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HISTORICAL WORKS FOR SCHOOLS.

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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

B. M. GARDINER

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CENTRAL EUROPE 1789

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Epochs of Modern History

THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION
1789–1795

BY
BERTHA MERITON GARDINER

SIXTEENTH IMPRESSION

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PREFACE.

In writing this handbook on the French Revolution, it has been my endeavour to give a correct and impartial account of the most important events of the revolutionary period, and of the motives by which the leading characters were actuated. Much has necessarily been omitted which finds a place in larger works. Those who wish to pursue the subject further, and have time at their disposal, would do well to study, besides general histories, some of the many books lately published which deal with special branches of the subject, and often enable the reader to form a more independent judgment both of men and events than is possible from the perusal of works of the former class alone. Amongst general histories those of Michelet and Louis Blanc will probably be found most serviceable. No satisfactory account of the relations of France with other countries is to be found in the French tongue, partly because French historians still write with bias, partly, also, because they hitherto either have been unacquainted with, or have ignored the results of German research. Professor Von Sybel’s well-known book, ‘Geschichte der Revolutionszeit,’ contains the fullest and best account of the relations which existed between the different States of Europe, but it is not an impartial one. Hermann Hüffer’s books are valuable contributions to our knowledge of diplomatic relations, and, being written from an opposite point of view, should be studied by all readers of Von Sybel. The history of the foreign policy of England during this period has still to be written. M. Sorel has lately published in the pages of the ‘Révue Historique’ a full account of the foreign policy pursued by the Committee of Public Safety after Robespierre’s fall, and of the negotiations leading to the treaties of peace signed in 1795 between France and Prussia and France and Spain. Much fresh information regarding the internal condition of France during the revolutionary period is to be found scattered in local and special histories of various kinds. Amongst such may be specially mentioned Mortimer Ternaux’s ‘Histoire de la Terreur,’ and ‘La Justice Révolutionnaire,’ by Berriat St. Prix. M. Taine in his great work has collected a large number of extracts from documents lying in the archives of the departments, but entire absence of classification, and the strong political bias of the writer, makes this work of less value to the student than others of less pretensions. Amongst the best of local histories are the works of M. Francisque Mège, which reveal the course taken by the Revolution in the province of Auvergne. Biographical works are numerous. Mirabeau’s character will best be learnt from his correspondence with the Count de la Marck. M. D’Héricault’s ‘Révolution de Thermidor’ contains a detailed account of the policy pursued by Robespierre after the expulsion of the Girondists. Danton’s life and character can best be studied in the works of M. Robinet. Schmidt’s ‘Pariser Zustände während der Revolutionszeit’ contains the best existing account of the economic condition of Paris between 1789 and 1800. As it is improbable that those for whom this book is in the first place intended will have any idea of the amount represented by so many thousand or million livres, I have invariably given the English equivalent of the French money, following the table inserted by Arthur Young in his ‘Travels in France.’ After the introduction of the revolutionary calendar, I have in giving dates followed the table in ‘L’Art de vérifier les Dates.’ In consequence of the different system of intercalation pursued in the two calendars, the correspondence of dates varies from year to year, and in consequence of leaving this fact unnoticed even French historians sometimes give the date in the old style wrongly. I have only further to add that the purple lines upon the map of France in provinces represent the frontiers where customs duties were levied under the old Monarchy. They are copied from a map published with Necker’s works. It will be seen that Alsace and Lorraine, as well as Bayonne and Dunkirk, were allowed to trade freely with the foreigner. Marseilles enjoyed the same privilege.

CONTENTS.

MAPS.

REVOLUTIONARY CALENDAR.

LEADING DATES IN THE HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Dates relating to military or foreign affairs are given in italics in order that the attention of the reader may be drawn to the relation between them and the domestic occurrences.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.
FEUDALISM AND THE MONARCHY.

The Monarchy in France.

Like the rest of Western Europe, France, in the Middle Ages, was ruled by a feudal nobility, holding their lands of the king. Nowhere in Western Europe in the tenth century was the power of the king less, or the power of the nobles greater. The weight of their authority, therefore, fell heavily upon the peasants on their estates, and upon the inhabitants of the little towns scattered over the country. A feudal noble, if he were a seigneur, answering to our lord of the manor, ruled all dwellers on his estate. Their claims to property were heard in his courts, and they were amenable to his jurisdiction for crimes committed, or alleged to have been committed, by them. The seigneur may not have been a worse tyrant than many kings and princes of whom we read in history; but he was always close at hand, whilst Nero or Ivan the Terrible was far off from the mass of his subjects. He knew all his subjects by sight, had his own passions to gratify amongst them, and his vengeance to wreak upon those whom he personally disliked. To be free from this domination must have been the one thought of thousands of miserable wretches.

To shake off the yoke by their own efforts was an impossibility. The nearest ally on whom they could count was the king. He too was opposed to the domination of the nobles, for as long as they could disregard his orders with impunity, he was king in name alone. He was, in fact, but one nobleman amongst many, with a higher title than the rest.

Dwellers in towns could more readily coalesce and resist the authority of the seigneurs than dwellers in the country. By trade they acquired wealth, and with wealth influence. In the twelfth century they formed themselves into municipal communities, and, bidding defiance to their seigneurs, called upon their king to aid them in achieving independence. From that time to the end of the seventeenth century the power of the Monarchy grew stronger with every succeeding generation. The king was the dispenser of law and order, while the enemies of law and order were the feudal nobles. When Louis XIV. took the government into his own hands, in 1661, his will was law. Justice was administered by parliaments or law courts acting in the name of the king. The affairs of the provinces were administered by intendants, acting by his commission. No nobleman, however wealthy or highly placed, dared to resist his authority. With the frank gaiety of their nation the nobles themselves accepted the position, and crowded to his court or confronted death in his armies. He was able to say, without fear of contradiction, ‘I am the State.’

Unhappily for his people, he could not say ‘I am the Nation.’ In him the Monarchy had been victorious over its enemies, but it had not accomplished its task. The nation wanted more work from its kings, wanted simply that they should go on in the path which had been trodden by their ancestors. The national wish was too feebly expressed to reach the ears of Louis. He was thinking of military glory and courtly display, not of the grievances of his people. He had overthrown the power of the nobility so far as it threatened his own. He did not care to inquire whether there was enough left to produce cruel wrong far off from the splendid palace of Versailles. His great-grandson, the vile, profligate Louis XV., had even less thought for the exercise of the duties of a king, as father of his people. The Monarchy was in its decline, not because it was intentionally tyrannical, but because it had ceased to do its duty. The French people were not Republican. They needed a government, and government in any true sense there was none.

Social condition of France.

In consequence of the king thus deserting the path trodden by his ancestors, a state of things arose in France such as was found in no other country. Nowhere did the nobility as a class do so little for the service of their countrymen, yet nowhere were they in possession of more social influence or greater privileges. Nowhere were the mercantile and trading classes comparatively more wealthy and intellectual, yet nowhere was the distinction between the noble and the plebeian or bourgeois more rigorously maintained. Finally, in no other country where, as was the case in France, the mass of peasants were free men, did the owners of fiefs retain so many rights over the dwellers on their estates, and yet live in such complete separation from them.

After the nobles had lost political power they were cut off from all healthy communication with their fellow subjects. In France all sons and daughters of noblemen were noble, and their families did not blend with those of other classes like the family of an English peer. Nobles contemned the service of the administration as beneath their birth; on the contrary, no one who was not of noble birth could hold the rank of an officer in the army. The great lords flocked to Paris and Versailles, where they wasted their substance in extravagant living; the lesser nobles, men who in England would have occupied the position of country gentlemen, were often through poverty compelled to reside in their châteaux, where they lived in isolation, having no common interests with their neighbours, while clinging tenaciously to the possession of their rights as proprietors and feudal lords. ♦Feudal rights.♦ These feudal rights varied in every province, but were of three general kinds. (1) Rights which had their origin when the seigneur was also ruler—as, for instance, the right of administering justice, though this he now almost invariably farmed to the highest bidder; the right of levying tolls at fairs and bridges; and the exclusive right of fishing and hunting. (2) Peasants in the position of serfs were only to be found in Alsace and Lorraine; but rights still existed all over the country which betrayed a servile origin. Thus, the farmer might not grind his corn but at the seigneur’s mill, nor the vine-grower press his grapes but at the seigneur’s press; and every man living on the fief must labour for the seigneur without return so many days in the year. (3) Finally, the courts ruled that wherever land was held by a peasant from the owner of a fief, there was a presumption that the owner retained a claim to enforce cultivation and the payment of annual dues. Land so held was termed a censive—resembling an English copyhold. The granting of land on these terms never stopped from the close of the Middle Ages down to the Revolution. The dues retained were often petty. One tenant might pay a small measure of oats; another a couple of chickens. Yet the payments were often sufficiently numerous to form the chief maintenance of many of the nobles. The holders of these censives possessed however, all the rights of proprietors. They could not be dispossessed so long as they paid the dues to which they were liable, and they could sell and devise the land without the consent of the owners of the fief. Properties held on these terms abounded in all parts of France, and though the extent of each censive was often no more than a couple of acres, it is probable that before the Revolution at least a fifth of the soil had by these means passed into the possession of the peasantry.

The existence of feudal rights produced three results exceedingly detrimental to the national prosperity. It impeded a good cultivation of the soil; it prevented the country from being inhabited by men of the middle class, who preferred to reside in towns rather than recognise the social superiority claimed by the seigneur; and, finally, it was an incessant source of irritation to the whole rural population. By the rights due to a seigneur as ruler, and by those of servile origin, all dwellers upon the fief were affected, whether occupiers of land or not. The cultivator suffered at every turn—in the prohibition to plant what crops he pleased; in the prohibition to destroy the seigneur’s deer and rabbits that roamed at will over his fields and devoured his green corn; in the toll he paid for leave to guard his crops while growing, and to sell them after they were gathered in; and in many other ways. Such a system had become in the course of centuries both excessively complicated and wholly unsuited to existing social conditions. Sometimes half-a-dozen different persons claimed dues from the same piece of land. The proprietorship of fiefs and the ownership of feudal rights, or the greater part of them, were constantly separated. Poverty induced the resident seigneur to sell his rights, which, bought by a townsman, passed from hand to hand in the market, like any other property, and were the more sought after because their possession was held a sign of social superiority. Non-resident owners farmed them, and middle-men were harsh and exacting in their collection. The peasant, ignorant and poor, but thrifty and cunning, and fondly attached to his plot of ground, disputed claims made upon him to pay dues now to this man, now to that, in virtue of concessions of which, in a vast number of cases, the origin was completely lost. Innumerable lawsuits resulted, which left stored up in the peasant’s mind bitter feelings of resentment against both judge and seigneur, one of whom he accused of partiality, the other of rapacity and extortion.

The Church.

The maintenance of feudal relations between classes, when neither government nor society rested on the same bases as in feudal times, could only be productive of harm. In right of birth privileges and advantages were claimed by nobles without regard to principles of justice or of public utility. On every side, in the army, the navy, the profession of the law, distinction between the nobleman and the bourgeois still prevailed. But no institution suffered in consequence of the privileges of the nobility so great moral detriment as the Church. The Church was a rich, self-governed corporation, in possession of an annual revenue of more than 8,750,000l., providing for about 130,000 persons, including monks and nuns. This great wealth was unfairly distributed, and to a large extent misapplied. As a rule, all higher posts were reserved for portionless daughters and younger sons of noble families. Bishops and abbots, who revelled in wealth, were nobles; parish priests, who had barely enough for subsistence, were bourgeois and peasants. Thus the Church teemed with abuses, and exerted little moral influence. Her wealth excited the jealousy of the middle classes, whilst the luxurious and profligate lives led by many prelates and holders of sinecures brought disgrace on the ecclesiastical profession. Of reform there was no hope, since the lower clergy, who had interest in effecting it, were excluded from all part in Church government.

Government and administration.

Such abuses called aloud for the hand of a reformer. The material result of social disorder was impoverishment and decay. ‘Whenever you stumble on a grand seigneur,’ wrote an English traveller, ‘you are sure to find his property a desert.... Go to his residence, wherever it may be, and you will probably find it in the midst of a forest very well peopled with deer, wild boars, and wolves. Oh! if I were the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip.’ The king had acquired power in right of the services he rendered the nation. When he ceased to do good, as had been the case since Louis XIV. plunged the nation into a series of wars of ambition, it was inevitable that he should do harm. The welfare of the masses was dependent on the action of the central government, and the central government sacrificed their welfare for the sake of obtaining favour with the upper classes. Hence administration was in a chaos, and the government, in appearance all powerful, was in reality strong only when it had to deal with the crushed and helpless peasant and artisan. The States-General, which in some sort answered to our English Parliament, had last met in 1614. For the past two centuries the royal council had been engaged in undermining local liberties, and establishing a centralised system of administration. The work in all essentials was so thoroughly done, that no parish business, down to the raising of a rate or the repairing of a church-steeple, could be effected without authorisation from Paris. Absolute and centralised, the government was also excessively arbitrary. On plea of State necessity it repudiated debts, broke contracts, over-ruled laws, and set aside proprietary rights without scruple. The issue of warrants, called lettres de cachet sealed letters, ordering the imprisonment of the person designated in some state fortress, was an ordinary mode of inflicting punishment. Yet, however harsh and arbitrary in treatment of individuals, the government sought to avoid collision with the upper classes as a body. On all sides it left standing institutions of the Middle Ages, local functionaries, and municipal assemblies, of which the existence in many instances increased the weight of local charges and impeded attempts to ameliorate the condition of the working classes. In the same way the upper law courts, the Parliaments, were suffered as of old to meddle in administrative matters. Privileges, so far from being assailed, were respected. Whatever special rights provinces, towns, or classes possessed were suffered to remain and were often extended.

Privileged classes.

The wars of Louis XIV. and the orgies of Louis XV. absorbed more and more money. On the labouring classes, already overtaxed, an increased weight of taxation was always being laid. Hence, of these classes the king became the oppressor, and the oppression was the greater because the upper classes, who were best able to pay taxes, contributed much less than their fair share of the burden.

The nobles and clergy, styled the two upper orders, stood, in right of their privileges, both pecuniary and honorary, apart from the rest of the nation. Nobles did not pay any direct taxes in the same proportion as their fellow subjects, and in the case of the taille, a heavy property tax, their privilege approached very nearly to entire exemption. The clergy, except in a few frontier provinces, paid personally no direct taxes whatever. The bourgeoisie was regarded as an inferior class. Those who were able acquired by purchase the rank and privileges of nobles, and in this way had come into existence a nobility of office and royal creation, which, although looked down upon by the old nobility of the sword, enjoyed the same pecuniary immunities. Those left on the other side of the line deeply resented the social superiority claimed by the nobility in right of its privileges. The upper section of the bourgeoisie was, however, itself privileged to no inconsiderable extent. By living in towns, merchants, shopkeepers, and professional men were able to avoid serving in the militia and collecting the taille, from which in the country nobles alone were exempt. They also purchased of the government petty offices, created in order that they might be sold, to which no serious duties were attached, but the possession of which conferred on the holders partial exemption from payment of the taille and of excise duties, and other privileges of like character.

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FRANCE IN PROVINCES 1769–1789.

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Taxes.

Oppressive as taxation was, owing to its weight alone, and to its unjust distribution between classes, it was rendered yet more so by want of administrative unity, by the nature of some of the taxes and the method of their assessment and collection. Internal custom-houses and tolls impeded trade, gave rise to smuggling, and raised the price of all articles of food and clothing. It took three and a half months to carry goods from Provence to Normandy, which, but for delays caused by the imposition of duties, might have travelled in three weeks. Customs duties were levied with such strictness that artisans who crossed the Rhône on their way to their work had to pay on the victuals which they carried in their pockets. Excise duties were laid on articles of commonest use and consumption, such as candles, fuel, wine, and even on grain and flour. Some provinces and towns were privileged in relation to certain taxes, and as a rule it was the poorest provinces on which the heaviest burdens lay. One of the most iniquitous of the taxes was the gabelle, or tax on salt. Of this tax, which was farmed, two-thirds of the whole were levied on a third of the kingdom. The price varied so much that the same measure which cost a few shillings in one province cost two or three pounds in another. The farmers of the tax had behind them a small army of officials for the suppression of smuggling, as well as special courts for the punishment of those who disobeyed fiscal regulations. These regulations were minute and vexatious in the extreme. Throughout the north and centre of France, the gabelle was in reality a poll tax; the sale of salt was a monopoly in the hands of the farmers; no one might use other salt than that sold by them, and it was obligatory on every person aged above seven years to purchase seven pounds yearly. This salt, however, of which the purchase was obligatory, might only be used for purely cooking purposes. If the farmer wished to salt his pig, or the fisherman his fish, they must buy additional salt and obtain a certificate that such purchase had been made. Thousands of persons, either for inability to pay the tax, or for attempting to evade the laws of the farm, were yearly fined, imprisoned, sent to the galleys, or hanged. The chief of the property taxes, the taille, inflicted as much suffering as the gabelle, and was also ruinous to agriculture. Over two-thirds of France the taille was a tax on land, houses, and industry, reassessed every year not according to any fixed rate, but according to the presumed capacity of the province, the parish, and the individual taxpayers. The consequence was that, on the smallest indication of prosperity, the amount of the tax was raised, and thus parish after parish, and farmer after farmer, were reduced to the same dead level of indigence.

Condition of the people.

Under the state of things here described, France had retrograded in wealth and population. Intense misery prevailed amongst the working classes. Artisans were unable to live on their wages; farmers and small proprietors were constantly being reduced to beggary; ignorance grew more dense. The government, by its own frequent setting aside of laws, and by its intolerance and cruelty, helped to render the people lawless, superstitious, and ferocious. Protestants were subjected to persecuting laws. Thousands of them had been driven from the country, or shot down by troops. The penal code was barbarous, and the brutal breaking on the wheel was an ordinary mode of putting criminals to death. It was only by very rough usage that fiscal regulations were maintained, and the taxes gathered in. If the taille and the gabelle were not paid, the defaulter’s goods were sold over his head, and his house dismantled of roof and door. In all cases in which the administration was concerned, whatever justice peasant and artisan received was meted to them by administrative officials who were themselves parties in the cause. Famine was like a disease which counted its victims by hundreds. As a rule, the farmer was a poor and ignorant peasant, living from hand to mouth, miserably housed, clothed, and fed.

An Englishman, Arthur Young, travelling in France in the years 1788–1789, reports how he passed over miles and miles of country once cultivated, but then covered with ling and broom; and how within a short distance of large towns no signs of wealth or comfort were visible. ‘There are no gentle transitions from ease to comfort, from comfort to wealth; you pass at once from beggary to profusion. The country deserted, or if a gentleman in it, you find him in some wretched hole, to save that money which is lavished with profusion in the luxuries of a capital.’ The same traveller tells us how, as he was walking up a hill in Champagne, he was joined by a poor woman who complained of the hardness of the times. ‘She said her husband had but a morsel of land, one cow and a poor little horse, yet he had a franchar (42 lbs.) of wheat and three chickens to pay as a quit rent to one seigneur, and four franchars of oats, one chicken, and one shilling to pay another, besides very heavy tailles and other taxes. She had seven children, and the cow’s milk helped to make the soup. It was said, at present, that something was to be done by some great folks for such poor ones, but she did not know who nor how, but God send us better, “car les tailles et les droits nous écrasent.” This woman, at no great distance, might have been taken for sixty or seventy, her figure was so bent and her face so furrowed and hardened by labour, but she said she was only twenty-eight.’

Since, owing to the weight of taxation, no profits were to be made by farming, it was impossible that there should be a good cultivation of the soil. The amount of capital employed on land in England was at least double that employed in France. Hence, while in England famine was unknown, in France production barely equalled consumption, and scarcities were of incessant occurrence. A single bad season would force the farmer to desert his land, and with his family beg or steal. Whenever bread rose above three halfpence the pound men starved. Bread riots constantly took place in one or another province, and the country swarmed with beggars, brigands, poachers, and smugglers. Thousands of these outcasts were imprisoned, sent to the galleys, or hanged; but no severity could lessen their number, while the causes producing them remained unremoved. Adequate means of providing for the destitute there were none. A few hospitals and other charitable institutions existed. Bishops, great seigneurs, and monasteries often kept alive hundreds in seasons of scarcity. Hospitals, however, were little better than plague houses, where the sick and infirm were taken in to die, whilst private charity was partial and insufficient. There was no general system of poor relief. With the object of keeping bread at a price within the people’s reach, the corn trade was subject to a variety of regulations and restrictions. Occasionally the government made purchases of foreign corn, which was resold under price. Sometimes the prices of corn and other articles of food were fixed. In towns the price of bread was ordinarily regulated according to the price of corn by police officers, a not unnecessary precaution when the baking trade was in the hands of a close corporation. A more vicious mode of relief could hardly have been devised, but to abandon it was no easy matter. The arbitrary means taken to reduce the price of corn often had the effect of raising it, and, when successful, only tended to lessen production and lead to greater scarcities, since cutting down the profit of the already overweighted corn grower was, in reality, casting an additional tax upon him. On the other hand, it was no less true that so long as the existing order continued, a slight rise in the price of the pound of bread meant sheer starvation for the mass of artisans, and for thousands of agricultural labourers and small proprietors who were not corn growers. Accustomed to look to the government to provide them with cheap bread, in every season of scarcity these clamoured for a reduction in price, and unless authorities were complaisant, resorted to riot and pillage.

Voltaire.

The misery of the working classes presented in itself reason enough for revolution; but revolution only comes when there are men of ideas to lead the unlettered masses. In France the educated classes entertained revolutionary ideas, and the men of letters who promulgated those ideas became the leaders of opinion, and exerted enormous influence over their own and the following generations. First came the Voltairians, led by Voltaire (1694–1778). During the century rapid advance was being made in all branches of study—in history, jurisprudence, mathematical and physical science. The idea of progress was definitely conceived, and knowledge upheld as the chief factor in producing virtue and happiness. For the increase and diffusion of knowledge the recognition of two principles was indispensable—religious toleration and the freedom of the press. Both these principles were, however, in direct antagonism to the principles on which the authority of the Roman Catholic Church was based—unity of faith and worship, the subordination of philosophy and science to theology, the submission of reason to the teaching of tradition. Protestant clergymen were put to death as late as 1762; while in 1765 a lad convicted of sacrilege was hanged, and his body afterwards burned. Such acts of intolerance and cruelty were, however, condemned by public opinion, and, between the Church and the exponents of the new ideas, violent collision inevitably ensued. Voltaire made it the work of his life to destroy belief in revealed religion. In verse and in prose, in historical works, in letters and pamphlets by the dozen, with rude licence or sham respect, he held up the Church to derision, indignation, and contempt, as the great enemy of enlightenment and humanity. ‘The most absurd of empires,’ he wrote, ‘the most humiliating for human nature, is that of priests; and of all sacerdotal empires, the most criminal is that of priests of the Christian religion.’

