Mirabeau obtained in the tribune the same ascendancy as Sieyes in the committees. He was a man who only waited the occasion to become great. At Rome, in the best days of the republic, he would have been a Gracchus; in its decline, a Catiline; under the Fronde, a cardinal de Retz; and in the decrepitude of a monarchy, when such a being could only find scope for his immense faculties in agitation, he became remarkable for the vehemence of his passions, and for their punishment, a life passed in committing excesses, and suffering for them. This prodigious activity required employment; the revolution provided it. Accustomed to the struggle against despotism, irritated by the contempt of a nobility who were inferior to him, and who excluded him from their body; clever, daring, eloquent, Mirabeau felt that the revolution would be his work, and his life. He exactly corresponded to the chief wants of his time. His thought, his voice, his action, were those of a tribune. In perilous circumstances, his was the earnestness which carries away an assembly; in difficult discussions, the unanswerable sally which at once puts an end to them; with a word he prostrated ambition, silenced enmities, disconcerted rivalries. This powerful being, perfectly at his ease in the midst of agitation, now giving himself up to the impetuosity, now to the familiarities of conscious strength, exercised a sort of sovereignty in the assembly. He soon obtained immense popularity, which he retained to the last; and he whom, at his first entrance into the legislature, every eye shunned, was, at his death, received into the Pantheon, amidst the tears of the assembly; and of all France. Had it not been for the revolution, Mirabeau would have failed in realizing his destiny, for it is not enough to be great: one must live at the fitting period.

The duke of Orleans, to whom a party has been given, had but little influence in the assembly; he voted with the majority, not the majority with him. The personal attachment of some of its members, his name, the fears of the court, the popularity his opinions enjoyed, hopes rather than conspiracies had increased his reputation as a factious character. He had neither the qualities nor the defects of a conspirator; he may have aided with his money and his name popular movements, which would have taken place just the same without him, and which had another object than his elevation. It is still a common error to attribute the greatest of revolutions to some petty private manoeuvring, as if at such an epoch a whole people could be used as the instrument of one man.

The assembly had acquired the entire power; the corporations depended on it; the national guards obeyed it. It was divided into committees to facilitate its operations, and execute them. The royal power, though existing of right, was in a measure suspended, since it was not obeyed, and the assembly had to supply its action by its own. Thus, independently of committees entrusted with the preparation of its measures, it had appointed others to exercise a useful superintendence without. A committee of supply occupied itself with provisions, an important object in a year of scarcity; a committee of inquiry corresponded with the corporations and provinces; a committee of researches received informations against the conspirators of the 14th of July. But finance and the constitution, which the past crises had adjourned, were the special subjects of attention.

After having momentarily provided for the necessities of the treasury, the assembly, although now become sovereign, consulted, by examining the cahiers, the wishes of its constituents. It then proceeded to form its institutions with a method, a liberal and extensive spirit of discussion, which was to procure for France a constitution conformable with justice and suited to its necessities. The United States of America, at the time of its independence, had set forth in a declaration the rights of man, and those of the citizen. This will ever be the first step. A people rising from slavery feels the necessity of proclaiming its rights, even before it forms its government. Those Frenchmen who had assisted at the American revolution, and who co-operated in ours, proposed a similar declaration as a preamble to our laws. This was agreeable to an assembly of legislators and philosophers, restricted by no limits, since no institutions existed, and directed by primitive and fundamental ideas of society, since it was the pupil of the eighteenth century. Though this declaration only contained general principles, and confined itself to setting forth in maxims what the constitution was to put into laws, it was calculated to elevate the mind, and impart to the citizens a consciousness of their dignity and importance. At Lafayette's suggestion, the assembly had before commenced this discussion; but the events at Paris, and the decrees of the 4th of August, had interrupted its labours; they were now resumed, and concluded, by determining the principles which were to form the table of the new law, and which were the assumption of right in the name of humanity.

These generalities being adopted, the assembly turned its attention to the organization of the legislative power. This was one of its most important objects; it was to fix the nature of its functions, and establish its relations with the king. In this discussion the assembly had only to decide the future condition of the legislative power. Invested as it was with constituent authority, it was raised above its own decisions, and no intermediate power could suspend or prevent its mission. But what should be the form of the deliberative body in future sessions? Should it remain indivisible, or be divided into two chambers? If the latter form should be adopted, what should be the nature of the second chamber? Should it be made an aristocratic assembly, or a moderative senate? And, whatever the deliberative body might be, was it to be permanent or periodical, and should the king share the legislative power with it? Such were the difficulties that agitated the assembly and Paris during the month of September.

If we consider the position of the assembly and its ideas of sovereignty, we shall easily understand the manner in which these questions were decided. It regarded the king merely as the hereditary agent of the nation, having neither the right to assemble its representatives nor that of directing or suspending them. Accordingly, it refused to grant him the initiative in making laws and dissolving the assembly. It considered that the legislative body ought not to be dependent on the king. It moreover feared that by granting the government too strong an influence over the assembly, or by not keeping the latter always together, the prince might profit by the intervals in which he would be left alone, to encroach on the other powers, and perhaps even to destroy the new system. Therefore to an authority in constant activity, they wished to oppose an always existing assembly, and the permanence of the assembly was accordingly declared. The debate respecting its indivisibility, or its division, was very animated. Necker, Mounier, and Lally-Tollendal desired, in addition to a representative chamber, a senate, to be composed of members to be appointed by the king on the nomination of the people. They considered this as the only means of moderating the power, and even of preventing the tyranny of a single assembly. They had as partisans such members as participated in their ideas, or who hoped to form part of the upper chamber. The majority of the nobility did not wish for a house of peers, but for an aristocratic assembly, whose members it should elect. They could not agree; Mounier's party refusing to fall in with a project calculated to revive the orders, and the aristocracy refusing to accept a senate, which would confirm the ruin of the nobility. The greater portion of the deputies of the clergy and of the commons were in favour of the unity of the assembly. The popular party considered it illegal to appoint legislators for life; it thought that the upper chamber would become the instrument of the court and aristocracy, and would then be dangerous, or become useless by uniting with the commons. Thus the nobility, from dissatisfaction, and the national party, from a spirit of absolute justice, alike rejected the upper chamber.

This determination of the assembly has been the object of many reproaches. The partisans of the peerage have attributed all the evils of the revolution to the absence of that order; as if it had been possible for anybody whatsoever to arrest its progress. It was not the constitution which gave it the character it has had, but events arising from party struggles. What would the upper chamber have done between the court and the nation? If in favour of the first, it would have been unable to guide or save it; if in favour of the second, it would not have strengthened it; in either case, its suppression would have infallibly ensued. In such times, progress is rapid, and all that seeks to check it is superfluous. In England, the house of lords, although docile, was suspended during the crisis. These various systems have each their epoch; revolutions are achieved by one chamber, and end with two.

The royal sanction gave rise to great debates in the assembly, and violent clamours without. The question was as to the part of the king in the making of laws; the deputies were nearly all agreed on one point. They were determined, in admitting his right to sanction or refuse laws; but some desired that this right should be unlimited, others that it should be temporary. This, in reality, amounted to the same thing, for it was not possible for the king to prolong his refusal indefinitely, and the veto, though absolute, would only have been suspensive. But this faculty, bestowed on a single man, of checking the will of the people, appeared exorbitant, especially out of the assembly, where it was less understood.

Paris had not yet recovered from the agitation of the 14th of July; the popular government was but beginning, and the city experienced all its liberty and disorder. The assembly of electors, who in difficult circumstances had taken the place of a provisional corporation, had just been replaced. A hundred and eighty members nominated by the districts, constituted themselves legislators and representatives of the city. While they were engaged on a plan of municipal organization, each desired to command; for in France the love of liberty is almost the love of power. The committees acted apart from the mayor; the assembly of representatives arose against the committees, and the districts against the assembly of representatives. Each of the sixty districts attributed to itself the legislative power, and gave the executive power to its committees; they all considered the members of the general assembly as their subordinates, and themselves as invested with the right of annulling their decrees. This idea of the sovereignty of the principal over the delegate made rapid progress. Those who had no share in authority, formed assemblies, and then gave themselves up to discussion; soldiers debated at the Oratoire, journeymen tailors at the Colonnade, hairdressers in the Champs Elysees, servants at the Louvre; but the most animated debates took place in the Palais Royal. There were inquired into the questions that occupied the national assembly, and its discussions criticised. The dearth of provisions also brought crowds together, and these mobs were not the least dangerous.

