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In order to understand the causes that led up to the Revolution of 1792, it is important to form some idea of the policy that inspired each of these factions, yet nothing is more difficult, since their avowed opinions not only varied perpetually, but in no way coincided with their secret aims. Afterwards, when the Republic had become an established fact, all the leading revolutionaries declared they had been Republicans from the beginning, but until that date they not only refrained from admitting to such opinions but indignantly disavowed them.
If these men were not Republicans, what, then, were they ? As far as it is possible to form any conclusion from their ambiguous and conflicting statements, the policy of these factions may be broadly indicated as follows :,?P>
I. The Cordeliers, who took their name from the church of the Cordelier monks where they first held their sittings, were led by Danton, and included Marat, Camille Desmoulins, Hébert—the Père Duchesne—and the Prussian Clootz. According to Beaulieu their sympathies were divided between Orléanism and anarchy.[51] Several of these men, as we have seen, had begun their revolutionary career as minor instruments of the Orléaniste conspiracy, and now, owing to the defection of the duke’s aristocratic allies, they had risen from the position of mere mob-orators to that of influential politicians. Yet their allegiance to the Duc d’Orléans was evidently spasmodic ; thus in 1791 we find Marat “ blessing Heaven for the gift of Louis XVI.,” a little later clamouring for a “ military dictator,” then in the following year publicly demanding 15,000 francs from the Duc d’Orléans for the printing of his pamphlets, and all the while crying out for “ heads ” and yet “ more heads ” with dreary reiteration. Desmoulins, after the temporary lapse, when, according to Bouillé, he was bought over to the Court by Lafayette, [52] had returned to the Orléanistes, and showed himself indefatigable in writing furious abuse
now of Louis XVI., now of his enemies the Brissotins. Danton, less sanguinary than Marat and less vitriolic than Desmoulins, was, however, more venal than either. Essentially a man of pleasure, he displayed all the bonhomie of the spendthrift and voluptuary when his desires were satisfied, all the fury of thwarted passion when lack of funds necessitated self-denial. And at first the Revolution had proved disappointing. Reduced to living on a louis a week, allowed him by his father-in-law—a prosperous limonadier—at the beginning of 1789, his activities as an Orléaniste agitator had brought him only a comfortable competence by the end of the year.
[53] But a comfortable competence was of no use to Danton, and 1791 found him once more
deeply in debt.
At this juncture Louis XVI. allowed himself to be persuaded by his minister, Montmorin, to negotiate with Danton, in the hope of “ moderating his anarchic fury and his guilty intrigues.” [54] Danton accepted the King’s money, invested part of it in a large property at Arcis-sur-Aube,
[55] carried a few useless motions in the King’s favour at the Cordeliers, and then returned to his
true affinity, the Duc d’Orléans. Danton was probably the most sincere Orléaniste of all ; henceforth we shall find him constantly attached to the interests of the duke, possibly for little or no remuneration ; but since, in the influential posts he occupied successively, his hand was http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (13 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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in every till, he could afford to dispense with this tangible recognition of his services.
As for the Republicanism professed by the Cordeliers on the one occasion of the petition at the Champ de Mars, we can discover no further trace of it in their speeches and writings during the year that followed. On the contrary, three months later we find Camille Desmoulins indignantly protesting against the imputation of Republicanism. “ Let no one slander me again ; let no one say that I preach the Republic, and that kings should be done away with.
Those who recently called us Republicans and the enemies of kings, so as to defame us in the opinion of imbeciles, were not acting in good faith ; they well knew that we are not ignorant enough to make out liberty to consist in having no King.” [56]
Later we find Danton declaring to Lafayette : “ General, I am more a monarchist than you are !
” and Marat, at the very moment that the Republic is inaugurated, passionately warning his fellow-countrymen of the disasters that must attend it : “ Fifty years of anarchy await you, and you will only come out of it with a dictator ! ”
II. The Brissotins, later to be known as the Girondins—by which name, to avoid confusion, it is simpler to refer to themwere, like the Cordeliers, led by a member of the Orléaniste conspiracy. It was with Brissot, as we have seen earlier in this book, that the idea of a “ second Fronde,” with the Duc d’Orléans at its head, had first originated, whilst Buzot, Pétion, Servan, and Clavière had all taken an active part in the Revolution of 1789. But with the advent of the deputies of the Gironde—Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Ducos, and Fonfrède—at the Legislative Assembly, a new element was introduced into the faction, and a variety of aims arose which all consisted not in a change of government but only in a change of king. Amongst the candidates proposed was still the Duc d’Orléans, but other members of the faction—notably Dumouriez—preferred his son the Duc de Chartres ; others, again, suggested deposing Louis XVI. and placing the Dauphin on the throne, with members of their own party to exercise the power of regency. But the most outrageous scheme of all was one on which the conspiracy of history has remained discreetly silent, for nothing is more discreditable to the Revolution. It will be remembered that amongst the revolutionary leaders approached by Frederick William’s emissary, the Jew Ephraim, were the principal members of this faction—Brissot, Pétion, Gensonné, and their friends—and so successful were the efforts of Ephraim that a definitely pro-German party was formed amongst them, of which the policy was to consist not merely in breaking the alliance between France and Austria, but in placing a prince of German origin on the throne of France.
This prince was to be either the Duke of York, son of George III. of England, or the celebrated Duke of Brunswick, the future signatory of the famous Manifesto, who had long been revered by the exponents of “ democracy ” in France.
