The Baron de Spielman, under the immediate dictation of the emperor, drew up the document. M. de Calonne in vain combated, in the name of the Count d'Artois, the hesitation that disconcerted the impatience of the emigres. The next day, on their return from a visit to Dresden, the two sovereigns, the Count d'Artois, M. de Calonne, the Marechal de Lascy, and the two negotiators, met in the emperor's apartment, where the declaration was read and discussed, every sentence weighed, and some expressions modified; and at the proposal of M. de Calonne, and the entreaties of the Count d'Artois, the emperor and the king of Prussia consented to the insertion of the last phrase, that threatened the Revolution with war.

Subjoined is the document that was the date of a war of twenty-two years' duration.

"The emperor and the king of Prussia, having listened to the wishes and representations of Monsieur and Monsieur le Comte d'Artois, declare conjointly that they look upon the present position of the king of France as an object of common interest to all the sovereigns of Europe. They trust that this interest cannot fail to be acknowledged by all the powers whose assistance is claimed; and that, in consequence, they will not refuse to employ, conjointly with the emperor and the king of Prussia, the most efficacious means, proportioned to their forces, for enabling the king of France to strengthen with the most perfect liberty the bases of a monarchical government, equally conformable to the rights of sovereigns and the welfare of the French nation. Then, and in that case, their aforesaid majesties are resolved to act promptly and in concert with the forces requisite to attain the end proposed and agreed on. In the mean time they will issue all needful orders to their troops to hold themselves in a state of readiness."

This declaration, at once timid and threatening, was evidently too much for peace, too little for war; for such words encourage the revolution, without crushing it. They at once showed the impatience of the emigres, the resolution of the king of Prussia, the hesitation of the powers, the temporising policy of the emperor. It was a concession to force and weakness, to peace and war; the whole state of Europe was there unveiled, for it was the declaration of the uncertainty and anarchy of its councils.

XVII.

After this imprudent and useless act, the two sovereigns separated. Leopold to go and be crowned at Prague, and the king of Prussia, returning to Berlin, began to put his army on a war footing. The emigrants, triumphing in the engagement they had entered into, increased in numbers. The courts of Europe, with the exception of England, sent in equivocal adhesions to the courts of Berlin and Vienna. The noise of the declaration of Pilnitz burst forth, and died away in Paris in the midst of the fetes in honour of the acceptance of the constitution.

However, Leopold, after the conferences at Pilnitz, was more earnest than ever in his attempts to find excuses for peace. The Prince de Kaunitz, his minister, feared all violent shocks, which might derange the old diplomatic mechanism, whose workings he so well knew. Louis XVI. sent the Count de Fersen secretly to him, in order to disclose his real motives in accepting the constitution, and to entreat him not to provoke, by any preparation of arms, the bad feelings of the Revolution, which seemed to be quieted by its triumph.

The emigrant princes, on the contrary, filled all courts with the words uttered in favour of their cause in the declaration of Pilnitz. They wrote a letter to Louis XVI., in which they protested against the oath of the king to the constitution, forced, as they declared, from his weakness and his captivity. The king of Prussia, on receiving the circular of the French cabinet, in which the acceptance of the constitution was notified, exclaimed, "I see the peace of Europe assured!" The courts of Vienna and Berlin feigned to believe that all was concluded in France by the mutual concessions of the king and the Assembly. They made up their minds to see the throne of Louis XVI. abased, provided that the Revolution would consent to allow itself to be controlled by the throne.

Russia, Sweden, Spain, and Sardinia were not so easily appeased. Catherine II. and Gustavus III., the one from a proud feeling of her power, and the other from a generous devotion to the cause of kings, arranged together, to send 40,000 Russians and Swedes to the aid of the monarchy. This army, paid by a subsidy of 15,000,000f. of Spain, and commanded by Gustavus in person, was to land upon the coast of France, and march upon Paris, whilst the forces of the empire crossed the Rhine.

These bold plans of the two northern courts were displeasing to Leopold and the king of Prussia. They reproached Catherine with not keeping her promises, and making peace with the Turks. Could the emperor march his troops on the Rhine whilst the battles of the Russians and Ottomans continued on the Danube and threatened the remoter provinces of his empire? Catherine and Gustavus nevertheless did not abate in their open protection to the emigration party. These two sovereigns accredited ministers plenipotentiary to the French princes at Coblentz. This was declaring the forfeiture of Louis XVI., and even the forfeiture of France. It was recognising that the government of the kingdom was no longer at Paris, but at Coblentz. Moreover, they contracted a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, between Sweden and Russia in the common interest of the re-establishment of the monarchy.

Louis XVI. then earnestly desiring the disarming, sent to Coblentz the Baron Viomenil and the Chevalier de Coigny to command his brothers and the Prince de Conde to disarm and disperse the emigrants. They received his orders as coming from a captive, and disobeyed without even sending him a reply. Prussia and the empire showed more deference to the king's intentions. These two courts disbanded the army collected by the princes, and ordered to be punished in their states all insults offered to the tricolour cockade; but at the very moment when the emperor thus gave evidence of his desire to maintain peace, war was about to involve him in spite of himself. What human wisdom sometimes refuses to the greatest causes, it sees itself compelled to accord to the smallest. Such was Leopold's situation. He had refused war to the great interests of the monarchy, and the strong feelings of the family which asked it from him, and yet was about to grant it to the insignificant interests of certain princes of the empire, whose possessions were in Alsace and Lorraine, and whose personal rights were violated by the new French constitution. He had refused succour to his sister, and was about to accord it to his vassals. The influence of the diet, and his duties as head of the empire, led him on to steps to which his personal feelings would never have urged him. By his letter of 3d December, 1791, he announced to the cabinet of the Tuileries the formal resolution on his part "of giving aid to the princes holding lands in France, if he did not obtain their perfect restoration to all the rights which belonged to them by treaty."

XVIII.

This threatening letter, secretly communicated in Paris, (before it was officially sent,) by the French ambassador in Vienna, was received by the king with much alarm, and with joy by certain of his ministers, and the political party of the Assembly. War cuts through every thing. They hailed it as a solution to the difficulties which they felt were crushing them. When there is no longer any hope in the regular order of events, there is in what is unknown. War appeared to these adventurous spirits a necessary diversion to the universal ferment; a career to the Revolution; a means for the king again to seize on power by acquiring the support of the army. They hoped to change the fanaticism of liberty into the fanaticism of glory, and to deceive the spirit of the age by intoxicating it with conquests instead of satisfying it with institutions.

The Girondist deputies were of this party. Brissot was their inspiration. Flattered by the title of statesmen, which they already assumed from vanity, and which was used towards them with irony, they were desirous to justify their pretensions by a bold stroke, which would change the scene, and disconcert, at the same time, the king, the people, and Europe. They had studied Machiavel, and considered the disdain of the just as a proof of genius. They little heeded the blood of the people, provided that it cemented their ambition.

The Jacobin party, with the exception of Robespierre, clamoured loudly for war: his fanaticism deceived him as to his weakness. War was to these men an armed apostleship, which was about to propagate their social philosophy over the universe. The first cannon shot fired in the name of the rights of man would shake thrones to their centre. Then there was finally a third party which hoped for war, that of the constitutional moderes, which flattered itself that it would restore sound energy to the executive power, by the necessity of concentrating the military authority in the hands of the king at the moment when the nationality should be menaced. All extremity of war places the dictatorship in the hands of the party which makes it, and they hoped, on behalf of the king, and of themselves, for this dictatorship of necessity.

XIX.

A young, but already influential, female had lent to this latter party the prestige of her youth, her genius, and her enthusiasm—it was Madame de Staeel. Necker's daughter, she had inspired politics from her birth. Her mother's salon had been the coenaculum of the philosophy of the 18th century. Voltaire, Rousseau, Buffon, D'Alembert, Diderot, Raynal, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, Condorcet had played with this child, and fostered her earliest ideas. Her cradle was that of the Revolution. Her father's popularity had played about her lips, and left there an inextinguishable thirst for fame. She sought it in the storms of the populace, in calumny, and death. Her genius was great, her soul pure, her heart deeply impassioned. A man in her energy, a woman in her tenderness, that the ideal of her ambition should be satisfied, it was necessary for her to associate in the same character genius, glory, and love.

