On the morning of the day appointed for the great enterprise, all in the secret were vividly excited except the queen. She alone preserved her coolness. No one could have guessed from her demeanor that she was on the point of embarking in an undertaking on which, in her belief, her own life and the lives of all those dearest to her depended. The children, who knew nothing of what was going on, went to their usual occupations—the dauphin to his garden on the terrace, Madame Royale to her lessons; and Marie Antoinette herself, after giving some orders which were to be executed in the course of the next day or two, went out riding with her sister-in-law in the Bois de Boulogne. Her conversation throughout the day was light and cheerful. She jested with the officer on guard about the reports which she understood to be in circulation about some intended flight of the king, and was relieved to find that he totally disbelieved them. She even ventured on the same jest with La Fayette himself, who replied, in his usual surly fashion, that such a project was constantly talked of; but even his rudeness could not discompose her.

As the hour drew near she began to prepare her children. The princess was old enough to be talked to reasonably, and she contented herself, therefore, with warning her to show no surprise at any thing that she might see or hear. The dauphin was to be disguised as a girl, and it was with great glee that he let the attendants dress him, saying that he saw that they were going to act a play. The royal supper usually took place soon after nine; at half-past ten the family separated for the night, and by eleven their attendants were all dismissed; and Marie Antoinette had fixed that hour for departing, because, even if the sentinels should get a glimpse of them, they would be apt to confound them with the crowd which usually quit the palace at that time.

Accordingly, at eleven o'clock the Count de Fersen, dressed as a coachman, drove an ordinary job-carriage into the court-yard; and Marie Antoinette, who trusted nothing to others which she could do herself, conducted Madame de Tourzel and the children down-stairs, and seated them safely in the carriage. But even her nerves nearly gave way when La Fayette's coach, brilliantly lighted, drove by, passing close to her as he proceeded to the inner court to ascertain from the guard that every thing was in its usual condition. In an agony of fright she sheltered herself behind some pillars, and in a few minutes the marquis drove back, and she rejoined the king, who was awaiting her summons in his own apartment, while one of the disguised Body-guards went for the Princess Elizabeth. Even the children were inspired with their mother's courage. As the princess got into the carriage she trod on the dauphin, who was lying in concealment at the bottom, and the brave boy spoke not a word; while Louis himself gave a remarkable proof how, in spite of the want of moral and political resolution which had brought such miseries on himself and his country, he could yet preserve in the most critical moments his presence of mind and kind consideration for others. He was half way down-stairs when he returned to his room. M. Valory, who was escorting him, was dismayed when he saw him turn back, and ventured to remind him how precious was every instant. "I know that," replied the kind-hearted monarch; "but they will murder my servant to-morrow for having aided my escape;" and, sitting down at his table, he wrote a few lines declaring that the man had acted under his peremptory orders, and gave the note to him as a certificate to protect him from accusation. When all the rest were seated, the queen took her place. De Fersen drove them to the Porte St. Martin, where the great traveling-carriage was waiting, and, having transferred them to it, and taken a respectful leave of them, he fled at once to Brussels, which, more fortunate than those for whom he had risked his life, he reached in safety.

For a hundred miles the royal fugitives proceeded rapidly and without interruption. One of the supposed couriers was on the box, another rode by the side of the carriage, and the third went on in advance to see that the relays were in readiness. Before midday they reached Chalons, the place where they were to be met by the first detachment of De Bouille's troops; and, when the well-known uniforms met her eye, Marie Antoinette for the first time gave full expression to her feelings. "Thank God, we are saved!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands; the fervor of her exclamation bearing undesigned testimony to the greatness of the fears which, out of consideration for others, she had hitherto kept to herself; but in truth out of this employment of the troops arose all their subsequent disasters.

De Bouille had been unwilling to send his detachments so far forward, pointing out that the notice which their arrival in the different towns was sure to attract would do more harm than their presence as a protection could do good. But his argument had been overruled by the king himself, who apprehended the greatest danger from the chance of being overtaken, and expected it, therefore, to increase with every hour of the journey. De Bouille's fears, however, were found to be the best justified by the event. In more than one town, even in the few hours that had elapsed since the arrival of the soldiers, there had been quarrels between them and the towns-people; in others, which was still worse, the populace had made friends with them and seduced them from their loyalty, so that the officers in command had found it necessary to withdraw them altogether; and anxiety at their unexpected absence caused Louis more than once to show himself at the carriage window. More than once he was recognized by people who knew him and kept his counsel; but Drouet, the postmaster at Ste. Menehould, a town about one hundred and seventy miles from Paris, was of a less loyal disposition. He had lately been in the capital, where he had become infected with the Jacobin doctrines. He too saw the king's face, and on comparing his somewhat striking features with the stamp on some public documents which he chanced to have in his pocket, became convinced of his identity. He at once reported to the magistrates what he had seen, and with their sanction rode forward to the next town, Clermont, hoping to be able to collect a force sufficient to stop the royal carriage on its arrival there. But the king traveled so fast that he had quit Clermont before Drouet reached it, and he even arrived at Varennes before his pursuer. Had he quit that place also he would have been in safety, for just beyond it De Bouille had posted a strong division which would have been able to defy all resistance. But Varennes, a town on the Oise, was so small as to have no post-house, and by some mismanagement the royal party had not been informed at which end of the town they were to find the relay. The carriage halted while M. Valory was making the necessary inquiries; and, while it was standing still, Drouet rode up and forbade the postilions to proceed. He himself hastened on through the town, collected a few of the towns-people, and with their aid upset a cart or two on the bridge to block up the way; and, having thus made the road impassable, he roused the municipal authorities, for it was nearly midnight, and then, returning to the royal carriage, he compelled the royal family to dismount and follow him to the house of the mayor, a petty grocer, whose name was Strausse. The magistrates sounded the tocsin: the National Guard beat to arms: the king and queen were prisoners.

How they were allowed to remain so is still, after all the explanations that have been given, incomprehensible. Two officers with sixty hussars, all well disposed and loyal, were in a side street of the town waiting for their arrival, of which they were not aware. Six of the troopers actually passed the travelers in the street as they were proceeding to the mayor's house, but no one, not even the queen, appealed to them for succor; or they could have released them without an effort, for Drouet's whole party consisted of no more than eight unarmed men. And when, an hour afterward, the officers in command learned that the king was in the town in the hands of his enemies, instead of at once delivering him, they were seized with a panic: they would not take on themselves the responsibility of acting without express orders, but galloped back to De Bouille to report the state of affairs. In less than an hour three more detachments, amounting in all to above one hundred men, also reached the town; and their commanders did make their way to the king, and asked his orders. He could only reply that he was a prisoner, and had no orders to give; and not one of the officers had the sense to perceive that the fact of his announcing himself a prisoner was in itself an order to deliver him.

One word of command from Louis to clear the way for him at the sword's point would yet have been sufficient; but he had still the same invincible repugnance as ever to allow blood to be shed in his quarrel. He preferred peaceful means, which could not but fail. With a dignity arising from his entire personal fearlessness, he announced his name and rank, his reasons for quitting Paris and proceeding to Montmedy; declaring that he had no thought of quitting the kingdom, and demanded to be allowed to proceed on his journey. While the queen, her fears for her children overpowering all other feelings, addressed herself with the most earnest entreaties to the mayor's wife, declaring that their very lives would be in danger if they should be taken back to Paris, and imploring her to use her influence with her husband to allow them to proceed. Neither Strausse nor his wife was ill-disposed toward the king, but had not the courage to comply with the request of the royal couple whom, after a little time, the mayor and his wife could not have allowed to proceed, however much they might have wished it; for the tocsin had brought up numbers of the National Guard, who were all disloyal; while some of the soldiers began to show a disinclination to act against them. And so matters stood for some hours; a crowd of towns-people, peasants, National Guards, and dragoons thronging the room; the king at times speaking quietly to his captors; the queen weeping, for the fatigue of the journey, and the fearful disappointment at being thus baffled at the last moment, after she had thought that all danger was passed, had broken down even her nerves. At first she had tried to persuade Louis to act with resolution; but when, as usual, she failed, she gave way to despair, and sat silent, with touching, helpless sorrow, gazing on her children, who had fallen asleep.

