Thus, the imagination, character, and studies of this girl prepared her, unknown to herself, for the republic. Her religion alone, then so powerful over her, restrained her within the bounds of that resignation which submits the thoughts to the will of God. But philosophy became her creed, and this creed formed a portion of her politics. The emancipation of the people united itself in her mind with the emancipation of ideas. She believed, by overturning thrones, that she was working for man; and, by overthrowing altars, that she was labouring for God. Such is the confession which she herself made of her change.

VIII.

However, the young girl had already attracted many suitors for her hand. Her father wished to marry her in the class to which he himself belonged. He loved, esteemed commerce, because he considered it the source of wealth. His daughter despised it because it was, in her eyes, the source of avarice and the food of cupidity. Men in this condition of life were repugnant to her. She desired in a husband ideas and feelings sympathising with her own. Her ideal was a soul and not a fortune. "Brought up from my infancy in connexion with the great men of all ages, familiar with lofty ideas and illustrious examples—had I lived with Plato, with all the philosophers, all the poets, all the politicians of antiquity, merely to unite myself with a shopkeeper, who would neither appreciate nor feel any thing as I did?"

She who wrote these lines was at that moment demanded in marriage of her parents by a rich butcher of the neighbourhood. She refused every offer. "I will not descend from the world of my noble chimeras," she replied to the incessant remonstrances of her father; "what I want is not a position but a mind. I will die single rather than prostitute my own mind in an union with a being with whom I have no sympathies."

Deprived of her mother by an early death, alone in the house of a father where disorder was the consequence of a second amour, melancholy gained possession of her mind, though it did not overcome it. She became more collected and reserved, in order to strengthen her feelings against isolation and misfortune. The perusal of the Heloise of Rousseau, which was lent to her about that time, made on her heart the same impression that Plutarch had made on her mind. Plutarch had shown her liberty; Rousseau made her dream of happiness: the one fortified, the other weakened her. She found the earnest desire of pouring forth her feelings. Melancholy was her rigid muse. She began to write, in order to console herself in the nurture of her own thoughts. Without any intention of becoming an authoress, she acquired by these solitary trials that eloquence with which she subsequently animated her friends.

IX.

Thus gradually ripened this patient and resolute mind, working on towards its destiny, when she believed she had found the man of the olden time of whom she had so long dreamed. This man was Roland de la Platiere.

He was introduced to her by one of her early friends, married at Amiens, where Roland then carried on the functions of inspector of manufactures. "You will receive this letter," wrote her friend, "by the hand of the philosopher of whom I have spoken to you already, M. Roland, an enlightened man, of antique manners; without reproach, except for his passion for the ancients, his contempt of his age, and his too high estimation of his own virtue. This portrait," she adds, "was just and well depicted. I saw a man nearly fifty years of age, tall, careless in his attitude, with that kind of awkwardness which a solitary life always produces; but his manners were easy and winning, and without possessing the elegance of the world, they united the politeness of the well-bred man to the seriousness of the philosopher. He was very thin, with a complexion much tanned; his brow, already covered by very little hair, and very broad, did not detract from his regular but unattractive features. He had, however, a pleasing smile, and his features an animated play, which gave them a totally different appearance when he was excited in speaking or listening. His voice was manly, his mode of speech brief, like a man with shortened breath; his conversation, full of matter, because his head was full of ideas, occupied the mind more than it flattered the ear. His language was sometimes striking, but harsh and inharmonious. This charm of the voice is a gift very rare, and most powerful over the senses," she adds, "and does not merely depend on the quality of the sound, but equally upon that delicate sensibility which varies the expression by modifying the accent." This is enough to assure us that Roland had not this charming gift.

X.

Roland, born of an honest tradesman's family, which had held magisterial offices and asserted claims to nobility, was the youngest of five brothers, and intended for the church. To avoid this destiny, which disgusted him, he fled from his father's roof at nineteen, and went to Nantes. Procuring a situation with a ship-builder, he was about to embark for India in trade, when an illness at the moment he was to embark prevented him. One of his relations, a superintendent of a factory, received him at Rouen, and gave him a situation in his office. This house, animated by the spirit of Turgot, made experiments in the details of its business with all the sciences, and by political economy with the loftiest problems of governments. It was peopled by philosophers, amongst whom Roland distinguished himself, and the government sent him to Italy to watch the progress of commerce there.

He left his young friend with reluctance, and forwarded to her regularly scientific letters, intended as notes to the work which he proposed to write on Italy—letters in which the sentiment that displayed itself beneath science, more resembled the studies of a philosopher than the conversations of a lover.

On his return she saw in him a friend. His age, gravity, manners, laborious habits, made her consider him as a sage who existed solely on his reason. In the union they contemplated, and which less resembled love, than the ancient associations of the days of Socrates and Plato—the one sought a disciple rather than a wife, and the other married a master rather than a husband. M. Roland returned to Amiens, and thence wrote to the father to demand his daughter's hand, which was bluntly denied to him. He feared in Roland, whose austerity displeased him, a censor for himself, and a tyrant for his child. Informed of her father's refusal, she grew indignant, and went to a convent destitute of every thing. There she lived on the coarsest food, prepared by her own hands. She plunged into deep study, and strengthened her heart against adversity. She revenged herself by deserving the happiness of a lot which was not accorded to her. In the evening she visited her friends; in the day an hour's walk in a garden surrounded with high walls. That feeling of strength which steels against fate—that melancholy which softens the soul, and feeds it on its own sensibility,—helped her to pass long winter months in her voluntary captivity.

A feeling of internal bitterness, however, poisoned even this sacrifice. She said to herself that this sensibility was not recompensed. She had flattered herself that M. Roland, on learning of her resolution and retreat, would hasten to take her from this convent and unite their destinies. Time passed on. Roland came not, and scarcely wrote. At the end of six months he arrived, and was again deeply enamoured on seeing his beloved behind a grating. He resolved on offering her his hand, which she accepted. However, so much calculation, hesitation, and coldness had dissipated the little illusion which the young captive had left, and reduced her feelings to deep esteem. She devoted rather than gave herself. It appeared to her sublime to immolate herself for the happiness of a worthy man; and she consummated this sacrifice with all the seriousness of reason and without a grain of heartfelt enthusiasm. Her marriage was to her an act of virtue, which she performed, not because it was agreeable to her, but because she deemed it sublime.

The pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau is seen again at this decisive moment of her existence. The marriage of Madame Roland is a palpable imitation of that of Heloise with M. de Volmar. But the bitterness of reality was not slow in developing itself beneath the heroism of her devotion. "By dint," she herself says, "of occupying myself with the happiness of the man with whom I was associated, I felt that something was wanting to my own. I have not for a moment ceased to see in my husband one of the most estimable persons that exists, and to whom it was an honour to me to belong; but I often felt that similarity was wanting between us,—that the ascendency of a dominating temper, united to that of twenty years more of age, made one of these superiorities too much. If we lived in solitude, I had sometimes very painful hours to pass: if we went into the world, I was liked by persons, some one of whom I was fearful might affect me too closely. I plunged into my husband's occupations, became his copying clerk, corrected his proofs, and fulfilled the task with an unrepining humility, which contrasted strongly with a spirit as free and tried as mine. But this humility proceeded from my heart: I respected my husband so much, that I always liked to suppose that he was superior to myself. I had such a dread of seeing a shade over his countenance, he was so tenacious of his own opinions, that it was a long time before I ventured to contradict him. To this labour I joined that of my house; and observing that his delicate health could not endure every kind of diet, I always prepared his meals with my own hands. I remained with him four years at Amiens, and became there a mother and nurse. We worked together at the Encyclopedie Nouvelle, in which the articles relative to commerce had been confided to him. We only quitted this occupation for our walks in the vicinity of the town."

Roland, dictatorial and exacting, had insisted from the beginning of their marriage, that his wife should refrain from seeing her young and attached friends whom she had loved in the convent, and who lived at Amiens. He dreaded the least participation of affection. His prudence outstepped the bounds of reason. To an union as solemn as marriage, the pleasure of friendship was necessary. This tyranny of an exclusive feeling was not compensated by love. Roland demanded every thing from his wife's compliance. If there was no faltering in her conduct, still she felt these sacrifices, and joyed over the accomplishment of her duties as the stoic enjoys his sufferings.

XI.

After some years passed at Amiens, Roland was promoted to the same duties at Lyons, his native place. In winter he dwelt in the town, and the rest of the year was passed in the country in his paternal home, where his mother still lived, a respectable old woman, but meddlesome and overbearing in her household. Madame Roland, in all the flower of youth, beauty, and genius, thus found herself tormented and beset by a domineering mother-in-law, a rough brother-in-law, and an exacting husband. The most passionate love could scarcely have been proof against so trying and painful a position. To soothe her she had the consciousness of discharging her duties, her occupation, her philosophy, and her child. It was sufficing, and eventually transformed this gloomy retreat into the abode of harmony and peace. We love to follow her into that solitude, when her mind was becoming tempered for her struggle, as we go to seek at Charmettes the still fresh and sparkling source of the life and genius of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

XII.

