Mirabeau predicted to the Duke of Brunswick, from this moment, leading influence in the affairs of Germany after the death of the king of Prussia, whom Germany called the Great King.

The duke was then fifty years of age. He defended himself, in his conversations with Mirabeau, from the charge of loving war. "Battles are games of chance," said he to the French traveller: "up to this time I have been fortunate. Who knows if to-day, although more lucky, I should be as well used by fortune?" A year after this remark he made the triumphant invasion of Holland, at the head of the troops of England. Some years later Germany nominated him generalissimo.

But war with France, however it might be grateful to his ambition as a soldier, was repugnant to his mind as a philosopher. He felt he should but ill carry out the ideas in which he had been educated. Mirabeau had made that profound remark, which prophesied the weaknesses and defects of a coalition guided by that prince: "This man is of a rare stamp, but he is too much of a sage to be feared by sages."

This phrase explains the offer of the crown of France made to the Duke of Brunswick by Custine, in the name of the monarchical portion of the Assembly. Freemasonry, that underground religion, into which nearly all the reigning princes of Germany had entered, concealed beneath its mysteries secret understandings between French philosophy and the sovereigns on the banks of the Rhine. Brothers in a religious conspiracy, they could not be very bitter enemies in politics. The Duke of Brunswick was in the depth of his heart more the citizen than the prince—more the Frenchman than the German. The offer of a throne at Paris had pleased his fancy. He fights not against a people, whose king he hopes to be, and against a cause, which he desires to conquer, but not to destroy. Such was the state of the Duke of Brunswick's mind;—consulted by the king of Prussia, he advised this monarch to turn his forces to the Polish frontier and conquer provinces there, instead of principles in France.

VI.

Dumouriez's plan was to separate, as much as possible, Prussia from Austria, in order to have but one enemy at a time to cope with; and the union of these two powers, natural and jealous rivals of each other, appeared to him so totally unnatural, that he flattered himself he could prevent or sever it. The instinctive hatred of despotism for liberty, however, overthrew all his schemes. Russia, through the ascendency of Catherine, forced Prussia and Austria to make common cause against the Revolution. At Vienna, the young Emperor Francis I. made far greater preparations for war than for negotiation. The Prince de Kaunitz, his principal minister, replied to the notes of Dumouriez in language that seemed a defiance of the Assembly. Dumouriez laid these documents before the Assembly, and forestalled the expressions of their just indignation, by bursting himself into patriotic anger. The contre coup of these scenes was felt even in the cabinet of the emperor at Vienna, where Francis I., pale and trembling with rage, censured the tardiness of his minister. He was present every day at the conferences held at the bedside of the veteran Prince de Kaunitz and the Prussian and Russian envoys charged by their sovereigns to foment the war. The king of Prussia demanded to have the whole direction of the war in his hands, and he proposed the sudden invasion of the French territory as the most efficacious means of preventing the effusion of blood, by striking terror into the Revolution, and causing a counter-revolution, with the hope of which the emigres flattered him, to break out in France. An interview to concert the measures of Austria and Prussia, was fixed between the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince de Hohenlohe, general of the emperor's army. For form's sake, however, conferences were still carried on at Vienna between M. de Noailles, the French ambassador, and Count Philippe de Cobentzel, vice-chancellor of the court. These conferences, in which the liberty of the people and the absolute sovereignty of monarchs continually strove to conciliate two irreconcileable principles, ended invariably in mutual reproaches. A speech of M. de Cobentzel broke off all negotiations, and this speech, made public at Paris, caused the final declaration of war. Dumouriez proposed it at the council, and induced the king, as if by the hand of fatality, himself to propose the war to his people. "The people," said he, "will credit your attachment when they behold you embrace their cause, and combat kings in its defence."

The king, surrounded by his ministers, appeared unexpectedly at the Assembly on the 20th of April, at the conclusion of the council. A solemn silence reigned in the Assembly, for every one felt that the decisive word was now about to be pronounced—and they were not deceived. After a full report of the negotiations with the house of Austria had been read by Dumouriez, the king added in a low but firm voice, "You have just heard the report which has been made to my council; these conclusions have been unanimously adopted, and I myself have taken the same resolution. I have exhausted every means of maintaining peace, and I now come, in conformity with the terms of the constitution, to propose to you, formally, war with the king of Hungary and Bohemia."

The king, after this speech, quitted the Assembly amidst cries and gestures of enthusiasm, which burst forth in the salle and the tribunes: the people followed their example. France felt certain of herself when she was the first to attack all Europe armed against her. It seemed to all good citizens that domestic troubles would cease before this mighty external excitement of a people who defend their frontiers. That the cause of liberty would be judged in a few hours on the field of battle, and that the constitution needed only a victory, in order to render the nation free at home, and triumphant abroad. The king himself re-entered his palace relieved from the cruel weight of irresolution which had so long oppressed him. War against his allies and his brothers had cost him many a pang. This sacrifice of his feelings to the constitution seemed to him to merit the gratitude of the Assembly, and by thus identifying himself with the cause of his country, he flattered himself that he should at least recover the good opinion and the love of his people. The Assembly separated without deliberating, and gave a few hours up to enthusiasm rather than to reflection.

VII.

At the sitting in the evening, Pastoret, one of the principal Feuillants, was the first to support the war. "We are reproached with having voted the effusion of human blood in a moment of enthusiasm; but is it to-day only that we are provoked? During four hundred years the house of Austria has violated every treaty with France. Such are our motives; let us no longer hesitate. Victory will adhere faithfully to the cause of liberty."

Becquet, a constitutional royalist, a profound and courageous orator, alone ventured to speak against the declaration of war. "In a free country," said he, "war is alone made to defend the constitution or the nation. Our constitution is but of yesterday, and it requires calm to take root. A state of crisis, such as war, opposes all regular movements of political bodies. If your armies combat abroad, who will repress faction at home? You are flattered with the belief that you have only Austria to cope against. You are promised that the other northern powers will not interfere; do not rely on this. Even England cannot remain neuter: if the exigencies of the war lead you to revolutionise Belgium, or to invade Holland, she will join Prussia to support the stadtholder against you. Doubtless England loves the liberty which is now taking root amongst you; but her life is commercial, she cannot abandon her trade in the Low Countries. Wait until you are attacked, and then the spirit of the people will fight in your cause. The justice of a cause is worth armies. But if you can be represented to other nations as a restless and conquering people, who can only exist in a vortex of turmoil and war, the nations will shun and dread you. Besides, is not war the hope of the enemies of the Revolution? Why give them cause to rejoice by offering it to them. The emigres, now only despicable, will become dangerous on that day when foreign armies lend them their assistance."

This sensible and profound speech, interrupted repeatedly by the ironical laughter and the insults of the Assembly, was concluded amidst the outcries of the tribunes. It required no small degree of heroism to combat the proposed war in the French chambers. Bazire alone, the friend of Robespierre, ventured, like Becquet, the king's friend, to demand a few days' reflection, before giving a vote that would shed so much human gore. "If you decide upon war, do so in such a manner that treason cannot envelope it," said he. Feeble applause showed that the republican allusion of Bazire had been comprehended, and that above all, it was necessary to remove a king and generals whose fidelity was suspected. "No, no," returned Mailhe, "do not lose an hour in decreeing the liberty of the whole world." "Extinguish the torches of your disagreements in the blaze of your cannon, and the glitter of your bayonets," added Dubayet. "Let the report be made instantly," demanded Brissot. "Declare war against kings, and peace to all nations," cried Merlin. The war was voted.

Condorcet, who had been informed already of this by the Girondists of the council, read in the tribune a proposed manifesto to the nations. The following was its substance: "Every nation has the right of giving itself laws, and of altering them at pleasure. The French nation had every reason to believe that these simple truths would obtain the assent of all princes. This hope has not been fulfilled. A league has been formed against its independence; and never did the pride of thrones more audaciously insult the majesty of nations. The motives alleged by despots against France are but an outrage to her liberty. This insulting pride, far from intimidating her, serves only to excite her courage. It requires time to discipline the slaves of despotism; every man is a soldier when he combats against tyranny."

VIII.

But the principal orator of the Gironde mounted the tribune the last. "You owe it to the nation," said Vergniaud, "to employ every means to assure the success of the great and terrible determination by which you have signalised this memorable day. Remember the hour of that general federation when all Frenchmen devoted their life to the defence of liberty and the constitution. Remember the oath which you have taken on the 14th of January, to bury yourselves beneath the ruins of the temple rather than consent to a capitulation, or to the least modification in the constitution. Where is the icy heart that does not palpitate in these important moments—the grovelling soul that does not elevate itself (I venture to utter the words) to heaven amidst these acclamations of universal joy; the apathetic man who does not feel his whole being penetrated and his forces raised by a noble enthusiasm far above the common force of the human race? Give to France, to Europe, the imposing spectacle of these national fetes. Reanimate that energy before which the Bastille fell. Let every part of the empire resound with these sublime words: 'To live free or die! The entire constitution without any modification, or death!' Let these cries reach even the thrones that have leagued against you; let them learn that it is useless to reckon upon our internal dissensions; that when our country is in danger, we are animated by one passion alone—that of saving her, or of perishing for her; in a word, should fortune prove false to so just a cause as ours, our enemies might insult our lifeless corpses, but never shall one Frenchman wear their fetters."