At seven o'clock on the morning of the 22d a single horseman rode into the town. He was an aid-de-camp of La Fayette. On the morning of the 21st the excitement had been great in Paris when it became known that the king had fled. The mob rose in furious tumult. They forced their way into the Tuileries, plundering the palace and destroying the furniture. A fruit-woman took possession of the queen's bed, as a stall to range her cherries on, saying that to-day it was the turn of the nation; and a picture of the king was torn down from the walls, and, after being stuck up in derision outside the gates for some time, was offered for sale to the highest bidder.[2] In the Assembly the most violent language was used. An officer whose name has been preserved through the eminence which after his death was attained by his widow and his children, General Beauharnais, was the president; and as such, he announced that M. Bailly had reported to him that the enemies of the nation had carried off the king. The whole Assembly was roused to fury at the idea of his having escaped from their power. A decree was at once drawn up in form, commanding that Louis should be seized wherever he could be found, and brought back to Paris. No one could pretend that the Assembly had the slightest right to issue such an order; but La Fayette, with the alacrity which he always displayed when any insult was to be offered to the king or queen, at once sent it off by his own aid-de-camp, M. Romeuf, with instructions to see that it was carried out The order was now delivered to Strausse; the king, with scarcely an attempt at resistance, declared his willingness to obey it; and before eight o'clock he and his family, with their faithful Body-guard, now in undisguised captivity, were traveling back to Paris.

When was there ever a journey so miserable as that which now brought its sovereigns back to that disloyal and hostile city! The National Guard of Varennes, and of other towns through which they passed, claimed a right to accompany them; and as they were all infantry, the speed of the carriage was limited to their walking pace. So slowly did the procession advance, that it was not till the fourth day that it reached the barrier; and, in many places on the road, a mob had collected in expectation of their arrival, and aggravated the misery of their situation by ferocious threats addressed to the queen, and even to the little dauphin. But at Chalons they were received with respect by the municipal authorities; the Hotel de Ville had been prepared for their reception: a supper had been provided. The queen was even entreated to allow some of the principal ladies of the city to be presented to her; and, as the next day was the great Roman Catholic festival of the Fete Dieu, they were escorted with all honor to hear mass in the cathedral, before they resumed their journey. Even the National Guard were not all hostile or insolent. At Epernay, though a menacing crowd surrounded the carriage as they dismounted, the commanding officer took up the dauphin in his arms to carry him in safety to the door of the hotel; comforting the queen at the same time with a loyal whisper well suited to her feelings, "Despise this clamor, madame; there is a God above all."

But, miserable as their journey was, soon after leaving Chalons it became more wretched still. They were no longer to be allowed the privilege of suffering and grieving by themselves. The Assembly had sent three of its members to take charge of them, selecting, as might have been expected, two who were known as among their bitterest enemies—Barnave, and a man named Petion; the third, M. Latour Maubourg, was a plain soldier, who might be depended on for carrying out his orders with resolution. In one respect those who made the choice were disappointed. Barnave, whose hostility to the king and queen had been chiefly dictated by personal feelings, was entirely converted by the dignified resignation of the queen, and from this day renounced his republicanism; and, though he adhered to what were known as Constitutionalist views, was ever afterward a zealous advocate of both the monarch and the monarchy. But Petion took every opportunity of insulting Louis, haranguing him on the future abolition of royalty, and reproaching him for many of his actions, and for what he believed to be his feelings and views for the future.

It was the afternoon of the 25th when they came in sight of Paris. So great had been Marie Antoinette's mental sufferings that in those few days her hair had turned white; and fresh and studied humiliations were yet in store for her. The carriage was not allowed to take the shortest road, but was conducted some miles round, that it might be led in triumph down the Champs Elysees, where a vast mob was waiting to feast their eyes on the spectacle, whose display of sullen ill-will had been bespoken by a notice prohibiting any one from taking off his hat to the king, or uttering a cheer. The National Guard were forbidden to present arms to him; and it seemed as if they interpreted this order as a prohibition also against using them in his defense; for, as the carriage approached the palace, a gang of desperate ruffians, some of whom were recognized as among the most ferocious of the former assailants of Versailles, forced their way through their ranks, pressed up against the carriage, and even mounted on the steps. Barnave and Latour Maubourg, fearing that they intended to break open the doors, placed themselves against them; but they contented themselves with looking in at the window, and uttering sanguinary threats. Marie Antoinette became alarmed—not for herself, but for her children. They had so closed up every avenue of air that those within were nearly stifled, and the youngest, of course, suffered most. She let down a glass, and appealed to those who were crowding round: "For the love of God," she exclaimed, "retire; my children are choking!" "We will soon choke you," was the only reply they vouchsafed to her. At last, however, La Fayette came up with an armed escort, and they were driven off; but they still followed the carriage up to the very gate of the palace with yells of insult. And it had a stranger follower still: behind the royal carriage came an open cabriolet, in which sat Drouet, with a laurel crown on his head,[3] as if the chief object of the procession wore to celebrate his triumph over his king.

The mob was even hoping to add to its impressiveness by the slaughter of some immediate victims—not of the king and queen, for they believed them to be destined to public execution; but they were eager to massacre the faithful Body-guards, who had been brought back, bound, on the box of the carriage; and they would undoubtedly have carried out their bloody purpose had not the queen remembered them, and, as she was dismounting, entreated Barnave and La Fayette to protect them. Though during the last three days many things had had their names altered,[4] the Tuileries had been spared. It was still in name a royal palace, but those who now entered it knew it for their prison. The sun was setting, the emblem of the extinction of their royalty, as they ascended the stairs to find such rest as they might, and to ponder in privacy for this one night over their fatal disappointment, and their still more fatal future.

Yet, though their return was full of ignominy and wretchedness, though their home had become a prison, the only exit from which was to be the scaffold, still, if posthumous renown can compensate for miseries endured in this life; if it be worth while to purchase, even by the most terrible and protracted sufferings, an undying, unfading memory of the most admirable virtues—of fidelity, of truth, of patience, of resignation, of disinterestedness, of fortitude, of all the qualities which most ennoble and sanctify the heart—it may be said, now that her agonies have long been terminated, and that she has been long at rest, that it was well for Marie Antoinette that she had failed to reach Montmedy, and that she had thus fallen again, without having to reproach herself in any single particular, into the hands of her enemies. As a prisoner to the basest of mankind, as victim to the most ferocious monsters that have ever disgraced humanity, she has ever commanded, and she will never cease to command, the sympathy and admiration of every generous mind. But the case would have been widely different had Louis and she found the refuge which they sought with the loyal and brave De Bouille. Their arrival in his camp could not have failed to be a signal for civil war; and civil war, under such circumstances as those of France at that time, could have had but one termination—their defeat, dethronement, and expulsion from the country. In a foreign land they might, indeed, have found security, but they would have enjoyed but little happiness. Wherever he may be, the life of a deposed and exiled sovereign must be one of ceaseless mortification. The greatest of the Italian poets has well said that the recollection of former happiness is the bitterest aggravation of present misery; and not only to the fugitive monarch himself, but to those who still preserve their fidelity to him, and to the foreign people to whom he is indebted for his asylum, the recollection of his former greatness will ever be at hand to add still further bitterness to his present humiliation. The most friendly feeling his misfortunes can ever excite is a contemptuous pity, such as noble and proud minds must find it harder to endure than the utmost virulence of hatred and enmity.

From such a fate, at least, Marie Antoinette was saved. During the remainder of her life her failure did indeed condemn her to a protraction of trial and agony such as no other woman has ever endured; but she always prized honor far above life, and it also opened to her an immortality of glory such as no other woman has ever achieved.



CHAPTER XXXII.

Marie Antoinette's Feelings on her Return.—She sees Hopes of Improvement.—The 17th of July.—The Assembly inquire into the King's Conduct on leaving Paris.—They resolve that there is no Reason for taking Proceedings.—Excitement in Foreign Countries.—The Assembly proceeds to complete the Constitution.—It declares all the Members Incapable of Election to the New Assembly.—Letters of Marie Antoinette to the Emperor and to Mercy.—The Declaration of Pilnitz.—The King accepts the Constitution.—Insults offered to him at the Festival of the Champ de Mars.—And to the Queen at the Theatre.—The First or Constituent Assembly is dissolved.

It was eminently characteristic of Marie Antoinette that her very first act, the morning after her return, was to write to De Fersen, to inform him that she was safe and well in health; but though she had roused herself for that effort of gratitude and courteous kindness, for some days she seemed stupefied by grief and disappointment, and unable to speak or think for a single moment of any thing but the narrow chance which had crushed her hopes, and changed success, when it had seemed to be secured, into ruin; and, if ever she could for a moment drive the feeling from her mind, her enemies took care to force it back upon her every hour. Before they reached the Tuileries, La Fayette had obtained from the Assembly authority to place guards wherever he might think fit; and no jailer ever took more rigorous precautions for the safe-keeping of the most desperate criminals than this man of noble birth, but most ignoble heart[1], now practiced toward his king and queen. Sentinels were placed along every passage of the palace, and, that they might have their prisoners constantly in sight, the door of every room was kept open day and night. The queen was not allowed even to close her bed-chamber, and a soldier was placed so as at all times to command a sight of the whole room; the only moment that the door was permitted to be shut being a short period each morning while she was dressing.

