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 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924024309480 
 
A HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 FRENCH REVOLUTION 
 
 BY 
 
 H. MORSE STEPHENS 
 
 BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 743 AND 745 Broadway 
 
 i886 
 
AMERICAN PREFACE. 
 
 [To Messrs. Seribner's authorized edition.] 
 
 In the original preface to this volume, I have stated ai 
 some length the reasons which induced me to lay before the 
 English public a new history of the French Eevolution, and 
 which will, I hope, justify its republication in America. 
 For those reasons I beg to refer my American readers to the 
 original preface, where they will see that I do not attempt 
 to rank myself with the great writers and thinkers who 
 have preceded me, with Carlyle, Thiers, Michelet, Louis 
 Blanc, Edgar Quinet, or Hippolyte Taine, but claim rather 
 a place with more modern workers, such as MM. Charles 
 Vatel, Aulard, and Albert Sorel. They will there find an 
 endeavor to classify the enormous mass of new material 
 which has appeared upon the history of the great Revolu- 
 tion in recent years ; material which, from its production in 
 small magazines, local histories, proceedings of societies, and 
 the works of specialists, is naturally inaccessible to the great 
 majority of English and American readers. I only claim 
 for myself that I am possessed with a great enthusiasm for 
 my subject, which I believe to be the most fascinating in its 
 interest and the most valuable for its political lessons in the 
 history of the world ; that I have worked at it diligently for 
 years, to the exclusion of everything else, and ■ that I have 
 
iv American Preface. 
 
 striven to be impartial in my treatment of it. I have tried 
 systematically to keep down anything like fine writing or 
 over-elaborate description, and to be as simple as I can, and 
 my efforts have been received with the kindest, most flatter- 
 ing, and most unanimous approval by the English reviewers, 
 to whom I take this, the first, opportunity of tendering my 
 most cordial thanks. I venture to hope that American re- 
 viewers will find it in their power to do likewise. I felt 
 complimented when Messrs. Scribner proposed to reproduce 
 my book in America, and take the opportunity of saying 
 these few words about myself in the special preface which 
 they have asked me to write for them, before I touch upon 
 the influence of the United States of America upon the 
 course of the French Revolution, and the reasons why the 
 period should have a special interest for the citizens of the 
 great Eepublic of the New World. 
 
 The two most striking and important events in the history 
 of the eighteenth century are the establishment of the United 
 States of America and the outbreak of the French Revolu- 
 tion. Without the successful termination of the American 
 War of Independence, it may be doubted whether the French 
 Revolution would have developed as it did, or whether it 
 would have taken place at all. Had not the successful es- 
 tablishment of a republic across the Atlantic given, to those 
 French leaders of thought who were discontented with the 
 Bourbon monarchy, a more modem instance of the advan- 
 tages of republican institutions than the republics of ancient 
 Greece and ancient Rome, their inclinations would have led 
 them to advocate limited monarchy after the English fashion 
 rather than republicanism. These leaders of thought were 
 
American Preface. v 
 
 not, however, the men who established the French Eepublic 
 of 1792— they only prepared the fall of the monarchy ; and 
 the men who founded the republic received their inspiration 
 and derived their precedents from the classic his.tories of 
 Greece and Rome, and not from the scanty annals of the new 
 republic of the West. This is a curious point, and one well 
 worth noting, that the influence of the American Eepublic 
 is hardly to be seen at all among the republican leaders of 
 the Revolutionary period, and cannot be traced in the purely 
 republican Constitutions of 1793 and the year III (1795), 
 while it was a factor of paramount importance in the over- 
 throw of the French monarchy and throughout the history 
 of the Constituent Assembly, and left its mark upon the 
 Constitution of 1791. 
 
 The reasons for this strange historical fact are to be seen 
 throughout the present volume. The leaders of the Left in 
 the Constituent Assembly, the men who made the Constitu- 
 tion of 1791, were men profoundly influenced by the estab- 
 lishment of the American Republic, and the French mon- 
 archy had only itself to blame for this. When England was 
 crippled in its flerce struggle with its rebellious daughter, 
 France, in order to have a blow at its old antagonists, came 
 to the assistance of the Americans, and sent them men, 
 money, and arms. The soldiers, and still more the officers, 
 who served there were naturally impressed by the high re- 
 publican principles of Washington and his colleagues, and 
 returned to France full of enthusiasm for their allies and of 
 admiration for their ideas, and the French Court, which had 
 sent them to America, could not well blame them, while 
 French society went into raptures over Lafayette and Ben- 
 
vi American Preface. 
 
 jamin Franklin. The young officers wlio had served in 
 America became the leaders of the Left in the Constituent 
 Assembly ; they were the flower of the French nobility, and 
 though not actually declared republicans, they wished, as 
 they showed in the debates on the Constitution of 1791, to 
 establish a practical republic, with the king as a sort of 
 perpetual president. Not only Lafayette, the hero of both 
 worlds, as he loved to be called, but the Lameths, the Vi- 
 comte de JSToailles, Comte Mathieu de Montmorency, the 
 Baron de Menou, the Comte de Custines, and the Prince de 
 Broglie, were all admirers of the American Constitution, and 
 had all served in America; and this brilliant group pro- 
 foundly impressed the more sober lawyers, who actually drew 
 up the French Constitution of 1791 with' their ideas. That 
 this was the case was a profound misfortune for France, and 
 the attempt to apply the political ideas of the founders of 
 the United States of America to France resulted in a de- 
 plorable failure. Lafayette could not see that America and 
 France were utterly different countries ; he could not grasp 
 the great political truth that countries must be trained to 
 self-government ; and he thought that because the American 
 Constitution was good in itself, it must be good for France. 
 In that he showed his inferiority to the great practical states- 
 man of the Revolution, Mirabeau. The inhabitants of the 
 colonies of ISTorth America had long been trained to self- 
 government, and they had the genius of the Anglo-Saxon 
 race for representative institutions. Each State had long 
 possessed its Colonial Assembly, and boasted of a parish 
 and municipal organization founded on those of the mother- 
 country; the establishment of the independence of the 
 
American Preface. vii 
 
 States of America meant practically only the substitution, 
 for governors appointed in England, of governors elected by 
 tbe States themselves. In France there was no such ma- 
 clunery to build upon, and Frenchmen, instead of the Anglo- 
 Saxon aptitude, had only the Celtic unfitness for representa- 
 tive institutions. The two peoples of France and of the 
 States of America differed in laws, customs, race, and char- 
 acter, and yet Lafayette tried to fit the American Constitu- 
 tion upon the French people. Nowhere is this more percep- 
 tible than in the lengthy discussion on the Declaration of the 
 Eights of Man ; because there was such a declaration in the 
 America^ Constitution, Lafayette said that there must be 
 one in the new Constitution of France, and days, weeks, 
 months slipped by, and great opportunities were lost,. to 
 please this ridiculous fancy of the admirers of the American 
 Constitution. 
 
 It was no wonder then, that, after this experience, French 
 leaders of the period which succeeded the Constituent As- 
 sembly refused any longer to follow the example of Amer- 
 ica, but followed rather their own ideas of political expedi- 
 ency; Manuel's scheme of making the President of the 
 Convention a sort of President of the Eepublic was unani- 
 mously rejected, and the Girondins as well as Eobespierre and 
 Saint Just both labored for an ideal very difierent to that 
 of "Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Toward the end 
 of their career, and after their overthrow in the Convention, 
 some of the Girondins did support the idea of a Federal Ee- 
 public, but the notion was counted to them as a crime, 
 and never had any real support in the country. The Ee- 
 publican Constitution of 1793, which was chiefly the work 
 
viii Americart Preface, 
 
 of Saint Just, as 'well as tlie Girondin Constitution sketched 
 out by Condorcet, which, never became law, showed no trace 
 of the influence of the founders of the United States of 
 America, and the Thermidorians, who, under the guidance 
 of Sieyes, drew up the Constitution of the year III (1795), 
 were too much occupied in providing an elaborate system of 
 counter-checks between the executive and legislative powers, 
 to pay much attention to precedents from across the Atlantic. 
 In the Constitution of the year VIII, which established the 
 Consulate, Sieyes, the " constitution-monger," also paid little 
 attention to the American principles, and preferred once 
 more to work out a system from his own inner conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 From these few remarks it will be seen, then, that the actual 
 influence of the American Constitution upon the ideas of the 
 Eevolution was greatest during the early years, and soon 
 dwindled away into nothing; but the admiration of the 
 1?rench people for the men who had preceded them in 
 adopting republican institutions remained undiminished. 
 The Constituent Assembly decreed three days of public 
 mourning for Benjamin Franklin, when he died at Auteuil 
 in April, 1790, on the motion of Mirabeau himself ; Palloy 
 sent a model of the Bastile, made out of one of the stones 
 of the fortress, to Washington ; and Tom Paine, as one of 
 the founders of the American Eepublic, • was elected by no 
 less than three departments to the Convention. The same 
 friendly feeling existed down to the time of the Directory ; 
 G-ouvemeur Morris, the American ambassador at Paris, 
 though himself disapproving of the excesses of the Eevolu- 
 tion, yet made an arrangement for the mutual advantage 
 
American Preface. ix 
 
 both of Prance and the United States, by which the money 
 lent to the Americans during their War of Independence was 
 repaid to France in convoys of wheat, and it was to secure 
 the safe arrival of the largest of these convoys that the battle 
 of June 1, 1794, was fought. In America the feehng toward 
 France was distinctly altered by the excesses of the Terror, 
 and many of the leading. statesmen, including Washington, 
 were unfavorably affected at this time, though what may be 
 called the French party, headed by Jefferson, continued their 
 sympathy to the new republic. During the Directory the 
 relations between France and the United States were decid- 
 edly strained by Washington's treaty with England, and 
 war was at one time imminent between the two republics, 
 and this episode is treated at length in the third volume of 
 this history. But the sympathy felt by many Americans 
 for the Eevolution is not so much to be seen in the conduct 
 of their statesmen as in the behavior of many of the younger 
 generation, who flocked to France, when she was at war with 
 all Europe, to give her their help. The most conspicuous 
 of these young men was Joel Barlow, whose most interesting 
 biography has recently been published in America. Barlow 
 even obtained an official position under the republic, and 
 was one of the commissioners for arranging the settlement 
 of Savoy as a department of France. There were many 
 others, whose names appear in the French archives as hav- 
 ing joined the French army, and it is a curious fact that 
 most of these young Americans joined the armies on the 
 frontiers, not as officers, but as surgeons and assistant-sur- 
 geons, and many of them rose to high rank in the medical 
 department. 
 
X American Preface. 
 
 There is one more point of view from whicli the relations 
 of the United States with the French Eevolution may be 
 considered. America was the home of refuge to which all 
 the French leaders turned when they failed to carry out their 
 ideas in France. In the great republic of the West, disap- 
 pointed constitutionalists, who had sat in the Constituent 
 Assembly and then seen the Constitution, of which they 
 had been so proud, fail so hopelessly, established themselves 
 in America, and waited for better times to come; among 
 them may be noticed the Due de la Eochefoucauld-Lian- 
 court and the Vicomte de ISToaiUes. Dupont de Nemours 
 there sought refuge and there died ; and many of those stal- 
 wart republicans of the Terror, the great proconsuls, who 
 did not fear to shed blood when they believed it necessary, 
 and who ruled France with a rod of iron, while the French 
 armies fought all Europe upon the frontiers, found safety 
 in the United States, and ended there their most eventful 
 lives. 
 
 This is but a mere sketch of the relations between France 
 and the United States during that great period from 1789 
 to 1799, in which France passed through a series of political 
 crises and tried a number of political experiments of para- 
 mount importance in the history of the world. I feel more 
 strongly than any one else can feel how inadequate my la- 
 bors are to tell the story of those ten years of turmoil, but I 
 have done my best with a gigantic subject, and trust that 
 my efforts will be as kindly received in America as they 
 have been in England. 
 
 I have only to say, in conclusion, that I have fully author- 
 ized Messrs. Scribner to produce this republication, and 
 
American Preface. xi 
 
 various slight corrections in tlie text have been made, 
 which had been passed over in revising the proofs of the 
 English edition ; and I sincerely trust that this history of a 
 great revolution, of which the most important portion treats 
 of the tumultuous story of a short-lived European republic, 
 may prove interesting to the citizens of the more stable 
 republic across the Atlantic. 
 
 H. MoESE Stephens. 
 
 Savage Club, London, 
 26 July, 1886. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 After such great historians as Carlyle and Mignet, Michelet 
 and Taine, have treated the history of the French Revolution, 
 the author of a new book upon the subject is bound to give 
 the reasons which have induced him to place himself in 
 competition with them. The English public is hardly aware 
 of the vast literature which has grown up in France during 
 the last few years upon this fascinating period, and it is with 
 the intention of giving the substance of the new information, 
 which has thus been afforded, that the present work has been 
 written. English readers derive their knowledge from the 
 marvellous work of Carlyle, and are, as a general rule, ignorant 
 of the new facts which have been brought to light since the 
 publication of his history. The great name of Carlyle has 
 made men wary of seeming to tread in his path, and the mass 
 of English readers are therefore left in ignorance of the many 
 points in which he erred, not wilfully, but from the scantiness 
 of the information at his disposal. To give but a single instance, 
 the exact relations of Mirabeau with the court were necessarily 
 unknown to Carlyle, as M. de Bacourt's volumes, which contain 
 the correspondence of Mirabeau with La Marck, were not 
 published until 1851, and have never been translated into 
 English. The most valuable English works upon the period, 
 Croker's " Essays " and Smyth's " Lectures," are both now out 
 of date, aiid even G. H. Lewes' " Life of Eobespierre," though 
 
xiv Preface. 
 
 in some ways the most remarkable book published upon that 
 statesman in any language, is often incorrect in details. In 
 more modern days nothing very valuable upon the period has 
 been published in England with the exception of the " Galilean 
 Church and the Revolution," by the Rev. W. H. Jervis, Mr. 
 John Morley's essays on Condorcet and Robespierre, and Mr. 
 Oscar Browning's most valuable edition of the " Gower 
 Despatches," which has however appeared too recently to 
 be used in this volume. Scattered papers of more or less 
 value have been published in various reviews and magazines, 
 but no real history of the French Revolution has been pub- 
 lished in England since Carlyle's great work. 
 
 Before giving a sketch of the various phases through 
 which the treatment of the history of the Revolution has 
 passed in France, and classifying in some degree the new 
 material which has been used, it is as well at once to declare 
 that this work does not abound in surprises. With the 
 exception of one document illustrating the career of Marat in 
 England, the remarkable manuscript account of the storming of 
 the Tuileries by the Baron de Durler contained in the British 
 Museum, and the private letters rff the Duke of Dorset, the 
 English ambassador in Paris, to the Duke of Leeds, the 
 Secretary of State, also in the Museum, I have had no access 
 to unknown material, but I have made diligent use of the 
 superb collection of pamphlets in the Museum Library, which 
 is unrivalled, even in Paris. The foundation of this collection 
 was laid by Sir Anthony Panizzi, and it was completed by 
 the acquisition of the Croker pamphlets. Mr. Croker for many 
 years entertained the idea of writing a history of the French 
 Revolution, and Murray offered him 2500 guineas if he would 
 undertake such a work ; but, though he never did write a 
 consecutive account of the period, he collected a vast library 
 upon the subject. On this library he wrote, in 1854, after it 
 
Preface. xv 
 
 had been acquired by the trustees of the British Museum, " Be 
 so good as to tell Mr. Panizzi, with my compliments, that my 
 collection of Eevolutionary pamphlets consisted of two parts 
 — the first part was formed by myself from various sources, of 
 which the most copious was an old bouquiniste of the name of 
 Colin, who had been Marat's printer or publisher, and who had 
 in some small, dark rooms, up two or three flights of stairs, an 
 immense quantity of volumes of the earlier days of the Revo- 
 lution. He had ten, twenty, fifty, of the same pamphlet, of 
 each of which I would buy but one of course ; but I bought 
 I should think, many thousands of others, of which he had 
 but single copies " (Croker's Correspondence and Diaries, 
 vol. iii. p. 318). Of the source of the second part of his 
 collection, Mr. Croker, unfortunately, says nothing in this 
 letter, or anywhere else in his correspondence. This most 
 valuable collection was freely used by Louis Blanc in the 
 composition of his history, but not by Carlyle. Mr. Froude, 
 in his life of Carlyle, says, " In the British Museum lay con- 
 cealed somewhere a 'collection of French pamphlets,' on the 
 Revolution, the completest in the world, which, after six weeks' 
 wrestle with officiality, Carlyle was obliged to find ' inaccessible ' 
 to him. Idle obstruction will put the most enduring of men 
 now and then out of patience, and Carlyle was not enduring in 
 such matters " (Froude's Life of Thomas Carlyle, vol. ii. p. 450). 
 The truth is that Carlyle demanded a private room in the 
 British Museum to work in, and that when such accommo- 
 dation was naturally refused, he declined to make any use of 
 the Museum collection, and contented himself with the books 
 which he bought, and those which were lent to him by friends, 
 like Mill. Many of the Museum pamphlets are stiU un- 
 catalogued, but the freest access and the kindest assistance 
 have always been given to me in the use of them by the 
 authorities of the Museum Library, and especially by Mr 
 
xvi Preface. 
 