Encyclopædists.

Voltaire himself was a sceptic. Behind him followed men who denied belief in a personal God and the immortality of the soul. Diderot (1713–1784) and D’Alembert (1717–1783), with indefatigable energy published the ‘Encyclopædia,’ or dictionary of universal knowledge, inculcating, at least indirectly, atheistical opinions, and designed, by the destruction of ignorance and superstition, to undermine the whole fabric of Christian theology. Before the end of his long life, in 1778, Voltaire was the most eminent man in France, and sceptical and atheistical opinions were commonly held and openly professed by men and women of the upper and middle classes. The triumph of the new philosophy was not, indeed, due merely to the powers of irony or the reasoning of its advocates. The scandalous abuses within the Church had prepared the way for its reception. The attacked had no efficient weapon with which to repel their assailants. The Church was without reforming energy or proselytising zeal. On the arm of the State she could not rely for support with the same confidence as in former times. The government was incapable of stamping out the new movement, nor was it prepared seriously to make the attempt. The official class, which came out of the middle class, was, like all others, permeated with the new ideas. The occasional arrest of authors and printers, and seizure of types and presses, did but increase the virulence of the attack, and made the forbidden books more eagerly sought after. The clergy were the more open to attack because they were interested in the maintenance of privileges and abuses which inflicted cruel wrongs on the working classes, while the new philosophy aimed at destroying whatever stood in the way of material progress and the happiness of the masses. In opposition to the Church’s doctrine of the natural depravity of human nature, its adherents taught that man is born good, and that wrong-doing is the result of ignorance; inculcated the importance of educating all classes, and refused to recognise limits to the improvement of which both individuals and the race are capable. Often accompanied by a sensual view of life, which accorded with the profligacy common amongst the upper classes at the time, this high opinion of human nature developed a respect for man as man, regardless of social position, race, or creed, and a passionate hatred of inequalities founded on such distinctions. ♦Economists.♦ A school of political economists, starting from the theory that all men originally had equal rights, and every man liberty to employ his time, his hands, and his brains according to his own advantage, demonstrated the principles of free trade, and declared entire liberty of agriculture, entire liberty of commerce and industry, entire liberty of the press to be the true foundations of national prosperity. Appealing to abstract principles of justice, humanity and right, Voltairians and Economists joined in opening a fire of scathing criticism on existing laws, customs, and institutions. They exposed the abuses and sufferings incident to the use of torture, serfdom, and the slave trade, to excessive centralisation and interference with trade and agriculture, to close guilds, feudal duties, internal custom-houses, to the taille and the gabelle, and demanded the carrying out of reforms which should set trade and industry free, destroy class and provincial privileges, introduce unity in the administration, and equality of rights between man and man.

Rousseau.

The Voltairians were specially characterised by their attack upon the Church and Christianity; the Economists by the importance which they attached to individual liberty. Neither regarded the ignorant and oppressed masses as able to act for themselves, and both looked to the royal power, enlightened by a free press, as the instrument through which reform must be effected. Rousseau was a writer of a different stamp. Instead of idolising knowledge he declared the untaught peasant and artisan the superiors of the philosopher and man of culture. They alone, he said, had retained that natural goodness of heart which men had in times long since gone by, when social inequalities along with idleness and luxury were unknown. Rousseau opposed also the atheistic tendencies of the day, declaring belief in a personal God and the immortality of the soul requisite to make life endurable to the oppressed. His indifference to knowledge and culture caused him to regard the masses themselves as alone able to regenerate France, if indeed regeneration were still possible. Society, according to him, was originally based on a contract by which every citizen in return for protection of person and property placed himself under the general will. Laws, therefore, were the expression of the general will; kings were merely the servants of the people, and not they but the people sovereign. Whatever was amiss in France, or in other countries, the fault lay purely with society and government, and should ever idleness and luxury disappear and the people recover their lost sovereignty, then and then only, as in primitive times, would men be happy and virtuous. ‘Man is born free,’ were the opening words of the ‘Social Contract,’ the book in which these theories were maintained, ‘and everywhere he is in chains.’

CHAPTER II.
FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XVI. (1774–1789).

When the necessity of reform had been demonstrated by a band of powerful and brilliant writers, whose works were the popular reading of the day, it was inevitable that desire for change should grow, as the new ideas spread over wider circles, and sufferers from abuses became more and more alive to their wrongs. Undermined by public opinion, the existing order could not endure for long, and the vital question before France was, by what means change should be accomplished. The Voltairians called on the King to take the work in hand, and on the death of Louis XV. in 1774, it appeared possible that the young Louis XVI. would endeavour to regain the path that his predecessors had abandoned, and, by relieving the people from their burdens, seek the welfare of the entire nation. ♦Turgot’s Ministry.♦ Turgot, the new Controller-General, who exercised the functions both of Minister of Finance and Minister of the Interior, represented the party of reform, and was in all his actions inspired by a strong love of knowledge and by a passionate desire to benefit his fellow-men. He was not, like the writers of his time, a mere theorist, but also a practised and successful administrator, who for thirteen years had been Intendant of the poor province of Limousin. Now that he was invested with higher authority, it was Turgot’s aim to ameliorate the condition of the people throughout France, by the introduction of reforms based on those principles of equality and individual liberty which Voltairians and Economists proclaimed. His chief reforms were the abolition of restrictions on the internal trade in corn and wine; the abolition of the corvée, or forced unpaid labour of the peasants for repair of roads, for which he substituted a land-tax payable by all proprietors whether privileged or not; and finally, the abolition of guilds, giving liberty to every one, however poor, to exercise what trade he pleased and to raise his condition according to his capacity. Besides these, his most important measures, Turgot carried out many lesser reforms tending to set labour and industry free, to cheapen food and clothing, and to lessen the burdens of the poor by the equalisation of taxation, and by the abolition of the fiscal abuses and sinecure offices which enriched the monied aristocracy of Paris and the court nobility. The reforms, however, which Turgot accomplished were but a small portion of those which he had in contemplation. He aimed at the remodelling of the whole system of taxation, the removal of all custom-houses to the frontier, the abolition of the gabelle, and the substitution for the taille of a new tax to be imposed on the land of all proprietors without exception, the gradual abolition of feudal dues, the grant of civil rights to Protestants, and, finally, the decentralisation of administration by the establishment of provincial assemblies, to be elected by all landed proprietors without distinction of rank. His work was no sooner begun than it was prematurely cut short. A violent opposition party was at once formed, which comprised the court nobility, the upper clergy, the nobility of office, farmers of the gabelle and other indirect taxes, judges in Parliament, masters of guilds and state officials—in a word, all those who made profit out of existing abuses, and whose special privileges were assailed. ‘Everybody fears,’ a friend of Turgot wrote to him, ‘either for himself, or for his brother, or for his friend.’

Louis XVI.

Whether Turgot was to stand or fall depended entirely on the resolution of the King. Louis XVI. was well-intentioned, conscientious, and sincerely desirous of ruling for the good of his subjects, but he lacked the qualities which are requisite to a prince called on to govern at a great national crisis. He was without self-confidence, irresolute in action, and incapable of judging the real value of men, or of grasping the real bearing of events and measures. He could not even rule his own court. Simple in his tastes, and shy and reserved by disposition, his happiest hours were spent in the hunting field, or in the company of a blacksmith, mastering the art of making locks. It was no wonder that such a King should be driven to and fro between conflicting opinions, when those who surrounded his throne, and with whom he came in daily contact, accused his Minister of violence and injustice, and of entertaining projects destructive to monarchical government. ‘The King,’ said Turgot, ‘is above all, for the good of all.’ Louis could never rise to this conception of his position. Turgot would have made him ruler of men equal before the law, and in possession of equal rights as citizens. Desirous as Louis was to ease the lower classes of their burdens, he was never able to conceive of the noble as being on the same footing as the common man. ♦Marie Antoinette.♦ The only person in whom he reposed confidence was his wife, Marie Antoinette, a daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, and with fatal weakness he often yielded to her desires in opposition to his own better judgment. She had been married to him while still a child, and left to grow up uninstructed and without guides in the corrupt atmosphere of the court of Versailles. At the age of nineteen, when she became Queen, she was a bright and vivacious, but ignorant and thoughtless woman, whose days were spent in a never ceasing round of formalities and dissipation. She employed her influence over her husband to obtain for her friends pensions and offices, without any sense of what was due to her position as Queen in the midst of a frivolous and intriguing court, or of what she owed to the starving and suffering masses who were deprived of their hard-won earnings for the enrichment of an idle and spendthrift nobility. When ministers sought to put a check on her extravagance, or in any way thwarted her inclinations, they provoked her resentment, dangerous in proportion to the power that she was able to exercise over the King. Her aversion to Turgot was the cause which finally produced his dismissal from office. The Austrian ambassador, Mercy, informing Maria Theresa of the event, used words of more pregnant meaning than he was himself aware. ‘The Controller-General,’ he said, ‘is of high repute for integrity, and is loved by the people; and it is therefore a misfortune that his dismissal should be in part the Queen’s work. Such use of her influence may one day bring upon her the just reproaches both of her husband and of the entire nation.’

Turgot was the greatest statesman that France had seen since Richelieu. He had a clear comprehension of the economical and social evils under which the country suffered, and of the remedies to be applied to them. The best ideas of the age found room in his capacious mind, and all that he attempted to do had ultimately to be accomplished, though by other means than those which he contemplated. Louis had shown his incapacity to see that it was his first duty to make himself the repairer of wrong and injustice, and truly a representative king, who could say, ‘I am the nation.’ After Turgot’s failure, revolution, that is to say change accompanied by violence and convulsion, became inevitable.

Reforming movement a European one.

The reforming movement, of which in France Turgot was the representative, was not confined to that country, but was, in fact, an European movement, of which the influence was felt, however faintly, even in the most backward States. Kings and statesmen, under the influence of Voltairian ideas, held sceptical opinions, and took interest in the material condition of their subjects. It was perceived that if monopolies enriched individuals they prevented the development of commerce and industry; that if duties were levied between the provinces of the same kingdom, exchange of commodities could only with difficulty be effected; that if nobles did not pay their fair share of taxation, the revenue of the State suffered, and the working classes were overburdened. Jealous eyes were cast upon the territorial wealth of the Catholic Church, and protests were raised against the multiplication of monasteries, and the idle lives led by their inmates. In many States efforts were made to increase the authority of the king by the destruction of provincial and class privileges. The idea that the sovereign reigned for the good of the nation was accepted, at least in theory, by the most autocratic of European princes. In Russia Catherine II., in Prussia Frederick II., invited to their courts and patronised French philosophers. In Spain Aranda, in Tuscany Manfredini, in Portugal Pombal endeavoured to lessen the privileges of nobles and clergy, and to loosen the bonds in which industry and commerce were held. In Savoy feudal charges were abolished, compensation being given to the proprietors. In Parma, in Brunswick, and in other Italian and German states, similar tendencies were manifested. But although the reforming movement, on the lines laid down by Voltaire and the Economists, was not confined to France, nowhere else was there to be found amongst the people any strong desire for reform. In Germany, in Spain, in Italy, the new views were confined to a few theorists and statesmen, and did not penetrate beneath the surface of society. The cause lay in the difference of social conditions. Outside France, nobles, as a rule, lived at home on their estates, still administering justice to peasants and serfs. The middle class took no interest in matters of government, but devoted its energies to scientific and literary pursuits. The lower classes, being still in dependence on the upper, entertained no lively resentment of their privileges. Hence reforming princes could never accomplish more than a few isolated changes without danger of rousing rebellion. Nobles and clergy, the moment their privileges were threatened, offered opposition; the middle class did not care to render support; the lower classes were more ready to follow the lead of nobles and clergy than the lead of the government. Of all the princes of his time the Emperor Joseph II. was the boldest innovator. In his hereditary dominions he offended the nobles by the abolition of provincial states, the clergy by closing monasteries and upholding principles of toleration, the people by alterations in their religious services. An insurrection broke out in Belgium under the leadership of nobles and clergy (1789). Both in Galicia and Hungary the nobles threatened to take up arms, and for a time it seemed as if the Austrian dominion would fall to pieces.

England.

In England the same ideas prevailed as on the Continent, but the social and political condition of the country was such as to enable reforms to be accomplished more gradually and with far less violent change than was possible either in France or Austria. The English people had for centuries formed an united nation. No sharp lines of division divided one class from another. The laws were the same for all: younger sons of noblemen ranked as commoners, and country gentlemen sat in Parliament by the side of merchants and traders. A free press prepared the way for change by allowing the discussion of questions of general interest, and free institutions gave political experience, and taught the governing classes the necessity of yielding in time to public opinion. Parliament, which represented only the landed and commercial interests, legislated selfishly, and was slow to admit or redress wrong done to the unrepresented classes; but gross oppression of the lower orders, such as existed in France, was unknown in England. Country gentlemen looked after the affairs of parish and county. The body of the rural population consisted of agricultural labourers maintained by poor-rates when wages fell short. Charges on land due to the lord of the manor, though far from being extinct, existed mainly in the form of money payments, affecting only a comparatively small number of persons. Although the same protective principles which prevailed on the Continent prevailed also in England, whatever restraints were laid either on persons in the selection of their calling, or on industry, commerce and agriculture, there was to be found far more liberty than elsewhere. The country was the most flourishing in Europe, and wealth was being rapidly accumulated. Special advance was made in the system of farming by the introduction of the rotation of crops and artificial manures. Wages rose, and bread was cheap, and all classes for a time shared in the general prosperity.

In England a large body of eminent men, philosophers, statesmen, and philanthropists, entertained the new ideas and sought to bring them into practice. In 1776, Adam Smith published the ‘Wealth of Nations,’ in which the principles of free trade were promulgated. The younger Pitt, who took office in 1783, was his disciple. He proposed to abolish restrictions on the trade of Ireland with England, and intended to lessen the power of the aristocracy by a reform of the electoral system. In 1787 a Treaty of Commerce was concluded between England and France, designed to increase trade between the two countries. The most important measures brought forward by Pitt were not, however, carried through Parliament. This was in part owing to the factious opposition of the Whigs, in part to the strong Conservative instincts of the governing classes, but in part also because little discontent or desire for change existed among the people at large.

Ministry of Necker.

If, however, England was slow to move, reforms once made rested on a sure foundation. Such was not the case with those made in the name of absolute princes on the Continent. After Turgot’s dismissal, fifty out of seventy of the guilds which he had abolished were revived, and the peasants were compelled by blows to resume their labours on the roads. Necker, a Genevese banker, was Turgot’s successor (October 1776). He was not a statesman, like Turgot, with definite aims in view, but he was an able financier and a humane man, holding the philanthropic sentiments of the day, and eager to relieve the condition of the masses. A war with England increased the difficulties of the government. In 1778 Louis, reluctantly following public opinion, assisted the English colonies in America in their struggle for independence. There were only three means of meeting the expenses of the war: increased taxation, economy, and loans. The first was impossible; the second only possible to a limited extent; and Necker, therefore, was compelled to borrow. The loans that he opened were quickly filled up, because men of the middle class, who were the chief lenders, believed that their interests were safe while he directed the finances. But the public debt was greatly increased, and the prospect of the future, with reforms uneffected in the system of taxation, rendered them more dark. Although Necker did not attempt to introduce radical measures such as had excited opposition against Turgot, his abolition of sinecures and other administrative changes gave offence to the same classes. The Parliament of Paris, whose lead was followed by the twelve provincial Parliaments, formed the chief organ of resistance. These Parliaments or law-courts were, in fact, powerful legal corporations to which many hundred persons were attached. The judges belonged to the nobility of office, and were independent of the government, since they held their offices in right of purchase, and might not be dispossessed without proof of misconduct. They exercised, besides judicial, a certain political function, since edicts of the King’s council did not have the force of law until they had been registered by the Parliaments. This right of registration in the time of Louis XIV. had been a mere form. If the Parliament of Paris hesitated to carry out his wishes, he held a so-called bed of justice when he came to the court in person, and on his command registration was compulsory. But now that the royal authority had fallen into contempt, the Parliaments offered prolonged resistance, and before the Government could obtain registration of its edicts, intimidation and even the use of military force were resorted to. Necker, when he sought to effect reform, necessarily became involved in quarrels with the Parliaments, and, finding that the King gave but a half-hearted support, he resigned office (1781).

Desire for political liberty.

Louis could relieve himself from momentary inconvenience by abandoning a Minister of whom he was weary, but had no power to stay the course of events. Those who had lent money to the government deeply resented Necker’s fall, because they believed him able to secure regular payment of the interest on the national debt. Desire for social change was accompanied by desire for political change also. Rousseau had said that the people was sovereign, and as the incompetency of the crown to carry out the national will became with each successive ministry more manifest, ideas long since vaguely floating in men’s minds gathered strength and consistency. The cause of the American colonies was taken up with immense enthusiasm. The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), which, in accordance with the principles laid down in the ‘Social Contract,’ asserted that all men were created equal and endowed with the natural right of overthrowing an unjust government, was hailed as the enunciation of an universal truth, of which Frenchmen as well as the colonists might reap the benefit. Meanwhile government in France grew yearly more utterly weak and helpless. The war with England ended in 1783, but financial embarrassments increased. ♦Calonne.♦ Calonne, who became Controller-General the same year, pursued Necker’s system of borrowing without his justification, and retained office by abstaining from acts calculated to offend the privileged classes. The demands of the Queen and the Court were complied with, and abuses destroyed by Necker again called into existence. ‘If it is possible, madam,’ said the obsequious Minister, on an occasion when the Queen pressed him for money, ‘it shall be done; if it is impossible, it shall be done.’ But such squandering of the revenue could not last for ever. Calonne’s credit broke down, and he was driven as a last resource to propose the reform of the entire system of administration and taxation. By publicity he hoped to overcome resistance. He called together an extraordinary council or assembly of notables, nominated by the King (February 1787), and laid his propositions before them, thinking that in the existing state of opinion they would not venture to refuse support. But this assembly, composed almost entirely of privileged persons, proved recalcitrant. The majority were against the reforms proposed, while the few who approved them were determined that they should be made by an assembly representative of the nation.

Brienne.

Calonne gave place (1787) to Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, the candidate of the Queen; but the new Minister had no choice except to take up the plans of his predecessor, and the government became involved in incessant strife with the Parliaments. The Parliaments concealed their aversion to the principle of equality of taxation, by denying the right of the King to impose new taxes without the consent of the nation, and by demanding the meeting of the States-General. The government, on its side, sought popularity by coupling edicts for raising loans and taxes with reforming measures. But it could obtain no support. The shifting policy which it had so long pursued, the attempts at reform, made, abandoned, and then made again, had destroyed confidence alike in its power and its good-will. Hence, although the Parliaments defended the privileges of nobles and clergy, their resistance was applauded, because it offered the surest means of forcing the King’s hand, and leaving him no alternative but to summon the nation to his aid. Along with equality, the word ‘liberty’ was on every man’s lips. The very nobles, who had so long opposed administrative and economical change, had themselves become vehement advocates of political change. More afraid of the crown than of the classes beneath them, and blind to the complete isolation of their own order, they looked forward to being at once leaders of a political revolution and guardians of their own interests. In fact, the privileged orders had no choice but either to submit at discretion to the King, or to join in the popular cry for the meeting of the States-General. Arbitrary attempts made by Brienne to free the crown of dependence on the Parliaments failed, in the face of resistance offered by all classes, and brought the country to the verge of actual insurrection. Disaffection was rife in the army. Peasants and artisans, excited by expectation of better days, were more ready than before to rise in insurrection against local authorities, and were less easily quelled. State bankruptcy impended. There was a deficit in the revenue of more than 2,000,000l., and money was wanting with which to pay the interest of the national debt. Under such circumstances Louis reluctantly yielded to the demand made on every side. He declared his intention of summoning the States-General and in order to regain confidence restored to the head of the finances his former and still popular minister, Necker (Aug. 1788).

Necker recalled to office.

Necker’s return to office was greeted with a burst of applause from one end of France to the other. His financial ability was relied on to stave off bankruptcy, and it was known that he had always opposed the court, and that he now desired the meeting of the States-General. But his popularity was due to those causes alone; not to any proof that he had given or could give of his fitness to direct the royal policy. As he failed to comprehend the real causes of the impending revolution, he would be unable to moderate its violence.

Pamphlets and cahiers.

The hopes and desires of every class found expression first in pamphlets, and subsequently in the cahiers or petitions of grievances drawn up by electoral assemblies to be laid before the States. The importance and necessity of reform was generally admitted, except where special interests or class prejudices made men averse to change. Thus nobles combated the conservative tendencies of ecclesiastics, ecclesiastics the conservative tendencies of nobles. Induced by pressure of public opinion the nobles mostly declared their willingness to admit the principle of equality of taxation. But agreement went no further. Between the two privileged orders and the body of the nation a gulf was fixed, of bridging which no hope existed. That which the nobles had in view by the meeting of the States was the establishment of constitutional monarchy, based on aristocratical institutions and insuring political and social predominance to their own order. The aim of the middle and working classes was absolutely to destroy every distinction which gave to nobles and ecclesiastics a position apart in the State. The members of the upper orders were not only to bear their fair share of taxation, but to submit to the same law, and to stand in all respects on exactly the same level as the mass of their fellow-citizens. A pamphlet written by the Abbé Siéyès, which gave clear articulation to the thought in men’s minds, acquired for its author European celebrity. What, he asked, is the Third Estate?—Everything. What hitherto has it been in the State?—Nothing. He then proceeded to argue that the Third Estate, in other words the people of France with the exception of the nobles, formed a complete nation by themselves; that by them all useful work was done; and that the nobility was merely an excrescence, preventing the growth and development of national life. The Third Estate is, he said, a nation fettered and oppressed. What would it be without the nobility?—A free and flourishing nation.