But after a time she rallied, and even began again to think the future not wholly desperate. She always looked at the most promising side of affairs, and the first shock of the anguish felt at Varennes had scarcely passed away, when, with irrepressible sanguineness, she began to look around her and search for some foundation on which to build fresh hopes. She even thought that she had found it in the divisions which were becoming daily more conspicuous in the Assembly itself. She had yet to learn that at such times violence always overpowers moderation, and that the worse men are, the more certain are they to obtain the upper hand.

The divisions among her enemies were indeed so furious as to justify at one time the expectation that one party would destroy the other. The Jacobins summoned a vast meeting, whose members they fixed beforehand at a hundred thousand citizens, to meet on Sunday, the 17th of July, to petition the Assembly to dethrone the king. On the appointed day, long before the hour fixed for the meeting, a fierce riot took place, the causes and even the circumstances of which have never been clearly ascertained, but which soon became marked with scenes of extraordinary violence. La Fayette, who tried to crush it in the bud, was pelted and fired at. Bailly hung out the red flag, the token of martial law being proclaimed, at the Hotel de Ville, The mob pelted the National Guard. The National Guard, too much exasperated and alarmed to obey La Fayette's order to fire over the people's heads, at one volley shot down a hundred of the rioters. The Jacobin leaders fled in alarm. Robespierre, who had been one of the chief organizers of the tumult, being also one of the basest of cowards, was the most terrified of all, and fled for shelter to his admirer, of congenial spirit, Madame Roland, whose protection he afterward repaid by sending her to the scaffold. The riot was quelled, and the officers of the National Guard urged La Fayette to take advantage of the opportunity, and lead them on to close by force the club of the Jacobins, and another of equal ferocity, known as the Cordeliers[2], lately founded by the fiercest of the Jacobins, Danton, and a butcher named Legendre, who boasted of his ferocity as his only title to interfere in the Government. If he had been honest in his professions of a desire to save the monarchy, La Fayette would have adopted their advice, for it had already become plain to every one that the existence of these clubs was incompatible with the preservation of the kingly authority; but his imbecile love of popularity made him fear to offend even such a body of miscreants as the followers of Danton and Robespierre, and he professed to believe that he had given them a sufficient lesson, and had so convinced them of his power to crush them that they would be grateful to him for sparing them, and learn to act with more moderation in future.

The decision of the Assembly also on the question, of the king's conduct in leaving Paris was not without its encouragement to one of the queen's disposition. She herself had been interrogated by commissioners appointed by the Assembly to inquire into the circumstances connected with the transaction, and her statement has been preserved. With her habitual anxiety to conceal from others the king's incapacity and want of resolution, she represented herself as acting wholly under his orders. "I declare," said she, "that as the king desired to quit Paris with his children, it would have been unnatural for me to allow any thing to prevent me from accompanying him. During the last two years, I have sufficiently proved, on several occasions, that I should never leave him; and what in this instance determined me most was the assurance which I felt that he would never wish to quit the kingdom. If he had had such a desire, all my influence would have been exerted to dissuade him from such a purpose[3]." And she proceeded further to exculpate all their attendants. She declared that Madame de Tourzel, who had been ill for some weeks, had never received her orders till the very day of the departure. She knew not whither she was going, and had taken no luggage, so that the queen herself had been forced to lend her some clothes. The three Body-guards were equally ignorant, and the waiting-women. Though it was true, she said, that the Count and Countess de Provence had gone to Flanders, they had only taken that course to avoid interfering with the relays which were required by the king, and had intended to rejoin him at Montmedy. The king's own statement tallied with hers in every respect, though it was naturally more explicit as to his motives and intentions; and his innocence of purpose was so irresistibly demonstrated, that, though Robespierre, in the most sanguinary speech which, he had ever yet uttered, demanded that he should be brought to trial, not concealing his desire that it should end in his condemnation; and though Petion, and a wretch named Buzot, a warm admirer and intimate friend of Madame Roland, demanded his deposition and the proclamation of a republic, Barnave had no difficulty in carrying the Assembly with him in opposition to their violence; and it was finally resolved that nothing which had happened furnished grounds for taking proceedings against any member of the royal family. It was ordered at the same time that De Bouille should be arrested and impeached; but when he found that nothing could be effected for the deliverance of the king, he had fled across the frontiers, and was safe from their malice.

Meanwhile, the unconstitutional and unprecedented violence which had been offered to the king naturally created the greatest excitement and indignation in all foreign countries. A month before the late expedition, the emperor had addressed a formal note to M. Montmorin, as Secretary of State, declaring that he would regard any ill-treatment of his sister as an injury done to himself;[4] and now[5] the chivalrous Gustavus of Sweden proposed to address to the Assembly a joint letter of warning from all the sovereigns of Europe, to declare that they would all make common cause with the King of France if any attempt were made to offer him further violence. But even the Austrian ministers regarded such a declaration as more likely to aggravate than to diminish the dangers of those whom it was designed to serve; and the queen herself preferred waiting for a time, to see the result of the strife between the rival parties in the Assembly.

The Assembly was at this time fully occupied with the completion of the Constitution, a work for which it had but little time left, since its own duration had been fixed at two years, which would expire in September; and also with the consideration of a question concerning the composition of the next Assembly which had been lately brought forward, and on which the queen was unfortunately misled into using her influence to procure a decision which was undoubtedly, in its eventual consequences, as disastrous to the king's fortunes as it was irreconcilable with common sense. Robespierre brought forward a resolution that no members of the existing Assembly should be eligible for a seat in that by which it was to be replaced. It was in reality a resolution to exclude from the new Assembly not only every one who had any parliamentary or legislative experience, but also all the adherents or friends of the throne, and to place the coming elections wholly in the power of the Jacobins. Robespierre was willing to be excluded himself from a conviction, that, with such an Assembly as would surely be returned, the Jacobin Club would practically exercise all the power of the State. But the Constitutional party, who saw that it was aimed at them, opposed it with great vigor; and would probably have been able to defeat it if the Royalist members who still retained their seats would have consented to join them. Unhappily the queen took the opposite view. With far more acuteness, penetration, and fertility of imagination than are usually given to women, or to men either, she had still in some degree the defect common to her sex, of being prone to confine her views to one side of a question; and to overrule her reason by her feelings and prejudices. Though she acknowledged the service which Barnave had rendered by defeating those who had wished to bring the king and herself to trial, she, nevertheless, still regarded the Constitutionalists in general with deep distrust as the party which desired to lower, and had lowered, the authority and dignity of the throne; and, viewing the whole Assembly with not unnatural antipathy, she fancied that one composed wholly of new members could not possibly be, more unfriendly to the king's person and government, and might probably be far better disposed toward them. She easily brought the king to adopt her views, and exerted the whole of her influence to secure the passing of the decree, sending agents to canvass those deputies who were opposed to it. With the Royalist members, the Extreme Right, her voice was law, and, by the unnatural union of them and the Jacobins, the resolution was carried.

It is the more singular that she should have been willing thus, as it were, to proscribe the members of the present Assembly, because, in a very remarkable letter which she wrote to her brother the emperor at the end of July, she founds the hopes for the future, which she expresses with a degree of sanguineness which can hardly fail to be thought strange when the events of June are remembered, on the conduct of the Assembly itself. The letter is too long to quote at full length, but a few extracts from it will help us in our task of forming a proper estimate of her character, from the unreserved exposition which it contains of her feelings, both past and present, with her views and hopes for the future, even while she keenly appreciates the difficulties of the king's position; and from the unabated eagerness for the welfare of France which it displays in every reflection and suggestion. That she still considers the imperial alliance of great importance to the welfare of both nations will surprise no one. The suspension of the royal authority which the Assembly had decreed on the 26th of June had been removed on the decision that the king was not to be proceeded against. Yet her first sentence shows that she was still subjected to cruel and lawless tyranny, which even hindered her correspondence with her own relations. A queen might have expected to be able to write in security to another sovereign; a sister to a brother; but La Fayette and those in authority regarded the rights of neither royalty nor kindred.

"A friend, my dear brother, has undertaken to convey this letter to you, for I myself have no means of giving you news of my health. I will not enter into details of what preceded our departure. You have already known all the reasons for it. During the events which befell us on our journey, and in the situation in which we were immediately after our return to Paris, I was profoundly distressed. After I recovered from the first shock of the agitation which they produced, I set myself to work to reflect on what I had seen; and I have endeavored to form a clear idea of what, in the actual state of affairs, the king's interests are, and what the conduct is which they prescribe to me. My ideas have been formed by a combination of motives which I will proceed to explain to you.