 Fortescue, the superintendent of the reading-room, who knows 
 the collection better than any one else. This great collection 
 has been used especially for Chapter I. of the present volume 
 on the " Elections/' which is based entirely upon it, but in 
 subsequent chapters the contemporary journals have formed 
 the groundwork of the story, though corrected and amplified 
 by these pamphlets and by modern monographs. 
 
 The history of the French Eevolution has gone through four 
 distinct stages in France, which must be noticed successively, 
 though the boundaries of the third and fourth stages cannot 
 be distinctly defined. The first stage is that of contemporary 
 histories. Though the various journals and pamphlets give 
 the narrative of events at first hand, they were quickly 
 followed up and made use of in regular histories. Of these the 
 earliest in point of date is that of Rabaut de Saint Etienne, 
 the Protestant pastor, and member of the Constituent Assembly 
 and of the Convention, who wrote his "Histoire de la Revolution 
 frangaise" in 1792, in the happy conviction that the Revolution 
 was all over, before it had reached the critical period in 
 which he himself died on the guillotine. Of the numerous 
 histories published under the Directory, the best known are 
 those of the " Deux Amis " and of Lacretelle, of which Carlyle 
 made copious use. But these writers lived too close to the 
 time of which they wrote to be able to clear their minds 
 of prejudices or to have knowledge of the documents which 
 could alone unravel hidden intrigues. 
 
 The period of the Empire and the Restoration was the age 
 of memoirs. Every one, who had played any part in the 
 stirring times of the Revolution, wrote his memoirs, and many 
 of these are naturally apologies rather than memoirs proper. 
 From the memoirs published before he wrote Carlyle drew 
 much of his material, and great use he made of it, but the 
 time had not then arrived for the sifting of the statements of 
 
Preface, xvii 
 
 the memoir writers by the light of documents. The most 
 valuable of these memoirs were collected and republished by 
 MM. Berville and Barrifere in their great " Collection des 
 M^moires r^latifs h. la Revolution fran9aise," between 1821 
 and 1828, but many are now extremely rare and very difficult 
 to procure. Though the epoch of memoirs ceased after the 
 deaths of the contemporaries of the Revolution, many have 
 since been published from the manuscripts they left, and 
 others are published every year. The story of some of 
 these memoirs is very curious, none more so than that 
 of those of Lar^veUiere-Lepaux, the Director, who left 
 orders in his will that his memoirs were to be printed and 
 published. His heirs were not proud of the part the Director 
 had played, so, after complying with the terms of his will and 
 printing the memoirs, they destroyed the whole issue at once, 
 and the only copy extant is the one which, in accordance with 
 the law of France, was sent to the " Bibliothfeque Nationale" 
 at Paris. Excerpts from unpublished memoirs are still being 
 published every day by specialists and in the two magazines 
 devoted to the history of the Revolution. 
 
 The epoch of memoirs was succeeded by the epoch of com- 
 plete histories, of which the greatest are those of Mignet, Thiers, 
 Louis Blanc, Quinet, and Michelet. Mignet's account, published 
 in 1824, is to this day the most useful manual of the history^of 
 the Revolution, and from the clear insight of the great historian 
 into the facts of which he treated, it is certain to retain its 
 position. Mignet's fault was in being too terse, Thiers erred 
 in the opposite direction. No one can deny the wonderful 
 mastery of the art of weaving up a mass of details into an 
 interesting shape which Thiers possessed, yet his history of 
 the Revolution is marked by the blemishes which disfigure his 
 far greater history of the Consulate and Empire. He is often 
 inaccurate and often unfairj and allowed his own political 
 
xviii Preface. 
 
 hopes and fears to influence his narrative. Louis Blanc's 
 history is also of immense length, but it is marred by being 
 written for a political purpose, and not to give a true account 
 of facts. Quinet's history is both shorter and more brUliant 
 than Louis Blanc's ; but it is influenced in the same way 
 by the author's political opinions. Of Michelet's history it 
 can only be said that it is a work of genius, of genius of the most 
 lofty character, but that it fails, as every history written by 
 a Frenchman, who loves his country, is bound to fail, in trying 
 to estimate the virtues and vices of his own ancestors. With 
 Michelet's history may be classed Lamartine's rhapsodies, which 
 exhibit indeed the genius of the poet, but not the careful 
 industry of the historian. It has been said that no boundary 
 could be drawn in this rough classification between the third 
 and fourth stages, and so this is the place to mention the 
 histories of Henri Martin and M. Taine. 
 
 Martin's history, which is a continuation of his great 
 "Histoire de France," was written in his old age, and is 
 without doubt the weakest thing he ever did ; but M. Taine's 
 volumes deserve a longer notice. For style, vigour, and 
 power, they are unequalled; but the same remark must be 
 made of him as of Michelet. He cannot do justice to all the 
 actors engaged in that terrible crisis which is called the 
 French Kevolution, and it is not to be expected from him or 
 from any Frenchman for at least a century. Only when the 
 results of the Revolution cease to be burning political questions, 
 and the names of its heroes cease to be flags, round which 
 parties rally, can Frenchmen treat the history of their Revolu- 
 tion with dispassionate calmness. If it is diflicult for an 
 Englishman to maintain his impartiality in discussing those 
 stirring times, how much more so must it be for a Frenchman ? 
 And a belief that an Englishman can by his nationality treat 
 it more impartially than a Frenchman ia an additional reason 
 why this work has been written. 
 
Preface. xix 
 
 These were the various stages through which the history 
 of the Kevolution passed before the influence of Ranke and the 
 German school made its way into France, and a new school 
 of specialists arose, who, instead of writing elaborate general 
 histories to prove their own theories, based their work upon 
 the right appreciation of documents, and were content to treat 
 departments of the subject alone. It is upon the labours of 
 these specialists that the present work is founded. It is impos- 
 sible to mention in this preface all the various books which 
 have been consulted, and all which have supplied new facts 
 have been quoted as authorities in the footnotes; but it is 
 advisable to point out some of the departments in which the 
 work of specialists has been particularly valuable, as it is in 
 these departments of the subject that many of the new facts 
 which win be foimd in this history have been diligently 
 collected. 
 
 First and most important is the department of the pro- 
 vincial history of the Revolution. Local history is a subject 
 which has attracted much attention in France during the last 
 forty years, and the works upon it have reached a high 
 standard of excellence. The local histories of more than forty 
 years ago, though in many respects excellent, generally closed 
 at 1789, or if they treated of the Revolution, treated it shortly, 
 as a sort of conclusion to their books. Good examples of these 
 older local histories are Victor Derode's "Histoire de Lille," 
 Fabre's and Boudin's histories of Marseilles, Aldeguier's "His- 
 toire de Toulouse," Giraudet's " Histoire de Tours," Poquet's 
 " Histoire de Chateau Thierry," P^cheur's " Histoire de Guise," 
 Dusevel's " Histoire d' Amiens," Melleville's histories of Laon and 
 of Chauny, Bergevin and Dupr^'s " Histoire de Blois," Cayon's 
 "Histoire de Nancy," Bourquelot's"Histoire de Provins," Ducrest 
 and ViUeneuve's " Histoire de Rennes," and Viaud and Fleury's 
 "Histoire de Roehefort.'' In more modern local histories of 
 
XX Preface. 
 
 great, and even of small cities, more -weight is laid upon the 
 r»volutionary period, and as they are compiled with more 
 historical power than the older annalists displayed, their 
 information is the more valuable. Of these more modern 
 histories may be noted O'Reilly's "Histoire de Bordeaux," 
 Carro's " Histoire de Meaux et du pays Meldois," Coet's 
 " Histoire de Roye," Levot's " Histoire de Brest," Fouquet's 
 " Histoire de Rouen," Hector de Rosny's " Histoire du Boulon- 
 nais," and Fauconneau-Dufresne's "Histoire de D4ols et de 
 Chateauroux." The concluding portions of these general local 
 histories are both valuable in themselves, and still more so 
 as leading the way to local histories of towns and districts 
 during the period of the Revolution alone. To mention all of 
 these would be impossible, but attention should be drawn to 
 the more important among them. The earlier of these local 
 specialist histories deserve a mention, though they are not 
 so valuable as those produced during the last twenty years, 
 since the improved knowledge of the Revolution has made 
 its way into the provinces. Of the earlier histories the most 
 notable are Du Chatellier's " Histoire de Bretagne pendant la 
 Revolution dans les Departements de I'ancienne Bretagne," 
 published in 1836, the works of SouUier and Andre on 
 the Revolution at Avignon, Balleydier's and Morin's histories 
 of Lyons during the revolutionary period, and Sommier's 
 "La Jura pendant la Revolution." Among the innumerable 
 modem histories the following, though but a few among 
 many, deserve notice : the numerous works of F. C. Heitz 
 and Francisque Mfege on the Revolution at Strasbourg and 
 in Lower Auvergne, Desmasures' " Histoire de la Revolution 
 dans le Departement de I'Aisne," Casteras' " La Revolution dans 
 le pays de Foix," Leccsne's most valuable " Histoire d' Arras 
 pendant la Revolution," Seinguerlet's " Strasbourg pendant 
 la Revolution," Pothier's "Roanne pendant la Revolution," 
 
Preface. xxi 
 
 V^ron K^ville's " D^partement du Haut-Ehin," the Comte de 
 Seilhac on the Bas-Limousin, Boivin Champeaux on the 
 " D(^partement de TEure," Lalli^'s "District de Machecoul," 
 Babeau's " Troyes," Duval-Jouve's " Montpellier," Ramon's 
 "Peronne," Darsy's "Amiens," Combe's "Castres pendant la 
 Revolution," Bouvier's " Vosges," and Duval's " Archives revolu- 
 tionnaires de la Creuse." This long string of names indicates 
 the immense amount of work that has been done of recent 
 years on the history of the Revolution in the provinces of 
 France; but it by no means exhausts them. Histories of 
 special periods, or even days, in the provinces abound, and, as 
 instances-, may be quoted at hazard Labot's " Oahiers, procfes 
 verbaux, etc., du Nivernois et Donziois," and Chancel's 
 '' L'Angoumois en 1789," Bourcier's "Essai sur la Terreur en 
 Anjou," and Durieux' " Une Alerte a Cambrai en 1791," Barbat 
 de Bignicourt's " Les Massacres h Reims," and Victor Modeste's 
 " Le Passage de Louis XVI. ^ Meaux au retour de Varennes 
 le 24 Juin, 1791." In addition to these books and pamphlets 
 nmstbe noticed the innumerable articles on the history of the 
 Revolution in the provinces published in the great reviews, 
 the local magazines, and the bulletins of local archaeo- 
 logical and historical societies and academies. Among the 
 former may be noted d'Ochsenf eld's " La Revolution h. Colmar " 
 in the Revue, de la Revolution and Guibert's " Le parti Girondin 
 dans la Haute- Vienne " in the Revue Historique, while it 
 would be unfair to make mention of any articles in particular 
 in the local magazines and bulletins. The extraordinary 
 ability of many of these local productions is a further proof 
 of the keen interest taken by provincial France in its local 
 history. Where all are good it is impossible to single out a 
 few without being partial; in all valuable contributions are 
 made to the local history of' the Revolution, but special 
 mention may be made of the Revue de Champagne et de Brie, 
 
xxii Prejace. 
 
 the Mevue de I'Agenais, the Revue d' Alsace, the Bevue de 
 Gasoogne, and the Mevue de I'Anjou et de la Bretagne, and, 
 among societies, of the bulletins of the Societe academique of 
 Laon, of the Societe historique et archseologique of Soissons, 
 of the Societe d'6mulation de I'Ain, and in the "Archives 
 historiques de Saintonge et de I'Aunis," issued by the Society 
 academique of Saintes. This enumeration of only a few of the 
 best sources of local history will by itself bear evidence to the 
 attention the subject has received in France, and will show 
 from what authorities I have compiled my account of the 
 Revolution in the provinces, which, I believe, contains much 
 that is new to English readers. 
 
 Next in importance, as bearing witness to the industry 
 of specialists, is the subject of the biographies of the great 
 personages of the Revolution. All the great leaders have had 
 their biographers, who have generally been eulogists, and 
 though, from this fact, the value of their books as historical 
 works is minimized, yet from the labour spent upon them, 
 and the documents contained in them, they make it possible to 
 give the facts of the lives of these individuals more correctly 
 than was possible to Thiers or Carlyle, and must necessarily 
 throw a truer light upon their careers. The most important 
 of these biographies, both in length and in intrinsic importance, 
 is Hamel's " Histoire de Robespierre," a lengthy work, which 
 partakes of the nature of an apology, and is eulogistic even 
 for a biography, but which is full of valuable information. 
 Less important, but worthy of mention, is the same author's 
 " Histoire de Saint Just." The life of Danton has been treated 
 by Bougeart, and more recently by Dr. Robinet, who has 
 devoted many books to the examination of his life. M. Chevre- 
 mont, who stjdes himself the " bibliographe de Marat," has 
 spent more than twenty years in labouring upon the life of 
 his hero, and until his numerous works were published it was 
 
Preface. xxiii 
 
 impossible to understand what was the real life and work of 
 the most universally abused man of the whole revolutionary- 
 period. Without mentioning every biography which has been 
 published of late years, special mention ought to be made of 
 Vatel's " Vergniaud," Jean Reynaud's " Vie et Correspondance 
 de Merlin de Thionville," the Comte de Pajol's "Kleber," 
 Avenel's " Anarchasis Clootz," Victor Advielle's " Babeuf," 
 Marc de Vissac's " Romme le Montagnard," Marcellin Boudet's 
 " Dulaure," Bardoux' "Montlosier," and Colonel lung's " Histoire 
 de Bonaparte," which goes down to 1799, and the same 
 author's very valuable " Dubois-Crance." Before leaving 
 this subject mention ought to be made of Von Arneth's 
 publication of the letters of Marie Antoinette, both to her 
 mother and her brothers Joseph and Leopold, which have 
 entirely revealed the policy of the Queen, and of the 
 regretted death of the Academician, Louis de Lom^nie, after 
 the publication of the first two volumes of his great work 
 " Les Mirabeau," from the style of which it may well be said 
 that the greatest loss the history of the French Revolution 
 has received for many years was the author's death before 
 completing the life of the greatest statesman of the whole 
 period. 
 
 A third department of special work, which deserves notice, 
 is that of the relations between France and Europe during 
 the revolutionary period, or what may be called the foreign 
 policy of the Revolution. Until the publication, six months 
 ago, of the first volume of M. Albert Sorel's masterly work 
 "L'Europe et la Revolution fran^aise," which promises to be the 
 most complete exposition of this subject from the French 
 point of view, Bourgoing's " Histoire diplomatique de I'Europe 
 pendant la Revolution fran5aise," and Masson's " Histoire du 
 d^partement des affaires ^trangkes," were the best French 
 books on this subject. But in Germany much valuable 
 
xxiv Preface. 
 
 work had already been done, and M. Sorel -would be tbe first 
 to admit that without these German histories his own could 
 never have been written. The most important of these works 
 IS without doubt Professor von Sybel's '• Geschiehte der 
 Revolutionszeit," which is chiefly valuable from this point 
 of view, and which has been translated into English by 
 Dr. Perry. Of greater value, as containing a collection of the 
 most important Austrian state papers, is Vivenot's " Quellen zur 
 Geschiehte der Deutscher Kaiserpolitik (Esterreichs wahrend 
 der franzosische Revolutionskriege, 1790-1801," though not 
 thrown into historical shape, and the same author's other 
 works on the period, "Thugut, Clerfayt, und Wurmser," 
 "Herzog Albrecht von Sachsen-Teschen, als Reichs-Feld- 
 Marschall," and "Der Rastadter Congress." Other important 
 German works on this period are Hermann HufFer's " Diplo- 
 matische Verhandlungen aus der Zeit der franzosischen 
 Eevolution," and Adolph Beer's " Joseph II., Leopold II., und 
 Kaunitz," and his " Analecten zur Geschiehte der Revolutions- 
 zeit." Mention should also be made of Halisser's "Deutsche 
 Geschiehte vorn Tode Friedrichs der Grossen bis zur Griindung 
 des deutschen Bundes," and of the veteran Leopold von 
 Ranke's " Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege," 
 published in 1875. In this connection also a word should be 
 said for Mr. Oscar Browning's valuable article, called " France 
 and England in 1793," in the Fortnightly Review for February, 
 1883, and Mr. C. A. Fyffe's "History of Modern Europe," 
 in which he has made use of the valuable despatches preserved 
 in the Record Oflice. 
 