Such was the state of Paris when the debate concerning the veto was begun. The alarm which this right conferred on the king excited, was extreme. It seemed as though the fate of liberty depended on the decision of this question, and that the veto alone would bring back the ancient system. The multitude, ignorant of the nature and limits of power, wished the assembly, on which it relied, to do all, and the king, whom it mistrusted, to do nothing. Every instrument left at the disposal of the court appeared the means of a counter-revolution. The crowds at the Palais Royal grew turbulent; threatening letters were sent to those members of the assembly, who, like Mounier, had declared in favour of the absolute veto. They spoke of dismissing them as faithless representatives, and of marching upon Versailles. The Palais Royal sent a deputation to the assembly, and required the commune to declare that the deputies were revocable, and to make them at all times dependent on the electors. The commune remained firm, rejected the demands of the Palais Royal, and took measures to prevent the riotous assemblies. The national guard supported it; this body was well disposed; Lafayette had acquired its confidence; it was becoming organised, it wore a uniform, submitted to discipline after the example of the French guard, and learned from its chief the love of order and respect for the law. But the middle class that composed it had not yet taken exclusive possession of the popular government. The multitude which was enrolled on the 14th of July, was not as yet entirely disbanded. This agitation from without rendered the debates upon the veto stormy; in this way a very simple question acquired great importance, and the ministry, perceiving how fatal the influence of an absolute decision might prove, and seeing, also, that the unlimited veto and the suspensive veto were one and the same thing, induced the king to be satisfied with the latter, and give up the former. The assembly declared that the refusal of his sanction could not be prolonged by the prince beyond two sessions; and this decision satisfied every one.

The court took advantage of the agitation in Paris to realise other projects. For some time it had influenced the king's mind. At first, he had refused to sanction the decrees of the 4th of August, although they were constitutive, and consequently he could not avoid promulgating them. After accepting them, on the remonstrances of the assembly, he renewed the same difficulties relative to the declaration of rights. The object of the court was to represent Louis XVI. as oppressed by the assembly, and constrained to submit to measures which he was unwilling to accept; it endured its situation with impatience and strove to regain its former authority. Flight was the only means, and it was requisite to legitimate it; nothing could be done in the presence of the assembly, and in the neighbourhood of Paris. Royal authority had fallen on the 23rd of June, military power on the 14th of July; there was no alternative but civil war. As it was difficult to persuade the king to this course, they waited till the last moment to induce him to flee; his hesitation caused the failure of the plan. It was proposed to retire to Metz, to Bouille, in the midst of his army; to call around the monarch the nobility, the troops who continued faithful, the parliaments; to declare the assembly and Paris in a state of rebellion; to invite them to obedience or to force them to it; and if the ancient system could not be entirely re-established, at least to confine themselves to the declaration of the 20th of June. On the other hand, if the court had an interest in removing the king from Versailles, that it might effect something, it was the interest of the partisans of the revolution to bring him to Paris; the Orleans faction, if one existed, had an interest in driving the king to flight, by intimidating him, in the hope that the assembly would appoint its leader lieutenant-general of the kingdom; and, lastly, the people, who were in want of bread, wished for the king to reside at Paris, in the hope that his presence would diminish, or put a stop to the dearth of provisions. All these causes existing, an occasion was only wanting to bring about an insurrection; the court furnished this occasion. On the pretext of protecting itself against the movements in Paris, it summoned troops to Versailles, doubled the household guards, and sent for the dragoons and the Flanders regiment. All this preparation of troops gave rise to the liveliest fears; a report spread of an anti-revolutionary measure, and the flight of the king, and the dissolution of the assembly, were announced as at hand. Strange uniforms, and yellow and black cockades, were to be seen at the Luxembourg, the Palais Royal, and at the Champs Elysees; the foes of the revolution displayed a degree of joy they had not manifested for some time. The behaviour of the court confirmed these suspicions, and disclosed the object of all these preparations.

The officers of the Flanders regiment, received with anxiety in the town of Versailles, were feted at the chateau, and even admitted to the queen's card tables. Endeavours were made to secure their devotion, and a banquet was given to them by the king's guards. The officers of the dragoons and the chasseurs, who were at Versailles, those of the Swiss guards, of the hundred Swiss, of the prevote, and the staff of the national guard were invited. The theatre in the chateau, which was reserved for the most solemn fetes of the court, and which, since the marriage of the second brother of the king, had only been used for the emperor Joseph II., was selected for the scene of the festival. The king's musicians were ordered to attend this, the first fete which the guards had given. During the banquet, toasts to the king and royal family were drunk with enthusiasm, while the nation was omitted or rejected. At the second course, the grenadiers of Flanders, the two bodies of Swiss, and the dragoons were admitted to witness the spectacle, and share the sentiments which animated the guests. The enthusiasm increased every moment. Suddenly the king was announced; he entered attired in a hunting dress, the queen leaning on his arm, and carrying the dauphin. Shouts of affection and devotion arose on every side. The health of the royal family was drunk, with swords drawn; and when Louis XVI. withdrew, the music played, "O Richard! O mon roi! l'univers t'abandonne." The scene now assumed a very significant character; the march of the Hullans, and the profusion of wine, deprived the guests of all reserve. The charge was sounded; tottering guests climbed the boxes, as if mounting to an assault; while cockades were distributed; the tri-coloured cockade, it is said, was trampled on, and the guests then spread through the galleries of the chateau, where the ladies of the court loaded them with congratulations, and decorated them with ribbons and cockades.

Such was this famous banquet of the 1st of October, which the court was imprudent enough to repeat on the third. One cannot help lamenting its fatal want of foresight; it could neither submit to nor change its destiny. This assembling of the troops, so far from preventing aggression in Paris, provoked it; the banquet did not make the devotion of the soldiers any more sure, while it augmented the ill disposition of the people. To protect itself there was no necessity for so much ardour, nor for flight was there needful so much preparation; but the court never took the measure calculated to make its designs succeed, or else it only half took it, and, in order to decide, it always waited until there was no longer any time.

The news of this banquet, and the appearance of black cockades, produced the greatest sensation in Paris. From the 4th, suppressed rumours, counter-revolutionary provocations, the dread of conspiracies, indignation against the court, and increasing alarm at the dearth of provisions, all announced an insurrection; the multitude already looked towards Versailles. On the 5th, the insurrection broke out in a violent and invincible manner; the entire want of flour was the signal. A young girl, entering a guardhouse, seized a drum, and rushed through the streets beating it, and crying, "Bread! Bread!" She was soon surrounded by a crowd of women. This mob advanced towards the Hotel de Ville, increasing as it went. It forced the guard that stood at the door, and penetrated into the interior, clamouring for bread and arms; it broke open doors, seized weapons, sounded the tocsin, and marched towards Versailles. The people soon rose en masse, uttering the same demand, till the cry, "To Versailles!" rose on every side. The women started first, headed by Maillard, one of the volunteers of the Bastille. The populace, the national guard, and the French guards requested to follow them. The commander, Lafayette, opposed their departure a long time, but in vain; neither his efforts nor his popularity could overcome the obstinacy of the people. For seven hours he harangued and retained them. At length, impatient at this delay, rejecting his advice, they prepared to set forward without him; when, feeling that it was now his duty to conduct as it had previously been to restrain them, he obtained his authorization from the corporation, and gave the word for departure about seven in the evening.

The excitement at Versailles was less impetuous, but quite as real; the national guard and the assembly were anxious and irritated. The double banquet of the household troops, the approbation the queen had expressed, J'ai ete enchantee de la journee de Jeudi—the king's refusal to accept simply the Rights of Man, his concerted temporizings, and the want of provisions, excited the alarm of the representatives of the people and filled them with suspicion. Petion, having denounced the banquets of the guards, was summoned by a royalist deputy to explain his denunciation, and make known the guilty parties. "Let it be expressly declared," exclaimed Mirabeau, "that whosoever is not king is a subject and responsible, and I will speedily furnish proofs." These words, which pointed to the queen, compelled the Right to be silent. This hostile discussion was preceded and succeeded by debates equally animated, concerning the refusal of the sanction, and the scarcity of provisions in Paris. At length, just as a deputation was despatched to the king, to require his pure and simple acceptance of the Rights of Man, and to adjure him to facilitate with all his power the supplying Paris with provisions, the arrival of the women, headed by Maillard, was announced.

Their unexpected appearance, for they had intercepted all the couriers who might have announced it, excited the terrors of the court. The troops of Versailles flew to arms and surrounded the chateau, but the intentions of the women were not hostile. Maillard, their leader, had recommended them to appear as suppliants, and in that attitude they presented their complaints successively to the assembly and to the king. Accordingly, the first hours of this turbulent evening were sufficiently calm. Yet it was impossible but that causes of hostility should arise between an excited mob and the household troops, the objects of so much irritation. The latter were stationed in the court of the chateau opposite the national guard and the Flanders regiment. The space between was filled by women and volunteers of the Bastille. In the midst of the confusion, necessarily arising from such a juxtaposition, a scuffle arose; this was the signal for disorder and conflict. An officer of the guards struck a Parisian soldier with his sabre, and was in turn shot in the arm. The national guards sided against the household troops; the conflict became warm, and would have been sanguinary, but for the darkness, the bad weather, and the orders given to the household troops first to cease firing and then to retire. But as these were accused of being the aggressors, the fury of the multitude continued for some time; their quarters were broken into, two of them were wounded, and another saved with difficulty.