Nature, education, and fortune rendered possible this triple dream of a woman, a philosopher, and a hero. Born in a republic, educated in a court, daughter of a minister, wife of an ambassador, belonging by birth to the people, to the literary world by talent, to the aristocracy by rank, the three elements of the Revolution mingled or contended in her. Her genius was like the antique chorus, in which all the great voices of the drama unite in one tumultuous concord. A deep thinker by inspiration, a tribune by eloquence, a woman in attraction, her beauty, unseen by the million, required intellect to be admired, and admiration to be felt. Hers was not the beauty of form and features, but visible inspiration and the manifestation of passionate impulse. Attitude, gesture, tone of voice, look—all obeyed her mind, and created her brilliancy. Her black eyes, flashing with fire, gave out from beneath their long lids as much tenderness as pride. Her look, so often lost in space, was followed by those who knew her, as if it were possible to find with her the inspiration she sought. That gaze, open, yet profound as her understanding, had as much serenity as penetration. We felt that the light of her genius was only the reverberation of a mine of tenderness of heart. Thus there was a secret love in all the admiration she excited; and she, in admiration, cared only for love. Love with her was but enlightened admiration.

Events rapidly ripened; ideas and things were crowded into her life: she had no infancy. At twenty-two years of age she had maturity of thought with the grace and softness of youth. She wrote like Rousseau, and spoke like Mirabeau. Capable of bold conceptions and complicated designs, she could contain in her bosom at the same time a lofty idea and a deep feeling. Like the women of old Rome who agitated the republic by the impulses of their hearts, or who exalted or depressed the empire with their love, she sought to mingle her feelings with her politics, and desired that the elevation of her genius should elevate him she loved. Her sex precluded her from that open action which public position, the tribune, or the army only accord to men in public governments; and thus she compulsorily remained unseen in the events she guided. To be the hidden destiny of some great man, to act through and by him, to grow with his greatness, be eminent in his name, was the sole ambition permitted to her—an ambition tender and devoted, which seduces a woman whilst it suffices to her disinterested genius. She could only be the mind and inspiration of some political man; she sought such a one, and in her delusion believed she had found him.

XX.

There was then in Paris a young general officer of illustrious race, excessively handsome, and with a mind full of attraction, varied in its powers and brilliant in its display. Although he bore the name of one of the most distinguished families at court, there was a cloud over his birth. Royal blood ran in his veins, and his features recalled those of Louis XV. The affection of Mesdames the aunts of Louis XVI. for this youth, educated under their eyes, attached to their persons, and who rose by their influence to the highest employments in the court and army, gave credit to many mysterious rumours.

This young man was the count Louis de Narbonne. Sprung from this origin, brought up in this court, a courtier by birth; spoiled by the hands of these females, only remarkable for his good looks, his levities, and his hasty wit; it was not to be expected that such a person was imbued with that ardent faith which casts a man headlong into the centre of revolutions, or the stoical energy which produces and controls them. He saw in the people only a sovereign, more exacting and more capricious than any others, towards whom it was necessary to display more skill to seduce, more policy to manage them. He believed himself sufficiently plastic for the task, and resolved to attempt it. Without a lofty imagination, he yet had ambition and courage, and he viewed the position of affairs as a drama, similar to the Fronde[8], in which skilful actors could enlarge their hopes in proportion to the facts, and direct the catastrophe. He had not sufficient penetration to see, that in a revolution there is but one serious actor—enthusiasm; and he had none. He stammered out the words of a revolutionary tongue—he assumed the costume, but had not the spirit of the times.

The contrast of this nature and of this part, this court favourite casting himself into the crowd to serve the nation, this aristocratic elegance, masked in patriotism of the tribune, pleased public opinion for the moment. They applauded this transformation as a difficulty overcome. The people was flattered by having great lords with it. It was a testimony of its power. It felt itself king, by seeing courtiers bowing to it, and excused their rank by reason of their complaisance.

Madame de Staeel was seduced as much by the heart as the intellect of M. de Narbonne. Her masculine and sensitive imagination invested the young soldier with all she desired to find in him. He was but a brilliant, active, high-couraged man; she pictured him a politician and a hero. She magnified him with all the endowments of her dreams, in order to bring him up to her ideal standard. She found patrons for him; surrounded him with a prestige; created a name for him, marked him out a course. She made him the living type of her politics. To disdain the court, gain over the people, command the army, intimidate Europe, carry away the Assembly by his eloquence, to struggle for liberty, to save the nation, and become, by his popularity alone, the arbiter between the throne and the people, to reconcile them by a constitution, at once liberal and monarchical; such was the perspective that she opened for herself and M. de Narbonne.

She but awakened his ambition, yet he believed himself capable of the destinies which she dreamed of for him. The drama of the constitution was concentrated in these two minds, and their conspiracy was for some time the entire policy of Europe.

Madame de Staeel, M. de Narbonne, and the constitutional party were for war; but theirs was to be a partial and not a desperate war which, shaking nationality to its foundations, would carry away the throne and throw France into a Republic. They contrived by their influence to renew all the personal staff of the diplomacy, exclusively devoted to the emigrants or the king. They filled foreign courts with their adherents, M. de Marbois was sent to the Diet of Ratisbon, M. Barthelemy to Switzerland, M. de Talleyrand to London, M. de Segur to Berlin. The mission of M. de Talleyrand was to endeavour to fraternise the aristocratic principle of the English constitution with the democratic principle of the French constitution, which they believed they could effect and control by an Upper Chamber. They hoped to interest the statesmen of Great Britain in a Revolution, imitated from their own, which, after having convulsed the people, was now becoming moulded in the hands of an intelligent aristocracy. This mission would be easy, if the Revolution were in regular train for some months in Paris. French ideas were popular in London. The opposition was revolutionary. Fox and Burke, then friends, were most earnest in their desire for the liberty of the Continent[9]. We must render this justice to England, that the moral and popular principle concealed in the foundation of its constitution, has never stultified itself by combating the efforts of other nations to acquire a free government. It has everywhere accorded the liberty similar to its own.

XXI.

The mission of M. de Segur at Berlin was more delicate. Its object was to detach the king of Prussia from his alliance with the emperor Leopold, whose coronation was not yet known, and to persuade the cabinet of Berlin into an alliance with revolutionary France. This alliance held out to Prussia with its security on the Rhine the ascendency of the new-sprung ideas in Germany: it was a Machiavelian idea, which would smile at the agitating spirit of the great Frederic, who had made of Prussia the corrosive influence (la puissance corrosive) of the empire.

These two words—seduce and corrupt—were all M. de Segur's instructions. The king of Prussia had favourites and mistresses. Mirabeau had written in 1786, "There can be at Berlin no secrets for the ambassador of France, unless money and skill be wanting; the country is poor and avaricious, and there is no state secret which may not be purchased with three thousand louis." M. de Segur, imbued with these ideas, made it his first object to buy over the two favourites. The one was daughter of Elie Enka, who was a musician in the chapel of the late king. Handsome and witty, she had at twelve years of age attracted the notice of the king, then prince royal, and he had, at that early age, as in anticipation of his amour, bestowed on her all the care and all the cost of a royal education. She had travelled in France and in England, and knew all the European languages; she had polished her natural genius by contact with the lettered men and artists of Germany. A feigned marriage with Rietz, valet de chambre of the king, was the pretext for her residence at court, and gave her the opportunity for surrounding herself with the leading men in politics and literature in the city of Berlin. Spoiled by the precocity of her fortune, yet careless as to its retention, she had allowed two rivals to dispute the king's heart. One, the young Countess d'Ingenheim, had just died in the flower of her youth; the other, the Countess d'Ashkof, had borne the king two children, and flattered herself, in vain, with having extricated him from the empire of Madame Rietz.

The Baron de Roll, in the name of the Count d'Artois, and the Viscount de Caraman, in the name of Louis XVI., had possessed themselves of all the avenues to this cabinet. The Count de Goltz, ambassador from Prussia to Paris, had informed his court of the object of M. de Segur's mission. The report ran amongst well-informed persons that this envoy carried with him several millions (francs), destined to pay the weakness or the treason of the Berlin cabinet.

A copy of the secret instructions of M. de Segur reached Berlin two hours before him, which revealed to the king the whole plan of seduction and venality that the agent of France was to practice on his favourites and mistresses, whose character, ambition, rivalries, weaknesses, true or feigned, the means of acting by them on the mind of the king, were all and severally noted down with the security of confidence. There was a tariff for all consciences,—a price for every treachery. The favourite aide-de-camp of the king, Rischofwerder, then very powerful, was to be assailed by irresistible offers, and in case his connivance should be revealed, a splendid establishment in France was to guarantee him against any eventuality.