IX.

These lyrical words of Vergniaud re-echoed at Berlin and at Vienna. "War has been declared against us," said the Prince de Kaunitz to the Russian ambassador, the Prince de Galitzin, "it is the same thing as if it had been declared against you." The command of the Prussian and Austrian forces was given to the Duke of Brunswick. The two princes by this act only ratified the choice of all Germany, for opinion had already nominated him. Germany moves but slowly: federations are but ill fitted for sudden wars. The campaign was opened by the French before Prussia and Austria had prepared their armaments.

Dumouriez had reckoned upon this sluggishness and inactivity of the two German monarchies. His skilful plan was to sever the coalition, and suddenly invade Belgium before Prussia could take the field. Had Dumouriez alone framed and carried out his own plan, the fate of Belgium and Holland was sealed; but La Fayette, who was charged to invade them at the head of 40,000 men, had neither the temerity nor the rapidity of this veteran soldier. A general of opinion rather than the general of an army, he was more accustomed to command citizens in the public square, than soldiers in a campaign. Personally brave, beloved by his troops, but more of a citizen than a soldier, he had, during the American war, headed small bodies of free men, but not undisciplined masses. Not to peril his soldiers; defend the frontiers with intrepidity; die bravely at a Thermopylae; harangue the national guard; and excite his troops for or against opinions; such was the nature of La Fayette. The daring schemes of great wars, that risk much to save every thing, and which expose the frontiers for a moment to strike at the heart of an empire, accorded but ill with his habits, much less with his situation.

By becoming a general, La Fayette had become the chief of a party; and whilst he was opposing foreign powers, his eyes were constantly turned towards the interior. Doubtless he needed glory to nourish his influence, and to regain the role of arbitrator of the Revolution, which now began to escape his grasp; but before every thing, it was necessary that he should not compromise himself; one defeat would have ruined all, and he knew it. He who never risks a loss, will never gain a victory. La Fayette was the general of temporisation; and to waste the time of the Revolution, was to destroy its force. The strength of undisciplined forces is their impetuosity, and every thing that slackens that ruins them.

Dumouriez, impetuous as the volcano, instinctively felt this, and strove, in the conferences that preceded the nomination of the generals, to infuse some portion of his own fire into La Fayette. He placed him at the head of the principal corps d'armee, destined to penetrate into Belgium, as the general most fitted to foment popular insurrection, and convert the war on the Belgian provinces into revolution; for to rouse Belgium in favour of French liberty, and to render its independence dependent on ours, was to wrest it from the power of Austria, and turn it against our foes. The Belgians, according to Dumouriez's plan, were to conquer Belgium for us; for the germs of revolt had been but imperfectly stifled in these provinces, and were destined to bud again at the step of the first French soldier.

X.

Belgium, which had been long dominated over by Spain, had contracted its jealous and superstitious Catholicism. The nation pertains to the priests, and the privileges of the priests appear to it the privileges of the people. Joseph II., a premature but an armed philosopher, sought to emancipate the people from sacerdotal despotism. Belgium had risen in arms against the liberty offered to her, and had sided with her oppressors. The fanaticism of the priests, and of the municipal privileges, united in a feeling of resistance to Joseph II., had set all Belgium in a flame. The rebels had captured GHENT and BRUSSELS, and proclaimed the downfall of the house of Austria, and the sovereignty of the Pays Bas. Scarcely had they triumphed, than the Belgians became divided amongst themselves. The sacerdotal and aristocratic party demanded an oligarchical constitution, whilst the popular party demanded a democracy, modelled on the French revolution.

VAN-DER-NOOT, an eloquent and cruel tribune, was the leader of the first party; VAN-DER-MERSH, a brave soldier, of the people. Civil war broke out amidst a struggle for independence. VAN-DER-MERSH, made prisoner by the aristocratic party, was immured in a gloomy dungeon until Leopold, the successor of Joseph II., profited by these domestic feuds, again to subjugate Belgium. Weary of liberty, after having tasted it, she submitted without resistance. Van-der-noot took refuge in Holland. Van-der-mersh, freed by the Austrians, was generously pardoned, and again became an obscure citizen.

All attempts at independence were repressed by strong Austrian garrisons, and could not fail to be awakened at the approach of the French armies. La Fayette appeared to comprehend and approve of this plan. It was agreed that the Marechal de Rochambeau should be appointed commander-in-chief of the army that threatened Belgium, that La Fayette should have under his orders a considerable corps that would invade the country, and then La Fayette would command alone in the Netherlands. Rochambeau, old and worn out by inactivity, would thus only receive the honour due to his rank. La Fayette would in reality direct the whole of the campaign and of the armed propaganda of the revolution. "This role suits him," said the old marechal. "I do not understand this war of cities." To cause La Fayette to march on Namur, which was but ill defended, capture it, march from thence on Brussels and Liege, the two capitals of the Pays Bas, and the focus of Belgian independence—send General Biron forward at the head of ten thousand men on Mons, to oppose the Austrian General Beaulieu, whose force was only two or three thousand men—detach from the garrison at Lille another corps of three thousand men, who would occupy Tournay, and who, after having left a garrison in this town, would swell the corps of Biron—send twelve hundred men from Dunkirk to surprise Furnes, and then advance by converging into the heart of the Belgian provinces with these forty thousand men under the command of La Fayette—attack, on every side, in ten days an enemy ill prepared to resist—to rouse the populations to revolt, and then increase the attacking army to eighty thousand troops, and join to it the Belgian battalions raised in the name of freedom, to combat the emperor's army as it arrived from Germany:—such was Dumouriez's bold idea of the campaign. Nothing was wanting to ensure its success but a man capable of executing it. Dumouriez disposed of the troops and the generals in conformity with this plan.

XI.

The impulse of France responded to the impulse of her genius.

On the other side of the Rhine the preparations were making with promptitude and energy. The emperor and the king of Prussia met at Frankfort, where they were joined by the Duke of Brunswick. The empress of Russia adhered to the aggression of the powers against France, and marched her troops into Poland, to repress the germs of the same principles that were to be combated at Paris. Germany yielded, in spite of herself, to the impulse of the three cabinets, and poured her masses towards the Rhine. The emperor preluded this war of thrones against people by his coronation at Frankfort. The head-quarters of the Duke of Brunswick were at Coblentz, the capital of the emigration. The generalissimo of the confederation had an interview there with the two brothers of Louis XVI., and promised to restore to them, ere long, their country and their rank, whilst they, in their turn, styled him the Hero of the Rhine, and the Right arm of kings.

Every thing wore a military aspect. The two princes of Prussia, quartered in a village near Coblentz, had but one room, and slept on the floor. The king of Prussia was welcomed on every bank of the Rhine by the salvos of his artillery. In every town through which he passed the emigres, the population, and the troops, proclaimed him beforehand the preserver of Germany. His name, written in letters of fire at the illuminations, was surrounded by this adulatory device, "Vivat Villelmus, Francos deleat, jura regis restituat!"—"Long live William, the exterminator of the French, the restorer of royalty."

XII.

Coblentz, a town situated on the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine, in the states of the Elector of Treves, had become the capital of the French emigres. A constantly increasing body of gentlemen, to the number of twenty-two thousand, assembled there, around the seven fugitive princes of the house of Bourbon. These princes were, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, the king's brothers; the two sons of the Comte d'Artois, the Duc de Berri and the Duc d'Angouleme; the Prince de Conde, the king's cousin, the Duke de Bourbon, his son, and the Duc d'Enghien, his grandson. All the military noblesse of the kingdom, with the exception of the partisans of the constitution, had quitted their garrisons or their Chateaus to join this crusade of kings against the French revolution. This movement—which now appears sacrilegious, since it armed citizens against their country, and led them to implore the assistance of foreign powers to combat France—did not at that time possess in the eyes of the French noblesse that parricidal character with which the more enlightened patriotism of the present age invests it. Culpable in the eyes of reason, it could at least explain itself before feeling. Infidelity to their country was termed fidelity to their king, and desertion, honour.

Allegiance to the throne was the religion of the French nobles; and the sovereignty of the people appeared to them an insolent dogma, against which it was imperative to take arms, unless they wished to be partakers of the crime. The noblesse had patiently supported the humiliation and the personal spoliation of title and fortune which the National Assembly had imposed on them by the destruction of the last vestiges of the feudal system; or rather, they had generously sacrificed them to their country on the night of the 6th of August. But these outrages on the king appeared more intolerable to them than those inflicted on themselves. To deliver him from his captivity—rescue him from impending danger—save the queen and her children—restore royalty—or perish fighting for this sacred cause, appeared to them the duty of their situation and their birth. On one side was honour, on the other their country: they had not hesitated, but had followed honour; and this was sanctified even more in their eyes by the magic word devotion. There was real devotion in the feeling that induced these young and these old men to abandon their rank in the army—their fortune—their country—their families, to rally around the white flag in a foreign land, to perform the duty of private soldiers, and brave eternal exile, the spoliation pronounced against them by the laws of their country, the fatigues of the camp, and death and danger on the battle-field. If the devotion of the patriots to the Revolution was sublime as hope, that of the emigrant nobles was generous as despair. In civil wars we should ever judge each party by its own ideas, for civil wars are almost invariably the expression of two duties in opposition to each other. The duty of the patriots was their country; of the emigres, the throne: one of the two parties was deceived as to its duty, but each believed it fulfilled it.