 It is not necessary to go through all the work which has 
 been done by specialists of recent years. The most important 
 departments have now been mentioned, but a few more 
 books should be alluded to, if only to show the wide range 
 over which work on the Revolution has been done in France. 
 
Preface. xxv 
 
 First and foremost must be mentioned the publication of the 
 proceedings of the Constituent 'Assembly from the archives by 
 MM. Mavidal and Laurent, at the expense of the French 
 Government, under the title of "Archives Parlementaires," 
 of which twenty volumes have at present been published 
 containing the full debates and reports of the first eighteen 
 months of its session, which necessarily supersede the accounts, 
 hitherto relied upon by historians, published in the Monitev/r, 
 and in Buchez and Roux' " Histoire parlementaire de la 
 Revolution fran9aise.'' Even superior in interest to this 
 colossal work is the "Tableaux de la Revolution fran5aise 
 publies sur les papiers inedits du d6partement de la police 
 secrete de Paris," by Adolph Schmidt, containing the reports 
 of the spies of the police, on which he has based three 
 volumes, called "Pariser Zustande, 1789-95." The history 
 of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris has been discussed by 
 M. Campardon and M. Henri Wallon, and the revolutionary 
 courts in the provinces by M. Berriat de Saint Prix. The 
 question of the reforms in education and public instruction 
 has been discussed by MM. CeJestin Hippeau, Albert Duruy, 
 Victor Pierre, Albert Babeau, and the Abbd Maggiolo. The 
 finances of the Revolution have been treated by M. Rene 
 Stourm, society, both under the Revolution and the Directory, 
 by the brothers De Goncourt, the theatre and the almanacks 
 of the Revolution by M. Welschinger, the prisons by M. 
 Dauban, art by M. Renouvier, the constitutional clergy by 
 M. Sciout, and the ^migr^s by M. Forneron and by M. Andr6 
 Lebon. Minuter subjects even have had important works 
 written upon them, as, for instance, the history of the famous 
 battalion of Marseillais, who entered Paris before August 10, 
 by MM. Pollio and MarceL 
 
 But it is not so much in books that specialists in the 
 history of the Revolution exhibit the results of their inquiries 
 
XXV i Frejace. 
 
 as in magazines and reviews. All the most important French 
 magazines contain valuable articles every year upon the 
 subject. In such work the Revue des Deux Mondes holds, of 
 course, the pre-eminence, and only recently it had the honour 
 of publishing M. Albert Sorel's important articles on 
 Dumouriez. The Eevue historique, Revue critique, Revue des 
 Questions historiques, and Contemporain are not far behind 
 it, and often contain valuable contributions on different 
 revolutionary subjects. But naturally the two monthly 
 magazines devoted solely to this history contain the most 
 valuable articles of all, though they are edited from different 
 standpoints. La Revolution frangaise was started in July, 
 1880, to prepare the minds of the French people for the 
 centenary of the Eevolution in 1889, under the editorship 
 of M. Auffuste Dide and the management of a committee 
 including the name of Henri Martin. It is written from a 
 revolutionary point of view, its editor and contributors believe 
 profoundly in the Revolution, and very much valuable work 
 has been done by it, and very valuable articles published in 
 it. The Revue de la Revolution was established to all appear- 
 ances to combat the Revolution frangaise. It is also published 
 every month, under the editorship of MM. Charles d'Hericault 
 and Gustave Bord, and is bitterly hostile to the Revolution. 
 Yet the work it does in publishing documents is very great, 
 and many most valuable documents and memoirs would 
 probably never have seen the light but for its existence. It 
 is not only, however, in the various monthly magazines, that 
 articles appear upon the Revolution, but in three important 
 Parisian newspapers a weekly article appears upon some 
 subject connected with the history of the Revolution. In the 
 Re'puhlique frangaise a weekly article was some years ago 
 started by Georges Avenel, whose place is now taken by 
 M. Marcellin Pellet, the author of the " Curiosites revolution- 
 
Preface. xxvii 
 
 uaires." A similar article is likewise published every week 
 in tlie Repuhlique radicale by M. Jean Bernard, and in the 
 Justice by the brilliant writer who signs himself '• Santonnax." 
 This rapid sketch of the special work lately done upon the 
 Revolution in France will justify me, I hope, in undertaking a 
 new history of the Revolution. But the fact that so much has 
 been published which is unknown to English readers would 
 not be sufficient excuse of itself, if I had not a yet stronger 
 conviction that the history of this important period is imper- 
 fectly known in England. It is without doubt the most 
 important period in modern history. Modern Europe is 
 utterly different from the Europe of 1789, and the French 
 Revolution marks the beginning of the change. Not only, how- 
 ever, are its results important, but its history is most dramatic. 
 It is full of a living interest, as the history of a great people 
 passing through a great crisis, and it is almost impossible to be 
 impartial in treating it. I have tried consistently to treat the 
 men, who played a part in it, as men, and neither to over- 
 praise nor over-depreciate. It is hardly possible for a French- 
 man, whose grandfather must have taken some part in it, to be 
 impartial ; it is possible for an Englishman to be so, and my 
 hope is that in my endeavour not to write a partisan history 
 I have not destroyed all the dramatic interest of the story. 
 There is, however, a yet further reason. In the history of the 
 great French Revolution, can be read great political lessons. 
 It was not only a period of destruction, but a period of con- 
 struction, and at a time when democracy is evidently going 
 to have its say in English politics, it is useful to study the 
 period of its development in France. Nearly every expedient, 
 whether socialistic or purely democratic, which has been 
 proposed of recent years for benefiting the condition of the 
 people, was tried between 1789 and 1799, and, if history has 
 any value at all, it is this period which ought to be examined 
 
xxviii Preface. 
 
 before any other, in order to learn the political lessons which 
 it teaches. 
 
 Last of all, I must express a few words of thanks to all who 
 have helped me in my work, and say that I hope the second 
 volume, carrying the history down to the death of Robespierre, 
 wiU be published in the summer, and the third volume, com- 
 pleting it down to the end of the Directory and the assump- 
 tion of power by Bonaparte, next winter. To the third volume 
 a complete index will be added. To my wife I owe my 
 hearty thanks ; and also to F. Clift, LL.D, as weU as to my 
 old schoolfellow, James Gay, of Thurning Hall, Norfolk, 
 without whose aid this volume could not have been com- 
 pleted. 
 
 H. MOESE STEPHENS. 
 
 London, 1886. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Distinction between the causes and the history of the French Revolution 
 
 Calonne — The assembly of the Notables and dismissal of Calonne — The 
 Parlement of Paris — Brienne's first conflict with the Parlement, August, 
 1787— Second conflict, November, 1787 — Suppression of the parlements 
 by the edicts of May 8, 1788 — Preparations for the States-General .^.,. 
 
 CHAPTER I, 
 THE ELECTIONS TO THE STATES-aENEEAL. 
 
 States-General summoned for May, 1789 — Affairs in Dauphine — Mounier — 
 " Historical pamphlets— ^TKe~"T?Ssultat du Conseil " — Political pamphlets 
 — Affairs in Brittany and Franche Comt^ — The r^glement of January 24 
 — The primary assemblies — Process of election — Local disputes — Supple- 
 mentary riglements — ^The noblesse — The clergy — The bishops — The 
 monks and chapters — The cures — The elections of the clergy — Primary 
 elections in villages and towns — The elections of the tiers ^tat — Malouet 
 — Other deputies of the tiers ^tat — Election of Mirabeau — The elections 
 in Paris — Bailly— Sieyes ^ 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BEBETINO- OF THE STATES-GENERAL. 
 
 Want of union among the deputies of the tiers ^tat— Introduction to the king 
 
 The Bishop of Nancy's sermon — Opening session of the States-General 
 
 Policy of the tiers etat until June 10 — The tiers etat declare themselves 
 
 the National Assembly — Oath of the Tennis-Court, June 20 — The Seance 
 Royale, June 23 — Mirabeau — Union of the orders — The Breton Club — 
 Mounier and Malouet lose their influence. — Camus — Rabaut de Saint- 
 jitienne — Gregoire— Concentration Of troops— Dismissal of Necker ..'. -i. SJ 
 
XXX Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER in. 
 
 THE [COtJKT AND THE MINISTRY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The king— Necker — Montmorin — Why were they unsuccessful? — The Comte 
 de Provence — The Duke of Orleans — The friends of Orleans and his 
 party — Th e queen — The Comte d'Artois and his policy — The Marechal 
 de Broglie — Concentration of troops — Mirabeau's speech — The new 
 ministry — The first emigration 75 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PARIS— THE WORKSHOP OP THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 Paris before the Revolution — Journalism — The publishers, Panckoucke, Prud- 
 homme, Lejay, Momoro — Types of journalism — Mirabeau as a journalist 
 — Volney — Barere — Brissot — Loustallot — Reporters : Lehodey and Maret 
 — The royalist, ministerialist, Orleanist, revolutionary, literary, and scien- 
 tific salons — Clubs — Popular societies — Assemblies of the districts — The 
 Palais-Royal — The Gardes Fran^aises — Political views of the farmers- 
 general, the lawyers, and the literary and scientific men — The bourgeois 
 — The working classes — The charities of Paris — Politics of the poor — 
 Causes of riots — Sack of Reveillon's house — Mutiny in the Gardes Fran- 
 {aises — The news of Necker's dismissal 93 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TAKING OP THE BASTILLE. 
 
 The news of Necker's dismissal — Camille Desmoulins — July 12 — The electors 
 at the Hotel de Ville— July 13— The morning of July 14— The Hotel des 
 Invalides — The Bastille — The storming of the Bastille — Release of the 
 prisoners — Incidents at the Hotel de Ville — The Assembly on July 12 
 and 13 — Lafayette vice-president — The king visits the Assembly — The 
 fifty deputies at Paris — Preparations — The king enters Paris — Lally- 
 Tollendal— The first emigration— Bailly's troubles — The National Guard 
 — Lafayette— MurderofFouIlon— Measures of the Assembly — The Assem- 
 bly wastes time — The session of August 4 — How the provinces imitated 
 Paris „ ,28 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE IPROVINCES IN 1789. 
 
 Eagerness for news in the provinces— Effect of Necker's dismissal— De 
 Broglie's ride— War against the chateaux— Land tenure in France- 
 Metayer tenure— High price of bread— The " great fear "—Establishment 
 
 of National Guards— Suppression of the peasants by the bourgeois 
 
 Classification of riots— Riots at Troyes, Caen, Rouen, Strasbourg, and 
 Vernon— Federations of National Guards— Re-establishment of local 
 authorities— Incapacity of the Assembly— Ouvrieis-Lyons 169 
 
Contents. xxxi 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE FIFTH AND SIXTH OF OCTOBEB. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Disorderly character of the debates in the Assembly — Debate on the number 
 of chambers — The question of the veto — Appearance of parties — Duval 
 d'EspriSmesnil — Mirabeau-Tonneau — The bishops — The Archbishop of 
 Aix — The right — Mounier and Malouet — The left — The extreme left — 
 The centre — Garat — Excitement in Paris— New journals — Marat — The 
 king and the army — The mob of women — Their arrival at Versailles — 
 Royal carriages stopped — Arrival of Lafayette — Attack on the palace — 
 Who was to blame ? — Importance of events — ^Retirement of Mounier ... 198 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE ASSEMBLT AT PARIS. 
 
 The Assembly at Paris — The Manege — Parties become more defined — Talley- 
 rand — The right : the Comte de Montlosier, the Abb^ Maury, Cazales — 
 The left : the triumvirate, Adrian Duport, Barnave, Charles de Lameth — 
 The followers of the triumvirate — Mirabeau enters into communication 
 with the court — His plan — Proposes new Ministers — Decree of November 
 7 — Mirabeau's manner of work — Assistants — Collaborators — Policy — 
 Detested and distrusted — Increased bitterness of political feeling — Political 
 duels — Theatrical and artistic politics — The " Cercle Sociale " — The 
 Jacobin, 1789, and Cordelier Clubs — Camille Desmoulins founds the 
 Revolutions de France et de Brabant — Marat and Ami du Peuple — Royalist 
 journals — The Actes des Apdtres — Attitude of Continental powers — 
 Attitude of England and America — Why no one interfered — The four 
 men in power — Position of Bailly, Lafayette, and Necker — Mirabeau's 
 first appeal to Lafayette — He is summoned by the court 229 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE C0NSTITT7TI0N. 
 
 Constitution-making — The colonies of France — Colonial policy of the As- 
 sembly — The constitutional committee — Target — Thouret — The new 
 constitution — ^The old provinces — The new departments — The new 
 local government— ^The procureurs-syndics — Mania for election — Active 
 citizens—" Loi des trois jours de travail " — " Loi du marc d 'argent " — 
 Universal condemnation of the parlements — Confusion of old French 
 law— New system of judicature — High Court for cases of high treason at 
 Orleans — Weakening of the executive — Distrust of the royal power — 
 Good intentions of the Assembly ....„ » 269 
 
xxxii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE CIVIL CONSTITUTION OP THE CLEBGT. 
 
 rAGK 
 
 Policy of the Assembly towards the Church — The Church in France — The 
 idea of a Galilean Church — Christianity attacked by Voltaire, the 
 Encyclopaedists, and Rousseau — Weakness of the Church in France — 
 The king would not reform it— ^First debates on the Church ; its property 
 declared to be national — Suppression of religious houses — Dom Gerle's 
 motion — The civil constitution of the clergy — Its weak points — The oath 
 imposed on the clergy — Tolerance of the Assembly in matters of con- 
 science — Clergy who took the oath — Leaders of clerical opposition — 
 The Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen — The Archbishop of Aix — Dom 
 Gerle — The Abbe Gouttes — The Abbe de Montesquiou — The Due de la 
 Rochefoucauld Liancourt u.^.^.m 291 
 
 CHAPTER XI, 
 
 miKABEATJ AND THE COTJBT. 
 
 Weakness of the court — The Comte de Mercy- Argenteau — The Comte de la 
 Marck — Negotiations between Mirabeau and the court — Mirabeau's 
 letters to the king and to Lafayette — His opinion of Lafayette — Debts 
 paid by the king — The affair of Nootka Sound — The debate on the right 
 of declaring peace and war — Interview at St. Cloud — Mirabeau's know- 
 ledge of foreign politics — The foreign policy of the Assembly — Mirabeau 
 and Montmorin— Mirabeau reporter of the diplomatic committee — Danger 
 of anarchy — The four enemies approaching — Mirabeau's thirtieth note for 
 the court — Extravagance — New assistants — Health gives way — Return 
 of Orleans — The riot at the Hotel de Castries — The new ministry — 
 Mirabeau's new partisans — The fete of the Federation — Mirabeau's great 
 plan — Could it have succeeded? 310 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FINANCIAL DIEEICTTLTT. 
 
 Importance of the financial question — Taxation and internal douanes 
 
 Colbert's protective system— Effect of Law's schemes, and rise of the 
 study of political economy — Establishment of agricultural societies— 
 The physiocrats— Turgot, Necker, and Calonne— Necker's financial 
 proposals, and the financial policy of the Assembly in 1789— Economic 
 
 state of the country, and scarcity of specie — Necessity of feeding Paris 
 
 Where was the State to find money ? — Errors with regard to the value of 
 Church property— Manner in which Church lands were sold — Mirabeau 
 proposes a new issue of assignats in August, 1790— Resignation of Necker 
 — Minor points of the Assembly's financial policy — Economic state of 
 France in 1790— The Marquis de Montesquiou— Dupont de Nemours— 
 Mirabeau as a financier „ ,,g 
 
Contents. xxxiii 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE FRENCH ARMY AND NAVT. 
 
