COURSE OF THE INTRIGUES IN 1790 AND 1791
A PERIOD of nearly three years elapsed between the second and third great outbreaks of the Revolution. During this interval changes so fundamental took place among the factions that the outbreaks of 1792 must be regarded as an entirely different movement—in fact as a new and distinct revolution.
In order to understand the causes that produced this second revolution it is necessary therefore to form some idea of the course taken by the revolutionary intrigues since the march on Versailles.
With the exile of the Duc d’Orléans and his mentor Choderlos de Laclos the Orléaniste conspiracy was temporarily arrested, and by the desertion of Mirabeau in the following spring lost its principal dynamic force. Mirabeau, it was said, had been “ bought ” by the Court ; true, Mirabeau received payment, but this time only for the expression of his real opinions. He had always despised the Duc d’Orléans, and once the King’s bounty had freed him from this ignoble servitude he devoted all his immense energy to building up the royal authority he had spent the previous years in overthrowing.
Louis XVI., who, as M. Sorel well expresses it, “ saw only in the Revolution a misunderstanding between himself and his people, exploited and stirred up by a band of sedition-mongers,” hoped by the capture of the chief agitator to put an end to hostilities.
On the 13th of July 1790, before taking his oath to maintain the Constitution on the following day at the Fête de la Fédération, Louis XVI. appeared at the Assembly, and delivered himself of this strangely human message to his people :
“ Tell your fellow-citizens that I wish I could speak to them all as I speak to you here ; tell them again that their King is their father, their brother, their friend ; that he can be happy only in their happiness, great with their glory, mighty through their liberty, rich through their prosperity, that he can suffer only in their griefs. Make the words or rather the feelings of my heart to be heard in the humblest cottages and in the dwellings of the unfortunate ; tell them that if I cannot go with you into their abodes, I desire to be there by my affection and by means of laws that will protect the weak, to watch with them, to live for them, to die if necessary for them… .”
But the return of the Duc d’Orléans two days earlier—which Lafayette was either too foolish or too cowardly to oppose—gave a fresh impetus to the conspirators, and insurrection broke out with redoubled fury at the Palais Royal. The professional agitators of 1789—St. Huruge, Grammont, Fournier l’Américain—were now reinforced by a gang of hired brigands, known as http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (1 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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the company of the “ Sabbat,” raised by the De Lameths and consisting mainly of Italians—notably Rotondo, Malga, and Cavallanti—whom we now find mingling in all the revolutionary mobs, and committing every form of sanguinary violence. [1] In the summer of
1790, soon after the Fête de la Fédération, Rotondo was despatched to St. Cloud to murder the Queen whilst she was walking in the garden, and failed only because the rain kept her indoors on the day appointed ; [2] again in the following November Rotondo and Cavallanti led a mob to pillage the house of the Duc de Castries, who had wounded one of the De Lameths in a duel.
At the same time the Duc d’Orléans entered into relations with another intriguer—Madame de la Motte, famous in the affair of the necklace, who now returned to Paris, and occupied a magnificent hotel in the Place Vendôme provided for her by the duke in return for fresh libels on the Queen. [3]
Meanwhile, in spite of the fact that he had sworn to maintain the Constitution and had placed no obstacles whatever in the way of the Assembly, the King was still kept a prisoner by Lafayette at the Tuileries in direct violation of the principles laid down by the people. [4]
It was under these circumstances that Louis XVI. decided in desperation to appeal for intervention by foreign powers. At the end of October an envoy was despatched to the Marquis de Bouillé, in command on the frontier, to inform him that “ the King’s position under the gaolership of Lafayette had become so intolerable that he contemplated flight to the frontier to one of the places under Bouillé’s command, in order to muster around him all the troops and also those of his subjects who had remained faithful to him, to endeavour to win back the rest of his people who had been misled by sedition-mongers, and to seek support in the help of his allies if all other means to re-establish order and peace proved unavailing.” [5]
Now since the suggestion contained in this letter of an appeal to the King’s allies, the Austrians, has been made the chief ground of accusation against both Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, it is important to understand their real intentions on this question of the “ Appel à l’Étranger.” No one has explained the matter more clearly than M. Louis Madelin, the historian who best represents modern French opinion :