At the foot of the mountains of Beaujolais, in the large basin of the Saone, in face of the Alps, there is a series of small hills scattered like the sea sands, which the patient vine-dresser has planted with vines, and which form amongst themselves, at their base, oblique valleys, narrow and sinuous ravines, interspersed with small verdant meads. These meadows have each their thread of water, which filters down from the mountains: willows, weeping birch, and poplars, show the course and conceal the bed of the streams. The sides and tops of these hills only bear above the lowly vines a few wild peach trees, which do not shade the grapes and large walnut trees in the orchards near the houses. On the declivity of one of these sandy protuberances was La Platiere, the paternal inheritance of M. Roland, a low farm-house, with regular windows, covered with a roof of red tiles nearly flat; the eaves of this roof project a little beyond the wall, in order to protect the windows from the rain of winter and the summer's sun. The walls, straight and wholly unornamented, were covered with a coating of white plaister, which time had soiled and cracked. The vestibule was reached by ascending five stone steps, surmounted by a rustic balustrade of rusty iron. A yard surrounded by outhouses, where the harvest was gathered in, presses for the vintage, cellars for the wine, and a dove-cote, abutted on the house. Behind was levelled a small kitchen-garden, whose beds were bordered with box, pinks, and fruit trees, pruned close down to the ground. An arbour was formed at the extremity of each walk. A little further on was an orchard, where the trees inclining in a thousand attitudes, cast a degree of shade over an acre of cropped grass; then a large enclosure of low vines, cut in right lines by small green sward paths. Such is this spot. The gaze is turned from the gloomy and lowering horizon to the mountains of Beaujeu, spotted on their sides by black pines, and severed by large inclined meadows, where the oxen of Charolais fatten, and to the valley of the Saone, that immense ocean of verdure, here and there topped by high steeples. The belt of the higher Alps, covered with snow and the apex of Mont Blanc, which overhangs the whole, frame this extensive landscape. There is in this something of the vastness of the infinite sea: and if on its bounded side it may inspire recollection and resignation, in its open part it seems to solicit thought to expand, and to convey the soul to far off hopes and to the eminences of imagination.

Such was, for five years, the bounded horizon of this young woman. It was there that she plunged into the plenitude of that nature of which, in her infancy, she had so frequently dreamed, and in which she had perceived only some small bits of sky, and some confused perspectives of royal forests, from the height of her window over the roofs of Paris. It was there that her simple tastes and loving soul found nutriment and scope for her sensibility.

Her life was there divided between household cares, the improvement of her mind, and active charity—that cultivator of the heart. Adored by the peasants, whose protectress she was, she applied to the consolation of their miseries the little to spare which a rigid economy left to her, and to the cure of their maladies the knowledge she had acquired in medicine. She was fetched from three and four leagues' distance to visit a sick person. On Sunday the steps of her court-yard were covered with invalids, who came to seek relief, or convalescents, who came to bring her proofs of their gratitude; baskets of chestnuts, goats' milk cheeses, or apples from their orchards. She was delighted at finding the country people grateful and sensible of kindness. She had drawn her own picture of the people residing in the vicinity of large cities. The burning of chateaux, during the outbreak and massacres of September, taught her subsequently that these seas of men, then so calm, have tempests more terrible than those of the ocean, and that society requires institutions, just as the waves require a bed, and strength is as indispensable as justice to the government of a people.

XIII.

The hour of the Revolution of '89 had struck, and came upon her in the bosom of this retreat. Intoxicated with philosophy, passionately devoted to the ideal of humanity, an adorer of antique liberty, she became on fire at the first spark of this focus of new ideas;—she believed with all her faith, that this revolution, like a child born without a mother's sufferings, must regenerate the human race, destroy the misery of the working classes, for whom she felt the deepest sympathy, and renew the face of the earth. Even the piety of great souls has its imagination. The generous illusion of France at this epoch was equal to the work which France had to accomplish. If she had not dared to hope so much, she would have dared nothing: her faith was her strength.

From this day, Madame Roland felt a fire kindled within her which was never to be quenched but in her blood. All the love which lay slumbering in her soul was converted into enthusiasm and devotion for the human race. Her sensibility deceived—too ardent, unquestionably, for one man—spread over a nation. She adored the Revolution like a lover. She communicated this flame to her husband and to all her friends. All her repressed feelings were poured forth in her opinions; she avenged herself on her destiny, which refused her individual happiness, by sacrificing herself for the happiness of others. Happy and beloved, she would have been but a woman; unhappy and isolated, she became the leader of a party.

XIV.

The opinions of M. and Madame Roland excited against them all the commercial aristocracy of Lyons, an honest right-minded city, but one of money, where all becomes a calculation, and where ideas have the weight and immobility of interests. Ideas have an irresistible current, which attract even the most stagnant populations; Lyons was led on and overwhelmed by the opinions of the epoch. M. Roland was raised to the municipality at the first election, and spoke out with all the earnestness of his principles, and the energy inspired by his wife. Feared by the timid, adored by the eager, his name, at first a byeword, became a rallying point;—public favour recompensed him for the insults of the rich. He was deputed to Paris by the municipal council, there to defend the commercial interests of Lyons, in the committees of the Constituent Assembly.

The connection of Roland with philosophers and economists who formed the practical party of philosophy, his necessary intercourse with influential members of the Assembly, his literary tastes, and, above all, the attraction and natural temptation which drew and retained eminent men around a young, eloquent, and impassioned woman, soon made the salon of Madame Roland an ardent, though not as yet noted, focus of the Revolution. The names which were found there reveal, from the first days, extreme opinions. For these opinions, the constitution of 1791 was only a halt.

It was on the 20th February, 1791, that Madame Roland returned to that Paris which she had quitted five years before, a young girl, unknown and nameless, and whither she came as a flame to animate an entire party, found a republic, reign for a moment, and—die! She had in her mind a confused presentiment of this destiny. Genius and Will know their strength,—they feel before others and prophesy their mission. Madame Roland had beforehand seemed carried on by hers to the heart of action. She hastened on the day after her arrival to the sittings of the Assembly. She saw the powerful Mirabeau, the dazzling Cazales, the daring Maury, the crafty Lameth, the impassive Barnave. She remarked with annoyance and intense hate, in the attitude and language of the right side, that superiority conferred by the habit of command and confidence in the respect of the million; on the left side, she saw inferiority of manners, and the insolence that mingles with low breeding. And thus did the antique aristocracy survive in blood, and avenge itself, even after its defeat on the democracy, which envied, whilst it beat it to the earth. Equality is written in the laws long before it is established in races. Nature is an aristocrat, and it requires a long use of independence to give to a republican people the noble attitude and polished dignity of the citizen. Even in revolutions, the parvenu of liberty is long seen in the vanquisher. Women's tact is very sensitive to these nice shades. Madame Roland understood them, but, so far from allowing herself to be seduced by this superiority of aristocracy, she was but the more indignant, and felt her hatred redoubled against a party which it was possible to overcome but impossible to humble.

XV.

It was at this period that she and her husband united with some of the most ardent amongst the apostles of popular ideas. It was not they who, as yet, were foremost in the favour of the people, and the eclat of talent,—it was they who appeared to it, to love the Revolution for the Revolution itself, and to devote themselves, with sublime disinterestedness, not to the success of their fortune, but to the progress of humanity. Brissot was one of the first. M. and Madame Roland had been, for a long time, in correspondence with him on matters of public economy, and the more important problems of liberty. Their ideas had fraternised and expanded together. They were united beforehand by all the fibres of their revolutionary hearts, but, as yet, did not know it. Brissot, whose adventurous life, and unwearied contentions were allied to the youth of Mirabeau, had already acquired a name in journalism and the clubs. Madame Roland awaited him with respect; she was curious to judge if his features resembled the physiognomy of his mind. She believed that nature revealed herself by all forms, and that the understanding and virtue modelled the external senses of men just as the statuary impresses on the clay the outward forms of his conception. The first appearance undeceived, without discouraging her in her admiration of Brissot. He wanted that dignity of aspect, and that gravity of character which seem like a reflection of the dignity, life, and seriousness of his doctrines. There was something in the man political, which recalled the pamphleteer. His levity shocked her; even his gaiety seemed to her a profanation of the grave ideas of which he was the organ. The Revolution, which gave passion to his style, did not throw any passion into his countenance. She did not find in him enough hatred against the enemies of the people. The mobile mind of Brissot did not appear to have sufficient consistency for a feeling of devotion. His activity, directed upon all matters, gave him the appearance of a novice in ideas rather than an apostle. They called him an intriguer.