 Disaffection in the anny before 1789 — Disproportionate number of generals — 
 The hous.ehold troops — The proprietary regiments — The foreign 
 regiments— The infantry— The artillery— The cavalry— The militia and 
 the colonial regiments— Large proportion of the great generals of the 
 republic and of Napoleon either officers or soldiers in the old royal army 
 — The military committee of the Assembly — Dubois-Crance proposes 
 conscription — Dubois-Cranc^ — The new military constitution, its mis- 
 takes and its results— The Marquis de Bouill^— The affair of Nancy- 
 Opinions in the Assembly and in the clubs about it^Disorganization 
 and want of discipline continue in the army — The French royal navy in 
 1789 — Riots at Toulon and Brest — The naval committee of the Assembly 
 and the new naval constitution — Disaffection continues — The old royal 
 army and navy destroyed, and the new schemes abortive ^ 368 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE DEATH OE MIRABEATT. 
 
 Mirabeau declares himself the advocate of the restoration of order, but not of 
 the old order — His second great scheme — Duquesnoy's report of the 
 topography of the Assembly — The oath of the clergy — Mirabeau's advice 
 about the woman Lamotte — Chances of foreign interference — The diplo- 
 matic committee — The affairs of Avignon and the princes of the empire 
 in Alsace — Mirabeau president of the Assembly and director of the 
 department of the Seine — The 1789, Monarchic, and Jacobin Clubs — 
 The question of emigration — Departure of Mesdames of France — La 
 Marck's visit to Bouille — Affair of Vincennes, and of the chevaliers du 
 poignard — Debate on the regency — Mirabeau's illness — Mirabeau's death 
 — ^Mirabeau as a statesman, as an orator, and as a man .« 409 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE PLIGHT TO VARENNES, AND THE DISSOLUTION OF THE 
 CONSTITtTENT ASSEMBLY. 
 
 Effect of Mirabeau's death at the court and in the Assembly — Growing im- 
 portance of Robespierre — History of the idea that the king should leave 
 Paris — The insult to the king on April 18 — The plan of escape — Pre- 
 parations for escape — Bouille's military preparations — The king leaves 
 Paris on June 21, is stopped at Varennes, and returns to Paris — The state 
 of Paris and the Assembly during the king's absence — The successful 
 escape of Monsieur — Effect of the king's flight on the Assembly, Lafa- 
 yette, and the people of Paris— The club of the Cordeliers draw up a 
 petition for the king's dethronement — The massacre on the Champ de 
 Mars on July 17 — Effects of the massacre — Revision of the Constitution 
 — Le Chapelier's motion against the clubs— Close of the Constituent 
 Assembly— The great work done by the Constituent Assembly in spite ot 
 their mistakes 434 
 
^ G IL A N Td 
 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 Distinction between the causes and the history of the French Revolution 
 — Calonne— The assembly of the Notables and dismissal of Calonne 
 — The Parlement of Paris— Brienne's first conflict with the Parlement, 
 August, 1787— Second conflict, November, 1787 — Suppression of the 
 parlements by the edicts of May 8, 1788— Preparations for the States- 
 General. 
 
 The causes and the history of that great political and social 
 movement which is universally known as the French Revolu- 
 tion form two distinct subjects. The historian has to describe 
 the events as they occurred, and to try to account for the 
 changing phases of the eventful period which elapsed between 
 the first meeting of the States-General in May, 1789, and the 
 seizure of supreme power by Napoleon Bonaparte in November, 
 1799 ; it is the task of the philosopher to analyze the causes. 
 To do so it would be necessary to make a careful survey of the 
 whole political history of France, in order to trace the growth 
 of the centralizing process which concentrated all power in 
 the hands of the king, and to examine the administration 
 of the finances at diSerent times, the false principles which 
 determined the incidence of taxation, and the increase ot 
 the enormous deficit which directly led to the summons of the 
 States-General. An investigation would also have to be made 
 into the efi"ect of the political and financial condition of the 
 country upon the material well-being of all classes, and into 
 the intellectual and moral state of every grade of society, 
 from the gay courtier and wealthy farmer of the taxes down 
 to the humblest artisan in the great cities, the poorest labourer, 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
2 Causes of the Revolution. 
 
 whether among the cornfields of Picardy and Artois, or the 
 vineyards of Guienne and Burgundy, and to the very beggar 
 upon the high-roads. This last inquiry would be the most 
 difficult of an, for it would entail an estimate of the influence 
 upon the minds of the people of the Jansenists and the Jesuits, 
 of Rousseau and Voltaire, of the Encyclopasdists and the 
 Physiocrats, and also of the different systems of education 
 pursued in the great colleges, both of the religious orders and of 
 royal foundation, and even in the village schools. Interesting 
 as the result of such an extended inquiry into the causes of 
 the great Revolution in France would be, it lies outside the 
 province of the present work. It would be necessary to go over 
 the whole political, financial, and literary history of France in 
 order to account satisfactorily for the causes of the events which 
 are to be narrated, and ia that case the introduction would be 
 nearly as long as the narrative. Nevertheless, it is necessary 
 to say a few words upon the occurrences which directly led to 
 the convocation of the first States-General since 1614, and to 
 examine carefully the elections to it, in order to see how the men 
 who were first to touch the administrative, political, military, 
 and religious edifice which had been erected by Richelieu and 
 Louis XIV. were chosen, and what manner of men they were. 
 At the close of 1786, only three years before the king and 
 queen became practically prisoners in the Tuileries, there was 
 no immediate prospect of a revolution ; the king was much 
 despised, and the queen much hated and slandered by the 
 courtiers, but to all outward appearance the monarchy was as 
 powerful as it had ever been. The only weak point was the 
 management of the finances ; for, though the people were cruelly 
 taxed, there was an estimated yearly deficit of over 125,000,000 
 livres. The controller-general of the finances, Charles Alex- 
 andre de Calonne, son of a president of the Parlement of Douai, 
 and formerly a judge there himself, had obtained office through 
 the influence of the Comte de Vergennes, the Foreign Minister, 
 and had for three years managed to blind the court and the 
 country to the state of the finances. His plan was to make a 
 great show and to borrow money on the strength of it ; and, in 
 
The Assembly of Notables. 3 
 
 pursuance of that plan, the queen had purchased the palace of 
 Saint-Cloud, and the king Rambouillet, and the estates of the 
 Prince de Rohan Gu6m6n6e and other impoverished noblemen, 
 while Calonne had raised loans to the extent of 800,000,000 
 livres. But Calonne was too shrewd not to know that he 
 could not go on borrowing for ever ; and, after three years of 
 lavish expenditure upon the noblesse of the court, he believed 
 himself strong enough to advise the king to summon an 
 assembly of the Notables of the kingdom, and to ask them to 
 sanction the abolition of the privileges of the noblesse in 
 matters of taxation, and the imposition of a general land tax 
 upon all landed property alike. 
 
 On February 22, 1787, the Assembly of Notables met. It 
 consisted of 144 members, divided into eight bureaux or 
 committees, each presided over by a prince of the blood, and 
 only contained eight or nine individuals who did not belong 
 to the two privileged orders, the clergy and the noblesse. 
 Before the Notables Calonne made a great display of reforming 
 zeal ; he proposed to them to sanction most of the great 
 reforms which Turgot had formerly propounded, including 
 representative assemblies in the provinces, the abolition cf 
 internal custom-houses, and above all, a general land tax. 
 But the Notables were not to be deceived ; the lavish distri- 
 bution of money among the courtiers had no effect upon them ; 
 they unanimously demanded a statement of Calonne's accounts, 
 and in one bureau, that presided over by the king's younger 
 brother, the Comte d'Artois, the Marquis de Lafayette was 
 heard to demand that the States-General, the old representa- 
 tive assembly of France, should be summoned. His demand 
 passed almost unnoticed at the time, for the struggle against 
 Calonne occupied all thoughts. The people of Paris, who dis- 
 believed in Calonne's sincerity, vehemently applauded the action 
 of the Notables, and it was with universal joy that the news 
 of his dismissal, on April 17, was hailed all over the country. 
 On May 3 his successor was appointed, and it was with some 
 surprise that the Parisians heard that Mgr. Lomenie de Brienne, 
 the Archbishop of Toulouse, had been selected to fiU Calonne's 
 
4 The Parlement of Paris. 
 
 place, on the recommendation of the Abbe Vermond, who had 
 originally been sent to Vienna to teach the Archduchess Marie 
 Antoinette French, and had had great influence with her ever 
 since. The Notables consented to all Calonne's reforms, except 
 the general land tax, when proposed by Lomdnie de Brienne, 
 well knowing that their sanction could not have the force of 
 law; and were dismissed on May 25, when Brienne was left to 
 face his difficulties by himself. But before any new tax could 
 be levied or any new law made, the royal edict had to be 
 registered by the Parlement of Paris, and the new minister 
 was aware that a struggle with this power was inevitable. 
 
 The Parlement of Paris dated from the fourteenth century, 
 when the kings of France used to decide all political affairs with 
 the advice of the Grand Council, and all financial matters in the 
 " Chambre des Comptes,'' and consulted the Parlement of Paris, 
 sitting in three chambers, the "Grand Chambre," the "Chambre 
 des EnquStes," and the " Chambre des Requetes," before doing 
 justice. By 1344 the Parlement had grown in numbers and 
 power, and administered justice by itself under the sanction of 
 the king, and it then consisted of three presidents and seventy- 
 eight counsellors, of whom forty- four were ecclesiastics and 
 thirty-four laymen. Louis XI., the politic king, made one great 
 reform in the constitution of the Parlement of Paris on October 
 21, 1467, when he decreed that the counsellors should be irre- 
 movable, except by forfeiture for high treason, in order that 
 he might get a better price for seats in the Parlement, which 
 he always sold. This great change finally determined the 
 history of the Parlement of Paris. It became a permanent 
 body of resident counsellors in Paris, administering justice 
 and registering new laws, while the States-General only met 
 occasionally, when specially summoned by the king. Francis I. 
 who had no affection for such an elected body as the States- 
 General, favoured the growth of the power of the Parlement, 
 and it was to the Parlement of Paris, and not to the States- 
 General, that he applied when he desired to annul the Treaty 
 of Madrid in 1527. Throughout the sixteenth century the 
 Parlement of Paris increased in influence, and it even beo-an 
 
The Provincial Parlements. 5 
 
 to venture to deliberate on the royal edicts, which were sent 
 down to it to be registered before they became laws. The 
 lawyers knew well and acknowledged that they could not 
 refuse to register an edict, if the king came down in person 
 and held a " lit de justice " and ordered them to do so, but at the 
 same time they were well aware that, in such times of dissen- 
 sion as the end of the sixteenth century, the king would not 
 like to incur their enmity by forcing them to register an edict 
 of which they disapproved. Richelieu, however, disregarded 
 them, and forced them to register whatever edict he pleased ; 
 and the disturbances of the Fronde, when they made their 
 greatest pretensions, led to the destruction for a century of their 
 claim to a right to deliberate on edicts laid before them, for 
 Louis XIV. was far too imperious a monarch to permit any 
 discussion of his measures. The Regent Orleans made use of 
 the lawyers of the Parlement to upset the will of Louis XIV.j 
 and then again confined them most sensibly to their old 
 functions of registration and administering justice, and Louis 
 XV. continued his policy. When they interfered in the struggle 
 between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, the king exiled them 
 from Paris in 1753, though he consented to the suppression 
 of their enemies the Jesuits in 1762; and in 1770, on the 
 advice of Maupeou, he abolished the old Parlement altogether, 
 and established the Parlement Maupeou. Louis XVL, on his 
 accession to the throne, had recalled the former counsellors, and 
 Lom6nie de Brienne was to find, in 1787 and 1788, that their 
 spirit was as mutinous as ever, and that they would not be 
 satisfied to merely register the royal edicts without discussing 
 them, as they had done in the reign of Louis XIV. The 
 Parlement of Paris was further strengthened in the country 
 by the existence of provincial parlements in aU the chief pro- 
 vinces, which, though they had no actual connection with the 
 Parlement of Paris, yet invariably made common cause with 
 it in all the struggles with royalty. These provincial parle- 
 ments were twelve in number, and were stationed at Toulouse, 
 Grenoble, Bordeaux, Dijon, Pau, Metz, Besan9on, Douai, 
 Rouen, Aix, Rennes, and Nancy. 
 
6 The States-General demanded. 
 
 To tlie Parlement of Paris Lom^me de Brienne sent his 
 edicts, one by one, to be registered. On June 17, 1787, tbe 
 edict for internal free trade was registered, on June 22 that for 
 the establishment of provincial assemblies, and on June 27 that 
 permitting the redemption of the corv6e, or right of exacting 
 forced labour, by a money payment ; and then there came a 
 pause before the great struggle which the archbishop knew 
 would follow the suggestion of the general land tax. On 
 July 16 the Abb6 Sabatier de Cabre, a clerical counsellor of 
 the Parlement, rose and remarked that only the States-General 
 could register a perpetual edict or grant a subsidy. The coun- 
 sellors of the Parlement hardly knew what to make of this 
 suggestion ; all mention of the old representative assembly of 
 France had been tacitly avoided for one hundred and seventy- 
 three years, and they were afraid at first of the very idea. 
 Nevertheless, after due consideration, the counsellors began to 
 approve of the Abbe Sabatier's proposition. They did not 
 believe for a moment that the king would consent to summon 
 the States-General ; but the suggestion of such a measure would 
 make them popular and the king unpopular, and it would be 
 a good excuse for refusing the hated land tax, which would 
 affect their own incomes. On July 30, therefore, after a long 
 debate, in which the Abb6 Sabatier, [Robert de Saint- Vincent, 
 an old Jansenist who remembered the struggles of the former 
 reign, Duval d'Espremesnil, an ambitious supporter of the 
 powers of the Parlement, Adrien Duport de Pr^laville, and 
 Preteau de Saint-Just distinguished themselves, the Parlement 
 of Paris refused to register two fresh edicts which had been sent 
 down to it, for the establishment of the general land tax and 
 of a new stamp tax, and demanded the convocation of the 
 States-General. The news of this opposition was hailed with 
 delight by the people of Paris, who now began to talk of 
 nothing but the States-General ; but the king promptly had 
 the decrees registered in a "lit de justice" on August 6, and 
 then exiled the whole Parlement to Troyes. The action of the 
 Parlement was enthusiastically approved all over France ; the 
 " Cour des Aides " and the " Coux des Comptes " both ratified 
 
Brienne and the Parlement of Paris. 7 
 
 its opposition, and the Court of the Chitelet and the provincial 
 parlements protested against the action of the king. 
 
 The counsellors of the Parlement soon tired of life in 
 Champagne and longed for the gay capital, and in September 
 a compromise was arrived at. The Parlement registered an 
 edict for the collection of two vingtifemes or twentieths, which 
 were to be levied on all property alike, and were recalled on 
 September 21. This could not do much to restore the balance 
 between income and' expenditure, and on November 19 
 Lomdnie de Brienne again came down to the Parlement with 
 the king and all his court, and asked that the Parlement should 
 register an edict for raising large loans for the next five years, 
 and promised vaguely in the king's name that the States- 
 General should be speedily summoned. The same leaders 
 opposed the edict for the loans as the land tax, supported on 
 this occasion by the Duke of Orleans, who was sitting as a 
 duke and peer, and the king abruptly turned the sitting into 
 a " lit de justice " and ordered the edict to be at once registered, 
 which was done. The next day the Parlement protested, but 
 the king tore out their protest, and declared that he would 
 summon the States-General for July, 1792. 
 