“ Marie Antoinette … appears to have thought of this appeal to Europe towards the summer of 1790. The idea she entertained concerning it—a woman’s idea, perfectly childish—is still little known in general. She dreamt in no way of a counter-revolution brought to Paris in the baggage-wagons of the foreigner, but of a simple manifestation on the frontiers, by means of which the Court would show that they ‘ disapproved of the way the King was treated.’ The Emperor would mass his troops, make a feint of advancing, Louis XVI. would place himself at the head of the French army, and Leopold would then retire before his brother-in-law, who, aureoled by this victory, would re-enter Paris surrounded by the love of an expectant people.” The plan was futile, however, for the reason that the “friendly” sentiments of the European sovereigns to whom this appeal was made were outweighed by their political ambitions. “ The cause of kings ! The cause of dynasties ! ” cries M. Madelin ; “ that will be said hypocritically in 1792, but the Revolution neither alarms nor scandalizes Europe in 1789 and 1790, it is rather http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (2 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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a cause for rejoicing.” All the splendour of old France that had evoked the envy and admiration of foreign monarchs was centred not only in the Court but in the Capetian dynasty, consequently the sight of France, their eternal rival, bleeding in the dust from self-inflicted wounds, seemed to these lesser powers no occasion for knight-errantry. As to the ties of blood which have been represented as binding together the royal families of Europe in a confraternity dangerous to the interests of their subjects, their feebleness was never better exemplified than in the French Revolution, for of all the European sovereigns Leopold II., Emperor of Austria, brother to the Queen of France, was perhaps the least eager to defend his sister’s interests or even to ensure her safety, whilst Gustavus III. of Sweden, bound by no ties of kinship, alone displayed activity in responding to her appeal.
In the case of Frederick William II. of Prussia, it was not merely a matter of passive acquiescence in the disorders of France, but, as we have already seen, of active cooperation.
The intrigue of Von den Goltz—which we must follow in the pages of Sorel—had prospered marvellously since the march on Versailles, for he had succeeded in carrying out his Prussian Majesty’s injunctions by forming a coalition with several of the most influential revolutionary leaders, notably the Orléaniste Pétion, In May of 1790 Frederick William had written to Von der Goltz ordering him “ to keep this Pétion on the alert, to express the satisfaction he (the King) feels at his conduct, and to let them know in Berlin whether it would not be expedient to give him a pension.” [6]
This letter was followed five months later by the despatch of a fresh emissary to France, a certain Jew agitator named Ephraim, who arrived in Paris on September 14, 1790, armed with a letter from the King of Prussia to Von der Goltz instructing him to put Ephraim in touch with the revolutionary leaders and pave his way for him :
“ Goltz had been preparing it for a long time. He arranged for the admission of the royal go-between with Lafayette, with Barnave, with Lameth ; he put him in touch with Pétion, Brissot, Gensonné, and their friends ( i.e. with the future Girondins). Ephraim found them full of animosity against Austria and full of cordiality towards Prussia. He showed himself still more anti-Austrian than any one amongst them, and the cynicism of his language with regard to the Queen seemed a certain guarantee of the sincerity of his sympathy for France.” Ephraim then tried to worm his way into the confidence of the King’s minister, Montmorin, but without success. “ ‘ The object he put forward,’ said Montmorin, ‘ is a commercial treaty, but I have occasion to believe that his mission extends further and that he has been instructed to sound us on a political understanding.’ … Montmorin had good reasons for distrusting all these Prussian manœuvres ; Ephraim was playing a very perfidious part in Paris. He frequented the clubs and made himself noticed by his democratic violence. ‘ His object,’ wrote Montmorin, ‘ is to embroil us with the Emperor of Austria, and he thinks that in stirring up the public against the Queen he will succeed in this more easily. He goes in for underhand dealings and tries to work upon the journalists. I am almost certain that he distributes money, and I know that he draws large sums from the banker.’ ” [7]
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Montmorin’s suspicions were perfectly correct, for on this point we have the evidence of contemporaries belonging to absolutely opposite parties. Thus the Comte de Fersen, writing to Gustavus III. of Sweden on March 8, 1791, states that Ephraim has been supplying money to the agents of revolutionary propaganda—“ not long ago he again received 600,000 louis.”[8]
And Camille Desmoulins threw further light on the matter in 1793 by this significant phrase : “ Is it not a fact aptly brought forward by Philippeaux that the treasurer of the King of Prussia, in giving him an account of the expenses for last year, produces an item of six million écus for corruptions in France ? ” [9] In all the sordid annals of the Hohenzollerns no greater perfidy has
ever been brought to light ; already they had embarked on the programme which in our own day they have pursued with unfailing success—the engineering of revolution in all those countries they wish to subdue. Well might the English Jacobin Miles exclaim : “ Of all the sceptred miscreants who have dishonoured royalty since you and I have perambulated this earth, I know of none so base, so mean, so infamous as the present King of Prussia. He has authorized his agents throughout Europe to commit a kind of general pillage—to cajole and rob all nations.”