During this tumult, the court was in consternation; the flight of the king was suggested, and carriages prepared; a picket of the national guard saw them at the gate of the Orangery, and, after closing the gate, compelled them to go back; moreover, the king, either ignorant of the designs of the court, or conceiving them impracticable, refused to escape. Fears were mingled with his pacific intentions, when he hesitated to repel the aggression or to take flight. Conquered, he apprehended the fate of Charles I. of England; absent, he feared that the duke of Orleans would obtain the lieutenancy of the kingdom. But, in the meantime, the rain, fatigue, and the inaction of the household troops, lessened the fury of the multitude, and Lafayette arrived at the head of the Parisian army.

His presence restored security to the court, and the replies of the king to the deputation from Paris, satisfied the multitude and the army. In a short time, Lafayette's activity, the good sense and discipline of the Parisian guard, restored order everywhere. Tranquillity returned. The crowd of women and volunteers, overcome by fatigue, gradually dispersed, and some of the national guard were entrusted with the defence of the chateau, while others were lodged with their companions in arms at Versailles. The royal family, reassured after the anxiety and fear of this painful night, retired to rest about two o'clock in the morning. Towards five, Lafayette, having visited the outposts which had been confided to his care, and finding the watch well kept, the town calm, and the crowds dispersed or sleeping, also took a few moments repose.

About six, however, some men of the lower class, more enthusiastic than the rest, and awake sooner than they, prowled round the chateau. Finding a gate open, they informed their companions, and entered. Unfortunately, the interior posts had been entrusted to the household guards, and refused to the Parisian army. This fatal refusal caused all the misfortunes of the night. The interior guard had not even been increased; the gates scarcely visited, and the watch kept as negligently as on ordinary occasions. These men, excited by all the passions that had brought them to Versailles, perceiving one of the household troops at a window, began to insult him. He fired, and wounded one of them. They then rushed on the household troops who defended the chateau breast to breast, and sacrificed themselves heroically. One of them had time to warn the queen, whom the assailants particularly threatened; and half dressed, she ran for refuge to the king. The tumult and danger were extreme in the chateau.

Lafayette, apprised of the invasion of the royal residence, mounted his horse, and rode hastily to the scene of danger. On the square he met some of the household troops surrounded by an infuriated mob, who were on the point of killing them. He threw himself among them, called some French guards who were near, and having rescued the household troops, and dispersed their assailants, he hurried to the chateau. He found it already secured by the grenadiers of the French guard, who, at the first noise of the tumult, had hastened and protected the household troops from the fury of the Parisians. But the scene was not over; the crowd assembled again in the marble court under the king's balcony, loudly called for him, and he appeared. They required his departure for Paris; he promised to repair thither with his family, and this promise was received with general applause. The queen was resolved to accompany him; but the prejudice against her was so strong that the journey was not without danger; it was necessary to reconcile her with the multitude. Lafayette proposed to her to accompany him to the balcony; after some hesitation, she consented. They appeared on it together, and to communicate by a sign with the tumultuous crowd, to conquer its animosity, and awaken its enthusiasm, Lafayette respectfully kissed the queen's hand; the crowd responded with acclamations. It now remained to make peace between them and the household troops. Lafayette advanced with one of these, placed his own tricoloured cockade on his hat, and embraced him before the people, who shouted "Vivent les gardes-du-corps!" Thus terminated this scene; the royal family set out for Paris, escorted by the army, and its guards mixed with it.

The insurrection of the 5th and 6th of October was an entirely popular movement. We must not try to explain it by secret motives, nor attribute it to concealed ambition; it was provoked by the imprudence of the court. The banquet of the household troops, the reports of flight, the dread of civil war, and the scarcity of provisions alone brought Paris upon Versailles. If special instigators, which the most careful inquiries have still left doubtful, contributed to produce this movement, they did not change either its direction or its object. The result of this event was the destruction of the ancient regime of the court; it deprived it of its guard, it removed it from the royal residence at Versailles to the capital of the revolution, and placed it under the surveillance of the people.



CHAPTER III

FROM THE 6TH OF OCTOBER, 1789, TO THE DEATH OF MIRABEAU, APRIL, 1791

The period which forms the subject of this chapter was less remarkable for events than for the gradually decided separation of parties. In proportion as changes were introduced into the state and the laws, those whose interests or opinions they injured declared themselves against them. The revolution had had as enemies, from the beginning of the states-general, the court; from the union of orders and the abolition of privileges, the nobility; from the establishment of a single assembly and the rejection of the two chambers, the ministry and the partisans of the English form of government. It had, moreover, against it since the departmental organization, the provinces; since the decree respecting the property and civil constitution of the clergy, the whole ecclesiastical body; since the introduction of the new military laws, all the officers of the army. It might seem that the assembly ought not to have effected so many changes at once, so as to have avoided making so many enemies; but its general plans, its necessities, and the very plots of its adversaries, required all these innovations.

After the 5th and 6th of October, the assembly emigrated as the court had done after the 14th of July. Mounier and Lally-Tollendal deserted it, despairing of liberty from the moment their views ceased to be followed. Too absolute in their plans, they wanted the people, after having delivered the assembly on the 14th of July, suddenly to cease acting, which was displaying an entire ignorance of the impetus of revolutions. When the people have once been made use of, it is difficult to disband them, and the most prudent course is not to contest, but to regulate intervention. Lally-Tollendal renounced his title of Frenchman, and returned to England, the land of his ancestors. Mounier repaired to Dauphine, his native province, which he endeavoured to excite to a revolt against the assembly. It was inconsistent to complain of an insurrection, and yet to provoke one, especially when it was to the profit of another party, for his was too weak to maintain itself against the ancient regime and the revolution. Notwithstanding his influence in Dauphine, whose former movements he had directed, Mounier was unable to establish there a centre of permanent resistance, but the assembly was thereby warned to destroy the ancient provincial organisation, which might become the frame- work of a civil war.

After the 5th and 6th of October, the national representatives followed the king to the capital, which their common presence had contributed greatly to tranquillise. The people were satisfied with possessing the king, the causes which had excited their ebullition had ceased. The duke of Orleans, who, rightly or wrongly, was considered the contriver of the insurrection, had just been sent away; he had accepted a mission to England; Lafayette was resolved to maintain order; the national guard, animated by a better spirit, acquired every day habits of discipline and obedience; the corporation, getting over the confusion of its first establishment, began to have authority. There remained but one cause of disturbance—the scarcity of provisions. Notwithstanding the zeal and foresight of the committee entrusted with the task of providing supplies, daily assemblages of the people threatened the public tranquillity. The people, so easily deceived when suffering, killed a baker called Francois, who was unjustly accused as a monopolist. On the 21st of October a martial law was proclaimed, authorizing the corporation to employ force to disperse the mob, after having summoned the citizens to retire. Power was vested in a class interested in maintaining order; the districts and the national guard were obedient to the assembly. Submission to the law was the prevailing passion of that epoch. The deputies on their side only aspired at completing the constitution and effecting the re-organisation of the state. They had the more reason for hastening their task, as the enemies of the assembly made use of what remained of the ancient regime, to occasion it embarrassment. Accordingly, it replied to each of their endeavours by a decree, which, changing the ancient order of things, deprived them of one of their means of attack.

It began by dividing the kingdom more equally and regularly. The provinces, which had witnessed with regret the loss of their privileges, formed small states, the extent of which was too vast, and the administration too independent. It was essential to reduce their size, change their names, and subject them to the same government. On the 22nd of December, the assembly adopted in this respect the project conceived by Sieyes, and presented by Thouret in the name of the committee, which occupied itself constantly on this subject for two months.

France was divided into eighty-three departments, nearly equal in extent and population; the departments were subdivided into districts and cantons. Their administration received a uniform and hierarchical form. The department had an administrative council composed of thirty-six members, and an executive directory composed of five members: as the names indicate, the functions of the one were to decide, and of the other to act. The district was organised in the same way; although on a smaller scale, it had a council and a directory, fewer in number, and subordinate to the superior directory and council. The canton composed of five or six parishes, was an electoral not an administrative division; the active citizens, and to be considered such it was necessary to pay taxes amounting to three days' earnings, united in the canton to nominate their deputies and magistrates. Everything in the new plan was subject to election, but this had several degrees. It appeared imprudent to confide to the multitude the choice of its delegates, and illegal to exclude them from it; this difficult question was avoided by the double election. The active citizens of the canton named electors intrusted with nominating the members of the national assembly, the administrators of the department, those of the district, and the judges of tribunals; a criminal court was established in each department, a civil court in each district, and a police-court in each canton.

Such was the institution of the department. It remained to regulate that of the corporation: the administration of this was confided to a general council and a municipality, composed of members whose numbers were proportioned to the population of the towns. The municipal officers were named immediately by the people, and could alone authorize the employment of the armed force. The corporation formed the first step of the association, the kingdom formed the last; the department was intermediate between the corporation and the state, between universal interests and purely local interests.