These instructions fell into the very hands of those whose fidelity was thus priced, and they gave them to the king with all the innocence of individuals shamefully calumniated. The king blushed for himself at the empire over his politics thus ascribed to love and intrigue. He was indignant at the fidelity of his subjects being thus assailed: all negotiation was nipped in the bud before the arrival of the negotiator. M. de Segur was received with coldness and all the irony of contempt. Frederic Willam affected never to mention him in his circle, and asked aloud before him, of the envoy of the elector of Mayence, news of the Prince de Conde: the envoy replied that this prince was approaching the frontiers of France with his army. "He is right," said the king, "for he is on the point of entering there." M. de Segur, accustomed, from his long residence and his familiar footing at the court of Catherine, to take love for the intermediary of his affairs, induced, it is said, the countess d'Ashkof and prince Henry of Prussia to join the peace party. This success was but a snare for his negotiation. The king, arranging with the emperor, affected for some time to lean towards France, to complain of the exactions of emigration, and to make much of the ambassador; who, thus cajoled, sent the warmest assurances to the French cabinet as to the intentions of Prussia. But the sudden disgrace of the countess d'Ashkof and the offer of alliance with France insultingly repulsed, threw at once light and confusion into the plots of M. de Segur: he demanded his recall. The humiliation of seeing his talents played with, the hopes of his party annihilated, the prospect of his country's misfortunes, and Europe in flames, had, it was reported, urged his sadness to despair. The report ran that he had attempted his life. This imputed suicide was but a brain fever occasioned by the anguish of a proud mind deeply wounded.

XXII.

The same party attempted, and at nearly the same time, to acquire for France a sovereign whose renown weighed as heavily as a throne in the opinion of Europe. This was the duke of Brunswick, a pupil of the great Frederic, the presumed heir of his military fame and inspiration, and proclaimed, by anticipation, by the public voice, generalissimo, in the coming war against France. To carry off from the emperor and the king of Prussia the chief of their armies, was to deprive Germany of confidence and of victory.

The name of the duke of Brunswick was a prestige which invested Germany with a feeling of terror and inviolability. Madame de Staeel and her party attempted it. This secret negotiation was concerted amongst Madame de Staeel, M. de Narbonne, M. de La Fayette, and M. de Talleyrand. M. de Custine, son of the general of that name, was chosen to convey to the duke of Brunswick the wishes of the constitutional party. The young negotiator was well prepared for his mission: witty, attractive, clever, an intense admirer of Prussian tactics and the duke of Brunswick, from whom he had had lessons in Berlin, he inspired confidence into this prince beforehand. He offered to him the rank of generalissimo of the French armies, an allowance of three millions of francs, and an establishment in France equivalent to his possessions and rank in the empire. The letter bearing these offers was signed by the minister of war and Louis XVI. himself.

M. de Custine set out from France in the month of January; on his arrival he handed his letter to the duke. Four days elapsed before an interview was accorded to him. On the fifth day, the duke admitted him to a personal and private interview. He expressed to M. de Custine with military frankness his pride and gratitude that the price attached to his merits by France must inspire in him: "But," he added, "my blood is German and my honour Prussia's; my ambition is satisfied with being the second person in this monarchy, which has adopted me. I would not exchange for an adventurous glory on the shifting stage of revolutions, the high and firm position which my birth, my duty, and some reputation already acquired have secured for me in my native land."

After this conversation, M. de Custine, finding the prince immoveable, disclosed his ultimatum, and held before his eyes the dazzling chance of the crown of France, if it fell from the brow of Louis XVI. into the hands of a conquering general. The duke appeared overwhelmed, and dismissed M. de Custine without depriving him of all hope of his accepting such an offer. But shortly afterwards, the duke, from duplicity, repentance, or prudence, replied by a formal refusal to both these propositions. He addressed his reply to Louis XVI., and not to his minister; and this unhappy king thus learnt the last word of the constitutional party, and how frail was the tenure on his brow of a crown which was already offered perspectively to the ambition of a foe!



BOOK VI.

I.

Such were the mutually threatening dispositions of France and Europe at the moment when the Constituted Assembly, after having proclaimed its principles, left to others to defend and apply them; like the legislator who retires into private life, thence to watch the effect and the working of his laws. The great idea of France abdicated, if we may use the expression, with the Constituted Assembly; and the government fell from its high position into the hands of the inexperience or the impulses of a new people. From the 29th of September to the 1st of October, there seemed to be a new reign: the Legislative Assembly found themselves on that day face to face with a king who, destitute of authority, ruled over a people destitute of moderation. They felt on their first sitting the oscillation of a power without a counterpoise, that seeks to balance itself by its own wisdom, and changing from insult to repentance, wounds itself with the weapon that has been placed in its grasp.

II.

An immense crowd had attended the first sittings; the exterior aspect of the Assembly had entirely changed; almost all the white heads had disappeared, and it seemed as though France had become young again in the course of a night. The expression of the physiognomies, the gestures, the attire of the members of the Assembly were no longer the same; that pride of the French noblesse, visible alike in the look and bearing; that dignity of the clergy and the magistrates; that austere gravity of the deputies of the Tiers etat had suddenly given place to the representatives of a new people, whose confusion and turbulence announced rather the invasion of power than the custom and the possession of supreme power. Many members were remarkable for their youth; and when the president, by virtue of his age, summoned all the deputies who had not yet attained their twenty-sixth year, in order to form the provisional bureau, sixty young men presented themselves, and disputed the office of secretary to the Assembly. This youth of the representatives of the nation alarmed some, whilst it rejoiced others; for if, on the one hand, such a representation did not possess that mature calmness and that authority of age that the ancient legislators sought in the council of the people; on the other, this sudden return to youth of the representatives of the nation, seemed a symptom of the regeneration of all the established institutions. It was visible to every body that this new generation had discarded all the traditions and prejudices of the old order of things; and its very age was a guarantee opposite to established rule, and which required that every statesman should by his age give pledges for the past, whilst from these was required guarantees for the future. Their inexperience was made a merit, their youth an oath. Old men are needed in times of tranquillity, young ones in times of revolutions.

Scarcely was the Assembly constituted, than the twofold feeling that was destined to dispute and contest every act—the monarchical and republican feeling—commenced upon a frivolous pretext, a struggle, puerile in appearance, serious in reality, and in which each party in the course of two days was alternately the conqueror and the conquered. The deputation that had waited on the king to announce to him the constitution of the Assembly, reported the result of its mission through the medium of the depute Ducastel, the president of this deputation. "We deliberated," said he, "as to what form of words we should make use of in addressing his majesty, as we feared to wound the national dignity or the royal dignity, and we agreed to use these terms:—'Sire, the Assembly is formed, and has deputed us to inform your majesty.' We proceeded to the Tuileries; the minister of justice announced to us that the king could not receive us before to-day at one o'clock. We, however, thought that the public safety required that we should be instantly admitted to the king's presence, and we therefore persisted. The king then informed us he would give us audience at nine o'clock, at which hour we again presented ourselves. At four paces distance from the king I saluted him, and addressed him in the terms agreed upon; he inquired the names of my colleagues, and I replied, 'I do not know them;' we were about to withdraw, when he recalled us, saying, 'I cannot see you before Friday.'"

An ill-repressed agitation, which had hitherto pervaded the ranks of the Assembly, now broke forth at these last words. "I demand," cried a deputy, "that this title of Majesty be no longer employed." "I demand," added another, "that this title of Sire be abolished; it is only an abbreviation of Seigneur, which recognises a sovereignty in the man to whom it is given." "I demand," said the deputy Bequet, "that we be no longer treated as automata, obliged to sit down or stand, just as it pleases the king to rise or to sit down." Couthon made his voice heard for the first time, and his first speech was a threat against royalty. "There is no other majesty here," said he, "than that of the law and the people. Let us leave the king no other title than that of King of the French. Let this scandalous chair be removed, the gilded seat brought for his use the last time he appeared in this chamber, if he really is anxious to fill the simple place of the president of a great people. Let an equality exist between us as regards ceremony: when he is uncovered and standing, let us stand and uncover our heads; when he is covered and seated, let us sit and wear our hats." "The people," said Chabot, "has sent you here to maintain its dignity; will you permit the king to say 'I will come at three o'clock,' as if you were unable to adjourn the Assembly without awaiting him?"

It was decreed that every member should have the right to sit covered in the king's presence. "This decree," observed Garrau de Coulon, "is calculated to create a degree of confusion in the Assembly; this privilege, given indiscriminately, would enable some to display pride, and others flattery." "So much the better," said a voice; "if there are any flatterers, we shall know them." It was also decreed that there should be only two chairs, placed in a line, one for the king, the other for the president; and lastly, that the king should have no other title than that of King of the French.

III.

These decrees humiliated the king, spread consternation amongst the constitutional party, and agitated the people. All had hoped that harmony would be established between the powers, and yet this understanding was destroyed at the outset, and the constitution tottered at its first step. This deprivation of the titles of royalty seemed a greater humiliation than the deprivation of the absolute power. Had we alone kept our king to expose him to the insults and derision of the people's representatives? how will a nation that does not respect its hereditary chief, respect its elected representatives? and is it by such outrages that liberty hopes to render herself acceptable to the throne? Or, is it by infusing similar feelings of resentment in the breast of the king, that he will be induced to protect the constitution, and to aid the maintenance of the rights of the people? If the executive power be a necessary reality, we must respect it, even in the king; if it be but a shadow, still should we respect and honour it. The ministerial council assembled, and the king declared that he was not forced by the new constitution to expose the monarchical dignity represented in his person to the outrages of the Assembly, and that he would order the ministers to preside at the opening of the legislative body.