Brissot brought Petion, his fellow-student and friend. Petion, already member of the Constituent Assembly, and whose harangues in two or three cases had excited interest. Brissot was reputed to have inspired these orations. Buzot and Robespierre, both members of the same Assembly, were introduced there. Buzot, whose pensive beauty, intrepidity, and eloquence were destined hereafter to agitate the heart and soften the imagination of Madame Roland; and Robespierre, whose disquiet mind and fanatic hatred cast him henceforward into all meetings where conspiracies were formed in the name of the people. Some others, too, came, whose names will subsequently appear in the annals of this period. Brissot, Petion, Buzot, Robespierre, agreed to meet four evenings in each week in the salon of Madame Roland.

XVI.

The motive of these meetings was to confer secretly as to the weakness of the Constituent Assembly, on the plots laid by the aristocracy to fetter the Revolution, and on the impulse necessary to impress on the lukewarm opinions, in order to consolidate the triumph. They chose the house of Madame Roland, because this house was situated in a quarter equi-distant from the homes of all the members who were to assemble there. As in the conspiracy of Harmodius, it was a woman who held the torch to light the conspirators.

Madame Roland thus found herself cast, from the first, in the midst of the movement party. Her invisible hand touched the first threads of the still entangled plot which was to disclose such great events. This part, the only one that could be assigned to her sex, equally flattered her woman's pride and passion for politics. She went through it with that modesty which would have been in her a chef d'oeuvre of skill if it had not been a natural endowment. Seated out of the circle near a work table, she worked or wrote letters, listening all the time with apparent indifference to the discussions of her friends. Frequently tempted to take a share in the conversation, she bit her lips in order to check her desire. Her soul of energy and action was inspired with secret contempt for the tedious and verbose debates which led to nothing. Action was expended in words, and the hour passed away taking with it the opportunity which never returns.

The conquests of the National Assembly soon enervated the conquerors. The leaders of this Assembly retreated from their own handiwork, and covenanted with the aristocracy and the throne to grant the king the revision of the constitution in a more monarchical spirit. The deputies who met at Madame Roland's lost heart and dispersed, until, at length, there only remained that small knot of unshaken men who attach themselves to principles regardless of their success, and who are attached to desperate causes with the more fervour in proportion as fortune seems to forsake them. Of this number were Buzot, Petion, and Robespierre.

XVII.

History must have a sinister curiosity in ascertaining the first impression made on Madame Roland, by the man who, warmed at her hearth, and then conspiring with her, was one day to overthrow the power of his friends, immolate them en masse, and send her to the scaffold. No repulsive feeling seems, at this period, to have warned her that in conspiring to advance Robespierre's fortune, she conspired for her own death. If she have any vague fear, that fear is instantly cloaked by a pity which is akin to contempt. Robespierre appeared to her an honest man; she forgave him his evil tongue and affected utterance. Robespierre, like all men with one idea, appeared overcome with ennui. Still she had remarked that he was always deeply attentive at these committees, that he never spoke freely, listened to all other opinions before he delivered his own, and then never took the pains to explain his motives. Like men of imperious temper, his conviction was to him always a sufficing reason. The next day he entered the tribune, and profiting, for his reputation's sake, by the confidential discussions to which he had listened in the previous evening, he anticipated the hour of action agreed upon with his allies, and thus divulged the plan concerted. When blamed for this at Madame Roland's, he made but slight excuse. This wilfulness was attributed to his youth, and the impatience of his amour-propre. Madame Roland, persuaded that this young man was passionately attached to liberty, took his reserve for timidity, and these petty treasons for independence. The common cause was a cover for all. Partiality transforms the most sinister tokens into favour or indulgence. "He defends his principles," said she, "with warmth and pertinacity—he has the courage to stand up singly in their defence at the time when the number of the people's champions is vastly reduced. The court hates him, therefore we should like him. I esteem Robespierre for this, and show him that I do; and then too, though he is not very attentive at the evening meetings, he comes occasionally and asks me to give him a dinner. I was much struck with the affright with which he was agitated on the day of the king's flight to Varennes. He said the same evening at Petion's that the Royal Family had not taken such a step without preparing in Paris a Saint Bartholomew for the patriots, and that he expected to die before he was twenty-four hours older. Petion, Buzot, Roland, on the contrary, said that this flight of the king's was his abdication, that it was necessary to profit by it in order to prepare men's minds for the republic. Robespierre, sneering and biting his nails, as usual, asked what a republic was."

It was on this day that the plan of a journal, called the Republican, was arranged between Brissot, Condorcet, Dumont of Geneva, and Duchatelet. We thus see that the idea of a republic was born in the cradle of the Girondists before it emanated from Robespierre, and that the 10th of August was no chance, but a plot.

At the same epoch, Madame Roland had given way, in order to save Robespierre's life, to one of those impulses which reveal a courageous friendship, and leave their traces even in the memory of the ungrateful. After the massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, accused of having conspired with the originators of the petition of forfeiture, and threatened with vengeance by the National Guard, Robespierre was obliged to conceal himself. Madame Roland, accompanied by her husband, went at 11 o'clock at night to his retreat in the Marais, to offer him a safer asylum in their own house. He had already quitted his domicile. Madame Roland then went to their common friend Buzot, and entreated him to go to the Feuillants, where he still retained influence, and with all speed to exculpate Robespierre before any act of accusation was issued against him.

Buzot hesitated for a moment, then replied,—"I will do all in my power to save this unfortunate young man, although I am far from partaking the opinion of many respecting him. He thinks too much of himself to love liberty; but he serves it, and that is enough for me. I shall be there to defend him." Thus, three of Robespierre's subsequent victims combined that night, and unknown to him, for the safety of the man by whom they were eventually to die. Destiny is a mystery whence spring the most remarkable coincidences, and which tend no less to offer snares to men through their virtues than their crimes. Death is everywhere: but, whatever the fate may be, virtue alone never repents. Beneath the dungeons of the Conciergerie Madame Roland remembered that night with satisfaction. If Robespierre recalled it in his power, this memory must have fallen colder on his heart than the axe of the headsman.



BOOK IX.

I.

After the dispersion of the Constituent Assembly, the mission of M. and Madame Roland having terminated, they quitted Paris. This woman, who had just left the centre of faction and business, returned to La Platiere to resume the cares of her rustic household and the pruning of her vines. But she had quaffed of the intoxicating cup of the Revolution. The movement in which she had participated for a moment impelled her still, though at a distance. She carried on a correspondence with Robespierre and Buzot; political and formal with Robespierre, pathetic and tender with Buzot. Her mind, her soul, her heart, all recalled it. Then took place between herself and her husband a deliberation, apparently impartial, in order to decide whether they should bury themselves in the country, or should return to Paris. But the ambition of the one, and the ardent desire of the other, had decided, unknown to, and before, either. The most trifling pretext was sufficient for their impatience. In the month of December they were again installed in Paris.

It was the period when all their friends arrived. Petion had just been elected maire, and was creating a republic in the commune. Robespierre, excluded from the Legislative Assembly by the law which forbade the re-election of the members of the Constituent Assembly, found a tribune in the Jacobins. Brissot assumed Buzot's place in the new Assembly, and his reputation, as a public writer and statesman, brought around him and his doctrines the young Girondists, who had arrived from their department, with the ardour of their age, and the impulse of a second revolutionary tide. They cast themselves, on their arrival, into the places which Robespierre, Buzot, Laclos, Danton, and Brissot had marked out for them.

Roland, the friend of all these men, but in the back ground, and concealed in their shadow, had one of those peculiar reputations, the more potent over opinion, as it made but little display: it was spoken of as though an antique virtue, beneath the simple appearance of a rustic: he was the Sieyes of his party. Beneath his taciturnity his deep thought was assured, and in his mystery the oracle was accredited. The brilliancy and genius of his wife attracted all eyes towards him: his very mediocrity, the only power that has the virtue of neutralising envy, was of service to him. As no one feared him, every body thrust him forward—Petion as a cover for himself—Robespierre to undermine him—Brissot to put his own villanous reputation under the shelter of proverbial probity—Buzot, Vergniaud, Louvet, Gensonne, and the Girondists, from respect for his science, and the attraction towards Madame Roland; even the Court, from confidence in his honesty and contempt for his influence. This man advanced to power without any effort on his own part, borne onwards by the favour of a party, by the prestige which the unknown has over opinion, by the disdain of his opponents and the genius of his wife.

II.

The king had for some time hoped that the wrath of the Revolution would be softened down by its triumph. Those violent acts, those stormy oscillations between insolence and repentance, which had marked the inauguration of the Assembly, had painfully undeceived him. His astonished ministry already trembled before so much audacity, and in the council avowed their incompetency. The king was desirous of retaining men who had given him such proofs of devotion to his person. Some of them, confidants or accomplices, served the king and queen, either by keeping up communications with the emigrants or by their intrigues in the interior.