XIII.

The emigration was composed of two entirely distinct parties—the politicians and the combatants. The politicians, who crowded round the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, and poured forth idle invectives against the truths of philosophy and the principles of democracy. They wrote books and supported papers, in which the French Revolution was represented to the foreign sovereigns as an infernal conspiracy of a few scoundrels against kings, and even against heaven. They formed the councils of an imaginary government—they sought to obtain missions—they formed plans—renewed intrigues—visited every court—stirred up the sovereigns and their ministers against France—disputed the favour of the French princes—devoured their subsidies—and transported to this foreign soil the ambitions, the rivalries, and the cupidity of a court.

The military men had brought nothing but the bravery, the insouciance, the recklessness, and the polish of their nation and profession. Coblentz became the camp of illusion and devotion. This handful of brave men deemed themselves a nation; and prepared, by accustoming themselves to the manoeuvres and fatigues of war, to conquer in a few days a whole monarchy. The emigrants of every country and every age have presented this spectacle; for emigration, like the desert, has its mirage. The emigrants believe that they have borne away their country on the soles of their shoes, to employ the language of Danton, but they carry away nought but its shadow, accumulate nothing but its anger, and find nothing but its pity.

XIV.

Amongst the first emigres, three factions corresponded to these different parties in the emigration itself.

The Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII., was a philosophic prince—a politician and a diplomatist somewhat inclined towards innovation; an enemy of the nobility, of the priesthood; favourable to the aristocracy; and who would have pardoned the Revolution, if the Revolution itself would have pardoned royalty. His early infirmities closing the career of arms to him, he became addicted to politics—he cultivated his mind—he studied history—he wrote well, and foreseeing the approaching downfall, he predicted the probable death of Louis XVI.—he believed in the vicissitudes of the Revolution, and prepared himself to become the pacificator of his country, and the conciliator of the throne and liberty. His heart possessed all the qualities and all the faults of a woman—he needed friendship, and he gave himself favourites; but he chose them rather for their elegance than their merit, and saw men and things only through books and the hearts of courtiers. Somewhat theatrical, he exhibited himself as a statue of right and misfortune to all Europe; studied his attitudes; spoke learnedly of his adversaries; and assumed the position of a victim and a sage: he was, however, unpopular with the army.

XV.

The Comte d'Artois, his junior, spoiled by nature, by the court, and by the fair sex, had taken on himself the role of a hero. He represented at Coblentz antique honour, chivalrous devotion, and the French character; he was adored by the court, whose grace, elegance, and pride were personified in him: his heart was good, his mind apt, but not well informed, and of limited comprehension. A philosopher, through indolence and carelessness before the Revolution, superstitious afterwards, through weakness and entrainment, he threatened the Revolution with his sword from a distance. He appeared more fitted to irritate than to conquer, and at this early period he already manifested that unbridled rashness and that useless spirit of provocation which was one day to cost him a throne. But his personal beauty, his grace, and his cordiality, covered all these defects, and he seemed destined never to die. Old in years, he was fated to reign, and die, eternally young. He was the prince of youth: at another epoch he would have been Francis I., in his own he was Charles X.

The Prince de Conde was a soldier by birth, inclination, and profession. He despised these two courts, transposed to the banks of the Rhine, for his court was his camp. His son, the Duc de Bourbon, served his first campaign under his orders, and his grandson, the Duc d'Enghien, in his seventeenth year, acted as his aide-de-camp. This young prince was the representative of manly grace in the camp of the emigres; his bravery, his enthusiasm, his generosity, all seemed to promise another hero to the heroic race of Conde. He was worthy of conquering in a cause not doomed, of dying sword in hand on the battle field, and not to fall, some years later, in the fosse at Vincennes, by the "lantern dimly burning," with no other friend than his dog, by the balls of a platoon of soldiers, ordered out at dead of night, as if for an assassination.

XVI.

Louis XVI. trembled in his palace at the shock of this war which he himself had proclaimed, and which loured on the frontiers. He did not conceal from himself that he was less the chief than the hostage of France, and that his head and that of his children would be forfeited to the nation on the first reverse or peril. Danger sees treason on every side, and the public journals and the clubs denounced more vehemently than ever the existence of the comite Autrichien, of which the queen was the centre. This report was universally believed by the nation, and only cost the queen her popularity during the peace, but during the war it might cost her her life. Thus, formerly accused of betraying the peace, this unfortunate family was now accused of betraying the war. In false positions every thing is a danger; the king comprehended the extent of his perils, and hastened to avert the most impending.

He despatched a secret emissary to the king of Prussia and the emperor, to entreat them, as they valued his safety, to suspend hostilities, and to precede the invasion by a conciliating manifesto, which might allow France to retire from the contest without disgrace, and would place the life of the royal family under the safeguard of the nation. This secret agent was Mallet-Dupan, a young journalist of Geneva, established in France, and mixed up with the counter-revolutionary movement. Mallet-Dupan was attached to the monarchy by principle, and to the king by personal devotion. He left Paris under pretext of returning to Geneva, and from thence went to Germany, where he had an interview with the Marechal de Castries, the foreign confidant of Louis XVI., and one of the leaders of the emigres. Accredited by the Duc de Castries, he presented himself at Coblentz to the Duke of Brunswick, at Frankfort to the ministers of the king of Prussia and the emperor; they however refused to place any faith in his communications, unless he produced a letter in the king's own hand. On this the king transmitted him a slip of paper, about two inches long, on which was written: "The person who will produce this note knows my intentions; implicit credence may be given to all he says in my name." This royal sign of recognition gave Mallet-Dupan access to the cabinets of the coalition.

Conferences were opened between the French negotiator, the Comte de Cobentzel, the Comte d'Haugwitz, and general Heyman, the plenipotentiaries of the emperor, and the king of Prussia. These ministers, after having examined the credentials of Mallet-Dupan, listened to his communications. They were to the effect that "the king alike prayed and exhorted the emigres not to cause the approaching war to lose its appearance of power against power, by taking part in it, in the name of the re-establishment of the monarchy. Any other line of conduct would produce a civil war, endanger the lives of the king and queen, destroy the throne, and occasion a general massacre of the royalists. The king added, that he besought the sovereigns who had taken up arms in his cause, to separate, in their manifesto, the faction of the Jacobins from the nation, and the liberty of the people from the anarchy that convulsed them; to declare formally and energetically to the Assembly, the administrative and municipal bodies, that their lives should be answerable for all and every attempt against the sacred persons of the king, the queen, and their children; and to announce to the nation that no dismemberment would follow the war, that they would treat for peace with the king alone, and that in consequence the Assembly should hasten to give him the most perfect liberty, in order to enable him to negotiate in the name of his people with the allied powers."

Mallet-Dupan explained the sense of these instructions with that enlightened good sense, and that devoted attachment to the king that marked him; he painted in the most lively colours the interior of the Tuileries, and the terror to which the royal family was a prey.

The negotiators were moved almost to tears, and promised to communicate these impressions to their sovereigns, and gave Mallet-Dupan the assurance that the intentions of the king should be the measure of the language which the manifesto of the coalition would address to the French nation.

They did not however dissimulate their astonishment at the fact that the language of the emigrant princes at Coblentz was so opposed to the views of the king at Paris. "They openly manifest," said they, "the intention of re-conquering the kingdom for the counter-revolution, of rendering themselves independent, of dethroning their brother and proclaiming a regency." The confidant of Louis XVI. left for Geneva after this conference; whilst the emperor, the king of Prussia, the principal princes of the confederation, the ministers, the generals, and the Duke of Brunswick went to Mayence. Mayence, where the fetes were interrupted by the councils, became for some days the head-quarters of the monarchs, and there, at the instigation of the emigres, extreme resolutions were adopted. It was resolved to combat a revolution that but increased in proportion as it received indulgence. The supplications of Louis XVI., and the warnings of Dupan were forgotten, and the plan of the campaign was fixed.

XVII.

The emperor was to have the supreme control of the war in Belgium, where his army was to be commanded by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen. Fifteen thousand men were to cover the right of the Prussians, and affect a junction with them at Longwy. Twenty thousand more of the emperor's troops, commanded by the Prince de Hohenlohe, were to establish themselves between the Rhine and the Moselle, cover the Prussian left, and operate upon Landau, Sarrelouis, and Thionville. A third corps, under Prince Esterhazy, and strengthened by five thousand emigres under the Prince de Conde, would threaten the frontiers from Switzerland to Philipsbourg, and the king of Sardinia would have an army of observation on the Var and the Isere. These dispositions made, it was resolved to reply to terror by terror, and to publish in the name of the generalissimo the Duke of Brunswick, a manifesto, which would leave the French revolution no other alternative than submission or death.

M. de Calonne proposed it, and the Marquis de Limon, formerly intendant des finances to the Duke of Orleans, first an ardent revolutionist like his master, then an emigre and an implacable royalist, wrote the manifesto and submitted it to the emperor, who in his turn submitted it to the king of Prussia. The king of Prussia sent it to the Duke of Brunswick, who murmured, and demanded a modification of some of the expressions, which was accorded. The Marquis de Limon, however, supported by the French princes, again restored the text. The Duke of Brunswick became indignant, and tore the manifesto to pieces, without however daring to disavow it, and the manifesto appeared, with all its insults and threats, to the French nation.