The execution of this plan, which organized the sovereignty of the people, which enabled all citizens to concur in the election of their magistrates, and entrusted them with their own administration, and distributed them into a machinery which, by permitting the whole state to move, preserved a correspondence between its parts, and prevented their isolation, excited the discontent of some provinces. The states of Languedoc and Brittany protested against the new division of the kingdom, and on their side the parliaments of Metz, Rouen, Bordeaux, and Toulouse rose against the operations of the assembly which suppressed the Chambres de Vacations, abolished the orders, and declared the commissions of the states incompetent. The partisans of the ancient regime employed every means to disturb its progress; the nobility excited the provinces, the parliaments took resolutions, the clergy issued mandates, and writers took advantage of the liberty of the press to attack the revolution. Its two principal enemies were the nobles and the bishops. Parliament, having no root in the nation, only formed a magistracy, whose attacks were prevented by destroying the magistracy itself, whereas the nobility and the clergy had means of action which survived the influence of the body. The misfortunes of these two classes were caused by themselves. After harassing the revolution in the assembly, they afterwards attacked it with open force— the clergy, by internal insurrections—the nobility, by arming Europe against it. They had great expectations from anarchy, which, it is true, caused France many evils, but which was far from rendering their own position better. Let us now see how the hostilities of the clergy were brought on; for this purpose we must go back a little.

The revolution had commenced with the finances, and had not yet been able to put an end to the embarrassments by which it was caused. More important objects had occupied the attention of the assembly. Summoned, no longer to defray the expenses of administration, but to constitute the state, it had suspended its legislative discussions, from time to time, in order to satisfy the more pressing necessities of the treasury. Necker had proposed provisional means, which had been adopted in confidence, and almost without discussion. Despite this zeal, he did not without displeasure see the finances considered as subordinate to the constitution, and the ministry to the assembly. A first loan of thirty millions (1,200,000l.), voted the 9th of August, had not succeeded; a subsequent loan of eighty millions (3,200,000l.), voted the 27th of the same month, had been insufficient. Duties were reduced or abolished, and they yielded scarcely anything, owing to the difficulty of collecting them. It became useless to have recourse to public confidence, which refused its aid; and in September, Necker had proposed, as the only means, an extraordinary contribution of a fourth of the revenue, to be paid at once. Each citizen was to fix his proportion himself, making use of that simple form of oath, which well expressed these first days of honour and patriotism:—"I declare with truth."

Mirabeau now caused Necker to be invested with a complete financial dictatorship. He spoke of the urgent wants of the state, of the labours of the assembly which did not permit it to discuss the plan of the minister, and which at the same time prevented its examining any other; of Necker's skill, which ensured the success of his own measure; and urged the assembly to leave with him the responsibility of its success, by confidently adopting it. As some did not approve of the views of the minister, and others suspected the intentions of Mirabeau with respect to him, he closed his speech, one of the most eloquent he ever delivered, by displaying bankruptcy impending, and exclaiming, "Vote this extraordinary subsidy, and may it prove sufficient! Vote it; for if you have doubts respecting the means, you have none respecting the want, and our inability to supply it. Vote it, for the public circumstances will not bear delay, and we shall be accountable for all postponement. Beware of asking for time; misfortune never grants it. Gentlemen, on the occasion of a ridiculous motion at the Palais Royal, an absurd incursion, which had never had any importance, save in feeble imaginations, or the minds of men of ill designs and bad faith, you once heard these words, 'Catiline is at the gates of Rome, and yet they deliberate!' And yet there were around us neither Catiline, nor perils, nor factions, nor Rome. But now bankruptcy, hideous bankruptcy, is there; it threatens to consume you, your properties, your honour, and yet you deliberate!" Mirabeau had carried away the assembly by his oratory; and the patriotic contribution was voted with unanimous applause.

But this resource had only afforded momentary relief. The finances of the revolution depended on a more daring and more vast measure. It was necessary not only to support the revolution, but to repair the immense deficit which stopped its progress, and threatened its future destiny. One way alone remained—to declare ecclesiastical property national, and to sell it for the rescue of the state. Public interest prescribed this course; and it could be done with justice, the clergy not being the proprietors, but the simple administrators of this property, devoted to religion, and not to the priests. The nation, therefore, by taking on itself the expenses of the altar, and the support of its ministers might procure and appropriate an important financial resource, and obtain a great political result.

It was important not to leave an independent body, and especially an ancient body, any longer in the state; for in a time of revolution everything ancient is hostile. The clergy, by its formidable hierarchy and its opulence, a stranger to the new changes, would have remained as a republic in the kingdom. Its form belonged to another system: when there was no state, but only bodies, each order had provided for its own regulation and existence. The clergy had its decretals, the nobility its law of fiefs, the people its corporations; everything was independent, because everything was private. But now that functions were becoming public, it was necessary to make a magistracy of the priesthood as they had made one of royalty; and, in order to make them dependent on the state, it was essential they should be paid by it, and to resume from the monarch his domains, from the clergy its property, by bestowing on each of them suitable endowments. This great operation, which destroyed the ancient ecclesiastical regime, was effected in the following manner:

One of the most pressing necessities was the abolition of tithes. As these were a tax paid by the rural population to the clergy, the sacrifice would be for the advantage of those who were oppressed by them. Accordingly, after declaring they were redeemable, on the night of the 4th of August, they were suppressed on the 11th, without providing any equivalent. The clergy opposed the measure at first, but afterwards had the good sense to consent. The archbishop of Paris gave up tithes in the name of all his brethren, and by this act of prudence he showed himself faithful to the line of conduct adopted by the privileged classes on the night of the 4th of August; but this was the extent of his sacrifices.

A short time after, the debate respecting the possession of ecclesiastical property began. Talleyrand, bishop of Autun, proposed to the clergy that they should renounce it in favour of the nation, which would employ it in defraying the expenses of worship, and liquidating its debt. He proved the justice and propriety of this measure; and he showed the great advantages which would accrue to the state. The property of the clergy amounted to several thousand millions of francs. After paying its debts, providing for the ecclesiastical services and that of hospitals, and the endowment of its ministers, sufficient would still remain to extinguish the public debt, whether permanent or annuities, and to reimburse the money paid for judicial offices. The clergy rose against this proposition. The discussion became very animated; and it was decided, in spite of their resistance, that they were not proprietors, but simple depositaries of the wealth that the piety of kings and of the faithful had devoted to religion, and that the nation, on providing for the service of public worship, had a right to recall such property. The decree which placed it at its disposal was passed on the 2nd of December, 1789.

From that moment the hatred of the clergy to the revolution broke out. At the commencement of the states-general it had been less intractable than the nobility, in order to preserve its riches; it now showed itself as opposed as they to the new regime, of which it became the most tenacious and furious foe. Yet, as the decree placed ecclesiastical property at the disposal of the nation, without, as yet, displacing it, it did not break out into opposition at once. The administration was still confided to it, and it hoped that the possessions of the church might serve as a mortgage for the debt, but would not be sold.

It was, indeed, difficult to effect the sale, which, however, could not be delayed, the treasury only subsisting on anticipations, and the exchequer, which supplied it with bills, beginning to lose all credit on account of the number it had issued.

They obtained their end, and proceeded with the new financial organisation in the following manner: The necessities of this and the following year required a sale of this property to the amount of four hundred millions of francs; to facilitate it, the corporation of Paris made considerable subscriptions, and the municipalities of the kingdom followed the example of Paris. They were to return to the treasury the equivalent of the property they received from the state to sell to private individuals; but they wanted money, and they could not deliver the amount since they had not yet met with purchasers. What was to be done? They supplied municipal notes intended to reimburse the public creditors, until they should acquire the funds necessary for withdrawing the notes. Once arrived thus far, they saw that, instead of municipal notes, it would be better to create exchequer bills, which would have a compulsory circulation, and answer the purpose of specie: this was simplifying the operation by generalising it. In this way the assignats had their origin.

This invention was of great utility to the revolution, and alone secured the sale of ecclesiastical property. The assignats, which were a means of payment for the state, became a pledge to the creditors. The latter by receiving them were not obliged to accept payment in land for what they had furnished in money. But sooner or later the assignats would fall into the hands of men disposed to realise them, and then they were to be destroyed at the same time that they ceased to be a pledge. In order that they might fulfil their design, their forced circulation was required; to render them safe, the quantity was limited to the value of the property proposed for sale; and that they might not fall by too sudden a change, they were made to bear interest. The assembly, from the moment of their issue, wished to give them all the consistency of money. It was hoped that specie concealed by distrust would immediately re-appear, and that the assignats would enter into competition with it. Mortgage made them quite as sure, and interest made them more profitable; but this interest, which was attended with much inconvenience, disappeared after the first issue. Such was the origin of the paper money issued under so much necessity, and with so much prudence, which enabled the revolution to accomplish such great things, and which was brought into discredit by causes that belonged less to its nature than to the subsequent use made of it.