That this plan was seriously entertained by certain of the Girondins, and played an important part in the Revolution of 1792, cannot be doubted, from the evidence of authorities so divergent in their political bias as Montjoie, Prudhomme, Camille Desmoulins, and St. Just ;[57] we shall, in fact, find reference to it in the works of nearly all contemporaries—several of the Girondins http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (14 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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actually admitted it themselves. [58]
The Duke of York seems to have been the candidate first entertained by this party, and, as it was further suggested to marry him to Mlle. d’Orléans, the scheme appealed particularly to those Girondins who had retained a sympathy for the Orléaniste cause. Brissot, who had married one of Mlle. d’Orléans’ maids, was no doubt influenced by this connection in favour of the project. It was apparently for the purpose of effecting this change of dynasty that Pétion was sent to London in the autumn of 1791 with Mlle. d’Orléans and her governess, Madame de Sillery ( alias Madame de Genlis), who had throughout played an insidious part in the Orléaniste conspiracy. In the Correspondance secrète, under the date of November 26, 1791, we find a significant reference to this journey :
“ … a new plan hovers over Republicanism, and has taken birth in the midst of the Jacobins. It consists, in the event of the deposition of Louis XVI., in calling to the throne a son of the King of England, on the condition that he upholds the Revolution against those who wish to destroy it. It seems that this project was the reason for the journey that M. Pétion made to England, where he concerted with the ‘ Society of Friends of the Revolution of 1688.’ [59] It has, we are
assured, been warmly taken up by the Protestants and Republicans of our southern provinces.” It will be seen, therefore, that in England it was not, as in Prussia, with the Government that the revolutionary intrigues were conducted, but with the opponents of the Government the English Jacobins. The Duke of York himself does not appear to have been consulted in the matter, and, as we shall see later, the plot was indignantly denounced by George III. when it came to his ears. By the beginning of 1792 this plan for a change of dynasty had matured sufficiently for a member of the conspiracy to propose it publicly at a Séance of the Jacobins. The member who acted as the mouthpiece of the party was a certain Jean Louis Carra, who had undergone two years’ imprisonment for robbing a widow. One of the most furious enemies of Louis XVI., Carra had long been an ardent admirer of German royal personages, and in 1783 had received from Frederick the Great the present of a gold and enamelled snuff-box set with pearls, in recognition of “ the reiterated proofs ” he had given his Prussian Majesty “ of his attachment.” [60] The idea of a German King, even of the anglicized variety, was therefore naturally pleasing
to Carra, and on the 4th of January he ascended the tribune of the Jacobin Club and definitely suggested dethroning Louis XVI. in favour of the Duke of York. [61] The speech met with a remonstrance from Danton, and Carra was called to order, but in a manner that did not deter him from repeating his proposal five days later in print.[62] Moreover, in Danton’s rebuke we can distinguish none of that thunderous eloquence with which he is popularly supposed to have denounced the enemies of his country. “ Audacity and yet more audacity ” might be necessary in order to subdue the supporters of the French throne, but the mildest tones of remonstrance sufficed him when it was merely a matter of handing that throne over bodily to the foreigner.
Possibly in Carra’s suggestion Danton saw more an indiscretion than a flagrant betrayal of his country, for the truth is that Danton himself did not hesitate to make use of foreign intervention when it could serve his interests, and he was just now engaged in an intrigue with precisely the http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (15 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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same party in England as that approached by Pétion and supported by Carra. “ Danton,” says his panegyrist, Dr. Robinet, “ at first had hopes of Germany, where he counted on the influence of the adversaries of the Austro-Prussian alliance, but it was the English Opposition that formed his most serious support.” [63]
When, after the riot of the Champ de Mars, Danton fled to England, he had taken the opportunity to carry out a political mission. The main object of this mission was to obtain the neutrality of England in the war that the French revolutionaries hoped to bring about with Austria, and Danton, who knew England well, was instructed to enlist the sympathies of the Whigs. With the help of his old friend Thomas Paine, and of Christie, another English revolutionary, Danton obtained interviews with Fox, Sheridan, and Lord Stanhope, with whom he succeeded in establishing cordial relations.[64] Danton having thus paved the way, Talleyrand—who, according to Dr. Robinet, was Danton’s political ally—went to London in the following spring and offered to hand over the Isles of France, of Bourbon, and of Tabago to England, and also to demolish the fortifications of Cherbourg—the triumph of the reign of Louis XVI.—if England would form an alliance with France and go to war with Austria. [65]
Brissot went further, and suggested ceding Calais and Dunkirk to England. [66] And these were
the men who accused Louis XVI. of intriguing with foreign powers to betray the interests of France !
The missions, both of Danton and of Talleyrand, met with very tangible success, for by the summer of 1792 a brisk correspondence had been started between the French and English Jacobins ; a number of the latter came over to Paris—some, indeed, actually became members of the Club in the Rue Saint-Honoré—and, what is more important, English guineas were sent to finance sedition. On April 26 the author of the Correspondance secrète writes complacently : “ A collection has been opened in England in aid of our Revolution ; one private person alone has written himself down for 1500 louis.”
What further proof is needed as to the origin of the “ gold of Pitt ” ? For again with superb cunning it was to Pitt these corruptions were attributed by the revolutionary factions—to Pitt, who had resolutely refused to associate with the Duc d’Orléans, who detested Danton,[67] and who received the revolutionary deputation under Talleyrand with such undisguised aversion that Chauvelin was reduced to the dignified expedient of stamping on Pitt’s toe in revenge. [68]
The policy of both the Cordeliers and the Girondins was therefore to dethrone Louis XVI. in favour of an Orléaniste or a foreign monarch. There was no question of a Republic. This even the revolutionaries themselves admit ; Brissot afterwards declared there were only three genuine Republicans at this date—Buzot, Pétion, and himself, [69] and we have already seen in
what Pétion and Buzot’s “ Republicanism ” consisted. Pétion put the number at five immediately before the 10th of August.[70] Perhaps M. Biré is nearest the truth in saying there were exactly two—the Englishman Thomas Paine and the Prussian Baron Clootz.[71]
III. And what of Robespierre ? The rôle of Robespierre at this moment is of so much importance that, although he had not yet formed a definite party of his own, he must be http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (16 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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regarded as a party in himself. For it was Robespierre who from the end of 1791 proved the great opponent to all plans of usurpation. Although at the beginning of the Revolution he had worked with the Orléanistes, it is probable that he had never entered into their design of placing the Duc d’Orléans on the throne ; his plan was simply to make use of the revolutionary machinery they had constructed in order to annihilate the Old Régime.[72] The orgies of Philippe and his boon companions held no attractions for the austere Maximilien. “ The wine of Champagne,” he said, “ is the poison of liberty.” It was not without reason that he earned the title of “ Incorruptible ”; for money he had no use ; his abnormal nervous system precluded him from all forms of excess. No longer the aimless Subversive he had been in 1789, he now above all things desired power—a power that was to be accorded to him by the people. For this reason Orléanistes and Girondins were alike abhorrent to him ; with Philippe or a German prince on the throne the people would have no voice whatever—even the present monarch was preferable to such a government. Since, therefore, he shrewdly realized that at this stage of the Revolution any attempt to dethrone Louis XVI. would inevitably lead to a government far less democratic than that of the Old Régime, he loudly proclaimed himself in favour of the existing monarchy. His speech at the Jacobins four days before the riot of the Champ de Mars was really admirable in its common sense and logic :
“ I have been accused, in the midst of the Assembly, of being a Republican ; they do me too much honour, I am not one. If I had been accused of being a monarchist they would have dishonoured me ; I am not that either. I would first observe that for many people the words ‘
republic ’ and ‘ monarchy ’ are entirely void of meaning. The word republic signifies no form of government in particular ; it applies to every government of free men who own a country.