Siéyès’ nation was a nation of twenty-five millions. The first two orders numbered together about 1,500,000 persons. That they were a minority was in itself no ground for crushing them. Reason and justice might as well lie on the side of the minority as on that of the majority. But Siéyès’ arguments were in existing circumstances perfectly sound and unanswerable. The nobles represented no national interests, and had long ceased to be the organs through which the nation expressed its wants. To the exercise of political powers they had no claim whatever. Their privileges and prejudices had for years stood in the way of the common good. They were without experience in political life, and as a rule without experience even in matters of government and administration. Their position amongst their fellow-citizens was that of an isolated caste; in short, all the bonds of connection were wanting which cause men to place reliance in others, and to accept them as leaders.

The privileges of the clergy and their claims to exercise power as a special order met with as little favour as those of the nobles. Clergy and laity were to stand on exactly the same footing with regard to civil and political rights. The combined influence of sceptical and liberal ideas made men desire to withdraw from the Church all coercive means of maintaining authority. The press was to be free, worship was also to be free, and nonconformists were to enjoy full civil and political rights. Equality was to prevail within the Church as well as within the State. The government of the Church was to be reorganised on a democratic basis, and the Pope’s authority, as head of the Church, to be confined to matters purely spiritual. Although the provincial nobles were jealous of the great lords, and desired to deprive them of whatever advantages they possessed above themselves, yet the nobility as a body still formed a caste, of which all members, except a small minority, were united in asserting rights and claiming privileges in opposition to the rest of the nation. The clergy, on the contrary, though held together by common interests as ecclesiastics, were torn asunder by the same class divisions that prevailed amongst laymen. The upper clergy, who were all of noble birth, proposed to maintain authority in their own hands and to effect ecclesiastical reform from inside; while the curés, who came from the ranks of the people, demanded State interference, as the only means of securing for themselves a full representation in Church councils, and a just share in the distribution of Church property.

Double representation of the Third Estate.

The question round which for the time discussion centred was the form to be taken by the States-General, as its solution would decide whether political supremacy should rest with the first two orders or with the Third Estate. Nobles and clergy demanded, in the first place, that they should each be represented by as many deputies as the Third Estate; in the second, that the deputies of each order should sit by themselves in a separate chamber, and that each chamber should vote apart. The bourgeoisie, backed by the people, on their side denied the right of the two first orders to a separate representation, and demanded that in any case the deputies of the Third Estate should equal in number the deputies of nobles and clergy combined, and that the three orders should sit together, forming a single chamber. The dispute engendered strong displays of party feeling, leading to riot and bloodshed. The Parliaments, formerly popular for contesting the royal authority, were now hooted and mobbed for supporting the demands of nobles and clergy. If at the present juncture Louis had taken clearly and unreservedly the side of the nation, it might have been possible for the crown to gain immense popularity and influence. The bourgeoisie, however democratic its theories of government, was warmly attached to the monarchy, and thoroughly loyal to the person of the King. But Louis, who had rejected Turgot, was again incapable of making himself the leader of the nation. In summoning the States he had acted, not through policy, but under stress of circumstances which he was unable to control. He expected the deputies of the Third Estate to aid him in subjecting the nobles to taxation, and in carrying out administrative reforms; but he could not understand that they expected him to join with them in destroying every vestige of the old feudal system, and in establishing a completely democratic rule. In relation to the point immediately at issue, the King went so far as it seemed to suit his own purpose, and no further. Accepting Necker’s advice, he consented that the deputies of the Third Estate should equal in number the deputies of both clergy and nobles. Whether after meeting the deputies were to sit as three chambers or as one was left undecided.

CHAPTER III.
THE ASSEMBLY AT VERSAILLES.

The King and the Revolution.

The States-General were opened by the King at Versailles amid a vast concourse on May 5, 1789. There were about 1,200 deputies, of whom about 300 represented the clergy, 300 the nobility, and the other 600 the Third Estate. If the King wished to retain the direction of affairs, it was imperative for him at once to declare for a single chamber. The privileged orders could but involve the crown in their own ruin, whilst behind the deputies of the Third Estate was the nation. Louis, however, was not prepared to accept the change which the formation of a single chamber implied—the abolition of all class distinctions, and the swamping of the nobles in the Third Estate. Necker, though more alive to the necessity of seeking popular support, had as little comprehension of the real situation in which the government stood. He wanted ultimately to establish a constitution with two houses, and regarded as the most pressing work of the moment the restoration of the finances. He did not perceive that civil and political equality was what the deputies of the Third Estate had set their heart upon effecting; and that until they were convinced that the government would be on their side, they would pay no attention to mere financial or administrative reforms. At the opening of the States, after speaking at length on the subject of the finances, Necker advised the deputies to appoint commissioners to settle what questions they would discuss in common session, and what as three separate bodies.

The intention of the Minister probably was that the deputies of the three orders should sit and vote together only when financial and administrative questions were under discussion. All other subjects were to be debated by the three estates sitting apart; and in cases in which they failed to come to an agreement, the final decision was to be left to the King.

Experience, indeed, has been in favour of the belief that, in ordinary times, it is expedient that legislative assemblies should be divided into two chambers. But in 1789 the work before the States-General was not one of ordinary legislation. No good could be accomplished until the abolition of the privileged existence of nobles and clergy had been effected; and as an upper chamber could at that time only be composed of nobles and clergy, such a chamber was certain to thwart the Third Estate in doing that which the nation expected them to do. It was, therefore, the vainest hope that Necker’s policy should give satisfaction to the country and enable the King to retain authority. He could only obtain the leadership of the Assembly by declaring unreservedly for a single chamber. But to adopt this course Louis must have been other than he was. Though he wanted to overcome the opposition of the privileged orders to the crown, he regarded their existence as inseparable from the monarchy. He was unable to conceive a monarchy founded on democratic institutions, and strong in proportion to the trust reposed in it. Education, surroundings, habits, his sense of duty itself forbade him to break loose from his past and accept the position of the People’s King. Yet all vestiges of the old feudal order were doomed to perish, whatever attitude Louis assumed; and it would have been well, both for him and France, could he at once have resigned power or been deposed. For if he refused to lead the attack upon the privileged orders, it would be made with all the greater violence, and government, in the true sense of the word, there would be none. Already disorder and riot were rife in many parts of the country. Peasants refused to pay taxes and feudal dues. Educated men cast suspicion on the intentions of the government. Officials were powerless to act with rigour in opposition to the current of public opinion. Intense excitement everywhere prevailed. In every town and hamlet men waited with eagerness for the speedy accomplishment of the desires which had found expression in the cahiers drawn up to be laid before the States.

Mirabeau.

If Louis was unable to forecast the future, so too was the great mass of his subjects. Amongst the throng of deputies who met together at Versailles, there was but one, the Marquis of Mirabeau, who comprehended the real meaning of the revolution, and foresaw with accuracy the course which events would take. This remarkable man was endowed by nature with enormous energy, mental and physical. While still a youth, he had left his mark for good or for ill wherever he went. He had incurred debts, fought duels, kept order amongst hungry peasants, eating, drinking, and working with them, obtained the good-will of men prejudiced against him, and won the hearts of women. His father, according to the fashion of the time, supported paternal authority by obtaining lettres de cachet from the government, ordering the imprisonment of his son. Mirabeau was imprisoned, now in one fortress, now in another, for months at a time. In early manhood, at the age of twenty-eight, he entered the donjon of Vincennes, a state fortress, where he inhabited a dark, barely-furnished room, and had converse with none but his gaoler. His offences against social order had not been light, for he had deserted his own wife for the wife of another man. But in his vices Mirabeau was but a type of the generation to which he belonged, and the real ground of his imprisonment lay elsewhere. Books and paper were as a favour allowed him. ‘Without books,’ he wrote, ‘I should be dead or mad.’ He read and wrote for fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. After a confinement of more than three years, the quarrel between him and his father was patched up. In 1780 he was released, broken in health, harassed by debts, and blackened in fame, but possessed of a large store of knowledge, a ready pen, a fluent tongue, and a genius for statesmanship which no man in France could rival. Genius was, however, no ground for advancement. A man who had sufficiently powerful interest at court might rise to the highest dignities in Church or State, whatever his incapacity, or whatever the stains on his past life. Mirabeau had no interest at court, while by Louis and his councillors talent was distrusted, and the one statesman that France possessed occupied the position of an unscrupulous adventurer, seeking by whatever means came first to hand to force his way into the ministry. It was no matter of surprise that so signal a victim of arbitrary government should prove an inveterate enemy to the existing order. But Mirabeau did not, through resentment for personal injuries, desire to weaken or degrade the royal authority. He possessed too strong a capacity for the exercise of power. He saw, moreover, too directly into the heart of the situation. He comprehended what no man but himself comprehended at that time, that the real aim of the French people was the sweeping away of all class distinctions, and that the monarchy might be immensely strong if only the King could be brought to adopt new principles of government, in accordance with the democratic spirit of the age. Had he been at the head of affairs he would at once have summoned the States-General and led the way in opening the attack upon the privileged orders. Excluded from all share in the government, he revenged himself by attacking it on every side. The proposition was made to him that he should employ his pen to destroy the popularity of the Parliaments. ‘I will never,’ was his reply, ‘make war upon the Parliaments except in presence of the nation.’ The hesitating and shuffling policy of the ministers; their vain attempts to effect reform through the royal power alone; their efforts to avoid or defer the meeting of the States; and, finally, their refusal, after being driven to call the nation to their aid, to declare for a single chamber, excited his scorn and indignation. He had not only the clear perception that in order to maintain the monarchy the first thing to be done was to crush the privileged orders; he had also the clear perception that the second thing, if indeed it was not of equal importance, was the organisation of government, and that this was impracticable so long as distrust existed between the crown and the nation. When the elections were held, rejected by his own order, he took his seat as representative of the Third Estate of Aix. At Versailles he was the mark of all observers. The wildness of his youth, his long imprisonment, his quarrels with his father, his lawsuits with his wife, his writings, and his eloquence, had given him notoriety throughout France. With the meeting of the States Mirabeau knew that the opportunity had come of making his power felt. ‘At last,’ he said, ‘we shall have men judged by the value of their brains.’

Title of National Assembly adopted by the Third Estate.

The inevitable consequence of the King’s refusal to declare himself against the privileged orders at once ensued. Disputes arose between the deputies as to the form that the legislature should take. There was a small minority of nobles for union, and a large minority of clergy, composed almost entirely of parish priests, who had to choose between alliance with the Third Estate and dependence on their ecclesiastical superiors. The questions at stake were too vital for compromise to be possible, and thus, while the people impatiently awaited redress of grievances, the Third Estate refused to proceed to business until they were joined by the other two. Political excitement grew greater amongst the middle classes, irritation and discontent amongst the lower. The winter had been one of the coldest and longest on record. The price of bread was rising, and misery, which sufferers expected to vanish on the first meeting of the Estates, was on the increase. It had always been a difficult matter to prevent rioting at Paris in times of political excitement or of scarcity, and now both causes combined to create disorder. In the Faubourg St. Antoine and other poor quarters of the city existed a population including great numbers of ruffians, beggars, and destitute workmen, of whom many were strangers from the country, largely brought to Paris by hope of finding bread or labour, and whose passions might readily be worked on with dangerous effect; while pamphleteers and street orators, without sense of responsibility, and full of passionate desire to assure the triumph of the Third Estate, did not measure their words in seeking to rouse popular indignation against the upper orders. Deputies distinguished as opponents of union were mobbed and hustled at Versailles, and their names held up to execration in Paris. The attitude of the capital gave strength to the deputies of the Third Estate, who finally cut the knot by adopting the title of National Assembly, inviting nobles and clergy to join them, and declaring their purpose of proceeding to business without those who refused to do so (June 17).

Royal sitting of June 23.

The assumption of this title was held an act of usurpation by the opponents of union. Court nobles and ecclesiastics appealed to the King to maintain the authority of his crown by interfering in support of their rights. The deputies of the Third Estate had, it was said, grasped at sovereign power to which they had no claim. As yet there had been no direct collision between the Crown and the deputies of the Third Estate. The long inefficiency of the King had, indeed, destroyed belief in the royal power as an instrument of government. Men believed in themselves, and they believed in the nation. They demanded liberty for individuals, and they demanded that the nation should govern itself. Yet, however democratic were the theories that prevailed, the great body of the French people was deeply attached to monarchy as a form of government, and thoroughly loyal to the person of the King. If desire for the establishment of a democratic constitution was intensely strong, there appeared no other means in the first place of destroying the upper orders; in the second, of preventing their resurrection. Had Louis taken the side of the nation, he might, as Mirabeau foresaw, have exercised immense influence over the course of affairs. If he refused, nominal sovereignty would be left to him, but men would be careful that he should have no real power in his hands. Louis was honestly prepared to cede constitutional rights to the country, which should set limits to the royal authority, and secure the persons and properties of his subjects against arbitrary usage. But he would not, so far as he could prevent it, suffer the abolition of class distinctions, or allow the real governing power to pass from himself and his council to the representatives of the nation. Thus, although the deputies of the Third Estate sought to conceal the fact from themselves, they had to contend against the Crown as well as against the nobility. Louis, in alarm for his authority, now thought to maintain it by openly taking the part of nobles and clergy. Marie Antoinette, less patient than her husband, witnessed with extreme resentment and indignation the conduct of the Third Estate. To excited courtiers it seemed as easy a matter for the King to impose his will on the representatives of the nation as it had been for his predecessors in times past to impose theirs on the Parliament of Paris. It was determined that the King should hold a royal sitting or séance, and declare his intentions to the assembled Estates. Meanwhile the deputies of the Third Estate were excluded from their hall on pretext that preparations had to be made for the reception of the King. Fully expecting a dissolution, they repaired to a neighbouring tennis court, where with one voice and hands raised to the sky they swore an oath never to separate before they had established constitutional government. There was a dense crowd outside. All approaches to the court were blocked, and the one deputy who refused to take the oath was with difficulty saved from outrage (June 20). The cause of the upper orders was now weakened by desertions from their ranks. A large number of curés as well as a few nobles joined the deputies of the Third Estate. This in itself, had Louis been well advised, might have warned him against the course that he proposed to take. On June 23 he came in state to the hall, where the whole body of deputies was by his injunction assembled. There, by the mouths of his ministers, he told them that they were to meet as three separate orders. With his consent first obtained, they might form one assembly for the discussion of matters of common interest; from which, however, all the burning questions of the day, ecclesiastical, social, and constitutional, were expressly excepted. Necker, who disapproved the arbitrary form in which the royal will was signified, saved his popularity by refusing to be present on the occasion. Before retiring, Louis ordered all to disperse and assemble next day in their separate chambers. In case of disobedience he would undertake by himself to secure the happiness of his subjects. ‘Seul,’ he said, ‘je ferai le bien de mes peuples.’ After he had gone, most of the nobility and the upper clergy left the hall; but the deputies of the Third Estate as well as many curés kept their seats. The Master of the Ceremonies, De Brézé, asked Bailly, the President, whether he had heard the orders of the King. ‘Yes, sir, we have heard the orders put in the King’s mouth,’ retorted Mirabeau, in words repeated and applauded throughout France, ‘and let me inform you that if your business is to turn us out, you had better ask orders to employ force, for we shall only quit our seats at the bayonet’s point.’ Before dispersing the recalcitrants declared their persons inviolable for all that they said or did as deputies.

Union of the three orders.

After this defiance of the royal authority, the Queen and the court would gladly have obtained the dissolution of the States. Difficulties, however, stood in the way. The financial embarrassments of the Government were still unrelieved. Further, it was clearly impossible for the King to cause his commands to be obeyed, unless he was prepared to appeal to military force, and the consequences of so doing were exceedingly doubtful. Class distinctions prevailed in the army as in other institutions of the old system. The officers, who were all noble, lived in luxury, largely on perquisites made at the men’s expense. The men, cheated of their pay, badly fed, and subjected to a harsh discipline, bitterly resented their wrongs, and despised and hated their officers. If an attempt were made to use intimidation there was great probability that resistance would be offered, that Paris would rise, and that the troops would refuse to fire on the insurgents. Louis was never willing to take decided action, and, for the time, the deputies of the Third Estate were left in enjoyment of victory. The King himself requested the nobles and ecclesiastics, who still kept aloof, to abandon further struggle, and thus after a delay of seven weeks the three Estates were finally constituted as one assembly.

Excitement in Paris.

The evil consequences of that delay were already but too plainly apparent. Since the meeting of the Estates agitation in Paris had spread from day to day. The Government, unable to use arbitrary and violent means of obtaining order, could no longer effectively perform its duties, because no trust was reposed in it. Political liberty threatened to degenerate rapidly into anarchy. No moral restraints existed amongst a people for centuries unaccustomed to self-government. There was no political organisation, and no standard of political morality. There were no recognised leaders weighted with a sense of responsibility, nor journals with a character to maintain. Appeals were made to the lowest passions, rumours and libels circulated without question of their truth or justice. The fiercer and more bitter his language, the more sure was the orator or journalist to gain a hearing and exert influence.

In the garden, surrounded by book and coffee shops, which was attached to the Palais Royal, a palace belonging to the Duke of Orleans—who, although distantly related to the King, had taken the popular side—agitators, mounted on chairs and tables, discoursed to excited throngs on the sovereignty of the people, and denounced the opponents of a single chamber to popular wrath. Here neither police officers nor supporters of the claims of nobles and clergy could enter except at peril of violent and brutal usage. This licence was the more dangerous because the hard times made the people more ready for the commission of criminal actions. Nevertheless, the tradesmen, merchants, and other persons in the middle class of life, who under ordinary circumstances are the first to feel the effects of mob violence, regarded the designs of the court as far more dangerous than the oratory of the Palais Royal. For while the court demanded the maintenance of class distinctions, the demagogues of the Palais Royal demanded their abolition, guaranteed by the establishment of a free and democratic constitution.

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REVOLUTIONARY PARIS

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The fall of the Bastille, July 14.

The government, on the pretext of maintaining order, quartered round and in Paris and Versailles regiments of Swiss and German troops in the service of France. The Queen and the Court desired, if not immediately to dissolve the Assembly, to compel its removal to some provincial town, where the deputies might more readily be forced to accept the terms offered by the King on June 23. Necker, supported by a minority of his fellow-councillors, was opposed to any plans for the intimidation of the Assembly; but he had no influence with the King, and was detested by the Queen and the King’s brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois, of whose projects he was left in ignorance. Louis relied on the troops to overawe the capital, but was averse to resort to military force unless in self-defence. Meanwhile, their neighbourhood increased excitement in Paris, and the middle classes found themselves between two fires. On the one side they feared an armed occupation of the town, and the proclamation of martial law; on the other a rising of the populace, which might end in the dissolution of all authority. The elections of deputies of the Third Estate had been by two degrees. Paris had been divided into sixty districts, returning 120 electors, who had elected twenty deputies to sit in the States-General. These electors, wishing to induce the Government to remove the troops, proposed the establishment of a civic guard for the maintenance of order. It was not, however, an easy matter to obtain the sanction of the Government to a measure that would put an armed force at the disposition of the capital. The National Assembly, agitated by fear lest violence should be exercised against itself, repeatedly besought the King to order the withdrawal of the troops. Louis refused, and at the same time dismissed Necker from office, ordering him to leave the kingdom immediately (July 11). It was on the presence of Necker in the council that the popular party relied as security that force would not be employed against the Assembly or the capital. Accordingly, the news of his dismissal, reported the next morning, set Paris in motion. All believed that troops would immediately advance, and the revolution be suppressed in blood. In the Palais Royal a young man, Camille Desmoulins, leaping on a table, exclaimed, ‘Citizens, they have driven Necker from office. They are preparing a St. Bartholomew for patriots. To arms! To arms! For a rallying sign take green cockades, the colour of hope.’ The leaves were torn from the surrounding trees to serve as cockades. There was, in fact, but one course which Louis could consistently pursue after he had dismissed Necker from office. He must use force to suppress opposition, taking whatever risk there was. But of decisive action there was no chance. The King had dismissed Necker without making up his mind what he would do afterwards. There was no plan formed, and no understanding between different authorities. A regiment of German cavalry charged, first, into a procession parading the streets with a bust of Necker, and afterwards into the Tuileries gardens, dispersing the throngs which excitement and curiosity had brought together. After blood had thus been shed, and the alarm and rage of the populace had increased, no further attempt was made to suppress the insurrection. Officers of the army were afraid to act without authorisation, and could not trust their men, many of whom deserted their regiments. The French guards, 3,600 strong, went over in a body to the people. Paving stones were torn up to erect barricades. The cry was raised for arms; pikes were fabricated by thousands; gunsmiths’ shops were ransacked, military storehouses broken open, and muskets and powder carried off in triumph.

During the following night and day (July 13) the barriers where the excise was levied were set on fire, the prisons opened, and bakers and wine shops pillaged. There were none in authority, and none who obeyed. The electors, sitting at the Hôtel de Ville, usurped what authority they could, which they exercised surrounded by a raging mob at imminent peril of their lives. At their appeal the bourgeoisie began promptly to raise an organised militia force in each of the sixty districts. Early next morning, July 14, the fury of the people was directed against the Bastille, the great State fortress and prison in the Faubourg St. Antoine, the ‘Tower’ of Paris, where for centuries past prisoners, often without charge of crime, had wasted their lives away. Its commander, the Marquis de Launay, had long since pulled up his drawbridges and made ready for defence as he watched the insurrection grow. His garrison was small, consisting only of thirty-two Swiss and eighty-two old French soldiers or Invalides. But the massive walls of the fortress and its double moat would effectually guard it against the assault of an undisciplined multitude. Summoned to surrender by a deputation from the Hôtel de Ville, De Launay replied that he would rather set fire to the powder magazine and blow the place to the skies. The population streamed by thousands to the spot, and the fortress was soon surrounded by a surging mob. An old soldier succeeded in cutting the chain which held up the drawbridge of the outer moat. A shout of triumph was raised. The assailants rushed over the fallen bridge, but only to be confronted by the second moat and unscaleable walls of the fortress. The French guards, bringing with them cannon, joined the besiegers, but all efforts to force the passage of the moat were frustrated. For five hours an incessant fire of musketry had been kept up. A hundred of the assailants lay dead, and but one of the garrison, when the Bastille unexpectedly and suddenly succumbed. The Invalides refused longer to resist, and compelled De Launay to surrender. Hulin, an officer leading the French guards, accepted the terms proposed—pardon and immunity for all. But he could not enforce their observance. The mass of human beings behind knew nothing of what those in front did. Enraged and uncontrollable, the mob broke into the fortress, those behind pushing aside those who went before, and striking blows at random. Six of the garrison were killed. De Launay was sent with an escort of French guards to the Hôtel de Ville. On the way the escort was hustled aside and the old man savagely murdered. His head, fixed on a pike, was carried in triumph about the streets. Late at night the news reached Versailles that the Bastille had fallen. ‘But,’ said Louis, ‘that is a revolt.’ ‘Sire,’ replied his informant, the Duke of Liancourt, ‘it is not a revolt, it is a revolution.’