 Lomenie de Brienne had, however, no real desire to meet 
 the States-General ; he only wished for popularity and for time 
 to prepare a new blow against the Parlement. This was no less 
 than the entire suppression of the parlements aU over France, 
 and the establishment of a "Cour pl6nifere," to consist of 
 certaiQ great nobles, ofiicials, and lawyers named for life, who 
 were to have the registering powers of the parlements, while 
 in the various bailliages of France small law courts were to be 
 appointed to administer justice. The States-General was to 
 be summoned for January, 1791, and various reforms, based, 
 like those of Calonne, on Turgot's suggestions, were to be 
 propounded. That some great scheme was being prepared was 
 well known, and when it was reported in the month of April 
 that the royal printing-press at Versailles was working night 
 and day under a guard of soldiers, consternation was general 
 amono- the counsellors of the Parlement of Paris. The 
 
8 The May Edicts. 
 
 chief leaders assembled daily at the house of Adrien Duport, 
 and it was in his salon that a young counsellor, named Goeslard 
 de Montsabert, read a copy of the complete scheme of Brienne, 
 which had been thrown to him by a workman out of a window 
 of the printing office, on the evening of May 2. On May 3 
 Goeslard read out the secret scheme to the Parlement, and 
 on May 5 both he himself and D'Espremesnil were arrested 
 by a captain in the Gardes Franpaises, the Marquis d'Agoult, 
 and sent by lettres de cachet to the prisons of Mont St. 
 Michel and the Chateau d'If. This exposure of his secret 
 profoundly irritated Lom^nie de Brienne, who nevertheless 
 persevered, and on May 8 the edicts for the suppression of the 
 parlements and the establishment of the " Cour pldnifere " were 
 registered in a "lit de justice.'' . 
 
 The May edicts created a storm of opposition ; the Parle- 
 ments of Rennes, Rouen, Grenoble, and Bordeaux protested, on 
 which the counsellors were exiled to their country estates, and 
 the people of France began to show their affection for their 
 parlements by riots and even by open insurrection. The only 
 manner in which to appease their wrath was to make serious 
 preparations for the summons of the States- General, and 
 Lomenie de Brienne, believing that it would approve of 
 his abolition of the parlements, began to issue edicts, which 
 indicated that the day of meeting was at hand. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ELECTIONS TO THE STATES-GENERAIi. 
 
 States-General summoned for May, 1789— Affairs in Dauphin^— Mounier 
 —Historical pamphlets— The " Rdsultat du Conseil "—Political pam- 
 phlets — Affairs in Brittany and Franche Comt^— The rfeglement of 
 January 24 — The primary assemblies— Process of election — Local 
 disputes— Supplementary rfeglements— The noblesse— The clergy— 
 The bishops— The monks and chapters— The cur^s — The elections of 
 the clergy — Primary elections in villages and towns— The elections 
 of the tiers ^tat—Malouet— Other deputies of the tiers ^tat — Elec- 
 tion of Mirabeau — The elections in Paris — Bailly — Sidyfes. 
 
 The Marquis de Lafayette had, in the year 1787, recommended 
 the convocation of the States- General as the only measure 
 which could save France from immediate bankruptcy; but 
 when Lafayette and afterwards the lawyers of the Parlement of 
 Paris suggested that the old representative assembly of France 
 should again be summoned after a lapse of 173 years, they 
 little suspected that its meeting would bring about a great 
 political revolution; and when the king promised to carry 
 out the suggestion, he never conceived that he had sealed the 
 fate of his dynasty. No one exactly knew what the States- 
 General was, or how it was composed ; but men of every 
 class and of every shade of opinion at once agreed that it, 
 and it alone, could save the country. The king believed that 
 he would be able to shift the responsibility of the heavy 
 burden of financial embarrassment on to the shoulders of 
 others ; Lom^nie de Brienne hoped for everlasting fame and 
 a long tenure of office as the convener of the States-General ; 
 the lawyers of the Parlement of Paris thought that an 
 
lo Movement in Dauphini. [chap. 
 
 elected Assembly would as surely overthrow Brienne as the 
 Notables had overthrown Calonne; and the mass of the 
 people, both educated and uneducated, expected that they 
 would at last have some voice in the spending of the taxes 
 which they paid, and that those taxes would be modified, and 
 levied equally on all classes alike. 
 
 Every one knew that the States-General was not to meet 
 till 1791, yet every one at once began to discuss, in salon 
 and in tavern, in books and in pamphlets, in what manner 
 the States-General was to be elected, and what was to be 
 the extent of its powers. Brienne's incapacity, and the 
 independent spirit of the Parlement of Paris, became more 
 and more visible, while the finances fell into greater and 
 greater confusion, until the king, in despair, determined to 
 hasten the day for the meeting of that assembly which was 
 to cure all ills ; and on August 8, 1788, the very same day 
 on which the establishment of Brienne's " Cour pldni^re " was 
 suspended by a royal edict, the States-General was summoned 
 to meet at Versailles on May 1, 1789. 
 
 These decrees of the king, and the retirement of Brienne, 
 which followed their promulgation, were not only due to 
 general causes, but more especially to a movement in a 
 corner of France, which was taking the shape of downright 
 rebellion, and might soon be imitated in other provinces. The 
 events of 1788 in Dauphind had an influence on the elections 
 to the States-General which it is impossible to overestimate. 
 But for the movement there, the problems offered by the new 
 idea of election in France might have been differently solved, 
 and the great part of the nation, which longed for political, 
 social, and financial reforms, would have been left without 
 organization. The assembly of Dauphin^ became the court 
 of appeal in every electoral difficulty ; its liberal noblesse 
 encouraged, with precept and example, the liberal noblesse of 
 other provinces ; its cur^s warned the cure's of aU France 
 against electing dignitaries of the Church, and thus determined 
 the character of the Estate of the clergy; the burghers of 
 Grenoble dissuaded those of other towns from attempting to 
 
I.] The Assembly of Visille. ii 
 
 form a distinct order ; the entire assembly warned the provinces 
 to think of the interests of France before the interests of 
 locality ; and its secretary, Jean Joseph Mounier, became the 
 most influential man in France, and the recognized leader of 
 the tiers ^tat throughout the country. The disturbances in 
 Dauphind arose primarily because the lawyers of the Parle- 
 ment of Grenoble had been ordered into exile on their country 
 estates for protesting against Brienne's May edicts, and began 
 with an informal assembly of the notables of Dauphin^, who, 
 by the pen of Mounier, their secretary, demanded the return 
 of their Parlement, and the convocation of their provincial 
 Estates, and threatened that, if not immediately summoned, 
 the provincial Estates would meet without royal letters of 
 convocation. The threat was carried out; and on July 21, 
 an irregular assembly of 397 deputies of Dauphin^ 49 of 
 whom were representatives of the clergy, 160 of the noblesse, 
 and 188 of the tiers etat, met at the chateau of Vizille, the 
 residence and cotton factory of a wealthy bourgeois of 
 Grenoble, named Claude Perier, the father of the celebrated 
 statesman, Casimir Perier.^ The assembly constituted itself 
 without any interference from the Mar^chal de Vaux, who 
 commanded the forces in the province, elected Mounier its 
 secretary, demanded the immediate summons of the States- 
 General, and adjourned. This was simply an act of rebellion, 
 and as such Brienne desired to treat it. He prepared to send 
 more troops down to Dauphind, and issued a lettre de cachet 
 against Mounier, the heart and soul of the whole movement. 
 But the king shrank from such extreme measures; he saw 
 clearly that any attempt to crush the movement by force 
 would drive, not only Dauphin^ but also the neighbouring 
 province of Provence, to arms, and it was on account 
 of these disturbances that he suspended the operation 
 of Brienne's May edicts, and accepted the resignation of 
 Brienne himself. The astute archbishop took care to be 
 weU rewarded, and received an enormous pension and his 
 nomination to the cardinalate ; but he never forgot his abrupt 
 I Mut(m& du Dauphvni, by Jules Taulier, p. 293. Grenoble : 1855. 
 
12 
 
 Mounter. [chap. 
 
 dismissal, and his subsequent conduct proved alike his own 
 incapacity and his desire for revenge. The king then decided 
 to follow his own impulses, and once more appointed Necker 
 his minister, on August 27, with full powers to treat the 
 assembly at Vizille in whatever way he liked, so long as he 
 avoided civil war. Necker tried to save the royal honour 
 by issuing royal letters of convocation for a new assembly in 
 Dauphin^; but the device failed, and in the new assembly, 
 which met at Romans on September 10, the same deputies 
 appeared who had been present at Vizille, and at once 
 re-elected Mounier to be their secretary. The victory was 
 obvious to all France, and it was no wonder that, in their 
 own electoral difficulties, the other provinces turned for advice 
 to Dauphin^, to Grenoble, and to Mounier. 
 
 Jean Joseph Mounier,^ who had practically overthrown 
 Brienne, and headed a successful and at the same time a 
 bloodless revolution, was born at Grenoble, in 1758. His 
 father was only a small shopkeeper, but was sufficiently 
 prosperous to send his son to the College Royal Dauphin, 
 and, when his abilities became manifest, to the University 
 of Orange, where he took the degree of Bachelor of Laws 
 in 1776. In 1779 he was admitted an advocate at Grenoble, 
 and in 1783 purchased the office of juge royal, one of the 
 two criminal judgeships of his province. Having then 
 comparative leisure, Mounier began to examine the science 
 of politics, and learnt English in order to study English 
 institutions, of which he became a profound admirer. The 
 influence of English institutions upon the chief leaders of 
 the French Revolution was extremely varied. Every French- 
 man who had been in England brought away different 
 impressions, according to the medium through which the 
 English constitution had appeared to him. Marat, who had 
 been mixed up with the popular societies, saw with their 
 eyes the evils of the unreformed House of Commons, the 
 
 1 Notice historique sur Jean Joseph Mmmier, printed in the edition 
 of his Easai sur Vitifluence attribuee aux philosophes, aux franoma^ona 
 et aux illumines sur la Revolution frangaise, published at Paris in 1822. 
 
I.] Mounier and the English Constitution. 13 
 
 immense influence of the Crown from its wealth and the 
 bestowal of honours, and the rapacity of the great families ; 
 Mirabeau, who had been intimate with the Marquis of 
 Lansdowne and others of the new Whigs, saw with them 
 the power of expansion which makes the English constitu- 
 tion so admirable ; Ijally-Tollendal admired it with the 
 admiration of his friend Burke; and the Duke of Orleans 
 perceived that politics did not at all trouble his friend, the 
 Prince of Wales, and concluded that the English constitution 
 must be very liberal to debauchee and pleasure-loving princes. 
 Mounier, however, had had no such practical experience of its 
 workings, and regarded English institutions as theoretically 
 good in themselves. He had carefully studied Blackstone and 
 De Lolme, and looked upon the English constitution as a 
 whole, without understanding that it had been the growth 
 of centuries of compromise, and that it was in many points 
 both more practical and less logical than his authorities stated. 
 Confiding in his knowledge of political theories, Mounier had 
 boldly taken the lead both at Vizille and at Romans, and 
 had won the greatest political reputation in France ; but the 
 vanity of the man, and the incurable narrowness which 
 always distinguishes a theoretical politician, prevented him 
 from becoming a leader at Versailles. The part he played 
 there was important for a few months, but he soon resigned 
 his seat in disgust, when he saw himself surpassed, not only 
 by deputies from other provinces, but also by a pupU of his 
 own, who had begun his political career under his own 
 auspices at this very period in Dauphin^ — a young, enthusi- 
 astic, and eloquent advocate of Grenoble, Antoine Pierre Joseph 
 Marie Barnave. 
 
 Mounier had overthrown Brienne, and it was left to 
 Necker to make preparations for the elections to the forth- 
 coming States-General. On July 5, 1788, the king had 
 issued a decree, ordering all corporations and public bodies to 
 examine their archives, and to send up to him any infor- 
 mation as to the previous meetings of the States-General which 
 they could procure. He also appealed to learned individuals. 
 
14 Historical Pamphlets. [chap. 
 
 and more especially to the members of the Academy of In- 
 scriptions, to help him. This appeal produced a flood of 
 historical treatises^ and pamphlets throughout the autumn 
 months of ]788, of which the most remarkable were the 
 "Recueil des Etats-G^n6raux," in eighteen volumes j the 
 " Recueil des pifeces historiques sur la Convocation des Etats- 
 G^n^raux," by the Comte de Lauraguais ; "Observations 
 sur la forme des Etats de 1614," by the Abb^ Morellet; 
 "Essai sur la formation des Assemblies Nationales," by 
 Servan; and " L'histoire, le c^r^monial et les droits des 
 Etats-Gent^raux," by the Due de Luynes. The very titles 
 of these works show by themselves the nature of these 
 historical investigations, which clearly proved that every 
 former States-General had more or less differed from its 
 predecessors, and that the old rules and customs were 
 utterly inapplicable. It soon became obvious that new 
 methods of election must be invented, and that two great 
 political problems must be solved — whether the tiers etat 
 should have double representation, that is, be represented by 
 as many deputies as both the other Estates, the noblesse 
 and the clergy, put together ; and whether in the States- 
 General the votes should be taken " par ordre " or " par tete " — 
 that is, whether all the deputies of the three Estates should 
 sit in one chamber and vote together, or the deputies of 
 each Estate should sit in a separate chamber, when the 
 majority in two Estates could overrule the majority in the 
 third. To propose a solution of these difficulties the Notables 
 of 1787 were again summoned in November, 1788 ; but they 
 did not do much to assist the king, and the majority among 
 them showed conclusively that they regarded the coming 
 States-General as afi"ording a favourable opportunity for con- 
 solidating the privileges of the noblesse and the clergy. 
 
 All men now looked to Necker as the arbiter of the 
 situation, and his want of ability as a statesman appears 
 clearly in his " Rapport au Roi," or " Report to the King," 
 
 1 For a list, see ie Oenie de la Bevolution, by 0. L. Cliassin, vol. i. ; 
 Les Elections dt 1789. Paris : 1863. 
 
I.] The " R^sultat du Conseil" 15 
 
 wMcli was printed as a supplement to the "Kdsultat du 
 Conseil," published on December 27, 1788. In this report 
 Necker dwelt on three points. Firstly, he declared that it 
 would be simply absurd, although the Notables had re- 
 commended it, to copy the old States-Generals exactly, and 
 to ordain that every royal bailliage and sdndchauss^e should 
 return the same number of deputies, because at that rate the 
 great bailliage of Poitou with 694,000 inhabitants, and that of 
 Vermandois with 774,000, would only have the same number 
 of representatives as the little bailliages of Gex and Dourdan 
 with but 18,000 and 7800 respectively. He next treated the 
 question of the double representation of the tiers dtat, and 
 in spite of historical traditions, the advice of the princes of 
 the blood and of the majority of the Notables, and the ex- 
 ample of the provincial estates of Brittany, Burgundy, and 
 Artois, he preferred to follow the example of Languedoc, 
 Provence, Hainault, and the new assembly in Dauphin^, and, 
 in compliance with innumerable petitions from the whole 
 kingdom, recommended that the tiers etat should have as 
 many representatives as the other two orders put together. 
 Finally, he was of opinion that the different orders need not 
 necessarily elect members of their own order — a provision 
 which he thought was necessary, to enable the tiers ^tat to 
 elect members of the liberal clergy and noblesse among their 
 deputie-s. On this report was based the " Resultat du Conseil," 
 which decreed that the coming States-General should consist 
 of a thousand deputies, elected in proportion to their popu- 
 lation by the different royal bailliages and s^ndchaussfes, in 
 two hundred and fifty deputations of four deputies each, 
 namely, one for the order of the noblesse, one for the clergy, 
 and two for the tiers ^tat. No party was satisfied with 
 Necker's decision, for not a word was said as to whether 
 voting was to be "par ordre" or "par tfete." The privileged 
 orders regarded vote " par ordre " as the real key-stone of the 
 difficulty, and the tiers ^tat perceived that their double 
 representation was of no use, if their deputies were merely 
 to form one of three chambers with equal powers. 
 
1 6 Political Pamphlets. [cha.p. 
 
 The publication of the " R&ultat du Conseil " altered the 
 current of electoral literature. Historical disquisitions were 
 no longer needed, and place was given to a flood of pamphlets 
 of a more abstract and, at the same time, of a more revolu- 
 tionary character. Of these new pamphlets the most suc- 
 cessful were " Les Etats-G(^neraux/' by Target, who on Ger- 
 bier's death had become the leader of the Paris bar ; " Des 
 conditions ndcessaires a l(^galit(^_^ des Etats-Gendraux," by Vol- 
 ney ; " De la deputation aux Etats-G^n^raux," by Roederer ; 
 "Considerations, recherches et observations," by Carra ; "De 
 la France et des Etats Unis," by Brissot de Warville, a 
 veteran pamphleteer, and Clavi^re, a Genevese exile ; " Yues 
 gen^rales sur la constitution fran9aise," by Cerutti, an ex- 
 Jesuit ; and " Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat ? " by the Abbfe Sidyes. 
 These pamphlets, amongst hundreds of others published at 
 Paris, had an immense circulation all over France, and con- 
 tained the most revolutionary proposals with regard to the 
 privileged orders, if they refused to acquiesce in the vote "par 
 tete." Still more curious and interesting are the pamphlets 
 which issued from the little printing-presses in every im- 
 portant provincial town, not only from their contents, but 
 because many of those leaders, whose names were afterwards 
 famous throughout the length and breadth of France, won 
 their local reputations as pamphleteers. To mention but a 
 few of the more famous names, Rabaut de Saint-Etienne and 
 Larevelliere-Lepaux, Lanjuinais and Boissy d'Anglas, Petion 
 and Robespierre, issued their little pamphlets for local circu- 
 lation only at the provincial printing-presses of Nimes and 
 Angers, Rennes and Annonay, Chartres and Arras. The 
 publication of the " R^sultat du Conseil " had concentrated 
 public discussion on the great question of vote " par ordre " or 
 vote "par tete;" innumerable pamphlets dwelt upon it, and the 
 course of events in different provinces ought to have taught 
 Necker that it was necessary to decide this question at once. 
 