Thus one can be just as free with a monarch as with a senate. What is the present French constitution ? It is a republic with a monarch. It is therefore neither a monarchy nor a republic—it is both.”[73]
Eight months later, when the Jacobin Club had fallen under the dominion of the Girondins, Robespierre indicated his policy still more clearly, disassociating himself from their schemes of usurpation :
“ As for me, I declare, and I do so in the name of the Society, which will not refute me, that I prefer the individual which chance, birth, and circumstances have given us for a king to all the kings that they would give us.” [74]
This veiled reference was characteristic of Robespierre. It is not without reason that so many of those who knew him describe Robespierre as a “ tigercat ”—feline was his nature and feline were his methods. His plan was always to make use of one faction to destroy another, and he still had need of the Girondins and the Orléanistes to destroy Lafayette, whom he suspected, not without reason, of aspiring to the rôle of Cromwell. When, therefore, a courageous deputy of the Assembly, Raimond Ribes, denounced the attempts of the Orléanistes to effect a change of dynasty, and the intrigues of Talleyrand and Brissot to betray the interests of France by ceding ports and colonies to England, [75] Robespierre, who was later on, by the pen of Camille http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (17 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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Desmoulins and the mouth of St. Just, to confirm all these accusations, joined with his fellow-Jacobins at the Club in declaring them to be founded on a fable. So with superb cunning the tigercat lay crouching, watching with cold green eyes the manœuvres of the rival factions. The time had not yet come to spring.
Such, then, was the complicated situation that faced the unfortunate Louis XVI. in the autumn of 1791. As with every other concession he had made to the cause of liberty his acceptance of the Constitution was followed by a fresh outbreak of revolutionary fury, and a month later the terrible affair of the Glacière d’Avignon took place. On this occasion it seems that the people of Avignon, hungry peasants, women, labourers out of work, indignant at the plundering of the churches by a horde of brigands—mostly foreigners, led by Jourdan Coupe-Tête—rose spontaneously against the revolutionary leaders and put one of them to death. In retaliation Jourdan and his troop, gorged with fiery liquors, turned on the people, and a three days’
massacre began in which, amidst atrocities too horrible to record—rape and cannibalism and drunken fury [76]—the unhappy victims, old men, women, children, mothers with babies at their breasts, were flung, some dead and some alive, into a deep ditch known as the “Glacière ” and covered over with quicklime.[77]
The Girondins secured an amnesty for the perpetrators of these deeds !
The massacre of Avignon was followed by further bloodshed in the provinces, and by the end of the year it was evident that no hope remained of restoring order to the kingdom unless by help from the outside.
Marie Antoinette at this juncture no doubt believed that nothing else than open warfare could save the situation, but Louis XVI. still shrank from violent measures and now reverted to his former idea of intervention by foreign powers. Accordingly he wrote to the principal sovereigns of Europe proposing that they should form “ a congress supported by an armed force as the best method for arresting the factions and establishing a more desirable order of things in France.” [78] There was no question of armed aggression, of hostile legions marching against
the French people, but of invoking moral support to suppress disorders, and if this failed, of summoning friendly allies to the rescue not only of the monarchy but of the people themselves.
If the King, then, appealed for support from abroad, it was not against the people but against their betrayers, the men by whom they were being starved, oppressed, imprisoned, and massacred. Could even hostile armies have produced worse horrors than those that were already taking place ? The King did not wish for war ; on the contrary, he did everything in his power to prevent it by providing a peaceful solution to the crisis.[79]
When, in March 1792, the Brissotins succeeded in driving his ministers from office, the King, wishing to give his enemies no further cause de guerre, resolved on the desperate measure of forming a new ministry from among the Jacobins themselves. “ I had chosen for my first agents,” he wrote to the Assembly, “ men known for their principles and invested with the confidence of the public ; they have left the ministry ; I have therefore thought it my duty to replace them by men who have obtained credit for their popular opinions. You have often told http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (18 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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me it was the only method to make the government work ; I thought it my duty to employ it so as to leave to malevolence no pretext for doubting my desire to co-operate with all my might in the welfare of our country.”
Accordingly the King decided to nominate the six Girondin ministers designated for him by Brissot—the feeble and irascible Roland, the dour and atrabilious Servan, the stockjobbing banker Clavière, Dumouriez, an Orléaniste adventurer, and—by an error of Brissot’s—two honest men, Lacoste and Duranton.
Unfortunately the King’s choice was not as “ popular ” as he imagined, for the Girondins were precisely the faction least in touch with “the people.” It was the middle classes—not the lawabiding bourgeoisie but the visionaries of the literary world, the little lawyers, the adorers of Rousseau—amongst whom the Girondins found their following ; for “ the people ” they had nothing but contempt. [80]
No more merciless light has ever been shed on the “ democracy ” of the Girondins than by an habituée of Madame Roland’s salon, Sophie Grandchamp. After describing the political discussions that took place amongst the Rolands and their friends, Madame Grandchamp goes on to remark :
“ I was an interested witness of these debates, yet amidst all this fine zeal I thought I perceived that very few would have shown it if public welfare had been the sole recompense. The austere dress that they adopted as the livery of their party seemed to me a petty ostentation for men truly enamoured of liberty, besides which it contrasted in a ridiculous way with the frivolous tone and morals they displayed. I asked Roland what good could be expected of a people who had no respect for the most sacred social ties… . ‘ They will help to overthrow despotism,’
replied my friends ; ‘ their private actions do not affect the truths they spread.’ It was, however, these private actions which propagated corruption and destroyed our hopes. Never was the love of pleasure, of the table, of women, and of gaming greater than at the moment when they wished to improve us. They left the precincts where the destinies of the Empire were being weighed in the balance to fly into the arms of lust and debauchery. A few pompous phrases on liberty and the sovereignty of the people sufficed to sanction or at least to excuse the most irregular conduct… .”
Phrases ! Always phrases ! “ La phrase les enivre ! ” remarks M. Louis Madelin, and nothing could better describe the much-vaunted eloquence of the Girondins. They belonged to that eternal class which proves disastrous to all sane government, “ Political Intellectuals,” adepts in word-weaving, who care nothing for the consequences to which their theories may lead, if only those theories sound plausible in speech and print. Thus Brissot had devoted his literary talents to writing philosophical treatises in which he justified theft[81] and advocated cannibalism,[82]
whilst the virtuous Roland, famous for his systems on the subject of commerce and manufacture, had drawn up a scheme in 1787 which he presented to the Academy of Lyons for utilizing the bodies of the dead by converting the fat into lampoil and the bones into phosphoric acid [83]—a proposal which Lyons, unenlightened by “ Kultur,” rejected.