When the clergy saw by a decree of the 29th of December the administration of church property transferred to the municipalities, the sale they were about to make of it to the value of four hundred millions of francs, and the creation of a paper money calculated to facilitate this spoliation, and render it definitive, it left nothing undone to secure the intervention of God in the cause of its wealth. It made a last attempt: it offered to realize in its own name the loan of four hundred millions of francs, which was rejected, because otherwise, after having decided that it was not the proprietor of church property, it would thus have again been admitted to be so. It then sought every means of impeding the operations of the municipalities. In the south, it raised catholics against protestants; in the pulpit, it alarmed consciences; in the confessional, it treated sales as sacrilegious, and in the tribune it strove to render the sentiments of the assembly suspected. It excited as much as possible religious questions for the purpose of compromising the assembly, and confounding the cause of its own interest with that of religion. The abuses and inutility of monastic vows were at this period admitted by every one, even by the clergy. At their abolition on the 13th of February, 1790, the bishop of Nancy proposed incidentally and perfidiously that the catholic religion alone should have a public worship. The assembly were indignant at the motives that suggested such a proposition, and it was abandoned. But the same motion was again brought forward in another sitting, and after stormy debates the assembly declared that from respect to the Supreme Being and the catholic religion, the only one supported at the expense of the state, it conceived it ought not to decide upon the question submitted to it.

Such was the disposition of the clergy, when, in the months of June and July, 1790, the assembly turned its attention to its internal organization. The clergy waited with impatience for this opportunity of exciting a schism. This project, the adoption of which caused so much evil, went to re-establish the church on its ancient basis, and to restore the purity of its doctrine; it was not the work of philosophers, but of austere Christians, who wished to support religion by the state, and to make them concur mutually in promoting its happiness. The reduction of bishoprics to the same number as the departments, the conformity of the ecclesiastical circumscription with the civil circumscription, the nomination of bishops by electors, who also chose deputies and administrators, the suppression of chapters, and the substitution of vicars for canons, were the chief features of this plan; there was nothing in it that attacked the dogmas or worship of the church. For a long time the bishops and other ecclesiastics had been nominated by the people; as for diocesan limits, the operation was purely material, and in no respect religious. It moreover generously provided for the support of the members of the church, and if the high dignitaries saw their revenues reduced, the cures, who formed the most numerous portion, had theirs augmented.

But a pretext was wanting, and the civil constitution of the clergy was eagerly seized upon. From the outset of the discussion, the archbishop of Aix protested against the principles of the ecclesiastical committee. In his opinion, the appointment or suspension of bishops by civil authority was opposed to discipline; and when the decree was put to the vote, the bishop of Clermont recapitulated the principles advanced by the archbishop of Aix, and left the hall at the head of all the dissentient members. The decree passed, but the clergy declared war against the revolution. From that moment it leagued more closely with the dissentient nobility. Equally reduced to the common condition, the two privileged classes employed all their means to stop the progress of reform.

The departments were scarcely formed when agents were sent by them to assemble the electors, and try new nominations. They did not hope to obtain a favourable choice, but aimed at fomenting divisions between the assembly and the departments. This project was denounced from the tribune, and failed as soon as it was made known. Its authors then went to work in another way. The period allotted to the deputies of the states-general had expired, their power having been limited to one year, according to the desire of the districts. The aristocrats availed themselves of this circumstance to require a fresh election of the assembly. Had they gained this point, they would have acquired a great advantage, and with this view they themselves appealed to the sovereignty of the people. "Without doubt," replied Chapelier, "all sovereignty rests with the people; but this principle has no application to the present case; it would be destroying the constitution and liberty to renew the assembly before the constitution is completed. This is, indeed, the hope of those who wish to see liberty and the constitution perish, and to witness the return of the distinction of orders, of prodigality in the public expenditure, and of the abuses that spring from despotism." At this moment all eyes were turned to the Right, and rested on the abbe Maury. "Send those people to the Chatelet," cried the latter, sharply; "or if you do not know them, do not speak of them." "The constitution," continued Chapelier, "can only be made by one assembly. Besides, the former electors no longer exist; the bailiwicks are absorbed in the departments, the orders are no longer separate. The clause respecting the limitation of power is consequently without value; it will therefore be contrary to the constitution, if the deputies do not retain their seats in this assembly; their oath commands them to continue there, and public interest requires it."

"You entangle us in sophisms," replied the abbe Maury; "how long have we been a national convention? You talk of the oath we took on the 20th of June, without considering that it cannot weaken that which we made to our constituents. Besides, gentlemen, the constitution is completed; you have, only now to declare that the king enjoys the plenitude of the executive power. We are here for the sole purpose of securing to the French nation the right of influencing its legislation, of establishing the principle that taxation shall be consented to by the people, and of securing our liberty. Yes, the constitution is made; and I will oppose every decree calculated to limit the rights of the people over their representatives. The founders of liberty ought to respect the liberty of the nation; the nation is above us all, and we destroy our authority by limiting the national authority."

The abbe Maury's speech was received with loud applause from the Right. Mirabeau immediately ascended the tribune. "It is asked," said he, "how long the deputies of the people have been a national convention? I answer, from the day when, finding the door of their session-house surrounded by soldiers, they went and assembled where they could, and swore to perish rather than betray or abandon the rights of the nation. Whatever our powers were, that day their nature was changed; and whatever powers we may have exercised, our efforts and labours have rendered them legitimate, and the adhesion of the nation has sanctified them. You all remember the saying of the great man of antiquity, who had neglected legal forms to save his country. Summoned by a factious tribune to declare whether he had observed the laws, he replied, 'I swear I have saved my country!' Gentlemen," he exclaimed, turning to the deputies of the commons, "I swear that you have saved France!"

The assembly then rose by a spontaneous movement, and declared that the session should not close till their task was accomplished.

Anti-revolutionary efforts were increasing, at the same time, without the assembly. Attempts were made to seduce or disorganize the army, but the assembly took prudent measures in this respect. It gained the affections of the troops by rendering promotion independent of the court, and of titles of nobility. The count d'Artois and the prince de Conde, who had retired to Turin after the 14th of July, corresponded with Lyons and the south; but the emigrants not having yet the external influence they afterwards acquired at Coblentz, and failing to meet with internal support, all their efforts were vain. The attempts at insurrection, originating with the clergy in Languedoc, had as little effect. They brought on some transient disturbances, but did not effect a religious war. Time is necessary to form a party; still more is required to induce it to decide on serious hostilities. A more practicable design was that of carrying off the king and conveying him to Peronne. The marquis de Favras, with the support of Monsieur, the king's brother, was preparing to execute it, when it was discovered. The Chatelet condemned to death this intrepid adventurer, who had failed in his enterprise, through undertaking it with too much display. The king's flight, after the events of October, could only be effected furtively, as it subsequently happened at Varennes.

The position of the court was equivocal and embarrassing. It encouraged every anti-revolutionary enterprise and avowed none; it felt more than ever its weakness and dependence on the assembly; and while desirous of throwing off the yoke, feared to make the attempt because success appeared difficult. Accordingly, it excited opposition without openly co-operating in it; with some it dreamed of the restoration of the ancient regime, with others it only aimed at modifying the revolution. Mirabeau had been recently in treaty with it. After having been one of the chief authors of reform, he sought to give it stability by enchaining faction. His object was to convert the court to the revolution, not to give up the revolution to the court. The support he offered was constitutional; he could not offer any other; for his power depended on his popularity, and his popularity on his principles. But he was wrong in suffering it to be bought. Had not his immense necessities obliged him to accept money and sell his counsels, he would not have been more blameable than the unalterable Lafayette, the Lameths and the Girondins, who successively negotiated with it. But none of them gained the confidence of the court; it only had recourse to them in extremity. By their means it endeavoured to suspend the revolution, while by the means of the aristocracy it tried to destroy it. Of all the popular leaders, Mirabeau had perhaps the greatest ascendancy over the court, because he was the most winning, and had the strongest mind.

The assembly worked unceasingly at the constitution, in the midst of these intrigues and plots. It decreed the new judicial organization of France. All the new magistracies were temporary. Under the absolute monarchy, all powers emanated from the throne, and all functionaries were appointed by the king; under the constitutional monarchy, all powers emanating from the people, the functionaries were to be appointed by it. The throne alone was transmissible; the other powers being the property neither of a man nor of a family, were neither of life-tenure, nor hereditary. The legislation of that period depended on one sole principle, the sovereignty of the nation. The judicial functions had themselves that changeable character. Trial by jury, a democratic institution formerly common to nearly all the continent, but which in England alone had survived the encroachments of feudalism and the throne, was introduced into criminal causes. For civil causes special judges were nominated. Fixed courts were established, two courts of appeal to prevent error, and a cour de cassation intended to secure the preservation of the protecting forms of the law. This formidable power, when it proceeds from the throne, can only be independent by being fixed; but it must be temporary when it proceeds from the people; because, while depending on all, it depends upon no one.

