison and on the scaffold, a part 
 worthy of the better qualities of his race, justifying the 
 words of Louis Blanc, " None but the dead come back." 
 To absolve him is impossible, for we know, better than 
 his persecutors, how he intrigued to recover uncontrolled 
 authority by bringing havoc and devastation upon the 
 people over whom he reigned. The crowning tragedy 
 is not that which Paris witnessed, when Santerre raised 
 his sword, commanding the drums to beat, which had 
 been silenced by the first word of the dying speech ; it is 
 that Lewis XVI. met his fate with inward complacency, 
 unconscious of guilt, blind to the opportunities he had 
 wasted and the misery he had caused, and died a penitent 
 Christian but an unrepentant king.
 
 XVII 
 THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 
 
 THE Constitution of 1791 had failed because it carried 
 the division of powers and the reaction against monarchical 
 centralisation so far as to paralyse the executive. Until 
 the day when a new system should be organised, a series 
 of revolutionary measures were adopted, and by these the 
 Convention governed to the end. Immediately after the 
 death of Lewis XVI. they began to send out repre- 
 sentatives with arbitrary powers to the departments. 
 The revolutionary tribunal was appointed in March to 
 judge political cases without appeal ; and the Secret 
 Committee of Public Safety in April, on the defeat and 
 defection of Dumouriez. All this time, the Girondins had 
 the majority. The issue of the king's trial had been 
 disastrous to them, because it proved their weakness, not 
 in numbers, but in character and counsel. Roland at 
 once resigned, confessing the defeat. But they stood four 
 months before their fall. During that memorable struggle, 
 the question was whether France should be ruled by 
 violence and blood, or by men who knew the passion for 
 freedom. The Girondins at once raised the real issue 
 by demanding inquiry into the massacres of September. 
 It was a valid but a perilous weapon. There could be no 
 doubt as to what those who had committed a thousand 
 murders to obtain power would be capable of doing in 
 their own defence. 
 
 The Girondins calculated badly. By leaving crime 
 unpunished they could have divided their adversaries. 
 Almost to the last moment Danton wished to avoid the 
 
 256
 
 THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 257 
 
 conflict. Again and again they rejected his offers. Open 
 war, said Vergniaud, is better than a hollow truce. Their 
 rejection of the hand that bore the crimson stain is the 
 cause of their ruin, but also of their renown. They were 
 always impolitic, disunited, and undecided ; but they rose, 
 at times, to the level of honest men. Their second line 
 of attack was not better chosen. Party politics were 
 new, and the science of understanding the other side was 
 not developed ; and the Girondins were persuaded that 
 the Montagnards were at heart royalists, aiming at the 
 erection of an Orleanist throne. Marat received money 
 from the Palais Royal ; and Sieyes to the last regarded 
 him as a masked agent of monarchy. Danton himself 
 assured the young Due de Chartres that the Republic 
 would not last, and advised him to hold himself in readi- 
 ness to reap, some day, what the Jacobins were sowing. 
 
 The aim of the Jacobins was a dictatorship, which was 
 quite a new substitute for monarchy, and the Orleans 
 spectre was no more than an illusion on which the 
 Gironde spent much of its strength. In retaliation, they 
 were accused of Federalism, and this also was a false 
 suspicion. Federal ideas, the characteristic of America, 
 had the sanction of the greatest names in the political 
 literature of France Montesquieu and Rousseau, Necker 
 and Mirabeau. The only evident Federalist in the Con- 
 vention is Barere. A scheme of federation was discussed 
 at the Jacobins on September 10, and did not come to a 
 vote. But the idea was never adopted by the Girondin 
 party, or by any one of its members, with the exception 
 of Buzot. They favoured things just as bad in Jacobin 
 eyes. They inclined to decentralisation, to local liberties, 
 to restraint on the overwhelming activity of Paris, to 
 government by representatives of the sovereign people, 
 not by the sovereign itself. All this was absolutely 
 opposed to the concentration of all powers, which was the 
 prevailing purpose since the alarm of invasion and treason, 
 and was easily confounded with the theory of provincial 
 rights and divided authority, which was dreaded as the 
 superlative danger of the time. That which, under the 
 
 S
 
 358 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 title of Federalism, was laid to their charge, must be 
 counted to their credit ; for it meant that, in a limited 
 sense, they were constitutional, and that there were degrees 
 of power and oppression, which even a Girondin would 
 resist 
 
 The Jacobins had this superiority over their fluctuating 
 opponents, that they fell back on a system which was 
 simple, which was intelligible, and which the most famous 
 book of the previous generation had made known to 
 everybody. For them there was no uncertainty, no 
 groping, and no compromise. They intended that the 
 mass of the people should at all times assert and enforce 
 their will, over-riding all temporary powers and superseding 
 all appointed agents. As they had to fight the world 
 with a divided population, they required that all power 
 should be concentrated in the hands of those who acted 
 in conformity with the popular will, and that those who 
 resisted at home, should be treated as enemies. They 
 must put down opposition as ruthlessly as they repelled 
 invasion. The better Jacobin would not have denied 
 liberty, but he would have defined it differently. For him 
 it consisted not in the limitation, but the composition ot 
 the governing power. He would not weaken the state by 
 making its action uncertain, slow, capricious, dependent 
 on alternate majorities and rival forces ; but he would 
 find security in power exercised only by the whole body 
 of the nation, united in the enjoyment of the gifts the 
 Revolution had bestowed on the peasant. That was the 
 most numerous class, the class whose interests were the 
 same, which was identified with the movement against 
 privilege, which would inevitably be true to the new 
 institutions. They were a minority in the Convention, 
 but a minority representing the unity and security of the 
 Republic, and supported by the majority outside. They 
 drew to themselves not the best or the most brilliant men, 
 but those who devoted themselves to the use of power, 
 not to the manipulation of ideas. Many good ad- 
 ministrators belonged to the party, among whom Carnot 
 is only the most celebrated. Napoleon, who understood
 
 THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 259 
 
 talent and said that no men were so vigorous and efficient 
 as those who had gone through the Revolution, gave office 
 to 127 regicides, most of whom were Montagnards. 
 
 The Girondins, vacillating and divided, would never 
 have made the Republic triumph over the whole of Europe 
 and the half of France. They were immediately confronted 
 by a general war and a formidable insurrection. They 
 were not afraid of war. The great military powers were 
 Austria and Prussia, and they had been driven to the 
 Rhine by armies of thirty or forty thousand men. After 
 that, the armies of Spain and England did not seem 
 formidable. This calculation proved to be correct. The 
 audacity of the French appeared in their declaration of 
 war against the three chief maritime powers at once 
 England, Spain, and Holland. It was not until 1797, 
 not for four years, that the superiority of the British fleet 
 was established. They had long hoped that war with 
 England could be avoided, and carried on negotiations 
 through a succession of secret agents. There was a notion 
 that the English government was revolutionary in character 
 as it was in origin, that the execution of the king was 
 done in pursuance of English examples, that a Protestant 
 country must admire men who followed new ideas. 
 Brissot, like Napoleon in 1815, built his hopes on the 
 opposition. Mr. Fox could not condemn the institution 
 of a Republic ; and a party that had applauded American 
 victories over their own countrymen might be expected 
 to feel some sympathy with a country which was partly 
 imitating England and partly America. 
 
 War with continental absolutism was the proper price 
 of revolution ; but the changes since 1789 were changes 
 in the direction of a Whig alliance. When the Convention 
 were informed that George III. would not have a regicide 
 minister in the country, they did not debate the matter, 
 but passed it over to a committee. They acted not only 
 from a sense of national dignity, but in the belief that the 
 event was not very terrible. The Girondins thought that 
 the war would not be popular in England, that the Whigs, 
 the revolutionary societies, and the Irish, would bring it
 
 260 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 to an early termination. Marat, who knew this country, 
 affirmed that it was an illusion. But there was no opposi- 
 tion to the successive declarations of war with England, 
 Holland, and the Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons, 
 which took place in February and March. Eight hundred 
 million of assignats were voted at once, to be secured on 
 the confiscated property of the emigres. France, at that 
 moment, had only 150,000 soldiers in the field. On 
 February 24, a decree called out 300,000 men, and 
 obliged each department to raise its due proportion. 
 The French army that was to accomplish such marvels 
 in the next twenty years, begins on that day. But the 
 first consequence was an extraordinary diminution in the 
 military power of the State. The Revolution had done 
 much for the country people, and had imposed no burdens 
 upon them. The compulsory levy was the first In 
 most places, with sufficient pressure, the required men 
 were supplied. Some districts offered more than their 
 proper number. 
 
 On March 10, the Conscription was opened in the 
 remote parishes of Poitou. The country had been agitated 
 for some time. The peasants, for there were no large 
 towns in that region, had resented the overthrow of 
 the nobility, of the clergy, and of the throne. The expul- 
 sion of their priests caused constant discontent. And 
 now the demand that they should go out, under officers 
 whom they distrusted, and die for a government *vhich 
 persecuted them, caused an outbreak. They refused to 
 draw their numbers, and on the following day they 
 gathered in large crowds and fell upon the two sorts of 
 men they detested the government officials, and the 
 newly established clergy. Before the middle of March 
 about three hundred priests and republican officials were 
 murdered, and the war of La Vendee began. And it was 
 there, and not in Paris, that liberty made its last stand in 
 revolutionary France. 
 
 But we must see first what passed in the Convention 
 under the shadow of the impending struggle. A committee 
 had been appointed, October 1 1, to draw up a constitution
 
 THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 261 
 
 for the Republic. Danton was upon it, but he was much 
 away, with the army in Belgium. Tom Paine brought 
 illumination from America, and Barere, generally without 
 ideas of his own, made others' plausible. The majority 
 were Girondins, and with them Sieyes was closely associated. 
 On February I 5, Condorcet produced the report. It was 
 the main attempt of the Girondins to consolidate their 
 power, and for three months it occupied the leisure of the 
 Convention. The length of the debate proved the weak- 
 ness of the party. Robespierre and his friends opposed 
 the work of their enemies, and talked it out. They 
 devoted their arguments to the preamble, the new formula 
 of the Rights of Man, and succeeded so well that no part 
 of the Constitution ever came to a vote. The most 
 interesting portion of the debate turned upon the principle 
 of religious liberty, which the draft affirmed, and which 
 was opposed by Vergniaud. Whilst this ineffectual 
 discussion proceeded, the fight was waged decisively else- 
 where, and the Jacobins delivered a counterstroke of 
 superior force. 
 
 Dumouriez's reverses had begun, and there was new 
 urgency in the demand for concentration. Danton came 
 to an understanding with Robespierre, and they decided 
 on establishing the revolutionary tribunal. It was to 
 consist of judges appointed by the Convention to try 
 prisoners whom the Convention sent before it, and to 
 judge without appeal. Danton said that it was a necessary 
 measure, in order to avert popular violence and vengeance. 
 He recommended it in the name of humanity. When the 
 Convention heard Danton speak of humanity there was a 
 shudder, and in the midst of a dead silence Lanjuinais 
 uttered the word " September." Danton replied that there 
 would have been no massacres if the new tribunal had 
 been instituted at the time. The Convention resolved 
 that there should be trial by jury, and that no deputies 
 should be tried without their permission. The object of 
 Robespierre was not obtained. He had meant that the 
 revolutionary tribunal should judge without a jury, and 
 should have jurisdiction over the deputies. The Girondins
 
 262 
 
 were still too strong for him. Danton next addressed 
 himself to them. They agreed that there should be a 
 strong committee to supervise and control the government. 
 On March 2 5 they carried a list of twenty-five, composed 
 largely of their own friends, and, by thus subjecting the 
 Assembly at large to a committee, they once more recovered 
 supreme power. Immediately after, the defection of 
 Dumouriezwas reported at Paris, and the Convention rightly 
 believed that they had narrowly escaped a great danger. 
 For Dumouriez had intended to unite all the forces he 
 could collect in the Dutch and Belgian Netherlands, and to 
 march into France at their head, to establish a government 
 of his own. He had been in close communication with 
 Danton, and the opportunity of attacking Danton was 
 too good to be lost. On April i Lasource accused him of 
 complicity in the treason. The truce between them was 
 at an end, and the consequences were soon apparent. 
 The committee of twenty-five was too bulky, and was made 
 up from different parties. A proposal was made to reduce 
 the number, and on April 6 a new committee of nine, the 
 real Committee of Public Safety, was elected, and no 
 Girondins were included in it. On the same day the first 
 execution took place of a prisoner sentenced by the new 
 tribunal. The two chief instruments of the revolutionary 
 government were brought into action at the same time. 
 But they did not enable the Jacobins to reach their enemies 
 in the Assembly, for the deputies were inviolable. Every- 
 body else was at the mercy of the public accuser. 
 
 The Girondins, having failed in their attack on Danton, 
 now turned against Marat, and by 220 to 132 votes sent 
 him before the revolutionary tribunal to be tried for 
 sedition. On the 24th he was acquitted. Meantime 
 his friends petitioned against the Girondins, and demanded 
 that twenty-two of them should be expelled. The petition 
 was rejected, after a debate in which Vergniaud refused to 
 have the fate of his party decided by primary assemblies, 
 on the ground that it would lead to civil war. Vendee 
 was in flames, and the danger of explosion was felt in 
 many parts of France.
 
 THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 263 
 
 Down to the month of May, the Girondins had failed 
 in their attacks on individual deputies, but their position 
 in the Assembly was unshaken. By their divisions, and 
 by means of occasional majorities, especially by the 
 uncertain and intermittent help of Danton, Robespierre 
 had carried important measures the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal, the Committee of Public Safety, the employment 
 of commissaries from the Convention to enforce the levies 
 in each department. By a series of acceptable decrees 
 in favour of the indigent, he had established himself and 
 his friends as the authors of a new order of society, against 
 the representatives of the middle class. The people of 
 Paris responded by creating an insurrectionary committee 
 to accomplish, by lawful pressure or otherwise, the purpose 
 of the deputation which had demanded the exclusion of 
 the twenty-two. On May 2 1 a commission of twelve was 
 appointed to vindicate the supremacy of the Convention 
 against the municipality. The Girondins obtained the 
 majority. Their candidates received from 104 to 325 
 votes. No Jacobin had more than 98. It was their last 
 parliamentary victory. There was no legal way of destroy- 
 ing them. The work had to be left to agitators like 
 Mara;, and the committee of insurrection. When this 
 came to be understood, the end was very near. The 
 committee of twelve, the organ of the Convention and of 
 the moderate part of it, arrested several of the most violent 
 agitators. On May 26, Robespierre summoned the 
 people of Paris against the traitorous deputies. Next day 
 they appeared, made their way into the Convention, and 
 stated their demands. The men were released, and the 
 commission of twelve was dissolved. But on the 28th 
 the Assembly, ashamed of having yielded tamely to a 
 demonstration which was not overwhelming, renewed the 
 commission, by 279 votes to 239. 
 
 A more decisive action was now resolved upon, and the 
 Jacobins prepared what they called a moral insurrection. 
 They desired to avoid bloodshed, for the tenure by which 
 the Revolutionary Tribunal existed was that it prevented 
 the shedding of blood otherwise than by legal forms.
 
 264 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 The Girondins, after expulsion, could be left to the enjoy- 
 ment of all the securities of a trial by jury. Meanwhile, 
 the Girondin scheme of Constitution was dropped, and five 
 new members were appointed to draw up a new one ; and 
 on May 30, for the first time, a president was taken from 
 the deputies of the Mountain. On May 3 1 the insurrec- 
 tionary masses invaded the Assembly. There was no 
 actual violence, and no resistance. The Girondins did 
 nothing to defend their cause, and their commission of twelve 
 was again dissolved. The deputies remained uninjured ; 
 but Roland fled, and his wife was sent to prison. Two 
 days later, June 2, the victory of moral force was completed. 
 The Tuileries were surrounded with cannon, the deputies 
 were not permitted to go out, and some of the Girondins 
 agreed to resign their seats in order to prevent an outbreak. 
 It was called a voluntary ostracism. 
 
 In the extreme weakness of the party Lanjuinais alone 
 spoke and acted with courage and decision. Legendre 
 went up to the Tribune while he was speaking, and 
 threatened to kill him. As Legendre was a butcher, 
 Lanjuinais replied, " First decree that I am a bullock." 
 When Chabot, who had been a Capuchin, reviled the fallen 
 statesmen, Lanjuinais exclaimed, " The ancients crowned 
 their victims with flowers, and the priest did not Insult 
 them." This brave man lived through it all, lived to wit- 
 ness the destruction of his enemies, to be the elect of many 
 departments, and to preside over the Chamber that decreed 
 the downfall of Napoleon. At the last moment, an obscure 
 supporter of the Girondins saw Danton, and called on him 
 to interfere to save the Convention from violence. Danton 
 answered that he could do nothing, for they had no con- 
 fidence in him. It is a redeeming testimony. On the 
 evening of June 2 the more conspicuous Girondins, without 
 being sent to prison, were placed under arrest. In the 
 capital, the victory of the Jacobins was complete. They 
 had conquered by the aid of the insurrectionary committee, 
 to which no man was admitted who did not swear approval 
 of the September murders. 
 
 Rout and extermination ensued upon the fall of the
 
 THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 265 
 
 Gironde. They had been scrupulous not to defend them- 
 selves by force, and preferred the Republic to their party. 
 While some remained as hostages in the power of the foe, 
 others went away to see what France would think of the 
 mutilation of its parliament. Their strength was in the 
 departments, and in several departments the people were 
 arming. In the west there was no hope for them, for 
 they had made the laws against which La Vended rebelled. 
 They turned to the north. In Normandy the royalists 
 were forming an army, under the famous intriguer, Puisaye. 
 Between such a man and Buzot no understanding could 
 subsist. There was no time for them to quarrel, for the 
 movement broke down at once. The people of Normandy 
 were quite indifferent. But there was one among them 
 who had spirit, and energy, and courage, and passion 
 enough to change the face of France. This extraordinary 
 person was the daughter of M. d'Armont, and she passed 
 into the immortality of history as Charlotte Corday. She 
 was twenty-four. Her father was a royalist, but she had 
 read Raynal, and had the classical enthusiasm which 
 was bred by Plutarch in those as well as in other days. 
 She had refused the health of Lewis XVI., because, she 
 said, he was a good man, but a bad king. She preferred 
 to live with a kinswoman, away from her own family, and 
 her mind was made up never to marry. Her bringing up 
 had been profoundly religious, but that influence seems to 
 have been weakened in her new home. There is no trace 
 of it during the five days on which a fierce light beats. 
 In her room they found her Bible lying open at the story of 
 Judith. From the 3ist of May she had learnt to regard 
 Marat as the author of the proscription of the Girondins, 
 some of whom had appeared at Caen in a patriotic halo. 
 When the troops were paraded, on July 7, those who 
 volunteered for the march against Paris were so few that 
 the hope of deeds to be done by armed men utterly 
 vanished. It occurred to Charlotte that there may be 
 something stronger than the hands and the hearts of 
 armed men. The Girondins were in the power of assassins, 
 of men against whom there was no protection in France
 
 266 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 but the dagger. To take a life was the one way of saving 
 many lives. Not a doubt ever touched her that it is right 
 to kill a murderer, an actual and intending murderer, on 
 condition of accepting the penalty. She told no one of 
 the resolution in her mind, and said nothing that was 
 pathetic, and nothing that was boastful. She only replied 
 to Potion's clumsy pleasantries : " Citizen, you speak like 
 that because you do not understand me. One day, you 
 will know." Under a harmless pretext she went to Paris, 
 and saw one of the Girondin deputies. In return for some 
 civility, she advised him to leave at once for Caen. His 
 friends were arrested, and his papers were already seized, 
 but he told her that he could not desert the post of duty. 
 Once more, she cried, " Believe me, fly before to-morrow 
 night ! " He did not understand, and he was one of the 
 famous company that mounted the scaffold with Vergniaud. 
 Next morning, Saturday July 1 3, Charlotte purchased her 
 dagger, and called on Marat. Although he was in the 
 bath where he spent most of his time, she made her way 
 in, and explained her importunity by telling him about 
 the conspirators she had seen in Normandy. Marat took 
 down their names, and assured her that in a few days he 
 would have them guillotined. At that signal she drove 
 her knife into his heart. When the idiotic accuser-general 
 intimated that so sure a thrust could only have been 
 acquired by practice, she exclaimed, " The monster ! He 
 takes me for a murderess." All that she felt was that 
 she had taken one life to preserve thousands. She was 
 knocked down and carried through a furious crowd to 
 prison. At first she was astonished to be still alive. 
 She had expected to be torn in pieces, and had hoped 
 that the respectable inhabitants, when they saw her head 
 displayed on a pike, would remember it was for them thather 
 young life was given. Of all murderers, and of all victims, 
 Charlotte Corday was the most composed. When the 
 executioner came for the toilette, she borrowed his shears 
 to cut off a lock of her hair. As the cart moved slowly 
 through the raging streets, he said to her, "You must 
 find the way long." " No," she answered, " I am not afraid
 
 THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE 267 
 
 of being late." They say that Vergniaud pronounced this 
 epitaph : " She has killed us, but she has taught us all 
 how to die." 
 
 After the failure in Normandy, of which this is the 
 surviving episode, Buzot and his companions escaped by 
 sea to the Gironde. Having been outlawed, on July 28, 
 they were liable to suffer death without a trial, and had 
 to hide in out -houses and caverns. Nearly all were 
 taken. Barbaroux, who had brought the Marseillais, shot 
 himself at the moment of capture, but had life enough to 
 be carried to the scaffold. Buzot and Potion outlived 
 their downfall for a year. Towards the end of the Reign 
 of Terror, snarling dogs attracted notice to a remote spot 
 in the south-west. There the two Girondins were found, 
 and recognised, though their faces had been eaten away. 
 Before he went out to die, Buzot placed in safety the 
 letters of Madame Roland. Seventy years later they 
 came to light at a sale, and the suspected secret of her 
 life told in her Memoirs, but suppressed by the early editors, 
 was revealed to the world. She had been executed on 
 November 10, 1793, four days after the Duke of Orleans, 
 and the cheerful dignity of her last moments has reconciled 
 many who were disgusted with her declamatory emphasis, 
 her passion, and her inhumanity. Her husband was safe 
 in his place of concealment near Rouen ; but when he 
 heard, he ran himself through with a sword-cane. The 
 main group had died a few days earlier. Of I 80 Girondin 
 deputies, 140 were imprisoned or dispersed, and 24 of 
 these managed to escape ; 73 were arrested at Paris, 
 October 3, but were not brought to trial ; 21, among 
 whom were many celebrities, went before the revolutionary 
 tribunal, October 24, and a week later they were put to 
 death. Their trial was irregular, even if their fate was 
 not undeserved. With Vergniaud, Brissot, and their com- 
 panions the practice began of sending numbers to the 
 guillotine at once. There were 98 in the five months 
 that followed. 
 
 During the agony of his party, Condorcet found shelter 
 in a lodging-house at Paris. There, under the Reign of
 
 268 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Terror, he wrote the little book on Human Progress, which 
 contains his legacy to mankind. He derived the leading 
 idea from his friend Turgot, and transmitted it to Comte. 
 There may be, perhaps, a score or two dozen decisive and 
 characteristic views that govern the world, and that every 
 man should master in order to understand his age, and 
 this is one of them. When the book was finished, the 
 author's part was played, and he had nothing more to live 
 for. As his retreat was known to one, at least, of the 
 Montagnards, he feared to compromise those who had 
 taken him in at the risk of their life. Condorcet assumed 
 a disguise, and crept out of the house with a Horace in 
 one pocket and a dose of poison in the other. When it 
 was dark, he came to a friend's door in the country. 
 What passed there has never been known, but the fugitive 
 philosopher did not remain. A few miles outside Paris 
 he was arrested on suspicion and lodged in the gaol. In 
 the morning they found him lying dead. Cabanis, who 
 afterwards supplied Napoleon in like manner, had given 
 him the means of escape. 
 
 This was the miserable end of the Girondin party. 
 They were easily beaten and mercilessly destroyed, and 
 no man stirred to save them. At their fall liberty perished ; 
 but it had become a feeble remnant in their hands, and 
 a spark almost extinguished. Although they were not 
 only weak but bad, no nation ever suffered a greater mis- 
 fortune than that which befell France in their defeat and 
 destruction. They had been the last obstacle to the Reign 
 of Terror, and to the despotism which then by successive 
 steps centred in Robespierre.
 
 XVIII 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 THE liberal and constitutional wave with which the 
 Revolution began ended with the Girondins ; and the 
 cause of freedom against authority, of right against force 
 was lost. At the moment of their fall, Europe was in 
 arms against France by land and sea ; the royalists were 
 victorious in the west ; the insurrection of the south was 
 spreading, and Pre"cy held Lyons with 40,000 men. The 
 majority, who were masters in the Convention, had before 
 them the one main purpose of increasing and concentrat- 
 ing power, that the country might be saved from dangers 
 which, during those months of summer, threatened to 
 destroy it. That one supreme and urgent purpose governed 
 resolutions and inspired measures for the rest of the year, 
 and resulted in the method of government which we call 
 the Reign of Terror. The first act of the triumphant 
 Mountain was to make a Constitution. They had criticized 
 and opposed the Girondin draft, in April and May, and 
 only the new declaration of the Rights of Man had been 
 allowed to pass. All this was now re -opened. The 
 Committee of Public Safety, strengthened by the accession 
 of five Jacobins, undertook to prepare a scheme adapted 
 to the present conditions, and embodying the principles 
 which had prevailed. Taking Condorcet's project as their 
 basis, and modifying it in the direction which the Jacobin 
 orators had pointed to in debate, they achieved their task 
 in a few days, and they laid their proposals before the 
 Convention on June 10. The reporter was He"rault de 
 Sechelles ; but the most constant speaker in the ensuing 
 
 269
 
 270 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 debate was Robespierre. After a rapid discussion, but 
 with some serious amendments, the Republican Constitu- 
 tion of 1793 was adopted, on June 24. Of all the fruits 
 of the Revolution this is the most characteristic, and it is 
 superior to its reputation. 
 
 The Girondins, by their penman Condorcet, had omitted 
 the name of God, and had assured liberty of conscience 
 only as liberty of opinion. They elected the executive 
 and the legislative alike by direct vote of the entire people, 
 and gave the appointment of functionaries to those whom 
 they were to govern. Primary assemblies were to choose 
 the Council of Ministers, and were to have the right of 
 initiating laws. The plan restricted the power of the 
 State in the interest of decentralisation. The Committee, 
 while retaining much of the scheme, guarded against the 
 excess of centrifugal forces. They elected the legislature 
 by direct universal suffrage, disfranchised domestic servants, 
 and made the ballot optional, and therefore illusory. 
 They resolved that the supreme executive council of 
 twenty-four should be nominated by the legislature from 
 a list of candidates, one chosen by indirect voting in each 
 department, and should appoint and control all ministers 
 and executive officers ; the legislature to issue decrees 
 with force of law in all necessary matters ; but to make 
 actual laws only under popular sanction, given or implied. 
 In this way they combined direct democracy with re- 
 presentative democracy. They restricted the suffrage, 
 abolished the popular initiative, limited the popular sanction, 
 withdrew the executive patronage from the constituency, 
 and destroyed secret voting. Having thus provided for 
 the composition of power, they proceeded in the interest 
 of personal liberty. The Press was to be free, there was 
 to be entire religious toleration, and the right of associa- 
 tion. Education was to become universal, and there was 
 to be a poor law ; in case of oppression, insurrection was 
 declared a duty as well as a right, and usurpation was 
 punishable with death. All laws were temporary, and 
 subject to constant revision. Robespierre, who had betrayed 
 socialist inclinations in April, revoked his earlier language,
 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 271 
 
 and now insisted on the security of property, propor- 
 tionate and not progressive taxation, and the refusal of 
 exemptions to the poor. In April, an unknown deputy 
 from the Colonies had demanded that the Divinity be ' 
 recognised in the preamble, and in June, after the elimina- 
 tion of the Girondins, the idea was adopted. At the 
 same time, inverting the order of things, equality was 
 made the first of the Rights of Man, and Happiness, 
 instead of Liberty, was declared the supreme end of civil 
 society. In point of spiritual quality, nothing was gained 
 by the invocation of the Supreme Being. 
 
 H6rault proposed that a Grand Jury should be elected 
 by the entire nation to hear complaints against the 
 government or its agents, and to decide which cases should 
 be sent for trial. The plan belonged to Sieyes, and was 
 supported by Robespierre. When it was rejected, he 
 suggested that each deputy should be judged by his con- 
 stituency, and if censured, should be ineligible elsewhere. 
 This was contrary to the principle that a deputy belongs 
 to the whole nation, and ought to be elected by the 
 nation, but for the practical difficulty which compels the 
 division into separate constituencies. The end was, that 
 the deputies remained inviolable, and subject to no check, 
 although the oldest member, a man so old that he might 
 very well have remembered Lewis XIV., spoke earnestly 
 in favour of the Grand Jury. 
 