Establishment of a Municipality and of a National Guard in Paris.

A great revolution had indeed been accomplished. The fall of the Bastille indicated the fall of the old monarchy, in which the King alone represented the nation. Louis had said to the Assembly that, unless he were obeyed, he would secure the happiness of his subjects without its aid, and Paris had replied by rising in support of the Assembly against himself. The falling away of the army had unmistakably revealed his weakness and powerlessness to resist the national will. His brother, the Count of Artois, and other unpopular courtiers, known to be especially hostile to the people’s cause, fled the country in disgust and alarm. Louis himself had no choice but to yield all that was demanded of him. He ordered the withdrawal of the troops, and recalled Necker to office. The Assembly sent eighty-eight of its members to announce the good news to Paris. They were received with enthusiasm, and escorted by thousands of national guards to the Hôtel de Ville, where the electors exercised the functions of a provisional municipality. Two deputies were singled out for special honours. A young and popular nobleman, Lafayette, who had fought in America against the English, and since the meeting of the Assembly had supported the cause of the Third Estate, was by acclamation chosen commander-in-chief of the new militia or national guard. Bailly, a mathematician, who had been president of the Third Estate when the oath was taken in the tennis court, was after the same fashion chosen mayor of Paris. To the blue and red, the colours of Paris first worn by the national guard, was subsequently, on Lafayette’s suggestion, added white, the colour of France. This new flag would, he magniloquently said, make the round of the world. Thus was instituted the famous tricolour, the emblem to France of the revolution.

It only remained for Louis to recognise these new revolutionary authorities, which made the capital of his kingdom independent of him and of his government. Leaving the Queen weeping at Versailles in alarm for his safety, he drove to Paris, attended merely by some members of the Assembly and a few national guards. At the barrier of Passy, the mayor, Bailly, presented him with the keys of the city, the same which, on an occasion dissimilar to this had been presented to Henri IV., when Paris had surrendered to him, ‘He,’ said Bailly to Louis, ‘had made conquest of his people. Now the people have made conquest of their King.’ Arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, Louis fixed a tricolour cockade on his hat and appeared on a balcony in front of the building. The thousands assembled outside applauded him loudly, and shouts of ‘Vive le Roi’ mingled with shouts of ‘Vive la Nation.’ The enthusiasm exhibited in his favour was not unreal. Amongst the multitude present, no stronger desire existed than that of accomplishing the revolution in accordance with the crown.

Risings in the provinces.

While political strife was raging at Paris, in the provinces the people, impatient for relief, were taking upon themselves the work of redressing their wrongs. Since the meeting of the States riots had broken out by scores over the face of the country. Taxes were refused, barriers for the collection of custom and excise duties burnt, the collectors driven off, markets pillaged, municipal officers forced at peril of their lives to fix a price for corn and bread. The news of the great insurrection of July 14 gave courage to agitators, and added fuel to the flame. In Paris, street mobs, goaded by hunger, were not easily restrained from hanging objects of suspicion on the nearest lamp-post. Foulon, an officer of the Government, accused truly or falsely of having said that the people if hungry might eat grass, was savagely murdered. His son-in-law, Berthier, suffered a like fate. Many other persons escaped but narrowly with their lives. Nevertheless, owing to the exertions of the new municipality and the national guard, life and property were more secure in the capital than in many provinces. Risings accompanied by pillage and murder took place in Strasbourg, Rouen, Besançon, Lyons, and other provincial towns. In the east, through Alsace, Franche-Comté, Lorraine, Burgundy and Dauphiny, the rural population sought to settle the question of feudal services by burning together the residences and the title-deeds of the seigneurs. In the Maconnais and Beaujolais, bands of peasants sacked and burned seventy-two country-houses in a fortnight. A panic spread through the country on the report that brigands, instigated by the enemies of the revolution, were on the march to destroy the crops. A general cry was raised for arms; the example set by Paris was followed; the middle classes combined to restore order; provisional municipalities were established and national guards instituted. The order obtained, however, was still most precarious. Municipal officers were in constant danger of falling victims to mob violence, while in country districts national guards often made common cause with the rioters.

Thus the result of the insurrection of July 14, and of the risings in the provinces, was the utter disorganisation of all the old machinery of government. Royal officers where they remained could not exercise authority. The army was in mutiny; the people were armed. New popular authorities had, as it were, of themselves sprung up over the face of the country, and the National Assembly, in place of the royal council, became the centre of government, so far as any government existed.

Decrees of August 4.

The Assembly was far more disquieted by the risings in the provinces than by the insurrection of July 14. The fall of the Bastille assured political power to the middle classes. This burning of country-houses and the refusal to pay taxes and feudal dues struck at all alike, and sapped the base on which the whole framework of society rested. As yet, in the south-west and centre, where feudal dues were less burdensome, riots were isolated and bloodshed rare, but there was every probability that the movement, if unchecked, would spread over the whole country. The injustice of the existing order, by which provinces, towns, and individuals were privileged without regard to public utility, the injury inflicted on agriculture by feudal dues, and the oppressive nature of many rights exercised by seigneurs had been demonstrated over and over again, and were admitted on all sides. In an evening sitting on August 4, the Assembly laid the axe to the root of the old order by adopting decrees based on the principles of unity of State institutions, equality before the law, and individual liberty. There was no province, town, class, or corporation whose special interests these decrees did not touch. They were in part the work of design, in part of the enthusiasm of the moment. No voices were raised in opposition. Nobles, bishops, curés, representatives of towns and provinces, vied with one another in proposing the abolition of privileges and rights which stood in the way of the common good. The decrees declared the feudal order destroyed, deprived seigneurs of the exclusive right of hunting and of keeping rabbits and pigeons, and abolished serfdom and servile dues off-hand; abolished also all special privileges belonging to provinces, towns, and corporations, and laid open to all citizens, without regard to birth, civil, military, and ecclesiastical preferment; and, finally, abolished tithes paid to the Church, and made promise of ecclesiastical reform in the future.

These decrees were not practical laws, but little more than an enunciation of general principles in accordance with which reform was afterwards to be effected. Thus the mass of feudal dues had still to be rendered until compensation had been given to the proprietors; the old taxes were to be paid until a new system of taxation based on principles of equality had been introduced. This hasty legislation could not, therefore, allay discontent, but excited a stronger reluctance on the part of the people to endure burdens, the injustice of which the National Assembly itself publicly proclaimed.

Composition of the Assembly.

The Assembly, on which rested the task of founding a new order amid the ruins of the old, was without political experience or recognised principles of action. It contained about 290 representatives of the nobility, of whom 140 were provincial noblemen, 20 judges in the upper courts, and 125 belonged to the court aristocracy. The clergy had returned 200 curés and only 100 bishops, abbés, and other dignitaries. A few more than 600 deputies represented the Third Estate, of whom 4 were ecclesiastics and 15 noblemen. The great majority were men independent of the Government. The profession by far the most largely represented was the law. There were 360 judges, barristers, and law officers of various kinds. The chamber was fitted up like a theatre, with a semi-circle of seats facing the president’s chair, beneath which was a tribune whence all set speeches were made.

The Reactionary Right.

Four main lines of opinion divided the Assembly roughly into four sections. The majority of nobles and the upper clergy sat together on the president’s right hand, forming the right side of the Assembly. Their standpoint was reactionary, in favour of the privileged orders. The fusion of the three orders having been accomplished against their will and in defiance of the royal authority, they regarded the Assembly’s work as resting on no justifiable foundation, and looked forward to reversing it on the first occasion. Here an officer, Cazalès, eloquently and loyally defended monarchical principles of government; the Abbé Maury, with vehemence and ability, the cause of the upper clergy; and D’Espréménil, a judge in the Parliament of Paris, the institutions of the old order.

The Right Centre.

The second section comprised deputies of all three orders. They were defenders of individual liberty and parliamentary control, but were bitterly opposed to the establishment of democratic institutions. They did not believe in the endurance of monarchy without an aristocracy and aristocratical institutions, and aimed at replacing the effete nobility by an aristocracy of wealth. For the exercise of political rights they would have required a high property qualification; and, copying the constitution of the English parliament, would have established a legislature composed of two houses, in both of which the landed interest was to predominate. They detested insurrection as a weapon, and were thoroughly alive to the danger in which since July 14 all authorities stood—of falling beneath the sway of mob violence. The restoration of order was, from their point of view, the matter of first moment, and they accordingly desired that the Assembly, in place of discussing constitutional questions, should at once turn its attention to the reform of the taxes and to other remedial laws, and that at the same time ministers should be empowered to use coercive measures for the punishment of rioters and the maintenance of the public tranquillity. The upholders of these views, who sat next the reactionary right, were but a small minority. Their most able speakers were two deputies of the Third Estate—Mounier and Malouet, and two nobles—Clermont-Tonnerre and Lally-Tollendal.

The Centre and Left.

The third and most numerous section, forming the centre and left of the Assembly, consisted of curés and deputies of the Third Estate, with a sprinkling of nobles and upper clergy. Though considerable differences of opinion prevailed in this body of seven to eight hundred men, two sentiments were common to all—passion for equality and desire for self-government. Hence no schemes calculated to vest power in the hands of large landed proprietors found favour with them. They were not, however, pure democrats, nor by sentiment republicans. Their real aim was government by the middle classes. To monarchy as a form of government they were not only attached, but regarded its maintenance as necessary to give stability to the constitution they were about to establish. Amongst the most prominent men on this side of the house were Thouret, Merlin of Douai, and other eminent lawyers, the Marquis of Mirabeau, Lafayette, the Abbé Siéyès, two brothers, the Lameths—both of them nobles and officers—and a young and eloquent barrister, Barnave.

The Extreme Left.

The fourth section, sitting on the extreme left—which must be distinguished from the left—was formed of a few deputies, some twenty or thirty in all, who were pure democrats, and whose programme included manhood suffrage, and the eligibility of all citizens to office without property or other qualifications. A republic was their ideal form of government, which they held alone compatible with free and democratic institutions. At the same time they entertained no thought of establishing such a government in France. The possibility of getting rid of the throne had not yet suggested itself to their minds. In the Assembly their opinions were regarded as exaggerated, and their influence was small. Amongst them sat Pétion and Robespierre, whose names afterwards rose into notoriety.

None of these four groups, except the last, properly speaking formed a party of which the members ordinarily voted in a body. There was no concerted action, no party discipline, no recognised leaders. The galleries were often filled by an excited and noisy audience, which interrupted debates and menaced unpopular speakers. Each deputy voted independently, and was subject to be swayed by whatever influence at the moment predominated—were it eloquence, enthusiasm, fear, or prejudice. The provincial nobility followed but sullenly in the wake of the court nobility, and on every opportunity made its hostility manifest. Deputies belonging to the centre and left constantly voted on opposite sides. According to the special point at issue, more or less democratic opinions were entertained by the same person. Thus Lafayette, although as a rule he was found in opposition to Malouet, wished like him for the establishment of a legislature composed of two houses, having become strongly convinced of the advantages of that system through his affection to American institutions. The most advanced group of the whole centre and left, headed by Barnave and the Lameths, sat furthest left, next to Buzot and Robespierre, with whom they not seldom voted.

Causes giving ascendancy to the Left.

In the chamber thus constituted, a variety of causes often gave ascendancy to the group which followed Barnave and the Lameths. The events of June 23 (p. 39) had destroyed confidence in the King, and though not expressed in words fear always prevailed that Louis would hereafter use whatever powers were given to him to effect a restoration of the old order. The reactionary right also refused to work with the advocates of the system of two chambers, such as Malouet and Mounier, thus alienating the less democratic members of the centre and propelling them towards the left. Nobles and ecclesiastics, who had opposed the union of the three orders, in place of seeking to establish a constitution based on monarchical principles, made it their policy to vitiate the Assembly’s work and so increase the elements of disorder as the surest and speediest means of producing reaction. Sometimes they abstained from voting or attending debates; sometimes they interrupted debates; at others they voted with the left against the constitutional right. The ministry was too feeble and too divided to exercise influence over the Assembly. It was without the first requisite for acquiring confidence, a declared and open policy. Necker, whose principles and aims coincided for the most part with those of Malouet and Mounier, always received hearty support from them and their friends. But, proud and irritable, accustomed to command and not to lead, he did not take advantage of the opportunities which he had for forming a ministerial party. While devising expedients for avoiding bankruptcy, he failed even to lay before the Assembly any complete account of the state of the finances. The reactionary right, which never forgave him for recommending the double representation of the Third Estate, and the extreme left, which distrusted him, concurred in attacking him on every opportunity. His popularity rapidly decreased, and his position in the ministry grew weak in proportion as his relations to the Assembly became strained. Mirabeau, the most powerful man in the house, was his enemy. The mass of deputies, without trust in the Government and menaced by the right, looked to the people for support, and through desire of maintaining popularity were the more ready to adopt measures urged on them by the ultra democratic press. Their minds were undisturbed, either by the violent language of Parisian demagogues, or by the existence of riots and bloodshed in many provinces. The one object that they kept steadily in view was the establishment of constitutional government on foundations that should make reaction hopelessly impossible; and compared with this the restoration of order was to them a matter of secondary importance. They had no fear of the people. Following the one-sided philosophy of their day, and leaving out of account the dense ignorance of the lower classes, the pride and prejudices of the upper, they believed that the establishment of a free constitution, followed by remedial legislation, would bring the revolution to an end within the course of a few months, and render the country law-abiding, prosperous, and contented.

Policy of Mirabeau.

How vain was this dream, entertained by those with whom he sat and voted, Mirabeau was well aware. He saw the people ignorant and credulous, without confidence in the middle class, and ready to follow the guidance of whoever promised them most; the middle class unaccustomed to take part in government and divided into factions, which were united merely by common hatred of aristocratic institutions. Under such conditions Mirabeau gave small credit to his countrymen for political capacity, and had no faith in the endurance of any constitution which cast upon the nation the entire work of administration and government. But, on the other hand, he did not seek, like Malouet, to found a strong monarchy on aristocratic institutions. No real aristocracy existed, and the passion for equality was irresistible, for the very reason that it was justified by the incapacity of those classes which had hitherto claimed to rise above their fellow countrymen. The government which Mirabeau regarded as alone suited to the requirements of the time was constitutional monarchy, based on principles of equality and individual liberty, upheld by the confidence of the middle class, and exercising influence over the direction of public opinion. Local administration was to be under the control of the central government; ministers were to have seats in the legislative body; and the king, in case of difference between himself and the legislature, was to have the right of refusing his consent to bills and of appealing by a dissolution to the constituencies. Mirabeau prophesied that unless the distrust which the Assembly felt towards Louis were dissipated, the throne would be overturned by the Parisian populace. His sense of danger quickened his desire to obtain a place in the council. He had many qualities fitting him to the task to which he aspired of at once domineering over Louis, and obtaining a majority in the Assembly to follow his guidance. He had insight into character, was master of his temper, and able to inspire men with his own belief, and to fascinate those who were prejudiced against him. As an orator he was unrivalled. The effect that he produced on his hearers was so powerful that his very opponents applauded him. But there were many drawbacks in his way. He came to the Assembly with an ill reputation that told heavily against him. His life even now was riotous and profligate, and he was known to be harassed by debts and unscrupulous in action. His fellow deputies, afraid of the crown acquiring influence over the Assembly by corruption, even whilst they were under the spell of his genius, were mistrustful of his political integrity. Lafayette refused to have dealings with a man whom he contemned as a libertine. Barnave and the Lameths were Mirabeau’s rivals for popularity, and jealous of the influence that his superior eloquence at times allowed him to exercise. On the side of the Government, which had no chance of surmounting the crisis under any other guidance, he received no encouragement. Necker feared and hated him as a dangerous and unprincipled demagogue, and repelled his overtures; while the aversion of the Queen to all noblemen who took the popular side was intense. ‘I trust,’ she one day said, ‘we shall never be reduced to the painful extremity of seeking aid of Mirabeau.’

Thus circumstanced, Mirabeau did his best to weaken and degrade the Government, expecting that in the course of a few months the King would be compelled to recognise his claims to office. He never missed an opportunity of undermining Necker’s popularity, and while defending with vehemence what he held to be the essential prerogatives of monarchy, maintained sway over the Assembly and the populace by fierce attacks directed against the nobles, the clergy, and the court.

Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The first legislative work of the Assembly after the decrees of August 4 (p. 50), was a Declaration of the rights of man, which, in general language, stated the aims which the greater part of the Assembly had in view. This manifesto of the principles of the revolution declared that men have natural and imprescriptible rights to liberty, property, and security, and also the right of resisting tyranny; that men are born equal in rights; that all citizens are equal in the eye of the law, and are equally admissible to all offices without other distinctions than those of virtue and talent; that the nation is sovereign, and that laws are the expression of the general will. In accordance with these principles, the Declaration announced the abolition of all orders and corporations, and proclaimed liberty of the press and liberty of worship.

Veto given to the King.

Debates on the form to be given to the new legislature followed the adoption of the Declaration of the rights of man. The proposal that there should be two houses was negatived by 499 against 89 votes. The new legislature was to meet every two years. The question whether the King was to have power to refuse his consent to decrees or exercise a so-called veto upon them was the cause of great excitement both at Versailles and Paris. Ultra-democratic agitators and journalists declared that to allow the King a share in the legislative power was to wrong the sovereignty of the nation. The relation existing between Louis and the Assembly was thoroughly false. The deputies of the centre and left were eager to avoid coming into collision with him, but were aware that he was only following by compulsion in their wake. On the ground that the nation was entitled to choose its own form of government, they took for granted that Louis must sanction without question or criticism all constitutional decrees. But they dared not trust the King, whom they excluded from any share in the formation of the new constitution, with authority which he might hereafter employ to subvert it. On the question of the veto a compromise was adopted, and the King empowered to refuse to pass the same decree during the sitting of two consecutive legislatures (September 20).

Scarcity of bread.

While the Assembly was engaged in discussion on the rights of man, all the causes which had been productive of crime and riot were still at work. The price of bread remained high after the harvest. This was due in part to deficiency in the crops, but much more generally to interference with the corn trade. The Assembly, acting in accordance with the free trade theories of the Economists, annulled all regulations impeding the free circulation of corn and flour. But the people, ignorant, distrustful and fierce, used the power that was in their hands to carry out the old system more methodically, threatening municipal officers with personal violence unless they took measures to insure that markets were well supplied. Pillage of corn on transit and purchases made by public bodies stopped ordinary trade, and produced an appearance of scarcity even where corn was plentiful. In every large town bread was sold under cost, the municipalities making good the loss to the bakers. To provision Paris, convoys of flour were brought into the town under military escort; large purchases of foreign corn were made, the Government supplying funds; and by these means bread was sold at about three halfpence the pound. But bread, if cheap, was scarce. Purchasers stood for hours in long ranks or queues at the bakers’ doors, and those who came last often left empty-handed. On the municipality and the national guard devolved the task of maintaining order. The national guard formed an organised police force. Most of those who served were volunteers, but 6,000, with whom had been incorporated the French guards, were paid and lodged in barracks. The officers were elected by the men. Lafayette, the commander-in-chief, was a brave and chivalrous soldier, whose enthusiasm for liberty and equality was unmixed with motives of personal aggrandisement. He was very popular with his troops, but his influence over them was confined within narrow limits. The guard, composed principally of the middle and lower middle classes, retained its character of a citizen force, possessing a strong political bias, and capable at any time of taking a course of its own.

The 6th October.

During the month of September the idea of going to Versailles and bringing the royal family to Paris fermented in the minds of the poorer inhabitants of the city. There were rumours that the King intended flight. The hungry people believed that their sufferings were solely due to the intrigues of reactionary nobles and ecclesiastics, and that bread would be abundant were the King once securely established in their midst. Whatever was proposed at Paris was known at Versailles. Since the revolution of July, plans of retreat to Metz and other towns had been urged on Louis. It was impossible to adopt this course without contemplating resource to arms. The Queen was willing, but Louis preferred to let events drift on sooner than give occasion to his subjects to throw on him the reproach cast on Charles I., of having roused civil war and caused the shedding of blood. Meanwhile the policy pursued was of a piece with that which preceded the fall of the Bastille. Paris was defied by bringing an additional force of a thousand foreign troops, the regiment of Flanders, from Arras to Versailles, but no further measures were taken to repel aggression. The officers of the royal body-guard held a banquet in honour of the new comers in the palace theatre before a large audience. The occasion was taken to make a strongly pronounced display of royalist sentiment. Insulting words were spoken against the Assembly; national toasts were left undrunk; the tricolor replaced by white cockades. The King was induced to come to the theatre, and the Queen, with the Dauphin in her arms, went the round of the table, making gracious speeches (October 1). Exaggerated reports of what had taken place spread through Paris. National guards were eager to avenge the insult offered to the tricolour, which, it was said, had been trampled under foot. Early on the morning of October 5 many thousands of hungry women began a march from Paris to Versailles, stopping and forcing all of their own sex whom they met on the way to accompany them. Bands of men soon followed, and the national guards, in place of opposing the movement, compelled Lafayette to march at their head after the mob. There was heavy rain all day, and the women on their arrival at Versailles were weary, fasting, and wet. They surrounded the palace, and broke into the hall of the Assembly, shouting, in reply to the speeches of the deputies, ‘Bread, bread, and not so many words!’ All through the day new bands continued to arrive, composed of both men and women. The royal body-guard, between whom and the mob shots were exchanged, were withdrawn within the palace gates. A little before midnight Lafayette at last arrived at the head of an orderly force of 20,000 men. He set watches at the palace gates, and afterwards entered to take a short rest. But at daybreak some of the mob broke into the palace courts, killed two soldiers of the body guard who fired on them, wounded others, and burst into the ante-room of the Queen’s bedchamber. Marie Antoinette, roused by her women, fled for her life to the King’s apartment. The alarm was given, and national guards arrived on the spot in time to avert more bloodshed, and to drive back the intruders. Louis, who had not been able to decide on flight while he still had opportunity, yielded to the will of the populace. A dense crowd was assembled in front of the palace, shouting, ‘The King to Paris!’ Louis stepped out on a balcony, in sign of assent. The popular instinct rightly fixed on the Queen as much more hostile to the revolution than the King. As she stepped out after her husband, with her girl and boy by her side, voices from below shouted, ‘No children.’ Pushing the children back, she bravely advanced without hesitation alone, while Lafayette, afraid for her safety, sought to make her peace with the people by stooping and kissing her hand. All steps were now turned towards Paris. First went a disorderly mob, rejoicing in their capture of the royal family, and shouting that bread would be plentiful, for they were bringing with them the baker, the baker’s wife, and the baker’s boy. The heads of the slain body-guards, ghastly trophies of their triumph, were carried on pikes. The royal carriages, surrounded by national guards, followed in the wake of the mob. On their arrival in Paris, the King and Queen were conducted to the Tuileries. The Assembly, which after a few days followed the King, was established in a riding-school in the neighbourhood of the palace.