For Miles, revolutionary though he was, displayed no small perspicacity in seeing through the intrigues of certain socalled democrats, and he was not deceived, as are our visionaries of to-day, by protestations of sympathy with the cause of liberty emanating from the willing slaves of Prussian despotism. “Some of the German courts,” he wrote on March 12, 1791, “have emissaries here—all apostles of liberty—preaching equal rights and assuring the giddy multitude that their example will be followed by the whole world. Prussia for intrigue takes the lead. She pays court to each party as appearances may seem to favour. The Tuileries she disregards. All her agents vociferate against the house of Austria as plotting with the Queen for the purpose of destroying the Revolution.”[10]
The skill with which this intrigue was conducted shows that the teachings of Frederick the Great had been laid to heart by his disciples. Frederick had always believed in the dissemination of democratic doctrines abroad whilst remaining a past master in the art of counteracting their influence at home. The rulers of the various German states had now more than ever need to exercise this talent, for the people of Germany displayed alarming symptoms of revolutionary fever. The doctrines of the German Illuminés that had contributed so powerfully to the revolution in France were now making themselves felt in the country that gave them birth. Burke, writing in this very year of 1791, remarks : “ A great revolution is preparing in Germany ; and a revolution, in my opinion, likely to be more decisive upon the general fate of nations than that of France itself… .”
This revolution, which might have proved the salvation of the civilized world by overthrowing the despotism of the Hohenzollerns, was averted by the revolution in France.
The death of Mirabeau in April 1791 removed a formidable obstacle from the path of Prussia.
The author of The Secret History of the Court of Berlin, who had declared that “ war is the national industry of Prussia,” was not the man to be deceived by the pacific protestations of http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (4 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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Frederick William’s emissaries. Mirabeau knew far more than was convenient about the intrigues of the Hohenzollerns, and he detested Hertzberg. “ That old fox,” he declared exultingly to Dumouriez, “ had only a short time to live.” [11]
Four days later Mirabeau himself was dead. The truth of the verdict, “ Death from natural causes,” was never proved conclusively, and the Orléanistes were strongly suspected of avenging themselves by poison for the defection of their most valuable ally. But is it altogether impossible that Ephraim may have been concerned in the matter ? The Jew agitator, at any rate, played an active part in the tumult that took place a fortnight later when the Orléanistes, once more hoping to achieve the King’s death at the hands of the people,[12] drove a mob to the Tuileries under the pretext of preventing the Royal Family from going to St. Cloud for Easter.