M. de Montmorin, an able man, but unequal to the difficulties of the crisis, had retired. The two principal men of the ministry were M. de Lessart for Foreign Affairs; M. Bertrand de Molleville in the Marine Department. M. de Lessart, placed by his position between the armed emigrants, the impatient Assembly, undecided Europe, and the inculpated king, could not fail to fall under his own good intentions. His plan was to avoid war in his own country by temporising and negotiations—to suspend the hostile demonstration of foreign power: to present to the intimidated Assembly the king, as sole arbiter and negotiator of peace between his people and the foreigner; and he trusted thus to adjourn the final collisions between the Assembly and the throne, and to re-establish the regular authority of the king by preserving peace. The personal arrangements of the emperor Leopold aided him in his plans; he had only to contend against the fatality which urges men and things to their denouement. The Girondists, and Brissot especially, overwhelmed him with accusations, inasmuch as he was the man who could most retard their triumph. By sacrificing him they could sacrifice a whole system: their press and their harangues pointed him out to the fury of the people;—the partisans of war marked him down as their victim. He was no traitor—but with them to negotiate was to betray. The king, who knew he was irreproachable and confided all his plans to him, refused to sacrifice him to his enemies, and thus accumulated resentments against the minister. As to M. de Molleville, he was a secret enemy of the constitution. He advised the king to play the hypocrite, acting in the letter, and thus to destroy the spirit, of the law,—advancing by subterranean ways to a violent catastrophe,—when, according to him the monarchical cause must come out victorious. Confiding in the power of intrigue more than in the influence of opinion, seeking everywhere traitors to the popular cause, paying spies, bargaining for consciences, believing in no one's incorruptibility, keeping up secret intelligence with the most violent demagogues, paying in hard money for the most incendiary propositions under the idea of making the Revolution unpopular from its very excesses, and filling the tribunes of the Assembly with his agents in order to choke down with their hootings, or render effective by their applause, the discourses of certain orators, and thus to feign in the tribunes a false people and a false opinion; men of small means in great matters presuming that it is possible to deceive a nation as if it were an individual. The king, to whom he was devoted, liked him as the depositary of his troubles, the confidant of his relations with foreign powers, and the skilful mediator of his negotiation with all parties. M. de Molleville thus kept himself in well-managed balance between his favour with the king, and his intrigues with the revolutionary party He spoke the language of the constitution well—he had the secret of many consciences bought and paid for.

It was between these two men that the king, in order to comply with popular opinion, called M. de Narbonne to the ministry of war. Madame de Staeel and the constitutional party sought the aid of the Girondists. Condorcet, was the mediator between the two parties. Madame de Condorcet, an exceedingly lovely woman, united with Madame de Staeel in enthusiasm for the young minister. The one lent him the brilliancy of her genius, the other the influence of her beauty. These two females appeared to fuse their feelings in one common devotion for the man honoured by their preference. Rivalry was sacrificed at the shrine of ambition.

III.

The point of union of the Girondist party with the constitutional party, in that combination of which M. de Narbonne's elevation was the guarantee, was the thirst of both parties for war. The constitutional party desired it, in order to divert internal anarchy, and dispel those fermentations of agitation which threatened the throne. The Girondist party desired it in order to push men's minds to extremities. It hoped that the dangers of the country would give it strength enough to shake the throne and produce the republican regime.

It was under these auspices that M. de Narbonne took office. He also was desirous of war; not to overthrow the throne in whose shadow he was born, but to dazzle and shake the nation, to hazard fortune by desperate casts, and to replace at the head of the people under the arms of the high military aristocracy of the country, La Fayette, Biron, Rochambeau, the Lameths, Dillon, Custines, and himself. If victory favoured the French flag, the victorious army, under constituent chiefs, would control the Jacobins, strengthen the reformed monarchy, and maintain the establishment of the two chambers; if France was destined to reverses, unquestionably the throne and aristocracy must fall, but better to fall nobly in a national contest of France against her enemies, than to tremble perpetually and to perish at last in a riot by the pikes of the Jacobins. This was the adventurous and chivalrous policy which pleased the young men by its heroism, and the women by its prestige. It betokened the high courage of France. M. de Narbonne personified it in the council. His colleagues, MM. de Lessart and Bertrand de Molleville, saw in him the total overthrow of all their plans. The king, as usual, was all indecision; one step forward and one backwards; surprised by the event in his hesitation, and thus unable to resist a shock, or himself to give any impulse.

Beside these official councillors, certain constituents not in the Assembly, especially the Lameths, Duport, and Barnave, were consulted by the king. Barnave had remained in Paris some months after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. He redeemed by sincere devotion to the monarchy the blows he had previously dealt upon it. He had measured with an eye of judgment, the rapid declivity down which the love of popular favour had impelled him. Like Mirabeau, he wished to pause when it was too late. Henceforth, remaining on the brink of events, he was besieged with terror and remorse. If his intrepid heart did not tremble for himself, the sympathy he experienced for the queen and royal family urged him to give the king advice which had but one fault,—it was impossible now to follow it.

These consultations, held at Adrien Duport's, the friend of Barnave and the oracle of the party, only served to embarrass the mind of the king with another element of hesitation. La Fayette and his friends also added their imperious counsel. La Fayette could not believe that he was supplanted. The national guard, which yet remained attached to him, still credited his omnipotence,—all these men and all these parties lent M. de Narbonne secret support. A courtier in the eyes of the court, an aristocrat in the eyes of the nobility, a soldier in the eyes of the army, one of the people in the eyes of the people, irresistible in the eyes of the women, he was the minister of public hope. The Girondists alone had an arriere-pensee in their apparent favour towards him. They elevated him to make his fall the more conspicuous: M. de Narbonne was to them but the hand which prepared the way for their advent.

IV.

Scarcely had he taken his place in the cabinet, than this young minister displayed all the activity, frankness, and grace of his character in the discussion of affairs, and his intercourse with the Assembly. He employed the system of confidence, and surprised the Assembly by his abandon, and these austere and suspicious men, who had hitherto seen nothing but deceit in the language of ministers, now yielded to the charm of his speeches. He addressed them, not in the official and cold language of diplomacy, but in the open and cordial tone of a patriot. He brought the dignity of his office to the tribune; he generously assumed all responsibility, and he professed the most cherished principles of the people with a sincerity that precluded the possibility of suspicion. He openly disclosed his projects, and the energy of his mind communicated itself to those men who were the most difficult to be won over. The nation too saw with delight an aristocrate so well adapt himself to their costume, their principles, and their passions. The ardour of his patriotism did not suffer the impulse, that confounded in him the king and the people, to slacken; and in the course of his short administration he did wonders of activity. He visited and put in a state of defence all the fortified places; raised an army, harangued the troops; arrested the emigration of the nobility, in the name of the common danger; nominated the generals, and summoned La Fayette, Rochambeau, and Luckner. A patriotic sentiment, of which he was the soul, pervaded France; by rendering the throne the centre of the national defence, he rendered the king again popular for a short time, and in the enthusiasm felt for their country, all parties became reconciled. His eloquence was rapid, brilliant, and sonorous as the clash and din of arms. This expansion of his heart was a part of his character; he bared his breast to the eyes of his adversaries, and by this confidence won them to his side.

The first day of his appointment to office, instead of announcing his nomination by a letter to the president, as was customary with the other ministers, he proceeded to the Assembly, and mounted the tribune. "I come to offer you," said he, "the profoundest respect for the authority with which the people have invested you; from attachment for the constitution, to which I have sworn; a courageous love for liberty and equality—yes, for equality, which has no longer any opponents, but which should nevertheless possess no less energetic supporters." Two days afterwards he gained the entire confidence of the Assembly, when speaking of the responsibility of the ministers. "I accept," cried he, "the definition of the situation of ministers just made, that tells us responsibility is death. Spare no threats, no dangers. Load us with personal fetters, but afford us the means of aiding the constitution to progress. For my own part, I embrace this opportunity of entreating the members of this Assembly to inform me of every thing which they deem useful to the welfare of the nation, during my administration. Our interests, our enemies are the same; and it is not the letter of the constitution only that we should seek to enforce, but the spirit; we must not seek merely to acquit ourselves, but to succeed. You will see that the minister is convinced that there is no hope for liberty unless it proceed through you and from you: cease then for awhile to mistrust us, condemn us afterwards if we have merited it; but first give us with confidence the means of serving you."

Such words as these touched even the most prejudiced, and it was unanimously voted that the speech should be printed, and sent to all the departments. In order to cement the reconciliation of the king and the nation, M. de Narbonne went to the committees of the Assembly, communicated to them his plans, discussed his measures, and won over all to his resolutions. This government in common was the spirit of the constitution; the other ministers saw in this the abasement of the executive power and an abdication of royalty, whilst M. de Narbonne saw in it the sole means of winning back public feeling to the king. Opinion had dethroned the royalty; it was to opinion that he looked to strengthen it, and therefore he made himself the minister of public opinion.