CHAPTER IV.
THE CONSTITUTION.

Results of movement of October 6.

The movement of October 6 was not, like the rising of July 14, unpremeditated. The scarcity of bread had been made use of by agitators to suggest to the populace the idea of bringing the King to Paris. Their object was to place both the King and the Assembly immediately under the influence of the capital. To the Duke of Orleans at the time was ascribed the intention of driving the royal family from Versailles, and obtaining for himself, if not the throne, a regency. The Duke, unprincipled and of mean capacity, was incompetent, if he had the ambition, to play a prominent part in the revolution. The possession of great wealth assured him hangers-on and partisans, but he was generally despised, and no man of any standing ever openly espoused his cause. Deputies of the centre and left, as well as the municipality and Lafayette, regarded the residence of the court at Paris as security against attempts to raise civil war by the removal of the King and the division of the Assembly. From this time the royal family was in fact in the keeping of Lafayette, whose troops composed the palace guard. The court could see nothing in the event but one more act of popular violence, which must before long cause reaction. After the fall of the Bastille, the King’s brother, the Count of Artois, had left France. Many court nobles, including deputies of the reactionary right, now took the same course, with full expectation of shortly returning and finding the old order of things restored. Two leaders of the right centre, Mounier and Lally-Tollendal, quitted the capital on the plea that their lives were in danger, and that the Assembly was not free. It was true that those who took the lead in defending unpopular opinions were subject to menace and insult, but it was not true that deputies sitting on the right were precluded from taking part in the debates or voting according to their pleasure. On the contrary, if the galleries were often noisy and abusive, bishops and nobles found opportunities not only of replying at length to their opponents, but also of obstructing proceedings for hours by mere clamour. The ordinary form of voting, which was simply by rising and sitting, prevented the frequent publication of division lists. Much important work, in which all could take part in safety, was done in private committees, and drafts of laws prepared in them were often adopted by the Assembly with little alteration. The withdrawal of deputies only helped to complete the disorganisation of an already divided minority.

The Jacobins.

While the right side of the Assembly, in consequence of desertions, disorganisation, and intimidation, became constantly less able to exert influence over the centre, the left acquired new sources of strength. With the object of concerting common action, a few deputies used to meet in a building in the Rue St. Honoré, belonging to some Dominican friars, who were commonly called Jacobins, because the church of St. Jacques had been assigned to them when, in the thirteenth century, they first arrived in Paris. In this building was organised a debating club, entitled by its founders the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, but which acquired celebrity under the name of the Jacobins. All deputies of the left joined it, as well as many persons who were not members of the Assembly, amongst whom were the most radical politicians and journalists of Paris. Whatever questions were debated in the Assembly were at the same time debated in the club, where democratic opinion was more pronounced, and put forward with less reserve. Barnave was in the club a more popular orator than Mirabeau, and Robespierre, who could hardly obtain a hearing in the Assembly, was listened to with attention and applause. Thus the existence of the Jacobins gave organisation to the more democratic party at a time when organisation was nowhere else to be found.

[Larger]

FRANCE IN DEPARTMENTS 1790

Longmans, Green & Co., London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta & Madras.

The Constitution.

Under the influences above described, fear of reaction, belief in theory, and desire for popularity, the Assembly completed the constitution and carried reform into every department of the state. Its work was based on principles of uniformity, decentralisation, and the sovereignty of the people, and whatever institutions clashed with these were swept away. The old division of the territory by provinces was abandoned, and France was divided into eighty-three departments, all as nearly as possible of the same extent, and named after geographical features, such as rivers and mountains. The eighty-three departments were subdivided into 374 districts. In every department was an elected administrative body for the management of its affairs; in every district an elected administrative body, subordinate to the administration of the department, for the management of affairs special to the district. These bodies were composed each of a general council and a permanent executive, styled the directory. In every district the former divisions, called communes, were left unaltered. Of these communes there were no less than 44,000 in France, some being large towns, whilst others were mere villages. The local affairs of these communes were placed under the direction of municipalities. The members of these municipalities were elected by all men inhabiting the commune twenty-five years old, and paying yearly in direct taxes, according to a reformed system of taxation, a sum varying from eighteen pence to two shillings, the value of three days’ labour. Manhood suffrage would have given 6,000,000 voters, while this qualification limited their number to about 4,300,000 only. Persons qualified to vote were required to serve in the national guard, and were called active citizens, whilst those disqualified were known as passive citizens. For the election of the administrative bodies of the district and the department, as well as of deputies to the legislature, the system adopted was by two degrees. There were many primary assemblies, consisting of all active citizens in each department, each of which chose a certain number of electors, who in turn elected the administrative bodies of the districts and of the department, as well as the deputies who were to represent the department in the legislature. The qualification for being a member of a municipality, or of any administrative body, was the payment yearly in direct taxes of a sum varying from six to eight shillings. A special and higher qualification was required for sitting in the legislature—the payment in direct taxes of a marc, in value nearly fifty shillings.

Judicial reform.

The new administrative divisions served as judicial divisions also. The old courts, including the parliaments, were one after another abolished. Each district was divided into cantons, and the primary assemblies in each canton elected judges, called justices of the peace (juges de paix), for the trial of petty causes. Every district had a civil, every department a criminal court, of which the judges were respectively elected by the electors of the district and the department. Persons belonging to any branch of the legal profession were eligible as judges, who were elected for six years only. Much directly remedial legislation accompanied this new framework. Procedure was rendered more favourable to the accused. Trial by jury on the English system was adopted in criminal cases, every department having its grand jury. Securities were taken against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and the law was made the same for all, without distinction of persons. A new penal code was drawn up which contrasted most favourably with the criminal law in force in other countries. Heresy and magic were no longer recognised as crimes. Torture was abolished, and the punishment of death confined to four or five offences.

Church property appropriated by the State.

Economical and financial reforms were also effected. Internal custom houses were removed, monopolies and trade restrictions abolished. The Assembly, however, trod here with more cautious steps than when effecting constitutional and administrative reforms. The tariff of export and import duties was modified, but fear of injuring French industries prevented the adoption of free trade principles in regulating the commercial relations between France and other countries. The restoration of the finances in the midst of revolution was not a work to be easily accomplished. The Assembly delayed to abolish the old taxes until a new system of taxation was organised, but meanwhile thousands refused to pay them, and the revenue proportionately decreased. To meet the expenses of government Necker was compelled to borrow, and in the autumn of 1789 the State debt reached about 43,750,000l. To prevent its increase and to meet the claims of creditors, the Assembly had resource to Church property. By the abolition of tithes on August 4, a revenue of 5,818,750l. passed into the hands of landed proprietors and agriculturists. The Church, however, remained possessed of property valued at a capital of more than 100,000,000l., bringing in a revenue of about 3,500,000l. All this property was declared to be at the service of the State, which undertook henceforth to provide for the clergy. Crown lands and Church lands to the value of 17,500,000l. were offered for sale, and state paper money to the same amount issued in the form of notes of the value of 44l., bearing a forced currency and called assignats, which were to be used in payment of state creditors, and were to be received back by the state from purchasers of the land so offered for sale, and thus to be gradually withdrawn from circulation and destroyed.

The upper clergy, supported by the nobles, vehemently opposed these measures, which entirely altered the status of the clergy. The clergy regarded themselves as administrators of property for Church purposes, and as independent of state influence; whereas they would henceforth be brought into close dependence on the state and lose the social position which wealth and independence gave them. The Abbé Maury accused the Assembly of interfering with the rights of property, and of being guilty of an act of spoliation. But the supporters of the new laws formed an overwhelming majority. Sceptics and theists, Jansenists who sought to reform the Church in accordance with the primitive usages of Christianity, lawyers who were merely following the legal traditions of the old monarchy in arguing that the state interest was paramount, informed the bishops that the clergy were not proprietors, but merely administrators of national property, who were justly deprived of a trust which they had executed ill. By the sale of Church lands the Assembly designed not merely to restore the finances, but by motives of self-interest to bind thousands to the work of revolution by indissoluble ties, since every purchaser of Church lands, every holder of assignats, every state creditor, would have a direct interest in the maintenance of the new order.

Civil constitution of the clergy.

The laws for the appropriation and sale of Church property were followed by laws for the reform of the Church. Monasteries and nunneries were suppressed, the existing inmates being pensioned and left at liberty to return to the world or live in such houses as were assigned to them. A special code, entitled the ‘Civil Constitution of the Clergy,’ undertook to carry out in the Church what had been already done for the state. The old diocesan and parochial divisions were abandoned. Every department was made a bishopric, and the boundaries of the parishes were changed according to convenience. Bishops were to be elected by all the electors of the department, curés by the electors of each district. Bishops were to signify their election to the Pope, but not to seek confirmation of their appointments at his hands. Chapters and ecclesiastical courts were abolished, and in exercising his functions each bishop was to be assisted by an ecclesiastical council, composed of chaplains selected amongst the curés of the diocese. The incomes of bishops were lowered, and those of curés raised. The whole expense of the establishment was estimated at nearly 3,000,000l.

Federation, July 14, 1790.

It was only by degrees that these changes were carried out. The municipalities and other administrative bodies were elected during the spring of 1790, the new judges not till the autumn, while the Civil Constitution of the Clergy came into force in the summer of the same year. An enormous strain was laid upon the patriotism and intelligence of the country. Active citizens were incessantly called upon to give time and thought to public affairs, by taking part in elections and serving in the national guard; while there were more than a million of unpaid administrative and municipal officers charged with important duties and great responsibility. All the local business of the departments devolved on them, the maintenance of roads and bridges, the police regulations, the care of hospitals, the imposition and collection of taxes, the sale of national property, and generally the carrying out of the decrees of the Assembly. Nevertheless, the country responded with admirable energy. Men believed that a new era of freedom and prosperity was about to open, and numbers came forward who unsparingly devoted time and money in discharge of civic duties, arduous and often dangerous. During the spring all over France the inhabitants of different villages, towns, and provinces met together to hold federations, or feasts of union, in honour of the new constitution. On July 14, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, a federation for the whole of France, at which the King presided, was held at Paris. Every department sent its deputation of national guards, who came to the number of 15,000 men. An altar was raised in the middle of the Champ de Mars, where Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, said mass, and blessed the banners of the departments. The thousands assembled swore with one voice to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the King. Louis, from his throne, took an oath to maintain the constitution, and the air resounded with shouts of ‘Long live the King.’ The Parisians entertained the visitors, and the day closed amid general lightheartedness and rejoicing. The Bastille was already razed to the ground, and crowds came to dance on the place where it had stood.

The nobles and the revolution.

The joy and enthusiasm exhibited at the festival of the federation was a genuine expression of desire for union entertained by the main and best part of the population, but this desire rested on no substantial basis. As the Assembly continued its work divisions multiplied, party spirit increased in violence, and the country, in place of enjoying order and settled government, drifted further in the direction of anarchy. The upper nobility did not conceal its detestation of the work of the revolution, or its expectation that the whole would be reversed. Most great nobles left the country, and establishing themselves at Coblentz or Turin proscribed all who took part in the revolution, threatened invasion, and called on foreign powers to restore the King to his rights by force. Those who remained in France assumed an attitude of scornful defiance, and by protests and intrigues sought to stir up hatred against the Assembly, and to bring it into contempt with the country. The lower nobles, if in some way losers, would have greatly gained by the revolution if it had proceeded no further; but various causes induced them to declare against it. The Assembly made no efforts to conciliate them, and a decree abolishing titles and armorial bearings had deeply hurt the pride of the whole order (June 9). By many it was held a point of honour to remain true to their caste; and, in fact, those who gave support to the revolutionary laws were placed under a social ban. Many nobles quitted the country with their families, owing to the insecurity of their lives. Those who were arming on the frontiers brought on all who belonged to their order the suspicion of being their accomplices. The peasantry needed no incentive to turn upon the seigneurs. Although the Assembly had abolished the feudal rights of a servile origin, and those which represented sovereignty, it maintained, until compensation was made to the owners, all dues presumed to have had their origin in agreement, and to represent the price paid for the possession of land. The arrangement was just, and, if it had been feasible, would have been of advantage to almost everyone interested. But to effect it a strong government was required, and France was in the midst of revolution. The peasants, in whose minds all feudal rights were inextricably bound up together, refused to recognise legal distinctions between them. The machinery, moreover, provided by the Assembly for effecting enfranchisement, in place of being speedy and simple, was complicated and in many cases practically inoperative. Hence the relations between peasants and seigneurs, as the revolution advanced, grew more and more embittered. While the owners of the dues threatened suits, their debtors resorted to violence. Scenes similar to those witnessed in the east in 1789 now occurred over a large portion of the country. Again and again, in 1790 and 1791, in the centre, in La Marche and Limousin, further south in Perigord and Rouergue, in the west in Bretagne, as well as in the east in Lyonnais, Alsace, Franche-Comté, and Champagne, peasants and vagabonds went about the country in bands, burning country-houses and title-deeds, and murdering those who attempted resistance.

Weakness of the Central Government.

The central government, whose duty it was to protect life and property, was impotent even to attempt the restoration of order. The Assembly, through fear that the King would use authority for the undoing of its work, had left him without means of enforcing obedience to the laws. His only agents were the administrative bodies, and he had no means of compelling them to perform their duties. The highest authority in reality rested with the administrative bodies which were lowest in the hierarchical scale—namely, with the municipalities. Of these there were no less than 44,000, each acting independently of the other, and though, according to the constitution, bound to carry out the instructions of the directories of districts and departments, able to disregard them with impunity. For the maintenance of order a Riot Act had been passed, but that the King might not take advantage of it for the suppression of constitutional rights, the municipalities alone had been empowered to put it in force. Sometimes municipal officers were unable, sometimes unwilling, to call out the national guard for the forcible dispersion of rioters. In towns the bourgeoisie served on the national guard, and there was no want of educated men to hold office. But in rural districts there were no inhabitants except a few nobles and curés and an unlettered peasantry. In hundreds of instances the mayor and his colleagues could neither read nor write, spoke only their own patois, and were incapable even of understanding the laws that they were required to enforce. National guards, in place of protecting the noble and his family from harm, took part with their neighbours in destroying their dwelling, and in maltreating all whom interest or prejudice incited them to regard as conspirators against the revolution.

Mutinies in the army.

Though troops of the line could be called out by municipalities to aid in the enforcement of the Riot Act, their presence was in towns but an additional cause of disorder. Class feeling was strongly pronounced in the army, and the men turned upon their officers, accusing them of extortion and oppression. All over the country, wherever regiments were quartered, troops mutinied, demanding milder discipline and higher pay, forming councils, seizing military chests, and compelling officers to render account of the sums that passed through their hands. These frequent mutinies alarmed men who closed their eyes to outrages committed by peasants. Supported by a large majority in the Assembly, the Marquis of Bouillé suppressed with heavy loss of life a serious mutiny that broke out in a Swiss regiment, Châteauvieux, stationed at Nancy (August 31). Reforms were afterwards effected both in army and navy. The pay of the men was raised, and juries composed of both men and officers instituted for the trial of military offences.

Schism in the Church.

The upper clergy, like the nobles, were alienated from the revolution by the fusion of the three orders in one chamber, and by the appropriation of Church property, and the civil constitution of the clergy, were rendered irreconcilable enemies. They accused the Assembly of seeking to destroy the Catholic religion, and denounced the civil constitution as unlawful interference with matters of Church government and discipline, which, as being matters of faith, were beyond the cognisance of the state. But these attempts to excite hostility against the Assembly had little success. The great body of the nation had its interests far too closely bound up with the revolution to be tempted into a crusade against it. The peasantry had no quarrel with ecclesiastical changes which affected neither eyes nor ears. The civil constitution itself did but reform the Church on the basis laid down in the cahiers. It was only in the south where the existence of Protestants excited religious rivalry, and the population was most fanatic and intolerant, that the work of the Assembly met with any serious resistance. At Perpignon, Tarn, Toulouse, and other towns, the election of administrative bodies and the closing of the monasteries gave rise to rioting and loss of life; while at Nimes, where Protestants formed a third of the inhabitants, the streets for three days ran with blood. Amongst the lower clergy there was small disposition to follow the lead of their ecclesiastical superiors. The state, which had appropriated church property, had improved their material condition, and raised their position within the Church. Of the monks, two-thirds elected to abandon monastic life. Nevertheless, the arguments employed against recognition of the civil constitution disturbed the minds of the curés, and the enforcement by the Assembly of an oath as a condition for holding any benefice or office, placed in the hands of the bishops, who had been driven by the loss of their revenues into unappeasable hostility to the revolution, an arm of which they were not slow to avail themselves, and by which they created a schism within the Church (November 27). This oath engaged the taker to be faithful to the nation, the law, and the King, and to maintain the constitution. The object which the Assembly had in view was to replace bishops who refused to take part in carrying out the new laws by men attached to the revolution. The fact, however, that the oath might be interpreted to imply acknowledgment of the lawfulness of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the provisions of which were inconsistent with the Papal system, was left out of account. The Pope declared that those who had taken it were schismatics, and cut off from communion with the Church. Passive acceptance of the civil constitution was, therefore, no longer possible to the curés. Of 138 bishops and archbishops only four took the oath, and two-thirds of the secular clergy refused it. Many members of the regular orders, however, took it, so that in the end about 60,000 ecclesiastics, or half of the clergy of France, accepted the new arrangements.

By the imposition of this oath discord was aroused in every department. The Assembly granted nonjurors a pension, and allowed them to officiate in parish churches. The result was that in two-thirds of the parishes of France there were two ministers, nominally of the same persuasion, struggling, the one to gain, the other to maintain, influence over the flock. The constitutional priest represented the nonjuror, or former incumbent, as a plotter against the laws and the constitution; the latter represented the intruder as a schismatic, incapable of administering any sacrament, so that persons married or children baptised by him were in reality neither married nor baptised. Here nonjurors were regarded as enemies to the State; there the constitutional clergy as enemies to religion; and whichever side was the stronger proceeded to acts of violence against the other. Generally, in the north of France, the nonjurors had comparatively small influence; and it was only in certain provinces, where they had the support of the peasantry—in Poitou, Auvergne, Alsace, and parts of Artois, Franche-Comté, Champagne, Languedoc, and Bretagne—that any large portion of the population exhibited zeal in their behalf.

Bold and radical reformers as the makers of the constitution proved themselves, monarchical sentiment and distrust of the political capacity of some million and a half of their countrymen had caused them at times to shrink from carrying out fully Rousseau’s theory of the sovereignty of the people. Hence, while their work was on one side attacked by the party of reaction, on the other it was decried by the extreme left, as being in contradiction to the principles which the Assembly had itself proclaimed in the Declaration of Rights. Outside the Assembly these views were even more strongly expressed. ♦Brissot.♦ One of the most noted journalists of the time, Brissot, combined with ultra-democratic tendencies a firm belief in the advantages of individual liberty, and was a zealous exponent of opinions subsequently known as Girondist. His ideal form of government, which he aspired to see established in France, was a democratic republic, where no civil or political distinctions existed between man and man; where habits of local government and obedience to the law allowed, without detriment to public order, the action of the central government to be barely visible; where principles of free trade, liberty of the press, and religious toleration were carried systematically out; where education, respect for labour, simple and virtuous habits of life prevailed amongst all classes. On the ground that vice and corruption readily found footing in large towns, Brissot was averse to the capital exercising political ascendancy over the country. ‘Without private morality,’ he said, ‘no public morality, no public spirit, and no liberty.’ The goal here pointed out was truly Utopian as compared with the actual condition of things in France. Nevertheless, Brissot was credulous enough to believe that, owing to the beneficial influences of general education and free institutions, its attainment would be possible in the course of some twenty or thirty years.

Desmoulins.

In Camille Desmoulins the levelling principles of the revolution found their ablest advocate. He belonged to the lower section of the middle class; and, while speaking in the name of the people, gave expression to the intense jealousy with which men in his position of life regarded claims of property or of birth to political or social distinction. Young, naive, and enthusiastic, Desmoulins was incapable of throwing dust in his own eyes or in the eyes of others, and from the first avowed that even the form of monarchical government was incompatible with the principles that his party held. Since, however, the Assembly ordained that France was to have a king, he expressed his readiness to take off his hat when Louis passed by, but he refused to recognise Marie Antoinette as Queen, and only made mention of her as the King’s wife. Desmoulins was no precisian like Brissot, and did not concern himself with the moral disposition of his fellow-countrymen. When attacking men whom he designated as ‘reactionaries’ and ‘aristocrats,’ without heed of consequences, he made use of every arm which served his end—irony, calumny, and gross exaggeration. The prevailing state of anarchy he made light of. Rousseau had said that the people were by nature merciful and forgiving, and his disciples palliated acts of ferocity on the score of ignorance and misery. Was it to be expected, Desmoulins asked, that after centuries of debasement liberty could be obtained without a little blood-letting?