The same thing had been attempted the year before when women were sent to incite the crowd to violence, but their efforts had proved unavailing, and the King had set forth upon his journey amidst the acclamations of the Parisians and cries of “ Bon voyage au bon Papa ! ” [13] The revolutionary leaders realized that more potent instruments must be employed if they were to bring off their coup. Danton, the principal organizer of the movement,[14] remained as usual in the background, but Laclos disguised as a jockey and Sillery as a lackey were recognized amongst the crowd. Again the professional agitators had been summoned—St. Huruge and the bloodthirsty members of the Sabbat ; “ Malga gorged with gold and wine ” mingled with the troops, inciting them to murder ; Rotondo led the rabble. [15] But it was said to be Ephraim who
had financed the movement with the funds confided to him by his royal master. [16]
This outrage finally decided Louis XVI. to carry out his plan of flight to the frontier, and on the 20th of June the Royal Family set forth on the fatal journey to Montmédy that ended in their arrest at Varennes. The Orléanistes immediately seized the opportunity to fan up popular fury against the King ; the gutter press in their pay poured forth pamphlets describing Louis XVI. as le gros cochon,[17] a besotted drunkard, “ a monopolizer, a swindler, a false-coiner, a devourer of men.” [18] At the Jacobin Club, Réal, amidst furious abuse of the King, proposed that the
Duc d’Orléans should be urged to accept the regency.[19] The duke, who at the first news of the King’s flight had driven round Paris with a smile on his lips congratulating himself on his victory, now became struck with panic, and exasperated his supporters by publishing a letter composed for him by Madame de Genlis declining the regency. [20] But Laclos, energetic as
ever in the cause of his royal “ protégé,” drew up a petition in collaboration with Brissot, demanding the deposition of the King and, in spite of the protests of Brissot, [21] “ his replacement by constitutional means ”—in other words, the substitution of the Due d’Orléans for Louis XVI.
The Orléanistes, however, had overreached themselves in degrading the King they had succeeded in degrading the monarchy, and now for the first time the cry of “ No more kings ! ” made itself heard, and the proposal was made that the phrase composed by Laclos should be replaced by one demanding the abolition of the monarchy.[22]
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entirely under their control known as the Théâtre Français, [23] met with the support of only a
few isolated revolutionaries, including Brissot and Condorcet, whose Republican convictions were more than doubtful, and was violently opposed by the Jacobins, who were mainly Orléanistes. Already at a sitting of the Club, immediately after the flight to Varennes, a member who ventured to propose a Republic had been indignantly shouted down,[24] and the
amendment suggested by the socalled “ Republicans ” was therefore rejected by the Jacobins, and the original proposal of Laclos retained in the petition which was to be presented at “ the altar of the country ” erected on the Champ de Mars.
By means of cajolery, threats, and the dissemination of panic news, [25] some thousands of
signatures were obtained in the Faubourgs—principally those of women and children [26]—and early in the morning of the day appointed, July 17, 1791, a disorderly crowd assembled on the Champ de Mars, and after inaugurating the ceremony by the murder of two unoffending citizens—an old soldier and a wig-maker, who had taken refuge from the rays of the sun beneath the steps of the altar in order to enjoy a frugal breakfast [27]—proceeded to the usual
revolutionary pastime of pelting the troops assembled by Lafayette with stones. Whereupon Lafayette and Bailly, the mayor, with unwonted firmness, hoisted the red flag and proclaimed martial law, but the soldiers, exasperated by the pistol shots that now succeeded to the hail of stones, without waiting for further orders fired on the rioters and killed a number of them. [28]
As in all popular tumults, the display of force brought the mob to its senses ; in an instant the whole Champ de Mars was swept clear of insurgents, but, what was more important, the fusillade had the effect of terrifying the revolutionary leaders. The Jacobins, assembled in their Club, hastily escaped by doors and windows, and ran for their lives amidst the jeers of the populace.[29] Brissot, Camille Desmoulins, and Fréron “ disappeared”;[30] Marat betook himself once more to a cellar ;[31] Robespierre, trembling in every limb, hurriedly changed his
lodgings ;[32] Danton fled to the country, and thence to England ;[33] whilst Hébert, the terrible
Père Duchesne, who for once had ventured out into a popular tumult and heard the bullets of the soldiery whistling past his ears, never recovered from his fright “ It seems,” says his biographer, M. d’Estrée, “ that every time his pamphlets mention this fusillade … they sweat anguish ; and this terror doubles his ferocity.” [34] At the same time the Jew Ephraim, openly
accused by Royalist writers of financing seditious libels and plotting the death of the Queen, was arrested and imprisoned for two days in the Abbaye, after which he was sent back to Prussia and we hear of him no more. [35]
The tumult, described henceforth by revolutionary writers as “ the massacre of the Champ de Mars,” was, moreover, not the only check received by the Orléaniste faction at this crisis ; a more serious reverse was the defection of several of the most influential Orléaniste leaders.