The emperor and the king of Prussia, informed of the secret leaning of the Duke of Brunswick to France, and of the offer of the crown made to him by the factions, caused him to undertake the responsibility of this proclamation either as a vengeance or a disavowal. This imperious defiance of the kings to freedom threatened with death every national guard taken with arms in his hand, protecting the independence of his country, and that in case the least outrage was offered by the factions to the king, Paris should be razed to the ground.



BOOK XV.

I.

Whilst a war to the death impended over the people, and menaced the king, discord continued to reign in the councils of the ministers. The minister of war, Servan, was accused by Dumouriez with obeying with servility, which resembled love rather than complaisance, the influence of Madame Roland, and of having wholly defeated the plans for the invasion of Belgium. The friends of Madame Roland, on their side, threatened Dumouriez that they would make the Assembly demand of him an account of the six millions of secret expenses, whose destination they suspected. Already Guadet and Vergniaud had prepared discourses and a project of a decree to demand a public reckoning for these sums. Dumouriez, who had bought friends and accomplices with this gold amongst the Jacobins and the Feuillants, revolted against the suspicion, refused, in the name of his outraged honour, to make any return of this expenditure, and boldly offered his resignation. Upon this a great number of members of the Assembly, Feuillants and Jacobins, Petion himself, called at the residence of the insulted minister, and conjured him to return to his post. He consented, on condition that they would leave the disposal of these funds to his conscience alone. The Girondists themselves, intimidated by his retirement, and feeling that a man of his character was indispensable to their weakness, withdrew their motion, and passed a vote of public confidence in him. The people applauded him as he quitted the Assembly. These applauses sounded gloomily in the council-chamber of Madame Roland. The popularity of Dumouriez renders her jealous. It was not in her eyes the popularity of virtue, and she coveted it all for her husband and her party. Roland and his Girondist colleagues, Servan, Claviere, redoubled their efforts to influence the mind of the king, and used threats in order to acquire it. To flatter the Assembly, court the people; irritate the Jacobins against the court; beset the king by the imperious demand of sacrifices which they knew were impossible; to injure him silently in opinion as the cause of all evil, or the obstacle to all good; to compel him, in fact, by insolence and outrage, to dismiss them that they might afterwards accuse him of betraying in them the Revolution: such were their tactics, resulting from their weakness rather than from their ambition.

This feeling of backing the king, whose ministers they were, was the basis of a conspiracy of which Madame Roland was the origin. At Roland's there was nothing but ill humour; amongst his colleagues it was a rivalry of patriotism with Robespierre. At Madame Roland's it was that passion for a republic which was impatient of any remnant of a throne, and which smiled complacently at the factions ready to overturn the monarchy. When factions had arms no longer, Madame Roland and her friends hastened to lead them.

II.

We see a fatal example in the step of the minister of war, Servan. He, entirely controlled by Madame Roland, proposed to the National Assembly, without authority from the king, or the consent of the council, to assemble round Paris a camp of 20,000 troops. This army, composed of federes chosen from amongst the most enthusiastic persons of the provinces, would be, as the Girondists believed, a kind of central army of opinions devoted to the Assembly, counter-balancing the king's guard, repressing the national guard, and recalling to mind that army of the parliament which, under the orders of Cromwell, had conducted Charles I. to the scaffold.

The Assembly, with the exception of the constitutional party, seized on this idea as hatred seizes the arm which is offered to it. The king felt the blow; Dumouriez saw through the perfidy, and could not repress his choler against Servan in the council-chamber. His reproaches were those of a loyal defender of his king. The replies of Servan were evasive, but full of provocation. The two ministers laid their hands upon their swords, and but for the presence of the king, and the intervention of their colleagues, blood would have flowed in the council-chamber.

The king was desirous of refusing his sanction to the decree for the 20,000 men. "It is too late," said Dumouriez: "your refusal would display fears too well founded, but which we must take care not to betray to our enemies. Sanction the decree, I will undertake to neutralise the danger of the concentration." The king requested time for consideration.

Next day the Girondists called upon the king to sanction the decree against the nonjuring priests. They came into direct contact with the religious conscience of Louis XVI. Supported by that, this prince declared that he would rather die than sign the persecution of the church. Dumouriez insisted as much as the Girondists in obtaining this sanction. The king was inflexible. In vain did Dumouriez represent to him that by refusing legal measures against the nonjuring priests he exposed the priests to massacre, and thus made himself responsible for all the blood that might be shed. In vain did they represent to him that this refusal would render the ministry unpopular, and thus deprive them of all hope of saving the monarchy. In vain did they appeal to the queen, and implore her, by her feelings as a mother, to bend the king to their wishes. The queen herself was for a long time powerless. At last the king seemed to hesitate, and gave Dumouriez a private meeting in the evening. In this conversation he ordered Dumouriez to present to him three ministers, to succeed Roland, Claviere, and Servan. Dumouriez at once named Vergennes for finance, Naillac for foreign affairs, Mourgues for the interior. He reserved the war department for himself: dictatorial minister at the moment when France was becoming an army. Roland, Claviere, and Servan, stung to the quick at a dismissal they had provoked the more because they had not anticipated it, hastened to carry their complaints and accusations to the Assembly. They were received there as martyrs to their patriotism; they had filled the tribunes with their partisans.

III.

Roland, Claviere, and Servan were present, under pretence of rendering an account of the grounds of their dismissal. Roland laid before the Assembly the celebrated confidential letter dictated by his wife, and which he had read to the king in his cabinet. He affected to believe that the dismissal of ministers was the punishment of his own courage. The advice he gave to the king in this letter thus turned into accusations of this unfortunate prince. Louis XVI. had never received from the malcontents a more terrible blow than that now given by his minister. Passions trouble the conscience of the people, and there are days when treachery passes current for heroism. The Girondists made a hero of Roland. They had his letter printed, and circulated it in the eighty-three departments.

Roland left the chamber amidst loud applauses. Dumouriez entered it in the midst of uproar. He displayed in the tribune the same calmness as in the field of battle. He began by announcing to the Assembly the death of General Gouvion. "He is happy," he said, with sadness, "to have died fighting against the enemy, and not to have been the witness of the discords which rend us to pieces. I envy his death." The deep serenity of a powerful mind was felt in his every tone—a mind resolute to contend against factions unto death. He then read a memorial relating to the ministry of war. His exordium was an attack upon the Jacobins, and a claim for the respect due to the ministers of the executive power. "Do you hear Cromwell!" exclaimed Guadet, in a voice of thunder. "He thinks himself already so sure of empire, that he dares to inflict his commands upon us." "And why not?" retorted Dumouriez, proudly, and turning towards the Mountain. His daring imposed on the Assembly. The Feuillant deputies went out with him to the Tuileries. The king announced to him his intention to give his sanction to the decree for the 20,000 men. As to the decree of the priests, he repeated to the ministers that he had resolved, and begged them to take to the president of the Assembly a letter in his own writing, which contained the motives for his veto. The ministers bowed, and separated in consternation.

IV.

When Dumouriez reached his house, he learnt that there had been gatherings of the populace in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and he informed the king, who believing that he intended to alarm him, lost his confidence in Dumouriez, who instantly offered his resignation, which the king accepted. The portfolio of the ministry of foreign affairs was confided to Chambonas; that of war to Lajard, a soldier of La Fayette's party; that of the interior to M. de Monciel, a constitutional Feuillant and friend of the king. This was on the 17th of June. The Jacobins, the people incited by the Girondists, were already disturbing the capital: all announced a coming insurrection. These ministers, without any armed force, without popularity, without party, thus accepted the responsibility of the perils accumulated by their predecessors. The king saw Dumouriez once again—it was the last time. The farewell between the monarch and his minister was affecting.

"You are going to the army?" said the king. "Yes, sire," replied Dumouriez, "and I should leave with joy this fearful city, if I had not a feeling of the dangers impending over your majesty. Deign to listen to me, sire; I am never destined to see you again. I am fifty-three years of age, and have much experience. They abuse your conscience with respect to the decree against the priests, and are pushing you on to civil war. You are without strength, defenceless, and you will sink under it, whilst History, though full of commiseration for you, will accuse you of the misfortunes of your people."

The king was seated near a table where he had just signed the general's accounts. Dumouriez was standing beside him with clasped hands. The king took his hands in his own, and said to him, in a voice sorrowful but resigned, "God is my witness, that I only think of the happiness of France." "I never doubted it, sire," responded Dumouriez, deeply affected. "You owe an account to God, not only for the purity, but also for the enlightened use, of your intentions. You think to save religion: you destroy it. The priests will be massacred: your crown will be taken from you; perhaps even your queen and children—." He did not finish, but pressed his lips to the king's hand, who shed tears.

"I await—expect death," replied the king, sorrowfully; "and I pardon my enemies already. I am grateful to you for your sensibility. You have served me well, and I esteem you. Adieu—be more happy than I am!" And on saying these words Louis XVI. went to a recess in a window at the end of the chamber, in order to conceal the trouble he felt. Dumouriez never saw him again. He shut himself up for several days in retirement, in a lonely quarter of Paris. Looking upon the army as the only refuge for a citizen still capable of serving his country, he set out for Douai, the head quarters of Luckner.