"...The situation of affairs here has greatly changed since our journey. The National Assembly was divided into a multitude of parties. Far from order being re-established, every day seemed to diminish the power of the law. The king, deprived of all authority, did not even see any possibility of recovering it on the completion of the Constitution through the influence of the Assembly, since that body itself was every day losing more the respect of the people. In short, it was impossible to see any end to disorder.

"To-day, circumstances present much more hope. The men who have the greatest influence in affairs are united together, and have openly declared for the preservation of the monarchy and the king, and for the re-establishment of order. Since their union, the efforts of the seditious have been defeated by a great superiority of strength. The Assembly has acquired a consistency and an authority in every part of the kingdom, which it seems disposed to use to establish the observance of the laws and to put an end to the Revolution. At this moment the most moderate men, who have never ceased to be opposed to revolutionary acts, are uniting, because they see in union the only prospect of enjoying in safety what the Revolution has left them, and of putting an end to the troubles of which they dread the continuance. In short, every thing seems at this moment to contribute to put an end to the agitations and commotions to which France has been given over for the last two years. This termination of them, however, natural and possible as it is, will not give the Government the degree of force and authority which I regard as necessary; but it will preserve us from greater misfortunes; it will place us in a situation of greater tranquillity, and, when men's minds have recovered from their present intoxication, perhaps they will see the usefulness of giving the royal authority a greater range.

"This, in the course which matters are now taking, is what one can foresee for the future, and I compare this result with what we could promise ourselves from a line of conduct opposed to the wishes which the nation displays. In that ease I see an absolute impossibility of obtaining any thing except by the employment of a superior force; and on this last supposition I will say nothing of the personal dangers which the king, my son, and I myself may have to encounter. But what could be the consequences but some enterprise, the issue of which is uncertain, and the ultimate result of which, whatever it might be, presents disasters such as one can not endure to contemplate? The army is in a bad state from want of leaders and of subordination; but the kingdom is full of armed men, and their imagination is so inflamed that it is impossible to foresee what they might do, and the number of victims who might be sacrificed.... It is impossible, when one sees what is going on here, to calculate what might be the effects of their despair. I only see, in the events which might arise out of such an attempt, but very doubtful prospects of success, and the certainty of great miseries for every one....

"If the Revolution should be terminated in the manner of which I have spoken, then it will be important that the king shall acquire, in a solid manner, the confidence and consideration which alone can give a real strength to the royal authority. No means are so well calculated to procure them for him as the influence which we might have over one of your resolutions[6] which would contribute to insure peace to France, and to dispel disquietude, which are so much the more grievous for the whole world, that they are among the principal obstacles to the re-establishment of public tranquillity. The share which in that way we should have in the termination of these troubles would win over to us all men of moderate temper, while the others, especially the chiefs of the Revolution, would attach themselves to us because of the sincere and efficacious inclination which we should have shown to conduct matters to the end, which they all wish for. Your own interests seem to me also to have a place in this system of conduct. The National Assembly, before separating, will desire, in concert with the king, to determine the alliances to which France is to continue attached; and the power of Europe which shall be the first to recognize the Constitution, after it has been accepted by the king, will undoubtedly be the one with which the Assembly will be inclined to form the closest alliance; and to these general views I might add the means which I myself have to dispose men's minds to maintain this alliance— means which will be extremely strengthened, if you share my view of the present circumstances.

"I can not doubt that the chiefs of the Revolution, who have supported the king in the last crisis, will be desirous to assure to him the consideration and respect necessary to the exercise of his authority, and that they will see in a close alliance of France with that power with which he is connected by ties of blood, a means of combining his dignity with the interests of the nation, and in that way of consolidating and strengthening a Constitution of which they all agree that the majesty of the king is one essential foundation.

"I do not know if, independently of all other reasons, the king will not find in that feeling and in the inclinations of the nation, when it has recovered its calmness, more deference, and a temper more favorable to him, than he could expect from the majority of those Frenchmen who are at present out of the kingdom.[7]"

And a letter which she wrote to Mercy a fortnight later is perhaps even more worthy of attention, as supplying abundant proof, if proof were needed, of the good-will and good faith which were the leading principles of herself and the king in all their dealings with the Assembly. Since her letter to her brother, matters had been proceeding rapidly. She had found some means of treating more directly than on any previous occasion, not only with Barnave, but with the far more unscrupulous A. Lameth; and the Assembly had made such progress in completing the Constitution that it was on the point of submitting it to the king for his acceptance. We have seen in Marie Antoinette's letter to the emperor that she was convinced of the necessity of Louis signifying that acceptance, and she adhered to that view of the policy to be pursued, though the last touches given to the Constitution had rendered many of its articles far more unreasonable than she had anticipated, and though the great English statesman, Burke, whose "Reflections" of the preceding year had naturally caused him to be regarded as one of the ablest advisers on whom she could rely, forwarded to her an earnest exhortation to induce her husband to reject it. He implored her "to have nothing to do with traitors." Using the argument which, to one so sensitive for her honor as Marie Antoinette, was well calculated to exert an almost irresistible influence over her mind, he declared that "her resolution at this most critical moment was to decide whether her glory was to be maintained, and her distresses to cease, or whether" (and he begged pardon for ever mentioning such an alternative) "shame and affliction were to be her portion for the rest of her life;" and he declared that "if the king should accept the Constitution, both king and queen were ruined forever."

The great writer was, as in more than one other instance of his career, too earnest in his conviction that principles were at stake in the course which he recommended, to consider whether that course were safe for those on whom he urged it, or even practicable. But Marie Antoinette, as one on whose decision the very lives of her husband and her child might depend, felt bound to consider, in the first place, how far her adoption of the advice thus tendered might endanger both; and, accordingly, while expressing to Mercy the full extent of her repugnance to the system of government, if indeed it deserved the name of a system, which the new Constitution had framed, she shows that her disapproval of it has in no degree led her to change her mind on the practical question of the course which the king should pursue. She justifies her decision to Mercy in a most elaborate letter, in which the whole position is surveyed with admirable good sense.[8]

"Our position is this: We are now on the point of having the Constitution brought to us for acceptance. It is in itself so monstrous that it is impossible that it should be long maintained. But, in the position in which we are, can we risk refusing it? No; and I will prove it to you. I am not speaking of the personal dangers which we should run. We have fully shown by the journey which we undertook two months ago that we do not take our own safety into account when the public welfare is at stake. But this Constitution is so intrinsically bad that it can only acquire consistence from any resistance which we might oppose to it. Our business, therefore, is to take a middle course, which may save our honor, and may put us in such a position that the people may come back to us when once their eyes are opened, and they have become weary of the existing state of affairs. I think also that it is necessary that, when they have presented the act to the king, he should keep it by him a few days; for he is not supposed to know what it is till it has been presented to him in all legal form; and that then he should summon the Commissioners before him, not to make any comments, not to demand any alterations, which perhaps might not be admitted, and which would be interpreted as an admission that he approved of the basis, but to declare that his opinions are not changed; that, in his declaration of the 20th of June,[9] he proved the absolute impossibility of governing under the new system, and that he is still of the same mind; but that, for the sake of the tranquillity of his country, he sacrifices himself; and that, as his people and the nation stake their happiness on his accepting it, he does not hesitate to signify that acceptance; and that the sight of their happiness will speedily make him forget the cruel and bitter griefs which they have inflicted on him and on his family.

"But if we take this line we must adhere to it; and, above all things, we must avoid any step which can create distrust, and we must move on, so to say, always with the law in our hand. I promise you that this is the best way to give them an early disgust at the Constitution. The mischief is, that for this we shall want an able and a trustworthy ministry.... Several people urge us to reject the act, and the king's brothers press upon him every day that it is indispensable to do so, and affirm that we shall be supported. By whom?" And she proceeds to examine the situation and policy of Spain, of the empire of England, and of Prussia, to prove that from none of them is there any hope of active aid, while to trust to the emigrants would be the worst expedient of all, because "we should then fall into a new slavery worse than the first, since, while we should appear to be in some degree indebted to them, we should not be able to extricate ourselves from their toils. They already prove this when they refuse to listen to the persons who are in our confidence, on the pretext that they do not trust them, while they seek to force us to give ourselves up to M. de Calonne, who, I fear, in all that he does is guided by nothing but his own ambition, his private enmities, and his habitual levity, thinking every thing he wishes not only possible, but already done.