 Dauphine immediately proceeded with its elections without 
 awaiting further instructions from Versailles. In its assembly 
 at Romans, on January 2, 1789, the ten leading liberal 
 
I.] The Estates of Brittany. 1 7 
 
 noblemen were elected deputies for the noblesse of the 
 province; the popular and liberal-minded Archbishop of 
 Vienne was elected for the clergy, while the other clerical 
 elections were referred to the diocesan bureau, which elected 
 four abb^s ; and fifteen deputies were elected for the tiers ^tat, 
 including Mounier, who was chosen by acclamation, Pison du 
 Galand, Charles Chabroud, and Barnave.^ 
 
 But although everything passed harmoniously in the 
 newly organized assembly of Dauphin^, very different news 
 came from Brittany and Franche Comt^. Brittany was at 
 this time one of the most populous and wealthy provinces 
 in France. Though its rural districts were badly cultivated, 
 it abounded in rich and prosperous cities. Nantes, according 
 to Arthur Young, was a wealthy and intelligent provincial city 
 which took an enlightened interest in politics, and possessed 
 many fine public buildings ; Rennes was the seat of government, 
 and boasted of a particularly famous law university; Brest, 
 Lorient, Saint Malo, and Quimper were all considerable ports. 
 The Bretons were peculiarly tenacious of their provincial 
 customs, and extremely proud of the self-government guar- 
 anteed to them at the marriage of Louis XII. with Anne 
 of Brittany. The Estates of Brittany^ had always adhered 
 to their ancient constitution, and sate in three distinct 
 chambers. The Estate of the noblesse included every man 
 of noble birth who was eighteen years of age, and formed 
 an unwieldy and unruly chamber * of some thirteen hundred 
 members, many of whom had no wealth, but their ancient 
 descent. The chamber of the clergy consisted of the highest 
 dignitaries of the province, and that of the tiers ^tat of a 
 few merchants and lawyers elected by the corporations of 
 certain important towns. The Estates were held in great 
 
 1 Taulier's Eistmre d/u BawphmS, p. 298. 
 
 ' Les Etats de Bretagne et I'administration de cette province jusqu'en 
 1789, by the Comte de Carnd, 2 vols., Paris, 1868, originally published 
 in the Revue des Deux Mondes during 1807. 
 
 ' For the character and the turbulence of the Breton Estate of the 
 noblesse, see Chateaubriand, Memoires d' outre Tombe, vol. ii., who de- 
 scribes the session of 1788, at which he was present. 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
1 8 Riots at Rennes. [chap. 
 
 respect by the whole population, and they had increased 
 their popularity by their bold and almost rebellious demand 
 for the convocation of the States-General in 1788. But when 
 the news of the " Rdsultat du Conseil " reached the province, 
 the Estates found that a new spirit had grown up among the 
 people. When they heard that Brittany, like the other semi- 
 independent provinces of France, was to be split up into 
 bailliages for electoral purposes, and that its deputies were 
 not to be elected, as in former times, by the provincial Estates, 
 the Estates appealed, as did the Parlement of Rennes, to 
 their ancient customs, and declared that the Estates of 
 Brittany alone could elect representatives for Brittany to a 
 States- General. At these protests a cry of disgust was raised 
 throughout the province. The educated Bretons of the tiers 
 6tat, and especially of the great city of Nantes, had imbibed 
 the spirit of Dauphin^, and they on their side publicly declared, 
 in numerous meetings and in pamphlets, that they would 
 never submit to be represented in the great Assembly, which 
 was to do so much for France, through the antiquated 
 machinery upheld by the Estates. The Estates and the 
 Parlement, instead of being beloved, were now hated, and 
 daily riots took place in the streets of Rennes.^ Foremost 
 among the opponents of the Estates were the law students of 
 the university, who banded together, and had violent battles 
 in the streets with the young nobles and their retainers, 
 and eventually besieged them for two days, January 26 and 
 27, in the Convent of the Cordeliers. These students were 
 commanded by a young man, who was afterwards to be one 
 of the greatest generals France ever produced, and yet to 
 die in arms against her — Jean Victor Moreau. He had been 
 for many years a law student, but though quite competent 
 to take his degree and settle down in practice, he pre- 
 
 1 ies Origines de la Eevolution en Bretagne, by Barthflemy Pecquet, 
 Paris, 1885 ; Histoire de la Eevolution dans Ies Departements de I'Ancienne 
 Bretagne, by A. B. Du Chatellier, Paris and Nantes, 1836, vol. i. ; La 
 Bretagne Moderne, by Pitre Chevalier, Paris, 1860, chapter v. ; and 
 Camp's Les Etats c?< Bretagne, vol. ii. chapter z. 
 
I.] Franche ComU. 19 
 
 ferred, like Gambetta in later times, to live among the 
 students, and air his political theories in their societies and 
 debating clubs. To help the la"w students of Rennes 
 marched the young men of Nantes,^ and the students of 
 Angers,^ encouraged by their mothers and wives and fiancees,' 
 prepared to follow their example, so that civil war seemed 
 imminent when the final rfeglement for the elections reached 
 Brittany, and shortly afterwards the advice of the leaders 
 in Dauphin^. The tiers ^tat of Brittany determined to follow 
 this advice, and to elect their deputies, as the rfeglement 
 directed, without further dispute; while the Breton cur^s 
 also followed the advice of their brothers of Dauphin^* 
 and, disregarding the absence of their bishops, met together 
 and elected cures alone to the States-General. Meanwhile 
 the noblesse and the clerical dignitaries of Brittany held 
 to their ancient customs, and since they were not allowed 
 to elect their deputies in the provincial Estates, none of 
 their representatives ever appeared at Versailles. 
 
 If the course of events in Dauphin^ and Brittany had not 
 taught Necker the power of the tiers ^tat and their determina- 
 tion not to be controlled by the privileged orders, he might 
 have learned the lesson from what happened in Franche 
 Comte,® where the coming struggle at Versailles was exactly 
 foreshadowed. In exceedingly bold language, by the mouth 
 of the President de Vezet, Marquis de Grosbois,^ the Parlement 
 of Besan^on had demanded the convocation of the ancient 
 
 * La Commune, et la Milice de Nantes, by Camille Mellinet, vol. vi. 
 pp. 7-21. Nantes : 1841. 
 
 2 For the excitement in Angers and the preparations of the students, 
 Bee Mouvement Provincial en 1789 et Biograpliie des Deputes de I'Anjou, 
 by M. Bougler, vol. i. pp. 105-121. 
 
 * See their declaration in British Museum, F. 420 (2.); and in Dougler's 
 . Mouvement Provincial en 1789, vol. i. p. 120. 
 
 * Le Genie de la Bevolution, by C. L. Chassin, vol. ii. ; Les Cahiers des 
 Cures. Paris: 1882. 
 
 6 Eisfoire Parlementaire de la Bevolution Frangaise, by Buchez and 
 Eoux, vol. i. pp. 285-287. 
 
 « Le President de Vezet, by L. Pingaud, in the Bevue Eistorique for 
 November, 1882. 
 
20 The Reglement of Jamiary 24, 1789. [chap. 
 
 provincial Estates of Franche Comte, and also of tlie States- 
 General, in 1788. To this demand Necker had assented, and 
 the Estates of Franche Comtd met in November, 1788, at 
 Besangon, and assembled in three chambers. A struggle at once 
 arose on the burning question. The tiers 6tat demanded vote 
 "par tSte," the noblesse assumed the legality of the vote 
 ''par ordre," and the Estate of the clergy was divided. Even- 
 tually the chamber of the clergy refused to act, the curds 
 siding with the tiers 6tat, and the dignitaries with the 
 noblesse, and the Estates broke up in confusion. Riots became 
 common in the streets of Besan9on, and the nobles were hooted 
 and assaulted. On the arrival of the reglement for the elec- 
 tions to the States-General, the Parlement of Besan5on pro- 
 tested, like the Parlement of Rennes, that the right of election 
 was vested in the provincial Estates, and the houses of its 
 leaders were sacked by the populace. 
 
 This rfeglement,^ which met with such strong opposition, 
 was the necessary complement of the " Rdsultat du Conseil," 
 and made elaborate regulations for the procedure of the 
 elections. It was issued on January 24, 1789, and concerned 
 only that part of France known as the " pays d' election." 
 It treated the obsolete administrative divisions of France, 
 known as royal bailliages in the north and royal sdndchaussdes 
 in the south, as units for electoral purposes, and by subsequent 
 rfeglements the semi-independent provinces, or "pays d'etat," 
 such as Brittany, Languedoc, and Burgundy, were split up 
 into corresponding divisions. The rfeglement of January 24 
 for the " pays d'61ection " was the model for the others ; by it 
 the grand baiUi or grand sdnf^chal in every royal bailliage or 
 royal se'ndchaussde was directed to convoke aU the noblemen 
 of his division in person or by proxy ; all the dignitaries of the 
 Church and beneficed clergy, with delegates from every chapter, 
 monastery, and convent ; and all the electors of the tiers dtat, 
 
 1 For the rfeglement and the whole question of the elections of 1789, 
 the great authority is Le Genie de la Mvolution, by C. L. Chassin, vol. i. '; 
 Les Mections de 1789, Paris, 18G3, in which the whole period is thoroughly 
 and completely treated. 
 
I.] Primary Assemblies. 21 
 
 who had been previously elected in every village and town ; 
 to meet at the cathedral or chief church of the principal city 
 of the division on a stated day. Notice of this day of meeting 
 was to be sent round to every nobleman and clerical dignitary 
 at his own expense, while the proclamation of the rfeglement 
 with this notice attached, and the fixing of a copy on the 
 door of every parish church, was to be of itself a sufficient 
 warrant for the attendance of the inferior clergy, and for the 
 liolding of the primary assemblies in every town and country 
 village. 
 
 These primary assemblies were differently composed in the 
 towns and country villages, owing to the fact that in the towns 
 the guilds and corporations of the various trades and pro- 
 fessions were recognized as electoral bodies as well as the 
 body of the tax-paying inhabitants. The guilds of arts eb 
 metiers, such as the butchers and bakers, weavers and dyers, 
 were to elect one elector, if less than one hundred persons were 
 present at the primary assembly, two for between one hundred 
 and two hundred, and upwards in the same proportion; while 
 the corporations of arts lib^raux, such as the physicians and 
 notaries, as well as the tax-paying inhabitants of every parish, 
 assembled in the parish church, were to elect two electors if 
 less than one hundred persons were present, four for between 
 one hundred and two hundred, and upwards. - Each of these 
 primary assemblies of guilds, corporations, and tax-paying in- 
 habitants was to draw up a cahier, or petition of grievances, 
 containing complaints of grievances and recommendations for 
 reform. Many of these special cahiers were very elaborately 
 drawn up, notably those of the grocers,^ stocking- makers,^ 
 and wholesale merchants in beer and cider^ of Rouen, and that 
 
 1 Cahler des Spiders de la Ville de Bouen, 1V89, 42 pp., numbered in 
 British Museum, F.R. 40. (3.) 
 
 2 Articles amies par les maitres et agrSges de la communaute des mar- 
 chands fabricants de Bos de la ville, fauxbourg et banlieue de liouen pour 
 servir d^instruction aux deux Deputes qui doivent la representer a VAssemblee 
 du Tiers Mat. B.M.— P.E. 31. (23.) 
 
 3 Cahier de la Gommunauti des Marchands privilegih en gros de Cidre 
 et Mere de la Ville de Rouen, 34 pp. B.M.— F.B. 40. (2.'> 
 
2 2 Village Cahiers. [chap. 
 
 of the College of Physicians at Chartres ^ ; and it is worthy of 
 remark that many of those local politicians, who had made a 
 local reputation by their pamphlets in the previous months, 
 employed themselves in drawing up these special cahiers, and 
 that, for instance, Robespierre^ drew up the cahier of the 
 cordonniers mineurs, or cobblers, of Arras. The successful 
 candidates at these primary assemblies formed the assembly of 
 the tiers dtat of the town, which, after discussing the special 
 cahiers, drew up the cahier of the town, and then elected as 
 many electors to the preliminary assembly of the tiers dtat of 
 the bailliage as had been prescribed by the reglement. In the 
 rural parishes the process was a little more simple. All tax- 
 payers, even the unemancipated serfs of the abbey of Sainte 
 Claude on Mount Jura,^ were to assemble in the village 
 church, and, after drawing up their cahier of complaints and 
 grievances, were to elect two electors, if the village contained 
 less than one hundred houses, three for between one hundred 
 and two hundred, and four between two hundred and three 
 hundred houses. As might be expected, the village cahier 
 was practically drawn up by the most educated man in the 
 parish, generally the village priest, the village lawyer, or the 
 village doctor. Some of these village cahiers were printed 
 at the time, when the compiler was proud of his handiwork 
 and wished to publish his ideas of reform ; such as the cahier 
 of Chevannes,* which was drawn up by Dupont de Nemours, 
 the political economist, of Coustretort,^ which elected two 
 avocats of Chartres, of Saint-Germain-en-Laye,^ Clamart- 
 sous-Meudon,' and Villiers-le-Bel.^ Most of them are reaUy 
 political pamphlets, and are too full of general schemes of 
 reform to be interesting; but only a very small proportion 
 were thus printed, and the remainder, which contain only 
 
 1 Cahier du ColUge des Medecins de Chartres. B.M. — F.R. 26. (1.) 
 
 2 La Jeunesse de Robespierre et la Convocation des Mals-Gemraux en 
 Artois, by Auguste Joseph Paris. Arras : 1870. M. Paris, who discovered 
 this cahier, lias given a curious facsimile of it in his valuable book. 
 
 3 L'iifjUse et les Demiers Serfs, by 0. L. Chassin. Paris : 1880. 
 
 * B.M.-P.R. 26.^10.), 78 pp. 6 B.M.-F.R. 26. (21.) 
 
 «B.M.— I'.R. 39. (15 ' B.M.--F.R. 26. (12.) s B.M.— F.K. 40 (12) 
 
I.] The Process of Election. 23 
 
 a simple statement of the village grievances, and give a 
 very vivid picture of village life under the old regime, are in 
 many cases still preserved in the archives of the chief city of 
 the bailliage, and are occasionally printed in local histories. 
 The electors from the towns and villages formed the pre- 
 liminary assembly of the tiers ^tat of the bailliage or s^nd- 
 chauss^e, which met in the appointed city, and there reduced 
 themselves to one-fourth of their number, who were then 
 recognized as the electors of the deputies of the tiers dtat to 
 the States-General. 
 
 On the appointed day the noblesse, summoned in person, 
 the beneficed clergy, with representatives of the monasteries, 
 convents, and chapters, and the electors of the tiers ^tat, all 
 assembled in the cathedral or chief church of the principal 
 city of the bailliage or s^ndchaussde and heard mass. After 
 mass the grand bailli d'^p^e or grand s^nechal solemnly 
 asked those present whether they would remain united and 
 draAV up their cahier and elect their deputies together, or 
 separate into three assemblies, according to their orders. With 
 the three important exceptions of Langres,^ Pdronne,^ and 
 Montfort I'Amaury,* the orders always decided to separate, and 
 the noblesse, clergy, and electors of the tiers ^tat departed to 
 different places, generally to the governor's house,' the bishop's 
 palace, and the town hall, where, under the presidency of the 
 grand baiUi or grand s^n^chal, the bishop, and the lieutenant- 
 general of the bailliage, the separate cahiers were drawn up, 
 and the deputies elected. When this was done the general 
 assembly of the three orders once more "met in the cathedral, 
 where, after hearing masL and long speeches from the bishop 
 and grand bailli, the elected deputies swore before their con- 
 
 1 Frock^verbal de I'AssembUe de I'Ordre de la Noblesse du Bailliage de 
 Langres, 34 pp. B.M.— F.R. 29. (10.) 
 
 2 Proces^erbal de I'Assemblie de I'Ordre de la NoUesse du Oowvernement 
 de Peronne, Montdidier et Boije. B.M.— F.R. 32. (21.) ; and La Revolution 
 a Pironne, by Gustave Ramon, which contains the caliiers of the 
 bailliage. 
 