This rumour created a reaction in Paris in favour of the king. The Assembly, as yet undecided, felt the blow; and that the popularity it sought was fast disappearing. "What has been the result of the decree of yesterday?" said the deputy Vosgien, at the opening of the sitting of the 6th of October. "Fresh hopes for the enemies of the public welfare, agitation of the people, depreciation of our credit, general disquietude. Let us pay to the hereditary representative of the people the respect that is his due. Do not let him believe that he is destined to be the mockery and the plaything of each fresh legislation; it is time for the constitution to cast anchor, and fix itself with firmness and stability."

Vergniaud, the hitherto unknown orator of the Gironde, displayed in his opening speech that audacious yet undecided character that was the type of his policy. His speeches were uncertain as his mind; he spoke in favour of one party, and voted for the other. "We all appear to agree," said he, "that if this decree concerns our internal regulations, it should be instantly put into execution; and it is evident to me that the decree does concern our internal regulations, for there can be no connection of authority between the legislative body and the king. It is merely a question of those marks of respect which are demanded to be shown to the royal dignity. I know not why the titles of Sire and Majesty, which recall feudality, should be restored; for the king ought to glory in the title of King of the French. I ask you, whether the king demanded a decree to regulate the etiquette of his household when he received your deputation? However, to speak my opinion without reserve, I think that if the king, as a mark of respect to the Assembly, rises and uncovers his head, the Assembly, as a mark of respect to the king, should imitate his example."

Herault de Sechelles demanded the repeal of the decree, and Champion, deputy of the Jura, reproached his colleagues for employing their meetings in such puerile debates. "I do not fear that the people will worship a gilded chair," said he, "but I dread a struggle between the two powers. You will not permit that the words sire and majesty be used, you will not even permit us to applaud the king; as if it were possible to forbid the people from manifesting their gratitude when the king has merited it. Do not let us dishonour ourselves, gentlemen, by a culpable ingratitude towards the National Assembly, who has retained these marks of respect for the king. The founders of liberty were not slaves; and previous to fixing the prerogatives of royalty, they established the rights of the people. It is the nation that is honoured in the person of its hereditary representative. It is the nation who, after having created royalty, has invested it with a splendour that remounts to the source from whence it sprung, and gives it a double lustre."

Ducastel, the president of the deputation sent to the king, spoke on the same side, but having inadvertently used the expression sovereign, in speaking of the king, and that the legislative power was vested in the Assembly and the king, this blasphemy and involuntary heresy raised a terrible storm in the chamber. Every word of this nature seemed to them to threaten a counter-revolution; for they were still so near despotism, that they feared at each step again to fall into its toils. The people was a slave, freed but yesterday, and who still trembled at the clank of his chains. However, the offensive decree was repealed, and this retraction was rapturously hailed by the royalists and the national guard. The constitutionalists saw in it the augury of renewed harmony between the ruling powers of the state; the king saw in it the triumph of a fidelity that had been deadened, but which blazed forth again on the least appearance of outrage to his person.

They were all deceived: it was but a movement of generosity, succeeding one of brutality; the hesitation of a nation that dares not, at one stroke, destroy the idol before which it has so long bowed the knee.

The royalists, however, attacked this return to moderation in their journals. "See," they cried, "how contemptible is this revolution—how conscious of its own weakness! This feeling of its own feebleness is a defeat already anticipated; see in two days how often it has given itself the lie. The authority that concedes is lost unless it possess the art of masking its retreat, of retreating by slow and imperceptible steps, and of causing its laws to be rather forgotten than repealed. Obedience arises from two causes, respect and fear. And both have been alike snapped asunder by the sudden and violent retrograde movement of the Assembly; for how can we respect or dread that power that trembles at its own audacity? The Assembly has abdicated by not completing that which it had dared to commence: the revolution that does not advance, retreats; and the king has conquered without striking a blow."

On their side the revolutionary party assembled that evening at the Jacobins, deplored their defeat, accused every one, and mutually recriminated on each other. "See," said their orators, "what underhand work has been accomplished in one night; what a triumph of corruption and fraud! The members of the former Assembly have mixed with the new members in the chamber, and have infused into the ears of their successors those concessions that have ruined them. After the sitting of that evening they mingled with the groups in the Palais Royal, spread alarm around, hinted of a second flight of the king, prognosticated trouble and anarchy, and made the people of Paris, who prefer their own private interests to the public weal, fear the utter destruction of confidence and the depression of the public credit. Can this venal race resist such arguments?"

All the real feelings of Paris were infused the next day into the attitude and discourses of the Assembly. "At the opening of the sitting," says a Jacobin, "I took my place amongst the deputies who were discussing the best means to obtain the repeal of the decree. I remarked that the decree having been carried the previous evening almost unanimously, it appeared impracticable to reckon upon so sudden and so scandalous a change of opinion. 'We are sure of the majority,' was their reply. I quitted my seat and took another, where precisely the same conversation passed. I then took refuge in that part of the chamber that had been so long the sanctuary of patriotism: there I heard the same arguments, the same apostacy. All had been purchased in the course of the night, and the best proof that this work of corruption had been accomplished before the deliberation is, that all the orators who spoke against the decree had their speeches ready written. Whence arises this surprise of the patriots? Because the well-intentioned members of the Assembly do not know each other; they have not met or reckoned their numbers here. It is true that you have opened your doors to receive them: they have entered this room to examine your countenance and ascertain your forces; but they are not as yet associated and knit together; nor have they acquired, by frequent visits here, and by listening to your discourses, that confidence and patriotism that form the great and good citizen."

The people, who sighed for repose after so many exciting scenes, destitute of work, money, and food, and intimidated by the approach of a severe winter, saw with indifference the attempt and the retraction of the Assembly, and suffered the deputies who had supported the decree to be insulted with impunity. Goupilleau, Couthon, Basire, Chabot, were threatened in the very Assembly by the officers of the national guard. "Beware!" said these soldiers of the people, bought over to the cause of the throne; "we will not suffer the Revolution to advance another step. We know you—we will watch you—you shall be hewed to pieces by our bayonets." These deputies, seconded by Barrere, came to the Jacobins' club, to denounce these outrages; but no effect was produced, and they gained nothing save expression of sterile indignation.

IV.

The king, reassured by this state of public feeling, proceeded, on the 7th, to the Assembly, where his appearance was the signal for unanimous acclamations. Some applauded the king, others applauded the constitution, in the person of the king. It inspired with real fanaticism that mass that judges of things by words alone, and believes all that the law proclaims sacred to be imperishable. Not content with crying Vive le Roi, they cried also Vive sa Majeste; and the acclamations of one part of the people thus avenged themselves on the offences of the others, and revered those titles that a decree had striven to efface. They even applauded the restoration of the royal chair beside that of the president, and it seemed to the royalists that this chair was a throne on which the people replaced the monarchy. The king addressed them, standing and bareheaded; his speech reassured their minds and touched their hearts; and if he lacked the language of enthusiasm, he had at least the accent of sincerity. "In order," said he, "that our labours may produce the beneficial results we have a right to expect, it is necessary that a constant harmony and an unalterable confidence should exist between the king and the legislative body. The enemies of our repose will seek every opportunity to spread disunion amongst us, but let the love of our country ally us, the public interest render us inseparable. Thus, public power will unfold itself without opposition, and the administration be harassed by no vain fears. The property and the opinions of every man shall be protected, and no excuse will remain for any one to live away from a country where the laws are in force, and the rights of all respected." This allusion to the emigres, and this indirect appeal to the king's brothers, caused a sensation of joy and hope to pervade the ranks of the Assembly.

The president Pastoret, a moderate constitutionalist, beloved alike by the king and the people, because, with the doctrines of power, he possessed the acuteness of the diplomatist and the language of the constitution, replied,—"Sire, your presence in this assembly is a fresh oath you take of fidelity to your country: the rights of the people were forgotten and all power confused. A constitution is born, and with it the liberty of France. As a citizen, it is your duty to cherish—as a king, to strengthen and defend it. Far from shaking your power, it has confirmed it, and has given you friends in those who formerly were styled your subjects. You said a few days ago in this temple of our country, that you have need of being beloved by all Frenchmen, and we also have need of being beloved by you. The constitution has rendered you the greatest monarch in the world; your attachment to it will place your majesty amongst those kings most beloved by the people. Strong by our union, we shall soon feel its salutary effects. To purify the legislation, support public credit, and crush anarchy,—such is our duty, such are our wishes. Such are yours, sire; and the blessing of the French nation will be the recompence."