Barnave, who with Pétion had been sent to escort the Royal Family on the terrible return journey from Varennes, had been won over by the sight of the Queen’s courage and suffering, and henceforth this most truculent of revolutionaries had no thought but to devote himself to the cause of the woman he admired and pitied so profoundly. On his arrival in Paris he http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (6 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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succeeded in detaching a number of other members from the Orléaniste conspiracy ; amongst these were Le Chapelier, Adrien Duport, Alexandre de Lameth, the Vicomte de Noailles, Muguet de Nantou, and the Duc de Liancourt. This party now joined itself to Bailly and Lafayette in support of the King and the Constitution. [36]
The most dangerous agitators having thus been either intimidated or won over, the Revolution was once more brought to a standstill—most contemporaries indeed believed that it had finally ended. [37]
The truth is that by this time the people were heartily sick of the Revolution, which had not only brought them perpetual unrest and alarms, but had created the serious problem of unemployment. “ The ill effects of the Revolution,” wrote Arthur Young in 1792, “ have been felt more severely by the manufacturers of the kingdom than by any other class of the people… . This effect, which was absolute death by starving many thousands of families, was a result that, in my opinion, might have been avoided. It flowed only from carrying things to extremities—from driving the nobility out of the kingdom and seizing, instead of regulating, the whole regal authority.”
For the revolutionaries of 1789, like certain Socialists of to-day, whose one idea is to clear the ground of all existing conditions, had never paused to consider what manner of social edifice could be constructed on the ruins, and the result of destroying, impoverishing, or putting to flight the wealthy and leisured classes had been simply to dislocate the whole industrial system and to ruin agriculture. For this reason the democrats of 1789 had become the aristocrats of 1792, and it was no longer only the nobles who cursed the Revolution but the farmers, the manufacturers, and the industrious bourgeois who three years earlier had hailed “ the dawn of liberty,” and now found themselves sharing the fate of the class they had been so eager to dethrone. [38]
With the employers of labour the workers suffered to an even greater degree. All the hands that had ministered to the needs or caprices of the rich were now idle—embroiderers, fan-makers, upholsterers, gilders, carriage-builders, bookbinders, engravers, wandered aimlessly through the streets of Paris ; 3000 tailors’ apprentices, the same number of shoemakers and barbers, 4000 domestic servants collected in crowds to deliberate on the misery of their condition.[39]
To add to their hardships the insurrection, encouraged by the revolutionaries in San Domingo, had checked the import of colonial supplies, consequently “ the carpenter, the locksmith, the mason, and the market porter no longer have their morning coffee and milk, and every morning they grumble at the thought that the reward of their patriotism is an increase of privations.” [40]
But whilst in the great upheaval many of the people had been brought down to the depths of misery, a few had risen to the height of prosperity and had become the oppressors of the poor.