V.

The Girondists remained a moment overwhelmed by the humiliation of their fall and the joy of their coming vengeance. "Here I am dismissed," was Roland's exclamation to his wife, on his return home. "I have but one regret, and that is, that our delays have prevented us from taking the initiative." Madame Roland retired to a humble apartment, without losing any of her influence and without regretting power, since she carried with her into her retreat, her genius, her patriotism, and her friends. With her the conspiracy only changed place; from the ministry of the interior she passed at once into the small council which she gathered about her, and inspired with her own earnest enthusiasm.

This circle daily increased. The admiration for the woman mingled in the hearts of her friends with the attraction of liberty. They adored in her the future Republic. The love which these young men did not avow for her made, unknown to her, a portion of their politics. Ideas only become active and powerful when vivified by sentiment. She was the sentiment of her party.

This party was joined about this time by a man unconnected with the Gironde; but his youth, his remarkable beauty, and his energy naturally threw him into this faction of illusion and love, controlled by a woman. This young man was Barbaroux.

At this time he was only twenty-six years of age. Born at Marseilles, of a sea-faring family, who preserved in their manners and features something of the boldness of their life and the agitation of their element. The elegance of his stature, the poetic grace of his countenance, recalled the accomplished forms which antiquity adored in the statues of Antinous. The blood of that Asiatic Greece of which Marseilles is a colony revealed itself in the purity of the young Phocian's profile.[21] As richly endowed with the gifts of the mind as those of the body, Barbaroux early used himself to public oratory, that gift of the men of the south. He became a barrister, and pleaded several causes with success; but the power and honesty of his mind revolted from that exercise of eloquence, so often mercenary, which simulates earnestness. He required a national cause, to which a man should give with language his soul and blood. The Revolution with which he was born offered this to him. He awaited with impatience the occasion and the hour to make use of it.

His youth still kept him away from the scene into which he ardently longed to cast himself. He passed his time near the village of Ollioules, on a small family estate, concealed beneath tall cork-trees, which threw their slight shade over the calcined declivities of this valley. He there attended to the cultivated patches which the aridity of the soil and the burning sun dispute with the rocks. In his leisure he studied natural sciences, and kept up a correspondence with two Swiss, whose systems of physics then occupied the learned world—M. de Saussure and Marat. But science was not sufficient for his mind, which overflowed with sensitiveness, and which Barbaroux poured forth in elegiac poetry as burning as the noonday, and vague as the horizon of the sea beneath his view. There is felt that southern melancholy whose languor, is closer allied to pleasure than weakness, and which resembles the songs of man seated in the broad sunshine, before or after labour. Mirabeau had thus begun his life. The most energetic lives frequently open in gloom, as if they had in their very germ presentiments of their contrary destiny. It would seem as though we read in the verses of this young man that through his tears he contemplated his faults, his expiation, and his scaffold.

VI.

After Mirabeau's election, and the agitations which followed, Barbaroux was named secretary of the municipality of Marseilles. At the troubles of Aries he took arms, and marched at the head of the young Marseillais against the rulers of the Comtal. His martial figure, his gestures, his ardour, his voice, made him conspicuous everywhere: he fascinated all. Being deputed to Paris in order to give an account of the events of the south to the National Assembly, the Girondists, Vergniaud and Guadet, who were desirous of obtaining an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon, did all in their power to attach this young man to their party. Barbaroux, impetuous as he was, did not justify the butchers of Avignon; but detested the victims. He was a man requisite to the Girondists. Struck by his eloquence and his enthusiasm, they presented him to Madame Roland: no woman was more formed to seduce, no man more formed to be seduced. Madame Roland—in all the freshness of her youth, in all the brilliancy of her beauty, and also in all the fulness of sensibility, which all the purity of her life could not stifle in her unoccupied heart—speaks thus tenderly of Barbaroux: "I had read," she says, "in the cabinet of my husband, the letters of Barbaroux, full of sense and premature wisdom. When I saw him I was astonished at his youth. He attached himself to my husband. We saw more of him after we left the ministry; and it was then, that reasoning on the miserable state of things, and the fear of a triumph of despotism in the north of France, we formed the plan of a republic in the south. This will be our pis aller, said Barbaroux, with a smile; but the Marseillais army here will dispense with our attempting it."

VII.

Roland then lived in a gloomy house of the Rue St. Jaques, almost in the garrets: it was a philosopher's retreat, and his wife illumined it. Present at all the conversations of Roland, she witnessed the conferences between her husband and the young Marseillais. Barbaroux thus relates the interview in which the first idea of a republic was mooted: "That astonishing woman was there," said he. "Roland asked me what I thought the best means of saving France. I opened my heart to him: my confidence called for his. 'Liberty is gone,' he replied, 'if we do not speedily disconcert the plots of the court. La Fayette is meditating treason in the north: the army of the centre is systematically disorganised: in six weeks the Austrians will be at Paris. Have we then laboured at the most glorious of revolutions for so many years to see it overthrown in a single day? If Liberty dies in France, it is lost for ever to the rest of the world!—all the hopes of philosophy are deceived—prejudices and tyranny will again grasp the world. Let us prevent this misfortune, and if the north is subjected, let us take Liberty with us into the south, and there form a colony of free men.' His wife wept as she listened to him, and I myself wept as I looked at her. Oh! how much the outpourings of confidence console and fortify minds that are in desolation. I drew a rapid sketch of the resources and hopes of Liberty in the south. A serene expression of joy spread over Roland's brow: he squeezed my hand, and we traced on a map of France the limits of this empire of Liberty, which extended from the Doubs, the Ain, and the Rhone to La Dordogne, and from the inaccessible mountains of Auvergne to Durance and the sea. I wrote, by dictation of Roland, to request from Marseilles a battalion and two pieces of cannon. These preliminaries agreed upon, I left Roland with feelings of deep respect for himself and his wife. I have seen them subsequently, during their second ministry, as simple minded as in their humble retreat. Of all the men of modern times, Roland seems to me most to resemble Cato; but it must be owned that it is to his wife that his courage and talents are due."

Thus did the original idea of a federative republic arise in the first interview between Barbaroux and Madame Roland. What they dreamed of as a desperate measure of Liberty, was afterwards made a reproach to them for having conspired as a plot. This first sigh of patriotism of two young minds who met and understood each other, was their attraction and their crime.

VIII.

From this day the Girondists, disengaged from every obligation with the king and ministers, conspired secretly with Madame Roland, and publicly in the tribune, for the suppression of the monarchy. They appeared to envy the Jacobins the honour of giving the throne the most deadly blows. Robespierre as yet spoke only of the constitution, limiting himself within the law, and not going a-head of the people. The Girondists already spoke in the name of the republic, and motioned with gesture and eye the republican coup d'etat, which every day drew nearer. The meetings at Roland's multiplied and enlarged: new men joined their ranks. Roland, Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, Condorcet, Petion, Lanthenas, who in the hour of danger betrayed them; Valaze, Pache, who persecuted and decimated his friends; Grangeneuve, Louvet, who beneath levity of manners and gaiety of mind veiled undaunted courage; Chamfort, the intimate of the great, a vivid intellect, heart full of venom, discouraged by the people before he had served it; Carra, the popular journalist, enthusiastic for a republic, mad with desire for liberty; Chenier[22], the poet of the revolution, destined to survive it, and preserving his worship of it until death, even under the tyranny of the empire; Dusaulx, who had beneath his gray hairs the enthusiasm of youth for philosophy—the Nestor of all the young men, whom he moderated by his sage exhortations; Mercier, who took all as a jest, even in the dungeon and death.

IX.

But of the men whom enthusiasm for the Revolution brought around her, he whom Madame Roland preferred to all was Buzot. More attached to this young female than to his party, Buzot was to her a friend, whilst the others were but tools or accomplices. She had quickly passed her judgment on Barbaroux, and this judgment, impressed with a certain bitterness, was like a repentance for the secret impression which the favourable exterior of this young man had at first inspired. She accuses herself with finding him so handsome, and seems to fortify her heart against the fascination of his looks. "Barbaroux is volatile," she said; "the adoration he receives from worthless women destroys the seriousness of his feelings. When I see such fine young men too conceited at the impression they make, like Barbaroux and Herault de Sechelles, I cannot help thinking that they adore themselves too much to have a great deal of adoration left for their country."

If we may lift the veil from the heart of this virtuous woman, who does not raise it herself for fear of developing a sentiment contrary to her duties, we must be convinced that her instinctive inclination had been one moment for Barbaroux, but her reflecting tenderness was for Buzot. It is neither given to duty nor liberty to fill completely the soul of a woman as lovely and impassioned as she: duty chills, politics deceive, virtue retains, love fills the heart. Madame Roland loved Buzot. He adored in her his inspiration and his idol. Perchance they never disclosed to each other in words a sentiment which would have been the less sacred to them from the hour in which it had become guilty. But what they concealed from one another they have involuntarily revealed at their death. There are in the last days and last hours of this man and this woman, sighs, gestures, and words, which allow the secret preserved during life to escape in the presence of death; but the secret thus disclosed keeps its mystery. Posterity may have the right to detect, but none to accuse, this sentiment.