 3 Oahier des Trois Ordres reunies des Bailliages de Montfort I'Amaury et 
 de Dreux. B.M.— F.R. 30. (26.) 
 
24 Local Disputes. [chap. 
 
 stituents to bring the complaints and suggestions, contained in 
 the cahiers entrusted to them, before the States-General, and 
 to obey the directions to themselves, or mandats, implicitly. 
 This system of election was entirely satisfactory so far as con- 
 cerned the privileged orders, which could elect directly, but 
 the extreme elaboration and complexity prescribed for the 
 elections of the tiers ^tat, which was intended to secure fair 
 representation, was only puzzling and calculated to promote 
 intrigues. These arrangements, too, were often further compli- 
 cated by the existence, especially in Lorraine, of numerous 
 secondary or subordinate royal bailliages ; ^ for the same elabo- 
 rate process was adopted for the election of deputations to the 
 principal bailliage as to the States-General itself. 
 
 The local excitement caused by the rfeglement in every 
 district was immense. The idea of the election was a new one 
 in the " pays d'dlection," where there had been no elections 
 since the States-General of 1614, and most individuals thought 
 more of their cities, districts, and provinces than of their 
 country. The first result of the publication of the rfeglement 
 was, therefore, an outburst of local jealousies. The bailliage 
 of Aunis claimed to be independent of Saintonge;^ the 
 royal bailliage of Nivernais^ asserted that it included the 
 ducal bailliage, and the old quarrel between Upper and 
 Lower Auverg-ne* again broke out. Similar rivalry ap- 
 peared between the cities of Riom and Clermont-Ferrand,^ 
 
 ^ Lorraine contained no less than thirty-four royal bailliages, which 
 were grouped for electoral purposes into the four principal bailliages of 
 Nancy, Mirecourt, Sarreguemines, and Bar-le-Duc. 
 
 2 Histoire de La Rochdle, by M. Dupont, p. 549, La Rochelle, 1830 ; 
 Histoire des Bochelais, by L. Delayant, vol. ii. p. 194. La Rochelle ' 
 1870. 
 
 s Convocation des Mats-06nemux et Legislation ElectoraJe de 1789 ; 
 Cahiers, proces-verhaux, etc., du Mvernois et Donziois, bv A. Labot vo 
 205-228. Paris : 1866. 
 
 4 Consult the varioua works of Pranoisque Mege, the distinguished 
 local historian of Auvergne, published as Chroniques et Becits de la. 
 Mevolution dans la ci-devant Basse-Auvergne, Departement du Buy de Dome. 
 
 5 Memoires de Malouet publics par sm petit-fils, le baron de Malouet, 
 2nd ed., vol. i. ch. ix. Paris : 1874. 
 
I.] The Cities of France in i 789. 25 
 
 each claiming to be the capital of the hailliage of Lower 
 Auvergne, and between the towns of Clermont-en-Argonne and 
 Varennes*; Chateauneuf-en-Thimerais ^ asserted that it was 
 a royal bailliage, and not dependent on Chartres ; and Metz 
 raised such murmurs about its being an imperial city, like 
 Strasbourg and Valenciennes, and about its being swamped by 
 country voters in the general assembly of the bailliage, that 
 it obtained an additional deputy to the tiers ^tat for itself^ 
 The whole question of the separate representation of cities was 
 raised, and might have resulted in the establishment of a fourth 
 Estate, had not the burgesses of Grenoble, in answer to an 
 application from the municipal authorities of Montauban, 
 Clermont-Ferrand, ChMons, Orleans, Tours, Besan9on, Dunkirk, 
 and Saint Quentin, and the Chambers of Commerce of Picardy, 
 Saint Malo, and Lille, advised most solemnly and earnestly 
 against any attempt to weaken the harmony of the tiers dtat.* 
 As it was, the cities were hardly adequately represented, 
 although many of them had a very large number of electors 
 assigned to them in the electoral assemblies of their bailliages. 
 From the number of these electors the comparative size and 
 importance of the different provincial cities in France, in 1789, 
 may be estimated. Lyons was allowed 150 electors in the 
 electoral assembly of its bailliage ; Bordeaux and Marseilles, 
 each 90 ; Rouen, 80 ; Nantes and Toulouse, 50 ; Toulon, 40 ; 
 Amiens, Lille, Orleans, and Versailles, 36; and Aix, Angers, 
 Brest, Caen, Clermont-Ferrand, Nimes, and Rheims, 30. Paris, 
 as the capital,, was ordered to elect 10 deputations — that 
 is, 40 deputies of the three orders — directly to the States- 
 General. Strasbourg, the ten imperial cities of Alsace, and 
 Valenciennes each returned two deputies of the tiers ^tat ; and 
 Metz, by its importunity, obtained a deputy to itself in March, 
 1789. 
 
 1 Supplementary reglement of March 15, 1789. B.M.— F.R. 26. (13.) 
 
 2 For its request, see B.M.— F.R. 26. (5.), which is granted by a 
 supplementary reglement of February 19, 1789. B.M.— F.R. 25. (35.) 
 
 3 The request of Metz was granted for these two reasons by a supple- 
 mentaiy reglement, dated April 6, 1789. B.M.— F.R. 30. (17.) 
 
 * B.M.— F.R. 29. (2.) 
 
26 Supplementary Reglements. £chap. 
 
 These quarrels between city and city and bailliage and 
 bailliage, together with the discovery of mistakes in the first 
 r^glement, owing to the novelty of the idea of election and* 
 ignorance of the comparative population of different bailliages, 
 caused the Government to issue a great number of supple- 
 mentary reglements for special cases during the spring of 
 1789. More important than these supplementary reglements 
 were those regulating the elections in the " pays d'etat,'" which 
 had not been included in the reglement of January 24, and 
 which granted twenty-two deputations to Brittany,^ twenty 
 to Languedoc,^ sixteen to Burgundy,' eleven to Provence,* 
 nine to Lorraine,^ seven to Franche Comt^,® and six to 
 Dauphin^ '' and to Alsace.® Other supplementary reglements 
 greatly increased the total number of deputies at the States- 
 General, for Maine was granted five deputations instead of 
 four,^ Nimes ■"' and Paris extra muros,^^ or without the walls, 
 four instead of three, Saint-Flour ^^ three instead of two, and 
 the duchy of Albret ^* and the Angoumois -* two instead of 
 one ; while Chateauneuf-en-Thimerais ^^ was granted a separate 
 deputation from Ghartres, and the eight deputations originally 
 granted to the Vermandois were increased to nine, and 
 redistributed among the four principal bailliages of Rheims, 
 Laon, Troyes, and Vitry-le-Fran9ais.^^ The inhabitants of the 
 pays de Soule were allowed a separate deputation,^'' because 
 the little kingdom of Navarre had refused to be treated as 
 a baiUiage and elect deputies; and the Basques,^® who had 
 unanimously declined to obey the summons of the grand 
 
 1 March 16, 1789. B.M. 28 d. 2. (6.) 2 February 7, 1789. BM.— 
 F.R. 29. (17.) 3 February 7, 1789. B.M.-F.R. 25 (19.) * Marcb 2, 
 1789. B.M.-F.R. 38. (6.) ^ February 7, 1789. B.M.-FR. 29. (35.) 
 « February 19, 1789. B.M.-F.R. 27. (8.) ' April 7, 1789. B.M.-F.R. 
 28. (IS.) 8 February 7, 1789. B.M.-F.R. 22. (5.) " March 15 1789 
 B.M.-F.R. 30. (1.) lo March 8, 1789. B.M.-F.R. 28 d. 1. (23.) " May 
 2, 1789. BM. 28 d. 1. (32.) 12 February 15, 1789. B M— F R 22 
 (21). 13 B.M.-F.R. 22. (2.) " B.M.-F.R. 22. (6.) i^ February 19, 
 1789. B.M.— F.R. 25. (36.) i" March 2, 1789. B. M. -F.R. 29. (5 ) 
 1' February 19, 1789. B.M.-F.R. 34. (27.) " jyiaich 28, 1789. B M. 
 -F.R. 22. (04.) 
 
I.] The Grand Baillis and Ddput'es Suppliants. 27 
 
 B^n^chal of Bayonne, were similarly gratified. The inhabi- 
 tants of the Quatre Vallees were also allowed a special 
 deputy to the tiers ^tat/ because the s^ndchauss^e of Auch 
 had refused to receive their cahier, and since the people of 
 Couserans had not been able to get to the electoral assembly 
 of Comminges on the appointed day, they were granted a 
 unique deputation of three members, consisting of one deputy 
 of each order.^ Sometimes the Government seemed to act 
 very capriciously, for the utterly irregular elections in 
 Dauphin^ were not quashed, while those at Orleans* and 
 Senlis* were declared illegal, because the electors had not 
 been reduced to one-fourth before the opening of the general 
 assembly of the three orders. Further difficulties were caused 
 by the obsolete characteristics of the bailliages. The offices 
 of grand bailli d'^p^e and grand s^ndchal were often 
 hereditary, and conferred so little authority or prestige, that 
 many of these functionaries had never assumed their office; 
 and, for instance, it was not until January, 1789, when he was 
 eighty-five years of age and had been grand bailli for more 
 than forty years, that the Comte de Mesgrigny-Villebertain was 
 sworn in as grand bailli d'^pde of the bailliage of Troyes.^ 
 In many provinces there were no grand baillis, and the king 
 had to supply their place by others ; thus, the Governors 
 of Artois and the Cambrdsis, the Commander-in-chief in 
 Corsica, and the Captain- General of Roussillon were appointed 
 to act in their respective provinces, and in Alsace three 
 noblemen, the Baron d'Andlau, the Prince de Broglie, and 
 the Baron de Schwembourg d'Heilisheim, were specially 
 nominated. A last curious electoral question was the question 
 of suppliants. For some reason the various electoral assem- 
 blies, with some few exceptions, had, after electing their 
 deputies, elected certain deputes sufpleants, who were to 
 supply the place of the original deputies in case of accident. 
 
 1 May-2, 17b9. B.M. 28 d. 1. (33.) ^ April 26, 1789. 28 d. 1. (49.) 
 3 March 12, 1789. 28 d. 1. (28.) < March 8, 1789. B.M. 28 d. 1. (24.) 
 5 Troyti jtetidant la Revolution, by Albert Babeau, vol. i. p. 107. 
 Paris : 1873. 
 
28 The Noblesse of 1789. [chap. 
 
 This -was probably due \o the desire of eveiy man to be 
 mixed up in the States-General in some way or another, if not 
 as a deputy, as a deputy suppleant, or even as an elector. 
 On May 3, by a special decree, the election of deputies 
 suppleants was recognized, and they were ordered to replace 
 the deputies of their bailliage in case of death, illness, 
 resignation, or absence from the realm. There can be no 
 doubt that the system of suppleants was a bad one, for it 
 prevented the Government from taking advantage of a vacancy 
 in the representative body to test the opinion of the country 
 by a fresh election in a particular district or city. 
 
 It is very interesting to examine the behaviour of the 
 three orders during the electoral period; for the reactionary 
 tendencies of the majority of the noblesse, and the sympathy 
 of the higher clergy with them, the unselfish policy and 
 generous ideas of the minority of the noblesse, the leaning 
 of the inferior clergy towards the people, and the mixture of 
 shrewdness and selfishness, fear and over-expectation of the 
 bourgeois and peasants, appear as clearly in the various 
 accounts of the elections all over France as in their cahiers. 
 
 The noblesse of France was in 1789 far less of a caste 
 than has been popularly believed, for nobility could always 
 be obtained by the purchase of an estate, bearing a title 
 of nobility with it, or by holding one of the innumerable 
 offices under the Crown for a sufficiently long time, and the 
 descendants of such new noblemen became noble in blood 
 in the fourth generation, if they had not in the meantime 
 " derogated " by engaging in trade. Nevertheless, between 
 the old seigneurs, or noblesse of the sword, and this new 
 noblesse, which had won its nobility by administrative, 
 judicial, or municipal office, or by money, the line was clearly 
 drawn ; and it is noteworthy that the former were extremely 
 liberal in their ideas, like Montmorency, La Rochefoucauld, 
 and Lafayette, while the latter were most tenacious of their 
 newly got privileges. Further, it may be noticed that but 
 few of the noblesse had titles in the English meaning of the 
 word, though they showed their nobility by assuming the 
 
I.] Elections of the Noblesse. 29 
 
 name of one of their estates with de, before it instead of their 
 patronymic; thus, for instance, out of the eighty -four noble- 
 men -who met at the electoral assembly of Troyes, only 
 fourteen bore the title of due, marquis, comte, vicomte, baron, 
 or chevalier.^ The system of proxies in the elections to the 
 States-General, which not only allowed the great lords and 
 princes of the blood to send their representatives to the 
 assemblies of every bailliage in which they possessed pro- 
 perty, but also provided for the representation of minors and 
 noble ladies, seemed to indicate that the Estate of the noblesse 
 at Versailles was to represent landed property held by noble 
 tenure. Yet, on the other hand, any nobleman of proved 
 nobility, if of sufficient age, was permitted to vote in person 
 or by proxy, and thus the Duke of Richmond, though an 
 Englishman who owned no property in France, was permitted 
 to vote by proxy in the electoral assembly at Bourges, as 
 Due d'Aubigny, a title inherited from his ancestress, Louise 
 de Querouaille.^ The result of this wide interpretation of 
 the word " noblesse " to include both the noble by blood and 
 the owners of " noble " property was, that in many places the 
 old and the new noblesse quarrelled to the final victory 
 of the latter from their numbers, and that in some instances 
 the nobles holding fiefs decided to exclude those noble only 
 by blood, which caused Mirabeau's rejection by the noblesse 
 of Aix. Arguments were freely drawn on this question from 
 a book recently published by Ch^rin, the learned genealogist, 
 who was to be the intimate friend of Hoche, and to die a 
 republican general on the field of Zurich, but who now wrote 
 an elaborate treatise in favour of the exclusion of the new 
 noblesse from the electoral assemblies.^ In nearly all of the 
 electoral assemblies of the noblesse there appeared a decided 
 
 1 Babeau's Troyes pendant la Revolution, vol. i. p. 164. 
 
 2 Proees^erhal de I'Assemhlde de la Noblesse du Berri tenue a Bourges en 
 1789. B.M.— F.E. 24. (5.) 
 
 3 Abrege Chronologique d'Sdits, DSclarati'ons, Seglements, Arre's et 
 Lettres Patentts des Bois de France, de la troisieme Bace, concernant le fait 
 de Noblesse, precSde d'wn, Discours sur Vorigine de la Noblesse, by L. N. H. 
 OWrin. 12mo. Paris : 1788. 
 
2,0 Elections of the Noblesse. [_chap. 
 
 determination on the part of the majority to hold firmly to 
 all their privileges, except those in matters of taxation, which 
 thej' felt to be untenable ; but in many instances their cahiers 
 contained more liberal ideas than they had adopted, for while 
 young and enthusiastic noblemen were generally elected to 
 dj-aw up the cahiers, men of the most conservative and 
 reactionary ideas were elected deputies. Yet there were some 
 few exceptional elections where the liberal noblesse were 
 entirely successful. At Langres, indeed, one of -the only three 
 bailliages, where the three orders had agreed to act together 
 and draw up their cahier in common, the credit was due 
 to the bishop, but at Montfort I'Amaury the unanimity was 
 entirely the work of the grand bailli d'dp^e, the young Oomte 
 Mathieu de Montmorency, who even succeeded in persuading 
 the three orders to recommend vote " par tete " in their 
 cahier.^ The course of the election at Chateauneuf-en- 
 Thimerais was in many respects a typical one. The noblesse 
 and the electors of the tiers dtat agreed to draw up their 
 cahier together, and found themselves in accord on general 
 principles, and all promised to go well, until the electors of 
 the tiers etat proposed a clause in the common cahier, con- 
 demning the game laws, at which the noblesse took exception, 
 and the dispute ended in the separation of the two orders.^ 
 At P^ronne,^ where Alexandre de Lameth was the guiding 
 spirit of the noblesse, the three orders agreed to act together 
 and to draw up a common cahier; but eventually only the 
 noblesse and the electors of the tiers ^tat acted together, 
 because the clergy, after drawing up a very liberal cahier 
 under the inspiration of the Abbd Maury, had to disperse 
 early, in order to perform Sunday mass in their separate 
 
 1 CaUer des trois Ordres rhims des BaiUiages de Montfort I'Amaury et de 
 Dreux, preddes des Arretes inseres dam le Proees^erlal de I'AssemhUe 
 (jetierale des dits trois Ordres du 16 Mai, 1789, et autres arretes posterieures 
 B.M.— F.R. 30. (26.) 
 