At the moment when the emperor sent to the king a communication threatening the frontiers, and the king personally informed the Assembly of the energetic measures he had adopted, M. de Narbonne, re-entering the Assembly after the king's departure, mounted the tribune. "I am on the eve of quitting Paris," said he, "in order to visit our frontiers; not that I believe the mistrust felt by the soldiers for their officers has any foundation, but because I hope to dissipate them by addressing all in the name of their king and their country. I will say to the officers, that ancient prejudices and an affection for their king carried to an excess for a time, may have excused their conduct, but that the word treason is unknown amongst nations of honourable men. To the soldiers, your officers who remain at the head of the army are bound by their oath and their honour to the Revolution. The safety of the state depends on the discipline of the army. I confide my post to the minister of foreign affairs, and such is my confidence, such should be the confidence of the nation in his patriotism, that I take on myself the responsibility of all the orders that he may give in my name." M. de Narbonne displayed on this occasion as much skill as magnanimity; he felt that he had sufficient credit with the nation to cover the unpopularity of his colleague, M. de Lessart, already denounced by the Girondists, and thus placed himself between them and their victim. The Assembly was carried away by his enthusiasm; he obtained 20,000,000 of francs for the preparations for war, and the grade of marshal of France for the aged Luckner. The press and the clubs themselves applauded him, for the general eagerness for war swept away all before it, even the resentments of faction.

One man alone of the Jacobins resisted the influence of this enthusiasm: this man was Robespierre. Up to this time Robespierre had been merely a discusser of ideas, a subaltern agitator, indefatigable and intrepid, but eclipsed by other and greater names. From this day he became a statesman; he felt his own mental strength; he based this strength on a principle, and alone and unaided ventured to cope with the truth. He devoted himself without regarding even the number of his adversaries, and by exercising he doubled his force.

All the cabinets of the princes threatened by the Revolution still debated the question of peace or war. It was discussed alike in the councils of Louis XVI., in the meetings of parties in the Assembly, at the Jacobins, and in the public journals. The moment was decisive, for it was evident that the negotiation between the emperor Leopold and France on the subject of the reception of emigrants in the states dependent on the empire was fast drawing to a close, and that before long the emperor would have given satisfaction to France by dispersing these bodies of emigres, or that France would declare war against him, and by this declaration draw on herself the hostilities of all her enemies at the same time. France thus would defy them all.

We have already seen that the Statesmen, and Revolutionists, Constitutionalists, and Girondists, Aristocrats, and Jacobins, were all in favour of war. War was, in the eyes of all, an appeal to destiny, and the impatient spirit of France wished that it would pronounce at once, either by victory or defeat. Victory seemed to France the sole issue by which she could extricate herself from her difficulties at home, and even defeat did not terrify her. She believed in the necessity of war, and defied even death. Robespierre thought otherwise, and it is for that reason that he was Robespierre.

He clearly comprehended two things; the first, that war was a gratuitous crime against the people; the second, that a war, even though successful, would ruin the cause of democracy. Robespierre looked on the Revolution as the rigorous application of the principles of philosophy to society. A passionate and devoted pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Contrat Social was his gospel; war, made with the blood of the people, was in the eyes of this philosopher—what it must ever be in the eyes of the wise—wholesale slaughter to gratify the ambition of a few, glorious only when it is defensive. Robespierre did not consider France placed in such a position as to render it absolutely necessary for her safety that the human vein should be opened, whence would flow such torrents of blood. Embued with a firm conviction of the omnipotence of the new ideas on which he nourished faith and fanaticism within a heart closed against intrigue, he did not fear that a few fugitive princes, destitute of credit, and some thousand aristocratic emigres, would impose laws or conditions on a nation whose first struggle for liberty had shaken the throne, the nobility, and the clergy. Neither did he think that the disunited and wavering powers of Europe would venture to declare war against a nation that proclaimed peace so long as we did not attack them. But should the European cabinets be sufficiently mad to attempt this new crusade against human reason, then Robespierre fully believed they would be defeated, for he knew that there lies invincible force in, the justice of a cause—that right doubles the energy of a nation, that despair often supplies the want of weapons, and that God and men were for the people.

He thought, moreover, that if it was the duty of France to propagate the advantages and the light of reason and liberty, the natural and peaceful extension of the French Revolution in the world would prove far more infallible than our arms,—that the Revolution should be a doctrine and not an universal monarchy realised by the sword, and that the patriotism of nations should not coalesce against his dogmata. Their strength was in their minds, for in his eyes the power of the Revolution lay in its enlightenment. But he understood more: he understood that an offensive war would inevitably ruin the Revolution, and annihilate that premature republic of which the Girondists had already spoken to him, but which he himself could not as yet define. Should the war be unfortunate, thought he, Europe will crush without difficulty beneath the tread of its armies the earliest germs of this new government, to the truth of which perhaps a few martyrs might testify, but which would find no soil from whence to spring anew. If fortunate, military feeling, the invariable companion of aristocratic feeling, honour, that religion that binds the soldier to the throne; discipline, that despotism of glory, would usurp the place of those stern virtues to which the exercise of the constitution would have accustomed the people,—then they would forgive every thing, even despotism, in those who had saved them. The gratitude of a nation to those who have led its children to victory is a pitfall in which the people will ever be ensnared,—nay, they even offer their necks to the yoke; civil virtues must ever fade before the brilliancy of military exploits. Either the army would return to surround the ancient royalty with all its strength, and France would have her Monk, or the army would crown the most successful of its generals, and liberty would have her Cromwell. In either case the Revolution escaped from the people, and lay at the mercy of the soldiery, and thus to save it from war was to save it from a snare. These reflections decided him; as yet he meditated no violence; he but saw into the future, and read it aright. This was the original cause of his rupture with the Girondists; their justice was but policy, and war appeared to them politic. Just or unjust, they wished for it as a means of destruction to the throne, of aggrandisement for themselves. Posterity must decide, if in this great quarrel the first blame lies on the side of the democrat, or the ambitious Girondists. This fierce contest, destined to terminate in the death of both parties, began on the 12th of December at a meeting of the Jacobin Club.

V.

"I have meditated during six months, and even from the first day of the Revolution," said Brissot, the leader of the Gironde, "to what party I should give my support. It is by the force of reason, and by considering facts, that I have come to the conviction that a people, who, after ten centuries of slavery, have re-conquered liberty, have need of war. War is necessary to consolidate liberty, and to purge the constitution from all taint of despotism. War is necessary to drive from amongst us those men whose example might corrupt us. You have the power of chastising the rebels, and intimidating the world; have the courage to do so. The emigres persist in their rebellion, the sovereigns persist in supporting them. Can we hesitate to attack them? Our honour, our public credit, the necessity of strengthening our revolution, all make it imperative on us. France would be dishonoured, did she tamely suffer the insolence and revolt of a few factions, and outrages that a despot would not bear for a fortnight. How shall we be looked upon? No! we must avenge ourselves, or become the opprobrium of all the other nations. We must avenge ourselves by destroying these herds of brigands, or consent to behold faction, conspiracy, and rebellion perpetuated, and the insolence of the aristocrats greater than ever. They rely on the army at Coblentz,—in that they put their trust. If you would at one blow destroy the aristocracy, destroy Coblentz, and the chief of the nation will be compelled to reign, according to the Constitution, with us and through us."

These words, pronounced by the statesman of the Gironde, awakened an echo in the breast of every man, from the Jacobin Club to the extremity of the country. The vehement applause of the tribunes was merely the expression of that impatience to know the final decision that pervaded all parties. Robespierre needed iron nerve and determination to confront his friends, his enemies, and public opinion; and yet he sustained this struggle of a single idea against all this passion for weeks. Great convictions are indefatigable; and Robespierre, by his own unaided exertions, balanced all France during a month. His very enemies spoke with respect of his firmness, and those who had not the courage to follow him, yet would have been ashamed not to esteem him. His eloquence, which had been dry, verbose, and dialectic, now became more elegant and more imposing. The public journals printed his speeches. "You, O people, who do not possess the means of procuring the speeches of Robespierre, I promise them to you," said the Orateur du Peuple, the Jacobin paper. "Preserve carefully the numbers that contain these speeches; they are masterpieces of eloquence, that should be preserved in every family, in order to teach future generations that Robespierre existed for the public good and the preservation of liberty."

After having exhausted every argument that philosophy, policy, and patriotism could suggest against an offensive war, commenced by the Gironde, and secretly fomented by the ministers, and carried on by the generals most suspected by the people, he mounted the tribune for the last time, against Brissot, on the night of the 13th January, and declared his conviction against war, in a speech as admirable as it was pathetic.

VI.

"Yes, I am vanquished; I yield to you," cried he, in a broken voice, "I also demand war. What do I say?—I demand a war, more terrible, more implacable than you demand. I do not demand it as an act of prudence, an act of reason, an act of policy, but as the resource of despair. I demand it on one condition, which doubtless you have anticipated,—for I do not think that the advocates of war have sought to deceive us. I demand it deadly—I demand it heroic—I demand it such as the genius of Liberty would declare against all despotism—such as the people of the Revolution, under their own leaders, would render it;—not such as intriguing cowards would have it, or as the ambitious and traitorous ministers and generals would carry it on.