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If, as Madame Roland indignantly records, Louis XVI. did not take his new ministers seriously, is it altogether surprising ? Their manners bewildered him no less than their mentalities. Men of the people he could have understood, but these philosophers, “ dressed like Quakers in their Sunday best,” who talked him down, interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, quarrelled amongst themselves and nearly came to blows in his presence, [84] were like nothing he had ever come across before. But Louis XVI., for all his heaviness, was not without a certain slow sense of humour, and we detect a hint of this in Madame Roland’s assertion that he treated his new ministers with the greatest goodnature ( la plus grande bonhomie), and led the conversation away from all questions of political importance. “ The council was soon nothing but a cafe where they amused themselves with chatting.” [85]
During these interviews the new ministers discovered that the King was in no way the imbecile he had been represented by his enemies, that he “ had a fine memory and showed much activity, that he was never idle and read often. He kept in mind the various treaties made by France with neighbouring powers ; he knew his history well ; he was the best geographer in his kingdom. … One could not present any subject to him on which he could not express an opinion founded on certain facts.” [86]
By degrees in this genial atmosphere the ministers lost some of their austerity : Roland began to boast of the royal favour shown him ; Clavière, encouraged by the King’s graciousness, presented a request for 95,000 livres to furnish his own apartments. [87] For a time it seemed
that the King had succeeded in disarming his opponents. But he had counted without Madame Roland—and, except perhaps for the Duc d’Orléans, the King, and more particularly the Queen, had no bitterer enemy.
Madame Roland’s malevolence was of long standing. Eighteen years earlier, as Manon Phlipon, the daughter of a Paris engraver, she had gone to Versailles with her mother on the invitation of an old lady in the service of the Court. During a whole week she had looked on at the dinners of the Royal Family, the Mass, the card-playing, the presentations. But Manon was unimpressed by these glittering functions, and when, after a few days, Madame Phlipon inquired whether her daughter was pleased with her visit, Manon bitterly replied, “ Yes, provided that it soon comes to an end ; a few more days and I shall detest all these people so heartily that I shall not know what to do with my hatred.”
She had never known what to do with her hatred ; all through the years that followed it had remained pent up in her heart, poisoning her youth, turning the joy of life to gall. The remembrance of those exalted beings, whose graciousness towards herself she had interpreted as patronage, became an obsession ; further encounters with their kind only increased her resentment. Yet she despised the petite bourgeoisie amongst which Fate had placed her as heartily as she hated the class above it ; the overtures of obscure lovers who presented themselves in crowds merely humiliated her. By her marriage to dull old Roland de la Platière she saw some hope of “ rising to the rank that became her.” Yet this too led to nothing ; her attempt to secure for him “ a title of nobility ” met with no success ; country life bored her to http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (20 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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exasperation. When at last the revolutionary storm burst over France, Manon Roland hailed it with rapture, ostensibly as the dawn of liberty, in reality as a retribution on the social system which accorded her a place of no importance. In the terrible letter she wrote to Bosc immediately after the massacre of Foullon and Berthier all the old hatred flamed out, and under its influence this woman who had fed on the classics descended to the language of a bargee : “ You are occupying yourself,” she wrote on July 26, 1789, “ with a municipality, and you allow heads to escape that will plot fresh horrors. You are but children ; your enthusiasm is a blaze of straw ; and if the National Assembly does not formally bring to trial two illustrious heads, or some generous Decius does not strike them off, you are all f… .” [88] The sentence ends with the usual revolutionary obscenity.
When at last in March 1792 Roland was elected to the Ministry, Manon knew a moment of exaltation ; the transition to the gorgeous Hôtel de Calonne, which had been given over to the Ministry of the Interior, restored her from a state of “ consuming languor ” to sudden exuberant vitality. But once again disillusionment awaited her. Of what avail were gilded salons, painted ceilings, giant lackeys standing at each side of the great folding doors, to open one or both according to the rank of the arriving guest [89]—observe the equality practised by our austere exponents of democracy !—if the Tuileries ignored her ? Over there in that remote mysterious Château, standing aloof from the noisy Paris world amidst its stately gardens, there dwelt the woman on whom Manon had resolved to wreak her vengeance. She knew what to do with her hatred now, and from this moment she pursued her victim with a malevolence that even at the foot of the scaffold knew no relenting.
The failing of great historians is to overlook the existence of apparently unimportant details, yet many a world-shaking event can be traced to trifling causes. The 20th of June 1792 was largely the result of a woman’s desire for revenge.
It was not that Madame Roland created the elements of revolution—these lay already to hand—but that she provided the pretexts for stirring up agitation. As Laclos had been “ the soul of the Orléaniste conspiracy,” galvanizing into activity the idle roués of the Palais Royal, Manon Roland, with untiring ingenuity, goaded on the vain and foolish Girondins, who, but for influence, might have rested content with their accession to the Ministry. When Roland and his colleagues returned from the councils at the Tuileries, and declared that the King was evidently sincere in his determination to maintain the Constitution, Marion Roland laughed them to scorn. “ During three weeks,” she writes, “ I saw Roland and Clavière enchanted with the King’s attitude, dreaming only of a better order of things, and flattering themselves that the Revolution was ended. ‘ Good God ! ’ I said to them, ‘ every time I see you start for the council full of this fine confidence, it always seems to me that you are ready to commit some folly.’ ‘ I assure you,’ Clavière answered me, ‘ that the King feels perfectly that his interest is bound up with the maintenance of the laws which have just been established ; he reasons about them too pertinently for one not to be convinced of this truth.’ ‘ Ma foi,’ added Roland, ‘ if he is not an honest man he is the greatest rogue in the kingdom ; no one could dissemble in that http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (21 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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way.’ And as for me I replied that I could not believe in love of the Constitution on the part of a man nourished on the prejudices of despotism and accustomed to enjoy it, and whose conduct recently proved the absence of genius and of virtue. The flight to Varennes was my great argument.” [90]
Because, therefore, she, Manon Roland, could not conceive it possible that any one possessing power or privileges should be willing to renounce them, the King was to be accused, without any proof whatever, of wishing to violate the Constitution. From this moment Mme. Roland devoted all her energies to the one purpose of shaking the people’s confidence in the King.
But this, at the beginning of 1792, was no easy matter, for the public was still convinced of the King’s sincerity, as the following significant passage from the journal of a young student then in Paris—an ardent admirer of the Girondins—reveals :
“ Oh ! fatal error ! traitors have succeeded in persuading this too credulous and confiding people that a King who from his tenderest infancy has sucked the venomous juice of despotism has all of a sudden been converted to patriotism… . By degrees he is making numerous partisans, above all he is attaching public opinion to himself … he will succeed in invading national liberty. The Parisians themselves appear to wish to hasten this disastrous moment.