 The Constitution wisely rescinded the standing offer 
 of support to insurgent nations, and renounced all purpose 
 of intervention or aggression. When the passage was 
 read declaring that there could be no peace with an 
 invader, a voice cried, " Have you made a contract with 
 victory ? " " No," replied Bazire ; " we have made a 
 contract with death." A criticism immediately appeared, 
 which was anonymous, but in which the hand of Condorcet 
 was easily recognised. He complained that judges were 
 preferred to juries, that functionaries were not appointed 
 by universal suffrage, that there was no fixed term of 
 revision, that the popular sanction of laws was reduced 
 to a mere form. Condorcet believed that nearly all
 
 272 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 inequality of fortune, such as causes suffering, is the effect 
 of imperfect laws, and that the end of the social art is to 
 reduce it. There were others who objected that the 
 Constitution did not benefit the poor. In regard to pro- 
 perty, as in other things, it was marked by a pronounced 
 Conservatism. It was adopted by a national vote of 
 1,801,918 to 11,610, and, with solemn rites, was in- 
 augurated on August 10. No term was fixed for it to 
 come into operation. The friends of Danton spoke of 
 an early dissolution, but the Convention refused to be 
 dissolved, and the Constitution was never executed. 
 Although other acts of the legislature at that time are 
 still good law, French jurists do not appeal to the great 
 constitutional law of June 24 and August 10, 1793. In 
 the course of the autumn, October 10 and December 4, 
 it was formally suspended, and was never afterwards 
 restored. France was governed, not by this instrument, 
 but by a series of defining enactments, which created 
 extraordinary powers, and suppressed opposition. 
 
 After the integrity of the Assembly, the next thing to 
 perish was the liberty of the Press. The journalists could 
 not claim the sanctity which had been violated in the 
 representatives, and gave way. Marat remained, and 
 exercised an influence in Paris which his activity on 
 June 2 increased. He had his own following, in the 
 masses, and his own basis of power, and he was not a 
 follower of either Danton or Robespierre. By his share 
 in the fall of the Girondins he became their equal. When 
 he died, the vacant place, in the Press and in the street, 
 was at once occupied by a lesser rival, Hubert. In a 
 little time, Hubert acquired enormous power. Marat's 
 newspaper had seldom paid its way ; but Hubert used to 
 print 600,000 copies of the Pere Duchesne. Through 
 his ally Chaumette, he controlled the municipality of 
 Paris, and all that depended from it. Through Bouchotte 
 and Vincent, he managed the War Office, with its vast 
 patronage and command of money, and distributed his 
 journal in every camp. To a man of order and precision 
 like Robespierre, the personage was odious, for he was
 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 273 
 
 anarchical and corrupt, and was the urgent patron of 
 incapable generals ; but Robespierre could not do without 
 his support in the Press, and was obliged to conciliate 
 him. Between Hubert and Danton there was open war, 
 and Danton had not the best of it. He had been weakened 
 by the overthrow of the Girondins whom he wished to 
 save, and was forced to abandon. In the Convention, he 
 was still the strongest figure, and at times could carry all 
 before him. But when he lost his seat on the governing 
 Committee, and was without official information, he was 
 no match at last for Robespierre. All through the 
 summer he was evidently waning, whilst the Confeder- 
 ates, Chaumette, Hubert, and Vincent, became almost 
 invincible. 
 
 On the loth of July the Committee of Public Safety, 
 after acting as a Committee of Legislation, was recomposed 
 as an executive body. There had been fourteen members, 
 there were now nine, Barere had the highest vote, 192 ; 
 St. Just had only 126; and Danton was not elected. 
 The influence of Robespierre was supreme ; he himself 
 became a member, on a vacancy, July 27. The fortunes 
 of France were then at their lowest. The Vendeans were 
 unconquered, Lyons was not taken, and the Austrians 
 and English had broken through the line of fortresses, 
 and were making slowly for Paris. A few months saw 
 all this changed, and those are the earlier months of the 
 predominance of Robespierre, with his three powerful 
 instruments, the Committee of Public Safety, the Revolu- 
 tionary Tribunal, and the Jacobin Club, which made him 
 master of the Convention. On July 27, the day before 
 he was elected to the Committee, an important change 
 occurred. For the first time, an order was sent from the 
 Tuileries to the army on the frontier, in a quarter of an 
 hour. This was the beginning of the semaphore tele- 
 graph, and science was laying hold of the Revolution. 
 On August I, the metrical system was introduced, and 
 the republican calendar followed ; but we shall speak of 
 it in another connection. 
 
 In the middle of August, Prieur, an engineer officer, 
 
 T
 
 274 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 was elected to the Committee, to conduct the business of 
 war ; but Prieur protested that he was the wrong man, 
 and advised them to take Carnot Therefore, August I 5, 
 very much against the wish of Robespierre, the organiser 
 of victory joined the government. The Hbertists had 
 proposed that the entire population should be forced into 
 the army, more particularly the richer class. Danton 
 modified the proposal into something reasonable, and on 
 August 23, Carnot drew up the decree which was called 
 the levee en masse. It turned France into a nominal 
 nation of soldiers. Practically, it called out the first class, 
 from eighteen to twenty-five, and ordered the men of the 
 second class, from twenty-five to thirty, to be ready. It 
 is to Danton and Carnot that France owed the army 
 which was to overrun the Continent ; and by the end of 
 the year the best soldiers in the world, Hoche, Moreau, 
 Masse'na, Bonaparte, were being raised to command. 
 
 On August 9, an event occurred in the civil order 
 which influenced the future of mankind as widely as the 
 creation of the French army. While the Committee of 
 Public Safety was busy with the Constitution, the Com- 
 mittee of Legislation was employed in drawing up a Code 
 of Civil Law, which was the basis of the Code Napoleon. 
 Cambaceres, who, with the same colleagues, afterwards 
 completed the work, presented it in its first form on that 
 day. Lastly, August 24, Cambon, the financial adviser 
 of the Republic, achieved the conversion and unification 
 of the Public Debt. 
 
 These were the great measures, undertaken and accom- 
 plished by the men who accepted the leadership of 
 Robespierre, in the first weeks of his government. We 
 come to those by which he consolidated his power. 
 
 At the beginning of September, the Committee was 
 increased by the admission of Billaud-Varennes, and of 
 Collot d'Herbois, of whom one afterwards overthrew 
 Danton, and the other, Robespierre. The appointment 
 of Collot was a concession to Hubert. The same party 
 were persuaded that the hands of government were weak, 
 and ought to be strengthened against its enemies. Danton
 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 275 
 
 himself said that every day one aristocrat, one villain, 
 ought to pay for his crimes with his head. Two measures 
 were at once devised which were well calculated to achieve 
 that object September 5, the Revolutionary Tribunal 
 was remodelled, and instead of one Revolutionary Tribunal, 
 there were four. And on September 17 the Law of 
 Suspects was passed, enabling local authorities to arrest 
 whom they pleased, and to detain him in prison even when 
 acquitted. In Paris, where there had been 1877 prisoners 
 on September 13, there were 2975 on October 20. On 
 September 25, the mismanagement of the Vendean War, 
 where even the Mentz garrison had been defeated, led to 
 a sharp debate in the Convention. It was carried away 
 by the attack of the Dantonists ; but Robespierre snatched 
 a victory, and obtained a unanimous vote of confidence. 
 From that date to the 26th of July 1794, we count the 
 days of his established reign, and the Convention makes 
 way for the Committee of Public Safety, which becomes 
 a Provisional government. 
 
 The party of violence insisted on the death of those 
 whom they regarded as hostages, the Girondins, for the 
 rising in the south, the queen for the rising in the west. 
 An attempt to save the life of Marie Antoinette had been 
 made by the government, with the sanction of Danton. 
 Maret was sent to negotiate the neutrality of minor 
 Italian States by offering to release her. Austria, not 
 wishing the Italians to be neutral, seized Maret and his 
 companion S^monville, in the passes of the Grisons, and 
 sent them to a dungeon at Mantua. The queen was sent 
 to the Conciergerie, which was the last stage before the 
 Tribunal ; and as her nephew, the emperor, did not 
 relent, in October she was put on her trial, and executed. 
 The death of the queen is revolting, because it was a 
 move in a game, a concession by which Robespierre paid 
 his debts to men at that time more violent than himself, 
 and averted their attack. We have already seen that the 
 advice she gave in decisive moments was disastrous, that 
 she had no belief in the rights of nations, that she plotted 
 war and destruction against her own people. There was
 
 276 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 cause enough for hatred. But if we ask ourselves who 
 there is that comes forth unscathed from the trials that 
 befell kings and queens in those or even in other times, 
 and remember how often she pleaded and served the 
 national cause against royalist and Emigre, even against 
 the great Irishman * whose portrait of her at Versailles, 
 translated by Dutens, was shown to her by the Duchess 
 of Fitzjames, we must admit that she deserved a better 
 fate than most of those with whom we can compare her. 
 
 That month of October, 1793, with its new and un- 
 precedented development of butchery, was a season of 
 triumph to the party of Hebert. The policy of wholesale 
 arrest, rapid judgment, and speedy execution was avowedly 
 theirs ; and to them Robespierre seemed a lethargic, 
 undecided person who only moved under pressure. He 
 was at last moving as they wished ; but the merit was 
 theirs, and theirs the reward. One of them, Vincent, 
 was of so bloodthirsty a disposition that he found comfort 
 in gnawing the heart of a calf as if it was that of a 
 royalist. But the party was not made up of ferocious 
 men only. They had two enemies, the aristocrat and 
 the priest ; and they had two passions, the abolition of 
 an upper class and the abolition of religion. Others had 
 attacked the clergy, and others again had attacked religion. 
 The originality of these men is that they sought a 
 substitute for it, and wished to give men something to 
 believe in that was not God. They were more eager to 
 impose the new belief than to destroy the old. Indeed, 
 they were persuaded that the old was hurrying towards 
 extinction, and was inwardly rejected by those who 
 professed it. While Hebert was an anarchist, Chaumette 
 was the glowing patriarch of irreligious belief. He 
 regarded the Revolution as essentially hostile to Christian 
 faith, and conceived that its inmost principle was that 
 which he now propounded. The clergy had been popular, 
 fora day, in 1789; but the National Assembly refused 
 to declare that the country was Catholic. In June 1792 
 the Jacobin Club rejected a proposal to abolish the State- 
 
 1 Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution.
 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 277 
 
 Church, and to erect Franklin and Rousseau in the niches 
 occupied by Saints, and in December a member speaking 
 against divine worship met with no support. On May 
 3O> I 793> during the crisis of the Gironde, the procession 
 of Corpus Christi moved unmolested through the streets 
 of Paris ; and on August 25, Robespierre presiding, the 
 Convention expressly repudiated a petition to suppress 
 preaching in the name of Almighty God. 
 
 On September 20, Romme brought the new calendar 
 before the Assembly, at a moment when, he said, equality 
 reigned in heaven as well as on earth. It was adopted 
 on November 24, with the sonorous nomenclature devised 
 by Fabre d'Eglantine. It signified the substitution of 
 Science for Christianity. Winemonth and fruitmonth 
 were not more unchristian than Julius and Augustus, 
 or than Venus and Saturn ; but the practical result was 
 the abolition of Sundays and festivals, and the supremacy 
 of reason over history, of the astronomer over the priest. 
 The calendar was so completely a weapon of offence, 
 that nobody cared about the absurdity of names which 
 were inapplicable to other latitudes, and unintelligible at 
 Isle de France or Pondicherry. While the Convention 
 wavered, moving sometimes in one direction and then 
 retracing its steps, the Commune advanced resolutely, for 
 Chaumette was encouraged by the advantage acquired by 
 his friends in September and October. He thought the 
 time now come to close the churches, and to institute new 
 forms of secularised worship. Supported by a German 
 more enthusiastic than himself, Anacharsis Cloots, he 
 persuaded the bishop of Paris that his Church was doomed 
 like that of the Nonjurors, that the faithful had no faith 
 in it, that the country had given it up. Chaumette was 
 able to add that the Commune wanted to get rid of 
 him. Gobel yielded. On November 7, he appeared, 
 with some of his clergy, at the bar of the Convention, 
 and resigned to the people what he had received from 
 the people. Other priests and bishops followed, and it 
 appeared that some were men who had gone about with 
 masks on their faces, and were glad to renounce beliefs
 
 278 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 which they did not share. Sieyes declared what every- 
 body knew, that he neither believed the doctrines nor 
 practised the rites of his Church ; and he surrendered a 
 considerable income. Some have doubted whether Gobel 
 was equally disinterested. They say that he offered his 
 submission to the Pope in return for a modest sum, and 
 it is affirmed that he received compensation through 
 Cloots and Chaumette, to whom his solemn surrender was 
 worth a good deal. The force of his example lost some- 
 what, when the bishop of Blois, Gre"goire, as violent an 
 enemy of kings as could be found anywhere, stood in the 
 tribune, and refused to abandon his ecclesiastical post. 
 He remained in the Convention to the end, clad in the 
 coloured robes of a French prelate. 
 
 Three days after the ceremony of renunciation, 
 Chaumette opened the Cathedral of Notre Dame to the 
 religion of Reason. The Convention stood aloof, in cold 
 disdain. But an actress, who played the leading part, 
 and was variously described as the Goddess of Reason or 
 the Goddess of Liberty, and who possibly did not know 
 herself which she was, came down from her throne in the 
 church, proceeded to the Assembly, and was admitted to 
 a seat beside the President, who gave her what was 
 known as a friendly accolade amid loud applause. After 
 that invasion, the hesitating deputies yielded, and about 
 half of them attended the goddess back to her place 
 under the Gothic towers. Chaumette decidedly triumphed. 
 He had already forbidden religious service outside the 
 buildings. He had now turned out the clergy whom the 
 State had appointed, and had filled their place with a 
 Parisian actress. He had overcome the evident reluctance 
 of the Assembly, and made the deputies partake in his 
 ceremonial. He proceeded, November 23, to close the 
 churches, and the Commune resolved that whoever opened 
 a church should incur the penalties of a suspect It was 
 the zenith of He"bertism. 
 
 Two men unexpectedly united against Chaumette and 
 appeared as champions of Christendom. They were 
 Danton and Robespierre. Robespierre had been quite
 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 279 
 
 willing that there should be men more extreme than he, 
 whose aid he could cheaply purchase with a few cartloads 
 of victims. But he did not intend to suppress religion in 
 favour of a worship in which there was no God. It was 
 opposed to his policy, and it was against his conviction ; 
 for, like his master, Rousseau, he was a theistic believer, 
 and even intolerant in his belief. This was not a link 
 between him and Danton who had no such spiritualist 
 convictions, and who, so far as he was a man of theory, 
 belonged to a different school of eighteenth - century 
 thought. But Danton had been throughout assailed by 
 the Hebertist party, and was disgusted with their violence. 
 The death of the Girondins appalled him, for he could 
 see no good reason which would exempt him from their 
 fate. He had no hope for the future of the Republic, no 
 enthusiasm, and no belief. From that time in October, 
 his thoughts were turned towards moderation. He 
 identified Hubert, not Robespierre, with the unceasing 
 bloodshed, and he was willing to act with the latter, his 
 real rival, against the raging exterminators. From the 
 end of September he was absent in his own house at 
 Arcis. At his return he and Robespierre denounced the 
 irreligious masquerades, and spoke for the clergy, who had 
 as good a right to toleration as their opponents. 
 
 When Robespierre declared that the Convention never 
 intended to proscribe the Catholic worship, he was sincere, 
 and was taking the first step that led to the feast of the 
 Supreme Being. Danton acted from policy only, in 
 opposition to men who were his own enemies. Chaumette 
 and Hubert succumbed. The Commune proclaimed that 
 the churches were not to be closed; and early in December 
 the worship of Reason, having lasted twenty-six days, 
 came to an end. The wound was keenly felt. Fire and 
 poison, said Chaumette, were the weapons with which the 
 priests attack the nation. For such traitors, there must 
 be no mercy. It is a question of life and death. Let us 
 throw up between us the barrier of eternity. The Mass 
 was no longer said in public. It continued in private 
 chapels throughout the winter until the end of February.
 
 28o THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 In April, one head of accusation against Chaumette was 
 his interference with midnight service at Christmas. 
 
 Robespierre had repressed H6bertism with the aid of 
 Danton. The visible sign of their understanding was the 
 appearance in December of the Vieux Cordelier. In this 
 famous journal Camille Desmoulins pleaded the cause of 
 mercy with a fervour which, at first, resembled sincerity, 
 and pilloried Hubert as a creature that got drunk on the 
 drippings of the guillotine. Robespierre saw the earlier 
 numbers in proof; but by Christmas he had enough of 
 the bargain. The Convention, having shown some inclina- 
 tion towards clemency on December 20, withdrew from it on 
 the 26th, and Desmoulins, in the last of his six numbers, 
 loudly retracted his former argument. The alliance was 
 dissolved. It had served the purpose of Robespierre, by 
 defeating Hebert, and discrediting Danton. In January, 
 the Vieux Cordelier ceased to appear. 
 
 Robespierre now stood between the two hostile parties 
 Danton, Desmoulins, and their friends, on the side of 
 a regular government ; Hubert, Chaumette, and Collot, 
 returned from a terrible proconsulate, wishing to govern 
 by severities. The energy of Collot gave new life to his 
 party, whilst Danton displayed no resource. Just then, 
 Robespierre was taken ill, and from February 19 to 
 March 1 3 he was confined to his room. Robespierre was 
 a calculator and a tactician, methodical in his ways, 
 definite and measured in his ends. He was less remark- 
 able for determination and courage ; and thus two men 
 of uncommon energy now took the lead. They were 
 Billaud-Varennes and St. Just. When St. Just was with 
 the army, his companion Baudot relates that they astonished 
 the soldiers by their intrepidity under fire. He adds that 
 they had no merit, for they knew that they bore charmed 
 lives, and that cannon balls could not touch them. That 
 was the ardent and fanatical spirit that St. Just brought 
 back with him. During his leader's illness he acquired 
 the initiative, and proclaimed the doctrine that all factions 
 constitute a division of power, that they weaken the state, 
 and are therefore treasonable combinations.
 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 281 
 
 On March 4, Hubert called the people to arms against 
 the government of Moderates. The attempt failed, and 
 Robespierre, by a large expenditure of money, had Paris 
 on his side. At one moment he even thought of making 
 terms with this dangerous rival ; and there is a story that 
 he lost heart, and meditated flight to America. In this 
 particular crisis money played a part, and Hebert was 
 financed by foreign bankers, to finish the tyranny of 
 Robespierre. On March I 3 he was arrested, Chaumette on 
 the 1 8th ; and on the I7th, Herault de Sechelles, Danton's 
 friend, on coming to the Committee of Public Safety, was 
 told by Robespierre to retire, as they were deliberating 
 on his arrest. On the ipth the Dantonists caused the 
 arrest of HeYon, the police agent of Robespierre, who 
 instantly had him released. March 24, Hebert was sent 
 to the scaffold. On the way he lamented to Ronsin that 
 the Republic was about to perish. " The Republic," said 
 the other, " is immortal." Hitherto the guillotine had been 
 used to destroy the vanquished parties, and persons 
 notoriously hostile. It was an easy inference, that it 
 might serve against personal rivals, who were the best of 
 Republicans and Jacobins. The victims in the month of 
 March were 127. 
 
 Danton did nothing to arrest the slaughter. His 
 inaction ruined him, and deprived him of that portion of 
 sympathy which is due to a man who suffers for his good 
 intentions. Billaud and St. Just demanded that he should 
 be arrested, and carried it, at a night sitting of the Com- 
 mittee. Only one refused to sign. Danton had been 
 repeatedly and amply warned. Thibaudeau, Rousselin, 
 had told him what was impending. Panis, at the last 
 moment, came to him at the opera, and offered him a 
 place of refuge. Westermann proposed to him to rouse 
 the armed people. Tallien entreated him to take measures 
 of defence ; and Tallien was president of the Convention. 
 A warning reached him from the very grave of Marat. 
 Albertine came to him and told him that her brother had 
 always spoken with scorn of Robespierre as a man of 
 words. She exclaimed, " Go to the tribune while Tallien
 
 282 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 presides, carry the Assembly, and crush the Committees. 
 There is no other road to safety for a man like you ! " 
 " What ? " he replied ; " I am to kill Robespierre and 
 Billaud ? " "If you do not, they will kill you." He said 
 to one of his advisers, "The tribunal would absolve me." 
 To another, " Better to be guillotined than to guillotine." 
 And to a third, " They will never dare ! " In a last 
 interview, Robespierre accused him of having encouraged 
 the opposition of Desmoulins, and of having regretted the 
 Girondins. " Yes," said Danton, " it is time to stop the 
 shedding of blood." " Then," returned the other, " you 
 are a conspirator, and you own it" Danton, knowing 
 that he was lost, burst into tears. All Europe would cast 
 hirn out ; and, as he had said, he was not a man who 
 could carry his country in the soles of his shoes. One 
 formidable imputation was to call him a bondsman of 
 Mr. Pitt ; for Pitt had said that if there were negotiations, 
 the best man to treat with would be Danton. He was 
 arrested, with Camille Desmoulins and other friends, on 
 the night of March 3 1 . Legendre moved next day that 
 he be heard before the Convention, and if they had heard 
 him, he would still have been master there. Robespierre 
 felt all the peril of the moment, and the Right supported 
 him in denying the privilege. Danton defended himself 
 with such force that the judges lost their heads, and the 
 tones of the remembered voice were heard outside, and 
 agitated the crowd. The Committee of Public Safety 
 refused the witnesses called for the defence, and cut short 
 the proceedings. The law was broken that Danton and 
 his associates might be condemned. 
 
 There was not in France a more thorough patriot 
 than Danton ; and all men could see that he had been 
 put to death out of personal spite, and jealousy, and fear. 
 There was no way, thenceforth, for the victor to maintain 
 his power, but the quickening of the guillotine. Reserving 
 compassion for less ignoble culprits, we must acknowledge 
 that the defence of Danton is in the four months of 
 increasing terror that succeeded the 5th of April 1794. 
 when Robespierre took his stand at the corner of the
 
 THE REIGN OF TERROR 283 
 
 Tuileries to watch the last moments of his partner in 
 crime. 
 
 The sudden decline of Danton, and his ruin by the 
 hands of men evidently inferior to him in capacity and 
 vigour, is so strange an event that it has been explained 
 by a story which is worth telling, though it is not 
 authenticated enough to influence the narrative. In Jwne 
 1793, just after the fall of the Girondins, Danton was 
 married. His bride insisted that their union should be 
 blessed by a priest who had not taken the oaths. Danton 
 agreed, found the priest, and went to confession. He 
 became unfitted for his part in the Revolution, dropped 
 out of the Committees, and retired, discouraged and 
 disgusted, into the country. When he came back, after 
 the execution of the queen, of Madame Roland, and the 
 Girondins, he took the side of the proscribed clergy, 
 and encouraged the movement in favour of clemency. 
 In this way he lost his popularity and influence, and 
 refused to adopt the means of recovering power. He 
 neglected even to take measures for his personal safety, 
 like a man who was sick of his life. At that time, seven 
 of the priests of Paris, whose names are given, took it by 
 turns to follow the carts from the prison to the guillotine, 
 disguised as one of the howling mob, for the comfort and 
 consolation of the dying. And the abb6 de Keravenant, 
 who had married Danton, thus followed him to the scaffold, 
 was recognised by him, and absolved him at the last 
 moment.
 
 XIX 
 
 ROBESPIERRE 
 
 WE reach the end of the Reign of Terror, on the 
 9th of Thermidor, the most auspicious date in modern 
 history. In April Robespierre was absolute. He had 
 sent Hubert to death because he promoted disorder, 
 Chaumette because he suppressed religion, Danton because 
 he had sought to restrain bloodshed. His policy was to 
 keep order and authority by regulated terror, and to 
 relax persecution. The governing power was concentrated 
 in the Committee of Public Safety by abolishing the office 
 of minister, instead of which there were twelve Boards of 
 Administration reporting to the Committee. That there 
 might be no rival power, the municipality was remodelled 
 and placed in the hands of men attached to Robespierre. 
 The dualism remained between representation in the 
 Assembly and the more direct action of the sovereign 
 people in the Town Hall. When the tocsin rings, said 
 a member of the Commune, the Convention ceases to 
 exist. In other words, when the principal chooses to 
 interfere, he supersedes his agent. The two notions of 
 government are contradictory, and the bodies that incor- 
 porated them were naturally hostile. But their antagonism 
 was suspended while Robespierre stood between. 
 
 The reformed Commune at once closed all clubs 
 that were not Jacobin. All parties had been crushed : 
 Royalists, Feuillants, Girondins, Cordeliers. What re- 
 mained of them in the scattered prisons of France was 
 now to be forwarded to Paris, and there gradually disposed 
 of. But though there no longer existed an opposing 
 
 284
 
 ROBESPIERRE 285 
 
 party, there was still a class of men that had not been 
 reduced or reconciled. This consisted chiefly of deputies 
 who had been sent out to suppress the rising of the 
 provinces in 1793. These Commissaries of the Conven- 
 tion had enjoyed the exercise of enormous authority ; 
 they had the uncontrolled power of life and death, and 
 they had gathered spoil without scruple, from the living 
 and the dead. On that account they were objects of 
 suspicion to the austere personage at the head of the 
 State ; and they were known to be the most unscrupulous 
 and the most determined of men. 
 
 Robespierre, who was nervously apprehensive, saw 
 very early where the danger lay, and he knew which of 
 these enemies there was most cause to dread. He never 
 made up his mind how to meet the peril ; he threatened 
 before he struck ; and the others combined and overthrew 
 him. He had helped to unite them by introducing a 
 conflict of ideas at a time when, apparently, and on the 
 surface, there was none. Everybody was a Republican 
 and a Jacobin, but Robespierre now insisted on the belief 
 in God. He perished by the monstrous imposture of 
 associating divine sanction with the crimes of his sanguin- 
 ary reign. The scheme was not suggested by expediency 
 for he had been always true to the idea. In early life he 
 had met Rousseau at Ermenonville, and he had adopted 
 the indeterminate religion of the " vicaire Savoyard." In 
 March 1792 he proposed a resolution, that the belief in 
 Providence and a future life is a necessary condition of 
 Jacobinism. In November, he argued that the decline 
 of religious conviction left only a residue of ideas favour- 
 able to liberty and public virtue, and that the essential 
 principles of politics might be found in the sublime teach- 
 ing of Christ. He objected to disendowment, because it 
 is necessary to keep up reverence for an authority supei ior 
 to man. Therefore, on December 5, he induced the Club 
 to break in pieces the bust of Helvtius. 
 
 Although Rousseau, the great master, had been a 
 Genevese Calvinist, nobody thought of preserving Chris- 
 tianity in a Protestant form. The Huguenot ministers
 
 286 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 themselves did nothing for it, and Robespierre had a 
 peculiar dislike of them. Immediately after the execution 
 of Danton and before the trial of Chaumette, the restora- 
 tion of religion was foreshadowed by Couthon. A week 
 later it was resolved that the remains of Rousseau, the 
 father of the new church, should be transferred to the 
 Pantheon. 
 
 On May 7, Robespierre brought forward his famous 
 motion that the Convention acknowledge the existence 
 of a Supreme Being. His argument, stripped of parlia- 
 mentary trappings, was this. The secret of the life of a 
 Republic is public and private virtue, that is, integrity, 
 the consciousness of duty, the spirit of self-sacrifice, sub- 
 mission to the discipline of authority. These are the 
 natural conditions of pure democracy; but in an advanced 
 stage of civilisation they are difficult to maintain without 
 the restraint of belief in God, in eternal life, in government 
 by Providence. Society will be divided by passion and 
 interest, unless it is reconciled and controlled by that 
 which is the universal foundation of religions. By this 
 appeal to a higher power Robespierre hoped to strengthen 
 the State at home and abroad. In the latter purpose he 
 succeeded ; and the solemn renunciation of atheism 
 impressed the world. It was very distinctly a step in the 
 Conservative direction, for it promised religious liberty. 
 There was to be no favour to churches, but also no 
 persecution. Practically, the advantage was for the 
 Christian part of the population, and irreligion, though 
 not proscribed, was discouraged. The Revolution appeared 
 to be turning backwards, and to seek its friends among 
 those who had acquired their habits of life and thought 
 under the fallen order. The change was undoubted ; and 
 it was a change imposed by the will of one man, un- 
 supported by any current of opinion. 
 
 A month later, June 8, the Feast of the Supreme Being 
 was held with all the solemnity of which Paris was capable. 
 Robespierre walked in procession from the Tuileries to the 
 Champ de Mars, at the head of the Convention. As the 
 others fell back, he marched alone with his hair powdered,
 
 ROBESPIERRE 287 
 
 a large nosegay in his hands, wearing the sky-blue coat and 
 nankeens by which he is remembered, for they reappeared 
 in the crisis of Thermidor. He had attained the loftiest 
 summit of prosperity and greatness that was ever given to 
 man. Not a monarch in Europe could compare with him 
 in power. All that had stood in his way during the last 
 five years had been swept to destruction ; all that survived 
 of the Revolution followed obedient at his heels. At the 
 last election of a President in the Convention there had 
 been 117 votes; but 485 had voted for Robespierre, that 
 he might parade at their head that day. It was there, in 
 that supreme and intoxicating moment, that a gulf opened 
 before him, and he became aware of the extremity of his 
 peril. For he could hear the hostile deputies in the front 
 rank behind him, muttering curses and sneering at the 
 enthusiasm with which he was received. Those fierce 
 proconsuls who, at Lyons, Nevers, Nantes, Toulon, had 
 crushed all that they were now forced to venerate by their 
 master, vowed vengeance for their humiliation. They said 
 that this was to be a starting-point for divine right, and 
 the excuse for a new persecution. They felt that they 
 were forging a weapon against themselves, and committing 
 an act of suicide. The decree of the month before would 
 have involved no such dire consequences ; but the elaborate 
 and aggressive ceremonial was felt as a declaration of war. 
 Experienced observers at once predicted that Robes- 
 pierre would not last long. He lost no time in devising 
 a precaution equal to the danger. He prepared what is 
 known as the law of the 22nd of Prairial, which was 
 presented by Couthon, and carried without a division on 
 June 10, two days after the procession. It is the most 
 tyrannical of all the acts of the Revolution, and is not 
 surpassed by anything in the records of absolute monarchy. 
 For the decree of Prairial suppressed the formalities of law 
 in political trials. It was said by Couthon, that delays 
 may be useful where only private interests are at stake, 
 but there must be none where the interest of the entire 
 public is to be vindicated. The public enemy has only 
 to be identified. The State despatches him to save itself.
 