Marat.

Marat, a writer of a third type—called, after the title of his journal, the ‘People’s Friend’—had no faith in any of the distinctive principles of the time. He did not believe in the goodness of human nature, nor in reason as the main lever by which to reconstitute society and government, nor in the political capacity of his countrymen, and was as ready to throw suspicion on the people’s nominees as Brissot on the integrity of men put in office by the King. He did not regard either commercial or individual liberty as necessarily calculated to increase the happiness and prosperity of the masses. The goal to which he pointed was a shadowy one of a democratic state, where mediocrity ruled, and government provided that the working-classes lacked neither labour nor bread. His means were the re-establishment of absolute power and the use of force. Since officials were corrupt, the upper classes seeking power merely for selfish ends, the people ignorant and easily deceived, Marat proposed to invest a dictator with authority to establish genuine equality by crushing under foot the possessors of wealth and talent. As, however, there appeared no probability of the adoption of this plan, he filled the pages of his journal with incentives to murder and insurrection, advising the people to secure their happiness by rising and killing their enemies in a body. Some thousands of heads laid low, the true era of freedom and prosperity would open.

Sources of influence of ultra-democrats.

Besides Brissot, Desmoulins, and Marat, there were a number of other writers who in words declared their loyalty to the constitution, while they excited discontent against it, called in question the patriotism and good faith of all who did not agree with themselves, and rendered harder the task of maintaining order. They had different aims and different views of life, but on certain points they were all agreed, and for the time the points of agreement alone came into prominence. With one voice they cast bitter reproaches on the Assembly for dividing Frenchmen into active and passive citizens, denying the suffrage to the latter, and excluding them from the national guard. So, again, they denounced the royal veto on decrees, on the ground that it subjected the will of the sovereign people to the will of the king. They condemned the Riot Act, and attacked the Assembly whenever sanction was given to the employment of military force against rioters. When the mutiny at Nancy was suppressed in blood, a loud cry of indignation was raised against Lafayette and other deputies who on that occasion abandoned the popular side. The ultra-democrats formed undoubtedly but a minority of the population. The majority of Frenchmen were content with the constitution, and had no desire to make more radical changes than those already accomplished. Many causes, however, enabled the ultra-democrats to exercise influence quite out of proportion to their numerical strength. It was not merely that the Government was weak, but also that there was no cohesion between classes, and that there was no class capable of leading the nation by obtaining its entire confidence. Suspicion of the nobles was so strong that they were already nearly in the position of a proscribed class. The bourgeoisie had not the habit even of administering local affairs, and was itself regarded with suspicion by the class beneath it. The people, both ignorant and discontented, regarded those men who were for the time in office as responsible for their misery. If corn and bread were dear, the municipal officer who would not lower their price was denounced as an aristocrat, and his life was threatened. Men of the middle class, engaged in professional and other pursuits, withdrew in large numbers from political life. The ultra-democrats, active, united, and unscrupulous, were therefore able, although a minority, to put themselves forward as representatives of France, and gradually to engross the direction of affairs in their own hands.

Influence exercised by Jacobin clubs.

In the National Assembly which represented France as it was in 1789, the party did not, as has been seen, number more than from twenty to thirty, but its weakness in the Assembly was fully atoned for by its strength in the Jacobins. This society had developed into a political organ which was none the less powerful because its authority was not recognised by the laws. During 1790 and 1791 Jacobin clubs were established in most provincial towns, and even in mere villages. They were generally affiliated to the head or mother society at Paris, with which they maintained a regular correspondence. Thus, at a time when all other bonds of cohesion had been destroyed or had fallen away, there was rising into existence over France, outside the constitution, a network of authorities, directed from a common centre in Paris. The clubs, in fact, perpetually interfered with the administrative bodies, tendering advice which often assumed the form of dictation or intimidation, and were always able, if they pleased, to get up demonstrations in favour of their own views. They represented that spirit of distrust which was everywhere felt and seemed to pervade the very air men breathed; and if more moderate politicians disapproved the violent language often used in them, and their assumptions of administrative authority, they did not desire their suppression, for the reason that their fear of danger from this source was less than their fear of the triumph of reactionists and the undoing of the work of the revolution.

In September 1790, the ministry had been dissolved in consequence of attacks made on it by the Jacobins of Paris. Necker, painfully alive to his loss of popularity, left the country unregretted (September), and his colleagues, alarmed at the charges brought against them, shortly afterwards resigned. Louis after this put men in office known to be opposed to the restoration of the old order, but they possessed as little influence on the Assembly as their predecessors. The right refused them support, because they did not belong to the party of reaction; and the left, because their attachment to the existing constitution was called in question.

Commune of Paris.

Besides the Jacobin Club, other machinery existed at Paris by aid of which the ultra-democrats were gradually paving the way for their own advent to power. In September 1790, the commune of Paris was reorganised in accordance with a special law, being divided into 48 sections, each of which had its primary assembly, composed of active citizens. Out of a population of 800,000, 84,000 were entitled to vote. Each of the 48 primary assemblies, commonly known as the sections, had a permanent committee, whose business it was to execute the orders of the municipality, and to carry out police regulations within the section. The municipality itself, of which Bailly was re-elected mayor, consisted of a general council of 96 and an executive of 44 members. It did its best to maintain order and support the constitution. Its position, however, was a difficult one. Work was scarce, crime rife, the prisons crowded. Liberty of speech and of the press was on all sides abused. There were no laws by which political agitation, though it took the form of treason to the constitution, could be legally suppressed. In the sections, owing to the withdrawal into private life of men of moderate views, the ultra-democrats were often able to obtain the upper hand. The permanent committees, in place of obeying the municipality, sometimes disputed authority with it or took an independent course of their own. All the 48 primary assemblies were entitled to meet whenever eight of their number made the demand in legal form. In the poorer sections agitators, by unceasing hostile criticism, undermined amongst the lower classes the popularity of the Assembly, of the municipality, of Lafayette, and of the national guard. Amongst many popular clubs, founded in different parts of Paris, the Cordeliers south of the Seine acquired special notoriety. Here presided Danton, an orator distinguished among his fellows by the zeal and energy which he flung into the contest with the municipality.

Mirabeau’s policy and death.

As the revolution thus ran its course, and the ultra democratic party, with the populace behind it, threatened by its activity and unscrupulousness in time to make itself entire master of the political arena, the stronger had become Mirabeau’s desire to enter the ministry and direct the counsels of the King. From entrance into the council he was, however, for the time hopelessly debarred. To nip his ambition in the bud, Necker and his colleagues, shortly after the King’s arrival in Paris, had instigated the Assembly to decree that no deputy should be a minister. In the spring of 1790 the King and Queen were induced to enter into secret communication with the great orator. He tendered them advice in a written form, and the King in return for his services made him monthly payments. But Mirabeau soon experienced that except in trivial matters his advice was never followed. He demanded a far fuller and more generous acceptance of the principles of the revolution than it was possible for Louis to give. He accepted as absolute gain, both for the King and the nation, the fall of the parliaments, the abolition of privileges, the destruction of the orders of nobles and clergy, and the freeing of land and labour. Unceasingly he urged and implored Louis to win the confidence of the nation by turning his back wholly on the past, and separating the cause of the crown from that of the upper orders. ‘To accomplish a reaction,’ he wrote, ‘you must destroy at a blow a whole generation or make blank the memories of twenty-five millions of men.’ Mirabeau accepted also as the noblest fruits of the revolution freedom of worship, freedom of the press, and the freedom of the individual from arbitrary treatment in property and person. But while detesting government that was arbitrary, or which went astray through want of means to test public opinion, Mirabeau had little faith in the wisdom of collective bodies of men, or in the political intelligence of the middle and lower classes, of whom he believed that, in the long run, the one would sell political liberty for order, the other for bread. He, therefore, looked to the King to be the guide and leader of the nation. His belief was that if only the existing barriers of distrust were broken down, the middle-class, relieved from fear of reaction in favour of the nobility and the Church, would readily assent to the establishment of a strong executive and the repeal of the decrees making administrative bodies independent of the central government, and excluding ministers from the legislature. He had, moreover, the penetration to see that the abolition of aristocratic institutions, and the parcelling out of the country into equal divisions, without historical traditions, were measures destructive of variety and vigour in the national life, and thereby favourable to the exercise of power by the crown. Unless the course that he advised were followed he predicted the fall of the throne. ‘The mob,’ he repeatedly said of the King and Queen, ‘will trample on their corpses.’ In despair of getting the existing Assembly to repeal its decrees, Mirabeau advised the King to quit Paris, and after doing all in his power to win the middle-class to his side to make, if necessary, an appeal to arms. While, however, he was urging such projects on Louis his naturally strong constitution, overtaxed by his exertions, broke down, and he died at the age of forty-two (April 2, 1791). It is wrong to regard Mirabeau as having been false to his principles because he entered into a pecuniary transaction with the King. He was a monarchist before 1789, and he died one in 1791. But the low moral elevation of his character vitiated his judgment, and increased the difficulties in his path. By taking money of the King he was precluded from the possibility of obtaining his confidence. Louis and Marie Antoinette never regarded him otherwise than as a dangerous demagogue bought over. The distrust in which his fellow deputies held him was not without justification. He was quite unscrupulous as to what means he employed to gain his ends, and did not hesitate to speak words in direct opposition to his real opinion, nor to support measures which he deemed injurious, in order to lower the Assembly in the opinion of the country, and increase the possibility of bringing about a reaction in the royal favour. It is difficult to doubt that his intense mortification at being excluded from the ministry made him more ready to countenance the idea of civil war.

Although long before his death ultra-democrats had accused Mirabeau of playing a double game, they could not prove the truth of their words, and to the last the great orator retained his popularity amongst the people. His remains were interred in the Panthéon, a large church lately built on the south side of the Seine, which the Assembly had reserved for the special burial-place of Frenchmen who by their services had won the honour and gratitude of their country. A vast crowd formed his funeral procession. A lady, annoyed by the dust, complained of the municipality for neglecting to water the boulevard. ‘Madam,’ replied a fishwoman, ‘they reckoned on our tears.’ Whether true or not, the story bears witness to the feelings of the time.

Position of Constitutionalists.

When Mirabeau died a significant change of temper was drawing over the Assembly. As the framers of the constitution approached its completion the truth began to press home on them that its stability was imperilled by the continuance of disorder. They saw taxes refused, administrative bodies pursuing whatever course was right in their own eyes, peasants pillaging corn, street mobs persecuting nonjurors, soldiers refusing obedience to officers, their own popularity waning, clubs usurping authority, ultra-democratic journals discrediting the constitution, and incessantly urging on the people the duty of insurrection. Now that a free constitution was established, and reform effected in every branch of the public service, justification for this state of things from their point of view vanished. Lafayette, Barnave, the Lameths, and other deputies of the left, who in 1790 had purposely sought to render the executive weak, in 1791 began to fear lest they had overshot their mark. Yet for them to change their course was no easy matter. They still sought for popular support, and clung to the principles on which the constitution of which they had themselves been the authors was based. Fear of reaction, moreover, still weighed heavily on them. The reactionary press, in coarse and violent language condemned the entire work of the Assembly, and threatened with the axe or the gallows all who from the opening of the States had at any time given support to revolutionary principles. Such threats were not without meaning at a time when emigrants were collecting in armed bands at Basel and Coblentz, threatening invasion; and the King’s brother, the Count of Artois, was calling on foreign powers to restore by force of arms the authority of the throne.

The primary assemblies for the election of the constitutional legislature were already meeting, when an event took place which brought into clearer light the relations existing between all parties.

CHAPTER V.
THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY.

Flight of the Royal Family.

To the King and Queen their position had long since become intolerable. They regarded the constitution as a monstrous work, based on principles subversive of all good government. To the laws establishing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and imposing an oath on beneficed ecclesiastics, Louis had given his official consent with reluctance, but as he was unable to obtain the sanction of the Pope to what he had done, his peace of conscience was gone. The Queen was greatly suspected of using her influence to incite her husband against the revolution. She was intensely unpopular. Up to the middle of the century France had pursued a policy of opposition to Austria. In 1756 jealousy of England, and of England’s ally, the rising state of Prussia, had brought about an offensive and defensive alliance between France and Austria. The national feeling of hostility had, however, not died out, and the insignificant part that France took in foreign affairs was ascribed not to the decadence of the monarchy, but to the Austrian alliance. To make firm the bond, the partisans of the new system had accomplished, in 1770, a marriage between Louis, then Dauphin, and Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Empress Queen, Maria Theresa. Thus, from her first entrance into the country, Marie Antoinette had been regarded with disfavour, as the pledge of an unpopular alliance. Courtiers and intriguers, opposed to the faction which had brought about her marriage, had accused her of sacrificing French to Austrian interests, and had bruited false and scandalous tales against her name. By the revolutionary journalists she was now held up to execration as the untrue wife and false Queen, the betrayer of France, who was seeking by aid of Austrian troops to put down the revolution in blood. Now that trouble had destroyed her love of dissipation and brought into relief the strong side of her character, Marie Antoinette devoted all the energy of which her mind was capable to the task of recovering for her husband and bequeathing to her son the reins of government. She found her chief pleasure in the fulfilment of her duties as wife and mother, and by her dignified bearing impressed those who came into contact with her with a high idea of her daring and intellect. Less ready, however, than her husband to make concessions, and far more so to practise deceit, she proved an evil councillor to Louis. Both desired that the constitution should fail, and regarded the increase of disorder with indifference, under the idea that suffering would speedily recall their penitent subjects to the foot of the throne. Meanwhile, Louis made repeated and public avowals of his satisfaction with the constitution, intending hereafter to withdraw his words on the plea that he was not at liberty to express his true opinion. Since the winter a plan of flight to the eastern frontier was projected, but its execution was delayed owing to want of money and troops. The Queen relied on her brother, the Emperor Leopold, to place whatever Austrian troops were in Luxemburg at her disposal in case of need. She thought that if the King were once in safety on the frontier, and able to protect his supporters, a large portion of the nation would rally round him, and that it would be possible to make a settlement which, while leaving to the country some form of constitutional government, would set the royal authority above the heads of all subjects. Rumours that the King intended flight had for months been floating about. In April, the national guard, in spite of Lafayette’s remonstrances, detained by force the royal carriages when on the point of starting for the Palace of St. Cloud, a short distance outside the city.

The King and Queen had for some time been preparing for flight, though the day of departure had been from various causes delayed. Servants who could not be trusted had to be dismissed, and clothes and other articles forwarded to the frontier ready for use. On the night of June 20 the King, disguised as a valet, his sister, the Princess Elizabeth, the Queen, the two children, and their governess, left the Tuileries unobserved, and were driven in a hackney-carriage a short distance outside Paris. Here they found ready waiting them a large new travelling coach, built for the occasion, and three soldiers of the bodyguard, dressed in yellow liveries, and prepared to act as couriers. The destination of the royal party was Montmédy, close to the Luxemburg frontier; and the Marquis of Bouillé, who commanded in that quarter, had undertaken to station detachments of troops to guard the way at all the chief towns and villages after Chalons. It was already two o’clock at night when the coach left Paris behind. The driver urged on his horses at a quick pace, some eight miles an hour, and about five o’clock in the afternoon the travellers reached Chalons-sur-Marne. At this point the most dangerous part of the journey seemed over. At the next post-house, Pont Sommevesle, Louis expected to see the first detachment of Bouillé’s troops. On his arrival, a little after six, he was, however, disappointed. Bouillé had, indeed, with considerable skill, ordered the passage of troops so that detachments should be present at all the principal places on the road along which the royal party was travelling; but unfortunately at each station those in command lacked either zeal or capacity, or both. Because the coach was three or four hours behind the time expected, the troops had already withdrawn from Pont Sommevesle. At St. Menehould, Louis, who incautiously put his head out of window, was recognised by the master of the post, Drouet, who observed his likeness to the image of the King on the assignats. Though not stopped, the coach was pursued by Drouet and others, whilst the troops present in the town suffered themselves to be disarmed. About midnight the coach safely reached Varennes, a little town divided in two by the river Aire. While the bodyguards were vainly seeking in the darkness a relay of horses, which was waiting on the farther side of the bridge, Drouet and his companions rode into the town, roused the mayor, and with whatever waggons and barrels came first to hand, blocked the road over the bridge. The coach was stopped, and the travellers compelled to alight and enter a house belonging to a grocer, the procureur of the commune. This was close to the bridge, beyond which were sixty hussars in their barracks. Their officers, in place of calling them out on the first alarm, rode off to seek instructions of Bouillé, who was miles away, at Stenay. Fifty or sixty more troops arrived shortly afterwards, and during the night it was still possible to disperse the opposers with a charge, and force a way through the barricade. The officers, unwilling to do it on their own responsibility, sought commands of Louis, who refused to take any decisive action. The Queen, nearly on her knees, implored the wife of the procureur, Madame Sauce, to let them proceed on their way. The woman expressed sympathy for her, but said that she too had a husband and children to care for. Meanwhile barricades were being strengthened, the alarm-bells were ringing through all the countryside, and by the morning the town was crowded with national guards, with whom the troops were drinking. The return journey was therefore begun, and five days after their departure the fugitives re-entered the Tuileries as prisoners (June 25).

Split between constitutionalists and ultra-democrats.

When Louis’s flight was first reported, intense alarm prevailed at Paris. It was expected that civil war, already organised, was on the point of breaking out, and that the emigrants were about to cross the frontier. The King’s capture brought a sense of relief, but did not tend to lessen the difficulties of the situation. In justification of his departure, Louis had left behind him a document, in which he criticised the constitution from an unfavourable point of view, and called in question all that had been done since October 1789. Thus by act and word he had made known, without disguise, his intention not to rule in accordance with the constitution, and henceforth it was impossible that the country should have confidence in him. Ultra-democrats with one voice wisely pronounced his protest and flight a virtual abdication. Some, slow to take a decided part, amongst whom Robespierre was prominent, or desirous of putting the Duke of Orleans forward, demanded Louis’s deposition and a regency; others, as Brissot, Desmoulins, and Danton, more sanguine and more outspoken, called for the establishment of a republic. The Cordeliers, under Danton’s guidance, covered the walls with placards in favour of a republic. The Jacobins, following Robespierre, stopped short of this, and asked only for the deposition of Louis. Closing their eyes, however, to the undoubted fact of the King’s insincerity, the deputies of the left and centre rallied together to support the tottering throne. They were aware that the republican party was but a small minority. Lafayette and Barnave, as well as other deputies, held themselves pledged in honour to Louis to maintain his throne. In case of deposition, there was increased danger of involving France in foreign war. Neither a change of succession nor a regency appeared desirable. The King’s brothers were emigrants, the Duke of Orleans a tool in the hands of Parisian demagogues. Above all, there was fear that the deposition of Louis would tend to undermine the constitution itself, and give increased influence to the advocates of pure democracy. Under the influence of such motives, the Assembly determined to restore the executive power to Louis, should he accept the constitution when presented to him as a completed whole. The republican party attempted a demonstration against this decision. On Sunday, July 17, a large gathering of persons assembled in the Champ de Mars, where a petition was signed asking the Assembly to reconsider its decrees. The meeting itself was not illegal, and in character perfectly peaceful. It was possible, however, that within twenty-four hours the petition would be brought before the Assembly supported by an armed and threatening mob. Urged on by the monarchists, the municipal officers, accompanied by Lafayette and the national guard, marched to the place of assemblage. Before the Riot Act was read or dispersion possible, some companies fired, in irritation, into the throng, killing and maiming several persons, men, women, and children. General flight followed, and the petition was no more heard of.

Attempt to revise the Constitution.

This event, known in the annals of the revolution as the massacre of the Champ de Mars, caused complete severance between the men who were bent on maintaining the constitution and the ultra-democratic party. A schism took place in the Jacobins. The constitutionalists founded a new club, the Feuillants, so called because it met in a convent formerly belonging to monks of that name, while the ultra-democrats remained in undisputed possession of the Jacobins. Amongst the constitutionalists or Feuillants were Lafayette, Barnave, the Lameths, and all the most prominent men of the centre and left. Could they have done their work over again, they would have introduced material changes in the constitution, with the double object of making it more acceptable to the King, and enabling the ministry to exercise control over the administrative bodies. Their main fear was that, after the dissolution of the existing Assembly, new men would come into power who, having had no hand in framing the constitution, would not have the same interest as themselves in sustaining it. According to a constitutional law, those who had been deputies could neither enter the ministry nor hold any government appointment for a certain number of years; while a special law forbade the election of men who had been members of the present constituent Assembly to the ensuing Legislature. Robespierre had proposed this latter law in April 1791, and to obtain its adoption had appealed to the deputies to give proof of disinterestedness. When the constitutional laws were adopted in a body, ready for final presentation to Louis, some few amendments were made, but the attempt of the constitutionalists to obtain the repeal of these important disqualifications failed. The right voted with Robespierre and Pétion, rejoicing over the falling out of their opponents.

Work of the Assembly.

Louis, when the constitution was presented to him, undertook to govern in accordance with it, and the deputies then dispersed to give place to their successors (September 30). Called upon to effect in the course of a few months changes which could only be accomplished without convulsions in the course of years, whatever their errors, they had rendered France many and great services. By their legal reforms alone they did away with an untold amount of mental and physical suffering. By their economical and financial reforms they paved the way for a new era in agriculture and industrialism. If, under passion and prejudice, they had on occasions wantonly increased the number and fury of opponents, yet much that they had been called on to do remained still undone, and when they closed the sittings there was small prospect that the tide of revolution would stop at the limit which they had drawn. They had found neither time nor opportunity to establish any general system of poor relief or any national system of education. By their decrees dealing with proprietary rights they had struck at the root of the old law, but the work of promulgating a new code they left to those who came after them. With the fiefs had fallen the law of primogeniture, but liberty of devise had been left in the main unrestricted, though in default of a will all relations equal in blood inherited equally. This principle of equal division was not a speculative invention of the revolution, but as regards land held by certain tenures, it had already existed in some parts of France. The finances of the state had been restored only on paper. All the expenses of government were regulated and the civil list fixed. Four main branches of the revenue, tobacco and salt monopolies, excise duties, and duties on wine had been abolished. The yearly expenditure, including the expenses of the Established Church, was estimated at 27,900,000l., of which 21,350,000l. had to be raised by taxation. In place of the taille a tax of 13,125,000l., rated by local boards, was imposed on lands and buildings. Taxes of 2,625,000l. were imposed on personal property. The remaining 6,000,000l. were to be raised by various forms of indirect taxation, custom duties, stamp taxes, and trade patents. The debt, however, during these two and a half years of revolution had been greatly augmented, and the deficit increased. The holders of the abolished offices had been liberally indemnified, and the reforms effected in all departments cost the nation no less than 61,200,000l., swelling the state debt to more than 87,500,000l. Meanwhile the people had refused to pay the old taxes long before their abolition by the Assembly, and it was now only with difficulty that some portion of the new was collected. Not only to pay state creditors, but also to cover the expenses of government, resort had been had to new issues of assignats, and in the spring of 1791 the paper money fell in value about ten per cent. Metal money became scarce, being sent out of the kingdom or kept in reserve. To supply the circulation, assignats of a few shillings value had been created, and thus their fall in value affected all classes. In September 1791 there were in circulation assignats to the value of about 48,125,000l.