In another matter, quite as important, the right of making peace or war, the assembly decided a new and delicate question, and this in a sure, just, and prompt manner, after one of the most luminous and eloquent discussions that ever distinguished its sittings. As peace and war belonged more to action than to will, it confided, contrary to the usual rule, the initiative to the king. He who was best able to judge of its fitness was to propose the question, but it was left to the legislative body to decide it.

The popular torrent, after having burst forth against the ancient regime, gradually subsided into its bed; new dykes restrained it on all sides. The government of the revolution was rapidly becoming established. The assembly had given to the new regime its monarch, its national representation, its territorial division, its armed force, its municipal and administrative power, its popular tribunals, its currency, its clergy; it had made an arrangement with respect to its debt, and it had found means to reconstruct property without injustice.

The 14th of July approached: that day was regarded by the nation as the anniversary of its deliverance, and preparations were made to celebrate it with a solemnity calculated to elevate the souls of the citizens, and to strengthen the common bonds of union. A confederation of the whole kingdom was appointed to take place in the Champ de Mars; and there, in the open air, the deputies sent by the eighty-three departments, the national representatives, the Parisian guard, and the monarch, were to take the oath to the constitution. By way of prelude to this patriotic fete, the popular members of the nobility proposed the abolition of titles; and the assembly witnessed another sitting similar to that of the 4th of August. Titles, armorial bearings, liveries, and orders of knighthood, were abolished on the 20th of June, and vanity, as power had previously done, lost its privileges.

This sitting established equality everywhere, and made things agree with words, by destroying all the pompous paraphernalia of other times. Formerly titles had designated functions; armorial bearings had distinguished powerful families; liveries had been worn by whole armies of vassals; orders of knighthood had defended the state against foreign foes, Europe against Islamism; but now, nothing of this remained. Titles had lost their truth and their fitness; nobility, after ceasing to be a magistracy, had even ceased to be an ornament; and power, like glory, was henceforth to spring from plebeian ranks. But whether the aristocracy set more value on their titles than on their privileges, or whether they only awaited a pretext for openly declaring themselves, this last measure, more than any other, decided the emigration and its attacks. It was for the nobility what the civil constitution had been for the clergy, an occasion, rather than a cause of hostility.

The 14th of July arrived, and the revolution witnessed few such glorious days—the weather only did not correspond with this magnificent fete. The deputies of all the departments were presented to the king, who received them with much affability; and he, on his part, met also with the most touching testimonies of love, but as a constitutional king. "Sire," said the leader of the Breton deputation, kneeling on one knee, and presenting his sword, "I place in your hands the faithful sword of the brave Bretons: it shall only be reddened by the blood of your foes." Louis XVI. raised and embraced him, and returned the sword. "It cannot be in better hands than in those of my brave Bretons," he replied; "I have never doubted their loyalty and affection; assure them that I am the father and brother, the friend of all Frenchmen." "Sire," returned the deputy, "every Frenchman loves, and will continue to love you, because you are a citizen- king."

The confederation was to take place in the Champ de Mars. The immense preparations were scarcely completed in time; all Paris had been engaged for several weeks in getting the arrangements ready by the 14th. At seven in the morning, the procession of electors, of the representatives of the corporation, of the presidents of districts, of the national assembly, of the Parisian guard, of the deputies of the army, and of the federates of the departments, set out in complete order from the site of the Bastille. The presence of all these national corps, the floating banners, the patriotic inscriptions, the varied costumes, the sounds of music, the joy of the crowd, rendered the procession a most imposing one. It traversed the city, and crossed the Seine, amidst a volley of artillery, over a bridge of boats, which had been thrown across it the preceding day. It entered the Champ de Mars under a triumphal arch, adorned with patriotic inscriptions. Each body took the station assigned it in excellent order, and amidst shouts of applause.

The vast space of the Champ de Mars was inclosed by raised seats of turf, occupied by four hundred thousand spectators. An antique altar was erected in the middle; and around it, on a vast amphitheatre, were the king, his family, the assembly, and the corporation. The federates of the departments were ranged in order under their banners; the deputies of the army and the national guards were in their ranks, and under their ensigns. The bishop of Autun ascended the altar in pontifical robes; four hundred priests in white copes, and decorated with flowing tricoloured sashes, were posted at the four corners of the altar. Mass was celebrated amid the sounds of military music; and then the bishop of Autun blessed the oriflamme, and the eighty-three banners.

A profound silence now reigned in the vast inclosure, and Lafayette, appointed that day to the command in chief of all the national guards of the kingdom, advanced first to take the civic oath. Borne on the arms of grenadiers to the altar of the country, amidst the acclamations of the people, he exclaimed with a loud voice, in his own name, and that of the federates and troops: "We swear eternal fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king; to maintain to the utmost of our power the constitution decreed by the national assembly, and accepted by the king; and to remain united with every Frenchman by the indissoluble ties of fraternity." Forthwith the firing of cannon, prolonged cries of "Vive la nation!" "Vive le roi!" and sounds of music, mingled in the air. The president of the national assembly took the same oath, and all the deputies repeated it with one voice. Then Louis XVI. rose and said: "I, king of the French, swear to employ all the power delegated to me by the constitutional act of the state, in maintaining the constitution decreed by the national assembly and accepted by me." The queen, carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, rose, lifted up the dauphin in her arms, and showing him to the people, exclaimed: "Behold my son, he unites with me in the same sentiments." At that moment the banners were lowered, the acclamations of the people were heard, and the subjects believed in the sincerity of the monarch, the monarch in the affection of the subjects, and this happy day closed with a hymn of thanksgiving.

The fetes of the confederation were protracted for some days. Illuminations, balls, and sports were given by the city of Paris to the deputies of the departments. A ball took place on the spot where had stood, a year before, the Bastille; gratings, fetters, ruins, were observed here and there, and on the door was the inscription, "Ici on danse," a striking contrast with the ancient destination of the spot. A contemporary observes: "They danced indeed with joy and security on the ground where so many tears had been shed; where courage, genius, and innocence had so often groaned; where so often the cries of despair had been stifled." A medal was struck to commemorate the confederation; and at the termination of the fetes the deputies returned to their departments.

The confederation only suspended the hostility of parties. Petty intrigues were resumed in the assembly as well as out of doors. The duke of Orleans had returned from his mission, or, more strictly speaking, from his exile. The inquiry respecting the events of the 5th and 6th of October, of which he and Mirabeau were accused as the authors, had been conducted by the Chatelets inquiry, which had been suspended, was now resumed. By this attack the court again displayed its want of foresight; for it ought to have proved the accusation or not to have made it. The assembly having decided on giving up the guilty parties, had it found any such, declared there was no ground for proceeding; and Mirabeau, after an overwhelming outburst against the whole affair, obliged the Right to be silent, and thus arose triumphantly from an accusation which had been made expressly to intimidate him.

They attacked not only a few deputies but the assembly itself. The court intrigued against it, but the Right drove this to exaggeration. "We like its decrees," said the abbe Maury; "we want three or four more of them." Hired libellists sold, at its very doors, papers calculated to deprive it of the respect of the people; the ministers blamed and obstructed its progress. Necker, still haunted by the recollection of his former ascendancy, addressed to it memorials, in which he opposed its decrees and gave it advice. This minister could not accustom himself to a secondary part: he would not fall in with the abrupt plans of the assembly, so entirely opposed to his ideas of gradual reform. At length, convinced or weary of the inutility of his efforts, he left Paris, after resigning, on the 4th of September, 1790, and obscurely traversed those provinces which a year before he had gone through in triumph. In revolutions, men are easily forgotten, for the nation sees many in its varied course. If we would not find them ungrateful, we must not cease for an instant to serve according to their own desire.

On the other hand, the nobility which had found a new subject of discontent in the abolition of titles, continued its anti-revolutionary efforts. As it did not succeed in exciting the people, who, from their position, found the recent changes very beneficial, it had recourse to means which it considered more certain; it quitted the kingdom, with the intention of returning thither with all Europe as its armed ally; but while waiting till a system of emigration could be organised, while waiting for the appearance of foreign foes to the revolution, it continued to arouse enemies to it in the interior of the kingdom. The troops, as we have before observed, had already for some time been tampered with in various ways. The new military code was favourable to the soldiers; promotion formerly granted to the nobility was now granted to seniority. Most of the officers were attached to the ancient regime, nor did they conceal the fact. Compelled to take what had become the common oath, the oath of fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king, some left the army, and increased the number of emigrants, while others endeavoured to win the soldiers over to their party.