Listen to them in the groups at the Palais Royal and in the Tuileries ; they are hurrying towards inevitable slavery. Who would have thought that this people would mistake its true friends so far as to distrust the inestimable Pétion, and would lavish its confidence and its applause on those perfidious beings who, profiting by its blindness and its torpor, abuse the sacred words of law and constitution in so execrable a way as to lead it to the feet of a king, to the feet of a traitor, of a perjurer, a true tiger disguised as a pig. The National Guards, above all, have degenerated extraordinarily… . They are real sbirri animated by that esprit de corps so fatal to liberty…. This is the sad state of affairs in Paris, and I see only two great ills capable of saving liberty—war or the flight of the King. I will even say that I ardently desire one of these terrible afflictions, because, as Mirabeau foretold us, our liberty can only be ensured in so far as she has for her bed mattresses of corpses, and because, in order to ensure this liberty, I consent, if necessary, to become one of these corpses.”[91]
Madame Roland and her friends saw this pacific disposition of the people with growing alarm, and thereupon devised a scheme characteristic of their political morality. Large placards attacking the royal authority were to be posted up all over Paris, and in order to defray the expenses necessary for this purpose they applied to their ally, Pétion, the Mayor of Paris, for a sum of money to be taken from the fund he held at the disposal of the Paris police. Pétion proved only too willing to co-operate ; unfortunately the police fund happened at this moment to be exhausted. Accordingly Dumouriez, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, was deputed to ask the King to supply Pétion with a large sum for the police, which was then to be handed over to the Rolands. Louis XVI., approached on the matter, displayed a certain perspicacity, but decided to give Pétion a chance of proving his good faith.
“ Pétion is my enemy,” he said to Dumouriez ; “ you will see that he will spend this money on http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (22 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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writings against me, but if you think it will be any use, give it to him.” [92]
The sum was made over and, of course, employed as the King suspected. “ The expedient,” remarks Madame Roland, “ was simple, and it was adopted.” [93]
We marvel as we read these words, not so much at the base treachery of securing money on false pretences and, as the King himself expressed it, of “ asking him to supply rods with which to scourge himself,” but at the complete lack of all sense of honour which made it possible for Madame Roland, quite unblushingly, to admit the scheme in her memoirs. She does not see that the manœuvre was in any way discreditable ; to her mind it was “ quite simple.” But defamatory placards alone would not avail to bring about a revolution ; some definite cause de guerre must be provided. If only the King could be represented as violating the Constitution or of plotting with the enemies of France, it would be easier to arouse popular indignation. But the King displayed an irritating fidelity to the Constitution—indeed his habit of producing a copy of the charter from his pocket and quoting it on every possible occasion was beginning to get on the nerves of his ministers—whilst any correspondence he had been carrying on with Austria could not be described as treasonable, since Austria still remained the ally of France.
In order, therefore, to prove the King a traitor, not only must the alliance of 1756 be broken, but war must be brought about between France and Austria. It was necessary, in the words of Brissot himself, “ to find an opportunity for setting traps for the King, in order to demonstrate his bad faith and his collusion with the princes who had emigrated.”[94] It is well to remember
this admission when reading the diatribes directed against Louis XVI. for inviting foreign invasion. The war, which for twenty-three years was to impoverish France and decimate her population, was not declared by Austria, but was brought about by the Girondins largely in the interests of Prussia at a moment when Austria appeared reluctant to enter France.[95] At the Jacobins both Danton and Robespierre opposed it, for they shrewdly perceived that if the foreign powers needed an incentive to march to the rescue of the Royal Family, the declaration of war was a direct invitation to them to advance. But the pro-Prussian party carried the day, and the scheme of Frederick the Great was finally realized.
If further evidence were needed of the manœuvres of Prussia it is to be found in the debates that took place in the Assembly, for we shall notice that, although on February 7 Prussia formed an alliance with Austria, and on March 7 the Duke of Brunswick was placed at the head of the allied armies, it was against Austria alone that the Girondins desired war to be declared ; in all their speeches it was against Austria, never against Prussia, that their invectives were directed ; it was the Hapsburgs, not the Hohenzollerns, who inspired their fury.
The Girondins well knew they had nothing to fear from Prussia or from Brunswick.
“ The Duke Ferdinand,” writes Sorel, “ had always loved France and professed to detest Austria… . The revolutionary party professed a singular esteem for his person. Far from seeing in him an abettor of tyrants many revolutionaries held him to be a friend of enlightened doctrines and a natural ally of France. The Girondins respected him, Dumouriez admired http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (23 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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him… .” [96] So great was this admiration that at the very moment when the duke was given
the supreme command the Girondins embarked on their further scheme of placing him on the throne of France.
“ I read on March the 18th,” writes Mallet du Pan, “ a writing, supported by good authority, in which it is affirmed that the plan of the leaders of the Jacobins is not exactly a republic but a change of dynasty, because they consider that the King will always be attached to the noblesse and little to the Constitution. Consequently they have offered the crown to the Duke of Brunswick… . By making the duke and England adopt this project they flatter themselves to be able to detach Prussia from the House of Austria, they even offer hint other advantages. The method devised for dethroning the King is to make the National Assembly declare that he has lost the confidence of the nation. Messieurs Condorcet, Brissot, and others are only the instruments, the agents of the enterprise, of which the principal chief and author is the Abbé Sièyes… .” [97] But Sorel is probably right in considering Mallet du Pan had been misinformed
on this last point ; no other evidence convicts Sièyes of complicity with this plot, of which the chief author was undoubtedly Carra.
In all the debates that took place in the Assembly on the subject of the “ Austrian Committee,” which the King and Queen were accused of holding at the Tuileries, and of which the Girondins attempted in vain to prove the existence, it was always Carra who inveighed most loudly against the perfidy of Marie Antoinette and her Austrian allies. But it was not until Brunswick was actually marching against France that Carra showed his hand by publicly proposing to give him the crown.
All through the year of 1792 the French revolutionary leaders admirably served the cause of Prussia—whether as dupes or as accomplices it is impossible to say with certainty. Even the cause of the Orléanistes was now subordinated to the purpose of carrying out the great scheme of Frederick the Great—the rupture of that alliance which barred the way to Prussian aggrandizement. This, then, was the policy of the faction that led all the attacks on Louis XVI.
for intriguing with foreign powers, and that later on had the audacity to accuse him of precipitating France into war. Yet there were tears in his eyes when on the 20th of April he formally announced the declaration of war against Austria. [98]
The Queen, however, breathed a sigh of relief. Anything, she felt, would be better than the present situation. The state of Paris was growing daily more alarming. This spring of 1792 a new and terrible element had made its appearance in the city—the band of ruffians who, from the tattered garments they wore that did duty as breeches, became known as the Sans-Culottes.
The members of this ragged legion, mostly young boys, were of a class not peculiar to revolutionary France, but corresponded to the “ hooligans ” of modern London, the Apaches of modern Paris, or the Bowery toughs of New York, and it is easy to imagine the terror they inspired amongst the peaceable citizens when formed into a corps and protected, not restrained, by the police. Montjoie relates that at the mere sight of two Sans-Culottes armed with pikes, wearing the red caps of galley-slaves that this spring of 1792 became the badge of revolution, http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (24 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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the inhabitants of a Paris street would fly trembling into their houses and barricade their doors.