Plans of the Queen.

Marie Antoinette and Louis had no other aim in accepting the constitution than to deceive the nation until foreign powers were ready to act in their behalf. After her return from Varennes the Queen repeatedly urged on her brother, the Emperor Leopold, to effect the meeting of a European congress for the settlement of French affairs. This congress was to have at its disposition an army; but the Queen wished that war should be avoided. Her expectation was that the country, under terror of invasion, would gladly accept the mediation of the King, and consent to a remodelling of the constitution according to his wishes. She sought to separate the cause of the crown alike from the cause of emigrants and of constitutionalists. She recalled with bitterness the opposition of the nobles to the government before 1789, and deeply resented their subsequent flight as a base desertion of the royal cause. Their present conduct stood in the way of the accomplishment of her own plans and heightened her feelings of resentment. They refused to accept as sincere the King’s acceptance of the constitution; they excited the country by threats of invasion and vengeance; and, by representing themselves as defenders of the monarchy, brought on Louis suspicion of being their accomplice. ‘The cowards,’ she indignantly wrote, ‘first to abandon us, and then to require that we should think only of them and their interests!’ To alliance with the constitutionalists Marie Antoinette was as averse as to alliance with the emigrants. Even were they willing and able to make some modifications in the constitution, to rule on their terms was to rule under their tutorship. Accordingly, while pretending to be acting with them, she looked forward with impatience to the day when she might with safety show her hand and prove them her tools and dupes.

State of Europe.

There was, however, small probability that a European congress would meet; still less that the nation would, without resistance, submit to foreign interference. Europe was in a disturbed condition. The great powers had no confidence in one another, nor were they desirous of acting in union. The empire of which the Queen’s brother was the head was composed of more than 300 states, greatly varying in size. The Peace of Westphalia, concluded at the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648), had assured the princes all the rights of independent and absolute rulers. Imperial institutions were in decay. The military organisation of the empire was very defective and inefficient for its defence. The Diet consisted merely of a few diplomatists, sitting permanently at Ratisbon, who were representatives of the larger states, and whom the smaller entrusted with their votes. Under Frederick the Great (1740–1786) Prussia had developed into a strong power, which acted as a rival to Austria within the empire. On all important occasions the larger states followed the lead either of the Emperor or of the King of Prussia, and between the cabinets of Vienna and Berlin a bitter antagonism existed. Russia was another state which, during the past hundred years, had risen into prominence. The Empress Catherine II. was an able and ambitious woman, who had made use of the rivalry existing between Prussia and Austria to interfere with effect in the affairs of Central Europe. Throughout the century, all the great powers, influenced by ambition and a desire for strengthening their frontiers, had pursued a policy of territorial aggrandisement. Louis XIV. had taken from the empire Alsace and Lorraine; Frederick the Great had torn Silesia from Austria; in 1772, Catherine II., Frederick the Great, and Maria Theresa together had deprived Poland of some of her provinces; more recently the Emperor Joseph II., son of Maria Theresa, had sought to incorporate Bavaria with the Austrian dominions, and had formed an alliance with Catherine for the spoliation of Turkey. In 1783 Catherine obtained the Crimea, thus extending her dominions to the Black Sea. Under this condition of things, the main security of the weaker states was found in the jealousy existing between the more powerful. The principle of the balance of power required that no large alterations should be made in the map of Europe, and that no one power should make territorial acquisitions unless others obtained an equivalent. Thus the opposition of Frederick the Great had foiled Joseph’s project of incorporating Bavaria. It was the traditional policy of France to support Sweden, Poland, and Turkey against aggression, and the readiness with which the first partition of Poland was carried out in 1772 was wholly owing to the decadence into which the French monarchy had fallen under Louis XV.

Europe and the revolution.

In 1789, when the States-General met, Joseph and Catherine were engaged in hostilities with Turkey, while England, Holland, and Prussia threatened to take part in the conflict on behalf of the Porte. This war in the east, and the possibility of a European conflict diverted attention from affairs in France. In February 1790, however, the enterprising and ambitious Joseph II. died; and his brother and successor, Leopold II., a prince of cool and cautious temperament, made it his chief object to restore order within his own dominions, more especially in Hungary and Belgium, which were still in a disturbed state owing to Joseph’s reforms. To insure Austria against being attacked by Prussia, he made, in July 1790, a treaty with Frederick William II., nephew of Frederick the Great, at Reichenbach, and, to free his hands more completely, entered into negotiations with Turkey. He had no disposition to attempt the restoration of absolute monarchy in France. It was the belief of continental statesmen that where, as in Poland or in England, a constitutional form of monarchy existed, the executive was necessarily weak and precluded from acting with vigour or decision in foreign affairs. Hence neither Leopold nor his chancellor, Kaunitz, took exception to the establishment of constitutional monarchy in France, which indeed they regarded as a pure gain to Austria. But after the flight of the royal family to Varennes, and the manifestation of republican opinions in Paris, foreign princes began to look on Louis’s cause as the cause of kings, and to dread lest revolutionary principles, spreading beyond France, should render their own thrones insecure. Leopold, desirous to aid his sister, sought the alliance of Frederick William, and made peace with the Porte at Sistova. A meeting was held between the two allied princes at Pilnitz, where they signed a declaration expressing their readiness to undertake armed intervention in French affairs, if other European powers would unite with them (August 27). Practically this declaration was no more than a threat. Neither Leopold nor Frederick William contemplated immediate resource to arms. The English cabinet, directed by Pitt, had already refused to take part in common action. The alliance between Austria and Prussia was as yet but loosely knit and was regarded with distrust by the old school of both Austrian and Prussian statesmen. Affairs in the east, moreover, called for unremitting attention. Poland, situated between three powerful and grasping neighbours, was a prey to perpetual anarchy. The monarchy was elective, and the king was kept in check by the fierce and seditious nobility by whose votes he was placed on the throne. The peasantry were downtrodden serfs, and the middle class without political rights; king and nobles struggling for power invited foreign interference, and Russia and Prussia by turns exercised ascendancy at Warsaw. In May 1791, a patriotic party, eager to secure national independence by the establishment of a strong government, obtained the adoption of a new constitution, curtailing the privileges of the nobles and making the crown hereditary. This measure at once excited the hostility of Catherine. She gave support to its opponents, and in order that she might carry out her designs in Poland undisturbed made peace with Turkey, and sought to stir up a European war in the west, encouraging the French emigrants, and instigating the German powers to interfere in their behalf. Catherine’s zeal, however, rendered Leopold the less willing to involve himself in hostilities, since events on the Vistula were of much more moment to him than the details of the French constitution. When, therefore, in September, Louis agreed to rule in accordance with the constitution, he affected to regard him as a free agent, and in the hope that the constitutional party would maintain the upper hand, turned a deaf ear to his sister’s entreaties that he would obtain the meeting of a European congress. The King of Prussia entertained a violent hatred of the principles of the revolution, but Polish affairs and distrust of Austria restrained him from coming forward as a champion of Louis’s cause. Thus, while continental princes agreed that the revolutionary tide must be stayed, nothing was settled as to time and means.

The new Legislature.

In such a state of foreign affairs the new Legislative Assembly met (October 1), the only one which ever came together in accordance with that constitution which had cost so much labour to build up. It consisted of 740 deputies, who represented exclusively revolutionary France. There were in it no partisans of the old rule, and no reformers with aristocratic tendencies. The right side was now composed of constitutionalists, who held that only by close adherence to the constitution could the country be safely guided between the double perils of reaction and anarchy. Though without confidence in the King, they regarded him as much less powerful for harm than the leaders of the Parisian populace, and sought on all occasions to maintain him in the unrestrained exercise of his constitutional prerogatives. The left of the Assembly, though avowedly constitutionalist, at heart cherished a desire for the establishment of a more democratic government, and the abolition of monarchy. A group of men, remarkable for youth, talent, and eloquence, sat on this side of the house. They were called Girondists, because their chief orators—Vergniaud, Gensonné, Guadet, and others who formerly belonged to the bar of Bordeaux—had been returned by the department of the Gironde. These men were fervent democrats and republicans, and at the same time defenders of the principle of individual liberty. They were also sceptics and theists, inheritors of Voltaire’s passionate scorn and hatred of Catholicism. Brissot, who now had a seat in the house, belonged to them, and his journal became the recognised organ of their party. Their policy was mainly dictated by a theoretic aversion to monarchical government, and nervous apprehension of the consequences of Louis’s treachery. Alive, however, to the fact that public opinion was in favour of the constitution, they formed no definite plans for its destruction, but endeavoured to obtain the adoption of measures calculated to reveal the King’s duplicity, and so to weaken the hold that the throne had upon the affection of the nation. The body of deputies forming the centre of the Assembly sincerely desired the maintenance of the constitution, but had no reliance on the good faith of Louis, and hence oscillated between the right and the left, being desirous of maintaining the throne, and yet being afraid to give to the executive a hearty support or to take strong measures for the suppression of insurrectionary movements.

Ecclesiastical policy.

Important questions pressed upon the Legislature for solution. The ecclesiastical settlement attempted by the constituent Assembly was being daily proved impracticable. In many cases the administrative bodies strove hard to preserve the peace and to keep the Churches open, both to the nonjurors and their rivals; but their efforts were hopeless. Without a military force always at command it was practically impossible to maintain both parties in their legal rights. In some departments the nonjurors set themselves at the head of insurgent peasants. In others they were subjected to insult and outrage. At Paris they could celebrate mass only under the protection of national guards. During the summer of 1791 many administrative bodies, on the plea that by no other means could order be preserved, prohibited nonjurors from officiating in parish churches, and required them to reside in the chief town of the department, away from their former parishioners. The Legislature had no choice but either to abandon the imposition of the oath or to follow it out to its logical consequences, and to regard those who refused to take it as enemies to the existing order. The last course accorded best with the prejudices of the majority, who accused the nonjurors of being the sole authors of troubles to which the situation itself could not fail to give rise. Some on the left proposed to exile them in a body. The Girondists detested them as the most bigoted of Catholics. The right weakly sought, on the ground of religious liberty, to leave matters as they were; but the centre here voted with the left, and a decree was passed depriving nonjurors of their pensions, and preventing their officiating in public (November 25). Louis, however, refused his sanction, and the situation remained unchanged.

Foreign policy.

A second and no less important question before the Assembly was the policy to be pursued in relation to the emigrants and to foreign powers. The Elector of Treves and other rulers of the small states, lay and ecclesiastical, on the Rhine, gave encouragement and aid to the emigrants in arming against France. These princes were eager to involve the larger states of the Empire in hostilities. Their territories were amongst the worst governed in Germany, and they feared lest revolutionary principles should prove contagious, and affect their own subjects. Many of them had, besides, a special ground of complaint. In Alsace and Lorraine they possessed rights as seigneurs, secured to them by the Treaty of Westphalia, and of which the decrees of August 4 (p. 50) had deprived them. This matter, however, might easily have been arranged between France and the Empire had there been a disposition on either side to maintain peace.

The principles of foreign policy pursued by the cabinets of Europe, and the theories promulgated by the revolutionists, were in direct opposition to one another. Statesmen took no account of national forces or aspirations, but, intent on territorial acquisitions, were ready to distribute populations of the same race and tongue among different masters as suited diplomatic combinations. On the contrary, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people involved a right to national independence. The constituent Assembly had publicly declared the aversion of the French nation to offensive wars, and had given proof of its pacific tendencies by limiting the army to 150,000 men. But the flight of the King and the drawing together of Austria and Prussia gave rise to great uneasiness as to the intentions of those powers, while the threat of interference in the Declaration of Pilnitz gave deep offence to the national pride. Measures were taken for increasing the army by an additional force of 97,000 volunteers. The Legislative, like the constituent Assembly, repudiated ideas of aggression and conquest, but became rapidly inflamed with warlike zeal. It gave expression to the intense feelings of hatred existing against the emigrants by a decree condemning to death as traitors all Frenchmen who, after the end of the year, should still be beyond the frontier in arms against their country (November 9). Louis refused to sanction the decree, and thus increased the suspicion resting on him of being the secret accomplice of those against whom it was aimed. The Girondists desired war with Austria. They were aware that there was no immediate danger of attack from the great powers, and that both the emigrants and the princes who abetted them, unless supported by the Emperor, were impotent; but they believed that, during war, the King’s duplicity would be clearly revealed, and judged it the wiser course, in place of waiting for attack, to begin hostilities, while Leopold still sought to avoid them. Enthusiastic confidence in the national spirit to fight to the last extremity in defence of its independence, and the expectation that the principles of the revolution would spread rapidly amongst other nations, and cause them to rise against their rulers, led the Girondists to entertain no doubt of the success of their arms. ‘Let us tell Europe,’ exclaimed a fiery orator, Isnard, ‘that if cabinets engage kings in a war against peoples, we will engage peoples in a war against kings.’ Of the constitutionalists few cared to avoid a rupture. The majority looked forward to war as a means of insuring the ascendancy of their own party, and of bringing into existence a powerful army under Lafayette’s command. There was no difficulty in finding a ground of quarrel with Leopold either as Emperor or as King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Assembly threatened to attack the empire unless the bands of emigrants on the frontier were dispersed. Afterwards, shifting its ground, it accused Leopold of having broken the treaty of 1756 between France and Austria, and declared that a refusal to renounce all treaties directed against the independence of the French nation—in other words, his understanding with the King of Prussia—would be held tantamount to a declaration of war (January 25, 1792). This hostile attitude of the Assembly hastened the conclusion of a defensive alliance between Austria and Prussia; after which Leopold, no longer caring to delay hostilities, added fuel to the flame by claiming a right of interference in the internal affairs of France, and by accusing the Assembly of being under the illegal ascendancy of republicans and Jacobins.

The outbreak of war might probably have been postponed, but it could hardly have been definitely averted. The doctrines of social and political equality announced by the French revolutionists were not, as were the arguments from law and precedent which had in the seventeenth century risen to the surface in the English Long Parliament, adapted merely to the country in which they arose. They were applicable to all the states of Western Europe. Hence, they acquired all the force of a religious propaganda. As in the sixteenth century men were not asked whether they were Germans or Frenchmen, but whether they were Catholics or Protestants, so now they would be first asked whether they were on the side of the revolutionary opinions or not. Before that great division of opinions all national antagonisms sank into comparative insignificance. The French revolutionist could not long avoid being carried away by a fierce desire to give effectual aid to his brother revolutionist abroad, and the German or English anti-revolutionist could not long keep his hands out of the fray whilst the classes in France with whom he warmly sympathised were being borne down and oppressed.

Declaration of War.

The ministry at this important crisis was disunited and without the confidence of the Assembly. While the Assembly desired war, Delessart, minister of foreign affairs, sought to maintain peace. The minister of war, Narbonne, a friend of Lafayette, flung so much energy and enthusiasm into the work of making preparations for hostilities that he won support from both sides of the Assembly. Bertrand de Molleville, minister of marine, was a reactionary. Louis through aversion to Lafayette dismissed Narbonne from office. Brissot took advantage of the discontent that this step excited amongst constitutionalists to bring a charge of high treason against Delessart for betraying the interests of France to Austria (March 10). This attack led to a break-up of the cabinet, and Louis, whose one object now was to tide with safety over the next few months, till the arrival of the allies at Paris, put in office men who represented the opinions dominant in the Assembly. Roland and Clavière, respectively ministers of the interior and of finance, belonged to the Girondists. Dumouriez, minister of foreign affairs, was an able, self-confident and unscrupulous soldier, eager to obtain distinction and a career. On March 1, Leopold had died. His son and successor, Francis, a young man of four-and-twenty, who was some months later elected Emperor, cared less to avoid a rupture than his father had done. The new French ministry was above all a war ministry, and on the official proposition of the King, the Assembly amid loud applause, declared war against Francis, as King of Hungary and Bohemia (April 20). Wars have often been entered on with as little ground of offence, but rarely with more rashness than when the Assembly thus engaged France in hostilities with Austria, which would necessarily involve a war also with her ally Prussia. The French fortresses were out of repair and the army completely disorganised. Since 1789 hundreds of officers had resigned, deserted, or had been driven away by their men. According to the laws of the constituent Assembly under officers were elected out of the ranks, and officers generally advanced according to length of service. There were, however, hundreds of vacancies still unfilled, and desertions both in army and navy continued. Of the 150,000 troops of the line, 50,000 had yet to be recruited. The 97,000 volunteers ordered to be raised were for the most part unarmed and untrained.

Robespierre and the Jacobins.

The peril of the country excited on all sides suspicion and distrust, increasing the bitterness of party strife and threatening to undermine the standing ground alike of constitutionalists and Girondists. Girondists as little as constitutionalists had an interest in making further alterations in the bases of social order. If the Girondists held more democratic notions of life and government, yet by equality they understood equality of rights alone, and were to the full as zealous defenders of the principles of internal free trade and individual liberty. They were also political purists and precisians, who, while decrying the aristocracies of birth and wealth, were intent on founding one of talent and virtue. Hence no sooner had they obtained possession of the ministries than they came into sharp collision with whatever members of the ultra-democratic party did not share their genuine devotion to impracticable ideals. A spirit different from theirs was by this time rising into prominence amongst the Jacobins. The saddest result of the long exercise of arbitrary authority is that it renders mutual confidence impossible. The legacy of the old system of government to the new France was distrust. Man distrusted man, and class distrusted class. Thousands of persons who had embarked in the revolution full of sentimental hope and confidence were now rushing into the opposite extreme. They had known so little of their fellow creatures as to imagine that the new equality would be received with enthusiasm, even by those who had profited the most by the old inequality; and they now fancied that under every reluctance to accept the fullest results of the revolution was concealed a deep design to betray it. A perfect self-confidence easily leads to the most deep-rooted suspicion; and those who, after the long seclusion from all participation in practical politics to which most Frenchmen had been condemned for centuries, were inevitably ignorant how complicated modern society is, readily imagined all who differed from them to be traitors to their country. Not only was this suspicion directed against the King and those of the once privileged orders who remained in France, but it fastened upon all superiority of station or of intellect. Many who had been educated in the theories of Rousseau to believe unreasonably in the purity and intelligence of the masses, learned no less unreasonably to distrust every man who in any way rose above the common level, and offered himself with more or less qualification as a rallying point to the disorganised society around him.

The man who most represented this prevailing distrust of all superiority would in the end gain for a time that very superiority which he himself denied to be desirable, but which was required by the very necessities of human nature. Such a man was Maximilien Robespierre. A lawyer from Arras, he had been so far influenced by the teaching of Rousseau as to throw up a lucrative judicial post, lest he should be compelled to condemn a fellow-creature to death. From such feelings of pity for the human race to cruelty towards individuals there is in times of revolution, but a short step. The few who stood in the way of the entrance of the people into the promised land, where liberty, equality, and fraternity were to become the accepted rule of life, soon came to be regarded as monsters of wickedness, whom it was the duty of every good citizen to sweep away from the earth for very kindness’ sake. The time for such a proscription had not yet come. But Robespierre, though he was now excluded from the Legislature, as having been a member of the last Assembly, was always on the alert in the Jacobins, ready in dry and acrid tones to draw attention to every delinquency of those who were struggling to build up authority. The social and political formulas of Rousseau alone had taken root in his mind. He cared for equality, and he cared for democracy. For individual liberty he ceased to care as soon as he found himself in a position to get the better of his adversaries by resorting to the arms of absolute and despotic governments. He was certain to be a dangerous and a cruel opponent. His mind was logical and narrow, he was ambitious and envious of all above himself, cunning and hypocritical, yet earnest in pursuit of his aims, incapable of strong affection, of a generous act or a magnanimous resolution, and wholly devoid of moral sense. Whoever stood in his light he regarded at once as a personal enemy and a traitor to the people’s cause. By temperament he was nervous and cautious. He never set himself at the head of popular movements, always guarded his statements so as to mean much or little, according to circumstances; and in case of danger, delayed till the last moment to take a decided part. Robespierre opposed the war because he divined that both constitutionalists and Girondists entered upon it with the aim of obtaining for themselves mastery over France. While the Girondists accused him of making himself the people’s idol, he accused them of seeking power for party purposes. In the end he entirely destroyed the popularity originally enjoyed by Brissot, Guadet, and others in the Jacobins. The society had become even more democratic in character since the constitutionalists abandoned it in July 1791. The galleries were opened to the public, and were ordinarily filled by the most ardent revolutionists belonging to the lower and lower middle classes. Of this audience Robespierre won the entire confidence. He put himself forward as the special representative of the people, whose wisdom and goodness formed his constant theme. He personified the distrust felt by the lower classes towards the possessors of rank, wealth, and talent. He was himself indifferent to the enjoyments that wealth can give, absolutely incorruptible, an orator without brilliant qualities of any kind, but in appearance and language always respectable. Behind Robespierre, frequenters of the Jacobins and joining in the attack on the Girondists, were Desmoulins and others, to whom the preciseness and exclusiveness of Roland and Brissot gave offence, besides adventurers and agitators of the lowest type, whose sole object was to pave the way for their own advent to power and office. Marat, in his journal, openly accused the Girondists as well as the constitutionalists of being sold to the court, and included both in the general proscription which he unceasingly urged on the people of Paris.

Administrative anarchy.