"... One circumstance worthy of remark is that in all these discussions on the Constitution the people take no interest, and concern themselves solely about their own affairs, limiting their wishes to having a Constitution and getting rid of the aristocrats... As to our acceptance of the Constitution, it is impossible for any thinking being to avoid seeing that we are not free. But it is essential that we should not awaken a suspicion of our feelings in the monsters who surround us. Let me know where the emperor's forces are and what is their present position. In every case the foreign powers can alone save us. The army is lost. There is no money. There is no bond, no curb which can restrain the populace, which is everywhere armed. Even the chiefs of the Revolution, when they wish to speak of order, are not listened to. This is the deplorable condition in which we are placed. Add that we have not a single friend— that every one betrays us, some out of hatred, others out of weakness or ambition. In short, I actually am reduced to dread the day when they will have the appearance of giving us a kind of freedom. At least, in the state of nullity in which we are at present, no one can reproach us.... You know the character of the person with whom I have to do.[10] At the last moment, when one seems to have convinced him, an argument, a word, will make him change his mind before any one suspects it. This is the reason why many expedients can not be even attempted."

On the 21st she hears that the Charter will be presented at the end of the week, and she repeats her fears that the conduct of the emigrants may involve them in fresh troubles. "It is essential that the French, and most especially the brothers of the king, should keep in the background, and allow the foreign princes to act by themselves. But no entreaty, no argument from us will induce them to do so. The emperor must insist upon it. It is the only way in which he can serve us. You know yourself the mischievous wrong-headedness and evil designs of the emigrants. The cowards! after having abandoned us, they seek to make us expose ourselves alone to danger, and serve nothing but their interests. I do not accuse the king's brothers; I believe their hearts and their intentions to be pure, but they are surrounded and guided by ambitious men who will ruin them after having first ruined us." ... On the 26th she hears that it will still be a week before the Constitution is brought to the king. "It is impossible, considering our position, that the king should refuse to accept it. You may depend upon this being true, since I say it. You know my character sufficiently to be sure that it would incline me rather to a noble and bold course. We have no resource but in the foreign powers. They must come to our assistance; but it is the emperor who must put himself at the head of every thing, and manage every thing.... I declare to you that matters are now come to such a state that it would be better to be king of a single province than of a kingdom so abandoned and disordered as this. I shall endeavor, if I can, to send the emperor information on all these matters. But, in the mean time, do you tell him all that you consider necessary to prove to him that we have no longer any resource except in him, and that our happiness, our existence, and that of my child depend on him alone, and on his prudence and promptitude in action.[11]"

And, however she from time to time caught at momentary hopes arising from other sources, the only one on which she placed any permanent reliance were the affection and power of her brother; and that hope, in the course of the winter, was cut from under her by his death.[12] Yet so correct was her judgment and appreciation of sound political principles, or, perhaps we might say, so keen was her sense of what was due to the independence and dignity of France, in spite of its present disloyalty, that a report that the emperor and Prussia had, by implication, claimed a right to dictate to France in matters of her internal government drew from her a warm remonstrance. As sovereign and brother she conceived that Leopold had a right to interfere to insure the safety of his own sister and of a brother sovereign; but she never desired him to interpose for any other object. From her childhood, as we have seen more than once, she had learned to regard the Prussian character and Prussian designs with abhorrence. And in a letter to Mercy of the 12th of September, after expressing an earnest hope that the emperor will not allow himself to be guided by "the cunning of Calonne, and the detestable policy of Prussia," she adds, "It is said here that in the agreement signed at Pilnitz,[13] the two powers engage never to permit the new French Constitution to be established. There certainly are things which foreign powers have a right to oppose, but, as to what concerns the internal laws of a country, every nation has a right to adopt those which suit it. They would be wrong, therefore, to intervene in such a matter; and all the world would see in such an act a proof of the intrigues of the emigrants.[14]"

She proceeds to tell him that all is settled. The king had adopted the line which she had marked out for him in her former letter. The Constitution had been presented to him on the 3d of September. He had taken a few days to consider it, not with the idea of proposing the slightest alteration, but in order to avoid the appearance of acting under compulsion; and, on the same day on which she wrote to Mercy, he was drawing up a letter to the Assembly, to announce his intention of visiting the Assembly to give it his royal assent in due form. But, though she would not have had him act otherwise, she can not announce this apparent termination of the contest without some natural expressions of grief and indignation.

"At last the die is cast. All that we have now to do is to regulate the future progress and conduct of affairs as circumstances may permit. I only wish that others would regulate their conduct by mine. But even in our own inner circle we have great difficulties and great conflicts. Pity me: I assure you that it requires more courage to support the condition in which I am placed than to encounter a pitched battle. And the more so that I do not deceive myself, and that I see nothing but misery in the want of energy shown by some, and the evil designs of others. My God! is it possible that, endowed as I am with force of character, and feeling as I do so thoroughly the blood which runs in my veins, I should yet be destined to pass my days in such an age and with such men! But, for all this, never believe that my courage is deserting me. Not for my own sake, but for the sake of my child, I will support myself, and I will fulfill to the end my long and painful career, I can no longer see what I am writing. Farewell.[15]"

Tears, we may suppose, were blinding her eyes, in spite of all her fortitude. There was no exaggeration in her declaration to the Empress Catherine of Russia, with whom at this time she was in frequent communication, that the "distrust which was shown by all around them was a moral and continual death, a thousand times worse than that physical death which was a release from all miseries.[16]" And in the same letter she explains that to remove this distrust was one principal object which the king and she had in view in all their measures. Yet, in spite of all his concessions, the week was not to pass without fresh insults being offered to the king, which shocked even his phlegmatic apathy. The letter which he sent to the Assembly to announce his compliance with its wishes was indeed received with acclamations which, if not sincere, were at least loud, and apparently unanimous; and, as if in reply to it, La Fayette proposed and carried a motion that the Assembly should pass an act of amnesty for all political offenses; and a magnificent festival was appointed to be held in the Champ de Mars on the following Sunday, in celebration of the joyful event. But, after the first brief excitement had passed away, the Jacobin faction recovered its ascendency, and contrived to make that very festival, which was designed to express the gratitude of the nation, an occasion of further humiliation to the unhappy Louis. Every arrangement for the day was discussed in a spirit of the bitterest disloyalty. When the question was raised, which in any other Assembly that ever met in the world would have been thought needless, what attitude the members were to preserve while the king was taking the prescribed oath to observe the Constitution, a hundred voices shouted out that they should all keep their seats, and that the king should swear, standing and bare-headed; and when one deputy of high reputation, M. Malouet, remonstrated against such a vote, arguing that so to treat the chief of the State would be a greater insult to the nation than even to himself, a deputy from Brittany cried out that M. Malouet and those who thought with him might receive Louis on their knees, if they liked, but that the rest of the Assembly should be seated.

And, in accordance with the feeling thus shown, every mark of respect was studiously withheld from the unhappy monarch, and every care was taken to show him that every deputy considered himself his equal. Two chairs exactly similar were provided for him and for the president; and when, after taking the oath and affixing his signature to the act, the king resumed his seat, the president, who, having to reply to him in a short address, had at first risen for that purpose, on seeing that Louis retained his seat, sat down beside him, and finished his speech in that position. Louis felt the affront. He contained himself while in the hall, and while the members were conducting him back to the palace, which they presently did amidst the music of military bands and the salutes of artillery. But when his escort had left him, and he reached his own apartments, his pride gave way. The queen with the dauphin had been present in a box hastily fitted up for her, and had followed him back. He felt for her more than for himself. Bursting into tears, he said, "It is all over. You have seen my humiliation. Why did I ever bring you into France for such degradation?" And the queen, while endeavoring to console him, turned to Madame de Campan, who has recorded the scene, and dismissed her from her attendance.[17] "Leave us," she said, "leave us to ourselves." She could not bear that even that faithful servant should remain to be a witness to the despair and prostration of her sovereign.

The very rejoicings were turned by the agents of the Jacobins into occasions for further outrages. The whole city was illuminated, and the sovereigns yielded to the entreaties of the popular leaders, to drive through the streets and the Champs Elysees to see the illumination. The populace, who believed the Revolution at an end and their freedom secured, cheered them heartily as they passed; but at every cry of "Vive le roi," a stentorian voice, close to the royal carriage, shouted out, "Not so: Vive la nation!" and the queen, though it was plain that the ruffian had been hired thus to outrage them, almost fainted with terror at his ferocity. A few days afterward, the insults were renewed even more pointedly. The royal family went in state to the opera, where, before their arrival, the Jacobins had packed the pit with a gang of their own hirelings, whose unpowdered hair made them conspicuous objects.[18] The opera was one of Gretry's, "Les Evenements Imprevus," in which one of the duets contains the line "Ah, comme j'aime ma maitresse." Madame Dugazon, a popular singer of the day, as she uttered the words, bowed toward the royal box, and instantly the whole pit was in a fury. "No mistress for us! no master! Liberty!" The whole house was in an uproar. The king's partisans and adherents replied with loyal cheers, "Vive le roi! Vive la reine!" The pit roared out, "No master! no queen!" and the Jacobins even proceeded to acts of violence toward all who refused to join in their cry. Blows were struck, and it became necessary to send for a company of the Guard to restore order.