 288 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Therefore the Committee was empowered to send whom 
 it chose before the tribunal, and if the jury was satisfied, 
 no time was to be lost with witnesses, written depositions, 
 or arguments. Nobody whom Robespierre selected for 
 execution would be allowed to delay judgment by defence ; 
 and that there might be no exception or immunity from 
 arbitrary arrest and immediate sentence, all previous 
 decrees in matter of procedure were revoked. That 
 article contained the whole point, for it deprived the 
 Convention of jurisdiction for the protection of its own 
 members. Robespierre had only to send a deputy's name 
 to the public accuser, and he would be in his grave next 
 day. The point had been so well concealed that nobody 
 perceived it. Afterwards, the deputies, warned by the 
 great jurist Merlin, saw what they had done, and on 
 June n, they stipulated that no member should be 
 arrested without leave of the Convention. Couthon and 
 Robespierre were not present. On the 1 2th, by threaten- 
 ing that the Committees would resign, they caused the 
 decree of the previous day to be rescinded, but they assured 
 the Assembly that it was superfluous, and their design had 
 been misunderstood. They maintained their text, and 
 gained their object ; but the success was on the other side. 
 The scheme had been exposed, and the Convention had 
 resisted, for the first time. The opposing deputies had 
 received warning, and showed that they understood. From 
 that moment they were on the watch, and their enemy 
 shrank from employing against them a clause the validity 
 of which he had denied. He gave them time to combine. 
 Over the rest of the nation he exerted his new power 
 without control. The victims increased rapidly in number. 
 Down to the middle of June, in fourteen months, the exe- 
 cutions had been about 1200. In seven weeks, after the 
 law of Prairial, they were 1376 ; that is, an average of 32 
 in a week rose to an average of 196. But the guillotine 
 was removed to a distant part of the city, where a deep 
 trench was dug to carry away such quantities of blood. 
 
 During this time the Tribunal was not acting against 
 men actually in public life, and we are not compelled to
 
 ROBESPIERRE 289 
 
 study its judgments, as if they were making history. 
 Whilst inoffensive people were suffering obscurely, the 
 enemies of the tyrant were plotting to save themselves 
 from the dreadful fate they saw so near them. Nothing 
 bound them together but fear and a common hatred for 
 the obtrusive dogmatist at the head of affairs ; and it was 
 not evident to each that they were acting in the same 
 cause. But there was a man among them, still somewhat 
 in the background, but gifted with an incredible dexterity, 
 who hurled Napoleon from power in 1815 and Robespierre 
 in 1794. 
 
 Fouche", formerly an Oratorian, had been one of the 
 most unscrupulous deputies on missions, and had given 
 the example of seizing the treasure of churches. For 
 he said there were no laws, and they had gone back to 
 the state of nature. After the execution of Hubert he 
 was recalled from Lyons ; and Robespierre, whose sister 
 he had asked in marriage, defended him at the Jacobins 
 on April 10. Being an unfrocked ecclesiastic, he was 
 elected president of the Club on June 6, as a protest 
 against the clerical tendencies of Robespierre. On the 
 i ith, immediately after the procession, and the law of 
 Prairial, Fouche attacked him in a speech in which he 
 said that it is to do homage to the Supreme Being to 
 plunge a sword into the heart of a man who oppresses 
 liberty. This was the first opening of hostilities, and it 
 seems to have been premature. Fouch6 was not sup- 
 ported by the club at the time, and some weeks later, 
 when Robespierre called him the head of the conspiracy 
 against him, he was expelled. He was a doomed man, 
 carrying his life in his hand, and he adopted more subtle 
 means of combat. July 19, five days after his expulsion, 
 Collot was elected President of the Convention. He and 
 Fouche" were united in sacred bands of friendship, for 
 they had put 1682 persons to death at Lyons. About 
 the same day others joined the plotters, and on July 20, 
 Barere, the orator of the Committee, who watched the 
 turning of the tide, made an ambiguous declaration por- 
 tending a breach. No plan of operations had been 
 
 U
 
 290 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 agreed upon, and there was yet time for Robespierre, 
 now fully awake to the approaching danger, to strike an 
 irresistible blow. 
 
 During the last few weeks the position of the country 
 had undergone a change. On the ist of June, Villaret 
 Joyeuse had given battle to the English off Ushant. It 
 was the beginning of that long series of fights at sea, in 
 which the French were so often successful in single 
 combat, and so often defeated in general actions. They 
 lost the day, but not the object for which they fought, 
 as the supplies of American grain were brought safely 
 into port. That substantial success and the opportune 
 legend of the Vengeur saved the government from 
 reproach. At the end of the month St. Just brought 
 news of the French victory over the Austrians at Fleurus, 
 the scene of so many battles. It was due to Jourdan 
 and his officers, and would have been lost if they had 
 obeyed St. Just ; but he arrived in time to tell his own 
 story. Many years were to pass before an enemy's 
 guns were again heard on the Belgian frontier. St Just 
 entreated his colleague to seize the opportunity, and to 
 destroy his enemies while the people were rejoicing over 
 victory. It appeared, afterwards, that the battle of Fleurus, 
 the greatest which the French had won since the reign of 
 Lewis XIV., rendered no service to the government 
 under whom it was fought. The soil of France was safe 
 for twenty years, and with the terror of invasion, the 
 need for terror at home passed away. It had been borne 
 while the danger lasted ; and with the danger, it came to 
 an end. 
 
 The Committee of Public Safety resented the law of 
 Prairial ; and when asked to authorise the proscription of 
 deputies refused. Robespierre did nothing to conciliate 
 the members, and had not the majority. And he 
 threatened and insulted Carnot. As the powers were 
 then constituted he was helpless against his adversaries. 
 The Commune and the Jacobins were true to him ; but 
 the Convention was on its guard, and the two Committees 
 were divided. Lists of proscription had been discovered,
 
 ROBESPIERRE 
 
 291 
 
 and those who knew that their names were upon them 
 made no surrender. 
 
 Two days after the speech which showed that Barere 
 was wavering, when Collot had been chosen President, 
 and Fouch was at work underground, a joint sitting of 
 both Committees was called at night St. Just proposed 
 that there should be a dictator. Robespierre was ready 
 to accept, but there were only five votes in favour three 
 out of eleven on one Committee, two out of twelve on 
 the other. The Jacobins sent a deputation to require 
 that the Convention should strengthen the executive ; it 
 was dismissed with words by Barere. One resource 
 remained. It might still be possible, disregarding the 
 false move of Prairial, to obtain the authority of the 
 Convention for the arrest, that is, for the trial and execu- 
 tion of some of its members. They had delivered up 
 Danton and Desmoulins, HeVault and Chaumette. They 
 would perhaps abandon Cambon or Fouche, Bourdon or 
 Tallien, four months later. 
 
 The Committees had refused Robespierre, and were 
 in open revolt against his will. His opponents there 
 would oppose him in the Assembly. But the mass of the 
 deputies, belonging not to the Mountain but to the Plain, 
 were always on his side. They had no immediate cause 
 for fear, and they had something to hope for. Seventy 
 of their number had been under arrest ever since October, 
 as being implicated in the fall of the Girondins. Robes- 
 pierre had constantly refused to let them be sent to trial, 
 and they owed him their lives. They were still in prison, 
 still in his power. To save them, their friends in the 
 Assembly were bound to refuse nothing that he asked for. 
 They would not scruple to deliver over to him a few 
 more ruffians as they had delivered over the others in 
 the spring. That was the basis of his calculation. The 
 Mountain would be divided ; the honest men of the Plain 
 would give him the majority, and would purge the earth 
 of another batch of miscreants. On his last night at 
 home he said to the friends with whom he lived, " We 
 have nothing to fear, the Plain is with us."
 
 292 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Whilst Robespierre, repulsed by the committees 
 which had so long obeyed him, sat down to compose 
 the speech on which his victory and his existence 
 depended, his enemies were maturing their plans. 
 Fouch informed his sister at Nantes of what was in 
 preparation. On the 2ist of July he is expecting that 
 they will triumph immediately. On the 23rd he 
 writes : " Only a few days more, and honest men will 
 have their turn. Perhaps this very day the traitors 
 will be unmasked." It is unlike so sagacious a man 
 to have written these outspoken letters, for they were 
 intercepted and sent to Paris for the information of 
 Robespierre. But it shows how accurately Fouch6 
 timed his calculation, that when they arrived Robespierre 
 was dead. 
 
 The importance of the neutral men of the Plain was 
 as obvious to one side as to the other, and the Con- 
 federates attempted to negotiate with them. Their 
 overtures were rejected ; and when they were renewed, 
 they were rejected a second time. The Plain were 
 disabled by consideration for their friends, hostages 
 in the grasp of Robespierre, and by the prospect of 
 advantage for religion from his recent policy. They 
 loaded him with adulation, and said that when he 
 marched in the procession, with his blue coat and 
 nosegay, he reminded them of Orpheus. They even 
 thought it desirable that he should live to clear off a 
 few more of the most detestable men in France, the very 
 men who were making advances to them. They believed 
 that time was on their side. Tallien, Collot, Fouch were 
 baffled, and the rigid obstinacy of the Plain produced a 
 moment of extreme and certain danger. 
 
 Whilst they hesitated, Tallien received a note in 
 a remembered handwriting. That bit of paper saved 
 unnumbered lives, and changed the fortune of France, 
 for it contained these words : " Coward ! I am to be 
 tried to-morrow." At Bordeaux, Tallien had found a 
 lady in prison, whose name was Madame de Fontenay, 
 and who was the daughter of the Madrid banker
 
 ROBESPIERRE 
 
 293 
 
 Cabarrus. She was twenty-one, and people who saw her 
 for the first time could not repress an exclamation of 
 surprise at her extraordinary beauty. After her release, 
 she divorced her husband, and married Tallien. In later 
 years she became the Princesse de Chimay ; but, for 
 writing that note, she received the profane but unforgotten 
 name of Notre Dame de Thermidor. 
 
 On the night of July 26, Tallien and his friends had 
 a third Conference with Boissy d'Anglas and Durand de 
 Maillane, and at last they gave way. But they made 
 their terms. They gave their votes against Robespierre 
 on condition that the Reign of Terror ended with him. 
 There was no condition which the others would not have 
 accepted in their extremity, and it is by that compact 
 that the government of France, when it came into the 
 hands of these men of blood, ceased to be sanguinary. 
 It was high time, for, in the morning, Robespierre had 
 delivered the accusing speech which he had been long 
 preparing, and of which Daunou told Michelet that it was 
 the only very fine speech he ever made. He spoke of 
 heaven, and of immortality, and of public virtue ; he 
 spoke of himself; he denounced his enemies, naming 
 scarcely any but Cambon and Fouche. He did not 
 conclude with any indictment, or with any demand that 
 the Assembly would give up its guilty members. His 
 aim was to conciliate the Plain, and to obtain votes from 
 the Mountain, by causing alarm but not despair. The 
 next stroke was reserved for the morrow, when the 
 Convention, by voting the distribution of his oration, 
 should have committed itself too far to recede. The 
 Convention at once voted that 250,000 copies of the 
 speech should be printed, and that it should be sent 
 to every parish in France. That was the form in 
 which acceptance, entire and unreserved acceptance, 
 was expressed. Robespierre thus obtained all that he 
 demanded for the day. The Assembly would be unable 
 to refuse the sacrifice of its black sheep, when he 
 reappeared with their names. 
 
 Then it was seen that, in naming Cambon, the orator
 
 294 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 had made a mistake. For Cambon, having had the 
 self-command to wait until the Convention had passed 
 its approving vote, rose to reply. He repelled the attack 
 which Robespierre had made upon him, and turned the 
 entire current of opinion by saying, " What paralyses the 
 Republic is the man who has just spoken." 
 
 There is no record of a finer act of fortitude in all 
 parliamentary history. The example proved contagious. 
 The Assembly recalled its vote, and referred the speech 
 to the Committee. Robespierre sank upon his seat and 
 murmured, " I am a lost man." He saw that the Plain 
 could no longer be trusted. His attack was foiled. If 
 the Convention refused the first step, they would not 
 take the second, which he was to ask for next day. He 
 went to the Jacobin Club, and repeated his speech to a 
 crowded meeting. He told them that it was his dying 
 testament. The combination of evil men was too strong 
 for him. He had thrown away his buckler, and was 
 ready for the hemlock. Collot sat on the step below 
 the president's chair, close to him. He said, " Why did 
 you desert the Committee? Why did you make your 
 views known in public without informing us ? " Robespierre 
 bit his nails in silence. For he had not consulted the 
 Committee because it had refused the extension of 
 powers, and his action that day had been to appeal to 
 the Convention against them. The Club, divided at 
 first, went over to him, gave him an ovation, and expelled 
 Collot and Billaud-Varennes with violence and contumely. 
 Robespierre, encouraged by his success, exhorted the 
 Jacobins to purify the Convention by expelling bad men, 
 as they had expelled the Girondins. It was his first 
 appeal to the popular forces. Cofrinhal, who was a man 
 of energy, implored him to strike at once. He went 
 home to bed, after midnight, taking no further measures 
 of precaution, and persuaded that he would recover the 
 majority at the next sitting. 
 
 Collot and Billaud, both members of the supreme 
 governing body, went to their place of meeting, after the 
 stormy scene at the Club, and found St. Just writing
 
 ROBESPIERRE 295 
 
 intently. They fell upon him, and demanded to know 
 whether he was preparing accusations against them. He 
 answered that that was exactly the thing he was doing. 
 When he had promised to submit his report to the 
 Committee of Public Safety before he went to the 
 Assembly, they let him go. In the morning, he sent 
 word that he was too much hurt by their treatment of 
 him to keep his promise. Barere meanwhile undertook 
 to have a report ready against St Just 
 
 Before the Assembly began business on the morning 
 of Sunday the pth of Thermidor, Tallien was in the lobby 
 cementing the alliance which secured the majority ; and 
 Bourdon came up and shook hands with Durand, saying, 
 " Oh ! the good men of the Right." When the sitting 
 opened, St. Just at once mounted the tribune and began 
 to read. Tallien, seeing him from outside, exclaimed, 
 " Now is the moment, come and see. It is Robespierre's 
 last day ! " The report of St. Just was an attack on the 
 committee. Tallien broke in, declaring that the absent 
 men must be informed and summoned, before he could 
 proceed. St Just was not a ready speaker, and when he 
 was defied and interrupted, he became silent. Robespierre 
 endeavoured to bring him aid and encouragement ; but 
 Tallien would not be stopped. Billaud followed in the 
 name of the government ; Barere and Vadier continued, 
 while Robespierre and St. Just insisted vainly on being heard. 
 The interrupters were turbulent, aggressive, out of order, 
 being desperate men fighting for life. Collot d'Herbois, the 
 President, did not rebuke them, and having surrendered 
 his place to a colleague whom he could trust, descended to 
 take part in the fray. If the Convention was suffered once 
 more to hear the dreaded voice of Robespierre, nobody 
 could be sure that he would not recover his ascendency. 
 These tactics succeeded. Both parties to the overnight 
 convention were true to it, and Robespierre was not allowed 
 to make his speech. The galleries had been filled from 
 five in the morning. Barere moved to divide the command 
 of Hanriot, the general of the Commune, on whose sword 
 the triumvirs relied ; and the Convention outlawed him
 
 296 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 and his second in command as the excitement increased. 
 This was early in the afternoon ; and it was on learning 
 this that the Commune called out its forces, and Paris 
 began to rise. 
 
 All this time Robespierre had not been personally 
 attacked. Decrees were only demanded, and passed, 
 against his inferior agents. The struggle had lasted for 
 hours ; he thought that his adversaries faltered, and made 
 a violent effort to reach the tribune. It had become known 
 in the Assembly that his friends were arming, and they 
 began to cry, " Down with the tyrant ! " The President 
 rang his bell and refused to let him speak. At last his 
 voice failed him. A Montagnard exclaimed, " He is 
 choking with the blood of Danton." Robespierre replied, 
 " What ! It is Danton you would avenge ? " And he said 
 it in a way that signified " Then why did you not defend 
 him ? " When he understood what the Mountain meant, 
 and that a motive long repressed had recovered force, he 
 appealed to the Plain, to the honest men who had been 
 so long silent, and so long submissive. They had voted 
 both ways the day before, but he knew nothing of the 
 memorable compact that was to arrest the guillotine. But 
 the Plain, who were not prepared with articulate arguments 
 for their change of front, were content with the unanswer- 
 able cry, " Down with the tyrant ! " That was evidently 
 decisive ; and when that declaration had been evoked by 
 his direct appeal the end came speedily. An unknown 
 deputy moved that Robespierre be arrested, nobody spoke 
 against it ; and his brother and several friends were taken 
 into custody with him. None made any resistance or protest. 
 The conflict, they knew, would be outside. The Commune 
 of Paris, the Jacobin Club, the revolutionary tribunal were 
 of their party ; and how many of the armed multitude, 
 nobody could tell. All was not lost until that was known. 
 At five o'clock the Convention, weary with a heavy day's 
 work, adjourned for dinner. 
 
 The Commune had its opportunity, and began to gain 
 ground. Their troops collected slowly, and Hanriot was 
 arrested. He was released, and brought back in triumph
 
 ROBESPIERRE 297 
 
 to the Hotel de Ville, where the arrested deputies soon 
 assembled. They had been sent to different prisons, but 
 all the gaolers but one refused to admit them. Robespierre 
 insisted on being imprisoned, but the turnkey at the 
 Luxembourg was unmoved, and turned him out. He 
 dreaded to be forced into a position of illegality and revolt, 
 because it would enable his enemies to outlaw him. Once 
 outlawed, there was nothing left but an insurrection, of 
 which the issue was uncertain. There was less risk in 
 going before the revolutionary tribunal, where every 
 official was his creature and nominee, and had no hope of 
 mercy from his adversaries, when he ceased to protect. 
 The gaoler who shut the prison door in his face sealed his 
 fate ; and it is supposed, but I do not know, that he had 
 his instructions from Voulland, on the other side, in order 
 that the prisoner might be driven into contumacy, against 
 his will. Expelled from gaol, Robespierre still refused 
 to be free, and went to the police office, where he was 
 technically under arrest. 
 
 St. Just, who had seen war, and had made men wonder 
 at his coolness under heavy fire, did not calculate with so 
 much nicety, and repaired, with the younger Robespierre, to 
 the municipality, where a force of some thousands of men 
 were assembled. They sent to summon their leader, but the 
 leader declined to come. He felt safer under arrest ; but 
 he advised his friends at the Commune to ring the tocsin, 
 close the barriers, stop the Press, seize the post, and arrest 
 the deputies. The position of the man of peace encourag- 
 ing his comrades to break the law, and explaining how 
 to do it, was too absurd to be borne. Coffinhal, who 
 was a much bigger man, came and carried him away by 
 friendly compulsion. 
 
 About ten o'clock the arrested deputies were united. 
 Couthon, who was a cripple, had gone home. The others 
 sent for him, and Robespierre signed a letter by which he 
 was informed that the insurrection was in full activity. 
 This message, and the advice which he forwarded from 
 his shelter with the police prove that he had made up his 
 mind to fight, and did not die a martyr to legality. But
 
 298 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 if Robespierre was ready, at the last extremity, to fight, 
 he did not know how to do it. The favourable moment 
 was allowed to slip by ; not a gun was fired, and the 
 Convention, after several hours of inaction and danger, 
 began to recover power. By Voulland's advice the prisoners 
 out of prison were outlawed, and Barras was put at the 
 head of the faithful forces. Twelve deputies were ap- 
 pointed to proclaim the decrees all over Paris. Mounted 
 on police chargers, conspicuous in their tricolor scarves, 
 and lighted by torches, they made known in every street 
 that Robespierre was now an outlaw under sentence of 
 death. This was at last effective, and Barras was able to 
 report that the people were coming over to the legal 
 authority. An ingenious story was spread about that 
 Robespierre had a seal with the lilies of France. The 
 western and wealthier half of Paris was for the Convention, 
 but parts of the poorer quarters, north and east, went 
 with the Commune. They made no fight. Legendre 
 proceeded to the Jacobin Club, locked the door, and put 
 the key in his pocket, while the members quietly dispersed. 
 About one in the morning, Bourdon, at the head of the men 
 from the district which had been the stronghold of Chau- 
 mette made his way along the river to the Place de Greve. 
 The insurgents drawn up before the Hotel de Ville made 
 no resistance, and the leaders who were gathered within 
 knew that all was over. 
 
 The collapse was instantaneous. A little earlier, a 
 messenger sent out by Gaudin, afterwards Duke of Gaeta 
 and Napoleon's trusted finance minister, reported that he 
 had found Robespierre triumphing and receiving congra- 
 tulations. Even in those last moments he shrank from 
 action. A warlike proclamation was drawn up, signed by 
 his friends, and laid before him. He refused to sign 
 unless it was in the name of the French people. " Then," 
 said Couthon, "there is nothing to be done but to die." 
 Robespierre, doubtful and hesitating, wrote the first two 
 letters of his name. The rest is a splash of blood. 
 When Bourdon, with a pistol in each hand, and the blade 
 of his sword between his teeth, mounted the stairs of the
 
 ROBESPIERRE 299 
 
 Hotel de Ville at the head of his troops, Lebas drew two 
 pistols, handed one to Robespierre, and killed himself 
 with the other. What followed is one of the most 
 disputed facts of history. I believe that Robespierre shot 
 himself in the head, only shattering the jaw. Many 
 excellent critics think that the wound was inflicted by 
 a gendarme who followed Bourdon. His brother took 
 off his shoes and tried to escape by the cornice outside, 
 but fell on to the pavement. Hanriot, the general, hid 
 himself in a sewer, from which he was dragged next 
 morning in a filthy condition. The energetic Coffinhal 
 alone got away, and remained some time in concealment 
 The rest were captured without trouble 
 
 Robespierre was carried to the Tuileries and laid on 
 a table where, for some hours, people came and stared at 
 him. Surgeons attended to his wound, and he bore his 
 sufferings with tranquillity. From the moment when the 
 shot was fired he never spoke ; but at the Conciergerie he 
 asked, by signs, for writing materials. They were denied 
 him, and he went to death taking his secret with him out 
 of the world. For there has always been a mysterious 
 suspicion that the tale has been but half told, and that 
 there is something deeper than the base and hollow 
 criminal on the surface. Napoleon liked him, and 
 believed that he meant well. Cambacres, the arch- 
 chancellor of the Empire, who governed France when the 
 Emperor took the field, said to him one day, " It is a 
 cause that was decided but was never argued." 
 
 Some of those who felled the tyrant, such as Cambon 
 and Barere, long after repented of their part in his fall. 
 In the north of Europe, especially in Denmark, he had 
 warm admirers. European society believed that he had 
 affinity with it. It took him to be a man of authority, 
 integrity, and order, an enemy of corruption and of war, 
 who fell because he attempted to bar the progress of 
 unbelief, which was the strongest current of the age. His 
 private life was inoffensive and decent. He had been 
 the equal of emperors and kings ; an army of 700,000 
 men obeyed his word ; he controlled millions of secret
 
 300 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 service money, and could have obtained what he liked for 
 pardons, and he lived on a deputy's allowance of eighteen 
 francs a day, leaving a fortune of less than twenty guineas 
 in depreciated assignats. Admiring enemies assert that 
 by legal confiscation, the division of properties, and the 
 progressive taxation of wealth, he would have raised the 
 revenue to twenty- two millions sterling, none of which 
 would have been taken from the great body of small culti- 
 vators who would thus have been for ever bound to the 
 Revolution. There is no doubt that he held fast to the 
 doctrine of equality, which means government by the poor 
 and payment by the rich. Also, he desired power, if it was 
 only for self-preservation ; and he held it by bloodshed, 
 as Lewis XIV. had done, and Peter the Great, and 
 Frederic. Indifference to the destruction of human life, 
 even the delight at the sight of blood, was common all 
 round him, and had appeared before the Revolution 
 began. The transformation of society as he imagined, if 
 it cost a few thousand heads in a twelvemonth, was less 
 deadly than a single day of Napoleon fighting for no 
 worthier motive than ambition. His private note-book 
 has been printed, but it does not show what he thought 
 of the future. That is the problem which the guillotine 
 left unsolved on the evening of June 28, 1794. Only 
 this is certain, that he remains the most hateful character 
 in the forefront of history since Machiavelli reduced to a 
 code the wickedness of public men.
 
 XX 
 
 LA VENDEE 
 
 THE remorseless tyranny which came to an end in 
 Thermidor was not the product of home causes. It was 
 prepared by the defeat and defection of Dumouriez ; it 
 was developed by the loss of the frontier fortresses in the 
 following July ; and it fell when the tide of battle rolled 
 away after the victory of Fleurus. We have, therefore, to 
 consider the series of warlike transactions that reacted 
 so terribly on the government of France. At first, and 
 especially in the summer of 1793, the real danger was not 
 foreign, but civil war. During four years the Revolution 
 always had force on its side. The only active opposition 
 had come from emigrant nobles who were a minority, acting 
 for a class. Not a battalion had joined Brunswick when 
 he occupied a French province ; and the mass of the 
 country people had been raised, under the new order, to a 
 better condition than they had ever known. For the hard 
 kernel of the revolutionary scheme, taken from agrarian 
 Rome, was that those who till the land shall own the land ; 
 that they should enjoy the certainty of gathering the fruits 
 of their toil for themselves ; that every family should 
 possess as much as it could cultivate. But the shock 
 which now made the Republic tremble was an insurrection 
 of peasants, men of the favoured class ; and the democracy 
 which was strong enough to meet the monarchies of Europe, 
 saw its armies put to flight by a rabble of field labourers 
 and woodmen, led by obscure commanders, of whom many 
 had never served in war. 
 
 One of Washington's officers was a Frenchman who 
 
 301
 
 302 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 came out before Lafayette, and was known as Colonel 
 Armand. His real name was the Marquis de La Rouerie. 
 His stormy life had been rich in adventure and tribulation. 
 He had appeared on the boards of the opera ; he had 
 gone about in company with a monkey ; he had fought a 
 duel, and believing that he had killed his man had 
 swallowed poison ; he had been an inmate of the monastery 
 of La Trappe, after a temporary disappointment in love ; 
 and he had been sent to the Bastille with other discontented 
 Bretons. On his voyage out his ship blew up in sight of 
 land, and he swam ashore. But this man who came out 
 of the sea was found to be full of audacity and resource. 
 He rose to be a brigadier in the Continental army ; and 
 when he came home, he became the organiser of the 
 royalist insurrection in the west. Authorised by the 
 Princes, whom he visited at Coblenz, he prepared a secret 
 association in Brittany, which was to co-operate with others 
 in the central provinces. 
 
 While La Rouerie was adjusting his instruments and 
 bringing the complicated agency to perfection, the invaders 
 came and went, and the signal for action, when they were 
 masters of Chalons, was never given. When volunteers 
 were called out to resist them, men with black cockades 
 went about interrupting the enrolment, and declaring that 
 no man should take arms, except to deliver the king. 
 Their mysterious leader, Cottereau, the first to bear the 
 historic name of Jean Chouan, was La Rouerie's right hand. 
 When the prospect of combination with the Powers was 
 dissolved by Dumouriez, the character of the conspiracy 
 changed, and men began to think that they could fight 
 the Convention single-handed, while its armies were busy 
 on the Rhine and Meuse. Brittany had 200 miles of coast, 
 and as the Channel Islands were in sight, aid could come 
 from British cruisers. 
 
 La Rouerie, who was a prodigy of inventiveness, and 
 drew his lines with so firm a hand that the Chouannerie, 
 which broke out after his death, lasted ten years and only 
 went to pieces against Napoleon, organised a rising, almost 
 from Seine to Loire, for the spring of 1793. Indeed it is
 
 LA VENDE 303 
 
 not enough to say that they went down before the genius of 
 Napoleon. The " Petite Chouannerie," as the rising of 1815 
 was called, contributed heavily to his downfall ; for he was 
 compelled to send 20,000 men against it, whose presence 
 might have turned the fortune of the day at Waterloo. 
 
 But in January 1793 La Rouerie fell ill, the news of 
 the king's death made him delirious, and on the 3Oth he 
 died. That the explosion might yet take place at the 
 appointed hour, they concealed his death, and buried him 
 in a wood, at midnight, filling the grave with quicklime. 
 The secret was betrayed, the remains were discovered, the 
 accomplices fled, and those who were taken died faithful 
 to their trust. 
 
 The Breton rising had failed for the time, and royalists 
 north of the Loire had not recovered from the blow when 
 La Vendee rose. The corpse in the thicket was found 
 February 26 ; the papers were seized March 3 ; and it 
 was March 1 2, at the moment when Brittany was paralysed, 
 that the conscription gave the signal of civil war. The 
 two things are quite separate. In one place there was a 
 plot which came to nothing at the time ; in the other, 
 there was an outbreak which had not been prepared. La 
 Vendee was not set in motion by the wires laid north of 
 the Loire. It broke out spontaneously, under sudden 
 provocation. But the Breton plot had ramified in that 
 direction also, and there was much expectant watching for 
 the hour of combined action. Smugglers, and poachers, 
 and beggar men had carried the whispered parole, armed 
 with a passport in these terms : " Trust the bearer, and 
 give him aid, for the sake of Armand " ; and certain remote 
 and unknown country gentlemen were affiliated, whose 
 names soon after filled the world with their renown. 
 D'Elbe'e, the future commander-in-chief, was one of them ; 
 and he always regarded the tumultuous outbreak of March, 
 the result of no ripened design, as a fatal error. That is 
 the reason why the gentry hung back at first, and were 
 driven forward by the peasants. It seemed madness to 
 fight the Convention without previous organisation for 
 purposes of war, and without the support of the far larger
 
 304 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 population of Brittany, which had the command of the 
 coast, and was in touch with the great maritime Power. 
 Politics and religion had roused much discontent ; but the 
 first real act of rebellion was prompted by the new principle 
 of compulsory service, proclaimed on February 23. 
 