When in June 1791 bands of working-men appealed to Marat for protection against their employers, it was against the masters who had been working-men themselves that their complaints were chiefly directed, [41] and against whom they could obtain no redress, for the Assembly with all its professed respect for the “ sovereignty of the people ” habitually http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (7 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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displayed complete indifference to practical schemes of social reform. [42] In the matter of the administration of justice throughout the country the revolutionary government had shown itself equally incapable, and the little lawyers now in power, “ proud of finding themselves invested with the authority of the old police, exercised the most vexatious tyranny, pronounced arbitrary verdicts, and ordered citizens to be arrested and imprisoned on the feeblest pretext. Men and women were torn from their beds on the erratic order of a president of the district… .”[43]
In a word, the condition of the country had become perfectly chaotic ; no one could feel any security either for their persons or their property, and the universal desire was now for a return to law and order. The revolutionary leaders were clever enough to turn this popular unrest to their own advantage ; all their troubles, they told the people, would end when the King had finally accepted the Constitution, which was now approaching completion, but they were careful to insinuate that the King was entirely opposed to the principles it contained. This was, of course, absolutely untrue ; Louis XVI. had throughout concurred with every true reform, and had already accepted the principles of the Constitution as expressed by the cahiers, but he had made no secret of the fact that he did not approve of the superstructure erected by the Assembly, which not only deprived him of the authority accorded to him by the unanimous will of the people, but which he held to be directly opposed to the interests of the people themselves. As a matter of fact the Constitution, in its finished form, was a mass of contradictions ; it was neither democratic nor autocratic, neither republican nor monarchic, and consequently satisfied neither Royalists nor revolutionaries. “ To tell the truth,” Camille Desmoulins openly declared at the Jacobin Club, “ there has been such a confusion of plans, and so many people have worked at it in contrary directions, that it is a veritable Tower of Babel.” [44]
It was this Tower of Babel that Louis XVI. has been bitterly reproached for criticizing. But by September 1791 the time had gone by for criticism ; every remonstrance, however reasonable, made by the King met only with insolence from the revolutionary factions in the Assembly, and Louis XVI. now realized that he must either accept the Constitution in its entirety or provoke another revolution. He decided, therefore, to accept it unconditionally, leaving it to the people to find out its imperfections for themselves. It is this that revolutionary historians describe as the King’s “ duplicity in the matter of the Constitution ”—“ he was not sincere,” they write, “ in his acceptance.” Now the precise attitude of the King towards the Constitution, and also towards the question of the appeal to foreign powers, is explained in a long and confidential letter that he wrote to his brothers at this date, of which the most important passages must be quoted verbatim :
“ You have no doubt been informed,” Louis XVI. wrote to the Comte de Provence and the Comte d’Artois, “ that I have accepted the Constitution, and you know the reasons that I gave to the Assembly, but these must not suffice for you ; I wish to make known to you all my motives. The state of France is such that she is on the verge of complete dissolution, which will only be hastened if one wishes to bring violent remedies to bear on the ills that overwhelm http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (8 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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her. The party spirit that divides her and the destruction of all authority are the causes of her trouble. Divisions must be made to cease and authority re-established, but for this purpose only two means are possible—union or force. Force can only be employed by foreign armies, and this means having recourse to war. Can a King allow himself to carry war into his own States ? Is not the remedy worse than the disease ? … I have therefore concluded that this idea must be abandoned, and that I must try the only other means left me—the union of my will with the principles of the Constitution. I feel all the difficulties of governing so great a nation. I might say I feel its impossibility, but any obstacle I had placed in the way would have caused the war I was anxious to avoid, and would have prevented the people from judging of the Constitution, because they would have seen nothing but my constant opposition. By adopting their ideas and following them in all good faith they will learn the cause of their troubles ; public opinion will change ; and since without this change one can hope for nothing but fresh convulsions, I shall bring about a better order of things by my acceptance than by my refusal….
I wished to let you know the motives for my acceptance, so that your conduct should be in accord with mine. Your attachment to me and your wisdom should make you renounce dangerous ideas that I do not adopt… . I was just finishing this letter when I received the one you sent me … [the two princes had written refusing to recognize the King’s acceptance of the Constitution]. You cannot believe how much this action has pained me. I was already much grieved at the Comte d’Artois going to the Conference of Pilnitz without my consent, but I will not reproach you, my heart cannot bring itself to do so. I will only point out to you that in acting independently of me, he thwarts my plans as I disconcert his…. I have already told you that the people endured all their privations because they have always been assured that these would end with the Constitution. It is only two days since it was finished, and you expect that already their mind is changed. I have the courage to accept it, so as to give the nation time to experience that happiness with which it has been deluded, and you wish me to renounce this useful experience! Sedition-mongers have always prevented it from judging of their work by talking to it incessantly of the obstacles I placed in the way of its execution ; instead of taking from them this last resource, would you serve their fury by having me accused of carrying war into my kingdom ? You flatter yourselves to outwit them by declaring that you are marching in spite of me, but how can one persuade them of this when the declaration of the Emperor and the King of Prussia was occasioned at your request ? Will it ever be believed that my brothers do not carry out my orders ? Thus you will show me to the nation as accepting (the Constitution) with the one hand and soliciting foreign powers with the other. What upright man could respect such conduct, and do you think to help me by depriving me of the esteem of all right-thinking people ? ” It is precisely this tortuous conduct, so strongly deprecated by the King, which has been attributed to him by the conspiracy of history, and represented to posterity as the cause of the second Revolution. “ Louis XVI.,” we are told, “ accepted the Constitution without any intention of maintaining it, and whilst at the same time soliciting foreign intervention by force of arms.” The truth—which no revolutionary writer has ever been able to disprove—is that, in http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (9 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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the words of Bertrand de Molleville, from the moment of his acceptance of the Constitution “ the King never varied a single instant from the resolution of faithfully executing the Constitution by every means in his power ”; that far from inviting foreign aggression he wrote at the same moment to the Emperor of Austria begging him to refrain from further intervention, and Leopold, only too thankful to abandon the campaign, formally undertook to interfere no further in the affairs of France. [45]
All was now peace, and the King’s acceptance of the Constitution provoked a wild burst of popular enthusiasm.