General Bouille was of this number. After having long refused to take the civic oath, he did so at last with this intention. He had a numerous body of troops under his command near the northern frontier; he was clever, resolute, attached to the king, opposed to the revolution, such as it had then become, though the friend of reform; a circumstance that afterwards brought him into suspicion at Coblentz. He kept his army isolated from the citizens, that it might remain faithful, and that it might not be infected with the spirit of insubordination which they communicated to the troops. By skilful management, and the ascendancy of a great mind, he also succeeded in retaining the confidence and attachment of his soldiers. It was not thus elsewhere. The officers were the objects of a general dislike; they were accused of diminishing the pay, and having no concern for the great body of the troops. The prevailing opinions had also something to do with this dissatisfaction. These combined causes led to revolts among the men; that of Nancy, in August, 1790, produced great alarm, and became almost the signal of a civil war. Three regiments, those of Chateauvieux, Maitre-de-camp, and the King's own, rebelled against their chiefs. Bouille was ordered to march against them; he did so at the head of the garrison and national guard of Metz. After an animated skirmish, he subdued them. The assembly congratulated him; but Paris, which saw in Bouille a conspirator, was thrown into fresh agitation at this intelligence. Crowds collected, and the impeachment of the ministers who had given orders to Bouille to march upon Nancy was clamorously demanded. Lafayette, however, succeeded in allaying this ebullition, supported by the assembly, which, finding itself placed between a counter- revolution and anarchy, opposed both with equal wisdom and courage.

The aristocracy triumphed at the sight of the difficulties which perplexed the assembly. They imagined that it would be compelled to be dependent on the multitude, or deprive itself entirely of its support; and in either case the return to the ancient regime appeared to them short and easy. The clergy had its share in this work. The sale of church property, which it took every means to impede, was effected at a higher price than that fixed. The people, delivered from tithes and reassured as to the national debt, were far from listening to the angry suggestions of the priests; they accordingly made use of the civil constitution of the clergy to excite a schism. We have seen that this decree of the assembly did not affect either the discipline or the creed of the church. The king sanctioned it on the 26th of December; but the bishops, who sought to cover their interests with the mantle of religion, declared that it encroached on the spiritual authority. The pope, consulted as to this purely political measure, refused his assent to it, which the king earnestly sought, and encouraged the opposition of the priests. The latter decided that they would not concur in the establishment of the civil constitution; that those of them who might be suppressed would protest against this uncanonical act, that every bishopric created without the concurrence of the pope should be null, and that the metropolitans should refuse institution to bishops appointed according to civil forms.

The assembly strengthened this league by attempting to frustrate it. If, contrary to their real desire, it had left the dissentient priests to themselves, they would not have found the elements of a religious war. But the assembly decreed that the ecclesiastics should swear fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king, and to maintain the civil constitution of the clergy. Refusal to take this oath was to be attended by the substitution of others in their bishoprics and cures. The assembly hoped that the higher clergy from interest, and the lower clergy from ambition, would adopt this measure.

The bishops, on the contrary, thought that all the ecclesiastics would follow their example, and that by refusing to swear, they would leave the state without public worship, and the people without priests. The result satisfied the expectations of neither party; the majority of the bishops and cures of the assembly refused to take the oath, but a few bishops and many cures took it. The dissentient incumbents were deprived, and the electors nominated successors to them, who received canonical institution from the bishops of Autun and Lida. But the deprived ecclesiastics refused to abandon their functions, and declared their successors intruders, the sacraments administred by them null, and all Christians who should venture to recognise them excommunicated. They did not leave their dioceses; they issued charges, and excited the people to disobey the laws; and thus an affair of private interest became first a matter of religion and then a matter of party. There were two bodies of clergy, one constitutional, the other refractory; they had each its partisans, and treated each other as rebels and heretics. According to passion or interest, religion became an instrument or an obstacle; and while the priests made fanatics the revolution made infidels. The people, not yet infected with this malady of the upper classes, lost, especially in towns, the faith of their fathers, from the imprudence of those who placed them between the revolution and their religion. "The bishops," said the marquis de Ferrieres, who will not be suspected, "refused to fall in with any arrangements, and by their guilty intrigues closed every approach to reconciliation; sacrificing the catholic religion to an insane obstinacy, and a discreditable attachment to their wealth."

Every party sought to gain the people; it was courted as sovereign. After attempting to influence it by religion, another means was employed, that of the clubs. At that period, clubs were private assemblies, in which the measures of government, the business of the state, and the decrees of the assembly were discussed; their deliberations had no authority, but they exercised a certain influence. The first club owed its origin to the Breton deputies, who already met together at Versailles to consider the course of proceeding they should take. When the national representatives were transferred from Versailles to Paris, the Breton deputies and those of the assembly who were of their views held their sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins, which subsequently gave its name to their meetings. It did not at first cease to be a preparatory assembly, but as all things increase in time, the Jacobin club did not confine itself to the influencing the assembly; it sought also to influence the municipality and the people, and received as associates members of the municipality and common citizens. Its organization became more regular, its action more powerful; its sittings were regularly reported in the papers; it created branch clubs in the provinces, and raised by the side of legal power another power which first counselled and then conducted it.

The Jacobin club, as it lost its primitive character and became a popular assembly, had been forsaken by part of its founders. The latter established another society on the plan of the old one, under the name of the club of '89. Sieyes, Chapelier, Lafayette, La Rochefoucauld directed it, as Lameth and Barnave directed that of the Jacobins. Mirabeau belonged to both, and by both was equally courted. These clubs, of which the one prevailed in the assembly and the other amongst the people, were attached to the new order of things, though in different degrees. The aristocracy sought to attack the revolution with its own arms; it opened royalist clubs to oppose the popular clubs. That first established under the name of the Club des Impartiaux could not last because it addressed itself to no class opinion. Reappearing under the name of the Club Monarchique, it included among its members all those whose views it represented. It sought to render itself popular with the lower classes, and distributed bread; but far from accepting its overtures, the people considered such establishments as a counter-revolutionary movement. The people disturbed their sittings, and obliged them several times to change their place of meeting. At length, the municipal authority found itself obliged, in January, 1791, to close this club, which had been the cause of several riots.

The distrust of the multitude was extreme; the departure of the king's aunts, to which it attached an exaggerated importance, increased its uneasiness, and led it to suppose another departure was preparing. These suspicions were not unfounded, and they occasioned a kind of rising which the anti-revolutionists sought to turn to account by carrying off the king. This project failed, owing to the resolution and skill of Lafayette. While the crowd went to Vincennes to demolish the dungeon which they said communicated with the Tuileries, and would favour the flight of the king, more than six hundred persons armed with swords and daggers entered the Tuileries to compel the king to flee. Lafayette, who had repaired to Vincennes to disperse the multitude, returned to quell the anti- revolutionists of the chateau, after dissipating the mob of the popular party, and by this second expedition he regained the confidence which his first had lost him.

The attempt rendered the escape of Louis XVI. more feared than ever. Accordingly, a short time after, when he wished to go to Saint Cloud, he was prevented by the crowd and even by his own guard, despite the efforts of Lafayette, who endeavoured to make them respect the law, and the liberty of the monarch. The assembly on its side, after having decreed the inviolability of the prince, after having regulated his constitutional guard, and assigned the regency to the nearest male heir to the crown, declared that his flight from the kingdom would lead to his dethronement. The increasing emigration, the open avowal of its objects, and the threatening attitude of the European cabinets, all cherished the fear that the king might adopt such a determination.

Then, for the first time, the assembly sought to stop the progress of emigration by a decree; but this decree was a difficult question. If they punished those who left the kingdom, they violated the maxims of liberty, rendered sacred by the declaration of rights; if they did not raise obstacles to emigration, they endangered the safety of France, as the nobles merely quitted it in order to invade it. In the assembly, setting aside those who favoured emigration, some looked only at the right, others only at the danger, and every one sided with or opposed the restrictive law, according to his mode of viewing the subject. Those who desired the law, wished it to be mild; but only one law could be practicable at such a moment, and the assembly shrank from enacting it. This law, by the arbitrary order of a committee of three members, was to pronounce a sentence of civil death on the fugitive, and the confiscation of his property. "The horror expressed on the reading of this project," cried Mirabeau, "proves that this is a law worthy of being placed in the code of Draco, and cannot find place among the decrees of the national assembly of France. I proclaim that I shall consider myself released from every oath of fidelity I have made towards those who may be infamous enough to nominate a dictatorial commission. The popularity I covet, and which I have the honour to enjoy, is not a feeble reed; I wish it to take root in the soil, based on justice and liberty." The exterior position was not yet sufficiently alarming for the adoption of such a measure of safety and revolutionary defence.