 The region which was to be the scene of so much glory 
 and so much sorrow lies chiefly between the left bank of 
 the Loire and the sea, about 100 miles across, from 
 Saumur to the Atlantic, and 50 or 60 from Nantes towards 
 Poitiers. Into the country farther south, the Vendeans, 
 who were weak in cavalry and had no trained gunners, 
 never penetrated. The main struggle raged in a broken, 
 wooded, and almost inaccessible district called the Bocage, 
 where there were few towns and no good roads. That was 
 the stronghold of the grand army, which included all that 
 was best in Vendean virtue. Along the coast there was a 
 region of fens, peopled by a coarser class of men, who had 
 little intercourse with their inland comrades, and seldom 
 acted with them. Their leader, Charette, the most active 
 and daring of partisans, fought more for the rapture of 
 fighting than for the sake of a cause. He kept open 
 communication by sea, negotiated with England, and 
 assured the Bourbons that, if one of them appeared, he 
 would place him at the head of 200,000 men. He 
 regarded the other commanders as subservient to the 
 clergy, and saw as little of them as he could. 
 
 The inhabitants of La Vendee, about 800,000, were 
 well-to-do, and had suffered less from degenerate feudalism 
 than the east of France. They lived on better terms with 
 the landlords, and had less cause to welcome the Revolution. 
 Therefore, too, they clung to the nonjuring clergy. At 
 heart, they were royalist, aristocratic and clerical, uniting 
 anti-revolutionary motives that acted separately elsewhere. 
 That is the cause of their rising ; but the secret of their 
 power is in the military talent, a thing more rare than 
 courage, that was found among them. The disturbances 
 that broke out in several places on the day of enrolment, 
 were conducted by men of the people. Cathelineau, one 
 of the earliest, was a carrier, sacristan in his village, who
 
 LA VENDEE 
 
 305 
 
 had never seen a shot fired when he went out with a few 
 hundred neighbours and took Cholet. By his side there 
 was a gamekeeper, who had been a soldier, and came from 
 the eastern frontier. As his name was Christopher, the 
 Germans corrupted it into Stoffel, and he made it famous 
 in the form of Stofflet While the conflict was carried on 
 by small bands there was no better man to lead them. 
 He and Charette held out longest, and had not been 
 conquered when the clergy, for whom they fought, 
 betrayed them. 
 
 The popular and democratic interval was short. After 
 the first few days the nobles were at the head of affairs. 
 They deemed the cause desperate. Not one of them had 
 promoted the rising, scarcely one refused to join in it. 
 The one we know best is Lescure, because his wife's 
 memoirs have been universally read. Lescure formed the 
 bond between gentry and clergy, for the cause was religious 
 as much as political. He would have been the third 
 generalissimo, but he was disabled by a wound, and put 
 forward his cousin, Henri de la Rochejaquelein,in preference 
 to Stofflet. We shall presently see that a grave suspicion 
 darkens his fame. Like Lescure, d'Elbe"e was a man of 
 policy and management ; but he was no enthusiast. He 
 desired a reasonable restoration, not a reaction ; and he 
 said just before his death that when the pacification came 
 it would be well to keep fanatics in order. 
 
 Far above all these men in capacity for war, and on a 
 level with the best in character, was the Marquis de 
 Bonchamps. He understood the art of manoeuvring large 
 masses of men ; and as his followers would have to meet 
 large masses, when the strife became deadly, he sought to 
 train them for it. He made them into that which they 
 did not want to be, and for which they were ill-fitted. It 
 is due to his immediate command that the war could be 
 carried on upon a large scale ; and that men who had begun 
 with a rush and a night attack, dispersing when the foe 
 stood his ground, afterwards defeated the veterans of the 
 Rhine under the best generals of republican France. 
 Bonchamps always urged the need of sending a force to 
 
 X
 
 306 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 rouse Brittany ; but the day when the army crossed the 
 Loire was the day of his death. 
 
 La Vendee was far from the route of invading armies, 
 and the district threatened by the Germans. There were 
 no fears for hearth and home, no terrors in a European 
 war for those who kept out of it. If they must fight, 
 they chose to fight in a cause which they loved. They 
 hated the Revolution, not enough to take arms against it, 
 but enough to refuse to defend it. They were compelled 
 to choose. Either they must resist oppression, or they 
 must serve it, and must die for a Government which was 
 at war with their friends, with the European Conservatives, 
 who gave aid to the fugitive nobles, and protection to the 
 persecuted priests. Their resistance was not a matter of 
 policy. There was no principle in it that could be long 
 maintained. The conscription only forced a decision. 
 There were underlying causes for aversion and vengeance, 
 although the actual outbreak was unpremeditated. The 
 angry peasants stood alone for a moment ; then was seen 
 the stronger argument, the greater force behind. Clergy 
 and gentry put forward the claim of conscience, and then 
 the men who had been in the royalist plot with La 
 Rouerie, began to weave a new web. That plot had been 
 authorised by the princes, on the 6migr6 lines, and aimed 
 at the restoration of the old order. That was not, origin- 
 ally, the spirit of La Vendee. It was never identified with 
 absolute monarchy. At first, the army was known as the 
 Christian army. Then, it became the Catholic and royal 
 army. The altar was nearer to their hearts than the 
 throne. As a sign of it, the clergy occupied the higher 
 place in the councils. Some of the leaders had been 
 Liberals of '89. Others surrendered royalism and accepted 
 the Republic as soon as religious liberty was assured. 
 Therefore, throughout the conflict, and in spite of some 
 intolerant elements, and of some outbursts of reckless fury, 
 La Vendee had the better cause. One Vendean, sur- 
 rounded and summoned to give up his arms, cried : " First 
 give me back my God." 
 
 Bernier, the most conspicuous of the ecclesiastical
 
 LA VENDEE 307 
 
 leaders, was an intriguer ; but he was no fanatical adherent 
 of obsolete institutions. The restoration of religion was, 
 to him, the just and sufficient object of the insurrection. 
 A time came when he was very careful to dissociate La 
 Vendee from Brittany, as the champions, respectively, of 
 a religious and a dynastic cause. He saw his opportunity 
 under the Consulate, came out of his hiding-place, and pro- 
 moted a settlement. He became the agent and auxiliary 
 of Bonaparte, in establishing the Concordat, which is as 
 far removed from intolerance as from legitimacy. As 
 bishop of Orleans he again appeared in the Loire country, 
 not far from the scene of his exploits ; but he was odious 
 to many of the old associates, who felt that he had 
 employed their royalism for other ends, without being a 
 royalist. 
 
 The country gentlemen of La Vendee had either not 
 emigrated, or had returned to their homes, after seeing 
 what the emigration came to. As far as their own 
 interests were concerned, they accepted the situation. 
 With all the combative spirit which made their brief 
 career so brilliant, few of them displayed violent or extreme 
 opinions. La Vendee was made illustrious mainly by 
 men who dreaded neither the essentials of the Revolution 
 nor its abiding consequences, but who strove to rescue 
 their country from the hands of persecutors and assassins. 
 The rank and file were neither so far-sighted nor so 
 moderate. At times they exhibited much the same 
 ferocity as the fighting men of Paris, and in spite of their 
 devotion, they had the cruel and vindictive disposition 
 which in France has been often associated with religion. 
 It was seen from the outset among the wild followers of 
 Charette ; and even the enthusiasts of Anjou and of Upper 
 Poitou degenerated and became bloodthirsty. They all 
 hated the towns, where there were municipal authorities 
 who arrested priests, and levied requisitions and men. 
 
 The insurrection began by a series of isolated attacks 
 on all the small towns, which were seats of government ; 
 and in two months of the spring of 1793 the republicans 
 had been swept away, and the whole country of La
 
 308 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Vendee belonged to the Vendeans. They were without 
 order or discipline or training of any sort, and were averse 
 to the sight of officers overtopping them on horseback. 
 Without artillery of their own, they captured 500 cannon. 
 By the end of April they were estimated at near 100,000, 
 a proportion of fighting men to population that has only 
 been equalled in the War of Secession. When the signal 
 was given, the tocsin rang in 600 parishes. In spite of 
 momentary reverses, they carried everything before them, 
 until, on the 9th of June, they took Saumur, a fortress 
 which gave them the command of the Loire. There they 
 stood on the farthest limit of their native province, with 
 40,000 soldiers, and a large park of artillery. To advance 
 beyond that point, they would require an organisation 
 stronger than the bonds of neighbourhood and the acci- 
 dental influence of local men. They established a govern- 
 ing body, largely composed of clergy ; and they elected 
 a commander -in -chief. The choice fell on Cathelineau, 
 because he was a simple peasant, and was trusted by the 
 priests who were still dominant. As they were all equal 
 there arose a demand for a bishop who should hold sway 
 over them. Nonjuring bishops were scarce in France ; 
 but Lescure contrived to supply the need of the moment. 
 Here, in the midst of so much that was tragic, and of so 
 much that was of good report, we come to the bewilder- 
 ing and grotesque adventure of the bishop of Agra. 
 
 At Dol, near St. Malo, there was a young priest who 
 took the oath to the Constitution, but afterwards dropped 
 the cassock, appeared at Poitiers as a man of pleasure, 
 and was engaged to be married. He volunteered in the 
 republican cavalry, and took the field against the royalists, 
 mounted and equipped by admiring friends. On May 5, 
 he was taken prisoner, and as his card of admission to 
 the Jacobins was found upon him, he thought himself in 
 danger. He informed his captors that he was on their 
 side ; that he was a priest in orders, whom it would be 
 sacrilege to injure ; at last, that he was not only a priest, 
 but a bishop, whom, in the general dispersion, the Pope 
 had chosen as his vicar apostolic to the suffering Church
 
 LA VENDEE 309 
 
 of France. His name was Guyot, and he called himself 
 Folleville. Such a captive was worth more than a 
 regiment of horse. Lescure carried the republican trooper 
 to his country house for a few days ; and on May 1 6 
 Guyot reappeared in the robes proper to a bishop, with 
 the mitre, ring, and crozier that belonged to his exalted 
 dignity. 
 
 It was a great day in camp under the white flag ; and 
 the enemy, watching through his telescope, beheld with 
 amazement the kneeling ranks of Vendean infantry, and 
 a gigantic prelate who strode through them and distributed 
 blessings. He addressed them when they went into action, 
 promising victory to those who fought, and heaven to 
 those who fell, in so good a cause ; and he went under 
 fire with a crucifix in his hand, and ministered to the 
 wounded. They put him at the head of the council, 
 and required every priest to obey him, under pain of 
 arrest. Bernier, who had been at school with Guyot, was 
 not deceived. He denounced him at Rome, through 
 Maury, who was living there in the enjoyment of well- 
 earned honours. The fraud was at once exposed. Pius 
 VI. declared that the bishop of Agra did not exist ; and that 
 he knew nothing of the man so called, except that he was 
 an impostor and a rogue. 
 
 From the moment when Bernier wrote, Guyot was 
 in his power ; but it was October before he translated the 
 papal Latin to the generals. They resolved to take no 
 notice, but the detected pretender ceased to say Mass. 
 La Rochejaquelein intended to put him on board ship 
 and get rid of him at the first seaport. They never 
 reached the sea. To the last, at Granville, Guyot was 
 seen in the midst of danger, and his girdle was among 
 the spoils of the field. Though the officers watched him, 
 the men never found him out. He served them faithfully 
 during his six months of precarious importance, and he 
 perished with them. He might have obtained hope of 
 life by betraying the mendacity of his accomplices, and 
 the imbecility of his dupes. He preferred to die without 
 exposing them.
 
 310 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 In June, when the victorious Vendeans occupied 
 Saumur, it was time that they should have a policy 
 and a plan. They had four alternatives. They might 
 besiege Nantes and open communications with English 
 cruisers. They might join with the royalists of the 
 centre. They might raise an insurrection in Brittany, 
 or they might strike for Paris. The great road to the 
 capital opened before them ; there were the prisoners in 
 the Temple to rescue, and the monarch to restore. Dim 
 reports of their exploits reached the queen, and roused 
 hopes of deliverance. In a smuggled note, the Princess 
 Elizabeth inquired whether the men of the west had 
 reached Orleans ; in another, she asked, not unreasonably, 
 what had become of the British fleet. It is said that 
 Stofflet gave that heroic counsel. Napoleon believed that 
 if they had followed it, nothing could have prevented the 
 white flag from waving on the towers of Notre Dame. 
 But there was no military organisation ; the troops 
 received no pay, and went home when they pleased. 
 The generals were hopelessly divided, and Charette 
 would not leave his own territory. Bonchamps, who 
 always led his men, and was hit in every action, was 
 away, disabled by a wound. His advice was known. 
 He thought that their only hope was to send a small 
 corps to rouse the Bretons. With the united forces of 
 Brittany and Vendee they would then march for Paris. 
 They adopted a compromise, and decided to besiege 
 Nantes, an open town, the headquarters of commerce 
 with the West Indies, and of the African slave trade. If 
 Nantes fell it would be likely to rouse Brittany ; and it 
 was an expedition in which Charette would take a part. 
 This was the disastrous advice of Cathelineau. They 
 went down from Saumur to Nantes, by the right bank of 
 the Loire, and on the night of June 28, their fire-signals 
 summoned Charette for the morrow. Charette did not 
 fail. But he was beyond the river, unable to make his 
 way across, and he resented the arrangement which was to 
 give the pillage of the wealthy city to the pious soldiers of 
 Anjou and Poitou, whilst he looked on from a distance.
 
 LA VENDEE 311 
 
 During the long deliberations at Saumur, and the 
 slow march down the river, Nantes had thrown up earth- 
 works, and had fortified the hearts of its inhabitants. 
 The attack failed. Cathelineau penetrated to the market 
 place, and they still show the window from which a 
 cobbler shot down the hero of Anjou. The Vendeans 
 retreated to their stronghold, and their cause was without 
 a future. D'Elb^e was chosen to succeed, on the death 
 of Cathelineau. He admitted the superior claims of 
 Bonchamps, but he disliked his policy of carrying the 
 war to the north. The others preferred d'Elbe because 
 they had less to fear from his ascendancy and strength of 
 will. They were not only divided by jealousy, but by 
 enmity. Charette kept away from the decisive field, and 
 rejoiced when the grand army passed the Loire, and left 
 their whole country to him. Charette and Stofflet caused 
 Marigny, the commander of the artillery, to be executed. 
 Lescure once exclaimed that, if he had not been helpless 
 from a wound, he would have cut down the Prince de 
 Talmond. Stofflet sent a challenge to Bonchamps ; and 
 both Stofflet and Charette were ultimately betrayed by 
 their comrades. Success depended on the fidelity of 
 d'Elbee, Bonchamps, and Lescure to each other, through 
 all divergences of character and policy. For two months 
 they continued to hold the Republic at bay. They never 
 reached Poitiers, and they were heavily defeated at 
 Lugon ; but they made themselves a frontier line of 
 towns, to the south-west, by taking Thouars, Parthenay, 
 Fontenay, and Niort. There was a road from north to 
 south by Beaupr6au, Chatillon, and Bressuire ; and 
 another from east to west, through Doue, Vihiers, Coron, 
 Mortagne. All these are names of famous battles. At 
 Cholet, which is in the middle of La Vendee, where the 
 two roads cross, the first success and the final rout took 
 place. 
 
 The advantage which the Vendeans possessed was 
 that there was no good army to oppose them, and there 
 were no good officers. It was the early policy of 
 Robespierre to repress military talent, which may be
 
 312 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 dangerous in a republic, and to employ noisy patriots. 
 He was not duped by them ; but he trusted them as safe 
 men ; and if they did their work coarsely and cruelly, 
 imitating the practice that succeeded so well at Paris, it 
 was no harm. That was a surer way of destroying 
 royalists en masse than the manoeuvres of a tactician, 
 who was very likely to be humane, and almost sure to be 
 ambitious and suspicious of civilians. Therefore a succes- 
 sion of incompetent men were sent out, and the star of 
 d'Elbe'e ascended higher and higher. There had been 
 time for communication with Pitt, who was believed to 
 be intriguing everywhere, and the dread of an English 
 landing in the west became strong in the Committees of 
 government at Paris. 
 
 At the end of July, a serious disaster befell the 
 French armies. Mentz surrendered to the Prussians, and 
 Valenciennes immediately after to the Austrians. Their 
 garrisons, unable to serve against the enemy abroad, 
 were available against the enemy at home. The soldiers 
 from Mayence were sent to Nantes. They were 8000, 
 and they brought K16ber with them. It was the doom 
 of La Vendee. By the middle of September the best 
 soldiers and the best generals the French government 
 possessed met the veterans of Bonchamps and d'Elbee. 
 In a week, from the i8th to the 23rd, they fought five 
 battles, of which the most celebrated is named after the 
 village of Torfou. And with this astonishing result, 
 that the royalists were victorious in every one of them, 
 and captured more than i oo cannon. On one of these 
 fields, Kle"ber and Marceau saw each other for the first 
 time. But it seemed that Bonchamps was able to 
 defeat even Kle"ber and Marceau, as he had defeated 
 Westermann and Rossignol. Then a strange thing 
 happened. Some men, in disguise, were brought into 
 the Vendean lines. They proved to be from the 
 Mayence garrison ; and they said that they would 
 prefer serving under the royalist generals who had beaten 
 them, rather than under their own unsuccessful chiefs. 
 They undertook, for a large sum of money, to return
 
 LA VENDEE 313 
 
 with their comrades. Bonchamps and Charette took 
 the proposals seriously, and wished to accept them. 
 But the money could only be procured by melting down 
 the Church plate, and the clergy made objection. Some 
 have thought that this was a fatal miscalculation. The 
 other causes of their ruin are obvious and are decisive. 
 They ought to have been supported by the Bretons, 
 and the Bretons were not ready. They ought to have 
 been united, and they were bitterly divided and insub- 
 ordinate. They ought to have created an impregnable 
 fastness on the high ground above the Loire ; but they 
 had no defensive tactics, and when they occupied a 
 town, would not wait for the attack, but retired, to have 
 the unqualified delight of expelling the enemy. Above 
 all, they ought to have been backed by England. 
 D'Elbee's first letter was intercepted, and four months 
 passed before the English government stirred. The 
 emigres and their princes had no love for these peasants 
 and stay-at-home gentry and clergy, who took so long 
 to declare themselves, and whose primary or ultimate 
 motive was not royalism. Puisaye showed Napier a 
 letter in which Lewis XVIII. directed that he should 
 be put secretly to death. 
 
 England ought to have been active on the coast very 
 early, during the light winds of summer. But the 
 English wanted a safe landing-place, and there was none 
 to give them. With more enterprise, while Charette 
 held the island of Noirmoutier, Pitt might have become 
 the arbiter of France. When he gave definite promises 
 and advice, it was October, and the day of hope had 
 passed. 
 
 In the middle of October Kle"ber, largely reinforced, 
 advanced with 25,000 men, and Bonchamps made up 
 his mind that the time had come to retreat into Brittany. 
 He posted a detachment to secure the passage of the 
 Loire at St. Laurent, and fell back with his whole force 
 to Cholet, whilst he sent warning to Charette of the 
 decisive hour. There, on October 16, he fought his 
 last fight. D'Elbe"e was shot through the body. He
 
 314 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 was carried in safety to Noirmoutier, and still lingered 
 when the Republicans recovered the island in January. 
 His last conversation with his conqueror, before he 
 suffered death, is of the highest value for this history. 
 Lescure had already received a bullet through the 
 head, and at Cholet, Bonchamps was wounded mortally. 
 But there had been a moment in the day during which 
 fortune wavered, and the lost cause owed its ruin to 
 the absence of Charette. Stofflet and La Rochejaquelein 
 led the retreat from Cholet to the Loire. It was a 
 day's march, and there was no pursuit. Bonchamps 
 was still living when they came to the river, and still 
 able to give one last order. Four thousand five hundred 
 prisoners had been brought from Cholet ; they were 
 shut up in the church at St. Laurent, and the officers 
 agreed that they must be put to death. At first, the 
 Convention had not allowed the men whom the royalists 
 released to serve again. But these amenities of civilised 
 war had long been abolished ; and the prisoners were 
 sure to be employed against the captors who spared 
 them. Bonchamps gave these men their lives, and on 
 the same day he died. When, at the same moment, 
 d'Elb6e, Lescure and Bonchamps had disappeared, La 
 Rochejaquelein assumed the command. Klber, whom 
 he repulsed at Laval, described him as a very able 
 officer ; but he led the army into the country beyond 
 the Loire without a definite purpose. The Prince de 
 Talmond, who was a La Tremoille, promised that when 
 they came near the domains of his family, the expected 
 Bretons would come in. More important was the 
 appearance of two peasants carrying a stick. For the 
 peasants were emigres disguised, and their stick contained 
 letters from Whitehall, in which Pitt undertook to help 
 them if they succeeded in occupying a seaport ; and he 
 recommended Granville, which stands on a promontory 
 not far from French Saint Michael's Mount. The 
 messengers declined to confirm the encouragement they 
 brought ; but La Rochejaquelein, heavily hampered with 
 thousands of women and children who had lost their
 
 LA VENDEE 315 
 
 homes, made his way across to the sea, and attacked 
 the fortifications of the place. He assaulted in vain ; 
 and although Jersey listened to the cannonade, no ships 
 came. The last hope had now gone ; and the remnant 
 of the great army, cursing the English, turned back 
 towards their own country. Some thousands of Bretons 
 had joined, and Stofflet still drove the republicans 
 before him. With La Rochejaquelein and Sapinaud he 
 crossed the Loire in a small boat. The army found 
 the river impassable, and wandered helplessly without 
 officers until, at Savenay, December 26, it was overtaken 
 by the enemy, and ceased to exist. Lescure had 
 followed the column in his carriage, until he heard of 
 the execution of the queen. With his last breath, he 
 said : " I fought to save her : I would live to avenge 
 her. There must be no quarter now." 
 
 In this implacable spirit Carrier was acting at Nantes. 
 But I care not to tell the vengeance of the victorious 
 republicans upon the brave men who had made them 
 tremble. The same atrocities were being committed in 
 the south. Lyons had overthrown the Jacobins, had put 
 the worst of them to death, and had stood a siege under 
 the republican flag. Girondins and royalists, who were 
 enemies at Nantes, fought here side by side ; and the 
 place was so well armed that it held out to October 9. 
 On the 29th of August, the royalists of Toulon called in 
 a joint British and Spanish garrison, and gave up the 
 fleet and the arsenal to Lord Hood. The republicans 
 laid siege to the town in October. The harbour of Toulon 
 is deep and spacious ; but there was, and still is, a fort 
 which commands the entrance. Whoever held 1'Aiguillette 
 was master of every ship in the docks and of every gun 
 in the arsenal. On December 1 8, at midnight, during a 
 violent storm, the French attacked and carried the fort. 
 Toulon was no longer tenable. Hastily, but imperfectly, 
 the English destroyed the French ships they could not at 
 once take away, leaving the materials for the Egyptian 
 expedition, and as fast as possible evacuated the harbour, 
 under the fire of the captured fort. The fortunes of
 
 316 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Bonaparte began with that exploit, and the first event of 
 his career was the spectacle of a British fleet flying before 
 him by the glare of an immense conflagration. The 
 year 1793 thus ended triumphantly, and the Convention 
 was master of all France, except the marshes down by 
 the ocean, where Charette defied every foe, and succeeded 
 in imposing his own terms on the Republic. But the 
 danger had come that disturbed the slumber of Robespierre, 
 and the man was found who was to make the Revolution 
 a stepping-stone to the power of the sword.
 
 XXI 
 
 THE EUROPEAN WAR 
 
 THE French Revolution was an attempt to establish in 
 the public law of Europe maxims which had triumphed 
 by the aid of France in America. By the principles of 
 the Declaration of Independence a government which 
 obstructs liberty forfeits the claim to obedience, and the 
 men who devote their families to ruin and themselves to 
 death in order to destroy it do no more than their duty. 
 The American Revolution was not provoked by tyranny 
 or intolerable wrong, for the Colonies were better off than 
 the nations of Europe. They rose in arms against a 
 constructive danger, an evil that might have been borne 
 but for its possible effects. The precept which condemned 
 George III. was fatal to Lewis XVI., and the case for 
 the French Revolution was stronger than the case for 
 the American Revolution. But it involved international 
 consequences. It condemned the governments of other 
 countries. If the revolutionary government was legitimate, 
 the conservative governments were not. They necessarily 
 threatened each other. By the law of its existence, 
 France encouraged insurrection against its neighbours, 
 and the existing balance of power would have to be 
 redressed in obedience to a higher law. 
 
 The successful convulsion in France led to a convulsion 
 in Europe ; and the Convention which, in the first illusions 
 of victory, promised brotherhood to populations striking 
 for freedom, was impolitic, but was not illogical. In truth 
 the Jacobins only transplanted for the use of oppressed 
 Europeans a precedent created by the Monarchy in favour
 
 318 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 of Americans who were not oppressed. Nobody imagined 
 that the new system of international relations could be 
 carried into effect without resistance or sacrifice, but the 
 enthusiasts of liberty, true or false, might well account it 
 worth all that it must cost, even if the price was to be 
 twenty years of war. This new dogma is the real cause 
 of the breach with England, which did such harm to 
 France. Intelligent Jacobins, like Danton and Carnot, 
 saw the danger of abandoning policy for the sake of 
 principle. They strove to interpret the menacing declara- 
 tion, until it became innocuous, and they put forward the 
 natural frontier in its stead. But it was the very essence 
 of the revolutionary spirit, and could not be denied. 
 
 England had remained aloof from Pilnitz and the 
 expedition under Brunswick, but began to be unfriendly 
 after the loth of August. Lord Gower did not at once 
 cease to be ambassador, and drew his salary to the end of 
 the year. But as he was accredited to the king, he was 
 recalled when the king went to prison, and no solicitude 
 was shown to make the step less offensive. Chauvelin 
 was not acknowledged. He was not admitted to present 
 his new credentials, and his requests for audience were 
 received with coldness. Pitt and Grenville were not 
 conciliatory. They were so dignified that they were 
 haughty, and when they were haughty they were insolent. 
 The conquest of Belgium, the opening of the Scheldt for 
 navigation, and the trial of the king, roused a bitter feeling 
 in England, and ministers, in the course of December, felt 
 that they would be safe if they went along with it. The 
 opening of the Scheldt was not resisted by the Dutch, and 
 gave England no valid plea. But France was threatening 
 Holland, and if out of English hatred to the Republic, to 
 republican principles of foreign policy, to the annexation 
 of the Netherlands, war was really inevitable, it was 
 important to get possession at once of the Dutch resources 
 by sea and land. 
 
 The idea of conciliating England by renouncing con- 
 quest, and the idea of defying England by the immediate 
 invasion of the United Provinces, balanced each other
 
 THE EUROPEAN WAR 319 
 
 for a time. By renunciation, the moderate or Girondin 
 party would have triumphed. The Jacobins, who drew 
 all the consequences of theories, and who were eager to 
 restore the finances with the spoils of the opulent Dutch- 
 men, carried their purpose when they voted the death of 
 the king. That event added what was wanting to make 
 the excitement and exasperation of England boil over. 
 Down to the month of January the government continued 
 ready to treat on condition that France restored her 
 conquests, and several emissaries had been received. The 
 most trustworthy of these was Maret, afterwards Duke of 
 Bassano. On the 28th of January Talleyrand, who was 
 living in retirement at Leatherhead, informed ministers 
 that Maret was again on the way to herald the approach 
 of Dumouriez himself, whose presence in London, on a 
 friendly mission, would have been tantamount to the 
 abandonment of the Dutch project. But Maret came too 
 late, and Dumouriez on his journey to the coast was 
 overtaken by instructions that Amsterdam, not London, 
 was his destination. 
 
 The news from Paris reached London on the evening 
 of the 23rd, and the audience at the theatre insisted that 
 the performance should be stopped. There was to be 
 a drawing - room next day. The drawing - room was 
 countermanded. A Council was summoned, and there a 
 momentous decision was registered. Grenville had refused 
 to recognise the official character of the French envoy, 
 Chauvelin. He had informed him that he was subject to 
 the Alien Act. On the 24th he sent him his passports, 
 with orders to leave the country. Upon that Dumouriez 
 was recalled. On the 2Qth Chauvelin arrived at Paris, 
 and told his story. And it was then, February i, that 
 the Convention declared war against England. With less 
 violent counsels in London, and with patience to listen to 
 Dumouriez, the outbreak of the war might have been 
 postponed. But nothing that England was able to offer 
 could have made up to France for the sacrifice of the fleet 
 and the treasure of Holland. 
 