Roland, an estimable but morose old man, had the exactions of weakness without having its gratitude or indulgence towards his partner. She remained faithful to him, more from respect to herself than from affection to him. They loved the same cause—Liberty; but Roland's fanaticism was as cold as pride, whilst his wife's was as glowing as love. She sacrificed herself daily at the shrine of her husband's reputation, and scarcely perceived her own self-devotion. He read in her heart that she bore the yoke with pride, and yet the yoke galled her. She paints Buzot with complacency, and as the ideal of domestic happiness. "Sensible, ardent, melancholy," she writes, "a passionate admirer of nature, he seems born to give and share happiness. This man would forget the universe in the sweetness of private virtues. Capable of sublime impulses and unvarying affections, the vulgar, who like to depreciate what it cannot equal, accuse him of being a dreamer. Of sweet countenance, elegant figure, there is always in his attire that care, neatness, and propriety, which announce respect of self as well as of others. Whilst the dregs of the nation elevate the flatterers and corrupters of the people to station—whilst cut-throats swear, drink, and clothe themselves in rags, in order to fraternise with the populace, Buzot possesses the morality of Socrates, and maintains the decorum of Scipio: so they pull down his house and banish him, as they did Aristides. I am astonished they have not issued a decree that his name should be forgotten." The man of whom she speaks in such terms from the depths of her dungeon, on the evening before her death, exiled, wandering, concealed in the caves of St. Emilion, fell as though struck by lightning, and remained several days in a state of phrenzy, on learning the death of Madame Roland.

Danton, whose name began to rise above the crowd, when his fame was but slight until now, sought at this period Madame Roland's acquaintance. All inquired what was the secret of the growing ascendency of this man? Where he came from? Who he was? Whither he was advancing? They sought his origin; his first appearance on the stage of the people; his first connection with the celebrated personages of his time. They sought in mysteries the cause of his prodigious popularity. It was pre-eminently in his nature.

X.

Danton was not merely one of those adventurers of demagogism who rise, like Masaniello, or like Hebert,[23] from the boiling scum of the masses. He was one of the middle classes, the heart of the nation. His family, pure, honest, of property, and industrious, ancient in name, honourable in manners, was established at Arcis-sur-Aube, and possessed a rural domain in the environs of that small town. It was of the number of those modest but well-esteemed families, who have the soil for their basis, and agriculture as their main occupation, but who give their sons the most complete moral and literary education, and who thus prepare them for the liberal professions of society. Danton's father died young. His mother had married again to a manufacturer of Arcis-sur-Aube, who had (and himself managed), a small cotton mill. There is still to be seen near the river, without the city, in a pleasant spot, the house, half rustic half town built, and the garden on the banks of the Aube, where Danton's infancy was passed.

His step-father, M. Ricordin, attended to his education as he would have done that of his own child. He was of an open communicative disposition, and was beloved in spite of his ugliness and turbulence; for his ugliness was radiant with intellect, and his turbulence was calmed and repented of at the least caress of his mother. He pursued his studies at Troyes, the capital of Champagne. Rebellious against discipline, idle at study, beloved by his masters and fellow pupils, his rapid comprehension kept him on an equality with the most assiduous. His instinct sufficed without reflection. He learned nothing; he acquired all. His companions called him Catiline—he accepted the name, and sometimes played with them at getting up rebellions and riots, which he excited or calmed by his harangues—as if he were repeating at school the characters of his after life.

XI.

M. and Madame Ricordin, already advanced in years, gave him, after his education was finished, the small fortune of his father. He came to finish his studies in law at Paris, and bought a place in parliament as a barrister, where he practised little and without any notoriety. He despised chicanery; his mind and language had the proportions of the great causes of the people and the throne. The Constituent Assembly began to stir them. Danton, watchful and impassioned, was anxious to mingle with them: he sought the leading men, whose eloquence resounded throughout France. He attached himself to Mirabeau; became connected with Camille Desmoulins, Marat, Robespierre, Petion, Brune (afterwards the marshal), Fabre d'Eglantine, the Duc d'Orleans, Laclos, Lacroix, and all the illustrious and second class orators who then "fulmined over" Paris. He passed his whole time in the tribunes of the Assembly, in the walks, and the coffee-houses, and his nights in the clubs. A few well-seasoned words, some brief harangues, some bursts of mysterious lightning: and above all, his hair like a horse's mane, his gigantic stature, and his powerful voice, made him universally remarked. Yet beneath the purely physical qualities of the orator men of intelligence remarked great good sense and an instinctive knowledge of the human heart. Beneath the agitator they discerned the statesman. Danton in truth read history, studied the ancient orators, practised himself in real eloquence, that which enlightens in its passion, and beneath his actual part was preparing another much superior. He only asked the movement to raise him so high that he might subsequently control it.

He married Mademoiselle Charpentier, daughter of a lemonade-seller on the Quai de l'Ecole. This young lady controlled him by her affection, and insensibly reformed him from the disorders of his youth to more regular domestic habits. She extinguished the violence of his passions, but without being able to quench that which survived all others—ambition of a great destiny.

Danton lived in a small apartment in the Cour de Commerce, near his father-in-law, in rigid economy, receiving but a very few friends, who admired his talent and attached themselves to his fortunes. The most constant were Camille Desmoulins, Petion, and Brune. From these meetings went forth signals of extensive sedition. The secret subsidies of the court came there to tempt the cupidity of the head of the young revolutionists. He did not reject them, but used them sometimes to excite and sometimes to control the agitations of opinion.

He had by this marriage two sons, whom his death left orphans in their cradle, and who succeeded to his small inheritance at Arcis-sur-Aube. These two sons of Danton, alarmed at the effects of their name, retired to their family domain, and cultivated it with their own hands, and in an honest and industrious obscurity limited to themselves all their father's notoriety. Like the son of Cromwell, they preferred the shade and silence the more, as their name had a too sinister reputation, and too wide an extension in the world. They remained unmarried, that the name might die with them.

At this moment Danton, whose ambitious instincts revealed the close return to fortune of the Girondists, sought to attach himself to this rising party, and give them the weight of his worth and importance. Madame Roland flattered him, but with fear and repugnance, as a woman would pat a lion.

XII.

Whilst the Girondists were exciting the anger of the people against the king, hostilities were beginning in Belgium, in consequence of reverses, which were attributed to treasons of the court: these were produced by three causes; the hesitation of the generals, who did not understand how to impart to their troops that ardour which impels the masses, and bears down resistance; the disorganisation of the armies, which emigration had deprived of their ancient officers, and who had no confidence in the new; and finally, the want of discipline, that element of revolutions, which clubs and Jacobinism had spread amongst the troops. An army that discusses is like a hand which would think.

La Fayette, instead of advancing at once on Namur according to Dumouriez's plan, lost a good deal of precious time in assembling and organising at Givet, and the camp of Ransenne. Instead of giving the other generals in line with him, the example and the signal of invasion and victory, by at once occupying Namur, he moved about the country with 10,000 men, leaving the remainder of his forces encamped in France, and fell back at the first news of the checks sustained by the detachments of Biron and Theobald Dillon. These checks, though partial and slight, were disgraceful for our troops. It was the astonishment of an army unaccustomed to war, and fearful of entering the lists, but which, like a soldier at his first campaign, would soon grow used to battles.

The Duc de Lauzun commanded under La Fayette, and was called general Biron. He was a man of the court, who had gone over in all sincerity to the side of the people. Young, handsome, chivalrous, with that intrepid gaiety which plays with death, he carried aristocratic honour into republican ranks. Loved by the soldiers, adored by the women, at his ease in camps, a roue in courts, he was of that school of sparkling vices of which the Marshal de Richelieu had been the type in France. It was said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being able to fix his inconstancy. Friend of the Duc d'Orleans, companion of his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him. All treachery was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost indignation. He adopted the Revolution as a noble idea, of which he was always ready to be the soldier, but never the accomplice. He did not betray the king, and always preserved a deep feeling of pity and sympathy for the queen; with an intense love for philosophy and liberty, instead of fomenting them by sedition, he defended them by war. He changed devotion to kings into devotion to his country. This noble cause, and the sorrows of the Revolution gave to his character a more manly stamp, and made him fight and die with the conscience of a hero.

He was encamped at Quievrain with 10,000 men, and advanced against the Austrian general Beaulieu, who occupied the heights of Mons, with a very weak army. Two regiments of dragoons, who formed Biron's advanced guard, were seized with a sudden panic on beholding Beaulieu's troops. The soldiers cried out treachery, and in vain did their officers attempt to rally them; they turned bridle and scattered disorder and fear throughout the ranks. The army gave way and mechanically followed the current of flight. Biron and his aides-de-camp threw themselves into the centre of the troops to stay and to rally them. They struck at them with their swords, and fired at them. The camp of Quievrain, the military chest, the carriage of Biron himself, were plundered by the fugitives.