"Frenchmen, heroes of the 14th of July, who, without guide or leader, yet acquired your liberty, come forth, and let us form that army which you tell us is destined to conquer the universe. But where is the general, who, imperturbable defender of the rights of the people, and born with a hatred to tyrants, has never breathed the poisonous air of the courts, and whose virtue is attested by the hatred and disgrace of the court; this general, whose hands, guiltless of our blood, are worthy to bear before us the banner of freedom; where is he, this new Cato, this third Brutus, this unknown hero? let him appear and disclose himself, he shall be our leader. But where is he? Where are these soldiers of the 14th of July, who laid down, in the presence of the people, the arms furnished them by despotism. Soldiers of Chateauvieux, where are you? Come and direct our efforts. Alas! it is easier to rob death of its prey, than despotism of its victims. Citizens! Conquerors of the Bastille, come! Liberty summons you, and assigns you the honour of the first rank! They are mute. Misery, ingratitude, and the hatred of the aristocracy, have dispersed them. And you, citizens, immolated at the Champ-de-Mars, in the very act of a patriotic confederation, you will not be with us. Ah, what crime had these females, these massacred babes, committed? Good God! how many victims, and all amongst the people—all amongst the patriots, whilst the powerful conspirators live and triumph. Rally round us, at least you national guards, who have especially devoted yourselves to the defence of our frontiers in this war with which a perfidious court threatens us. Come—but how?—you are not yet armed. During two whole years you have demanded arms, and yet have them not. What do I say? You have been refused even uniforms, and condemned to wander from department to department, objects of contempt to the minister, and of derision to the patricians, who receive you only to enjoy the spectacle of your distress. No matter; come, we will combat naked like the American savages.

"But shall we await the orders of the war office to destroy thrones? Shall we await the signal of the court? Shall we be commanded by these patricians, these eternal favourites of despotism, in this war against aristocrats and kings? No—let us march forward alone; let us be our own leaders. But see, the orators of war stop me! Here is Monsieur Brissot, who tells me that Monsieur le Comte de Narbonne must conduct this affair; that we must march under the orders of Monsieur le Marquis de La Fayette; that the executive power alone possesses the right of leading the nation to victory and freedom. Ah, citizens, this word has dispelled all the charm! Adieu, victory and the independence of the people; if the sceptres of Europe ever be broken, it will not be by such hands. Spain will continue for some time the degraded slave of superstition and royalism. Leopold will continue the tyrant of Germany and Italy, and we shall not speedily behold Catos or Ciceros replace the pope and the cardinals in the conclave. I declare openly, that war, as I understand the term—war, such as I have proposed, is impracticable. And if it be the war of the court, of the ministers, of the patricians who affect patriotism, that we must accept—oh, then, far from believing in the freedom of the world, I despair of your liberty. The wisest course left us is to defend it against the perfidy of those enemies at home who lull you with these heroic illusions.

"I continue calmly and sorrowfully. I have proved that liberty possesses no more deadly foe than war; I have proved that war, advised by men already objects of suspicion, was, in the hands of the executive power, nought save a means of annihilating the constitution, only the end of a plot against the Revolution. Thus to favour these plans of war, under what pretext soever, is to associate ourselves with these treasonable plots against the Revolution. All the patriotism in the world, all the pretended political commonplaces, cannot change the nature of things. To inculcate, like M. Brissot and his friends, confidence in the executive power, and to call down public favour on the generals, is to disarm the Revolution of its last hope—the vigilance and energy of the nation. In the horrible position in which despotism, intrigue, treason, and the general blindness have placed us, I consult alone my head and my heart. I respect nothing, save my country; I obey nought, save truth. I know that some patriots blame the frankness with which I present this discouraging future of our situation. I do not conceal my fault from myself. Is not the truth already sufficiently guilty because it is the truth? Ah! so that our slumbers be light, what matter, though we be awakened by the clash of chains?—and in the quietude of slavery let us no longer disturb the repose of these fortunate patriots. No, but let them know that we can measure with a firm eye and steady heart the depth of the abyss. Let us adopt the device of the palatine of Posnania—'I prefer the storms of liberty to the serenity of slavery.'

"If the moment of emancipation be not yet arrived, at least we should have the patience to await it. If this generation was but destined to struggle in the quicksand of vice, into which despotism had plunged it; if the theatre of our revolution was destined but to present to the eyes of the universe a struggle between perfidy and weakness, egotism and ambition;—the rising generation would commence the task of purifying this earth, so sullied by vice. It would bring, not the peace of despotism or the sterile agitations of intrigue, but fire and sword to lay low the thrones and exterminate the oppressors. O more fortunate posterity, thou art not stranger to us! It is for thee that we brave the storms and the intrigues of tyranny. Often discouraged by the obstacles that environ us, we feel the necessity of struggling for thee. Thou shalt complete our work. Retain on thy memory the names of the martyrs of liberty." The sentiments of Rousseau were to be traced in these words.

VII.

Louvet, one of the friends of Brissot, felt their power, and mounted the tribune in order to move the man who alone arrested the progress of the Gironde. "Robespierre," said he, apostrophising him directly; "Robespierre—you alone keep the public mind in suspense—doubtless this excess of glory was reserved for you. Your speeches belong to posterity, and posterity will come to judge between you and me. But you Will mar a great responsibility by persisting in your opinions; you are accountable to your contemporaries, and even to future generations—yes, posterity will judge between us, unworthy as I may be of it. It will say, a man appeared in the Constituent Assembly—inaccessible to all passions, one of the most faithful defenders of the people—it was impossible not to esteem and cherish his virtues—not to admire his courage—he was adored by the people, whom he had constantly served, and he was worthy of it. A precipice opens. Fatigued by too much labour, this man imagined he saw peril where there was none, and did not see it where it really was. A man of no note was present, entirely occupied with the present moment, aided by other citizens, he perceived the danger, and could not remain silent. He went to Robespierre, and sought to make him touch it with his finger. Robespierre turned away his eyes, and withdrew his hand, the stranger persisted, and saved his country."

Robespierre smiled with disdain and incredulity at these words. The suppliant gestures of Louvet, and the adjurations of the tribunes found-him the next morning firm and unmoved. Brissot resumed the debate on war;—"I implore Monsieur Robespierre," said he, in conclusion, "to terminate so unworthy a struggle, which profits alone the enemies of the public welfare." "My surprise was extreme," cried Robespierre, "at seeing this morning, in the journal edited by M. Brissot, the most pompous eulogium on M. de La Fayette." "I declare," replied Brissot, "that I am utterly ignorant of the insertion of this letter in 'Le Patriots Francais.'" "So much the better," returned Robespierre. "I am delighted to find that M. Brissot is not a party to any such apologies." Their words became as bitter as their hearts, and hate became more perceptible at every reply. The aged Dusaulx interfered, made a touching appeal to the patriots, and entreated them to embrace. They complied. "I have now fulfilled a duty of fraternity, and satisfied my heart," cried Robespierre. "I have yet a more sacred debt to pay my country. All personal regard must give place to the sacred interests of liberty and humanity. I can easily reconcile them here with the regard and respect I have promised to those who serve them; I have embraced M. Brissot, but I persist in opposing him: let our peace repose only on the basis of patriotism and virtue." Robespierre, by his very isolation, proved his force, and obtained fresh influence over the minds of the waverers. The papers began to side with him. Marat heaped invectives on Brissot; Camille Desmoulins, in his pamphlets, exposed the shameful association of Brissot, in London, with Morande, the dishonoured libellist. Danton himself, the orator of success, fearing to be deceived by fortune, hesitated between the Girondists and Robespierre. He remained silent for a long time, and then made a speech full of high-sounding words, beneath which was visible the hesitation of his convictions, and the embarrassment of his mind.



BOOK X.

I.

Whilst this was passing at the Jacobins, and the journals—those echoes of the clubs—excited in the people the same anxiety and the same hesitation, the underhand diplomacy of the cabinet of the Tuileries, and the emperor Leopold, who sought in vain to postpone the termination, were about to behold all their schemes thwarted by the impatience of the Gironde and the death of Leopold. This philosophic prince was destined to bear away with him all desire of reconciliation and every hope of peace, for he alone restrained Germany. M. de Narbonne, thwarted by public demonstrations the secret negotiations of his colleague M. de Lessart, who strove to temporise, and to refer all the differences of France and Europe to a congress.

The diplomatic committee of the Assembly, urged by Narbonne, and composed of Girondists, proposed decisive resolutions. This committee, established by the Assembly, and influenced by the ideas of Mirabeau, called the ministers to account for every thing that occurred: out of the kingdom diplomacy was thus unmasked—the negotiations broken off—all combination rendered impossible, for the cabinets of Europe were continually cited before the tribune of Paris. The Girondists, the actual leaders of this committee, possessed neither the skill nor the prudence necessary to handle without breaking the fine threads of diplomacy. A speech was in their eyes far more meritorious than a negotiation; and they cared not that their words should re-echo in foreign cabinets, provided they sounded well in the chamber or the tribune. Moreover, they were desirous of war, and looked on themselves as statesmen, because at one stroke they had disturbed the peace of Europe. Ignorant of politics, they yet deemed themselves masters of it, because they were unscrupulous; and because they affected the indifference of Machiavel, they deemed they possessed his depth.