The party conflicts waged in the capital were repeated in the departments. The central government was powerless to impose uniform action. Roland, the minister of the interior, issued circulars, inculcating the duty of obedience to the laws, but words were powerless to restrain the passions which the revolution had let loose. Each administrative body followed its own course, according as it was under the dominion of constitutionalist or Girondist opinions. In the departments round Paris small armies of peasants and brigands, often with municipal officers at their head, went about fixing a maximum price of corn and other articles of food. In Languedoc and Guienne insurgent bands extorted money and pillaged country houses. But nowhere was administrative anarchy so great and crime so rife as in the four departments of Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône, Vaucluse, and Lozère, where reactionary and revolutionary elements came into violent collision. In Lozère attempts were being made to excite amongst the peasantry a Catholic reaction, and an armed camp, in communication with the emigrants, was formed at Jalès. On the other hand, the municipality at Marseilles, composed of violent ultra-democrats, raised a force of 4,000 men, and disarmed a Swiss regiment at Aix, and the national guard of Arles. Avignon, under mob rule, witnessed the commission of horrible crimes. The Comtat Venaissin had belonged to the Pope since 1273, and Avignon, its chief town, since 1348. After the meeting of the States-General civil war broke out within this small territory between the supporters and opponents of revolutionary principles and of union with France. The constituent Assembly sent mediators who patched up a peace in January 1791. In September 1791 it at last decreed the union of Avignon and the Comtat to France. But it had been too late to prevent the perpetration of the most atrocious deeds. The force raised by the French party, which had been recruited from the lowest sources, quarrelled with its employers, the municipality of Avignon. A number of persons were imprisoned without regard to age or sex. One of the insurgent officers was in revenge brutally murdered in the streets. His comrades, led by Jourdan, a brigand by profession, retaliated by killing in cold blood sixty and more prisoners—men, women, and children—whose bodies they flung into a dungeon beneath a tower of the Papal palace (October, 1791). The assassins, though they were at first imprisoned, afterwards obtained their release in right of an amnesty, which the constituent Assembly before its dispersion had passed, covering all crimes attaching to the revolution.

Position of Girondists.

The undisguised enmity of Robespierre, the cry raised for a maximum price of corn, the tragedy of Avignon, the illegalities and crimes incessantly committed, alarmed the Girondists, and tended to restrain them from coming to open breach with the constitutionalists; but they continued to regard domestic treason as far more dangerous than mob violence, both to themselves and to France, and fearing to give the executive the least vantage ground whence to facilitate the advance of the Allies, opposed with vehemence the employment of coercive measures, either to suppress political agitation on the part of the clubs, or to restrain administrative bodies from passing beyond their legal functions. They still entertained the belief that the people would be brought to obey the voice of reason, and thought that were Louis’s treachery once set in a clear light, the storm of revolution would pass over with the establishment of a republican government, and the country return without effort to paths of law and amity.

The 20th June.

Sense of danger made the Assembly the more eager to resort to repressive measures against the emigrants and the nonjurors. The property, real and personal, of the emigrants, was put under charge of the administrative bodies, and their revenues confiscated by the state. A decree, to which, however, the King refused his sanction, authorised the directories of the departments to banish nonjurors who refused to take an oath of fidelity to the nation, the law, and the King (May 27). Sanguine expectations of victory had been rapidly dissipated. In April the Belgian frontier was crossed; but the troops on their first meeting with the enemy fled in disorder, disobeying their officers, whom they accused of treason. Servan, the minister of war, proposed the formation of an armed camp for the protection of Paris. Much opposition was however, raised to the project, and the Assembly decreed (June 6) that 20,000 volunteers, recruited in the departments, should meet at Paris to take part in the celebration of a federal festival on July 14, the third anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. The real object of those who supported the decree was to have a force at Paris with which to maintain mastery over the city should the Allies penetrate into the interior. Louis left the decree unsanctioned, as he had the one directed against nonjurors. The agitators of the sections sought to get up an armed demonstration against this exercise of the King’s constitutional prerogative. Though armed demonstrations were illegal, the municipality offered but a perfunctory and half-hearted resistance. Bailly had resigned office in the autumn of the preceding year. The new mayor, Pétion, was a Girondist. During the winter half of the municipal officers had been re-elected, and of the new members many were ultra-democrats. Lafayette, no longer at the head of the national guard, commanded on the eastern frontier. The officers of the guard were mostly constitutionalists, but there was so little confidence in the King that few were prepared to act with vigour or could answer for the conduct of their men. Louis, irritated at the pressure put on him by Roland, Clavière, and Servan to sanction the two decrees, dismissed the three ministers from office (June 13). Dumouriez, who had quarrelled with his colleagues, supported the King in taking this step, but in face of the hostility of the Assembly himself resigned office (June 15). Three days later a letter from Lafayette was read in the Assembly. The general denounced the Jacobins as the authors of all disorders, called on the Assembly to maintain the prerogatives of the crown, and intimated that his army would not submit to see the constitution violated (June 18). Possibly the dismissal of the ministers and the writing of this letter were measures concerted between the King and Lafayette. In any case the King’s motive was to excite division between the constitutionalists and the Girondists, so as to weaken the national defence. The dismissal of the ministers was, however, regarded by the Girondists as a proof of the truth of their worst suspicions, and no measures were taken to prevent an execution of the project of making an armed, and therefore illegal demonstration against the royal policy. On June 20, thousands of persons, carrying pikes or whatever weapon came to hand, and accompanied by several battalions of the national guard, marched from St. Antoine to the hall of the Assembly. A deputation read an address demanding the recall of the ministers. Afterwards the whole of the procession, men, women, and children, dancing, singing, and carrying emblems, defiled through the chamber. Instigated by their leaders they broke into the Tuileries. The King, who took his stand on a window seat, was mobbed for four hours. To please his unwelcome visitors, he put on his head a red cap, such as was now commonly worn at the Jacobins as an emblem of liberty, in imitation of that which was once worn by the emancipated Roman slave. He declared his intention to observe the constitution, but neither insult nor menace could prevail on him to promise his sanction to the two decrees. The Queen, separated from the King, sat behind a table on which she placed the Dauphin, exposed to the gaze and taunts of the crowds which slowly traversed the palace apartments. At last, but not before night, the mob left the Tuileries without doing further harm, and order was again restored.

This insurrection and the slackness, if not connivance, of the municipal authorities, excited a widespread feeling of indignation amongst constitutionalists. Lafayette came to Paris, and at the bar of the Assembly demanded in person what he had before demanded by letter (June 28). With him, as with other former members of the constituent Assembly, it was a point of honour to shield the persons of the King and Queen from harm. Various projects for their removal from Paris were formed, but policy and sentiment alike forbade Marie Antoinette to take advantage of them. There was hazard in their execution, and the aims of their authors were not hers. The one gleam of light on the horizon of this unhappy Queen was the advance of the Allies. ‘Better die,’ she one day bitterly exclaimed, ‘than be saved by Lafayette and the constitutionalists!’

Country declared in danger.

There was, no doubt, a possibility of the Allies reaching Paris that summer, but this enormously increased the danger of the internal situation. There were 80,000 Austrians and Prussians collecting on the other side of the Rhine. To oppose their advance there were but 40,000 men stationed at Metz and Sedan, half of whom were recruits who had never seen fire. The new ministers were constitutional monarchists of weak type, who had neither energy nor a decided policy. It was known that the army was not in a fit state to repel the enemy. The Girondist orators unnerved the Assembly by asking whether the King and his ministers desired that it should be in such a state? Both in Paris and in the departments thousands of honest and patriotic men, disgusted with party violence, and not knowing which side to take, withdrew wholly into private life, or went to serve on the frontier. To rouse the nation to a sense of peril the Assembly caused public proclamation to be made in every municipality that the country was in danger. The appeal was responded to with enthusiasm, and within six weeks more than 60,000 volunteers enlisted. The Duke of Brunswick, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces, published a manifesto, drawn up by the emigrants. If the authors of this astounding proclamation had deliberately intended to serve the purpose of those Frenchmen who were bent on kindling zeal for the war, they could not have done anything more likely to serve their purpose. The powers required the country to submit unconditionally to Louis’s mercy. All who offered resistance were to be treated as rebels to their King, and Paris was to suffer military execution if any harm befell the royal family.

August 10.

The Jacobins openly proposed to depose the King. Those who shared their views in the Assembly, however, consisted of but a small body of members, who were called the Mountain, because they occupied the topmost benches on the left. Unhappily the majority refused to take into consideration a question the solution of which in the sense indicated by the Jacobins would have spared much future misery to both King and people. In the house of Roland, the dismissed Girondist minister of the interior, projects were discussed of defending the line of the Loire in case of the Allies reaching the capital. Madame Roland, a talented, enthusiastic woman, who directed the actions of her husband, was the centre of a small, and uncompromising circle, which was ready to abet the destruction of the throne by violence. But the leading Girondists—Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, and Gensonné—unwilling that the republic should owe its origin to violence, were prepared to give support to the throne had Louis assented to make the executive dependent on the Legislature, and to restore the late ministers to office. Their overtures to this effect were, however, rejected; and, meanwhile, a second insurrection, which had for its object the King’s deposition, was in preparation. The Assembly, after declaring the country in danger, had authorised the sections of Paris, as well as the administrative authorities throughout France, to meet at any moment. The sections had, in consequence, been able to render themselves entirely independent of the municipality. In each of the sectional or primary assemblies from 700 to 3,000 active citizens had the right to vote, but few cared to attend, and thus it constantly happened that a small active minority spoke and acted in the name of an apathetic constitutional majority. Thousands of volunteers passed through Paris on their way to the frontier, some of whom were purposely retained to take part in the insurrection. The municipality of Marseilles, at the request of Barbaroux, a young friend of the Rolands, sent up a band of 500 men, who first sung in Paris the verses celebrated as the ‘Marseillaise.’ The danger was the greater since every section had its own cannon and a special body of cannoneers, who nearly to a man were on the side of the revolutionists. The terrified and oscillating Assembly made no attempt to suppress agitation, but acquitted (August 8) Lafayette, by 406 against 280 votes, of a charge of treason made against him by the left, on the ground that he had sought to intimidate the Legislature. This vote was regarded as tantamount to a refusal to pass sentence of deposition on Louis. On the following night the insurrection began. Its centre was in the Faubourg of St. Antoine, and it was organised by but a small number of men. Mandat, the commander-in-chief of the national guard, was an energetic constitutionalist, who had taken well concerted measures for the defence of the Tuileries. But the unscrupulousness of the conspirators was more than a match for his zeal. Soon after midnight commissioners from twenty-eight sections met together at the Hôtel de Ville, and forced the Council-General of the Municipality to summon Mandat before it, and to send out orders to the officers of the guard in contradiction to those previously given. Mandat, unaware of what was passing, obeyed the summons, and on his arrival was arrested and murdered. After this the commissioners dispersed the lawful council and usurped its place. At the Tuileries were about 950 Swiss and more than 4,000 national guards. Early in the morning the first bands of insurgents appeared. On the fidelity of the national guards it was impossible to rely; and the royal family, attended by a small escort, left the palace, and sought refuge with the Assembly. Before their departure orders had been given to the Swiss to repel force by force, and soon the sound of firing spread alarm through Paris. The King sent the Swiss instructions to retire, which they punctually obeyed. One column, passing through the Tuileries gardens, was shot down almost to a man. The rest reached the Assembly in safety, but several were afterwards massacred on their way to prison. For twenty-four hours the most frightful anarchy prevailed. Numerous murders were committed in the streets. The assailants, some hundreds of whom had perished, sacked the palace, and killed all the men whom they found there. Of the 749 deputies only 284 ventured to attend the sitting. The Assembly was flooded by dense crowds calling for the deposition of the King. A decree was passed pronouncing Louis provisionally suspended, and summoning a National Convention to decide on the future form of government. The distinction between active and passive citizens was abolished, and manhood suffrage ordained. Roland, Clavière, and Servan were restored to office, and the candidate of the Mountain, Danton, appointed minister of justice.

The throne which had for so many centuries been the symbol of law and order for the French nation, had fallen in a day before the attack of a disorganised mob. Yet the very ease with which the insurgents succeeded in their task carries conviction with it that the catastrophe was the result of causes which had been long at work. In truth, the throne of Louis had, since the meeting of the States-General, ceased to be the symbol of law and order. Unable to guide the people whom he had once called his subjects, Louis had become an obstacle in their path. It was but natural that he should feel dissatisfied with the course of events which had reduced him to that nullity for which alone his character fitted him. Even in time of peace his existence in a place of nominal authority would have been irritating alike to himself and to those who still called him King. With the outbreak of war his position became absolutely untenable. He could not but wish well to the invaders, whose advent would free him from degradation and personal constraint. The mere suspicion that such a wish was entertained by him—and such a suspicion would be hard to silence—would arm against him all who most prized the independence of their country, or would make them indifferent to his fall. Even if he did nothing to assist the invaders, his continuance on the throne would paralyse the national defence. To remove the cause of that paralysis was the first step to that reorganisation of anarchical France which the invasion had made imperative. Though Louis had been struck down by a violent and unruly mob, the submission of France to the act done in its name was more than the outcome of that helplessness to which Frenchmen had been condemned by centuries of despotic government. It was the silent acknowledgment that Louis was out of place upon the throne.

CHAPTER VI.
THE FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS.

Submission of the country.

The departments accepted passively the results of the insurrection of August 10. Men feared lest by offering opposition they might render easier the advance of the allies. Lafayette, while he prepared to defend the road to Paris, refused to recognise the validity of what had been done. The Assembly declared him a traitor, his soldiers abandoned him, and, in company with three other members of the late constituent Assembly, he fled across the frontier, where all four were arrested and imprisoned by the Austrians. The Assembly itself had lost all control over the course of events. The men who had refused to take the right step of deposing Louis had now to pay the penalty. That which might have been effected without shock by the constituent or legislative Assembly had been done by a violent explosion of popular wrath. The Assembly had failed to take the lead, and after its flagrant subjection to mob dictation, it was without moral energy or force. Yet a mob, however powerful to destroy, is powerless to reconstruct. The one organised force in Paris which could translate the feelings of the populace into action was that of the sixty or seventy commissioners who had dispersed the legal Municipal Council on the night before the insurrection. A few days afterwards they raised their number by fresh elections to 288. From henceforth this irregularly-elected body is known to history as the Commune of Paris. With this new Commune supreme power for the moment practically resided. It was strong because it knew its own mind, and because it fully accepted the work of those of its members who had swept away a king suspected of being in alliance with a foreign enemy. Among the newly-chosen members was Robespierre, the only one who had hitherto been of note. Other names, such as those of Billaud-Varennes, Collot d’Herbois, Hébert and Chaumette now rose first into prominence. Of the mass many were unprincipled adventurers, others timid timeservers. ♦The insurrectionary Commune.♦ To a few the holding of municipal office was merely a step in their career upwards. The better men resigned office or kept out of sight, the more ruffianly and unscrupulous came to the front. The ministers were thwarted and disobeyed, the Assembly threatened, public property plundered, numbers of arrests made, liberty of speech suppressed. Constitutionalists for the most part kept away from the Assembly, and laws were passed which before the insurrection had been rejected by large majorities. Nonjurors were required to leave the country within fifteen days on pain of ten years’ imprisonment; and unbeneficed ecclesiastics, on whom the oath had never been imposed, were subjected to the same fate whenever six citizens of their department joined in demanding their exile. Emigrants’ property was confiscated and offered for sale. Administrative bodies and municipalities were authorised to issue warrants of arrest against persons suspected of political crime. This law, which may be likened to a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in England, destroyed at a blow the safeguards against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment which the constituent Assembly had toiled to build up.

Yet, in spite of the terror that reigned, the position of the Commune was insecure. In the departments it had no supporters. In Paris it could only reckon on some hundreds of arms and votes. The artisans of St. Antoine had taken part in the insurrection to destroy the throne, not with the intention of placing power in the hands of the present holders of office, most of whom were men entirely unknown to fame. The Assembly resented their ascendancy, and there was no doubt that one of the first acts of the Convention would be to attempt to establish its own authority over the Commune.

The September massacres.

With the object of obtaining political supremacy an atrocious scheme was devised, in the execution of which the advance of the enemy assisted. The allies, marching from Coblentz, arrived before Longwy on August 20. The place surrendered in four days. Verdun was next besieged. Dumouriez, who commanded in Lafayette’s place, was at Sedan with 20,000 men; Kellermann with another 20,000 at Metz. Unless these forces should unite before Verdun surrendered, the way to Paris would be open to the enemy. Strenuous exertions were being made by all authorities to send men to the frontier, and Danton devoted to the task unflagging vigour and energy. He dominated in the ministry over his Girondist colleagues, and by his stirring appeals excited the passion and enthusiasm of whatever audience he addressed. ‘The bells that ring,’ he cried, as recruits hastened to the Champs de Mars, ‘are no signal of alarm. They sound the charge upon our country’s enemies. To conquer them we need audacity, and again audacity, and ever audacity, and France is saved.’ On his proposition the Assembly decreed that commissioners should go from house to house and make an inventory of arms, horses and carts. Of this decree the Commune took advantage for its own purposes. For two days and nights the barriers were closed, and many hundred persons arrested, principally nobles and constitutionalists. Twenty-four hours later, while the church bells were ringing and Danton exciting citizens to enlist, bands of assassins, hired by the Commune, visited the prisons and massacred their inmates. The work was carried out under the special direction of a committee composed of the municipal officers at the head of the police, to whom Marat and a few other persons, who, like himself, were not members of the Commune, joined themselves. Besides political prisoners, a number of ordinary criminals perished, including women and boys, though in most cases the women were spared. At two of the chief prisons, the Abbey and La Force, some show of judicial forms was observed. At the Abbey a dozen individuals appointed themselves judges with a president at their head. Each prisoner was called in turn before them. He was asked one or two questions, and without further discussion, either acquitted or ordered to be taken to the other prison, La Force, a formula which meant death. As the condemned passed through the prison gates, executioners stationed without rained blows upon his back and head. The street became strewn with corpses and ran with blood.

Similar scenes were enacted at La Force, where Hébert acted as president of the tribunal. The massacres effected in eight prisons went on continuously for five days and nights (September 2–7), during which it is calculated that more than a thousand prisoners were butchered. No action was taken to interfere with the murderers. Ministers and deputies were afraid even to denounce the Commune in vigorous language lest the weapons of the assassins should be turned against themselves. They had no material force on which to rely. Santerre, who commanded the national guard, obeyed the Commune. The inhabitants of Paris remained perfectly passive, the violence of party strife having destroyed enthusiasm for political ideals, and the sense of common duty. In the midst of the butchery the news came that Verdun had fallen, and the uncertainty of their own fate deadened men’s sympathy for the fate of those charged justly or unjustly with being in connivance with the enemy. So far as Paris was concerned the contrivers of the massacres succeeded in their object. The elections to the Convention were held while terror reigned over the city, and twenty-four men, some of whom were partners in the crime, and none of whom were prepared to denounce it, were returned for Paris. An attempt was made to influence, by like means, the elections in the departments. A circular, signed by Marat and his colleagues, was sent out inviting the country to follow the example of the capital and to murder traitors. This incitation to massacre, was, however, attended with small success. In a few towns murders were committed at the instigation of agents of the Commune; but generally the elections were conducted without disturbance.

The Campaign of 1792.

When Verdun surrendered Dumouriez was still at Sedan, and Kellermann at Metz. Between the allies and the plain of Champagne was only a natural barrier, the forest of Argonnes, a range of wooded hills. Fortunately for France the allies were dilatory in all their movements. The campaign, instead of being commenced in the spring, had been delayed till autumn, when the season was less favourable and France better prepared to resist. The Duke of Brunswick was a cautious commander, who had acquired his military reputation in the Seven Years’ War. With 80,000 men he did not believe it possible to maintain his communications and occupy Paris in safety. His proposal, therefore, had been to capture the fortresses on the Meuse, and to reserve operations against the capital for the ensuing spring. But the King of Prussia, who in person took part in the war, was eager to push on to Paris and to release the royal family. After the fall of Verdun the Duke assented, but advanced slowly and reluctantly. Meanwhile Dumouriez by rapid marches got before him to the forest, and occupied the passes leading through it. Driven from his positions as Brunswick advanced, he rallied his men in the plain and made a stand near St. Menehould, where he was joined by Kellermann. Recruits were incessantly pouring in, so that the united French forces numbered 60,000 men. The allies on their descent into the plain took up a position between the French army and Paris. The weather was very wet, the roads nearly impassable, and the invading army with difficulty supplied with bread. The placing of garrisons in Longwy and Verdun, together with sickness, had reduced the effective force under Brunswick’s command to 40,000 men, and he could not push on to Paris leaving Dumouriez’ army unbeaten behind him. The King was eager to fight, but Brunswick persuaded him, in place of attempting to storm the French positions, merely to open a cannonade on Kellermann’s forces, which were stationed in advance of Dumouriez’ men on some heights near the village of Valmy (September 20). This cannonade was the turning point of the campaign. The young French recruits stood fire so well that the allies determined on retreat. The Austrian troops were afterwards called off for the defence of Belgium, and thus Brunswick’s plan of holding the line of the Meuse was rendered impracticable. Verdun and Longwy were evacuated, and the Prussians retreated to Coblentz (October).

The Convention.

The Legislative Assembly gave place to the Convention on September 21, the day after the cannonade of Valmy. At once, the abolition of monarchy was decreed, and the following day was henceforth accounted as the first of the French Republic. The new Assembly consisted of 749 members, of whom 186 had belonged to the legislative, 77 to the constituent Assembly, and 486 were new men. The constitutionalists, through intimidation or want of public spirit, had kept away from the poll, and among all the deputies were none who did not vote for the abolition of monarchy with real or feigned enthusiasm. The Girondists now sat on the right, forming the conservative side of the House. Vergniaud, Brissot, Gensonné, and Guadet were all re-elected, and around them gathered a knot of new comers, amongst whom were Buzot, Pétion, Barbaroux, Louvet, and others who shared their views. The deputation of Paris, together with about thirty deputies from the departments, now formed the Mountain, sitting as in the last Assembly on the topmost benches of the left. Here were Marat and other directors of the massacres, several municipal officers, including Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, and Collot d’Herbois, the Duke of Orleans, who to flatter the mob now called himself Philip Egalité, Desmoulins, and Danton, who resigned the post of minister of justice in order to retain his seat in the Assembly.

The Girondists and the Mountain.