Every day two to three hundred of these Sans-Culottes invaded the gardens of the Tuileries and stirred up popular feeling against the Queen.[100]
“ You see me in despair,” she said one day to the King in the presence of Dumouriez. “ I dare not stand at the window on the side of the gardens. Yesterday evening to breathe the air I showed myself at the window on the side of the Court ; a canonnier apostrophized me with a coarse insult, adding, ‘ How pleased I shall be to see your head on the point of my bayonet.’ …
If I cast my eyes on that dreadful garden there is a man standing on a chair reading aloud horrors against us, there is a soldier or an abbé being dragged to the fountain and overwhelmed with blows and insults… . What an abode ! What people ! ”
“ The Queen,” says Ferrières, “ was not exaggerating : the Orléanistes and Girondins never ceased exciting the populace against the King and Queen… . A crowd of hired orators daily declaimed the libels composed by the faction… . Louis XVI. was represented as a Nero, a sanguinary monster breathing only murder and carnage, wishing to bring foreign troops into France and use them to support him in the execution of his plans… . The Queen was painted either under the degrading colours of a Messalina given up to the most shameful licentiousness, or as a fury seeking only to bathe herself in the blood of the French. These slanderous horrors were cried aloud in all the streets, were repeated at the tribune of the Jacobins, at the bar of the Assembly.”
What wonder that Marie Antoinette longed for her own people to come and deliver her ? What wonder if she despaired of the French nation when this was the portion of it daily presented to her sight ?
Louis XVI. was even more affected by the horror of the situation, and at last, Madame Campan relates, “ fell into a state of depression which reached the point of physical collapse. He was ten days in succession without uttering a word even in the midst of his family … the Queen drew him out of this disastrous condition … by throwing herself at his feet, now conjuring up visions calculated to alarm him, now expressing her love for him.” [101] It was a clear case of mental break-down, and must be taken into consideration in judging the King’s conduct at this crisis. Undoubtedly he vacillated, at one moment lending an ear to the men who would persuade him that salvation lay in this or that revolutionary faction, the next convinced by Fersen or the Queen that nothing but foreign intervention could avail to restore law and order.
So the months of spring went by and June arrived—the last June of the monarchy.
PRELIMINARIES OF THE 20TH OF JUNE
The plan of raising a mob to march on the Tuileries, one of the leaders afterwards admitted, was “ conceived and planned in the salon of Madame Roland.” It is certain at any rate that, as http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (25 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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Mortimer Temaux pointed out, “ the day of June the 20th had been prepared long beforehand by the agitators of the Faubourgs ; the date had been settled—it was that of the Oath of the Tennis Court [102]—the rôles were distributed, complicity agreed on and accepted, the issue
alone was uncertain ; it depended on the degree of excitement and exasperation to which the masses could be brought.” The reasons given by revolutionary writers for the invasion of the Tuileries are, therefore, only the pretexts that were given to the people in order to induce them to carry out the designs of the leaders. But, as we have already seen, the people at this moment were in no mood to rise. Even the Faubourgs of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau showed little tendency to revolt, although perpetually stirred up by Santerre and by Gonchon.
Théroigne de Méricourt, no longer the light-hearted fille de joie who had ridden with the mob to Versailles, but a haggard and embittered virago, was also hard at work in Saint-Antoine, where she had organized revolutionary clubs for women on the model of the Société Fraternelle that formed an annexe to the Jacobins and served as a training school for the future tricoteuses.
But Théroigne’s efforts met with violent remonstrance from the working-men of Saint-Antoine, who complained to Santerre that the sweetness of their wives’ tempers was not increased by attendance at these assemblies, and the Jacobins were obliged to request Mlle. Théroigne “ to moderate her activities.”[103]
Nothing, indeed, is more surprising than the resistance shown by the inhabitants of the Faubourgs to the seductions of the Jacobins—a fact of which historians give no idea, but which is only revealed by a study of contemporary literature, especially of the ultra-revolutionary variety. It is in the pages of Prudhomme, in the reports of the Séances des Jacobins, that we discover the immense efforts made by the revolutionaries and their repeated failures to enlist the sympathies of the people. For when we consider the wretchedness of the people at this crisis, and realize that the arms of the Jacobins were always open to receive them ; when we remember that any deserter from the army who appealed to the Society for sympathy stood an excellent chance of receiving a civic crown, that any man or woman who entered the hall and uttered revolutionary sentiments received an ovation, and in many instances a sum of money, that any schoolboy who recited a revolutionary poem was invited to the honours of the Séance and overwhelmed with compliments, we can only wonder that the Faubourgs did not crowd en masse to the club in the Rue Saint-Honoré. But no, only here and there does a stray dweller of the Faubourgs find his way there, and then with what triumph and at what length is the incident recorded in the journal of the Society !
True, we shall read often of deputations from the “ sections of Paris ” arriving, both at the Assembly and at the Jacobins, but we do not need the explanations of Montjoie, of Beaulieu, or the Deux Amis de la Liberté to realize that the speeches crammed with classical allusions delivered on these occasions were not the work of the poor and unlettered inhabitants of the Faubourgs, but of the revolutionary agents who distributed them to orators so unlearned that they were hardly able to read the words aloud. [104] As to any spontaneous expressions of the
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the press, which at this date was almost entirely in the pay of the revolutionary leaders. Thus we read of an imposing deputation from Saint-Marceau to the National Assembly consisting of 6000 men armed with pikes and forks, and women with their arms held threateningly aloft, and children carrying naked swords, led by “ an orator in rags who spoke like Cicero ” in praise of the Revolution, but a petition signed by 30,000 citizens which was presented a few days later to protest against the tyranny of the Jacobins is not even mentioned in the reports of the debates.