This day awakened hope once more in the hearts of the king and queen. They believed they had again found their subjects; and the people believed that they had again found their king. All recollections of what had passed at Varennes seemed buried in oblivion; and popularity had one of those sudden blasts that drive away the clouds in the sky for a short space, and deceive even those who have learnt to mistrust them. The royal family wished to enjoy it, and to let Madame and the dauphin profit by it; for these two infants knew nothing of the people save their fury; they had alone seen the nation through the bayonets of the 6th of October,—the rags of the emeute,—of the dust of the return from Varennes; the king wished they should now see them in a state of tranquillity and affection for him, for he taught his son to love the people, and not to avenge their offences towards him. In the pangs he had suffered, the most bitter was rather the ingratitude of the nation, than his own personal humiliations; for, to be misconstrued by the nation, was, in his eyes, far more painful than to be persecuted by them. One moment of justice on the part of public opinion made him forget two years of outrage. He went that evening to the Theatre Italien with the queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his children. The hopes to which the events of the day had given rise—his words of that morning—the expression of confidence and affection on his features—the beauty of the two princesses—the infantine grace of his children, produced on the spectators one of those impressions, where pity vies with respect, and enthusiasm softens the heart into veneration.

The theatre rang with applause mingled with sobs; every eye was fixed on the royal box, as though in mute reparation for so many insults offered to the king and his family. The populace can never resist the sight of children, there are so many mothers in every crowd; the dauphin, a lovely child, seated on the lap of his mother, and absorbed in the play, repeated the gestures of the actors to his mother as though to explain the piece to her. This careless tranquillity of innocence between the two storms—this childish sport at the foot of a throne, so soon to become a scaffold—this expansion of the heart of the queen, that had been so long closed to joy and security, filled every eye with tears, not excepting the king himself.

There are moments in every revolution when the most furious and enraged populace becomes gentle and compassionate; it is when it suffers nature and not policy to sway it; and instead of being a people, it becomes a man. Paris had such an instant: it was of short duration.

V.

The Assembly was very anxious to re-acquire the public feeling of which a momentary weakness had dispossessed it. It already blushed at its moderation for a day, and was anxious to cast fresh jealousies between the throne and the nation. A numerous party in the chamber was desirous of pushing matters to extremities, and to tighten the cord of the present posture of affairs until it snapped. For this purpose the party required agitation; tranquillity by no means suited its designs. It had ambitious desires as vast as its talents, ardent as its youth, impatient as its thirst for advancement. The Constituent Assembly, composed of reflective men of eminence in the state, and in the social hierarchy, had but the ambition of advancing the ideas of liberty and fame; the new Assembly had that of tumult, fortune, and power. Formed of obscure, poor, and unknown men, it aspired to the acquisition of all in which it was deficient.

This latter party, of which Brissot was the journalist, Petion the popular member, Vergniaud the genius, the party of the Girondists the body, entered on the scene with the boldness and unity of a conspiracy. It was the bourgeoisie triumphant, envious, turbulent, eloquent, the aristocracy of talent, desiring to acquire and control by itself alone liberty, power, and the people. The Assembly was made up of unequal portions of three elements; the constitutionalists, who formed the aristocratic liberty and moderate monarchy party; the Girondists, the party of the movement, sustained until the Revolution fell into their hands; the Jacobins, the party of the people, and of philosophy in action; the first arrangement and transition, the second boldness and intrigue, the third fanaticism and devotion. Of these last two parties the Jacobin was not the most hostile to the king. The aristocracy and the clergy destroyed, that party had no repugnance to the throne; it possessed in a high degree the instinct of the unity of power; it was not the Jacobins who first demanded war, and who first uttered the word republic, but it was the first who uttered and often repeated the word dictatorship. The word republic appertained to Brissot and the Girondists. If the Girondists, on their coming in to the Assembly, had united with the constitutional party in order to save the constitution by moderate measures, and the Revolution by not urging it into war, they would have saved their party and controlled the throne. The honesty in which their leader was deficient was also wanting in their conduct—they were all intrigue. They made themselves the agitators in an assembly of which they might have been the statesmen. They had not confidence in the republic, but feigned it. In revolutions sincere characters are the only skilful characters. It is glorious to die the victim of a faith; it is pitiful to die the dupe of one's ambition.

VI.

Three causes of uneasiness agitated men's minds at the moment when the Assembly opened its sittings—the clergy, emigration, and impending war.

The Constituent Assembly had committed a gross error in stopping at a half measure in reforming the clergy in France. Mirabeau himself had been weak on this question. The Revolution was at the bottom only the legitimate rising of political liberty against despotism, and of religious liberty against the legal domination of Catholicism, because a political institution. The constitution had emancipated the citizens, and it was necessary to emancipate the faithful, and to claim consciences for the state, in order to restore them to themselves, to individual reason, and to God. This is what philosophy desired, which is only the rational expression of the mind's impulses.

The philosophers of the Constituent Assembly receded before the difficulties of this labour. Instead of an emancipation, they made a compact with the power of the clergy, the dreaded influences of the court of Rome, and the inveterate habits of the people. They contented themselves with relaxing the chain which bound the state to the church. Their duty was to have snapped it asunder. The throne was chained to the altar, they desired to chain the altar to the throne. It was only displacing tyranny,—oppressing conscience by law instead of oppressing the law by conscience.

The civil constitution of the clergy was the expression of this reciprocal false position. The clergy was deprived of these endowments in landed estates, which decimated property and population in France. They deprived it of its benefices, its abbeys, and its tithes—the altar's feudality. It received in lieu an endowment in salaries levied on the taxes. As the condition of this arrangement, which gave to the working clergy an existence, influence, and a powerful body of ministers of worship paid by the state, they required the clergy to take the oath of the constitution. This constitution comprised articles which affected the spiritual supremacy and administrative privileges of the court of Rome. Catholicism became alarmed and protested; consciences were disturbed. The Revolution, until then exclusively political, became schism in the eyes of a portion of the clergy and the faithful. Amongst the bishops and the priests, some took the civil oath, which was the guarantee of their existence; others refused, or, after having taken it, retracted. This gave rise to trouble in many minds, agitation in consciences, division in the temples. The great majority of parishes had two ministers,—the one a constitutional priest, salaried and protected by the government, the other refractory, refusing the oath, deprived of his income, driven from the church, and raising altar opposing altar in some clandestine chapel, or in the open field. These two ministers of the same worship excommunicated each other, the one in the name of the constitution, and the other in the name of the Pope and of the church. The population was also divided according to the greater or lesser degree of revolutionary spirit prevailing in the province. In cities and the more enlightened districts the constitutional worship was exercised almost without dispute. In the open country and the less civilised departments, the priest who had not taken the oath became a consecrated tribune, who at the foot of the altar, or in the elevation of the pulpit, agitated the people and inspired it, in all the horror of a constitutional and schismatic priesthood, with hatred of the government which protected it. This was not actually persecution or civil war, but the sure prelude to both.

The king had signed with repugnance and even constraint the civil constitution of the clergy: but he had done so only as king, and reserving to himself his liberty and the faith of his conscience. He was Christian and Catholic in all the simplicity of the Gospel, and in all the humility of obedience to the church. The reproaches he had received from Rome for having ratified by his weakness the schism in France, wounded his conscience and distracted his mind. He had never ceased to negotiate officially or secretly with the pope, in order to obtain from the head of the church either an indulgent concession to the necessities of religion in France, or prudent temporising. It was on these terms only that he could restore peace to his mind. Inexorable Rome had only granted him its pity. Fulminating bulls were in circulation by the hands of nonjuring priests, cast at the heads of the population, and only stopping at the foot of the throne. The king trembled, to see them burst one day on his own head.

On the other hand, he felt that the nation, of which he was the legitimate head, would never forgive him for sacrificing it to his religious scruples. Placed thus between the menaces of Heaven and the threats of his own people, he procrastinated with all his might the denunciations of Rome and the votes of the Assembly. The Constitutional Assembly understood this anxiety of the king's feelings and the dangers of persecution. It had given time to the king, and displayed forbearance to men's consciences: it had not intermeddled with the faith of the simple believer, but left each at liberty to pray with the priest of his choice. The king had been the first to avail himself of this liberty, and had not thrown open the chapel of the Tuileries to the constitutional worship. The choice of his confessor sufficiently indicated the choice of his conscience. The man in him protested against the political necessities which oppressed the monarch. The Girondists wished to compel him to declare himself. If he yielded to them, he infringed upon his dignity; if he resisted, he lost the remaining shreds of his popularity. To compel him to decide was a great point for the Girondists.