The emperor Leopold, by a proclamation, on the 21st of December, furnished the Assembly with a pretext for an outbreak. "The sovereigns united," said the emperor, "for the maintenance of public tranquillity and the honour and safety of the crowns." These words excited the minds of all to know what could be their meaning; they asked each other how the emperor, the brother-in-law, and ally of Louis XVI., could speak to him for the first time of the sovereigns acting in concert? and against what, if not against the Revolution? And how could the ministers and ambassadors of the Revolution have been ignorant of its existence? Why had they concealed from the nation their knowledge, if they had known it? There was, then, a double diplomacy, each striving to outwit the other. The Austrian Alliance was, then, no dream of faction; there was either incompetence or treason in official diplomacy, perhaps both. A projected congress was spoken of—could it have any other object than that of imposing modifications on the constitution of France?—And all felt indignant at the idea of ceding even one tittle of the constitution to the demand of monarchical Europe.

II.

It was whilst the public mind was thus agitated that the diplomatic committee presented, through the Girondist Gensonne, its report on the existing state of affairs with the emperor. Gensonne, an advocate of Bordeaux, elected to the Legislative Assembly on the same day as Guadet and Vergniaud, his friends and countrymen, composed, with these deputies, that triumvirate of talent, opinion, and eloquence, afterwards termed the Gironde. An obstinate and dialectic style of oratory, bitter and keen irony, were the characteristics of the talents of the Gironde; it did not carry away by its eloquence, it constrained; and its revolutionary passions were strong, yet under the control of reason.

Before entering the Assembly, he had been sent as a commissioner with Dumouriez, afterwards so celebrated, to study the state of the popular feeling in the department of the west, and to propose measures likely to tend to the pacification of these countries, then distracted by religious differences. His clear and enlightened report had been in favour of tolerance and liberty—those two topics of all consciences. He was then, in common with the other Girondists, resolved to carry out the Revolution to its extreme and definite form—a republic, without, however, too soon destroying the constitutional throne, provided the constitution was in the hands of his party.

The intimate friend of the minister Narbonne, his calumniators accused him of having sold himself to him. Nothing, however, bears out this suspicion; for if the soul of the Girondists was not free from ambition and intrigue, their hands at least were pure from corruption.

Gensonne, in his report in the name of the diplomatic committee, asked two questions; first, what was our political situation with regard to the emperor; secondly, should his last office be regarded as an act of hostility; and in this case was it advisable to accelerate this inevitable rupture by commencing the attack.

"Our situation with regard to the emperor," replied he to himself, "is, that the French interests are sacrificed to the house of Austria; our finances and our armies wasted in her service—our alliances broken, and what mark of reciprocity do we receive? The Revolution insulted; our cockade profaned; the emigres permitted to congregate in the states dependent on Austria; and, lastly, the avowal of the coalition of the powers against us. When from the heart of Luxembourg our princes threaten us with an invasion, and boast of the support of the other powers, Austria remains silent, and thus tacitly sanctions the threats of our enemies. It is true she affects from time to time to blame the hostile demonstrations against France, but this was but an hypocritical peace. The white cockade and the counter-revolutionary uniform are openly worn in her states, whilst our national colours are proscribed. When the king threatened the elector of Treves that he would march into his territories and disperse the emigres by force, the emperor ordered general Bender to advance to the assistance of the elector of Treves. This is but a slight matter: in the report drawn up at Pilnitz, the emperor declares, in concert with the king of Prussia, that the two powers would consider the steps to be taken, with regard to France, by the other European courts; and that should war ensue, they would mutually assist each other. Thus it is manifest that the emperor had violated the treaty of 1756, by contracting alliances without the knowledge of France; and that he has made himself the promoter and pivot of an anti-French system. What can be his aim but to intimidate and subdue us, in order to bring us to accept a congress, and the introduction of shameful modifications in our new institutions?

"Perhaps," added Gensonne, "this idea has germinated in France? Perhaps secret information induces the emperor to hope that peace may be maintained on such conditions. He is deceived: it is not at the moment when the flame of liberty is first kindled in a nation of twenty-four millions, that Frenchmen would consent to a capitulation, to which they would prefer death. Such is our situation, that war, which in other times would be a scourge to the human race, would now be useful to the public welfare. This salutary crisis would elevate the people to the level of their destiny; it would restore to them their pristine energy—it would re-establish our finances, and stifle the germ of intestine dissension. In a similar situation Frederic the Great broke the league formed against him by the court of Vienna, by forestalling it. Your committee propose that the preparations for war be accelerated. A congress would be a disgrace—war is necessary—public opinion wishes for it—and public safety demands it."

The committee concluded, by demanding clear and satisfactory explanations from the emperor; and that in case these explanations should not be given before the 10th of February, this refusal to reply should be considered as an act of hostility.

III.

Scarcely was the report terminated than Guadet, who presided that day at the Assembly, mounted the tribune, and began to comment on the report of his friend and colleague. Guadet, born at Saint Emelion, near Bordeaux, already celebrated as an advocate before the age at which men have generally made themselves a reputation, impatiently expected by the political tribunes, had at last arrived at the Legislative Assembly. A disciple of Brissot, less profound, but equally courageous and more eloquent than his master, he was intimately connected with Gensonne, Vergniaud, to whom he was bound by being of the same age, the same passions, and the same country; endowed with an undaunted and energetic mind and winning powers of oratory, equally fitted to resist the movement of a popular assembly, or to precipitate them to a termination; all these natural advantages were heightened by one of those southern casts of face and feature that serve so well to illustrate the working of the mind within.

"A congress has just been spoken of," said he; "what, then, is this conspiracy formed against us? How long shall we suffer ourselves to be fatigued by these manoeuvres—to be outraged by these hopes? Have those who have planned them, well weighed this? The bare idea of the possibility of a capitulation of liberty might hurry into crime those malcontents who cherish the hope; and these are the crimes we should crush in the bud. Let us teach these princes that the nation is resolved to preserve its constitution pure and unchanged, or to perish with it. In one word, let us mark out the place for these traitors, and let that place be the scaffold. I propose that the decree pass at this instant; That the nation regards as infamous, as traitors to their country, and as guilty of leze-majeste, every agent of the executive power, every Frenchman (several voices, 'every legislator') who shall take part, directly or indirectly, at this congress, whose object is to obtain modifications in the constitution, or a mediation between France and the rebels."

At these words the Assembly rose as if by common consent. Every hand was raised in the attitude of men ready to take a solemn oath; the tribunes and the chamber confounded their applause, and the decree was passed.

M. de Lessart, whom the gesture and the allusion of Guadet seemed to have already designated as the victim to the suspicions of the people, could not remain silent under the weight of these terrible allusions. "Mention has been made," said he, "of the political agents of the executive power: I declare that I know nothing which can authorise us to suspect their fidelity. For my own part, I will repeat the declaration of my colleagues in the ministry, and adopt it for my own—the constitution or death."

Whilst Gensonne and Guadet aroused the Assembly by this preconcerted scene, Vergniaud aroused the crowd by the copy of an address to the French people, which had been spread abroad for the last few days amongst the masses. The Girondists remembered the effect produced two years previously by the proposed address to the king to dismiss the troops.

"Frenchmen," said Vergniaud, "war threatens your frontiers; conspiracies against liberty are rife. Your armies are assembling: mighty movements agitate the empire. Seditious priests prepare in the confessional, and even in the pulpit, a rising against the constitution; martial law becomes essential. Thus it appeared to us just. But we only succeeded in brandishing the thunderbolts for a moment before the eyes of the rebels—the king has refused to sanction our decrees; the German princes make their territories a stronghold for the conspirators against us. They favour the plots of the emigres, and furnish them with an asylum, arms, horses, and provisions. Can patience endure this without becoming guilty of suicide? Doubtless you have renounced the desire of conquest; but you have not promised to suffer insolent provocation. You have shaken off the yoke of tyrants; surely, then, you will not bow the knee to foreign despots? Beware! you are surrounded by snares; traitors seek to reduce you through disgust or fatigue to a state of languor that enervates your courage; and soon perhaps they will strive to lead it astray. They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of calumny against the National Assembly to criminate the Revolution in your eyes. Oh, beware of these excessive terrors! Repulse indignantly these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the constitution, yet unceasingly speak of the monarchy. The monarchy is to them the counter-revolution. The monarchy is the nobility; the counter-revolution—that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille, chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty. Foreign satellites in the interior of the state—bankruptcy, engulphing with your assignats your private fortunes and the national wealth—the fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration, despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country. Nobility; that is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one for tyranny, the other for slavery. Nobility; ah! the very word is an insult to the human race.