Whilst this defeat, without a battle, humiliated the French army, in its first step, at Quievrain, bloody assassinations stained our flag at Lille. General Dillon had left that city, the enemy showed itself on the plain to the number of nine hundred men. At its appearance only, the French cavalry uttered treacherous cries, and passing by the infantry, fled to Lille, without being followed, abandoning its artillery, carriages, and baggage. Dillon, hurried along by his squadrons to Lille, was there massacred by his own soldiers. His colonel of engineers, Berthois, fell beside his general, beneath the bayonets of the cowards who abandoned him. The dead bodies of these two victims of fear were hung up in the Place d'Armes, and then delivered up by the malcontents to the insults of the populace of Lille, who dragged their mutilated carcases along the streets. Thus commenced in shame and crime those wars of the Revolution which were destined to produce, during twenty years, so much heroism, and so much military virtue. Anarchy had penetrated to the camps, honour was there no longer: order and honour are the two necessities of an army. In anarchy there is still a nation—without discipline there is no longer an army.

XIII.

Paris was in consternation at this news; the Assembly greatly troubled, the Girondists trembled, the Jacobins were vociferous in their imprecations against the traitors. Foreign courts and the emigrants had no doubt of an easy triumph in a few marches over a revolution which was afraid of its very shadow. La Fayette, without having been attacked, fell back, very prudently, on Givet. Rochambeau sent in his resignation as commandant of the army of the north. Marshal Luckner was nominated in his place. La Fayette, much dissatisfied, kept the command of the central army.

Luckner was upwards of seventy years of age, but retained all the fire and activity of the warrior; he only required genius to have been a great general. He had a reputation for complaisance, which sufficed for every thing. It is a great advantage for a general to be a stranger in the country in which he is serving. He has no one jealous of him: his superiority is pardoned, and presumed if it do not exist, in order to crush his rivals: such was old Luckner's position. He was a German,—pupil of the great Frederic, with whom he had served with eclat during the seven years' war as commandant of the vanguard, at the moment when Frederic changed the war, and commenced its tactics. The Duc de Choiseul was desirous of depriving Prussia of a general of this great school, to teach the modern art of battles to French generals. He had attracted Luckner from his country by force of temptations, fortune, and honours. The national Assembly, from respect to the memory of the philosopher king, had preserved to Luckner the pension of 60,000 francs which had been paid to him during the Revolution. Luckner, indifferent to constitutions, believed himself a revolutionist from gratitude. He was almost the only one amongst the ancient general officers who had not emigrated. Surrounded by a brilliant staff of young officers of the party of La Fayette, Charles Lameth, du Jarri, Mathieu de Montmorency, he believed he had the opinions which they instilled into him. The king caressed, the Assembly flattered, the army respected, him. The nation saw in him the mysterious genius of the old war coming to give lessons of victory to the untried patriotism of the Revolution, and concealing its infinite resources under the bluntness of his exterior, and the obscure Germanism of his language. They addressed to him, from all sides, homage as though he were an unknown God. He did not deserve either this adoration, or the outrages with which he was soon after overwhelmed. He was a brave and coarse soldier, as misplaced in courts as in clubs. For some days he was an idol, then the plaything of the Jacobins, who, at last, threw him to the guillotine, without his being able to comprehend either his popularity or his crime.

XIV.

Berthier, who afterwards became Napoleon's right hand, was then the head of Luckner's staff. The old general seized, with warlike instinct, on Dumouriez's bold plan. He had entered at the head of 22,000 men on the Austrian territory at Courtray and Menin. Biron and Valence, his two seconds in command, entreated him to remain there, and Dumouriez, in his letters, urged him in similar manner. On arriving at Lille, Dumouriez learnt that Luckner had suddenly retreated on Valenciennes, after having burnt the suburbs of Courtray; thus giving, on our frontier, the signal of hesitation and retreat.

The Belgian population, their impulses thus checked by the disasters or timidity of France, lost all hope, and bent beneath the Austrian yoke. General Montesquiou collected the army of the south with difficulty. The king of the Sardinians concentrated a large force on the Var. The advanced guard of La Fayette, posted at Gliswel, at a league from Maubeuge, was beaten by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen, at the head of 12,000 men. The great invasion of the Duke of Brunswick, in Champagne, was preparing. The emigration took off the officers, desertion diminished our soldiery. The clubs disseminated distrust against the commanders of our strong places.

The Girondists were urging on rebellion, the Jacobins were exciting the army to anarchy, the volunteers did not rise, the ministry was null, the Austrian committee of the Tuileries corresponded with various powers, not to deceive the nation, but to save the lives of the king and his family. A suspected government, hostile assembly, seditious clubs, a national guard intimidated and deprived of its chief, incendiary journalism, dark conspiracies, factious municipality, a conspirator-mayor, people distrustful and starving, Robespierre and Brissot, Vergniaud and Danton, Girondists and Jacobins, face to face, having the same spoil to contend for—the monarchy, and struggling for pre-eminence in demagogism in order to acquire the favour of the people; such was the state of France, within and without, at the moment when exterior war was pressing France on all sides, and causing it to burst forth with disasters and crimes. The Girondists and Jacobins united for a moment, suspended their personal animosity, as if to see which could best destroy the powerless constitution which separated them. The bourgeoisie personified by the Feuillants, the National Guard, and La Fayette, alone remained attached to the constitution. The Gironde, from the tribune itself, made that appeal to the people against the king which it was subsequently doomed to make in vain in favour of the king against the Jacobins. In order to control the city, Brissot, Roland, Petion, excited the suburbs, those capitals of miseries and seditions. Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths, then appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue; such were about to appear under the conspiring hand of the Girondists and demagogues.



BOOK XVI

I.

In proportion as power snatched from the hands of the king by the Assembly disappeared, it passed into the commune of Paris. The municipality, that first element of nations which are forming themselves, is also the last asylum of authority when they are crumbling to pieces. Before it falls quite to the people, power pauses for a moment in the council-chamber of the magistrates of the city. The Hotel de Ville had become the Tuileries of the people; after La Fayette and Bailly, Petion reigned there: this man was the king of Paris. The populace (which has always the instinct of position) called him King Petion. He had purchased his popularity, first by his private virtues, which the people almost always confound with public virtues, and subsequently by his democratic speeches in the Constituent Assembly. The skilful balance which he preserved at the Jacobins between the Girondists and Robespierre had rendered him respectable and important. Friend of Roland, Robespierre, Danton, and Brissot, at the same time suspected of too close connection with Madame de Genlis and the Duc d'Orleans' party, he still always covered himself with the mantle of proper devotion to order and a superstitious reverence for the constitution. He had thus all the apparent titles to the esteem of honest men and the respect of factions; but the greatest of all was in his mediocrity. Mediocrity, it must be confessed, is almost always the brand of these idols of the people: either that the mob, mediocre itself, has only a taste for what resembles it; or that jealous contemporaries can never elevate themselves sufficiently high towards great characters and great virtues; or that Providence, which distributes gifts and faculties in proportion, will not allow that one man should unite in himself, amidst a free people, these three irresistible powers, virtue, genius, and popularity; or rather, that the constant favour of the multitude is a thing of such a nature that its price is beyond its worth in the eyes of really virtuous men, and that it is necessary to stoop too low to pick it up, and become too weak to retain it. Petion was only king of the people on condition of being complaisant to its excesses. His functions as mayor of Paris, in a time of trouble, placed him constantly between the king, the Assembly, and the revolts. He bearded the king, flattered the Assembly, and pardoned crime. Inviolable as the capital which he personified in his position of first magistrate of the commune, his unseen dictatorship had no other title than his inviolability, and he used it with respectful boldness towards the king, bowed before the Assembly, and knelt to the malcontents. To his official reproaches to the rioters, he always added an excuse for crime, a smile for the culprits, encouragement to the misled citizens. The people loved him as anarchy loves weakness; it knew it could do as it pleased with him. As mayor, he had the law in his hand; as a man, he had indulgence on his lips and connivance in his heart: he was just the magistrate required in times of the coups d'etat of the faubourgs.

Petion allowed them to make all their preparations without appearing to see them, and legalised them whenever they were completed.

II.

His early connection with Brissot had drawn him towards Madame Roland. The ministry of Roland, Claviere, and Servan obeyed him more than even the king, he was present at all their consultations, and although their fall did not involve him, it wrested the executive power from his grasp. The expelled Girondists had no need to infuse their thirst of vengeance into the mind of Petion. Unable any longer to conspire legally against the king, with his ministers, he yet could conspire with the factions against the Tuileries. The national guards, the people, the Jacobins, the faubourgs, the whole city, were in his hands; thus he could give sedition to the Girondists to aid this party to regain the ministry; and he gave it them with all the hazards—all the crimes that sedition carries with it. Amongst these hazards was the assassination of the king and his family: this event was beforehand accepted by those who provoked the assembly of the populace, and their invasion of the king's palace. Girondists, Orleanists, Republicans, Anarchists, none of these parties perhaps actually meditated this crime, but they looked upon it as an eventuality of their fortune. Petion, who doubtless did not desire it, at least risked it; and if his intention was innocent, his temerity was a murder. What distance was there between the steel of twenty thousand pikes and the heart of Louis XVI.? Petion did not betray the lives of the king, the queen, and the children, but he placed them at stake. The constitutional guard of the king had been ignominiously disbanded by the Girondists; the Duc de Brissac, its commander, was sent to the high court of Orleans, for imaginary conspiracies,—his only conspiracy was his honour; and he had sworn to die bravely in defence of his master and his friend. He could have escaped, but though even the king advised him to fly, he refused. "If I fly," replied he, to the king's entreaties, "it will be said that I am guilty, and that you are my accomplice; my flight will accuse you: I prefer to die." He left Paris for the national court of Orleans: he was not tried, but massacred at Versailles, on the 6th of September, and his head with its white hairs was planted on one of the palisades of the palace gates, as if in atrocious mockery of that chivalrous honour that even in death guarded the gate of the residence of his king.