 Our ministers may have been wanting in many
 
 320 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 qualities of negotiators, and the dismissal of Chauvelin 
 laid on them a responsibility that was easy to avoid. 
 They could not for long have averted hostilities. It is 
 possible that Fox might have succeeded, for Fox was able 
 to understand the world of new ideas which underlay the 
 policy of France ; but the country was in no temper to 
 follow the Whigs. They accused Pitt unjustly when they 
 said that he went to war from the motive of ambition. 
 He was guiltless of that capital charge. But he did less 
 than he might have done to prevent it, perceiving too 
 clearly the benefit that would accrue. And he is open to 
 the grave reproach that he went over to the absolute 
 Powers and associated England with them at the moment 
 of the Second Partition, and applied to France the 
 principles on which they acted against Poland. When 
 the Prince of Coburg held his first conference with his 
 allies in Belgium, he declared that Austria renounced all 
 ideas of conquest. The English at once protested. 
 They made known that they desired to annex as much 
 territory as possible, in order to make the enemy less 
 formidable. Our envoy was Lord Auckland, a man of 
 moderate opinions, who had always advised his government 
 to come to terms with the Republic. He exhorted Coburg 
 not to rest until he had secured a satisfactory line of 
 frontier, as England was going to appropriate Dunkirk 
 and the Colonies, and meant to keep them. George III., 
 on April 27, uttered the same sentiments. France, he said, 
 must be greatly circumscribed before we can talk of any 
 means of treating with that dangerous and faithless nation. 
 In February Grenville definitely proposed dismemberment, 
 offering the frontier fortresses and the whole of Alsace 
 and Lorraine to Austria. It was the English who 
 impressed on the operations, that were to follow, the 
 character of a selfish and sordid rapacity. 
 
 The island kingdom alone had nothing to fear, for she 
 had the rest of the maritime Powers on her side, and the 
 preponderance of the naval forces was decisive. The 
 French began the war with 76 line -of -battle ships. 
 England had 115, with 8718 guns to 6002. In weight
 
 THE EUROPEAN WAR 321 
 
 of metal the difference was not so great, for the English 
 guns threw 89,000 Ibs. and the French 74,000. But 
 England had the Spanish fleet, of 56 ships -of- the -line, 
 and the Dutch with 49 the Spaniards well built, but 
 badly manned ; the Dutch constructed for shallow waters, 
 but with superior crews. To these must be added 
 Portugal, which followed England, and Naples, whose 
 king was a Bourbon, brother to the king of Spain. There- 
 fore, in weight of metal, which is the first thing, next to 
 brains, we were at least 2 to I ; and in the number of 
 ships 3 to i, or about 230 to 76. That is the reason 
 why the insular statesmen went to war, if not with greater 
 enterprise and energy, yet with more determination and 
 spirit, than their exposed and vulnerable allies upon the 
 Continent The difference between them is that between 
 men who are out of reach and are 2 to I, and men whose 
 territories are accessible to an enemy greatly superior to 
 themselves in numbers. Therefore it was Pitt who from 
 his post of vantage pushed the others forward, and, when 
 they vacillated, encouraged them with money and the 
 promise of spoil. The alliance with the maritime states 
 was important for his policy, but it accomplished nothing 
 in the actual struggle. The Dutch and the Spaniards 
 were never brought into line ; and the English, though 
 they owed their safety at first to their system of alliances, 
 owed their victories to themselves. And those victories 
 became more numerous and splendid when, after two 
 years of inefficacious friendship with us, the Spaniard and 
 the Dutchman joined our enemies. England was drawn 
 into the war, which it maintained with unflagging resolution, 
 by the prospect of sordid gain. It brought increase of 
 rents to the class that governed, and advantage to the 
 trader from the conquest of dependencies and dominions 
 over the sea. 
 
 The year 1793 brought us no profit from the sea. 
 We occupied Toulon on the invitation of the inhabitants, 
 and there we had in our possession half of the naval 
 resources of France. But before the end of the year we 
 were driven away. The French dominions in India fell 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 at once into our hands, and in March and April 1794 
 we captured the Windward Islands in the West Indies, 
 Martinique, Santa Lucia, and at last Guadeloupe. But 
 a Jacobin lawyer came over from France and reconquered 
 Guadeloupe, and the French held it with invincible 
 tenacity till 1 8 1 o. They lost Hayti, but it never became 
 English, and drifted into the power of the negroes, who 
 there rose to the highest point they have attained in 
 history. In the summer of the same year, 1794, Corsica 
 became a British dependency, strengthening enormously 
 our position in the Mediterranean. We were not able to 
 retain it. Our admirals did nothing for La Vendee. So 
 little was known about it that on December 1 9 there was a 
 question of sending an officer to serve under Bonchamps, 
 who at that time had been dead two months. 
 
 In all this chequered and inglorious history there 
 is one day to be remembered. On April 1 1, 1794, 
 130 merchantmen, laden with food-supplies, sailed from 
 Chesapeake Bay for the ports of France. Lord Howe 
 went out to intercept them ; and on May 1 6 the French 
 fleet left Brest to protect them. Howe divided his force. 
 He sent Montagu to watch for the merchantmen, and led 
 the remainder of his squadron against Villaret Joyeuse. 
 After a brush on May 28, they met, in equal force, on 
 the ist of June, 400 miles from land. The French 
 admiral had an unfrocked Huguenot divine on board, who 
 had been to sea in his youth, and was now infusing the 
 revolutionary ardour into the fleet, as St. Just did with 
 the army. The fight lasted three hours and then ceased. 
 Villaret waited until evening, but Lord Howe had several 
 ships disabled, and would neither renew the battle nor 
 pursue the enemy. The French had lost seven ships out 
 of twenty-six. The most famous of these is the Vengeur 
 du Peuple. It engaged the Brunswick, and the rigging 
 of one ship became so entangled with the anchors of the 
 other that they were locked together, and drifted away 
 from the line. They were so close that the French could 
 not fire their lower deck guns, having no space to ram 
 the charge. The English were provided for this very
 
 THE EUROPEAN WAR 323 
 
 emergency with flexible rammers of rope and went on 
 firing into the portholes of the enemy, while the French 
 captain, calling up his men from below, had the advantage 
 on the upper deck. At last the rolling of the sea forced 
 the unconquered enemies to part. The Brunswick had 
 lost 158 out of a crew of 600, and 2 3 of her guns out 
 of 74 were dismounted. She withdrew out of action 
 disabled, and went home to refit. The Vengeur remained 
 on the ground, with all her masts gone. Presently it was 
 seen that she had been hit below the water-line. The 
 guns were thrown overboard, but after some hours the 
 Vengeur made signals that she was sinking. English 
 boats came and rescued about 400 men out of 723. 
 Those of the survivors who were not wounded were seen 
 standing by the broken mast, and cried " Vive la rpublique," 
 as the ship went down. That is the history, not the 
 legend, of the loss of the Vengeur^ and no exaggeration 
 and no contradiction can mar the dramatic grandeur of 
 the scene. 
 
 The battle of the 1st of June is the one event by land 
 or sea that was glorious to British arms in the war of the 
 first Coalition. The ascendancy then acquired was never 
 lost Our failures in the West Indies, at Cape Verde 
 Islands, in the Mediterranean, and on the coasts of France, 
 and even the defection of our maritime allies, did not 
 impair it. And later on, when all were against us, admirals 
 more original and more enterprising than Howe increased 
 our superiority. The success was less brilliant and entire 
 than that which Nelson gained against a much greater force 
 at Trafalgar, when France lost every ship. Montagu did 
 not intercept the French merchantmen, and did not help 
 to crush the French men-of-war. Villaret Joyeuse and 
 the energetic minister from Languedoc lost the day, but 
 they gained the substantial advantage. Under cover of 
 their cannon, the ships on which the country depended for its 
 supplies came into port. Although during those two years 
 the French fought against great odds at sea, their loss was 
 less than they had expected, and did not weaken their 
 government at home. They had reason to hope that
 
 324 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 whenever their armies were brought to close quarters with 
 Spain and the Netherlands, the fortune of war at sea 
 would follow the event on land. 
 
 The war with which we have now to deal passed 
 through three distinct phases. During the year 1793, 
 the French maintained themselves with difficulty, having 
 to contend with a dangerous insurrection. In 1794 the 
 tide turned in their favour; and 1795 was an epoch of 
 preponderance and triumph. The Republic inherited from 
 the Monarchy a regular army of 220,000 men, seriously 
 damaged and demoralised by the emigration of officers. 
 To these were added, first, the volunteers of 1791, who 
 soon made good soldiers, and supplied the bulk of the 
 military talent that rose to fame down to 1815, and the 
 like of which was never seen, either in the American Civil 
 War, or among the Germans in 1870. The second batch 
 of volunteers, those who responded to the Brunswick 
 proclamation and the summons of September, when the 
 country was in danger, were not equal to the first. The 
 two together supplied 309,000 men. At the beginning 
 of the general war, in March 1793, the Conscription was 
 instituted, which provoked the rising in Vendee, and was 
 interrupted by troubles in other departments. Instead 
 of 300,000 men, it yielded 164,000. In the summer of 
 1793, when the fortresses were falling, there was, first, the 
 levy en masse, and then, August 23, the system of requisi- 
 tion, by which the levy was organised and made to produce 
 425,000 men. Altogether, in a year and a half, France 
 put 1,100,000 men into line ; and at the critical moment, 
 at the end of the second year, more than 700,000 were 
 present under arms. That is the force which Carnot had 
 to wield. He was a man of energy, of integrity, and of 
 professional skill as an engineer, but he was not a man 
 of commanding abilities. Lord Castlereagh rather flip- 
 pantly called him a foolish mathematician. Once, having 
 quarrelled with his former comrade Fouche", and having 
 been condemned to banishment, he had this conversation 
 with him : " Where am I to go, traitor ? " " Wherever 
 you like, idiot." As an austere republican he was out of
 
 THE EUROPEAN WAR 325 
 
 favour during the empire ; but his defence of Antwerp is 
 a bright spot in the decline of Napoleon. He became 
 Minister of the Interior on the return from Elba, and his 
 advice might have changed the history of the world. For 
 he wished the emperor to fall upon the English before 
 they could concentrate, and then to fight the Prussians at 
 his leisure. One night, during a rubber of whist, the tears 
 that ran down his cheek betrayed the news from Waterloo. 
 
 Carnot owed his success to two things arbitrary control 
 over promotion, and the cheapness of French lives. He 
 could sacrifice as many men as he required to carry a 
 point. An- Austrian on the Sambre, 1,000 miles from 
 home, was hard to replace. Any number of Frenchmen 
 were within easy reach. Colonel Mack observed that 
 whenever a combatant fell, France lost a man, but Austria 
 lost a soldier. La Vendee had shown what could be done 
 by men without organisation or the power of manoeuvring, 
 by constant activity, exposure, and courage. Carnot 
 taught his men to win by a rush many times repeated, 
 and not to count their dead. The inferior commanders 
 were quickly weeded out, sometimes with help from the 
 executioner, and the ablest men were brought to the front. 
 The chief army of all, the army of Sambre et Meuse, was 
 commanded by Kle"ber. Moreau, Reynier, Marceau, and 
 Ney. Better still, on the Rhine were Hoche, Desaix, and 
 St. Cyr. Best of all, in the Apennines, the French were 
 led by Bonaparte and Massena. 
 
 All these armaments had scarcely begun when the 
 victory of Neerwinden and the flight of Dumouriez brought 
 the Austrians up to the Belgian frontier. Carnot was not 
 discovered, the better men had not risen to command, the 
 levy en masse had not been thought of. The French 
 could do nothing in the field while the Prince of Coburg, 
 supported by the Dutch, and by an Anglo- Hanoverian 
 army under the Duke of York, sat down before the 
 fortresses. By the end of July Cond and Valenciennes 
 had fallen, and the road to Paris was open to the victors. 
 They might have reached the capital in overwhelming 
 force by the middle of August. But the English coveted,
 
 326 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 not Paris but Dunkirk, and the Duke of York withdrew 
 with 37,000 men and laid siege to it. Coburg turned 
 aside in the opposite direction, to besiege Le Quesnoy. 
 He proposed to conquer the fortified towns, one after 
 another, according to Grenville's prescription, and then 
 to join hands with the Prussians whom it was urgent to 
 have with him when penetrating to the interior. The 
 Prussians meanwhile had taken Mentz, the garrison, like 
 that of Valenciennes, making a defence too short for their 
 fame. But the Prussians remembered the invasion of the 
 year before, and they were in no hurry. The allies, with 
 conflicting interests and divided counsels, gave the enemy 
 time. Some years later, when Napoleon had defeated the 
 Piedmontese, and was waiting for them to send back the 
 treaty he had dictated at Cherasco, duly signed, he grew 
 excessively impatient at their delay. The Piedmontese 
 officers were surprised at what seemed a want of self- 
 restraint, and let him see it. His answer was, " I may 
 often lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute." 
 
 The French put to good account the time their enemies 
 allowed them. Carnot took office on August 14, and on 
 the 23rd he caused the Convention to decree what is 
 pleasantly called the levy en masse, but was the system of 
 requisition, making every able-bodied man a soldier. The 
 new spirit of administration was soon felt in the army. 
 The forces besieging Le Quesnoy and Dunkirk were so far 
 apart that the French came between and attacked them 
 successively. The Dunkirk garrison opened the sluices 
 and flooded the country, separating the English from the 
 covering force of Hanoverians, and leaving the Duke of 
 York no means of retreat except by a single causeway. 
 On September 8 the French defeated the Hanoverians at 
 Hondschooten and relieved Dunkirk. The English got 
 away in great haste, abandoning their siege guns ; but as 
 they ought not to have got away at all, the French cut off 
 the head of their victorious commander. Jourdan, his 
 successor, turned upon the Prince of Coburg, and, by the 
 new and expensive tactics, defeated him at Wattignies on 
 October 16. Carnot, who did not yet trust his generals,
 
 THE EUROPEAN WAR 327 
 
 arrived in time to win the day by overruling Jourdan and 
 his staff. And every French child knows how he led the 
 charge through the grapeshot, on foot, with his hat at the 
 end of his sword. From that day to the peace of Bale he 
 held the army in his grasp. He had stopped the invasion. 
 No one in the allied camp spoke any more of the shortest 
 road to Paris ; but they still held the places they had 
 conquered. Two months later, Hoche, who had distin- 
 guished himself at Dunkirk, took the command in the 
 Vosges, and stormed the lines of Weissenburg at the 
 scene of the first action in the war of 1870. By the end 
 of December the Prussians were shut up in Mayence, and 
 Wurmser had retired beyond the Rhine. By that time, 
 too, La Vendee, and Lyons, and Toulon had fallen. The 
 campaign of 1794 was to be devoted to foreign war. 
 
 During that autumn and winter, Carnot, somewhat 
 unmindful of what went on near him and heedless of the 
 signatures he gave, was organising the enormous force the 
 requisition provided, and laying the plans that were to 
 give him so great a name in the history of his country. 
 He divided the troops into thirteen armies. They call 
 them fourteen, I believe, because there were cadres for an 
 army of reserve. Two were required for the Spanish war, 
 for the Pyrenees are impassable by artillery except at the 
 two ends, where narrow valleys lead from France to Spain 
 near San Sebastian, and by a strip of more open country 
 near the Mediterranean. What passed there did not 
 influence events ; but it is well to know that the Spaniards 
 under Ricardos gained important advantages in 1794, and 
 fought better than they ever did in the field during their 
 struggle with Napoleon. A third army was placed on the 
 Italian frontier, a fourth on the Rhine, and a fifth against 
 the allies in Flanders. Carnot increased the number 
 because he had no men who had proved their fitness for 
 the direction of very large forces. He meant that his 
 armies should be everywhere sufficient, but in Belgium 
 they were to be overwhelming. That was the point of 
 danger, and there a great body of Austrians, Dutch, 
 English, and Hanoverians had been collected. The
 
 328 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Emperor himself appeared among them in May ; and his 
 brother, the Archduke Charles, was the best officer in the 
 allied camp. 
 
 At the end of April Coburg took Landrecies, the fourth 
 of the line of fortresses that had fallen. On May 1 8 the 
 French were victorious at Tourcoing, where the English 
 suffered severely, and the Duke of York sought safety in 
 precipitate flight There was even talk of a court martial. 
 The day was lost in consequence of the absence of the 
 Archduke, who suffered from fits like Julius Caesar, and is 
 said to have been lying unconscious many miles away. 
 For a month longer the allies held their ground and 
 repeatedly repressed Jourdan in his attempts to cross the 
 Sambre. At last, Charleroi surrendered to the French, 
 and on the following day, June 26, they won the great 
 battle of Fleurus. Mons fell on July I, and on the 5th the 
 allies resolved to evacuate Belgium. The four fortresses 
 were recovered in August ; and Coburg retired by Lige 
 into Germany, York by Antwerp into Holland. In 
 October Jourdan pursued the Austrians, and drove them 
 across the Rhine. The battle of Fleurus established the 
 ascendancy of the French in Europe as the ist of June 
 had created that of England on the ocean. They began 
 the offensive, and retained it for twenty years. Yet the 
 defeat of Fleurus, after such varying fortunes and so much 
 alternate success does not explain the sudden discourage- 
 ment and collapse of the allies. One of the great powers 
 was about to abandon the alliance. Prussia had agreed 
 in the spring to accept an English subsidy. For 300,000 
 down, and 150,000 a month, a force of fifty to sixty 
 thousand Prussians was to be employed in a manner to 
 be agreed upon with England, that meant in Belgium. 
 Before Malmesbury's signature was dry, the whole situation 
 altered. 
 
 The Committee of Public Safety had created a diversion 
 in the rear of the foe. Kozsiusko, with the help of French 
 money and advice, had raised an insurrection in Poland, and 
 the hands of the Prussians were tied. The Polish question 
 touched them nearer than the French, and all their thoughts
 
 THE EUROPEAN WAR 329 
 
 were turned in the opposite direction. The Austrians 
 began to apprehend that Prussia would desert them on 
 the Rhine, and would gain an advantage over them in 
 Poland, while they were busy with their best army in 
 Flanders. Pitt increased his offers. Lord Spencer was 
 sent to Vienna to arrange for a further subsidy. But the 
 Prussians began to withdraw. Marshal Moellendorf in- 
 formed the French in September that the Austrians were 
 about to attack Treves. He promised that he would do 
 no more than he could help for his allies. On the 2Oth, 
 Hohenlohe, who was not in the secret, having fought 
 Hoche at Kaiserslautern and defeated him, the commander- 
 in-chief sent explanations and apologies. In October, Pitt 
 stopped the supplies, and the Prussians disappeared from 
 the war. 
 
 The winter of 1794-95 was severe, and even the 
 sea froze in Holland. In January, Pichegru marched 
 over the solid Rhine, and neither Dutch nor English offered 
 any considerable resistance. The Prince of Orange fled to 
 England; the Duke of York retreated to Bremen, and 
 there embarked ; and on the 28th the French were 
 welcomed by the democracy of Amsterdam. A body of 
 cavalry rode up to the fleet on the ice, and received its 
 surrender. There was no cause left for it to defend. 
 Holland was to be the salvation of French credit. It 
 gave France trade, a fleet, a position from which to enter 
 Germany on the undefended side. The tables were turned 
 against Pitt and his policy. His Prussian ally made 
 peace in April, giving up to France all Germany as far 
 as the Rhine, and undertaking to occupy Hanover, if 
 George III., as elector, refused to be neutral. Spain almost 
 immediately followed. Manuel Godoy, lately a guardsman, 
 but Prime Minister and Duke of Alcudia since November 
 1 792, had declined Pitt's proposals for an alliance as long as 
 there were hopes of saving the life of Lewis by the promise 
 of neutrality. When those hopes came to an end, he con- 
 sented. The joint occupation of Toulon had not been amic- 
 able ; and when George III. was made King of Corsica, it 
 was an injury to Spain as a Mediterranean Power. The
 
 330 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 animosity against regicide France faded away ; the war was 
 not popular, and the Duke of Alcudia became, amid general 
 rejoicing, Prince of the Peace. 
 
 We saw how the first invasion, in 1792, brought the 
 worst men to power. In 1 793, the Reign of Terror coincided 
 exactly with the season of public danger. Robespierre 
 became the head of the government on the very day when 
 the bad news came from the fortresses, and he fell im- 
 mediately after the occupation of Brussels, July 1 1, 1794, 
 exposed the effects of Fleurus. We cannot dissociate 
 these events, or disprove the contention that the Reign of 
 Terror was the salvation of France. It is certain that the 
 conscription of March 1793, under Girondin auspices, 
 scarcely yielded half the required amount, whilst the levies 
 of the following August, decreed and carried out by the 
 Mountain, inundated the country with soldiers, who were 
 prepared by the slaughter going on at home to face the 
 slaughter at the front. This, then, was the result which 
 Conservative Europe obtained by its attack on the Republic. 
 The French had subjugated Savoy, the Rhineland, Belgium, 
 Holland, whilst Prussia and Spain had been made to sue 
 for peace. England had deprived France of her colonies, 
 but had lost repute as a military Power. Austria alone, 
 with her dependent neighbours, maintained the unequal 
 struggle on the Continent under worse conditions, and 
 with no hope but in the help of Russia.
 
 XXII 
 
 IT remains for us to pursue the course of French politics 
 from the fall of the Terrorists to the Constitution of the 
 year III., and the close of the Convention in October 
 I 79S- The State drifted after the storm, and was long 
 without a regular government or a guiding body of 
 opinion. The first feeling was relief at an immense 
 deliverance. Prisons were opened and thousands of 
 private citizens were released. The new sensation dis- 
 played itself extravagantly, in the search for pleasures 
 unknown during the stern and sombre reign. Madame 
 Tallien set the fashion as queen of Paris society. Men 
 rejected the modern garment which characterised the 
 hateful years, and put on tights. They buried the chin 
 in folded neckcloths, and wore tall hats in protest against 
 the exposed neck and the red nightcap of the enemy. 
 Powder was resumed ; but the pigtail was cut off straight, 
 in commemoration of friends lost by the fall of the axe. 
 Young men, representing the new spirit, wore a kind of 
 uniform, with the badge of mourning on the arm, and a 
 knobstick in their hands adapted to the Jacobin skull. 
 They became known afterwards as the Jeunesse Dor/e. 
 The press made much of them, and they served as a body 
 to the leaders of the reaction, hustling opponents, and 
 denoting the infinite change in the conditions of public 
 life. 
 
 These were externals. What went on underneath 
 was the gradual recovery of the respectable elements of 
 society, and the passage of power from the unworthy
 
 332 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 hands of the men who destroyed Robespierre. These, 
 the Thermidorians, were faithful to the contract with the 
 Plain, by which they obtained their victory. Some had 
 been friends of Danton, who, at one moment of the 
 previous winter, had approved a policy of moderation in 
 the use of the guillotine. Tallien had domestic as well 
 as public reasons for clemency. But the bulk of the 
 genuine Montagnards were unaltered. They had deserted 
 Robespierre when it became unsafe to defend him ; but 
 they had not renounced his system, and held that it was 
 needful as their security against the furious enmity they 
 had incurred when they were the ruling faction. 
 
 The majority in the Convention, where all powers 
 were now concentrated, were unable to govern. The 
 irresistible resources of the Reign of Terror were gone, and 
 nothing occupied their place. There was no working 
 Constitution, no settled authority, no party enjoying 
 ascendancy and respect, no public men free from the 
 guilt of blood. Many months were to pass before the 
 ruins of the fallen parties gathered together and con- 
 stituted an effective government with a real policy and 
 the means of pursuing it. The chiefs of the Commune 
 and of the revolutionary tribunal, near one hundred in 
 number, had followed Robespierre to the scaffold. 
 
 The Committees of government had lost their most 
 energetic members, and were disabled by the new plan of 
 rapid renewal. Power fluctuated between varying com- 
 binations of deputies, all of them transient and quickly 
 discredited. The main division was between vengeance 
 and amnesty. And the character of the following months 
 was a gradual drift in the direction of vengeance, as the 
 imprisoned or proscribed minority returned to their seats. 
 But the Mountain included the men, who by organising, 
 and equipping, and controlling the armies had made 
 France the first of European Powers, and they could not 
 at once be displaced. Barere proposed that existing 
 institutions should be preserved, and that Fouquier should 
 continue his office. On August 19, Louchet, the man 
 who led the assault against Robespierre, insisted that it
 
 AFTER THE TERROR 333 
 
 was needful to keep up the Terror with all the rigour that 
 had been prescribed by the sagacious and profound Marat. 
 A month later, September 21, the Convention solemnised 
 the apotheosis of Marat, whose remains were deposited in 
 the Pantheon, while those of Mirabeau were cast out. 
 Three weeks later, the master of Robespierre, Rousseau, 
 was brought, with equal ceremony, to be laid by his side. 
 The worst of the remaining offenders, Barere, Collot 
 d'Herbois, and Billaud-Varennes, were deprived of their 
 seats on the Committee of Public Safety. But in spite 
 of the denunciations of Lecointre and of Legendre, the 
 Convention refused to proceed against them. 
 
 All through September and a great part of October the 
 Mountain held its ground, and prevented the reform of 
 the government. Billaud, gaining courage, declared that 
 the lion might slumber, but would rend his enemies on 
 awaking. By the lion, he meant himself and his friends 
 of Thermidor. The governing Committees were recon- 
 structed on the principle of frequent change ; the law of 
 Prairial, which gave the right of arbitrary arrest and 
 unconditional gaol delivery, was abrogated ; and commis- 
 saries were sent out to teach the Provinces the example 
 of Paris. 
 
 Beyond these measures, the action of the State stood 
 still. The fall of the men who reigned by terror produced, 
 at first, no great political result. The process of change 
 was set in motion by certain citizens of Nantes. Carrier 
 had sent a batch of 132 of his prisoners to feed the Paris 
 guillotine. Thirty-eight of them died of the hardships 
 they endured. The remainder were still in prison in 
 Thermidor ; and they now petitioned to be put on their 
 trial. The trial took place ; and the evidence given was 
 such as made a reaction inevitable. On September 14, 
 the Nantais were acquitted. Then the necessary conse- 
 quence followed. If the victims of Carrier were innocent, 
 what was Carrier himself? His atrocities had been 
 exposed, and, on November 12, the Convention resolved, 
 by 498 to 2, that he should appear before the tribunal. 
 For Carrier was a deputy, inviolable under common law.
 
 334 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 The trial was prolonged, for it was the trial not of a man, 
 but of a system, of a whole class of men still in the enjoy- 
 ment of immunity. 
 
 Everything that could be brought to light gave 
 strength to the Thermidorians against their enemies, 
 and gave them the command of public opinion. On 
 December 16 Carrier was guillotined. He had defended 
 himself with spirit. The strength of his case was that 
 his prosecutors were nearly as guilty as himself, and that 
 they would all, successively, be struck down by the 
 enemies of the Republic. He did his best to drag down 
 the party with him. His associates, acquitted by the 
 revolutionary tribunal on the plea that their delinquencies 
 were not political, were then sent before the ordinary 
 courts. On the day on which the convention resolved 
 that the butcher of Nantes must stand his trial, they 
 closed the Jacobin Club, and now the. reaction was 
 setting in. 
 
 On December I, after hearing a report by Carnot, the 
 assembly offered an amnesty to the insurgents on the 
 Loire, and on the 8th those Girondins were recalled who 
 had been placed under arrest. This measure was decisive. 
 With the willing aid of the Plain they were masters of 
 the Convention, for they were seventy-three in number, 
 and, unlike the Plain, they were not hampered and 
 disabled by their own iniquities. They were not accom- 
 plices of the Reign of Terror, for they had spent it in 
 confinement. They had nothing to fear from a vigorous 
 application of deserved penalties, and they had a terrible 
 score to clear off. There were still sixteen deputies who 
 had been proscribed with Buzot and the rest. They were 
 now amnestied, and three months later, March 8, they 
 were admitted to their seats. There they sat face to face 
 with the men who had outlawed them, who had devoted 
 them to death by an act the injustice of which was now 
 proclaimed. 
 
 The cry for vengeance was becoming irresistible as the 
 policy of the last year was reversed. In the course of that 
 process La Vended had its turn. On the 1 7th of February,
 
 AFTER THE TERROR 335 
 
 at La Jaunaye, the French Republic came to terms with 
 Charette. He was treated as an equal power. He ob- 
 tained liberty for religion, compensation in money, relief 
 from conscription, and a territorial guard of 2000 men, 
 to be paid by the government, and commanded by himself. 
 The same conditions were accepted soon after by Stofflet, 
 and by the Breton leader, Cormatin. In that hour of 
 triumph Charette rode into Nantes with the white badge 
 of Royalism displayed ; and he was received with honour 
 by the authorities, and acclaimed by the crowd. Immedi- 
 ately after the treaty of La Jaunaye which granted the 
 free practice of religion in the west, it was extended to 
 the whole of France. The churches were given back 
 some months later ; there is one parish, in an eastern 
 department, where it is said that the church was never 
 closed, and the service never interrupted. 
 
 In March the Girondins were strong enough to turn 
 upon their foes. The extent of the reaction was tested 
 by the expulsion of Marat from his brief rest in the 
 Pantheon, and the destruction of his busts all over the 
 town, by the young men stimulated by Freron. In March, 
 the great offenders who had been so hard to reach, 
 Collot d'Herbois, Billaud, and Barere, were thrown into 
 prison. Carnot defended them, on the ground that they 
 were hardly worse than himself. The Convention resolved 
 that they should be sent to Cayenne. Barere escaped on 
 the way. Fouquier-Tinville came next, and his trial did 
 as much harm to his party in the spring as that of Carrier 
 in the preceding autumn. He pleaded that he was but 
 an instrument in the hands of the Committee of Public 
 Safety, and that as the three members of it, whom he 
 had obeyed, were only transported, no more could be 
 done to himself. The tribunal was not bound by the 
 punishments decreed by the Assembly, and in May 
 Fouquier was executed. 
 