Writers who represent the flight to Varennes as having finally lost the King the affection of his people entirely disregard the unanimous evidence of contemporaries that two or three months after that fateful journey not only the King but the Queen were more popular than ever.[46]
When they appeared in public the people pursued them with “ Bravos ! ” At the opera the Queen was greeted, particularly by the women, with frantic enthusiasm and cries of “ Vive la Reine ! ” In the streets a new popular refrain was heard :
Not’ bon Roi
A tout fait
Et not’ bonne Reine
Qu’elle eut de la peine !
Enfin les v’là
Hors d’embarras !
The attempt of the deputies at the new Legislative Assembly to insult the King by keeping on their hats when he entered the hall, and by depriving him of his titles of honour, met with violent remonstrance from the people. “ On Saturday at the comedy,” writes a contemporary, “ the people in the crowds around the door cried out, ‘ Long live the King and Queen ! Give us back our noblesse who provided us with a living, our clergy and our courts ! ’ And in the theatre they cried, ‘ Vive Sire,’ and ‘ Sa Majesté,’ and a patriot who called out ‘ Vive la Nation’
was roughly handled, dragged outside, and ducked in the gutter. At the Assembly the deputies were grievously insulted and called ragamuffins ( va-nu-pieds), and this because, by a decree which they were forced to revoke the next day, they had deprived the King of the name of Sire and the title of ‘ Majesté,’ of the chair of honour at the Assembly, and finally of precedence to the President.” [47]
The King, overjoyed at the renewed understanding between himself and his people, wrote thankfully : “ The end of the Revolution has arrived ; may the nation resume its happy character ! ”
What need was there for further agitations ? The fear of foreign aggression had been finally removed, all the demands of the nation had been satisfied, and the only cause for popular discontent was not that the Revolution had not gone far enough, but that it had gone too far.
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resolved to overthrow the King and Constitution. Far more than at the beginning of the first Revolution were the aims of the revolutionaries opposed to those of the people. Then the nation had unanimously demanded a change in the government, and for a time the work of revolution and of reformation had run concurrently ; now the two were diametrically opposed, for the people had no further grievance, the existing order of things had been framed according to their will, and therefore the attempt to overthrow it was a deliberate and criminal conspiracy against the will and the liberties of the nation.
In order to understand the manner in which this conspiracy was carried on, it is necessary to form some idea of the elements that composed the National Assembly at the beginning of 1792.
Now when, on the completion of the Constitution in September 1791, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved, all its members—that is to say all the men who had framed the great reforms in the government—were, on the proposal of Robespierre, precluded from sitting in the Legislative Assembly that followed. This measure, which excluded Robespierre himself, was less of a self-denying ordinance than might at first appear, for by 1791 it was no longer the Assembly that governed France but the Jacobin Club, of which Robespierre was a leading member. This association, which started as the Club Breton at Versailles in 1789, where, as we have seen, the partisans of the Duc d’Orléans forgathered, had moved to Paris after the 6th of October, and installed itself in the Dominican convent in the Rue Saint-Honoré, commonly known as the Jacobins, because the principal convent of the order was in the Rue Saint-Jacques. It was here that under the name of “ Friends of the Constitution ” a revolutionary centre was inaugurated, and before long the Jacobins, as they were popularly known, had started branches of the club in the towns and villages all over France. By this means, at a signal from headquarters, insurrections could be organized, or addresses purporting to come from the inhabitants of country districts could be drawn up and sent to Paris by the agents of the society.