Yet when, on the last day of the month, the king visited the Assembly[19] to declare its dissolution, the president addressed him in terms of the most loyal gratitude, affirming that by his acceptance of the Constitution, he had earned the blessings of all future generations; and when he quitted the hall, the populace escorted the royal carriage back to the palace with vociferous cheers. Though, in the eyes of impartial observers, this display of returning good-will was more than counterbalanced when, as the members of the Assembly came out, some of the Royalists and Constitutionalists were hooted, and some of the fiercest Jacobins were greeted with still more enthusiastic acclamations.



CHAPTER XXXIII.

Composition of the New Assembly.—Rise of the Girondins,—Their Corruption and Eventual Fate.—Vergniaud's Motions against the King.—Favorable Reception of the King at the Assembly, and at the Opera.—Changes in the Ministry.—The King's and Queen's Language to M. Bertrand de Moleville.— The Count de Narbonne.—Petion is elected Mayor of Paris.—Scarcity of Money, and Great Hardships of the Royal Family.—Presents arrive from Tippoo Sahib.—The Dauphin.—The Assembly passes Decrees against the Priests and the Emigrants.—Misconduct of the Emigrants.—Louis refuses his Assent to the Decrees.—He issues a Circular condemning Emigration.

The new Assembly met on the 1st of October, and its composition afforded the Royalists, or even the Constitutionalists, the party that desired to stand by the Constitution which had just been ratified, very little prospect of a re-establishment of tranquillity. The mischievous effect of the vote which excluded members of the last Assembly from election was seen in the very lists of those who had been returned. In the whole number there were scarcely a dozen members of noble or gentle birth; the number of ecclesiastics was equally small; while property was as little represented as the nobility or the Church. It was reckoned that of the whole body scarcely fifty possessed two thousand francs a year. The general youth of the members was as conspicuous as their poverty; half of them had hardly attained middle age; a great many were little more than boys. The Jacobins themselves, who, before the elections, had reckoned on swaying their decisions by terror, could hardly have anticipated a result which would place the entire body so wholly at their mercy.

But what was still move ominous of evil was the rise of a new party, known as that of the Girondins, from the circumstance of some of its most influential members coming from the Gironde, one of the departments which the late Assembly had carved out of the old province of Gascony. It was not absolutely a new party, since the foundations of it had been laid, during the last two months of the old Assembly, by Petion and a low-born pamphleteer named Brissot, who, as editor of a newspaper to which he gave the name of Le Patriote Francais, rivaled the most blood-thirsty of the Jacobins in exciting the worst passions of the populace. But Petion and Brissot had only sown the seeds. The opening of the new Assembly at once gave it growth and vigor, when the deputies from the Gironde plunged into the arena of debate, and showed an undeniable superiority in eloquence to every other party. The chiefs, Vergniaud, Gensonne, and Gaudet, were lawyers who had never obtained any practice. Isnard, the first man to make an open profession of atheism in the Assembly, was the son of a perfumer in Provence. They were adventurers as utterly without principle as without resources. And their first thought appears to have been to make money of the king's difficulties, and to sell themselves to him. They applied to the Minister of the Interior, M. de Lessart, proposing to place the whole of their influence at the service of the Government, on condition of his securing each of them a pension of six thousand francs a month.[1] M. de Lessart would not have objected to buy them, but he thought the price which they set upon themselves too high; and as they adhered to their demand, the negotiation went off, and they resolved to revenge themselves on his royal master with all the malice of disappointed rapacity.

As none of them had any force of character, they fell under the influence of the wife of one of their number, a small manufacturer, named Roland, the same who, as we have already seen, was the first to raise the cry of blood in France, and to recommend the assassination of the king and queen while they were still in fancied security at Versailles. Under the direction of this fierce woman, whose ferocity was rendered more formidable by her undoubted talents, the Girondins began an internecine war with the king, who had refused them the wages which they had asked. They planned and carried out the sanguinary attacks on the palace in the summer of the next year. They brought Louis to the scaffold by the unanimity of their votes. Yet it would have been more fortunate for themselves as well as for him had they been less exorbitant in their demands, and had they connected themselves with the Government as they desired. For though they succeeded in their treason, though Madame Roland saw the accomplishment of her wish in the murder of the king and queen, their success was equally fatal to themselves. Almost all of them perished on the same scaffold to which they had consigned their virtuous sovereigns, meeting a fate in one respect worse even than theirs, from the infamy of the names which they have left behind them.

Yet for a few days it seemed as if their malignity would miss its aim. They did not wait a single day before displaying it; but, at the preliminary meeting of the Assembly, before it was opened for the dispatch of business, Vergniaud proposed to declare it illegal to speak of the king as his majesty, or to address him as "sire;" while another deputy, named Couthon, who at first belonged to the same party, though he afterward joined the Jacobins, carried a motion that, when Louis came to open the Assembly, the president should occupy the place of honor, and the second seat should be allotted to the sovereign.

Still, for a moment it seemed as if they had overshot their mark, and as if the more loyal party would be able to withstand and defeat them. The Assembly itself was compelled to repeal its recent votes, since Louis, whom indignation for once inspired with greater firmness than he usually displayed, refused to open the new Assembly in person unless he were to be received with the honors to which his rank entitled him. The offensive resolutions were canceled; and, when he had therefore opened the session in a dignified and conciliatory speech which was chiefly of his own composition, the president, M. Pastoret, a member of the Constitutional party, replied in a language which was not only respectful, but affectionate. The Constitution, he said, had given the king friends in those who were formerly only styled his subjects. The Assembly and the nation felt the need of his love. As the Constitution had rendered him the greatest monarch in the world, so his attachment to it would place him among the kings most beloved by their people.

And it seemed as if the Parisians in general shared to the full the loyal sentiments uttered by M. Pastoret. Writing the same week to her brother, Marie Antoinette, with a confidence which could only spring from a sincere attachment to the whole nation, reiterated her old opinion that "the good citizens and good people had always in their hearts been friendly to the king and herself;[2]" and expressed her belief that since the acceptance of the Constitution the people "had again learned to trust them." She was "far from giving herself up to a blind confidence. She knew that the disaffected had not abandoned their treasonable purposes; but, as the king and she herself were resolved to unite themselves in sincere good faith to the people, it was impossible but that, when their real feelings were known, the bulk of the people should return to them. The mischief was that the well-meaning knew not how to act in concert."

It did seem as if she were correct in her estimate of the feelings of the citizens, when, in the evening of the day on which Louis had opened the Assembly, the whole royal family, including the two children, went to the opera; and, as if with express design to ratify the loyal language of the president of the Assembly, the whole audience greeted them with a most enthusiastic reception. More than once they interrupted the performance with loud cheers for both king and queen; and as the pleasure of children is always an attractive sight, they sympathized especially with the delight of the little dauphin, their future king, as they all then thought him, who, being new to such a spectacle, only took his eyes off the stage to imitate the gestures of the actors to his mother, and draw her attention to them.

In more than one of her letters the queen had vehemently deplored the want of a stronger ministry than of late had been in the king's service. It was a natural complaint, though in fact the ability or want of ability displayed by the ministers was a matter of but slight practical importance, so completely had the Assembly engrossed the whole power of the State; but in the course of the autumn some changes were made, one of which for a time certainly added to the comfort of the sovereigns. M. Montmorin retired; M. de Lessart was transferred to his office; and M. Bertrand de Moleville, who was entirely new to official life, became the minister of marine. The whole kingdom did not contain a man more attached to the king and queen. But he combined statesman-like prudence with his loyalty; and his conduct before he took office elicited a very remarkable proof of the singleness of mind and purpose with which the king and queen had accepted the Constitution. M. Bertrand had previously refused office, and was very unwilling to take it now; and he frankly told Louis that he could not hope to be of any real service to him unless he knew the plans which the king might have formed with respect to the Constitution, and the line of conduct which he desired his ministers to observe on the subject; and Louis told him distinctly that though "he was far from regarding the Constitution as a masterpiece, and though he thought it easy to reform it advantageously in many particulars, yet he had sworn to observe it as it was, and that he was bound to be, and resolved to be, strictly faithful to his oath; the more so because it seemed to him that the most exact observance of the Constitution was the surest method to lead the nation to understand it in all its bearings; when the people themselves would perceive the character of the changes in it which it was desirable to make."