 The Montagnards resolved that they would not perish 
 without a struggle. On April I they assailed the Con- 
 vention, and were repulsed. A number of the worst were 
 thrown into prison. A more formidable attack was made
 
 336 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 on May 20. For hours the Convention was in the power 
 of the mob, and a deputy was killed in attempting to 
 protect the president. Members who belonged to the 
 Mountain carried a series of decrees which gratified the 
 populace. Late at night the Assembly was rescued. The 
 tumultuous votes were declared non-existent, and those 
 who had moved them were sent before a military com- 
 mission. They had not prompted the sedition, and it 
 was urged that they acted as they did in order to appease 
 it, and to save the lives of their opponents. Romme, 
 author of the republican Calendar, was the most remark- 
 able of these men ; and there is some doubt as to their 
 guilt, and the legality of their sentence. One of them 
 had been visited by his wife, and she left the means of 
 suicide in his hands. As they left the court, each of 
 them stabbed himself, and passed the knife in silence to 
 his neighbour. Before the guards were aware of anything, 
 three were dead, and the others were dragged, covered 
 with blood, to the place of execution. It was the iyth 
 of June, and the Girondins were supreme. Sixty-two 
 deputies had been decreed in the course of the reaction, 
 and the domination of the Jacobin mob, that is, govern- 
 ment by equality instead of liberty, was at an end. The 
 middle class had recovered power, and it was very 
 doubtful whether these new masters of France were willing 
 again to risk the experiment of a republic. That experi- 
 ment had proved a dreadful failure, and it was more easy 
 and obvious to seek relief in the refuge of monarchy than 
 on the quicksands of fluttering majorities. 
 
 The royalists were wreaking vengeance on their enemies 
 in the south, by what was afterwards known as the White 
 Terror ; and they showed themselves in force at Paris. 
 For a time, every measure helped them that was taken 
 against the Montagnards, and people used publicly to say 
 that 8 and 9 are 17, that is, that the revolution of 1789 
 would end by the accession of Lewis XVII. Between 
 Girondin and royalist there was the blood of the king, 
 and the regicides knew what they must expect from a 
 restoration. The party remained irreconcilable, and
 
 AFTER THE TERROR 337 
 
 opposed the idea. Their struggle now was not with the 
 Mountain, which had been laid low, but with their old 
 adversaries the reforming adherents of Monarchy. But 
 there were some leading men who, from conviction or, 
 which would be more significant, from policy began to 
 compound with the exiled princes. Tallien and Cam- 
 bacres of the Mountain, Isnard and Lanjuinais of the 
 Gironde, Boissy d'Anglas of the Plain, the successful 
 general Pichegru, and the best negotiator in France 
 Barthe'lemy, were all known, or suspected, to be making 
 terms with the Count of Provence at Verona. It was 
 commonly reported that the Committee was wavering, 
 and that the Constitution would turn towards monarchy. 
 Breton and Vendean were ready to rise once more, Pitt was 
 preparing vast armaments to help them ; above all, there 
 was a young pretender who had never made an enemy, 
 whose early sufferings claimed sympathy from royalist and 
 republican, and who shared no responsibility for Emigre and 
 invader, whom, for the best of reasons, he had never seen. 
 Meantime the Republic had improved its position in 
 the world. Its conquests included the Alps and the 
 Rhine, Belgium, and Holland, and surpassed the successes 
 of the Monarchy even under Lewis XIV. The con- 
 federacy of kings was broken up. Tuscany had been 
 the first to treat. Prussia had followed, bringing with 
 it the neutrality of Northern Germany. Then Holland 
 came, and Spain had opened negotiations. But with 
 Spain there was a difficulty. There could be no treaty 
 with a government which detained in prison the head of 
 the House of Bourbon. As soon as he was delivered up, 
 Spain was ready to sign and to ratify. Thus in the spring 
 of I 79S> the thoughts of men came to be riveted on the 
 room in the Temple where the king was slowly and 
 surely dying. The gaoler had asked the Committee 
 what their intention was. " Do you mean to banish him ? " 
 " No." To kill him ? " " No." " Then," with an oath ! 
 " what is it you want ? " " To get rid of him." On May 3, it 
 was reported to the government that the young captive 
 was ill. Next day, that he was very ill. But he was an 
 
 Z
 
 338 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 obstacle to the Spanish treaty which was absolutely 
 necessary, and twice the government made no sign. On 
 the 5th, it was believed that he was in danger, and then 
 a physician was sent to him. The choice was a good 
 one, for the man was capable, and had attended the 
 royal family. His opinion was that nothing could save 
 the prisoner, except country air. One day he added : 
 " He is lost, but perhaps there are some who will not be 
 sorry." Three days later Lewis XVII. was living, but 
 the doctor was dead, and a legend grew up on his 
 grave. It was said that he was poisoned because he had 
 discovered the dread secret that the boy in the Temple 
 was not the king. Even Louis Blanc believed that the 
 king had been secretly released, and that a dying patient 
 from the hospital had been substituted for him. The 
 belief has been kept alive to this day. The most 
 popular living dramatist l has a play now running at Paris, 
 in which the king is rescued in a washerwoman's linen 
 basket, which draws crowds. The truth is that he died 
 on June 8, 1795. The Republic had gained its purpose. 
 Peace was signed with Spain ; and the friends of monarchy 
 on the Constitutional Committee at once declared that 
 they would not vote for it. 
 
 At the very moment when the Constitution was pre- 
 sented to the Assembly by Boissy d'Anglas, a fleet of 
 transports under convoy appeared off the western coast. 
 Pitt had allowed La Vendee to go down in defeat and 
 slaughter, but at last he made up his mind to help, and 
 it was done on a magnificent scale. Two expeditions 
 were fitted out, and furnished with material of war. 
 Each of them carried three or four thousand emigres, 
 armed and clad by England. One was commanded by 
 d'Hervilly, whom we have already seen, for it was he who 
 took the order to cease firing on August 10 ; the other 
 by young Sombreuil, whose father was saved in September 
 in the tragic way you have heard. At the head of them 
 all was the Count de Puisaye, the most politic and 
 
 1 Sardou.
 
 AFTER THE TERROR 339 
 
 influential of the emigres, a man who had been in touch 
 with the Girondins in Normandy, who had obtained the ear 
 of ministers at Whitehall, and who had been washed in so 
 many waters that the genuine, exclusive, narrow-minded 
 managers of Vendean legitimacy neither understood nor 
 believed him. They brought a vast treasure in the shape 
 of forged assignats ; and in confused memory of the 
 services rendered by the titular of Agra, they brought a 
 real bishop who had sanctioned the forgery. 
 
 The first division sailed from Cowes on June 10. 
 On the 23rd Lord Bridport engaged the French fleet 
 and drove it into port. Four days later the Emigres 
 landed at Carnac, among the early monuments of the 
 Celtic race. It was a low promontory, defended at the 
 neck by a fort named after the Duke de Penthievre, and 
 it could be swept, in places, by the guns of the fleet. 
 Thousands of Chouans joined ; but La Vende'e was 
 suspicious and stood aloof. They had expected the fleet 
 to come to them, but it had gone to Brittany, and there 
 was jealousy between the two provinces, between the 
 partisans of Lewis XVIII. and those of his brother the 
 Count d'Artois, between the priests and the politicians. 
 The clergy restrained Charette and StofHet from uniting 
 with Puisaye and his questionable allies, whom they 
 accused of seeking the crown of France for the Duke of 
 York ; and they promised that, if they waited a little, 
 the Count d'Artois would appear among them. They 
 effectively ruined their prospects of success ; but Pitt 
 himself had contributed his share. Puisaye declined to 
 bring English soldiers into his country, and his scruples 
 were admitted. But, in order to swell his forces, the 
 frugal minister armed between 1000 and 2000 French 
 prisoners, who were republicans, but who declared them- 
 selves ready to join, and were as glad to escape from 
 captivity as the government was to get rid of them. The 
 royalist officers protested against this alloy, but their 
 objections did not prevail, and when they came to their 
 own country these men deserted. They pointed out a 
 place where the republicans could pass under the fort at
 
 340 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 low water, and enter it on the undefended side. At 
 night, in the midst of a furious tempest, the passage was 
 attempted. Hoche's troops waded through the stormy 
 waters of Quiberon bay, and the tricolor was soon displayed 
 upon the walls. 
 
 The royalists were driven to the extremity of the 
 peninsula. Some, but not many, escaped in English boats, 
 and it was thought that our fleet did not do all that it 
 might have done to retrieve a disaster so injurious to the 
 fame and the influence of England. Sombreuil defended 
 himself until a republican officer called on him to capitu- 
 late. He consented, for there was no hope ; but no terms 
 were made, and it was in truth an unconditional surrender. 
 Tallien, who was in the camp, hurried to Paris to intercede 
 for the prisoners. Before going to the Convention, he went 
 to his home. There his wife told him that she had just seen 
 Lanjuinais, that Sieyes had brought back from Holland, 
 where he had negotiated peace, proofs of Tallien's treason- 
 able correspondence with the Bourbons, and that his life 
 was in danger. He went at once to the Convention, 
 and called for the summary punishment of the captured 
 emigres. 
 
 Hoche was a magnanimous enemy, both by character 
 and policy, and he had a deep respect for Sombreuil. He 
 secretly offered to let him escape. The prisoner refused to 
 be saved without his comrades ; and they were shot down 
 together near Auray, on a spot which is still known as the 
 field of sacrifice. They were six or seven hundred. The 
 firing party awakened the echoes of Vendee, for Charette 
 instantly put his prisoners to death ; and the Chouans 
 afterwards contrived to cut down every man of the four 
 battalions charged with the execution. 
 
 The battle of Quiberon took place on July 21, and 
 when all that ensued was over on August 25, another 
 expedition sailed from Portsmouth with the Count d'Artois 
 on board. He landed on an island off La Vendee, and 
 Charette, with fifteen thousand men, marched down to 
 the coast to receive him, among the haggard veterans of 
 the royal cause. There, on October 10, a message came
 
 AFTER THE TERROR 341 
 
 from the Prince informing the hero that he was about to 
 sail away, and to wait in safety for better times. Five 
 days earlier the question had been fought out and decided 
 at Paris, and a man had been revealed who was to raise 
 deeper and more momentous issues than the obsolete con- 
 troversy between monarchy and republic. That contro- 
 versy had been pursued in the constitutional debates under 
 the fatal influence of the events on the coast of Brittany. 
 The royalists had displayed their colours, sailing under 
 the British flag, and the British alliance had not availed 
 them. And they had displayed a strange political im- 
 becility, contrasting with their spirit and intelligence in war. 
 
 The constitutional committee had been elected on 
 April 23 under different auspices, when the Convention 
 was making terms with Charette and Cormatin, as well as 
 with the foreign Powers. Sieyes, of necessity, was the first 
 man chosen ; but he was on the governing committee, and 
 he declined. So did Merlin and Cambace"res, for the same 
 reason, and the three ablest men in the assembly did not 
 serve. 
 
 Eleven moderate but not very eminent men were 
 elected, and the draft was made chiefly by Daunou, and 
 advocated by Thibaudeau. Daunou was an ancient 
 oratorian, a studious and thoughtful if not a strong man, 
 who became keeper of the archives, and lived down to 
 1840 with a somewhat usurped reputation for learning. 
 Thibaudeau now began to exhibit great intelligence, and 
 his writings are among our best authorities for these later 
 years of the Republic and for the earlier years of the Empire. 
 The general character of their scheme is that it is in- 
 fluenced more by experience than by theory, and strives 
 to attach power to property. They reported on June 23 ; 
 the debate began on July 4 ; and on the 2Oth Sieyes 
 intervened. His advice turned mainly on the idea of 
 a constitutional jury, an elective body of about one 
 hundred, to watch over the Constitution, and to be guardians 
 of the law against the makers of the law. It was to receive 
 the plaints of minorities and of individuals against the
 
 342 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 legislature, and to preserve the spirit of the organic in- 
 stitutions against the omnipotence of the national repre- 
 sentatives. This memorable attempt to develop in Europe 
 something analogous to that property of the Supreme Court 
 which was not yet matured in America, was rejected on 
 August 5, almost unanimously. 
 
 The Constitution was adopted by the Convention on 
 August 17. It included a declaration of duties, founded 
 on confusion, but defended on the ground that a declara- 
 tion of rights alone destroys the stability of the State. 
 And in matters touching religion it innovated on what 
 had been done hitherto, for it separated Church and State, 
 leaving all religions to their own resources. The division 
 of powers was carried farther, for the legislative was 
 divided into two, and the executive into five. Universal 
 suffrage was restricted ; the poorest were excluded ; and 
 after nine years there was to be an educational test. The 
 law did not last so long. The electoral body, one in two 
 hundred of the whole constituency, was to be limited to 
 owners of property. The directors were to be chosen by 
 the legislature. Practically, there was much more regard 
 for liberty, and less for equality, than in the former con- 
 stitutions. The change in public opinion was shown by 
 the vote on two Houses which only one deputy opposed. 
 
 At the last moment, that there might be no danger 
 from royalism in the departments, it was resolved that two- 
 thirds of the legislature must be taken from the Convention. 
 They thus prolonged their own power, and secured the 
 permanence of the ideas which inspired their action. At 
 the same time they showed their want of confidence in 
 the republican feeling of the country, and both exasperated 
 the royalists and gave them courage to act for themselves. 
 On September 23 the country accepted the scheme, by a 
 languid vote, but with a large majority. 
 
 The new Constitution afforded securities for order 
 and for liberty such as France had never enjoyed. The 
 Revolution had begun with a Liberalism which was a 
 passion more than a philosophy, and the first Assembly 
 endeavoured to realise it by diminishing authority,
 
 AFTER THE TERROR 343 
 
 weakening the executive, and decentralising power. In 
 the hour of peril under the Girondins the policy failed, 
 and the Jacobins governed on the principle that power, 
 coming from the people, ought to be concentrated in 
 the fewest possible hands and made absolutely irre- 
 sistible. Equality became the substitute of liberty, and 
 the danger arose that the most welcome form of equality 
 would be the equal distribution of property. The Jacobin 
 statesmen, the thinkers of the party, undertook to abolish 
 poverty without falling into Socialism. They had the 
 Church property, which served as the basis of the public 
 credit. They had the royal domain, the confiscated estates 
 of emigrants and malignants, the common lands, the forest 
 lands. And in time of war there was the pillage of 
 opulent neighbours. By these operations the income of 
 the peasantry was doubled, and it was deemed possible to 
 relieve the masses from taxation, until, by the immense 
 transfer of property, there should be no poor in the 
 Republic. These schemes were at an end, and the 
 Constitution of the year III. closes the revolutionary 
 period. 
 
 The royalists and conservatives of the capital would 
 have acquiesced in the defeat of their hopes but for the 
 additional article which threatened to perpetuate power in 
 the hands of existing deputies, which had been carried by 
 a far smaller vote than that which was given in favour of 
 the organic law itself. The alarm and the indignation were 
 extreme, and the royalists, on counting their forces, saw that 
 they had a good chance against the declining assembly. 
 Nearly thirty thousand men were collected, and the com- 
 mand was given to an experienced officer. It had been 
 proposed by some to confer it on the Count Colbert de 
 Maulevrier, the former employer of Stofflet. This was 
 refused on the ground that they were not absolutists or 
 emigres, but Liberals, and partisans of constitutional 
 monarchy, and of no other. 
 
 The army of the Convention was scarcely six thousand, 
 and a large body of Jacobin roughs were among them. 
 The command was bestowed on Menou, a member of the
 
 344 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 minority of nobles of 1789. But Menou was disgusted 
 with his materials, and felt more sympathy with the enemy. ' 
 He endeavoured to negotiate, and was deposed, and 
 succeeded by Barras, the victor in the bloodless battle of 
 Thermidor. 
 
 Bonaparte, out of employment, was lounging in Paris, 
 and as he came out of the theatre he found himself 
 among the men who were holding the parley. He 
 hurried to headquarters, where the effect of his defining 
 words upon the scared authorities was such that he was 
 at once appointed second in command. Therefore, when 
 morning dawned, on October 5, the Louvre and the 
 Tuileries had become a fortress, and the gardens were a 
 fortified camp. A young officer who became the most 
 brilliant figure on the battlefield of Europe Murat 
 brought up cannon from the country. The bridge, and 
 the quay, and every street that opened on the palace, were 
 so commanded by batteries that they could be swept by 
 grape-shot. Officers had been sent out for provisions, for 
 barrels of gunpowder, for all that belongs to hospital and 
 ambulance. Lest retreat should be cut off, a strong 
 detachment held the road to St. Cloud ; and arms were 
 liberally supplied to the Convention and the friendly 
 quarter of St Antoine. The insurgents, led by dexterous 
 intriguers, but without a great soldier at their head, could 
 not approach the river ; and those who came down from 
 the opulent centre of the city missed their opportunity. 
 After a sharp conflict in the Rue St. Honore", they fled, 
 pursued by nothing more murderous than blank cartridge ; 
 and Paris felt, for the first time, the grasp of the master. 
 The man who defeated them, and by defeating them kept 
 the throne vacant, was Bonaparte, through whose genius 
 the Revolution was to subjugate the Continent.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 BEFORE embarking on the stormy sea before us, we ought 
 to be provided with chart and compass. Therefore I 
 begin by speaking about the histories of the Revolution, so 
 that you may at once have some idea what to choose 
 and what to reject, that you may know where we stand, 
 how we have come to penetrate so far and no farther, what 
 branches there are that already bear ripe fruit and where 
 it is still ripening on the tree of knowledge. I desire to 
 rescue you from the writers of each particular school and 
 each particular age, and from perpetual dependence on the 
 ready-made and conventional narratives that satisfy the 
 outer world. 
 
 With the growing experience of mankind, the larger 
 curiosity and the increased resource, each generation adds 
 to our insight. Lesser events can be understood by 
 those who behold them, great events require time in 
 proportion to their greatness. 
 
 Lamartine once said that the Revolution has mysteries 
 but no enigmas. It is humiliating to be obliged to 
 confess that those words are no nearer truth now than 
 when they were written. People have not yet ceased 
 to dispute about the real origin and nature of the event. 
 It was the deficit ; it was the famine ; it was the Austrian 
 Committee ; it was the Diamond Necklace, and the 
 humiliating memories of the Seven Years' War ; it was 
 the pride of nobles or the intolerance of priests ; it was 
 
 345
 
 346 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 philosophy ; it was freemasonry ; it was Mr. Pitt ; it 
 was the incurable levity and violence of the national 
 character ; it was the issue of that struggle between 
 classes that constitutes the unity of the history of 
 France. 
 
 Amongst these interpretations we shall have to pick 
 our way ; but there are many questions of detail on 
 which I shall be forced to tell you that I have no deciding 
 evidence. 
 
 ***** 
 
 After the contemporary memoirs, the first historian 
 who wrote with authority was Droz. He was at work for 
 thirty years, having begun in 1811, when Paris was still 
 full of floating information, and he knew much that other- 
 wise did not come out until long after his death. He had 
 consulted Lally Tollendal, and he was allowed to use the 
 memoirs of Malouet, which were in manuscript, and which 
 are unsurpassed for wisdom and good faith in the litera- 
 ture of the National Assembly. Droz was a man of sense 
 and experience, with a true if not a powerful mind ; and 
 his book, in point of soundness and accuracy, was all that 
 a book could be in the days when it was written. It is 
 a history of Lewis XVI. during the time when it was 
 possible to bring the Revolution under control ; and the 
 author shows, with an absolute sureness of judgment, that 
 the turning-point was the rejection of the first project of 
 Constitution, in September 1789. For him, the Revolu- 
 tion is contained in the first four months. He meant to 
 write a political treatise on the natural history of revolu- 
 tions, and the art of so managing just demands that unjust 
 and dangerous demands shall acquire no force. It became 
 a history of rejected opportunities, and an indictment of 
 the wisdom of the minister and of the goodness of the 
 king, by a constitutional royalist of the English school. 
 His service to history is that he shows how disorder and 
 crime grew out of unreadiness, want of energy, want of 
 clear thought and definite design. Droz admits that there 
 is a flaw in the philosophy of his title-page. The position 
 lost in the summer of 1789 was never recovered. But
 
 APPENDIX 347 
 
 during the year 1790 Mirabeau was at work on schemes 
 to restore the monarchy, and it is not plain that they 
 could never have succeeded. Therefore Droz added a 
 volume on the parliamentary career of Mirabeau, and 
 called it an appendix, so as to remain true to his original 
 theory of the fatal limit. We know the great orator 
 better than he could be known in 1842, and the value of 
 Droz's excellent work is confined to the second volume. 
 It will stand undiminished even if we reject the idea 
 which inspired it, and prefer to think that the cause 
 might have been won, even when it came to actual 
 fighting, on the loth of August. Droz's book belongs 
 to the small number of writings before us which are 
 superior to their fame, and it was followed by one that 
 enjoyed to the utmost the opposite fate. 
 
 For our next event is an explosion. Lamartine, the 
 poet, was one of those legitimists who believed that 1830 
 had killed monarchy, who considered the Orleans dynasty 
 a sham, and set themselves at once to look ahead of it 
 towards the inevitable Republic. Talleyrand warned him 
 to hold himself ready for something more substantial than 
 the exchange of a nephew for an uncle on a baseless 
 throne. With the intuition of genius he saw sooner than 
 most men, more accurately than any man, the signs of 
 what was to come. In six years, he said, we shall be 
 masters. He was mistaken only by a few weeks. He 
 laid his plans that, when the time came, he should be the 
 accepted leader. To chasten and idealise the Revolution, 
 and to prepare a Republic that should not be a terror to 
 mankind, but should submit easily to the fascination of a 
 melodious and sympathetic eloquence, he wrote the History 
 of the Girondins. The success was the most instantaneous 
 and splendid ever obtained by a historical work. People 
 could read nothing else ; and Alexandre Dumas paid him 
 the shrewd compliment of saying that he had lifted history 
 to the level of romance. Lamartine gained his purpose. 
 He contributed to institute a Republic that was pacific and 
 humane, responsive to the charm of phrase, and obedient 
 to the master hand that wrote the glories of the Gironde.
 
 348 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 He always believed that, without his book, the Reign of 
 Terror would have been renewed. 
 
 From early in the century to the other day there was 
 a succession of authors in France who knew how to write 
 as scarcely any but Mr. Ruskin or Mr. Swinburne have 
 ever written in England. They doubled the opulence 
 and the significance of language, and made prose more 
 sonorous and more penetrating than anything but the 
 highest poetry. There were not more than half a dozen, 
 beginning with Chateaubriand, and, I fear, ending with 
 Saint Victor. Lamartine became the historian in this 
 Corinthian school of style, and his purple patches outdo 
 everything in effectiveness. But it would appear that in 
 French rhetoric there are pitfalls which tamer pens avoid. 
 Rousseau compared the Roman Senate to two hundred 
 kings, because his sensitive ear did not allow him to say 
 three hundred trots cents rots. Chateaubriand, describing 
 in a private letter his journey to the Alps, speaks of the 
 moon along the mountain tops, and adds : " It is all right ; 
 I have looked up the Almanac, and find that there was 
 a moon." Paul Louis Courier says that Plutarch would 
 have made Pompey conquer at Pharsalus if it would have 
 read better, and he thinks that he was quite right. 
 Courier's exacting taste would have found contentment in 
 Lamartine. He knows very well that Marie Antoinette 
 was fifteen when she married the Dauphin in 1770 ; yet 
 he affirms that she was the child the Empress held up in 
 her arms when the Magyar magnates swore to die for 
 their queen, Maria Theresa. The scene occurred in 1741, 
 fourteen years before she was born. Histories of literature 
 give the catalogue of his amazing blunders. 
 
 In his declining years he reverted to this book, and 
 wrote an apology, in which he answered his accusers, 
 and confessed to some passages which he exhorted them 
 to tear out. There was good ground for recantation. 
 Writing to dazzle the democracy by means of a bright 
 halo, with himself in the midst of it, he was sometimes 
 weak in exposing crimes that had a popular motive. His 
 republicanism was of the sort that allows no safeguard for
 
 APPENDIX 349 
 
 minorities, no rights to men but those which their country 
 gives them. He had been the speaker who, when the 
 Chamber wavered, rejected the Regency which was the 
 legal government, and compelled the Duchess of Orleans 
 to fly. When a report reached him that she had been 
 seized, and he was asked to order her release, he refused, 
 saying, "If the people ask for her, she must be given up 
 to them." 
 
 In his own defence he showed that he had consulted 
 the widow of Danton, and had found a witness of the last 
 banquet of the Girondins. In his book he dramatised the 
 scene, and displayed the various bearing of the fallen 
 statesmen during their last night on earth. Granier de 
 Cassagnac pronounced the whole thing a fabrication. It 
 was told by Nodier who was a professional inventor, and 
 by Thiers who gave no authority, and none could be found. 
 But there was a priest who sat outside the door, waiting to 
 offer the last consolations of religion to the men about to 
 die. Fifty years later he was still living, and Lamartine 
 found him and took down his recollections. An old 
 Girondin, whom Charlotte Corday had requested to defend 
 her, and who died a senator of the Second Empire, 
 Pontcoulant, assured his friends that Lamartine had 
 given the true colour, had reproduced the times as he 
 remembered them. In the same way General Dumas 
 approved of Thiers's loth of August. He was an old 
 soldier of the American war, a statesman of the Revolu- 
 tion, a trusted servant of Napoleon, whose military history 
 he wrote, and he left memoirs which we value. But I 
 suspect that these lingering veterans were easily pleased 
 with clever writers who brought back the scenes of their 
 early life. There may be truth in Lamartine's colouring, 
 but on the whole his Girondins live as literature not 
 as history. And his four volumes on the National 
 Assembly are a piece of book -making that requires no 
 comment. 
 
 Before the thunder of the Girondins had rolled away, 
 they were followed by two books of more enduring value 
 on the same side. Louis Blanc was a socialist politician,
 
 350 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 who helped, after 1840, to cement that union of socialists 
 and republicans which overthrew the monarchy, and went 
 to pieces on the barricades of June 1 848. Driven into 
 exile, he settled in London, and spent several years 
 at work in the British Museum. It was not all a 
 misfortune, as this is what he found there : it will give 
 you an encouraging idea of the resources that await us 
 on our path. When Croker gave up his house at the 
 Admiralty on the accession of the Whigs, he sold his 
 revolutionary library of more than 10,000 pieces to the 
 Museum. But the collector's fever is an ailment not to 
 be laid by change of government or loss of income. Six 
 years later Croker had made another collection as large 
 as the first, which also was bought by the Trustees. 
 Before he died, this incurable collector had brought to- 
 gether as much as the two previous lots, and the whole 
 was at last deposited in the same place. There, in one 
 room, we have about five hundred shelves crowded, on 
 an average, with more than one hundred and twenty 
 pamphlets, all of them belonging to the epoch that 
 concerns us. Allowing for duplicates, this amounts to 
 forty or fifty thousand Revolution tracts ; and I believe 
 that there is nothing equal to it at Paris. Half of them 
 were already there, in time to be consulted both by Louis 
 Blanc and Tocqueville. Croker's collection of manuscript 
 papers on the same period was sold for ^50 at his 
 death, and went to what was once the famous library of 
 Middle Hill. 
 
 Louis Blanc was thus able to continue in England the 
 work he had begun at home, and he completed it in 
 twelve volumes. It contains much subsidiary detail 
 and many literary references, and this makes it a useful 
 book to consult. The ponderous mass of material, and 
 the power of the pen, do not compensate for the weary 
 obtrusion of the author's doctrine and design. 
 
 An eminent personage once said to me that the 
 parliament of his country was intent on suppressing 
 educational freedom. When I asked what made them 
 illiberal, he answered, "It is because they are liberal."
 
 APPENDIX 351 
 
 Louis Blanc partook of that mixture. He is the ex- 
 pounder of Revolution in its compulsory and illiberal 
 aspect. He desires government to be so constituted that 
 it may do everything for the people, not so restricted 
 that it can do no injury to minorities. The masses 
 have more to suffer from abuse of wealth than from 
 abuse of power, and need protection by the State, not 
 against it. Power, in the proper hands, acting for the 
 whole, must not be restrained in the interest of a part. 
 Therefore Louis Blanc is the admirer and advocate of 
 Robespierre ; and the tone of his pleading appears at 
 the September massacres, when he bids us remember St. 
 Bartholomew. 
 
 Michelet undertook to vindicate the Revolution at the 
 same time as Louis Blanc, without his frigid passion, 
 his ostentatious research, his attention to particulars, but 
 with deeper insight and a stronger pinion. His position 
 at the archives gave him an advantage over every 
 rival ; and when he lost his place, he settled in the 
 west of France and made a study of La Vendde. He 
 is regardless of proof, and rejects as rubbish mere 
 facts that contribute nothing to his argument or his 
 picture. Because Arras was a clerical town, he calls 
 Robespierre a priest Because there are Punic tombs at 
 Ajaccio, he calls Napoleon a countryman of Hannibal. 
 For him the function of history is judgment, not narrative. 
 If we submit ourselves to the event, if we think more of 
 the accomplished deed than of the suggested problem, we 
 become servile accomplices of success and force. History 
 is resurrection. The historian is called to revise trials 
 and to reverse sentences, as the people, who are the 
 subject of all history, awoke to the knowledge of their 
 wrongs and of their power, and rose up to avenge the 
 past. History is also restitution. Authorities tyrannised 
 and nations suffered ; but the Revolution is the advent of 
 justice, and the central fact in the experience of mankind. 
 Michelet proclaims that at his touch the hollow idols were 
 shattered and exposed, the carrion kings appeared, un- 
 sheeted and unmasked. He says that he has had to
 
 352 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 swallow too much anger and too much woe, too many 
 vipers and too many kings ; and he writes sometimes as 
 if such diet disagreed with him. His imagination is filled 
 with the cruel sufferings of man, and he hails with a pro- 
 found enthusiasm the moment when the victim that could 
 not die, in a furious act of retribution, avenged the martyr- 
 dom of a thousand years. The acquisition of rights, the 
 academic theory, touches him less than the punishment of 
 wrong. There is no forgiveness for those who resist the 
 people rising in the consciousness of its might. What is 
 good proceeds from the mass, and what is bad from 
 individuals. Mankind, ignorant in regard to nature, is a 
 righteous judge of the affairs of man. The light which 
 comes to the learned from reflection comes to the un- 
 learned more surely by natural inspiration ; and power is 
 due to the mass by reason of instinct, not by reason of 
 numbers. They are right by dispensation of heaven, and 
 there is no pity for their victims, if you remember the 
 days of old. Michelet had no patience with those who 
 sought the pure essence of the Revolution in religion. He 
 contrasts the agonies with which the Church aggravated 
 the punishment of death with the swift mercy of the 
 guillotine, and prefers to fall into Danton's hands rather 
 than into those of Lewis IX. or Torquemada. 
 