Adolphe Schmidt, in his studies of revolutionary Paris, has worked out by statistics that out of all the 600,000 to 800,000 inhabitants of the capital there were, in 1792, not more than 5000 to 6000 real revolutionaries—a number that diminished in the following year to nearly half—and that during the whole revolutionary period the anti-revolutionaries constituted nine-tenths of the population. In this June of 1792 the departmental administration placed in this category of “ honest folk ” and “ young folk ” “ those useful and hard-working men attached to the State at every point of their existence and by all the objects of their affections—proprietors, cultivators, tradesmen, artisans, workmen, and all those estimable citizens whose activity and economy contribute to the public treasury, and animate all the resources of national prosperity. All these men profess a boundless devotion to the Constitution, and principally to the sovereignty of the nation, to political equality and to constitutional monarchy.” “The Jacobin Club,” the same report declares, “ is alone responsible for any disturbances in the city.” [106]
In order, therefore, to persuade the people of Paris to march on the Tuileries some very powerful incentive must be provided. For some months the Girondins, Brissot, Gensonné, and above all Carra, had endeavoured to inflame the popular mind by continual declamations against the socalled “Austrian Committee,” by means of which Marie Antoinette was declared to be betraying France to the Emperor of Austria, but their efforts to prove the existence of this committee had ended in ignominious failure. To the request for a written statement of their accusations they replied : “ What do you wish us to prove ? Conspiracies cannot be written down ( Les conspirations ne s’écrivent pas).” Later on at their trial, when they asked Fouquier Tinville for proofs of their guilt, Fouquier quoted these words to them and sent them to the guillotine. [107]
The scare of the “ Austrian Committee ” having failed to rouse the people, the Girondins set about devising further “ traps ” for the King. If only Louis XVI. were to refuse his sanction to any decrees passed by the Assembly the old cry against the “ Veto ” could be raised, and an insurrection might be expected to result. Accordingly three iniquitous decrees were placed before the Assembly. The first enacted that all the nonjuring priests—that is to say, those who had not subscribed to the civil constitution of the clergy—should be deported ; the second that the King should be deprived of his bodyguard of 1800 men accorded to him by the Constitution, but suspected by the revolutionaries of loyalty to his person, and the third that a camp of 20,000 men should be formed outside Paris. Louis gave his sanction to the second decree, but withheld it from the first and third. Now, since the first decree was mainly instigated by Roland, and the third was proposed by Servan—Madame Roland’s particular ally http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (27 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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in the ministry—it is impossible not to recognize the hand of Madame Roland in all this. The three decrees were, of course, directly unconstitutional, the last because, according to the terms of the Constitution, the King alone had the authority to propose any addition to the standing army, and the camp of 20,000 men was proposed by Servan entirely on his own authority, without reference to the King or even to the other ministers. Moreover, as the 20,000 men were to consist of “ confederates ” from the provinces, that is to say, they were to be chosen by the Jacobin Clubs all over France, the plan met with immediate remonstrance, not only from the King but from sane men of every party. Lafayette wrote to the King from his camp at Maubeuge urging him to persist in his refusal to sanction the decree ; even Robespierre expressed his disapproval.
The ministers themselves were violently divided on the subject, Roland, Servan, and Clavière supporting the plan, Dumouriez, Lacoste, and Duranton protesting—Dumouriez, indeed, nearly came to blows with Servan in the King’s presence. [108]
But most of all was the proposal resented by the National Guard of Paris—a corps essentially representative of the people—who sent a deputation to the Assembly to protest against the imputation that they were incompetent to defend the capital. “ Servan,” said the orator of this deputation, “ had violated the Constitution, had shown himself ‘the vile instrument of a faction that rends the kingdom.’ We citizens of Paris, we who were the first to conquer liberty, we shall know how to defend it at all times against every kind of tyrant ; we have still the force and courage of the men of the 14th of July.” At this Vergniaud, rising in wrath, declared that the petitioners were guilty of “ inconceivable audacity,” and should be refused “ the honours of the sitting ”—in other words, that they should be driven from the hall. A further deputation of the National Guard, armed with a petition bearing 8000 signatures, met with a like reception, and the Assembly thereupon closed the debate. [109]
To this, then, had the “ sovereignty of the people ” been reduced. All through the Revolution we shall find the same method employed ; the only deputations recognized as representative of the people are those organized by the revolutionary leaders and marching to the word of command ; spontaneous demonstrations are invariably silenced and declared to be “ seditious.” The Jacobin Club, dominated by the Girondins, whose violence during the early part of 1792
surpassed even that of the future Terrorists, had succeeded in establishing a tyranny which roused the indignation of all true lovers of liberty. At his camp in Maubeuge, Lafayette received from the administrative and municipal bodies all over the country further complaints of their excesses, and now once again he resolved to come to the rescue of the monarchy. His letter to the Assembly on June 16 is one of the few admirable incidents in his vacillating career.
“ Can you deny,” he wrote indignantly, “ that a faction—and to avoid vague denominations, the Jacobin faction—has caused all the disorders ? It is this faction that I loudly accuse.
Organized like an empire apart in its metropolis and its affiliations, blindly directed by a few ambitious leaders, this sect forms a distinct corporation in the midst of the French people, of which it usurps the powers by subjugating its representatives and its agents. It is there that at http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (28 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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public meetings attachment to the law is called ‘ aristocracy ’ and its infringement ‘patriotism’; there the assassins of Desilles triumph, the crimes of Jourdan find panegyrists…. It is I who denounce this sect to you … and how should I delay any longer in fulfilling this duty when each day weakens constituted authority, substitutes the spirit of party for the will of the people, when the audacity of agitators imposes silence on peaceful citizens and casts aside men who could be useful…. May the royal power remain intact, for it is guaranteed by the Constitution ; may it be independent, for that independence is one of the mainsprings of our liberty ; may the King be revered, for he is invested with the majesty of the nation ; may he choose a ministry that wears the chains of no party, and if there are conspirators may they perish beneath the power of the sword.
“ In a word, may the reign of the Clubs be destroyed by you and give place to the reign of law … their disorganizing maxims (give place) to the true principles of liberty, their delirious fury to the calm and settled courage of a nation that knows its rights and defends them, may party considerations yield to the real interests of the country, which at this moment of danger should unite all those to whom its subjugation and ruin are not a matter of atrocious profit and infamous speculation.”
These courageous words of Lafayette were received with a howl of execration by the Girondins. Vergniaud rose angrily to declare that “ it was all over with liberty if a general were allowed to dictate laws ” to the Assembly.
No less than sixty-five departments of France and several large towns hastened to endorse the sentiments of Lafayette. [110] But it was useless indeed for any one to oppose the Girondins at
this crisis ; the power was all in their hands, and Dumouriez, realizing this, dared not stand against them, so, although he had declared that “ those who demanded the formation of a camp of 20,000 men near Paris were as much the enemies of the country as the enemies of the King,” he ended by advising Louis XVI. to sanction the decree.
It was the crowning misfortune of the unhappy King at every crisis of the Revolution to lack disinterested advisers. Before the siege of the Bastille Necker had not dared to stand by him ; at the march on Versailles all his ministers had distinguished themselves by their ineptitude ; and now, before the invasion of the Tuileries, Dumouriez failed him ignominiously.
Long afterwards in his Mémoires Dumouriez completely justified the King’s conduct in refusing his sanction to the two decrees, but his tribute to the integrity of Louis XVI. only places his own perfidy in a blacker light. One day, Dumouriez relates, the King, taking him by the hand, said, “ in accents that neither art nor dissimulation could have imitated, ‘ God is my witness that I wish for nothing but the happiness of France,’ and Dumouriez, with tears in his eyes, replied, ‘ Sire, I do not doubt it … if all France knew you as I do all our misfortunes would be ended ! ’ ” Yet, after this, Dumouriez betrayed him. For Louis XVI. having refused to sanction the two decrees, Dumouriez only waited for the inevitable explosion in order to resign his post in the ministry and return to the army—and the Duc de Chartres.