"And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that all Europe is in arms.—You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a solemn declaration. Yes, the representatives of France, free, and deeply attached to the constitution, will be buried beneath her ruins, rather than suffer a capitulation unworthy of them to be wrung from them. Rally yourselves, take courage! In vain do they strive to excite the nations against you, they will only excite the princes, for the hearts of the people are with you, and you embrace their cause by defending your own. Hate war: it is the greatest crime of mankind, and the most fearful scourge of humanity; but since it is forced on you, follow the course of your destiny. Who can foresee how far will extend the punishment of those tyrants who have forced you to take arms?" Thus, these three statesmen joined their voices to impel the nation to war.

IV.

The last words of Vergniaud gave the people a tolerably clear prospect of an universal republic. Nor were the constitutionalists less eager in directing the ideas of the nation towards war. M. de Narbonne, on his return from his hasty journey, presented a most encouraging report to the Assembly, of the state of the fortified towns.—He praised every one. He presented to the country the young Mathieu de Montmorency, one of the most illustrious names of France, and whose character was even more noble than his name, as the representative of the aristocracy devoting itself to liberty. He declared that the army, in its attachment to its country did not separate the King from the Assembly. He praised the commanders of the troops, nominated Rochambeau general-in-chief of the army of the north, Berthier at Metz, Biron at Lisle, Luckner and La Fayette on the Rhine. He spoke of plans for the campaign, concerted between the king and these officers; he enumerated the national guards, ready to serve as a second line to the active army, and solicited that they should be promptly armed; he described these volunteers, as giving the army the most imposing of all characters—that of national feeling; he vouched for the officers, who had sworn fidelity to the constitution, and exonerated from the charge of treason those who had not done so; he encouraged the Assembly to mistrust those that hesitated. "Mistrust," said he, "is, in these stormy times, the most natural, but the most dangerous feeling; confidence wins men's hearts, and it is important that the people should show they have friends only." He ended by announcing that the active force of the army was 110,000 foot, and 20,000 cavalry, ready to take the field.

This report, praised by Brissot in his journal, and by the Girondists in the Assembly, afforded no longer any pretext for delaying the war. France felt that her strength was equal to her indignation, and she could be restrained no longer. The increasing unpopularity of the king augmented the popular excitement. Twice had he already arrested, by his royal veto, the energetic measures of the Assembly—the decree against the emigres, and the decree against the priests who had not taken the oath. These two vetos, the one dictated by his honour, the other by his conscience, were two terrible weapons, placed in his hand by the constitution, yet which he could not wield without wounding himself. The Girondists revenged themselves for this resistance by compelling him to make war on the princes, who were his brothers, and the emperor, whom they believed to be his accomplice.

The pamphleteers and the Jacobin journalists constantly spoke of these two vetos as acts of treason. The disturbances in Vendee were attributed to a secret understanding between the king and the rebellious clergy. In vain did the department of Paris, composed of men who respected the conscience of others, such as M. de Talleyrand, M. de la Rochefoucauld, and M. de Beaumetz, present to the king a petition in which the true principles of liberty protested against the revolutionary inquisition: counter-petitions poured in from the departments.

V.

Camille Desmoulins, the Voltaire of the clubs, lent to the petition of the citizens of Paris that insolent raillery, which made the success of his talent.

"Worthy representatives," ran the petition[13], "applauses are the civil list of the people, therefore do not reject ours. To collect the homages of good citizens, and the insults of the bad, is, to a National Assembly, to have combined all suffrages. The king has put his veto to your decree against the emigrants, a decree equally worthy of the majesty of the Roman people and the clemency of the French people. We do not complain of this act of the king, because we remember the maxim of the great politician Machiavel, which we beg of you to meditate upon profoundly—It is against nature to fall voluntarily from such a height. Penetrated with this truth, we do not then require from the king an impossible love for the constitution, nor do we find fault that he is opposed to your best decisions. But let public functionaries foresee the royal veto, and declare their rebellion against your decree, against the priests; let them carry off public opinion; let these men be precisely the same who caused to be shot in the Champ-de-Mars the citizens who were signing a petition against a decree which was not yet decided upon; let them inundate the empire with copies of this petition, which is nothing more than the first leaf of a great counter-revolutionary register and a subscription for civil war sent for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all permanent slaves. Fathers of the country! there is here such complicated ingratitude and abuse of confidence, of contradiction and chicanery, of prevarication and treason, that profoundly indignant at so much wickedness concealed beneath the cloak of philosophy and hypocritical civism, we say to you—Your decree has saved the country, and if they are obstinate in refusing you permission to save the country, well, the nation will save itself, for, after all, the power of a veto has a termination—a veto does not prevent the taking of the Bastille.

"You are told that the salary of the priests was a national debt. But when you only request the priests to declare that they will not be seditious—are not they who refuse this declaration already seditious in their hearts? And these seditious priests, who have never lent anything to the state—who are only creditors of the state in the name of benevolence—have they not a thousand times forfeited the donation through their ingratitude? Away, then, with these miserable sophisms, fathers of the country, and have no more doubt of the omnipotence of a free people. If liberty slumbers, how can the arm act? Do not raise this arm again, do not again lift the national club to crush insects. Did Cato and Cicero proceed against Cethegus or Catiline? It is the chiefs we should assail: strike at the head."

A scornful laugh echoed from the tribunes of the Assembly to the populace. The proces-verbal of this sitting was ordered to be sent to the eighty-three departments. Next day the Assembly reconsidered this, and negatived its vote of the previous evening; but publicity was still given to it, and it echoed through the provinces, carrying with it the disquietude, derision, and hatred attached to the Royal Veto. The constitution, handed over to ridicule and hooted in full assembly, had now become the plaything of the populace.

For many months the state of the kingdom resembled the state of Paris. All was uproar, confusion, denunciation, disturbance in the departments. Each courier brought his riots, seditions, petitions, outbreaks, and assassinations. The clubs established as many points of resistance to the constitution as there were communes in the empire. The civil war hatching in La Vendee burst out by massacres at Avignon.

VI.

This city and comtal, united to France by the recent decree of the Constituent Assembly, had remained from this period in an intermediary state between two dominations, so favourable to anarchy. The partisans of the papal government, and the partisans of the reunion with France, struggled there in alternations of hope and fear, which prolonged and envenomed their hate. The king, from a religious scruple, had for too long suspended the execution of the decree of reunion. Trembling to infringe upon the domain of the church, he deferred his decision, and his impolitic delays gave time for crimes.

France was represented in Avignon by mediators. The provisional authority of these mediators was supported by a detachment of troops of the line. The power, entirely municipal, was confided to the dictatorship of the municipality. The populace, excited and agitated, was divided into the French or revolutionary party, and the party opposed to the reunion by France and the Revolution. The fanaticism of religion with one, the fanaticism of liberty with the other, impelled the two parties even to crimes. The warmth of blood, the thirst of private vengeance, the heat of the climate, all added to civil passions. The violences of Italian republics were all to be seen in the manners of this Italian colony, of this branch establishment of Rome on the banks of the Rhone. The smaller states are, the more atrocious are their civil wars. There opposite opinions become personal hatreds; contests are but assassinations. Avignon commenced these wholesale assassinations by private murders.

On the 16th of October a gloomy agitation betrayed itself by the mobs of people collecting on various points, particularly consisting of persons enemies of the Revolution. The walls of the church were covered with placards, calling on the people to revolt against the provisional authority of the municipality. There were bruited about rumours of absurd miracles, which demanded in the name of Heaven vengeance for the assaults made against religion. A statue of the Virgin worshipped by the people in the church of the Cordeliers had blushed at the profanations of her temple. She had been seen to shed tears of indignation and grief. The people, educated under the papal government in such superstitious credulities, had gone in a body to the Cordeliers to avenge the cause of their protectress. Animated by fanatical exhortations, confiding in the divine interposition, the mob, on quitting the Cordeliers, and increasing as it went, hurried to the ramparts, closed the doors, turned the cannon on the city, and then spread themselves through the streets, demanding with loud clamours the overthrow of the government. The unfortunate Lescuyer, notary of Avignon, secretary (greffier) of the municipality, more particularly pointed out to the fury of the mob, was dragged violently from his residence, and along the pavement to the altar of the Cordeliers, where he was murdered by sabre-strokes and blows from bludgeons, trampled under foot, his dead body outraged and cast as an expiatory victim at the feet of the offended statue. The national guard, having despatched a detachment with two pieces of cannon from the fort, drove back the infuriated populace, and picked from the pavement the naked and lifeless carcase of Lescuyer. The prisons of the city had been broken open, and the miscreants they contained came to offer their assistance for other murders. Horrible reprisals were feared, and yet the mediators, absent from the city, were asleep, or closed their eyes upon the actual danger. The understanding between the leaders of the Paris clubs and the rioters of Avignon became more fearfully intimate.