III.

The first insurrections of the Revolution were the spontaneous impulses of the people: on one side was the king, the court and the nobility; on the other the nation. These two parties clashed by the mere impulse of conflicting ideas and interests. A word—a gesture—a chance—the assembling a body of troops—a day's scarcity—the vehement address of an orator in the Palais Royal, sufficed to excite the populace to revolt, or to march on Versailles. The spirit of sedition was confounded with the spirit of the Revolution. Every one was factious—every one was a soldier—every one was a leader. Public passion gave the signal, and chance commanded.

Since the Revolution was accomplished, and the constitution had imposed on each party legal order, it was different. The insurrections of the people were no longer agitations, but plans. The organised factions had their partisans—their clubs—their assemblies—their army and their pass-word. Amongst the citizens, anarchy had disciplined itself, and its disorder was only external, for a secret influence animated and directed it unknown even to itself. In the same manner as an army possesses chiefs on whose intelligence and courage they rely; so the quartiers and sections of Paris had leaders whose orders they obeyed. Secondary popularities, already rooted in the city and faubourgs, had been founded behind those mighty national popularities of Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Bailly. The people felt confidence in such a name, reliance in such an arm, favour for such a face; and when these men showed themselves, spoke, or moved, the multitude followed them without even knowing whither the current of the crowd would lead; it was sufficient for the chiefs to indicate a spot on which to assemble, to spread abroad a panic terror, infuse a sudden rage, or indicate a purpose, to cause the blind masses of the people to assemble on the appointed spot ready for action.

IV.

The spot chosen was most frequently the site of the Bastille, the Mons Aventinus of the people, the national camp, where the place and the stones reminded them of their servitude and their strength. Of all the men who governed the agitators of the faubourgs, Danton was the most redoubtable. Camille Desmoulins, equally bold to plan, possessed less courage to execute. Nature, which had given this young man the restlessness of the leaders of the mob, had denied him the exterior and the power of voice necessary to captivate them; for the people do not comprehend intellectual force. A colossal stature and a sonorous voice are two indispensable requisites for the favourites of the people: Camille Desmoulins was small, thin, and had but a feeble voice, that seemed to "pipe and whistle in the wind" after the tones of Danton, who possessed the roar of the populace.

Petion enjoyed the highest esteem of the anarchists, but his official legality excused him from openly fomenting the disorder, which it was sufficient that he desired. Nothing could be done without him, and he was an accomplice. After them came Santerre, the commander of the battalion of the faubourg St. Antoine. Santerre, son of a Flemish brewer, and himself a brewer, was one of those men that the people respect because they are of themselves, and whose large fortune is forgiven them on account of their familiarity. Well known to the workmen, of whom he employed great numbers in his brewery; and by the populace, who on Sundays frequented his wine and beer establishments—Santerre distributed large sums of money, as well as quantities of provisions, to the poor; and, at a moment of famine, had distributed three hundred thousand francs' worth of bread (12,000l.). He purchased his popularity by his beneficence; he had conquered it, by his courage, at the storming of the Bastille; and he increased it by his presence at every popular tumult. He was of the race of those Belgian brewers who intoxicated the people of Ghent to rouse them to revolt.

The butcher, Legendre, was to Danton what Danton was to Mirabeau, a step lower in the abyss of sedition. Legendre had been a sailor during ten years of his life, and had the rough and brutal manners of his two callings, a savage look, his arms covered with blood, his language merciless, yet his heart naturally good. Involved since '89 in all the Revolutionary movements, the waves of this agitation had elevated him to a certain degree of authority. He had founded, under Danton, the Cordeliers club, the club of coups de main, as the Jacobins was the club of radical theories; and he convulsed it to its very centre, by his eloquence untaught and unpolished. He compared himself to the peasant of the Danube. Always more ready to strike than to speak, Legendre's gesture crushed before he spoke. He was the mace of Danton. Huguenin, one of those men who roll from profession to profession, on the acclivity of troublous times, without the power to arrest his course; an advocate expelled from the body to which he belonged; then a soldier, and a clerk at the barriere; always disliked, aspiring for power to recover his fortune, and suspected of pillage. Alexandre, the commandant of the battalion of the Gobelins, the hero of the faubourg, the friend of Legendre. Marat, a living conspiracy, who had quitted his subterranean abode in the night; a living martyr of demagogism, revelling in excitement, carrying his hatred of society to madness, exulting in it, and voluntarily playing the part of the fool of the people as so many others had played at the courts the part of the king's fool. Dubois Crance, a brave and educated soldier. Brune, a sabre, at the service of all conspiracies. Mormoro, a printer, intoxicated with philosophy. Dubuisson, an obscure writer, whom the hisses of the theatre had forced to take refuge in intrigue. Fabre d'Eglantine, a comic poet, ambitious of another field for his powers. Chabot, a capuchin monk, embittered by the cloister, and eager to avenge himself on the superstition which had imprisoned him. Lareynie, a soldier-priest. Gonchon, Duquesnois, friends of Robespierre. Carra, a Girondist journalist. An Italian, named Rotondo. Henriot, Sillery, Louvet, Laclos, and Barbaroux, the emissary of Roland and Brissot, were the principal instigators of the emeute of the 20th of June.

V.

All these men met in an isolated house at Charenton, to concert in the stillness and secrecy of the night on the pretext, the plan, and the hour of the insurrection. The passions of these men were different, but their impatience was the same; some wished to terrify, others to strike, but all wished to act; when once the people were let loose, they would stop where destiny willed. There were no scruples at a meeting at which Danton presided; speeches were superfluous where but one feeling prevailed; propositions were sufficient, and a look was enough to convey all their meaning. A pressure of the hand, a glance, a significant gesture, are the eloquence of men of action. In a few words, Danton dictated the purpose, Santerre the means, Marat the atrocious energy, Camilla Desmoulins the cynical gaiety of the projected movement, and all decided on the resolution of urging the people to this act. A revolutionary map of Paris was laid on the table, and on it Danton traced the sources, the tributary streams, the course, and the meeting-place of these gatherings of the people.

The Place de la Bastille, an immense square into which opened, like the mouths of so many rivers, the numerous streets of the faubourg St. Antoine, which joins, by the quartier de l'Arsenale and a bridge, the faubourg St. Marceau, and which, by the boulevard, opened before the ancient fortress, has a large opening to the centre of the city and the Tuileries, was the rendezvous assigned, and the place whence the columns were to depart. They were to be divided into three bodies, and a petition to present to the king and the Assembly against the veto to the decree against the priests and the camp of 20,000 men, was the ostensible purpose of the movement; the recall of the patriot ministers, Roland, Servan, and Claviere, the countersign; and the terror of the people, disseminated in Paris and the chateau of the Tuileries the effect of this day. Paris expected this visit of the faubourgs, for five hundred persons had dined together the previous day on the Champs Elysees.

The chief of the federes of Marseilles and the agitators of the central quarters had fraternised there with the Girondists. The actor Dugazon had sung verses, denunciatory of the inhabitants of the Chateau; and at his window in the Tuileries the king had heard the applause and these menacing strains, that reached even to his palace. As for the order of the march, the grotesque emblems, the strange weapons, the hideous costumes, the horrible banners and the obscene language, destined to signal the apparition of this army of the faubourgs in the streets of the capital, the conspirators prescribed nothing, for disorder and horror formed a part of the programme, and they left all to the disordered imagination of the populace, and to that rivalry of cynicism which invariably takes place in such masses of men. Danton relied on this fact.

VI.

Although the presence of Panis and Sergent, two members of the municipality, gave a tacit sanction to the plan, the leaders undertook to recruit the sedition in silence, by small groups during the night, and to collect the fiercest rassemblements of the quartier Saint Marceau and the Jardin des Plantes, on the bank of the Arsenale, by means of a ferry, then the only means of communication between the two faubourgs. Lareynie was to arouse the faubourg St. Jacques and the market of the place Maubert, where the women of the lower classes came daily to make their household purchases. To sell and to buy is the life of the lower orders, and money and famine are their two leading passions. They are always ready for tumult in those places where these two passions concentrate, and no where is sedition more readily excited, or in greater masses of people.

The dyer Malard, the shoemaker Isambert, the tanner Gibon, rich and influential artizans, were to pour from the sombre and foetid streets of the faubourg Saint Marceau their indigent population, who but rarely show themselves in the principal quartiers. Alexandre, the military tribune of this quarter of Paris, in which he commanded a battalion, was to place himself at its head on the place, before daybreak, to concentrate the people, and then give them the impulse that should lead them to the quays and the Tuileries. Varlet, Gonchon, Ronsin, and Siret, the lieutenants of Santerre, who had been employed in this system of tactics since the first agitations of '89, were charged with the execution of similar manoeuvres in the faubourg St. Antoine. The streets of this quarter, full of manufactories and wine and beer shops, the abiding place of misery, toil, and sedition, which extend from the Bastille to la Roquette and Charenton, contained in themselves alone an army that could invade Paris.