M. Bertrand expressed his warm approval of the wisdom of such a policy, but thought it so important to know how far the queen coincided in her husband's sentiments that he ventured to put the question to his majesty. The king assured him that he had been speaking her sentiments as well as his own, and that he should hear them from her own lips; and accordingly the queen immediately granted the new minister an audience, in which, after expressing, with her habitual grace and kindness, her feeling that, by accepting office at such a time, he was laying both the king and herself under a personal obligation, she added, "The king has explained to you his intentions with respect to the Constitution; do not you think that the only plan for him to follow is to be faithful to his oath?" "Undoubtedly, madame." "Well, you may depend upon it that nothing will make us change. Have courage, M. Bertrand; I hope that, with patience, firmness, and consistency, all is not yet lost.[3]"

Nor was M. Bertrand the only one of the ministers who received proofs of the resolution of the queen to adhere steadily to the Constitution. There was also a new minister of war, the Count de Narbonne, as firmly attached to the persons of the sovereigns as M. Bertrand himself, though in political principle more inclined to the views of the Constitutionalists than to those of the extreme Royalists. He was likewise a man of considerable capacity, eloquent and fertile in resources; but he was ambitious and somewhat vain; and he was so elated at the approval expressed by the Assembly of a report on the military resources of the kingdom which he laid before it soon after his appointment, that he obtained an audience of the queen, the object of which was to convince her that the only means of saving the State was to confer on a man of talent, energy, sagacity, and activity, who enjoyed the confidence of the Assembly and of the nation, the post of prime minister; and he admitted that he intended to designate himself by this description. Marie Antoinette, though fully aware of the desirableness of having a single man of ability and firmness at the head of the administration, was for a moment surprised out of her habitual courtesy. She could not forbear a smile, and in plain terms asked him "if he were crazy.[4]" But she proceeded with her usual kindness to explain to him the impracticability of the scheme which he had suggested, and the foundation of her argument was an explanation that such an appointment would be a violation of the Constitution, which forbade the king to create any new ministerial office. And the count deserves to have it mentioned to his honor that the rebuff which he had received in no degree cooled his attachment to the king and queen, or the zeal with which he labored for their service.

We have no information how far the new minister coincided in a step which the queen took in the course of November, and which is commonly ascribed to her judgment alone. Before its dissolution, the late Assembly had broken up the National Guard of Paris into separate legions, and had suppressed the appointment of commander-in-chief of the forces; and La Fayette, whom this measure had left without employment, feeling keenly the diminution of his importance, and instigated by the restlessness common to men of moderate capacity, conceived the hope of succeeding Bailly in the mayoralty of Paris, which that magistrate was on the point of resigning.

It had become a post of great consequence, since the extent to which the authority of the crown had been pared away tended to make the mayor the absolute dictator of the capital; and consequently the Jacobins were anxious to secure the office for one of the extreme Revolutionary party, and set up Petion as a rival candidate. The election belonged to the citizens, and, as in the city the two parties possessed almost equal strength, it was soon seen that the court, which had by no means lost its influence among the tradesmen and shop-keepers, had the power of deciding the contest in favor of the candidate for whom it should pronounce, Marie Antoinette declared for Petion. She knew him to be a Jacobin,[5] but he was so devoid of any reputation for ability that she did not fear him. Nor, except that he had behaved with boorish disrespect and ill-manners during their melancholy return from Varennes, had she any reason for suspecting him of any special enmity to the king.

But La Fayette, though always loud in his professions of loyalty, had never lost an opportunity of offering personal insults to both the king and herself. It was to his shameful neglect (to put his conduct in the most favorable light) that she justly attributed the danger to which she had been exposed at Versailles, and the compulsion which had been put upon the king to take up his residence in Paris; and, not to mention a constant series of petty insults which he had heaped on both Louis and herself, and on the Royalists as a body, he had given unmistakable proofs of his personal animosity toward the king by his conduct on the 21st of June, and by the indecent rigor with which he treated them both after their return from Varennes. Even when he was loudest in the profession of his desire and power to influence the Assembly in the king's favor, one of his own friends had told him to his face that he was insincere,[6] and that Louis could not and ought not to trust his promises; and every part of his conduct toward the royal pair was stamped with duplicity as well as with ill-will. It was not strange, therefore, indeed it was fully consistent with the honest openness of Marie Antoinette's own character, that she should prefer an open enemy to a pretended friend. She even believed what, from the very commencement of the Revolution, many had suspected, that La Fayette cherished views of personal ambition, and aimed at reviving the old authority of a Maire du Palais over a Roi Faineant[7]. She therefore directed her friends to throw their weight into the scale in favor of Petion, who was accordingly elected by a great majority, while the marquis, greatly chagrined, retired for a time to his estate in Auvergne.

The victory, however, was an unfortunate one for the court. It contributed to increase the confidence of its enemies; and, as their instinct showed them that it was from the resolution of the queen that they had the most formidable opposition to dread, it was against her that, from their first entrance into the Assembly, Vergniaud and his friends specially exerted themselves; Vergniaud openly contending that the inviolability of the sovereign, which was an article of the new Constitution, applied only to the king himself, and in no degree to his consort; while in the Jacobin and Cordelier Clubs the coarsest libels were poured forth against her with unremitting perseverance to stimulate and justify the most obscene and ferocious threats. The coarsest ruffians in a street quarrel never used fouler language of one another than these men of education applied to the pure-minded and magnanimous lady whose sole offense was that she was the wife of their kind-hearted king.

And, in addition to this daily increase of their danger which such denunciations could not fail to augment, the royal family were now suffering inconveniences which even those whose measures had caused them had never designed. They were in the most painful want of money. The agitation of the last two years had rendered the treasury bankrupt. The paper money, which now composed almost the whole circulation of the country, was valueless. While, as it was in this paper money (assignats, as the notes were called, as being professedly secured by assignments on the royal domains and on the ecclesiastical property which had been confiscated), that the king's civil list was paid, at the latter end of each month it was not uncommon for him and the queen to be absolutely destitute. It was with great reluctance that they accepted loans from their loyal adherents, because they saw no prospect of being able to repay them; but had they not availed themselves of this resource, they would at times have wanted absolute necessaries.[8]

The royal couple still kept their health, the king's apathy being in this respect as beneficial as the queen's courage: they still rode a great deal when the weather was favorable; and on one occasion, at the beginning of 1792, the queen, with her sister-in-law and her daughter, went again to the theatre. The opera was the same which had been performed at the visit in October; but this time the Jacobins had not been forewarned so as to pack the house, and Madame du Gazon's duet was received with enthusiasm. Again, as she sung "Ah, que j'aime ma maitresse!" she bowed to the royal box, and the audience cheered. As if in reply to one verse, "Il faut les rendre heureux," "Oui, oui!" with lively unanimity, came from all parts of the house, and the singers were compelled to repeat the duet four times. "It is a queer nation this of ours," says the Princess Elizabeth, in relating the scene to one of her correspondents, "but we must allow that it has very charming moments.[9]"

A somewhat curious episode to divert their minds from these domestic anxieties was presented by an embassy from the brave and intriguing Sultan of Mysore, the celebrated Tippoo Sahib, who sought to engage Louis to lend him six thousand French troops, with whose aid he trusted to break down the ascendency which England was rapidly establishing in India. Tippoo backed his request, in the Oriental fashion, by presents, though not such as, in the opinion of M. Bertrand, were quite worthy of the giver or of the receiver. To the king he sent some diamonds, but they were yellow, ill-cut, and ill-set; and the rest of the offering was composed of a few pieces of embroidered silk, striped cloth, and cambric: while the queen's present consisted of nothing more valuable than a few bottles of perfume of no very exquisite quality, and a few boxes of powdered scents, pastils, and matches. The king and queen gave nearly the whole present to M. Bertrand for his grandchildren, the queen only reserving a bottle of attar of rose and a couple of pieces of cambric; and that chiefly to afford a pretext for seeing M. Bertrand once or twice, without his reception being imputed to a desire to promote some Austrian intrigue; for the Jacobins had lately revived the clamor against Austrian influence with greater vehemence than ever.