The public feeling served their designs. Religious troubles began to assume a political character. In ancient Brittany the conforming priests became objects of the people's horror, and they fled from contact with them. The nonjuring priests all retained their flocks. On Sundays large bodies of many thousand souls were seen to follow their ancient pastors, and go to chapels situated two or three leagues from any dwelling, or in concealed hermitages, sanctuaries which had never been stained by the ceremonies of a constitutional worship. At Caen blood had even flowed in the very cathedral, where the nonjuring priest disputed the altar with the conforming pastor. The same disorders threatened to spread over all parts of the kingdom: every where were to be seen two pastors and a divided flock. Resentment, which already displayed itself in insult, of necessity soon arrived at bloodshed. The one half of the people, disturbed in its faith, reverted to the aristocracy out of love for its worship. The Assembly must thus alienate the popular element, which it had so recently caused to triumph over royalty. It was highly necessary to provide against this unexpected peril.

There were only two means of extinguishing this flame at its source: either by freedom of conscience, stoutly maintained by the executive power, or persecution of the ministers of the ancient faith. The undecided Assembly wavered between these two parties. On a report of Gallois and Gensonne, sent as commissioners into the departments of the west, to investigate the causes of the agitation and the feelings of the people, the discussion commenced. Fauchet, a conforming priest and celebrated preacher, subsequently constitutional bishop of Calvados, opened the debate. He was one of those men who, beneath an ecclesiastical garb, conceal the heart of a philosopher. Reformers from feeling, priests by the state, sensible of the wide discrepancy between their opinions and their character, a national religion, a revolutionary Christianity, was the sole means remaining to them to reconcile their interest and their policy: their faith, wholly academic, was only a religious convenience. They desired to transform Catholicism insensibly into a moral code, of which the dogma was now but a symbol, which, in the people's eyes, comprised sacred truths; and which, gradually stripped of holy fictions, would allow the human understanding to glide insensibly into a symbolic deism, whose temple should be flesh, and whose Christ should be hardly more than Plato rendered a divinity. Fauchet had the daring mind of a sectarian and the intrepidity of a man of resolution.

VII.

"We are accused of a desire to persecute. It is calumny. No persecution. Fanaticism is greedy of it, real religion repulses it, philosophy holds it in horror. Let us beware of imprisoning the nonjurors; of exiling, even of displacing them. Let them think, say, write all they please against us. We will oppose our thoughts to their thoughts; our truths to their errors; our charity to their hatred. Time will do the rest. But in awaiting its infallible triumph we must find an efficacious and prompt mode of hindering them from prevailing over weak minds, and propagating ideas of a counter-revolution. A counter-revolution! This is not a religion, gentlemen! Fanaticism is not compatible with liberty. Look else at these ministers—they would have swum in the blood of patriots. This is their own expression. Compared with these priests, atheists are angels. (Applause.) However, I repeat, let us tolerate them, but do not let us pay them. Let us not pay them to rend our country in pieces. It is to this measure only that we should confine ourselves. Let us suppress all salary from the national treasury to the nonjuring priests. Nothing is due to them but in their clerical capacity. What service do they render? They invoke ruin on our laws; and they say they follow their consciences! Must we pay consciences which push them to the extremity of crime against their country? The nation supports them: is not that enough? They appeal to the article of the constitution, which says, 'The salaries of the ministers of Catholic worship form a portion of the national debt.' Are they ministers of the Catholic worship? Does the state recognise any other Catholicity than its own? If they would attempt any other it is open to them and their sectarians! The nation allows all sorts of worship, but only pays one. And what a saving for the nation to be freed from thirty millions (of francs), which she pays annually to her most implacable enemies! (Bravo.) Why have we these phalanx of priests, who have abjured their ministry? these legions of canons and monks; these cohorts of abbes, friars, and beneficed clergy of all sorts, who were not remarkable otherwise, except for their pretensions, inutility, intrigues and licentious life; and are only so to-day by their vindictive interference, their schemes, their unwearied hatred of the Revolution? Why should we pay this army of dependents from the funds of the nation? What do they do? They preach emigration, they send coin from the realm, they foment conspiracies against us from within and without. Go, say they to the nobility, and combine your attacks with the foreigner; let blood flow in streams, provided that we recover our privileges! This is their church! If hell had one on earth it is thus that it would speak. Who shall say we ought to endow it?"

Tourne, the constitutional bishop of Bourges, replied to the Abbe Fauchet as Fenelon would have answered Bossuet. He proved that, in the mouth of his adversary, toleration was fanatical and cruel. "You have proposed to you violent remedies for the evils which anger can only envenom; it is a sentence of starvation which is demanded of you against our nonjuring brethren. Simple religious errors should be strangers to the legislator. The priests are not guilty—they are only led astray. When the eye of the law falls on these errors of the conscience, it envenoms them. The best means of curing them is not to see them. To punish by the pangs of hunger simple and venial errors, would be an opprobrium to legislation—a horror in morals. The legislator leaves to God the care of avenging his own glory, if he believe it violated by an indecorous worship. Would you, in the name of tolerance, again create an inquisition which would not have, like the other, the excuse of fanaticism? What, gentlemen, would you transform into arbitrary proscribers the founders of liberty? You will judge, you will exile, you will imprison, en masse, men amongst whom, if there are some guilty, there are still more innocent! Crimes are no longer individual, and guilt would be decreed by category; but were they all and all equally guilty, could you have the cruelty to strike, at the same time, this multitude of heads; when under similar circumstances the most cruel despots would be content with decimating them? What then have you to do? One thing only: to be consistent, and found practical liberty and the peaceable co-existence of different worships on the bases of tolerance. Why do not our brethren of the priesthood enjoy the power of worshiping beside us the same God—whilst in our cities, where we refuse them the right of celebrating our holy mysteries, we allow heathens to celebrate the mysteries of Iris and Osiris? Mahometans to invoke their prophet? the rabbin to make his burnt-offerings? To what extent, I ask, shall such strange tolerance be permissible? to what extent, I ask also, will you push despotism and persecution? When the law shall have regulated the civil arts, births, marriage, burial, with religious ceremonies, by which Christians consecrate them; when the law will permit the same sacrifice on two altars, with what consistency can it forbid the virtue of the same sacraments? These temples, it will be repeated, are the council-chambers of the factious. True, if they be rendered clandestine, as the persecutors would make them; but if these temples be open and free, the eye of the law will penetrate there and every where else: it will be no longer religious worship, it will be crime they will watch and detect—and what do you fear? Time is with you; this class of the nonjurors will be extinct, and never renewed. A worship supported by individuals, and not by the state, constantly tends to weaken itself; at least, the factious, who are in their commencement animated by the divinity of their faith, gradually become reconciled, and identify themselves with the general freedom. Look at Germany—look at Virginia—where opposite creeds mutually borrow the same sanctuaries, and where different sects fraternise in the same patriotism. This is what we should tend to; these are the principles which ought gradually to implant themselves widely amongst a people: light ought to be the great precursor of the law. Let us leave to despotism to prepare its slaves for its commands by ignorance."

VIII.

Ducos, a young and generous-hearted Girondist, with whom enthusiasm for the honest carried him beyond the policy of his party, moved for the printing of this speech. His voice was drowned amidst the applause and murmurs which followed—a testimony of the indecision and impartiality of men's minds. Fauchet replied at the next sitting, and pointed out the connection between civil troubles and religious quarrels. "The priests," he said, "are of unreasonable tyranny, which still maintains its hold on consciences by the ill-broken thread of its power. It is a faction 'scotched, not killed'—it is the most dangerous of factions."

Gensonne spake like a statesman, and counselled toleration towards conscientious priests, and the repulsion by force of law of the turbulent clergy. During this discussion, couriers daily arriving from the country, brought news of fresh disorders. Every where the constitutional priests were insulted, driven away, massacred at the foot of the altars. The country churches, closed by order of the National Assembly, were burst open by axes, the nonjuring priests returned to them, urged by the fanaticism of the people. Three cities were besieged and on the point of being burnt down by the country people. The threatened civil war seemed the prelude to the counter-revolution. "See," exclaimed Isnard, "whither the toleration and impunity you have preached, conduct you!"

Isnard, deputy of Provence, was the son of a perfumer of Grasse. His father had educated him for a literary life, and not for business. He had studied politics in the antiquities of Greece and Rome. He had in his mind the idea of one of the Gracchi; he had his courage in his soul and his tone in his voice. Still very young, his eloquence was as fervent as his blood; his language was but the fire of his passion, coloured by a southern imagination; his words poured forth like the rapid bursts of impatience. He was the revolutionary impetus personified. The Assembly followed him breathless, and with him arrived at fury before it attained conviction. His discourses were magnificent odes, which elevated discussion to lyric poetry, and enthusiasm to convulsion; his action bespoke the tripod rather than the tribune. He was the Danton of the Gironde, as Vergniaud was to become its Mirabeau.