Nothing in the history of the Revolution is more surprising than the skill with which this system was carried out. The French as a nation are notoriously unmethodical, and the fall of the Old Régime may be largely attributed to its lack of organization. Whence, then, this talent for organization displayed by the revolutionary leaders alone ? Robison, in his Proofs of a Conspiracy, supplies the key to the problem. The earlier revolutionary leaders were, as we have seen, the disciples of the German Illuminés, and it was they who initiated them into the art of forming political committees “ to carry through the great plan of a general overturning of religion and government… . These committees arose from the Illuminati in Bavaria … and these committees produced the Jacobin Club.” “ The chief lesson,” Robison goes on to observe, that the revolutionary leaders took from Germany, “ was the method of doing business, of managing their own correspondence, and of procuring and training pupils.” These propaganda were very systematically carried out amongst the people, and in the confidential memoranda sent out from headquarters was an “ earnest exhortation to establish in every quarter secret schools of political education, and schools for the public education of the children of the people, under the direction of well-principled masters,” of masters, that is to say, http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (11 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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who would inculcate in their pupils a contempt for all religion and all government.
The Germans, as we to-day have reason to know, are past masters in the art of disseminating lying propaganda and of duping the uneducated classes, and the fact that the Jacobins of France were their disciples explains the extraordinary resemblance between the methods of the French revolutionary leaders and those of the German leaders in the recent war. Thus the plan of committing atrocities and then attributing them to one’s enemies, of justifying aggression by the plea that one was acting merely in self-defence, of announcing sinister designs on the part of one’s own intended victim, is a form of jesuitry peculiar to the German mind, and this was throughout the plan of the French revolutionaries. Whenever they contemplated an attack upon the King, an alarm was circulated that the King was meditating a massacre of the people ; the unarmed citizens, the unoffending priests, the women and children who perished, were invariably “ conspirators ” harbouring dark designs, and with such skill were these propaganda carried out as to deceive not only ignorant contemporaries but educated posterity.
By means of this German system of propaganda the Assembly ceased to be democratic—that is to say, it ceased to be the expression of the people’s will. In 1789 the people had chosen their own representatives at the Constituent Assembly ; in 1791 the deputies of the Legislative Assembly were the choice of the Jacobin Club. “ This society,” says Dumouriez, “ extending everywhere its numerous affiliations, made use of the provincial clubs to make itself master of the elections. All the cranks, all the seditious scribblers, all the agitators were chosen to go and represent the nation, ‘ to defend its interests,’ it was said, ‘ against a perfidious court.’ Very few wise or enlightened men, still fewer nobles, were chosen, and the National Assembly, thus composed, assembled armed with prejudices and hostile views against the unfortunate Louis and his court. It began by ‘ adoring ’ the Constitution so as to establish itself securely… .” [48]
Prudhomme, a more consistent democrat than most revolutionary writers, endorses this description : “ This new body did not include the three castes that existed in the Constituent Assembly, it was almost half composed of lawyers who had thrown themselves into the Revolution, as we shall see, rather for personal interests than for love of their country or of Liberty.” [49] “ These men showed very little attachment to the Constitution they had sworn to
defend ”; amongst them all Prudhomme could only mention two “ who having received powers from their constituents for the maintenance of the royal charter … had the courage ”—and we might add the honesty—“ to carry out their instructions.” [50]
Under these circumstances the King’s situation was hopeless from the outset. What could avail his resolution to maintain the Constitution when all the leaders of the new Assembly, with the Jacobins at their back, were secretly conspiring to overthrow both it and him ? A further complication lay in the fact that these leaders were all divided in their aims, and the Jacobin Club itself was rent by the disputes of opposing factions.