As M. Bertrand had grandchildren, he could well appreciate the pleasure of the queen at an incident which closed one of his audiences. While he was thus receiving her commands, the little dauphin, "beautiful as an angel," as the minister describes him, was capering about the room in high delight, brandishing a wooden sword, a new toy which had just been given him. An attendant called him to go to supper; and he bounded toward the door. "How is this, my boy?" said Marie Antoinette, calling him back; "are you going off without making M. Bertrand a bow?" "Oh, mamma," said the little prince, still skipping about, and smiling, "that is because I know well that M. Bertrand is one of our friends.... Good-evening, M. Bertrand." "Is not he a nice child?[10]" said the queen, after he had left the room. "He is very happy to be so young. He does not feel what we suffer, and his gayety does us good." Alas! that which was now perhaps her only pleasure—the contemplation of her child's opening grace and amiability—before long became even an addition to her affliction, as the probabilities increased that the madness of the people and the wickedness of their leaders would deprive him of the inheritance, to preserve which to him was the principal object of all her cares and exertions.

But these moments of gratification were becoming fewer as time went on. Each month, each week brought fresh and increasing anxieties to engross all her thoughts. As the Girondin leaders began to feel their strength, the votes of the Assembly became more violent. One day it passed a fresh decree against the priests, depriving all who refused to take the oath to the new ecclesiastical constitution of the stipends for which their former preferments had been commuted, placing them under strict supervision, and declaring them liable to instant banishment if they should venture to exercise their functions in private. Another day it vented its wrath upon the emigrants, summoning the Count de Provence by name to return at once to France; and, with respect to the rest of the body, now very numerous, declaring their conduct in being assembled on the frontier of the kingdom in a state of readiness for war in itself an act of treason; and condemning to death and confiscation of their estates all who should fail to return to their native land before a stated day.

But in these decrees the advocates of violence had for the moment gone too far—they had outrun the feelings of the nation. The emigrants, indeed, neither deserved nor found sympathy in any quarter. The main body of them was at this time settled at Coblentz, where their conduct was such that it is hard to say whether it were more offensive to their country, more injurious to their king, or more discreditable to themselves. They could not even act in harmony. The king's two brothers established rival courts, with a mistress at the head of each. Madame de Balbi still ruled the Count de Provence; Madame de Polastron was the presiding genius of the coterie of the Count d'Artois. The two ladies, regarding each other with bitter jealousy, agitated the whole town with their rivalries and wranglings, and agreed in nothing but in their endeavors to excite some foreign sovereign or other to make war upon their native land. It was in vain that Louis himself first entreated them, and, when he found his entreaties were disregarded, commanded his brothers to return. They positively refused obedience to his order, telling him, in language which can only be characterized as that of studied insult, that he was writing under coercion; that his letter did not express his real views, and that "their honor, their duty, even their affection for him, alike forbade them to obey him.[11]" The queen could not command, but she wrote to them more than one letter of most earnest entreaty, and, as the princes founded part of their hopes on the co-operation of the Northern sovereigns, she wrote also to the empress and to Gustavus, pressing both, and especially the King of Sweden,[12] to restrain them; but they were too headstrong and full of their own projects to listen to her entreaties any more than to the king's commands, and did not even take the trouble to conceal their negotiations with foreign powers, nor their object, which could be nothing but war.

It was impossible that such conduct steadily pursued by the king's own brothers could be any thing but most pernicious to his cause. It could not fail to excite suspicions of his own good faith. It supplied the Jacobins with pretexts for putting fresh restraints on his authority; and it frightened even the Constitutionalists, since it was plain that civil war must ensue, with, very probably, the addition of foreign war also, if these machinations of the emigrants were not suppressed.

Still, these sweeping proscriptions of entire classes were not yet to the taste of the nation. Petitions from the country, and even one from the department of the Seine, were presented to Louis, begging him to refuse his assent to the decree against the priests; and the feeling which they represented was so strong, and the reputation of some of the petitioners stood so high for ability and influence, that the ministers believed that he could safely refuse his sanction to both the votes. Even without their advice he would have rejected the decree against the priests, as one absolutely incompatible with his reverence for religion and its ministers; and his conduct on this subject supplies one more striking parallel to the history of the great English rebellion; since there can hardly be a more precise resemblance between events occurring in different ages and different countries than is afforded by the resistance made by Charles to the last vote of the London Parliament against the bishops, and this resistance of Louis to the will of the Assembly on behalf of the priests, and by the fatal effect which, in each case, their conscientious and courageous determination had upon the fortunes of the two sovereigns.

Louis therefore put his veto on both the decrees, with the exception of that clause in the act against the emigrants which summoned his brothers to return to the kingdom. But, that no one might pretend to fancy that he either approved of the conduct of the emigrants or sympathized with their principles or designs, he issued a circular letter to the governors of the different sea-ports, in which he remonstrated most earnestly with the sailors, numbers of whom, as it was reported in Paris, were preparing to follow their example. He pointed out in it that those who thus deserted their country mistook their duty to that country, to him as their king, and to themselves; that the present aspect of the nation, desirous to return to order and to submission to the law, removed every pretext for such conduct. He set before them his own example, and bid them remain at their posts, as he was remaining at his; and, in language more impressive than that of command, he exhorted them not to turn a deaf ear to his prayers; and at the same time he addressed letters to the electors of Treves and Mayence, and to the other petty German princes whose territories, bordering on the Rhine, were the principal resort of the emigrants, requiring them to cease to give them shelter, and announcing that if they should refuse to remove them from their dominions he should consider their refusal a sufficient ground for war; while, to show that he did not intend this menace to be a dead letter, he soon afterward announced to the Assembly that he had ordered a powerful army of a hundred and fifty thousand men to be moved toward the frontier, under the command of Marshal Luckner, Marshal Rochambeau, and General La Fayette, and he invited the members to vote a levy of fifty thousand more men to raise the force of the nation to its full complement.



CHAPTER XXXIV.

Death of Leopold.—Murder of Gustavus of Sweden.—Violence of Vergniaud. —The Ministers resign.—A Girondin Ministry is appointed.—Character of Dumouriez.—Origin of the Name Sans-culottes.—Union of Different Parties against the Queen.—War is declared against the Empire.—Operations in the Netherlands.—Unskillfulness of La Fayette.—The King falls into a State of Torpor.—Fresh Libels on the Queen.—Barnave's Advice.—Dumouriez has an Audience of the Queen.—Dissolution of the Constitutional Guard.— formation of a Camp near Paris.—Louis adheres to his Refusal to assent to the Decree against the Priests.—Dumouriez resigns his Office, and takes command of the Army.

War of some kind—foreign war, civil war, or both combined—had apparently become inevitable; and Marie Antoinette deceived herself if she thought that the armed congress of sovereigns, for which she was above all things anxious, could lead to any other result. In any ease, a congress must have produced one consequence which she deprecated as much as any other, a waste of time, while, as she truly said, her enemies never wasted a moment. Nor, with the very different views of the policy to be pursued, which the emperor and the King of Prussia entertained (Frederick being an advocate of an armed intervention in the affairs of France, which Leopold opposed as impracticable, and, if practicable, impolitic), was it easy to see how a congress could have brought those monarchs to agree on any united system of action. But all projects of that kind necessarily fell to the ground in consequence of the death of the emperor, which took place, after a very short illness, on the 1st of March, 1792; and before the end of the same month the royal family lost another warm friend in Gustavus of Sweden, who was assassinated in the very midst of preparations which he confidently hoped might contribute to deliver his brother sovereign from his troubles.

Marie Antoinette spoke truly when she said that the enemies of the crown never lost time. The very prospect of war increased the divisions of the Assembly, since the Jacobins were undisguisedly averse to it. Not one of their body had any reputation for skill in arms, so that in the event of war it was evident that the chief commands, both in army and navy, must be conferred on persons unconnected with them; while the Girondins, though, as far as was yet known, equally destitute of members possessed of any military ability, looked on war as favorable to their designs, whatever might be the issue of a campaign. They were above all things eager for the destruction of the monarchy, and they reckoned that if the French army were victorious, its success would disable those who were most willing and might be most able to support the throne; while, if the enemy should prevail, it would be easy to represent their triumph as the fruit of the mismanagement, if not of the treachery, of the king's generals and ministers; and the opposition of these two parties was at this time so notorious that the queen thought it favorable to the king, since each would be eager to preserve him as a possible ally against its adversaries. It is for her husband's and her child's safety that she expresses anxiety, never for her own. With respect to herself her uniform language is that of fearlessness. She does not for a moment conceal from her correspondents her sense of the dangers which surround her. She has not only open hostility to fear, but treachery, which is far worse; and she declares that "a perpetual imprisonment in a solitary tower on the sea-shore would be a less cruel fate than that which she daily endures from the wickedness of her enemies and the weakness of her friends. Every thing menaces an inevitable catastrophe; but she is prepared for every thing. She has learned from her mother not to fear death. That may as well come to-day as to-morrow. She only fears for her dear children, and for those she loves; and high among those whom she loves she places her sister-in-law Elizabeth, who is always an angel aiding her to support her sorrows, and who, with her poor, dear children, never quits her.[1]"