IX.

It was his maiden speech in the Assembly. "Yes," he said, "look at the point to which impunity conducts us! It is always the source of great crimes, and is now the sole cause of the disorganised state into which society is plunged. The plans of toleration proposed to you are very well for tranquil times; but can we tolerate those who will neither tolerate the constitution nor the laws? Will it be when French blood has at last stained the waves of the sea, that you will become sensible of the dangers of indulgence? It is time that every thing is submitted to the will of the nation; that tiaras, diadems, and censers should yield to the sceptre of the laws. The facts you have just heard are but the prelude of what is about to occur in the rest of the kingdom. Consider the circumstances of these troubles, and you will see that they have the effect of a disorganised system contemporary with the constitution. This system was born there! (the orator pointed to the right) it is sanctioned at the court of Rome. It is but a real fanaticism we have to unmask—it is but hypocrisy! The priests are the privileged brawlers, who ought to be punished by penalties more severe than mere private individuals. Religion is an all-powerful weapon. 'The priest,' says Montesquieu, 'takes the man from the cradle, and accompanies him to the tomb;' is it then astonishing that he should have so much control over the mind of the people, and that it is requisite to make laws, in order that under a pretence of religion it should not trouble the public peace? What should be the nature of such a law? I maintain that one only can be efficacious, and that is banishment from the realm. (The tribunes hailed this with loud applause.) Do you not see that it is necessary to separate the factious priest from the people whom he misleads, and send away these plague-spotted men to the lazarettos of Italy and Rome? I am told that the measure is too severe. What!—you are then blind and mute at all that occurs! Are you then ignorant that a priest can effect more mischief than all your enemies? I am answered, 'Ah! you should not persecute.' My answer is, that to punish is not to persecute. I answer thus to those who repeat what I heard retorted here on the Abbe Maury, that nothing is more dangerous than to make martyrs. This danger only exists when you have to strike fanatics in earnest, or men really pious, who believe the scaffold to be the nearest footstool to heaven. This is not the present case; for if there be priests who earnestly reject the constitution, they will not give any trouble to public order. Those who really trouble it, are men who only weep over religion in order to recover their lost privileges; those who should be punished without pity; and be assured that you will not thereby augment the strength of the emigrants: for we know that the priest is cowardly—as cowardly as vindictive—that he knows no other weapon but superstition; and that, accustomed to combat in the mysterious arena of confession, he is a nullity in every other battle-field. The thunders of Rome will fall harmless on the bucklers of liberty. The foes to your regeneration will never grow weary; no, they will never grow weary of crimes, so long as you leave them the means! You must overcome them, or be overcome by them; and whosoever sees not this is blind. Open the page of history; you will see the English sustaining for fifty years a disastrous war, in order to maintain their revolution. You will see in Holland seas of blood flowing in the war against Philip of Spain. When, in our times, the Philadelphians would be free, have we not also seen war in the two hemispheres? You have been witnesses of the recent outbreaks in Brabant, and do you believe that your Revolution, which has snatched the sceptre from despotism, and from aristocracy its privileges, from nobility its pride, from the clergy its fanaticism—a Revolution which has dried up so many golden sources from the grasp of the priesthood, torn so many frocks, crushed so many theories—do you believe that such a Revolution will absolve you? No—no!—this Revolution will have a denouement, and I say—and with no intention of provocation—that we must advance boldly towards this denouement. The more you delay, the more difficult and blood-stained will be that triumph!" (Violent murmurs.)

"But do you not see," resumed Isnard; "that all counter-revolutionists are obstinate, and leave you no other part than that of vanquishing them? It is better to have to contend against them, whilst the citizens are still up and stirring, and well remember the perils they have encountered, than to allow patriotism to grow cold! Is it not true that already we are no longer what we were in the first year of liberty; (some of the chamber applaud, whilst others disapprove). If fanaticism had then raised its head, the law would have been subjected! Your policy should be to compel victory to declare itself; drive your enemies to extremities, and you Will have them return to you from fear, or you will subdue them by the sword. Under important circumstances, prudence is a weakness. It is especially with respect to rebels that you should be decisive and severe; they should be hewn down as they rise. If time be permitted to them to have meetings and earnest partisans, then they spread over the empire like an irresistible torrent. It is thus that despotism acts, and it was thus that one individual kept beneath his yoke a whole nation. If Louis XVI. had employed this great means whilst the Revolution was but yet in its cradle, we should not now be here! This rigour, the vice of a despot, is the virtue of a nation. Legislators, who shrink from such extreme means, are cowards—criminals: for when the public liberty is assailed, to pardon is to share the crime. (Great applause.)

"Such rigour might perchance cost an effusion of blood? I know it! But if you do not make use of it, will not more blood flow? Is not civil war a still greater misfortune? Cut off the gangrened member to save the whole frame.[10] Indulgence is the snare into which you are tempted. You will find yourselves abandoned by the nation for not having dared to sustain, nor known how to defend, it. Your enemies will hate you no less. Your friends will lose confidence in you. The law is my God: I have no other—the public good, that is my worship! You have already struck the emigrants—again a decree against the refractory priests, and you will have gained over ten millions of arms! My decree would be comprised in two words: compel every Frenchman, priest or not, to take the civil oath, and ordain that every man who will not sign shall be deprived of all salary or pension. Sound policy would decree that every one who does not sign the contract should leave the kingdom. What proofs against the priest do we require? If there be but a complaint lodged against the priest by the citizen with whom he lives, let him be at once expelled! As to those against whom the penal code shall pronounce punishment more severe than exile, there is but one sentence left: Death!!"

X.

This oration, which pushed patriotism even to impiety, and made of the public safety an implacable deity, to which even the innocent were to be sacrificed, excited a frantic enthusiasm in the ranks of the Girondist party, a bitter indignation amongst the moderate party. "To propose the printing of such a speech," said Lecos, a constitutional bishop, "is to propose the printing of a code of atheism. It is impossible that a society can exist, if it have not an immutable morality derived from the idea of a God." Derisive sneers and murmurings hailed this religious protest. The decree against the priests, presented by Francois de Neufchateau, and adopted by the legislative committee, was couched in these terms:—"Every ecclesiastic not taking the oaths is required to present himself before the expiration of the week at his municipality, and there take the civil oath.

"Those who shall refuse are not entitled in future to receive any allowance or pension from the public treasury.

"Every year there shall be an aggregate made of those pensions which the priests have forfeited, and this sum shall be divided amongst the eighty-three departments, to be employed in charitable works, and in giving succour to the indigent.

"These priests shall be, moreover, from their simple refusal of the oath, reputed as suspected of rebellion and specially surveilles.

"They may in consequence thereof be sent from their domicile, and another be assigned to them.

"If they refuse to change their domicile when called upon to do so, they shall be imprisoned.

"The churches employed for the paid worship of the state, cannot be devoted to any other service. Citizens may hire other churches or chapels, and exercise their worship therein. But this permission is forbidden to nonjuring priests suspected of revolt."

XI.

This decree, which created more fanaticism than it repressed, and which accorded freedom of worship not as a right but as a favour, saddened the heart of the faithful; and the revolt in La Vendee, and persecution every where, followed. Suspended as a fearful weapon over the conscience of the king, it was sent for his assent.

The Girondists were delighted at thus keeping the wretched monarch between their law and his own faith—schismatic if he recognised the decree, and a traitor to the nation if he refused it. Conquerors in this victory, they advanced towards another.

After having forced the king to strike at the religion of his conscience, they wished to force him to deal a blow at the nobility and his own brothers. They renewed the question of the emigrants. The king and his ministers had anticipated them. Immediately after the acceptance of the constitution, Louis XVI. had formally renounced all conspiracy, interior or exterior, in order to recover his power. The omnipotence of opinion had convinced him of the vanity of all the plans submitted to him for crushing it. The momentary tranquillity of spirits after so many shocks, the reception he had met with in the Assembly, the Champ-de-Mars, in the theatre,—the freedom and honours restored to him in his palace, had persuaded him that, if the constitution had some fanatics, royalty had no implacable enemies in his kingdom. He believed the constitution easy of execution in many of its provisions, and impracticable in others. The government which they imposed on him seemed to him as a philosophical experiment which they desired to make with their king. He only forgot one thing, and that is, the experiments of a people are catastrophes. A king who accepts the terms of a government which are impossible, accepts his own overthrow by anticipation. A well-considered and voluntary abdication is more regal than that daily abdication which is undergone in the degradation of power. A king saves, if not his life, at least his dignity. It is more suitable to majesty royal to descend by its own will, than to be cast down headlong. From the moment when the king is king no longer, the throne becomes the last place in the kingdom.