Mirabeau did not long enjoy the popularity which he imagined he was so sure of. That was the last sitting he attended. A few days afterwards he terminated a life worn out by passions and by toil. His death, which happened on the 2nd of March, 1791, was considered a public calamity; all Paris attended his funeral; there was a general mourning throughout France, and his remains were deposited in the receptacle which had just been consecrated aux grands hommes, in the name of la patrie reconnaissante. No one succeeded him in power and popularity; and for a long time, in difficult discussions, the eyes of the assembly would turn towards the seat from whence they had been accustomed to hear the commanding eloquence which terminated their debates. Mirabeau, after having assisted the revolution with his daring in seasons of trial, and with his powerful reasoning since its victory, died seasonably. He was revolving vast designs; he wished to strengthen the throne, and consolidate the revolution; two attempts extremely difficult at such a time. It is to be feared that royalty, if he had made it independent, would have put down the revolution; or, if he had failed, that the revolution would have put down royalty. It is, perhaps, impossible to convert an ancient power into a new order; perhaps a revolution must be prolonged in order to become legitimate, and the throne, as it recovers, acquire the novelty of the other institutions.

From the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, to the month of April, 1791, the national assembly completed the reorganization of France; the court gave itself up to petty intrigues and projects of flight; the privileged classes sought for new means of power, those which they formerly possessed having been successively taken from them. They took advantage of all the opportunities of disorder which circumstances furnished them with, to attack the new regime and restore the old, by means of anarchy. At the opening of the law courts the nobility caused the Chambres de vacations to protest; when the provinces were abolished, it made the orders protest. As soon as the departments were formed, it tried new elections; when the old writs had expired, it sought the dissolution of the assembly; when the new military code passed, it endeavoured to excite the defection of the officers; lastly, all these means of opposition failing to effect the success of its designs, it emigrated, to excite Europe against the revolution. The clergy, on its side, discontented with the loss of its possessions still more than with the ecclesiastical constitution, sought to destroy the new order by insurrections, and to bring on insurrections by a schism. Thus it was during this epoch that parties became gradually disunited, and that the two classes hostile to the revolution prepared the elements of civil and foreign war.



CHAPTER IV

FROM APRIL, 1791, TO THE 3OTH SEPTEMBER. THE END OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY

The French revolution was to change the political state of Europe, to terminate the strife of kings among themselves, and to commence that between kings and people. This would have taken place much later had not the kings themselves provoked it. They sought to suppress the revolution, and they extended it; for by attacking it they were to render it victorious. Europe had then arrived at the term of the political system which swayed it. The political activity of the several states after being internal under the feudal government, had become external under the monarchical government. The first period terminated almost at the same time among all the great nations of Europe. Then kings who had so long been at war with their vassals, because they were in contact with them, encountered each other on the boundaries of their kingdoms, and fought. As no domination could become universal, neither that of Charles V. nor that of Louis XIV., the weak always uniting against the strong, after several vicissitudes of superiority and alliance, a sort of European equilibrium was established. In order to appreciate ulterior events, I propose to consider this equilibrium before the revolution.

Austria, England, and France had been, from the peace of Westphalia to the middle of the eighteenth century, the three great powers of Europe. Interest had leagued the two first against the third. Austria had reason to dread the influence of France in the Netherlands; England feared it on the sea. Rivalry of power and commerce often set them at variance, and they sought to weaken or plunder each other. Spain, since a prince of the house of Bourbon had been on the throne, was the ally of France against England. This, however, was a fallen power: confined to a corner of the continent, oppressed by the system of Philip II., deprived by the Family Compact of the only enemy that could keep it in action, by sea only had it retained any of its ancient superiority. But France had other allies on all sides of Austria: Sweden on the north; Poland and the Porte on the east; in the south of Germany, Bavaria; Prussia on the west; and in Italy, the kingdom of Naples. These powers, having reason to dread the encroachments of Austria, were naturally the allies of her enemy. Piedmont, placed between the two systems of alliance, sided, according to circumstances and its interests, with either. Holland was united with England or with France, as the party of the stadtholders or that of the people prevailed in the republic. Switzerland was neutral.

In the last half of the eighteenth century, two powers had risen in the north, Russia and Prussia. The latter had been changed from a simple electorate into an important kingdom, by Frederick-William, who had given it a treasure and an army; and by his son Frederick the Great, who had made use of these to extend his territory. Russia, long unconnected with the other states, had been more especially introduced into the politics of Europe by Peter I. and Catharine II. The accession of these two powers considerably modified the ancient alliances. In concert with the cabinet of Vienna, Russia and Prussia had executed the first partition of Poland in 1772; and after the death of Frederick the Great, the empress Catharine and the emperor Joseph united in 1785 to effect that of European Turkey.

The cabinet of Versailles, weakened since the imprudent and unfortunate Seven Years' War, had assisted at the partition of Poland without opposing it, had raised no obstacle to the fall of the Ottoman empire, and even allowed its ally, the republican party in Holland, to sink under the blows of Prussia and England, without assisting it. The latter powers had in 1787 re-established by force the hereditary, stadtholderate of the United Provinces. The only act which did honour to French policy, was the support it had happily given to the emancipation of North America. The revolution of 1789, while extending the moral influence of France, diminished still more its diplomatic influence.

England, under the government of young Pitt, was alarmed in 1788 at the ambitious projects of Russia, and united with Holland and Prussia to put an end to them. Hostilities were on the point of commencing when the emperor Joseph died, in February, 1790, and was succeeded by Leopold, who in July accepted the convention of Reichenbach. This convention, by the mediation of England, Russia, and Holland, settled the terms of the peace between Austria and Turkey, which was signed definitively, on the 4th of August, 1791, at Sistova; it at the same time provided for the pacification of the Netherlands. Urged by England and Prussia, Catharine II. also made peace with the Porte at Jassy, on the 29th of December, 1791. These negotiations, and the treaties they gave rise to, terminated the political struggles of the eighteenth century, and left the powers free to turn their attention to the French Revolution.

The princes of Europe, who had hitherto had no enemies but themselves, viewed it in the light of a common foe. The ancient relations of war and of alliance, already overlooked during the Seven Years' War, now ceased entirely: Sweden united with Russia, and Prussia with Austria. There was nothing now but the kings on one side, and people on the other, waiting for the auxiliaries which its example, or the faults of princes might give it. A general coalition was soon formed against the French revolution. Austria engaged in it with the hope of aggrandizement, England to avenge the American war, and to preserve itself from the spirit of the revolution; Prussia to strengthen the threatened absolute power, and profitably to engage its unemployed army; the German states to restore feudal rights to some of their members who had been deprived of them, by the abolition of the old regime in Alsace; the king of Sweden, who had constituted himself the champion of arbitrary power, to re-establish it in France, as he had just done in his own country; Russia, that it might execute without trouble the partition of Poland, while the attention of Europe was directed elsewhere; finally, all the sovereigns of the house of Bourbon, from the interest of power and family attachments. The emigrants encouraged them in these projects, and excited them to invasion. According to them, France was without an army, or at least without leaders, destitute of money, given up to disorder, weary of the assembly, disposed to the ancient regime, and without either the means or the inclination to defend itself. They flocked in crowds to take a share in the promised short campaign, and formed into organized bodies under the prince de Conde, at Worms, and the count d'Artois, at Coblentz.

The count d'Artois especially hastened the determination of the cabinets. The emperor Leopold was in Italy, and the count repaired to him, with Calonne as minister, and the count Alphonse de Durfort, who had been his mediator with the court of the Tuileries, and who had brought him the king's authority to treat with Leopold. The conference took place at Mantua, and the count de Durfort returned, and delivered to Louis XVI. in the name of the emperor, a secret declaration, in which was announced to him the speedy assistance of the coalition. Austria was to advance thirty- five thousand men on the frontier of Flanders; the German states, fifteen thousand on Alsace; the Swiss, fifteen thousand on the Lyonese frontier; the king of Sardinia, fifteen thousand on that of Dauphine; Spain was to augment its army in Catalonia to twenty thousand; Prussia was well disposed in favour of the coalition, and the king of England was to take part in it as elector of Hanover. All these troops were to move at the same time, at the end of July; the house of Bourbon was then to make a protest, and the powers were to publish a manifesto; until then, however, it was essential to keep the design secret, to avoid all partial insurrection, and to make no attempt at flight. Such was the result of the conferences at Mantua on the 20th May, 1791.

Louis XVI., either from a desire not to place himself entirely at the mercy of foreign powers, or dreading the ascendency which the count d'Artois, should he return at the head of the victorious emigrants, would assume over the government he had established, preferred restoring the government alone. In general Bouille he had a devoted and skilful partisan, who at the same time condemned both emigration and the assembly, and promised him refuge and support in his army. For some time past, a secret correspondence had taken place between him and the king. Bouille prepared everything to receive him. He established a camp at Montmedy, under the pretext of a movement of hostile troops on the frontier; he placed detachments on the route the king was to take, to serve him for escort, and as a motive was necessary for these arrangements, he alleged that of protecting the money despatched for the payment of the troops.

The royal family on its side made every preparation for departure; very few persons were informed of it, and no measures betrayed it. Louis XVI. and the queen, on the contrary, pursued a line of conduct calculated to silence suspicion; and on the night of the 20th of June, they issued at the appointed hour from the chateau, one by one, in disguise. In this way they eluded the vigilance of the guard, reached the Boulevard, where a carriage awaited them, and took the road to Chalons and Montmedy.