 With all this, by the real sincerity of his feeling for 
 the multitude, by the thoroughness of his view and his 
 intensely expressive language, he is the most illuminating 
 of the democratic historians. We often read of men 
 whose lives have been changed because a particular book 
 has fallen into their hands, or, one might say, because they 
 have fallen into the hands of a particular book. It is not 
 always a happy accident ; and one feels that things would 
 have gone otherwise with them if they had examined Sir 
 John Lubbock's List of Best Books, or what I would rather 
 call the St. Helena library, containing none but works 
 adequate and adapted to use by the ablest man in the full 
 maturity of his mind. Of such books, that are strong 
 enough, in some eminent quality, to work a change and 
 form an epoch in a reader's life, there are two, perhaps,
 
 APPENDIX 353 
 
 on our revolutionary shelf. One is Taine, and the other 
 Michelet. 
 
 The fourth work of the revolutionary party, that was 
 written almost simultaneously with these, is that of 
 Villiaume". Lamartine esteemed Vergniaud. Louis Blanc 
 esteemed Robespierre, Michelet, Danton. Villiaume' went 
 a step farther, and admired Marat. He had lived much 
 in the surviving families of revolutionary heroes, and 
 received, he says, the last breath of an expiring tradition. 
 He had also gathered from Chateaubriand what he 
 remembered ; and Thierry, who was blind, caused his 
 book to be read to him twice over. 
 
 The account of Marat in the 28th volume of Buchez 
 was partly written by Villiaume", and was approved by 
 Albertine Marat. The great bibliographical curiosity in 
 the literature of the Revolution is Marat's newspaper. It 
 was printed often in hiding-places and under difficulties, 
 and is so hard to find that, a few years ago, the Paris 
 library did not possess a complete set A bookseller 
 once told me that he had sold it to an English statesman 
 for .240. Marat's own copy, corrected in his handwriting, 
 and enriched with other matter, was preserved by his 
 sister. In 1835 she made it over to Villiaume", who, 
 having finished his book, sold it in 1859 for So to the 
 collector Solar. Prince Napoleon afterwards owned it ; 
 and at last it made its way to an ancient Scottish castle, 
 where I had the good fortune to find it. 
 
 * # * * # 
 
 Whilst the revolutionary historians, aided by public 
 events, were predominating in France, the conservatives 
 competed obscurely, and at first without success. Genoude 
 was for many years editor of the leading royalist journal, 
 and in that capacity initiated a remarkable phase of 
 political thought. When the Bourbons were cast out 
 under the imputation of incurable absolutism, the legiti- 
 mists found themselves identified with a grudging liberality 
 and a restricted suffrage, and stood at a hopeless disad- 
 vantage. In the Gazette de France Genoude at once 
 adopted the opposite policy, and overtrumped the liberal 
 
 2 A
 
 354 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Orleanists. He argued that a throne which was not 
 occupied by right of inheritance, as a man holds his estate, 
 could only be made legitimate by the expressed will of 
 France. Therefore he insisted on an appeal to the nation, 
 on the sovereignty of the people, on the widest extension 
 of the franchise. When his friend Courmenin drew up the 
 Constitution of 1848, it was Genoude who induced him 
 to adopt the new practice of universal suffrage, which was 
 unknown to the Revolution. Having lost his wife, he 
 took orders. All this, he said one day, will presently 
 come to an end, not through the act of a soldier or an 
 orator, but of a Cardinal. And he drank to the memory 
 of Richelieu. 
 
 The notion of a legitimate throne,restored by democracy, 
 which was borrowed from Bolingbroke, and which nearly 
 prevailed in 1873, gives some relief and originality to his 
 work on the Revolution. You are not likely to meet with 
 it. When Talleyrand's Memoirs appeared, most people 
 learnt for the first time that he went at night to offer 
 his services to the king, to get the better of the Assembly. 
 The editor placed the event in the middle of July. Nobody 
 seemed to know that the story was already told by 
 Genoude, and that he fixed the midnight bid for power 
 at its proper date, a month earlier. 
 
 The history of Ame'de'e Gabourd is a far better book, 
 and perhaps the best of its kind. Gabourd had 
 previously written a history of France, and his many 
 volumes on the nineteenth century, with no pretension 
 in point of research, are convenient for the lower range 
 of countries and events. He writes with the care, the 
 intelligence, the knowledge of the work of other men, 
 which distinguish Charles Knight's Popular History of 
 England. I have known very deep students indeed who 
 were in the habit of constantly using him. He says, 
 with reason, that no writer has sought truth and justice 
 with more perfect good faith, or has been more careful to 
 keep aloof from party spirit and accepted judgments. 
 As he was a constitutionalist, the revolution of February 
 was the ruin of a system which he expected to last for
 
 APPENDIX 355 
 
 ever, and to govern the last age of the world. But 
 Gabourd remained true to his principles. He wrote : " I 
 shall love the people, and honour the king ; and I shall 
 have the same judgment on the tyranny from above and 
 the tyranny from below. I am not one of those who set 
 a chasm between liberty and religion, as if God would 
 accept no worship but that of servile hearts. I shall not 
 oppose the results of the event which I describe, or deny 
 the merit of what had been won at the price of so much 
 suffering." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 The Doctrinaires were of all men in the best position 
 to understand the Revolution and to judge it rightly. 
 They had no weakness for the ancient monarchy, none 
 for the republic ; and they accepted the results rather than 
 the motives. They rejoiced in the reign of reason, but 
 they required the monarchy duly limited, and the church 
 as established by the Concordat, in order to resume the 
 chain of history and the reposing influence of custom. 
 They were the most intellectual group of statesmen in the 
 country ; but, like the Peelites, they were leaders without 
 followers, and it was said of them that they were only 
 four, but pretended to be five, to strike terror by their 
 number. Guizot, the greatest writer among them, 
 composed, in his old age, a history of France for his 
 grandchildren. It was left incomplete, but his discourses 
 on the Revolution, the topic he had thought about all his 
 life, were edited by his family. These tales of a grand- 
 father are not properly his work, and, like the kindred and 
 coequal lectures of Niebuhr, give approximately the views 
 of a man so great that it is a grief not to possess them 
 in authentic form. 
 
 Instead of Guizot, our Doctrinaire historian is Barante. 
 He had the distinction and the dignity of his friends, their 
 book learning, and their experience of public affairs ; and 
 his work on the dukes of Burgundy was praised, in the 
 infancy of those studies, beyond its merit In early life 
 he had assisted Madame de la Rochejaquelein to bring 
 out her Memoirs. His short biography of Saint Priest,
 
 356 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Minister of the Interior in the first revolutionary year, is 
 a singularly just and weighty narrative. After 1848 he 
 published nine volumes on the Convention and the 
 Directory. Like the rest of his party, Barante had always 
 acknowledged the original spirit of the Revolution as the 
 root of French institutions. But the movement of 1848, 
 directed as it was against the Doctrinaires, against their 
 monarchy and their ministry, had much developed the 
 conservative element which was always strong within 
 them. 
 
 In those days Montalembert succeeded Droz at the 
 Academy, and took the opportunity to attack, as he said, 
 not 1793 but 1789. He said that Guizot, the most 
 eloquent of the immortals, had not found a word to urge 
 in reply. On this level, and in opposition to the revival 
 of Jacobin ideas and the rehabilitation of Jacobin character, 
 Barante composed his work. It was a great occasion, as 
 the tide had been running strongly the other way ; but 
 the book, coming from such a man, is a disappointment. 
 In the trial of the king adverse points are slurred over, 
 as if a historian could hold a brief. A more powerful 
 writer of conservative history appeared about the same 
 time in Heinrich von Sybel. 
 
 ***** 
 
 About the middle of the fifties, when Sybel's earlier 
 volumes were coming out, the deeper studies began in 
 France with Tocqueville. He was the first to establish, if 
 not to discover, that the Revolution was not simply a 
 break, a reversal, a surprise, but in part a development 
 of tendencies at work in the old monarchy. He brought 
 it into closer connection with French history, and believed 
 that it had become inevitable, when Lewis XVI. ascended 
 the throne, that the success and also the failure of the 
 movement came from causes that were at work before. 
 The desire for political freedom was sincere but adulterated. 
 It was crossed and baffled by other aims. The secondary 
 and subordinate liberties embarrassed the approach to 
 the supreme goal of self-government. For Tocqueville 
 was a Liberal of the purest breed a Liberal and nothing
 
 APPENDIX 357 
 
 else, deeply suspicious of democracy and its kindred, 
 equality, centralisation and utilitarianism. Of all writers 
 he is the most widely acceptable, and the hardest to find 
 fault with. He is always wise, always right, and as just as 
 Aristides. His intellect is without a flaw, but it is limited 
 and constrained. He knows political literature and history 
 less well than political life ; his originality is not creative, 
 and he does not stimulate with gleams of new light or 
 unfathomed suggestiveness. 
 
 Two years later, in 1858, a work began to appear 
 which was less new and less polished than Tocqueville's, 
 but is still more instructive for every student of politics. 
 Duvergier de Hauranne had long experience of public 
 life. He remembered the day when he saw Cuvier mount 
 the tribune in a black velvet suit and speak as few orators 
 have spoken, and carry the electoral law which was the 
 Reform Bill of 1 8 1 7. Having quarrelled with the Doctrin- 
 aires, he led the attack which overthrew Guizot, and was 
 one of three on whom Thiers was relying to save the 
 throne, when the king went away in a cab and carried 
 the dynasty with him. He devoted the evening of his 
 life to a history of parliamentary government in France, 
 which extends in ten volumes to 1830, and contains 
 more profound ideas, more political science, than any 
 other work I know in the compass of literature. He 
 analyses every constitutional discussion, aided by much 
 confidential knowledge, and the fullest acquaintance with 
 pamphlets and leading articles. He is not so much at home 
 in books ; but he does not allow a shade of intelligent 
 thought or a valid argument to escape him. During the 
 Restoration, the great controversy of all ages, the conflict 
 between reason and custom was fought out on the higher 
 level. The question at that time was not which of the 
 two should prevail, but how they should be reconciled, and 
 whether rational thought and national life could be made 
 to harmonise. The introductory volume covers the Revolu- 
 tion, and traces the progress and variation of views of 
 government in France, from the appearance of Sieyes to 
 the elevation of Napoleon.
 
 358 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Laboulaye was a man of like calibre and measure- 
 ments, whom Waddington, when he was minister, called 
 the true successor of Tocqueville. Like him he had 
 saturated himself with American ideas, and like him he 
 was persuaded that the revolutionary legacy of con- 
 centrated power was the chief obstacle to free institutions. 
 He wrote, in three small volumes, a history of the United 
 States, which is a most intelligent abstract of what he had 
 learnt in Bancroft and Hildreth. He wrote with the utmost 
 lucidity and definiteness, and never darkened counsel 
 with prevaricating eloquence, so that there is no man 
 from whom it is so easy and so agreeable to learn. His 
 lectures on the early days of the Revolution were published 
 from time to time in a review, and, I believe, have not 
 been collected. Laboulaye was a scholar as well as a 
 statesman, and always knew his subject well, and as a 
 guide to the times we can have none more helpful than 
 his unfinished course. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The event of the English competition is the appear- 
 ance of Carlyle. After fifty years we are still dependent 
 on him for Cromwell, and in Past and Present he gave 
 what was the most remarkable piece of historical thinking 
 in the language. But the mystery of investigation had 
 not been revealed to him when he began his most famous 
 book. He was scared from the Museum by an offender 
 who sneezed in the Reading Room. As the French 
 pamphlets were not yet catalogued, he asked permission 
 to examine them and to make his selection at the shelves 
 on which they stood. He complained that, having 
 applied to a respectable official, he had been refused. 
 Panizzi, furious at being described as a respectable official, 
 declared that he could not allow the library to be pulled 
 about by an unknown man of letters. In the end, the 
 usual modest resources of a private collection satisfied his 
 requirements. But the vivid gleam, the mixture of the 
 sublime with the grotesque, make other opponents forget 
 the impatient verdicts and the poverty of settled fact in 
 the volumes that delivered our fathers from thraldom to
 
 APPENDIX 359 
 
 Burke. They remain one of those disappointing storm- 
 clouds that give out more thunder than lightning. 
 ***** 
 
 The proof of advancing knowledge is the improvement 
 in compendiums and school books. There are three which 
 must be mentioned. In the middle of the century 
 Lavaltee wrote a history of France for his students at the 
 Military College. Quoting Napoleon's remark, that the 
 history of France must be in four volumes or in a hundred, 
 he pronounces in favour of four. During a generation his 
 work passed for the best of its kind. Being at St. Cyr, 
 once the famous girls' school, for which Racine composed 
 his later tragedies, he devoted many years to the elucidation 
 of Madame de Maintenon, and the recovery of her inter- 
 polated letters. His Revolution is contained in 230 pages 
 of his fourth volume. There is an abridgment of the like 
 moderate dimensions by Carnot. He was the father of 
 the President, and the son of the organiser of victory, who, 
 in 1815, gave the memorable advice to Napoleon that, if 
 he made a rush at the English, he would find them 
 scattered and unprepared. He was a militant republican, 
 editor of the Memoirs of his father, of Gre"goire, and of 
 Barere, and M. Aulard praises his book, with the 
 sympathy of a co-religionist, as the best existing narrative. 
 Other good republicans prefer what Henri Martin wrote 
 in continuation of his history of France. I should have no 
 difficulty in declaring that the seventh volume of the French 
 history by Dareste is superior to them all ; and however 
 far we carry the process of selection and exclusion, I would 
 never surrender it. 
 
 We have seen that there are many able works on either 
 side, and two or three that are excellent. And there are 
 a few sagacious and impartial men who keep the narrow 
 path between them : Tocqueville for the origin, Droz and 
 Laboulaye for the decisive period of 1789, Duvergier de 
 Hauranne for all the political thinking, Dareste for the great 
 outline of public events, in peace and war. They amount 
 to no more than five volumes, and are less than the single 
 Thiers or Michelet, and not half as long as Louis Blanc.
 
 360 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 We can easily read them through ; and we shall find that 
 they have made all things clear to us, that we can trust them, 
 and that we have nothing to unlearn. But if we confine 
 ourselves to the company of men who steer a judicious 
 middle course, with whom we find that we can agree, our 
 wisdom will turn sour, and we shall never behold parties 
 in their strength. No man feels the grandeur of the 
 Revolution till he reads Michelet, or the horror of it 
 without reading Taine. But I have kept the best for the 
 end, and will speak of Taine, and two or three more who 
 rival Taine, next week. 
 
 ***** 
 
 After much partial and contentious writing, sagacious 
 men attained a reasonable judgment on the good and 
 evil, the truth and error, of the Revolution. The view 
 established by constitutional royalists, like Duvergier de 
 Hauranne, and by men equidistant from royalist or re- 
 publican exclusiveness, such as Tocqueville and Laboulaye, 
 was very largely shared by intelligent democrats, more 
 particularly by Lanfrey, and by Quinet in his two volumes 
 on the genius of the Revolution. At that time, under 
 the Second Empire, there was nothing that could be called 
 an adequate history. The archives were practically un- 
 explored, and men had no idea of the amount of labour 
 serious exploration implies. The first writer who produced 
 original matter from the papers of the Paris Commune 
 was Mortimer Ternaux, whose eight volumes on the Reign 
 of Terror came out between 1862 and 1880. What he 
 revealed was so decisive that it obliged Sybel to rewrite 
 what he had written on the scenes of September. 
 
 When I describe the real study of the Revolution as 
 beginning with Tocqueville and Ternaux, I mean the 
 study of it in the genuine and official sources. Memoirs, 
 of course, abounded. There are more than a hundred. 
 But memoirs do not supply the certainty of history. 
 Certainty comes with the means of control, and there 
 is no controlling or testing memoirs without the contem- 
 porary document Down to the middle of the century, 
 private letters and official documents were rare. Then,
 
 APPENDIX 361 
 
 in the early summer of 1851, two important collections 
 appeared within a few weeks of each other. 
 
 First came the Memoirs of Mallet du Pan, a liberal, 
 independent, and discerning observer, whom, apart from 
 the gift of style, Taine compares to Burke, and who, like 
 Burke, went over to the other side. 
 
 This was followed by Mirabeau's Secret Correspondence 
 with the Court. His prevarication and double-dealing 
 as a popular leader in the pay of the king had long 
 been known. At least twenty persons were in the secret. 
 One man, leaving Paris hurriedly, left one paper, the 
 most important of all, lying about in his room. Unmistak- 
 able allusions were found among the contents of the Iron 
 Chest. One of the ministers told the story in his Memoirs, 
 and a letter belonging to the series was printed in 1827. 
 La Marck, just before his death, showed the papers 
 to Montigny, who gave an account of them in his work 
 on Mirabeau, and Droz moreover knew the main facts 
 from Malouet when he wrote in 1842. For us the 
 interest of the publication lies not in the exposure of 
 what was already known, but in the details of his tortuous 
 and ingenious policy during his last year of life, and of 
 his schemes to save the king and the constitution. For 
 the revolutionary party, the posthumous avowal of so 
 much treachery was like the story of the monk who, 
 dying with the fame of a saint, rose under the shroud 
 during the funeral service, and confessed before his brethren 
 that he had lived and died an unrepentant hypocrite. 
 
 Still, no private papers could make up for the silence 
 of the public archives ; and the true secrets of government, 
 diplomacy and war, remained almost intact until 1865. 
 The manner in which they came to be exhumed is the 
 most curious transaction in the progress of revolutionary 
 history. It was a consequence of the passion for auto- 
 graphs and the collector's craze. Seventy thousand auto- 
 graphs were sold by auction in Paris in the twenty-eight 
 years from 1822 to 1850. From the days of the Restora- 
 tion no letters were more eagerly sought and prized than 
 those of the queen. Royalist society regarded her as an
 
 362 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 august, heroic, and innocent victim, and attributed the ruin 
 of the monarchy to the neglect of her high-minded counsels. 
 It became a lucrative occupation to steal letters that bore 
 her signature, in order to sell them to wealthy purchasers. 
 Prices rose steadily. A letter of the year 1784, which 
 fetched fifty -two francs in 1850, was sold for one 
 hundred and seven in 1857, and for one hundred and 
 fifty in 1 86 1. In 1844 one was bought for two hundred 
 francs, and another for three hundred and thirty. A 
 letter to the Princess de Lamballe, which fetched seven 
 hundred francs in 1860, went up to seven hundred and 
 sixty in 1865, when suspicion was beginning to stir. In 
 all, forty-one letters from the queen to Mme. de Lamballe 
 have been in the market, and not one of them was 
 genuine. When it became worth while to steal, it was 
 still more profitable to forge, for then there was no limit 
 to the supply. 
 
 In her lifetime the queen was aware that hostile 
 emigres imitated her hand. Three such letters were 
 published in 1801 in a worthless book called Madame 
 de Lamballe's Memoirs. Such forgeries came into the 
 market from the year 1822. The art was carried to 
 the point that it defied detection, and the credulity of 
 the public was insatiable. In Germany a man imitated 
 Schiller's writing so perfectly that Schiller's daughter 
 bought his letters as fast as they could be produced. At 
 Paris the nefarious trade became active about 1839. 
 
 On March 15, 1861, a facsimilist, Betbeder, issued a 
 challenge, undertaking to execute autographs that it would 
 be impossible to detect, by paper, ink, handwriting, or 
 text. The trial came off in the presence of experts, and 
 in April 1 864 they pronounced that his imitations could 
 not be distinguished from originals. In those days there 
 was a famous mathematician whose name was Chasles. 
 He was interested in the history of geometry, and also 
 in the glory of France, and a clever genealogist saw his 
 opportunity. He produced letters from which it appeared 
 that some of Newton's discoveries had been anticipated 
 by Frenchmen who had been robbed of their due fame.
 
 APPENDIX 363 
 
 M. Chasles bought them, with a patriotic disregard for 
 money ; and he continued to buy, from time to time, 
 all that the impostor, Vrain Lucas, offered him. He 
 laid his documents before the Institute, and the Institute 
 declared them genuine. There were autograph letters 
 from Alexander to Aristotle, from Caesar to Vercingetorix, 
 from Lazarus to St. Peter, from Mary Magdalen to 
 Lazarus. The fabricator's imagination ran riot, and he 
 produced a fragment in the handwriting of Pythagoras, 
 showing that Pythagoras wrote in bad French. At last 
 other learned men, who did not love Chasles, tried to 
 make him understand that he had been befooled. When 
 the iniquity came to light, and the culprit was sent to 
 prison, he had flourished for seven years, had made several 
 thousand pounds, and had found a market for 27,000 
 unblushing forgeries. 
 
 About the time when this mysterious manufacture was 
 thriving, Count Hunolstein bought one hundred and forty- 
 eight letters from Marie Antoinette, of a Paris dealer, for 
 .3400, and he published them in June 1864. Napoleon 
 III. and the Empress Eugenie, whose policy it was to 
 conciliate legitimists whom the Italian Revolution offended, 
 exhibited a cultivated interest in the memory of the un- 
 happy queen ; and it happened that a high official of their 
 Court, M. Feuillet de Conches, was zealous in the same 
 cause. He began his purchases as early as 1830, and had 
 obtained much from the Thermidorean, Courtois, who had 
 had Robespierre's papers in his hands. Wachsmuth, 
 who went to Paris in 1840 to prepare his historical work, 
 reported in German reviews on the value of Feuillet's 
 collection ; and in 1843 ne was described as the first of 
 French autographophiles the term is not of my coining. 
 It was known that he meditated a publication on the royal 
 family. He travelled all over Europe, and was admitted 
 to make transcripts and facsimiles in many places that 
 were jealously guarded against intruders. . His first 
 volume appeared two months later than Hunolstein's, 
 and his second in September. During that summer and 
 autumn royalism was the fashion, and enjoyed a season
 
 364 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 of triumph. Twenty-four letters were common to both 
 collections ; and as they did not literally agree, trouble- 
 some people began to ask questions. 
 
 The one man able to answer them was Arneth, then 
 deputy keeper of the archives at Vienna, who was em- 
 ployed laying down the great history of Maria Theresa 
 that has made him famous. For the letters written by 
 Marie Antoinette to her mother and her family had been 
 religiously preserved, and were in his custody. Before the 
 end of the year Arneth produced the very words of the 
 letters, as the Empress received them ; and then it was 
 discovered that they were quite different from those which 
 had been printed at Paris. 
 
 An angry controversy ensued, and in the end it became 
 certain that most of Hunolstein's edition, and part of 
 Feuillet's, was fabricated by an impostor. It was 
 whispered that the supposed originals sold by Charavay, 
 the dealer, to Hunolstein came to him from Feuillet de 
 Conches. Sainte Beuve, who had been taken in at first, 
 and had applauded, thereupon indignantly broke off his 
 acquaintance, and published the letter in which he did it. 
 Feuillet became more wary. His four later volumes are 
 filled with matter of the utmost value ; and his large 
 collection of the illegible autographs of Napoleon were 
 sold for 1250 and are now at The Durdans. 
 
 It is in this way that the roguery of a very dexterous 
 thief resulted in the opening of the imperial archives, in 
 which the authentic records of the Revolution are deposited. 
 For the emperors, Joseph and Leopold, were the queen's 
 brothers ; her sister was regent in the Low Countries, the 
 family ambassador was in her confidence, and the events 
 that brought on the great war, and the war itself, under 
 Clerfayt, Coburg, and the Archduke Charles, can be known 
 there and there only. Once opened, Arneth never after- 
 wards allowed the door to be closed on students. He 
 published many documents himself, he encouraged his 
 countrymen to examine his treasures, and he welcomed, 
 and continues to welcome, the scholars of Berlin. Thirty 
 or forty volumes of Austrian documents, which were
 
 APPENDIX 365 
 
 brought to light by the act of the felonious Frenchman, 
 constitute our best authority for the inner and outer 
 history of the Revolution, and of the time that preceded 
 it. The French Foreign Office is less communicative. 
 The papers of their two ablest diplomatists, Barthe"lemy and 
 Talleyrand, have been made public, besides those of Fersen, 
 Maury, Vaudreuil, and many emigres ; and the letters of 
 several deputies to their constituents are now coming out. 
 
 Next to the Austrian, the most valuable of the diplo- 
 matists are the Americans, the Venetians, and the Swede, 
 for he was the husband of Necker's illustrious daughter. 
 This change in the centre of gravity which went on 
 between 1865 and 1885 or 1890, besides directing 
 renewed attention to international affairs, considerably 
 reduced the value of the memoirs on which the current 
 view of our history was founded. For memoirs are 
 written afterwards for the world, and are clever, apolo- 
 getic, designing and deceitful. Letters are written at the 
 moment, and are confidential, and therefore they enable 
 us to test the truth of the memoirs. In the first place, we 
 find that many of them are not authentic, or are not by 
 the reputed author. What purports to be the memoirs of 
 Prince Hardenberg is the composition of two well-informed 
 men of letters, Beauchamp and d'Allouville. Beauchamp 
 also wrote the book known as the Memoirs of Fouche. 
 Those of Robespierre are by Reybaud, and those of 
 Barras by Rousselin. Roche wrote the memoirs of 
 Levasseur de la Sarthe, and Lafitte those of Fleury. 
 Clery, the king's confidential valet, left a diary which met 
 with such success that somebody composed his pretended 
 memoirs. Six volumes attributed to Sanson, the exe- 
 cutioner, are of course spurious. 
 
 When Weber's Memoirs were republished in the long 
 collection of Baudoin, Weber protested and brought an 
 action. The defendant denied his claim, and produced 
 evidence to prove that the three first chapters are by 
 Lally Tollendal. It does not always follow that the book 
 is worthless because the title-page assigns it to a man 
 who is not the author. The real author very often is not
 
 366 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 to be trusted. Malouet is one of those men, very rare in 
 history, whose reputation rises the more we know him ; 
 and Dumont of Geneva was a sage observer, the con- 
 fidant, and often the prompter, of Mirabeau. Both are 
 misleading, for they wrote long after, and their memory 
 is constantly at fault. Dumouriez wrote to excuse his 
 defection, and Talleyrand to cast a decent veil over 
 actions which were injurious to him at the Restoration. 
 The Necker family are exasperating, because they are 
 generally wrong in their dates. Madame Campan wished 
 to recover her position, which the fall of the Empire had 
 ruined. Therefore some who had seen her manuscript 
 have affirmed that the suppressed passages were adverse to 
 the queen ; for the same reason that, in the Fersen corre- 
 spondence, certain expressions are omitted and replaced 
 by suspicious asterisks. Ferrieres has always been 
 acknowledged as one of the most trustworthy witnesses. 
 It is he who relates that, at the first meeting after the 
 oath, the deputies were excluded from the tennis-court 
 in order that the Count d'Artois might play a match. We 
 now find, from the letters of a deputy recently published, 
 that the story of this piece of insolence is a fable. The 
 clergy had made known that they were coming, and it was 
 thought unworthy of such an occasion to receive a pro- 
 cession of ecclesiastics in a tennis-court ; so the deputies 
 adjourned to a neighbouring church. 
 
 Montlosier, who was what Burke called a man of 
 honour and a cavalier, tells us that his own colleague 
 from Auvergne was nearly killed in a duel, and kept his 
 bed for three months. Biauzat, the fellow-townsman of 
 the wounded man, writes home that he was absent from 
 the Assembly only ten days. The point of the matter is 
 that the adversary whose hand inflicted the wound was 
 Montlosier himself. 
 
 The narrative which Madame Roland drew up in prison, 
 as an appeal to posterity, is not a discreet book, but it 
 does not reveal the secret of her life. It came out in 
 1863, when three or four letters were put up for sale at 
 auction, and when, shortly after, a miniature, with some-
 
 APPENDIX 367 
 
 thing written on it, was found amid the refuse of a 
 greengrocer's shop. They were the letters of Madame 
 Roland, which Buzot had sent to a place of safety before 
 he went out and shot himself ; and the miniature was her 
 portrait, which he had worn in his flight. 
 
 Bertrand, the Minister of Marine, relates that the 
 queen sent to the emperor to learn what he would do 
 for their deliverance, and he publishes the text of the 
 reply which came back. For a hundred years that docu- 
 ment has been accepted as the authentic statement of 
 Leopold's intentions. It was the document which the 
 messenger brought back, but not the reply which the 
 emperor gave. That reply, very different from the one 
 that has misled every historian, was discovered by Arneth, 
 and was published two years ago by Professor Lenz, who 
 lectures on the Revolution to the fortunate students of 
 Berlin. Sybel inserted it in his review, and rewrote Lenz's 
 article, which upset an essential part of his own structure. 
 