Be this as it may, the king frankly declared to his ministers his intention of legally executing the constitution, and of associating himself unreservedly and without guile to the will and destiny of the nation. The queen, by one of those sudden and inexplicable changes in the heart of woman, threw herself, with the trust of despair, into the party of the constitution. "Courage," she said to M. Bertrand de Molleville, minister and confidant of the king: "Courage! I hope, with patience, firmness, and perseverance, that all is not lost."

The minister of marine, Bertrand de Molleville, wrote, by the king's orders, to the commandants of the ports a letter, signed by the king:—"I am informed," he said, in this circular, "that emigrations in the navy are fast increasing. How is it that the officers of a service always so dear to me, and which has invariably given me proofs of its attachment, are so mistaken at what is due to their country, to me, and to themselves! This extreme step would have seemed to me less surprising some time since, when anarchy was at its height, and when its termination was unseen; but now, when the nation desires to return to order and submission to the laws, is it possible that generous and faithful sailors can think of separating from their king? Tell them to remain where their country calls them. The precise execution of the constitution is to-day the surest means of appreciating its advantages, and of ascertaining what is wanting to make it perfect. It is your king who desires you to remain at your posts as he remains at his. You would have considered it a crime to resist his orders, you will not refuse his prayers."

He wrote to general officers, and to commandants of the land forces:—"In accepting the constitution, I have promised to maintain it within, and defend it against enemies without; this solemn act should banish all uncertainty. The law and the king are henceforth identified. The enemy of the law becomes that of the king. I cannot consider those sincerely devoted to my person who abandon their country at the moment when it has the greatest need of their services. Those only are attached to me who follow my example and unite with me for the public weal, and remain inseparable from the destiny of the empire!"

Finally, he ordered M. de Lessart, the minister for foreign affairs, to publish the following proclamation, addressed to the French emigrants:—"The king," thus it ran, "informed that a great number of French emigrants are withdrawing to foreign lands, cannot see without much grief such an emigration. Although the law permits to all citizens a free power to quit the kingdom, the king is anxious to enlighten them as to their duties, and the distress they are preparing for themselves. If they think, by such means, to give me a proof of their affection, let them be undeceived; my real friends are those who unite with me in order to put the laws in execution, and re-establish order and peace in the kingdom. When I accepted the constitution, I was desirous of putting an end to civil discord—I believed that all Frenchmen would second my intentions. However, it is at this moment that emigration is increasing: some depart because of the disturbances which have threatened their lives and property. Ought we not to pardon the circumstances? Have not I too my sorrows? And when I forget mine, can any one remember his perils? How can order be again established if those interested in it abandon it by abandoning themselves? Return, then, to the bosom of your country: come and give to the laws the support of good citizens. Think of the grief your obstinacy will give to the king's heart; they would be the most painful he could experience."

The Assembly was not blinded by these manifestations; it saw beneath a secret design of escaping from the severest measures; it was desirous of compelling the king to carry them out, and, let us add, the nation and the public safety also required it.

XII.

Mirabeau had treated the question of the emigration of the Constituent Assembly rather as a philosopher than a statesman. He had disputed with the legislator the right of making laws against emigration: he was mistaken. Whenever a theory is in contradiction to the welfare of society it is because that theory is false, for society is the supreme truth.

Unquestionably in ordinary times, man is not imprisoned by nature, and ought not to be by the law, within the frontiers of his native land; and, with this view, the laws against emigration should only be exceptional laws. But, because exceptional, are these laws therefore unjust? Evidently not. The public danger has its peculiar laws, as necessary and as just as laws made in a time of security. A state of war is not a state of peace. You shut your frontiers to strangers in war time; you may close them to your citizens. A city is legally put in a state of siege during a sedition. We can put the nation in a state of siege in case of external danger co-existent with internal conspiracy. By what absurd abuse of liberty can a state be constrained to tolerate on a foreign soil gatherings of citizens armed against itself, which it would not tolerate in its own land? And if these gatherings should be culpable without, why should the state be interdicted from shutting up those roads which lead emigrants to these gatherings? A nation defends itself from its foreign enemies by arms, from its internal foes by its laws. To act otherwise would be to consecrate without the country the inviolability of conspiracies which were punished within: it would be to proclaim the legality of civil war, provided it was mixed up with foreign war, and that sedition was covered by treason. Such maxims ruin a whole people's nationality, in order to protect abuse of liberty by certain citizens. The Constituent Assembly was so wrong as to sanction such. Had it proclaimed from the beginning the laws repressive of emigration in troubled times, during revolutions, or on the eve of war, it would have proclaimed a national truth, and prevented one of the great dangers and principal causes of the excesses of the Revolution. The question now was no longer to be treated with reason, but by vindictive feelings. The imprudence of the Constituent Assembly had left this dangerous weapon in the hands of parties who were about to turn it against the king.

XIII.

Brissot, the inspirer of the Gironde, the dogmatic statesman of a party which needed ideas and a leader, ascended the tribune in the midst of anticipated plaudits, which betokened his importance in the new Assembly. His voice was for war, as the most efficacious of laws.

"If," said he, "it be really desired to check the tide of emigration, we must more particularly punish the more elevated offenders, who establish in foreign lands a centre of counter-revolution. We should distinguish three classes of emigrants; the brothers of the king, unworthy of belonging to him,—the public functionaries, deserting their posts and deluding citizens,—and finally, the simple citizens, who follow example from imitation, weakness, or fear. You owe hate and banishment to the first, pity and indulgence to the others. How can the citizens fear you, when the impunity of their chiefs insures their own? Have you then two scales of weights and measures? What can the emigrants think, when they see a prince, after having squandered 40,000,000 (of francs) in ten years, still receive from the National Assembly more millions, in order to provide for his extravagance and pay his debts?

"Divide the interests of the rebellious by alarming the prime criminals. Patriots are still amused by paltry palliatives against emigration; the partisans of the court have thus trifled with the credulity of the people, and you have seen even Mirabeau deriding those laws, and telling you they would never be put into execution, because a king would not himself become the accuser of his own family. Three years without success, a wandering and unhappy life, their intrigues frustrated, their conspiracies overthrown, all these defeats have not cured the emigrants; their hearts were corrupted from the cradle. Would you check this revolt? then strike the blow on the other side of the Rhine: it is not in France. It was by such decided steps that the English prevented James II. from impeding the establishment of their liberty. They did not amuse themselves with framing petty laws against emigration, but demanded that foreign princes should drive the English princes from their dominions. (Applause.) The necessity of this measure was seen here from the first. Ministers will talk to you of considerations of state, family reasons; these considerations, these weaknesses cover a crime against liberty. The king of a free people has no family. Again, I counsel you attack the leaders only; let it no longer be said, 'These malcontents are then very strong; these 25,000,000 of men must then be very weak thus to consider them.'

"It is to foreign powers especially that you should address your demands and your menaces. It is time to show to Europe what you are, and to demand of it an account of the outrages you have received from it. I say it is necessary to compel those powers to reply to us, one of two things; either they will render homage to our constitution, or they will declare against it. In the first place, you have not to balance, it is necessary that you should assail the powers that dare to threaten you. In the last century when Portugal and Spain lent an asylum to James II., England attacked both. Have no fears—the image of liberty, like the head of Medusa, will affright the armies of our enemies; they fear to be abandoned by their soldiers, and that is why they prefer the line of expectation, and an armed mediation. The English constitution and an aristocratic liberty will be the basis of the reforms they will propose to you, but you will be unworthy of all liberty if you accept yours at the hands of your enemies. The English people love your Revolution; the emperor fears the force of your arms: as to this empress of Russia, whose aversion to the French constitution is well known, and who in some degree resembles Elizabeth, she cannot hope for success more brilliant than had Elizabeth against Holland. It is with difficulty that slaves are subjugated fifteen hundred leagues off; they cannot enslave free men at this distance. I will not condescend to speak of other princes; they are not worthy of being included in the number of your serious enemies. I believe then that France ought to elevate its hopes and its attitude. Unquestionably you have declared to Europe that you will not attempt any more conquests, but you have a right to say to it, 'Choose between certain rebels and a nation.'"

XIV.

This discourse, although in several parts very contradictory, proved that Brissot had the intention of playing three parts in one, and of captivating at once the three parties in the Assembly. In his philosophical principles he affected the tone of a moderator, and repeated the axioms of Mirabeau against the laws relative to expatriation; in his attack on the princes he included the king, and held him up to the people as an object of suspicion; and lastly, in his denunciation of the diplomacy of the ministers, he urged them to a war a l'outrance, and displayed in this measure the energy of a patriot and the foresight of a statesman; for in case war should be the result, he did not conceal from himself the jealousy of the nation against the court, and he knew that the first act of open war would be to declare the king a traitor to his country.