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had so long been waiting, and before the King could announce his final decision she had devised a further trap which this time was to prove effectual.
The dismissal of Necker had served as a pretext for the Revolution of July 1789 ; the dismissal of the three “ patriot ministers,” Roland, Servan, and Clavière, might be expected to bring about the Revolution of June 1792. Accordingly she composed a letter [111] which Roland was to hand to the King in the council as his own composition, but of which the authorship was only too plainly visible. Who but Madame Roland, with her insatiable greed for power, could have basely taunted Louis XVI. with the loss of those prerogatives that he had voluntarily renounced ? “ Your Majesty has enjoyed the great prerogatives that he believed to belong to royalty. Brought up with the idea of retaining them he could not feel any pleasure at seeing them taken from him ; the desire to have them given back is as natural as the regret at seeing them done away with.” Then, dropping the tone of contemptuous condolence, she proceeds to threaten him, and all the old ferocity flashes out anew : “ Two important decrees have been drawn up, both of essential interest to the public tranquillity and the salvation of the State. The delay to sanction them inspires distrust ; if prolonged it will cause discontent ; and I am forced to say that in the present agitation of all minds, discontent may lead to anything. There is no time to draw back, it is no longer even possible to temporize—the revolution is made in the minds of the people, it will be finished at the price of blood, and will be cemented with blood, if wisdom does not prevent misfortune it is possible to avoid… .
“ I know that the austere language of truth is rarely welcomed near the throne ; I know also that it is because it cannot make itself heard there that revolutions become necessary … and I know nothing that can prevent me from fulfilling my conscious duty,” etc.
Not content with handing this precious document to the King, Roland, obedient to Manon’s instructions, insisted on reading it aloud to him, after which he delivered himself of a violent tirade containing “ the bitterest and most insulting details ” on the conduct of the King, representing him as a “ perjurer,” reproaching him on the subject of his confessor and of his bodyguard, on the imprudences of the Queen, and the intrigues of the Court with Austria. [112]
There was a limit to the patience even of Louis XVI.; and this attack of Roland’s had the effect of bringing things to a crisis. On the 12th of June the King dismissed Roland, Servan, and Clavière ; on the 19th he finally placed his “ Veto ” on the two decrees.
Nothing could have suited Madame Roland better. For once we may believe her to be sincere when she assures us that she was enchanted at the dismissal of the three ministers, for, if the King’s action added fuel to her fury, it had provided the final pretext for insurrection. [113]
The plan concerted in Madame Roland’s salon of collecting a mob to march on the Tuileries was matured in the councils of the Orléanistes. At Charenton, Danton, Marat, Santerre, Camille Desmoulins[114] met by night, as the Orléanistes of 1789 had met at Montrouge or Passy, for it was they alone who could control the workings of the great revolutionary machine ; it was they who chose and paid the mob leaders, they who distributed the roles, prompted the orators, and lavished gold and strong drink on the obedient multitude they held at http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (30 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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their command. The Girondins could only suggest and perorate ; the Orléanistes knew how to lead from words to action. Then the conspirators set to work to inflame the minds of the people : Carra, Gorsas, Brissot, and Condorcet distributed seditious pamphlets, Pétion and Manuel placarded the walls of the city with fresh calumnies against the Royal Family.[115] A caricature was hawked on the quays representing Louis XVI. with his crown slipping from his head, seated at picquet with the Duc d’Orléans, and exclaiming, “ J’ai écarté les cœurs, il a pour lui les piques, j’ai perdu la partie.” [116] The pikes were literally those of Orléans, for Pétion
had ordered 30,000 to be forged for arming the populace, and by a refinement of brutality the points were so constructed as not only to wound but to lacerate horribly the flesh of the victims.
[117] These, together with 50,000 red caps of liberty, were distributed in the Faubourgs.
Meanwhile Gorsas paraded the streets crying out, “ My friends, we must go to-morrow to plant under the windows of fat Louis not the oak of liberty but an aspen ! ” [118]
As usual, the people were not admitted to the secrets of the leaders, whose ingenious method was invariably to propose some apparently harmless demonstration, and then to stir the people up to commit excesses. By this means it was always possible to avoid responsibility, and to attribute the blame for any violence that took place to the uncontrollable passions of the populace. As on the 14th of July the people had only been told to march on the Bastille in order to procure arms for their defence, and on the 5th of October to go to Versailles and ask the King for bread, so before the 20th of June the programme officially put before the inhabitants of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau was to form a procession in order to present a petition to the King and Legislative Assembly, asking for the sanction of the two decrees and the recall of the dismissed ministers. [119] After this they were to proceed to the terrace of the
Tuileries and plant a “ tree of liberty,” to commemorate the anniversary of the Oath of the Tennis Court. Nothing more innocent could be imagined, and by way of inducement to the more peaceable amongst the people it was suggested how pleasant it would be to visit the inside of the Tuileries, and see Monsieur and Madame Veto at home. [120] But in order to ensure
the cooperation of the populace more potent methods were employed, and amongst these, as in every outbreak of the Revolution, alcohol played the principal part. So in the Faubourgs throughout the 19th of June champagne, distributed by Santerre, flowed freely,[121] whilst the professional instigators of crime who had figured in all the former tumults—Gonchon, St.
Huruge, Fournier l’Americain, and Rotondo—stirred up insurrection. In the Champs Élysées a feast was spread to which the inhabitants of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau were bidden ; in the surrounding cabarets half-naked Sans-Culottes collected, incendiary speeches were made, the Prussian Clootz as toast-master proposed the deposition of Louis XVI.; and although the more prudent of the leaders affected to support this proposition, the comedian Dugazon was permitted to sing verses provoking the people to murder the King. [122]
Louis XVI. well knew what was taking place in the city. That day he wrote to his confessor, asking him to come to him “ I have never had so great need of your consolations ; I have done with men, it is towards Heaven that I turn my eyes. Great disasters are announced for to-http://yamaguchy.netfirms.com/webster/frenchrev/fr_rev_04.html (31 of 55)5.4.2006 10:40:12
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morrow ; I shall have courage.” And as he looked out that summer evening across the great gardens of the Tuileries to the sun sinking behind the Champs Élysées, he said to good old Malesherbes standing by him, “ Who knows whether I shall see the sun set to-morrow ? ” Then with an untroubled conscience he went to rest, ready to welcome death that would deliver him from the hideous nightmare of life. And in hundreds of little French homes that night the people, who still loved their King, lay down likewise to rest, little dreaming of the terrible scenes of the morrow that in the lying pages of history were to be set down to their account.