 The Marquis de Bouill6 wrote his recollections in 1797, 
 to clear himself from responsibility for the catastrophe 
 of Varennes. The correspondence, preserved among 
 Fersen's papers, shows that the statements in his Memoirs 
 are untrue. He says that he wished the king to depart 
 openly, as Mirabeau had advised ; that he recommended 
 the route by Rheims, which the king rejected ; and that 
 he opposed the line of military posts, which led to disaster. 
 The letters prove that he advised secret departure, the 
 route of Varennes, and the cavalry escort 
 
 ***** 
 
 The general characteristic of the period I am describing 
 has been the breakdown of the Memoirs, and our emancipa- 
 tion from the authority of the writers who depended on 
 them. That phase is represented by the three historians, 
 Sybel, Taine, and Sorel. They distanced their prede- 
 cessors, because they were able to consult much personal, 
 and much diplomatic, correspondence. They fell short of 
 those who were to come, because they were wanting in 
 official information. 
 
 Sybel was Ranke's pupil, and he had learnt in the
 
 368 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 study of the Middle Ages, which he disliked, to root out 
 the legend and the fable and the lie, and to bring history 
 within the limits of evidence. In early life he exploded 
 the story of Peter the Hermit and his influence on the 
 Crusades, and in the same capacity it was he who exposed 
 the fabrication of the queen's letters. Indeed he was so 
 sturdy a critic that he scorned to read the fictitious 
 Hardenberg, although the work contains good material. 
 He more than shared the unspiritual temper of the school, 
 and fearing alike the materialistic and the religious basis 
 of history, he insisted on confining it to affairs of state. 
 Having a better eye for institutions than his master, and 
 an intellect adapted to affairs, he was one of the first 
 to turn from the study of texts to modern times and 
 burning questions. In erudition and remote research he 
 fully equalled those who were scholars and critics, and 
 nothing else ; but his tastes called him to a different career. 
 He said of himself that he was three parts a politician, so 
 that only the miserable remnant composed the professor. 
 Sybel approached the Revolution through Burke, with 
 essays on his French and Irish policy. He stood firmly 
 to the doctrine that men are governed by descent, that the 
 historic nation prevails invincibly over the actual nation, 
 that we cannot cast off our pedigree. Therefore the 
 growth of things in Prussia seemed to him to be almost 
 normal, and acceptable in contrast with the condition of a 
 people which attempted to constitute itself according to 
 its own ideas. Political theory as well as national 
 antagonism allowed him no sympathy with the French, 
 and no wonder he is generally under-estimated in France. 
 He stands aloof from the meridian of Paris, and meditates 
 high up in Central Europe on the conflagration of 1789, 
 and the trouble it gave to the world in general. The 
 distribution of power in France moves him less than the 
 distribution of power in Europe, and he thinks forms of 
 government less important than expansion of frontier. 
 He describes the fall of Robespierre as an episode in the 
 partition of Poland. His endeavour is to assign to the 
 Revolution its place in international history.
 
 APPENDIX 369 
 
 Once it was said, in disparagement of Niebuhr and 
 other historians, that when you ask a German for a black 
 coat he offers you a white sheep, and leaves you to effect 
 the transformation yourself. Sybel belongs to a later 
 age, and can write well, but heavily, and without much 
 light or air. His introduction, published in 1853, several 
 years before the volume of Tocqueville, has so much in 
 common with it, that it was suggested that he might 
 have read the earlier article by Tocqueville, which John 
 Mill translated for the Westminster Review. But Sybel 
 assured me that he had not seen it. He had obtained 
 access to important papers, and when he became a great 
 public personage, everything was laid open before him. 
 In diplomatic matters he is very far ahead of all other 
 writers, except Sorel. Having been an opposition leader, 
 and what in Prussia is called a Liberal, he went over 
 to Bismarck, and wrote the history of the new German 
 Empire under his inspiration, until the Emperor excluded 
 him from the archives, of which, for many active years, 
 he had been the head. His five volumes, not counting 
 various essays written in amplification or defence, stand, 
 in the succession of histories, by dint of constant revision, 
 at a date near the year 1880. For a time they occupied 
 the first place. In successive editions errors were weeded 
 out as fast as they could be found ; and yet, even in the 
 fourth, Mounier, who, as everybody knows, was elected for 
 Dauphin^, is called the deputy from Provence. Inas- 
 much as he loves neither Thiers nor Sieyes, Sybel 
 declares it absurd to compare, as Thiers has done, the 
 Constitution of 1799 to the British Constitution. In the 
 page alluded to, one of the most thoughtful in the 
 Consulate and Empire, Thiers is so far from putting the 
 work of Sieyes on the British level, that his one purpose 
 is to display the superiority of a government which is 
 the product of much experiment and incessant adaptation 
 to the artificial outcome of political logic. 
 
 Sybel's view is that the Revolution went wrong quite 
 naturally, that the new order was no better than the old, 
 because it proceeded from the old, rose from an exhausted 
 
 2 B
 
 370 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 soil, and was worked by men nurtured in the corruption 
 of the old regime. He uses the Revolution to exhibit 
 the superiority of conservative and enlightened Germany. 
 And as there is little to say in favour of Prussia, which 
 crowned an inglorious war by an inglorious peace, he pro- 
 duced his effect by piling up to the utmost the mass of 
 French folly and iniquity. And with all its defects, it 
 is a most instructive work. A countryman, who had 
 listened to Daniel Webster's Bunker Hill oration, described 
 it by saying that every word weighed a pound. Almost 
 the same thing might be said of Sybel's history, not for 
 force of language or depth of thought, but by reason of 
 the immense care with which every passage was con- 
 sidered and all the evidence weighed. The author lived 
 to see himself overtaken and surpassed, for internal history 
 by Taine, and for foreign affairs by Sorel. 
 
 Taine was trained in the systems of Hegel and Comte, 
 and his fundamental dogma was the denial of free will 
 and the absolute dominion of physical causes over the 
 life of mankind. A violent effort to shape the future 
 by intention and design, and not by causes that are in 
 the past, seemed to him the height of folly. The idea 
 of starting fresh, from the morrow of creation, of emanci- 
 pating the individual from the mass, the living from the 
 dead, was a defiance of the laws of nature. Man is 
 civilised and trained by his surroundings, his ancestry, 
 his nationality, and must be adapted to them. The 
 natural man, whom the Revolution discovered and brought 
 to the surface, is, according to Taine, a vicious and 
 destructive brute, not to be tolerated unless caught young, 
 and perseveringly disciplined and controlled. 
 
 Taine is not a historian, but a pathologist, and his 
 work, the most scientific we possess, and in part the most 
 exhaustive, is not history. By his energy in extracting 
 formulas and accumulating knowledge, by the crushing 
 force with which he masses it to sustain conclusions, he is 
 the strongest Frenchman of his time, and his indictment 
 is the weightiest that was ever drawn up. For he is no 
 defender of the Monarchy or of the Empire, and his cruel
 
 APPENDIX 371 
 
 judgments are not dictated by party. His book is one 
 of the ablest that this generation has produced. It is no 
 substitute for history. The consummate demonstrator, 
 concentrated on the anatomy of French brains, renounces 
 much that we need to be told, and is incompetent as to 
 the literature and the general affairs of Europe. Where 
 Taine failed Sorel has magnificently succeeded, and he 
 has occupied the vacant place both at the Academy and 
 in his undisputed primacy among writers on the Revolu- 
 tion. He is secretary to the Senate, and is not an 
 abstract philosopher, but a politician, curious about things 
 that get into newspapers and attract the public gaze. 
 Instead of investigating the human interior, he is on the 
 look-out across the Alps and beyond the Rhine, writing, 
 as it were, from the point of view of the Foreign Office. 
 He is at his best when his pawns are diplomatists. In 
 the process of home politics, and the development of 
 political ideas, he does not surpass those who went before 
 him. Coming after Sybel, he is somewhat ahead of him 
 in documentary resource. He is more friendly to the 
 principles of the Revolution, without being an apologist, 
 and is more cheerful, more sanguine, and pleasanter to 
 read. A year ago I said that, Sybel and Taine being 
 dead, Sorel is our highest living authority. To-day I can 
 no longer use those words. 
 
 On Ranke's ninetieth birthday, Mommsen paid him this 
 compliment : " You are probably the last of the universal 
 historians. Undoubtedly you are the first." This fine 
 saying was double-edged, and intended to disparage general 
 histories ; but it is with a general history that I am going 
 to conclude what I have to say on the literature of the 
 Revolution. In the eighth volume of the General History \ 
 now appearing in France, Aulard gives the political out- 
 line of the Revolution. It may be called the characteristic 
 product of the year 1889. When the anniversary came 
 round, for the hundredth time, and found the Republic 
 securely established, and wielding a power never dreamed 
 of by the founders, men began to study its history in 
 a new spirit. Vast pains and vast sums were expended
 
 372 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 in collecting, arranging, printing, the most authentic and 
 exact information ; and there was less violence and 
 partiality, more moderation and sincerity, as became the 
 unresisted victor. In this new school the central figure 
 was M. Aulard. He occupies the chair of revolutionary 
 history at Paris ; he is the head of the society for pro- 
 moting it ; the editor of the review, La Revolution, now 
 in its thirty-first volume ; and he has published the 
 voluminous acts of the Jacobin Club and of the Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety. Nobody has ever known the 
 printed material better than he, and nobody knows the 
 unpublished material so well. The cloven hoof of party 
 preference appears in a few places. He says that the 
 people wrought vengeance after the manner of their kings ; 
 and he denies the complicity of Danton in the crimes 
 of September. As Danton himself admitted his guilt 
 to no less a witness than the future king of the French, 
 this is a defiance of a main rule of criticism that a man 
 shall be condemned out of his own mouth. Aulard's 
 narrative is not complete, and lacks detail ; but it is in- 
 telligent and instructive beyond all others, and shows the 
 standard that has been reached by a century of study. 
 
 Where then do we now stand, and what is the elevation 
 that enables us to look down on men who, the other day, 
 were high authorities ? We are at the end, or near the 
 end, of the supply of Memoirs ; few are known to exist in 
 manuscript. Apart from Spain, we are advanced in 
 respect of diplomatic and international correspondence ; 
 and there is abundant private correspondence, from 
 Fersen downwards. But we are only a little way in 
 the movement for the production of the very acts of the 
 government of revolutionary France. 
 
 To give you an idea of what that means. Thirty years 
 ago the Cahiers, or Instructions, of 1789 were published in 
 six large volumes. The editors lamented that they had 
 not found everything, and that a dozen cahiers were 
 missing in four provinces. The new editor, in his two 
 volumes of introduction, knows of 120 instructions that 
 were overlooked by his predecessors in those four regions
 
 APPENDIX 373 
 
 alone ; and he says that there were 50,000 in the whole of 
 France. One collection is coming out on the Elections 
 for Paris, another on the Paris Electors, that is, the body 
 entrusted with the choice of deputies, who thereupon took 
 over the municipal government of the city and made 
 themselves permanent. Then there is the series of the 
 acts of the Commune, of the several governing com- 
 mittees, of the Jacobins, of the war department, and seven 
 volumes on Vendee alone. 
 
 In a few years all these publications will be completed, 
 and all will be known that ever can be known. Perhaps 
 some one will then compose a history as far beyond 
 the latest that we possess as Sorel, Aulard, Rambaud, 
 Flammermont are in advance of Taine and Sybel, or 
 Taine and Sybel of Michelet and Louis Blanc ; or of the 
 best that we have in English, the three chapters in the 
 second volume of Buckle, or the two chapters in the 
 fifth volume of Lecky. In that golden age our historians 
 will be sincere, and our history certain. The worst 
 will be known, and then sentence need not be deferred. 
 With the fulness of knowledge the pleader's occupation 
 is gone, and the apologist is deprived of his bread. 
 Mendacity depended on concealment of evidence. When 
 that is at an end, fable departs with it, and the margin 
 of legitimate divergence is narrowed. 
 
 Don't let us utter too much evil of party writers, for 
 we owe them much. If not honest, they are helpful, as 
 the advocates aid the judge ; and they would not have 
 done so well from the mere inspiration of disinterested 
 veracity. We might wait long if we watched for the 
 man who knows the whole truth and has the courage 
 to speak it, who is careful of other interests besides his 
 own, and labours to satisfy opponents, who can be liberal 
 towards those who have erred, who have sinned, who have 
 failed, and deal evenly with friend and foe assuming 
 that it would be possible for an honest historian to have 
 a friend.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Adams, John, 23 
 
 Agra, bishop of, 308-9 
 
 Aiguillon, Due de, 99, 154 
 
 Alsace, 206, 208, 211 
 
 Amsterdam, 329 
 
 Anglas, Boissy d', 293, 337-8 
 
 Archives, Austrian, 364 
 
 Argenson, d', 8-9 
 
 Argenteau, Mercy, 147 
 
 Armand, Colonel, the Marquis de la 
 
 Rouerie, 302-3 
 Arneth, 364 
 Artois, Comte d', 59, 69, 178-9, 204, 
 
 339 
 
 Auckland, Lord, 320 
 Aulard, 371-2 
 
 Baillon, 183, 187, 189 
 
 Bailly, 71, 74, 88 
 
 Bale, peace of, 327 
 
 Barante, 355 
 
 Barbaroux, 267 
 
 Barentin, 55 
 
 Barere, 99, 117, 257, 273, 289, 295, 
 
 332. 335 
 
 Barnave, 91-3, 109, 191, 195, 200 
 Barras, 298, 344 
 Barthelemy, 337, 365 
 Bastille, 84, 85 
 Batz, Baron de, 254 
 Baudot, 280 
 Bazire, 271 
 Beaumetz, 128 
 Becard, 85 
 Beccaria, 18 
 Belgium, 330 
 Bentham, 106 
 Bernier, 307-9 
 Bertrand, 246 
 Besenval, 84 
 Beurnonville, 217 
 Billaud-Varennes, 248, 274, 280-2, 
 
 294-S. 333-5 
 Blanc, Louis, 349-50 
 
 Bonchamps, Marquis de, 305, 310- 
 
 312 ff. 
 
 Bordeaux, archbishop of, 102 
 Bouille, Marquis de, 174-5, T 8ii 367 
 Bouilte, de, the younger, 185 
 Bourbon, House of, 260, 337, 340 
 Bourdon, 298 
 Breteuil, 83, 175, 232 
 Bridport, Lord, 339 
 Brissot, 205, 209, 226, 243, 259 
 Broglie, Marshal de, 80 
 Brunswick, Duke of, 211, 231 
 Brussels, 221 
 Burke, Edmund, 29, 31, 126, 183, 204, 
 
 213 
 Buzot, 249, 267, 334, 367 
 
 Cabanis, 268 
 
 Calonne, 45, 178-9 
 
 Cambaceres, 274, 299, 337, 341 
 
 Cambon, 293-4 
 
 Cam pan, Madame, 128 
 
 Camus, 105 
 
 Carlyle, 358 
 
 Carnac, 339 
 
 Carnot, 258, 274, 290, 318, 324-6, 
 
 334 
 
 Carnot the younger, 359 
 Carrier, 93, 315, 333, 334 
 Cassagnac, Granier de, 349 
 Castlereagh, Lord, 324 
 Cathelineau, 304, 308, 310-11 
 Cazales, 75, no, 193 
 Cerutti, 92 
 Chabot, 264 
 Charette, 237, 304, 307, 310-14, 335 
 
 339-40 
 
 Charleroi, 328 
 Charles, Archduke, 328 
 Chartres, Due de, 257 
 Chateaubriand, 115, 348, 353 
 Chatelet, Due de, 101 
 Chatham, 26-7 
 Chaumette, 272, 276-7, 278, 280 
 
 375
 
 376 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Chauvelin, 318-19 
 
 Choiseul, Due de, 181, 185 
 
 Cholet, battle of, 313 
 
 Chouans, Chouannerie, 302, 303, 339- 
 
 34 
 
 Clerfayt, 216-17, 221-2 
 Clermont, Count Tonnerre de, 82, 98, 
 
 102, 230 
 
 Clermont, 188-90 
 Cloots, Anacharsis, 277 
 Coburg, Prince of, 320, 325-6, 328 
 Coffinhal, 294, 297, 299 
 Collot, 289, 292 
 Cond6, 325 
 Condorcet, 261, 267-8 
 Cook, Captain, 149 
 Corday, Charlotte, 265-7, 349 
 Cordeliers, the, 128, 227, 229 
 Cormatin, 335, 341 
 Corsica, 322 
 Cottereau, 302 
 Courier, Paul Louis, 348 
 Courmenin, 354 
 Couthon, 286, 297-8 
 Croker, 350 
 Custine, 220, 253 
 Cuvier, 357 
 
 Damas, 188, 189, 191 
 
 Danton, 84, 226, 234, 238, 241, 242-4, 
 
 257, 261, 273-8, 282-3, 3*8. 349i 
 
 35 2 . 372 
 Dareste, 359 
 Daunou, 341 
 Delauney, 85, 86 
 Delessart, 202, 208-9 
 Desaix, 325 
 Deseze, 252 
 Desmoulins, Camille, 84, 226, 248, 280, 
 
 282 
 
 Diderot, 31 
 Domat, 2 
 Dreux-Bre'ze', 74 
 Drouet, 186-8, 191-2 
 Droz, 346-7, 35 
 Dumouriez, 209, 215, 221, 222-3, 262, 
 
 319, 366 
 
 Dunkirk, 320, 326 
 Dupont de Nemours, 51, 62, 116 
 Duport, 98, 99, 100, 155 
 
 Egalit6, Prince, 221 
 Eglantine, Fabre de, 277 
 Elbee, de, 303, 305 
 Elizabeth, Princess, 181, 246 
 Amigrts, the, 129, 178, 201, 240, 260, 
 
 3 I 3' I 4. 33 8 -40 
 Estaing, Count, 127, 136 
 
 Favras, Marquis de, 145 
 
 Flderts, the, 229 
 
 F6nelon, 3, 4 
 
 Fersen, Count, 176, 182-4, 188, 206, 
 
 213. 365-7 
 
 Feuillants, 194, 226, 230 
 Fleurus, battle of, 290, 328 
 Fontenoy, Madame de, her note to 
 
 Tallien, 293 
 Fouch6, 289 ff., 324 
 Foulon, 90 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville, 332, 335 
 Fox, 259, 320 
 
 Francis, king of Hungary, 209 
 Franklin, 126 
 
 Frederic William, 211, 219 
 Freron, 226 
 
 Gabourd, Am6dee, 354 
 
 Garat, 254 
 
 Genoude, 353 
 
 George III. , 202, 259, 320, 329 
 
 Gobel, 171, 277 
 
 Godoy, Manuel, 329 
 
 Goethe, 218 
 
 Goguelat, 189 
 
 Gouvion, General, 182-3 
 
 Gower, Lord, 155, 318 
 
 Gregoire, bishop of Blois, 171, 278 
 
 Grenville, 318, 320 
 
 Guadeloupe, 322 
 
 Guizot, 355 
 
 Gustavus III., 178 
 
 Guyot, bishop of Agra, 309 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, 34, 36 
 
 Hanriot, 295-6, 299 
 
 Hauranne, Duvergier de, 357, 359-60 
 
 Hayti, island of, 322 
 
 Hubert, 272, 276, 281 
 
 Herbois, Collot de, 247, 274, 295, 333, 
 
 335 
 
 Hervilly, de, 236, 238, 338 
 Hoche, 244 
 Hohenlohe, 329 
 Holland, 260, 329 
 Hood, Lord, 315 
 Howe, Lord, 322 
 Hunolstein, 363 
 
 Isnard, 205, 228, 337 
 
 Jansenists, the, 2, 169 
 Jefferson, 92, 126 
 Jourdan, 326, 328 
 Joyeuse, Villaret, 322-3 
 Jurieu, 2 
 
 Kaiserslautern, battle of, 329
 
 INDEX 
 
 377 
 
 Kaunitz, 126, 203, 207-8, 212 
 Kellermann, 217-18 
 Kteber, 312-13, 314, 325 
 Klopstock, 126 
 Korff, Madame de, 184 
 Kozsiusko and the Polish insurrection 
 328 
 
 Laboulaye, 359-60 
 
 Lafayette, General, 32, 38, 88, 124; 
 
 130, 134, 137, 152, 182, 183, 196, 
 
 201, 229-30, 233 
 Lally Tollendal, 88, 90-91, 101, no, 
 
 143, 230, 346 
 La Marck, 131, 147, 155 
 Lamartine, 345, 347-8 
 Lamballe, Princess de, 245 
 Lameth, 109, 155 
 Lanfrey, 360 
 
 Langres, bishop of, in, 118, 133 
 La Jaunaye, treaty of, 335 
 Lanjuinais, 103, 144, 252, 261, 264, 
 
 337, 340 
 Lasource, 262 
 Latour Maubourg, 191 
 Lavallee, 359 
 Lavergne, 215 
 Lavoisier, 91 
 Lecointre, 333 
 
 Legendre, 226, 228, 264, 298, 333 
 Leonard, 181, 185, 188 
 Leopold, 177-8, 202-3, 208, 367 
 Le Quesnoy, 326 
 Lescure, 305, 308, 311, 313-15 
 Lewis XIV., 337 
 Lewis XVI., 40-43, 49, 72, 75, 87, 89, 
 
 118, 140, 170, 180-90, 195, 198, 204, 
 
 206, 227, 228, 231, 232, 233-5, 
 
 236-7, 242, 251-3, 255, 346 
 Lewis XVII., 338 
 Lewis XVIII., 313, 339 
 Liancourt, Due de Rochefoucauld, 87, 
 
 233 
 
 Limon, 213 
 Longwy, 215, 242 
 Louchet, 332 
 Louis Philippe, 223 
 Louvet, 250 
 Lubbock, Sir John, 352 
 Lubersac, bishop of Chartres, 100, 159 
 Luckner, General, 229 
 Luxemburg, Duke of, 61 
 Lyons, 315, 327 
 
 Machault, 42 
 
 Mack, Colonel, 325 
 
 Mailhe, 251 
 
 Maillane, Durand de, 293, 295 
 
 Maillard, 129, 131-2, 244 
 
 Malesherbes, 42, 252 
 
 Mallet du Pan, 212, 361 
 
 Malmesbury, 328 
 
 Malouet, 51, 54, 230, 346, 366 
 
 Mandat, 235 
 
 Mantua, 178, 179 
 
 Manuel, 248 
 
 Marat, 93, 113, 128, 226, 241, 262, 266; 
 
 333-5, 353 
 Marceau, 312, 325 
 Maret, 275, 319 
 Marie Antoinette, 55, 59, 131, 138, 140, 
 
 141-2, 177-8, 197, 180, 200, 206-7, 
 
 213. 2 75. 348, 3 6 2-4 
 Marigny, 311 
 Martin, Henry, 359 
 Massna, 274, 325 
 Maulevrier, Count Colbert de, 343 
 Maultrot, 3 
 Maurepas, 43 
 Maury, Cardinal, no, 147 
 Mayence, 312 
 Menou, 343 
 Mentz, 326 
 
 Mercier de la Riviere, 13 
 Merlin, 288, 341 
 Michelet, 351, 360 
 Mirabeau, 37, 62, 63, 64, 82, 105, no, 
 
 125, 131, 148, 151, 153, 154, 156-7, 
 
 347. 361 
 
 Moellendorf, Marshal, 329 
 Mons, 328 
 Montagu, 322, 323 
 Montalembert, 356 
 Montciel, Terrier de, 226, 229 
 Montesquieu, 7, 220 
 Montlosier, 65, 144, 366 
 Montm6dy, 180 
 Montmorin, 153 
 Moreau, 274, 325 
 Morris, 82, 230 
 Mounier, 60, 61, 95, 109, in, 118, 
 
 122-3, I 3 2 -3 I 137, 143 
 Mousson, 251 
 Murat, 344 
 
 Mantes, 311, 333 
 
 Napier, 313 
 
 Naples, 321 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, 61, 115, 216, 236, 
 
 259. 274. 3i6, 325-6, 344 
 Narbonne de Lara, Count, Minister of 
 
 War, 201-2, 208 
 Necker, 43, 46, 47, 49, 56, 64, 70, 73, 
 
 75. 83, 88, 101, 124, 135 
 Meerwinden, 325 
 Vey, Marshal, 325 
 Niebuhr, 355, 369 
 Noailles, 87, 99
 
 378 
 
 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 Orange, the Prince of, 329 
 Orleans, the Duke of, 135-6, 253 
 Orleans, the Duchess of, 349 
 
 Paine, Tom, 126, 249 
 
 Pamiers, bishop of, 175 
 
 Panis, 226, 281 
 
 Panizzi, 358 
 
 Paris, archbishop of, 81, 167 
 
 Penthievre, Due de, 339 
 
 P6tion, 201, 226, 235, 249, 267 
 
 Pichegru, 329, 337 
 
 Pilnitz, declaration of, 202 
 
 Pitt, 210, 216, 254, 314, 318, 321, 329 
 
 338. 346 
 Pius VI. and the Civil Constitution of 
 
 the clergy, 170, 172-3 
 Plain, the deputies of the, 291 
 Poland, 320 
 
 Polignac, the Duchess of, 65, 83, 88 
 Pontecoulant, 349 
 Portugal, 321 
 Pre'cy, 269 
 Priestly, 248 
 Prieur, 274 
 Provence, the Count of, 48, 50, 145-6, 
 
 181, 337 
 Prussia, 329 
 Puisaye, Count de, 265, 313, 338 
 
 Quiberon, battle of, 340 
 Quinet, 360 
 
 Ranke, 371 
 
 Raynal, Abb6, 18 
 
 Rebecqui, 251 
 
 Reinhard, 200 
 
 Reynier, 325 
 
 Richelieu, Due de, 135 
 
 Rigby, Dr., 86 
 
 Robespierre, 117, 226, 270, 273, 275, 
 
 278, 280, 284, 285, 294, 298, 299- 
 
 300, 330, 332, 351 
 Rochefoucauld, La, Duke de Liancourt, 
 
 8 7- 233 
 Rochejaquelein, Henri de la, 305, 309, 
 
 3*4 
 
 Roederer, 225, 236-7 
 
 Roland, 228, 238, 243, 249, 251, 264 
 
 Roland, Madame, 225, 267, 367 
 
 Romeuf, 183, 188 
 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 94 
 
 Romme, 277, 336 
 
 Rouerie, Marquis de la, 302-3 
 
 Rousseau, 14-17, 285, 333, 348 
 
 Royer Collard, 122 
 
 Saint Victor, 348 
 
 Sainte Marie, Miomandre de, 138 
 
 Santerre, 226-8, 235 
 
 Sardinia, the king of, 220 
 
 Sauce, 189 
 
 Saumur, 308 
 
 Savenay, 315 
 
 Scheldt, opening of the, 318 
 
 S6chelles, HeYault de, 269, 271, 281 
 
 S6monville, 275 
 
 Sergent, 226 
 
 Serre, De, 114 
 
 Sieyes, 67, 101-2, no, 119, 121, 
 
 159-62, 163, 249, 261, 340-41 
 Simolin, 208 
 Smith, Adam, 22 
 Sombreuil, 246, 338-40 
 Sorel, 367, 371 
 Spain, 260, 321, 329, 337 
 Spencer, Lord, 329 
 St. Cyr, 325 
 St. Just, 251, 273, 280-81, 290, 295, 
 
 297 
 
 St. M6nehould, 186-7 
 St. Priest, 130, 135-6, 355 
 Stael, Madame de, 137, 201 
 Stofflet, 305, 310-11, 314-15, 335, 339 
 Swiss Guard, 238 
 Sybel, Heinrich von, 356, 360-70 
 
 Taine, 93, 353, 360, 367, 370-71 
 Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, 69, 75, 
 
 79, no, 156, 167, 171, 319, 347, 
 
 365-6 
 Tallien, 243, 281, 292, 295, 332, 337, 
 
 34 
 
 Tallien, Madame, 331 
 Talmond, Prince de, 314 
 Target, 116 
 
 Ternaux, Mortimer, 360 
 Thibaudeau, 341 
 Thierry, 353 
 Thiers, 357, 369 
 Thouret, 119, 123 
 TocqueviUe, 157, 350, 356, 359-60 
 Torfou, 312 
 Torquemada, 352 
 Toulon, 315, 321 
 Toulouse, archbishop of, 46, 148 
 Tourzel, Madame de, 245 
 Tronchet, 252 
 Turgot, 10, n, 14, 42 
 Tuscany, 337 
 
 Ushant, 290 
 
 Vadier, 295 
 Valenciennes, 312, 325 
 Valmy, 216, 218 
 Vancouver Island, 149, 150 
 Varennes, 120, 179, 189
 
 INDEX 
 
 379 
 
 Vendee. La, 260, 303-4, 334, 337 
 
 Verdun, 215, 244 
 
 Vergniaud, 209, 225, 228, 231, 
 
 249, 253, 261, 267 
 Versailles, the march to, 129-30 
 Villaret-Joyeuse, 290 
 Villiaume', 353 
 Vincent, 273, 276 
 Virieu, 99 
 Volney, 123 
 Voulland, 297, 298 
 
 238 
 
 Washington, 126 
 Wattignies, 326 
 Weber, 246, 365 
 Webster, Daniel, 25 
 Weissenburg, 327 
 Westermann, 226, 238, 281 
 Wilson, James, 35, 36 
 Windward Islands, 322 
 Wurmser, 327 
 
 York, the Duke of, 325-6, 328-9, 339 
 
 THE END 
 
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