 2 Proces-verbalde VAssemlUe dela NoUesse de Chateauneuf-en-Thimerais 
 B.M— F.R. 41. (1). 
 
 ' Ramon's La Reoolution a Peronne, bk. ii. p. 132. 
 
I.] Elections of the Noblesse. 31 
 
 parishes. At Senlis,^ the noblesse, under the presidency of 
 the Due de L^vis, was ready to act with the electors of the 
 tiers ^tat, and the same spirit appeared at Nevers,^ but in 
 both instances the clergy refused their consent and concur- 
 rence. But these elections were purely exceptional, for as 
 a rule the noblesse held superciliously aloof from the electors 
 of the tiers etat, and more than once, as in the case of the 
 would-be reformer of the army, the Comte de Guibert, at 
 Bourges, treated with the greatest indignity all supporters 
 of liberal ideas among themselves.* Great estates, long- 
 proved nobility of family, royal descent, or tenure of the 
 highest offices in the State, did not ensure success at the 
 elections of the noblesse : the Mar^chal Due de Noailles, and 
 the Due d'Ayen, the heads of the great house of Noailles, 
 were rejected ; the Duke of Orleans, though proposed in five 
 provincial bailliages, was only elected in two, Cri^py-en-Valois 
 and Villers-Cotterets ; and Calonne was not only not elected, 
 but even unanimously refused admission to the assembly of 
 the noblesse of the bailliage of BailleuL* In many bailliages, 
 notably at Bordeaux,^ the liberal noblesse protested and 
 abstained from concurring in the elections ; but it was only 
 in Artois that the reactionary noblesse felt it necessary to 
 protest. At Vesoul, the capital of the bailliage of Amont* 
 
 1 Proces-verhal et cahier de la NoUesse du Bailliage de Senlis. B.M. — 
 
 r.R. 39. (21.) 
 
 2 Labot's Cahiers, etc., dv, Nivernois et Donziois, p. 341. 
 
 ' B.M. — F.R. 24. (5.), and Mimmres du Comte Miot de Melito, vol. i. 
 p. 3. Paris : 1876. 
 
 * Discnurs prononcd le premier Avril, 1789, par M. VanpradeJks, 
 ecuyer, Lieutenant-Oeneral du Bailliage royal de Flandres a Bailleid, 
 pr^sidant le tiers etat, a Vouverture de I'assernblee, suivi de la deliberation 
 du tiers itat, et de la rholulion prise par le Clergi au sujet de la voyage de 
 M. de Calonne a Bailleul. B.M —F.R. 22. (2.) 
 
 ' Declaration fnite par une partie de la hohlesse de Guienne, adhera,nt 
 aux priricipes de la declaration faite par un de nous [Lafon de Ladebat] d 
 VAssemUee generate Jder 6 Avril, 1789, signed by twenty-eight noblemen 
 and eleven proxies headed by Due de Duras. B.M.— F.R. 40. (5.) 
 
 8 B.M.— F.R. 22. (2.) and 22. (3.) ; ' Pingaud's President de Vezet, in 
 the Bevue Eistoriqae, November, 1822, pp. 300-S02. 
 
32 Elections of the Noblesse. [chap. 
 
 in Franclie Cornt^, there was a double election. The sup- 
 porters of the rights of the provincial Estates, headed by the 
 President de Vezet, had refused to assemble, as the reglement 
 had directed, and in their absence the liberal noblesse elected 
 liberal deputies, including the Marquis de Toulongeon and 
 Bureaux de Pusy. The conservative noblesse then saw the 
 advantage they had given their adversaries, and met of their 
 own accord, and elected conservative deputies, headed by 
 De Vezet, and this double election gave rise to many a long 
 debate after the meeting of the States-General at Versailles. 
 In some bailliages parties were very evenly balanced, and 
 at Blois, where the great chemist Lavoisier was secretary ,i 
 and Alexandre de Beauharnais was elected deputy, forty-three 
 noblemen were found to support vote " par tete," against 
 fifty-one iq, favour of vote " par ordre." ^ Yet, in spite of the 
 liberal ideas of the minority, the nobles of 1789 showed their 
 consciousness of their rank in their universal and unanimous 
 protest in nearly every bailliage against the punishment 
 inflicted upon the Cardinal de Rohan for his share in the 
 scandal of the diamond necklace, and against the arbitrary 
 dismissal of the Comte de Moreton-Chabrillant from the 
 command of his regiment. On the whole, the elections of 
 the noblesse exhibited a marked opposition to any constitu- 
 tional reforms, although in the electoral assemblies the order 
 almost universally promised to abandon its privileges in 
 taxation ; but it was nevertheless certain that the Estate of 
 the noblesse would contain a few noblemen conspicuous for 
 their liberal ideas. Their acknowledged chief was the 
 Marquis de Lafayette, the friend of Washington, who had 
 been elected at Riom, and whose services in America had 
 already associated his name with the idea of revolution. Many 
 of the young officers, who had served under him or with him 
 
 ^ It was at this time that Lavoisier, on eoming to Blois for the 
 elections, lent the city fifty thousand francs without interest, and thus 
 saved it from famine, for which loan he was made a citizen of Blois. 
 Hhtuire. de Blois, by L. Bergevin and A. Duprd, vol. i. pp. 170, 171. Blois ■ 
 184G. 
 
 2 B.M.— F.R. 25. (8.) 
 
I.] The French Clergy in 1789. 33 
 
 in America, had imbibed the same ideas, and several of 
 them were elected to the States-Genei-al, including the 
 Vicomte de Noailles, the Due d'Aiguillon, the Prince de 
 Broglie, the Vicomte Alexandre de Beauharnais, the Comte 
 Mathieu de Montmorency, and the eloquent brothers, Charles 
 and Alexandre de Lameth. 
 
 The clerical elections ^ are far more interesting than those 
 of the noblesse, for in them first appeared the signs of what 
 has been called " the insurrection of the cur^s." ' The unequal 
 division of the wealth of the Church in France is fairly shown 
 by the fact that, out of its income of two hundred and twenty- 
 four millions of francs, the cur^s received but thirty-six 
 millions, and the dignitaries of the Church expected to have in 
 the electoral assemblies an influence proportionate to their 
 wealth and rank ; but they were to be greatly disap- 
 pointed, for, acting under the advice of the curds of Dauphin^, 
 the inferior clergy in nearly every province utterly disre- 
 garded their spiritual chiefs. In this behaviour they were 
 encouraged by their numbers, for the rfeglement allowed 
 every beneficed curd or vicaire — as long as he returned him- 
 self, or could find a substitute, to sing mass on Sunday, if a 
 Sunday intervened during the course of the elections — to be 
 present at the electoral assembly and to vote in person, while 
 even the wealthiest monasteries and chapters might only send 
 single representatives, and the bishops had only their own 
 votes. Besides the " insurrection of the curds" against their 
 bishops, a strong feeling of dislike towai-ds the monks on the 
 part of the curds is as clearly perceived in the course of the 
 electoral period. This feeling had showed itself very early in 
 the reign of Louis XVI., and may be attributed in part to the 
 suppression of the Jesuits, whose place, as teachers of the 
 inferior clergy, had been taken by the Oratorians, who held 
 distinctly Jansenist opinions. • It was a result of their educa- 
 tion also that the curds differed from their bishops in their 
 
 ' The whole question of the clerical elections and the insurrection of 
 the cur^s is thoroughly worked out in Chassin's Xe Ginie de la Bivolution, 
 vol. ii., Les Cahiers des Curis. Paris : 1882. 
 
 VOL. I. » 
 
34 The Bishops. [chap. 
 
 leniency towards Protestantism and even towards rationalism ; 
 for, whi'e as recently as January, 1788, the bishops in conclave 
 at Paris had solemnly and emphatically protested against the 
 very moderate concessions made to the Protestants, and had 
 always condemned Rousseau, the country curds lived on good 
 terms with the Protestant pastors, and knew by heart Rous- 
 seau's " Confessions of a Savoyard Vicar." 
 
 The character of the bishops and dignitaries of the Church, 
 from the very mode of their appointment, could hardly be 
 expected to be particularly moral, or their sentiments particu- 
 larly liberal. They were usually younger sons of wealthy 
 noblemen or ministers of state ; for, in order to maintain the 
 family property undivided, it was the custom for only one son 
 of a noble house to be allowed to marry, while the others 
 either took orders or became knights of the order of St. John 
 of Malta. It was not necessarily the eldest son who was 
 chosen to carry on the family stock; and Charles Maurice 
 de Talleyrand-Perigord, for instance, the witty Bishop of 
 Autun, whose career was to be so long and varied, had been 
 sent into the Church, although the eldest son, because of 
 his feeble health. Such bishops, and so chosen, could not be 
 expected to be in sjonpathy with either their curds or the 
 people. They lived at Paris, and regarded their dignities 
 merely as sources of income, and were incessantly mixed 
 up in court intrigues in order to procure their translation 
 to richer sees. To such an extent had the court obtained 
 absolute power over the Church, that, out of the 131 arch- 
 bishoprics and bishoprics in France in 1789, only five were 
 given to men of roturier birth, and these were the five 
 poorest of all. It is strange rather that so many good and 
 liberal-minded bishops were produced under this system than 
 that there were so many of immoral life and narrow-minded 
 ideas. For liberal-minded bishops did exist ; and, though the 
 majority of the bench held by the order from which they 
 sprang, and declined to admit the necessity of reform, a great 
 part was played during the electoral period and the early 
 months of the States-General by such tolerant statesmen as 
 
I.J The Monks and Friars. 35 
 
 the Archbishops of Vienne and Bordeaux, and the bishops of 
 Blois, Langres, and Nancy. Most of the bishops and high 
 dignitaries of the Church, as in Brittany, were disgusted with 
 the clause in the rfeglement, which threw supreme power into 
 the hands of the curfe, and protested vehemently against it ; 
 and, had it not been for Necker, whose Protestant faith made 
 him incline favourably towards the parochial clergy, it may 
 be doubted whether the Estate of the clergy would not have 
 consisted, as in former times, of bishops and abbds alone. Yet 
 the bishops, as a body, played a more important part in the 
 elections than they did in the States-General, for Necker could 
 not help appointing them ex-officio presidents of the electoral 
 assemblies of the clergy. This did not always ensure their 
 election as deputies ; but, as a rule, the bishop or one of the 
 dignitaries of the bailliage was elected with one, two, or more 
 curds ; and, when the elections were completed, it was found 
 that the Estate of the clergy would be represented at Versailles 
 by 42 bishops, 55 abbes, and 7 monks, together with no less 
 than 205 curds. 
 
 The unpopularity of monks and friars with the parochial 
 clergy is easily accounted for by the fact that, in nearly every 
 parish, the greater tithes, and often the larger portion of the 
 lesser tithes, were exacted for the benefit of some distant 
 monastery, which did nothing for the parish, while the curd 
 had to do all the work for a mere pittance. Most of these 
 monasteries were extremely wealthy, and, as the number of 
 monks had steadily declined for more than twenty-five years, 
 it followed that the abbots and priors were richer than ever 
 before. These appointments had fallen, like the bishoprics, 
 under the control of the court, and were generally filled by 
 cadets of noble families on their way to a bishopric, or held 
 by them with a bishopric. The wealth, superciliousness, and 
 absenteeism of the abbds and prieurs made monks in general 
 unpojiular ; yet the individual monks, who formed the commu- 
 nities, had often as much reason to complain of their superiors 
 as the curds or the people in general. The despotism which 
 these superiors exercised over the members of their monas- 
 
36 llie Chapters. [chap. 
 
 teries is well illustrated by a carious electoral episode. Accord- 
 ing to the rfeglement, each monastery was to elect a represen- 
 tative, but the prior of the convent of Carthusian monks at 
 Bellary, in the Nivernois, refused to allow his monks to elect, 
 and said that he would himself go to the electoral assembly 
 of the clergy as their representative. The monks, however, 
 elected their sacristan in a secret meeting, and having no 
 money, they then wrote a curious letter to Necker, begging 
 him to send a remittance for their deputy's expenses to a 
 certain notary in the village for fear of the prior.^ The 
 convents of nuns were nearly as rich as the monasteries, 
 and as much detested as impropriators of tithes ; they gene- 
 rally sent their father confessors as their representatives to the 
 electoral assembly of the clergy of their bailliage, and in more 
 than one instance these proxies were elected to the States- 
 General. The chapters of canons were in the aggregate not 
 nearly so rich as the monasteries, but each individual canon 
 was far richer than each individual monk, because the income 
 of the chapter was equally distributed amongst its members, 
 and there was no rich abbot or prior to take the lion's share. 
 As usual, whenever a chapter was excessively rich, like those 
 of Lyons or Saint D^nis, care was taken that every canon 
 should be of noble birth, and the same precaution was generally 
 observed by the bishops in appointing their vicars-general, and 
 the clergy of their cathedrals. Exception must be made from 
 the general detestation in which the regular clergy were held 
 by the cur^s in favour of the teaching brotherhoods, and espe- 
 cially of the Oratorians.^ This body had obtained and deserved 
 an immense influence over the minds of the clergy, and, since 
 the suppression of the Jesuits, had almost monopolized the 
 education of the clergy. That they were worthy of the 
 
 1 Labot's Cahiers, proces-verbaux, etc., du Nivernois et Sonziois, pp. 
 233-240. 
 
 2 For the condition of the brethren of the Oratory in 1789 and their 
 attitude towards the Revolution, see tlie monograph of Pere A. Ingold 
 L'Oratoire et la Revolution, in the Bevue de la Revolution for April 
 June, July, and September, 1883. 
 
I.] The Curds. 37 
 
 esteem in which they were held is proved by the general 
 excellence of the provincial cur^s in both morals and ability. 
 Some of the greatest and most pure-minded of the revolu- 
 tionary leaders came from among their own ranks ; and, since 
 they could boast of Daunou and Lakanal, the Oratorians need 
 not be ashamed of the more able and more unscrupulous men 
 who had been for some years teachers in their college at 
 Juilly ^ — Fouch^ and BiUaud-Varenne. 
 
 The cur^s, as has been said, were generally, from their 
 excellent education, inclined to Jansenist opinions or else 
 to a broad-minded toleration, and the absence of any effectual 
 supervision on the part of their bishops had made them 
 extremely independent, and accustomed them to think for 
 themselves both in questions of politics and theology. By 
 birth the country cur^s generally belonged to the very poorest 
 class, and were therefore in entire sympathy with their flocks, 
 over whom their education, which had very often been given to 
 them by the liberality of the seigneur or a subscription from 
 the village, gave them an immense ascendancy. They were, 
 as a rule, too poor ever to leave their parishes, and their 
 remuneration consisted in certain small tithes paid in kind, 
 which afforded barely enough to sustain life. As early as 1776 
 the country cures of Dauphind had leagued together to obtain 
 a small portion of the greater tithes, which were impropriated 
 by the monasteries, and in 1782 they had succeeded in obtain- 
 ing a small additional income, which brought up the average 
 stipend of a country curd to about £32 a year. A much better 
 position was held by the parochial clergy in the towns, who 
 were generally of at least bourgeois birth, and were much 
 more adequately paid, but they somewhat resembled the gay 
 abbes of Paris, and had far less influence over the shrewd 
 bourgeois and intelligent artisans, who formed their congrega- 
 tions, than their rural brethren had over their simple flocks. 
 It must be remembered, too, that the power of eloquence or 
 great literary ability often raised curds of the very humblest 
 
 1 Histoire de I'Abbaye et d/u, College de Juilly, by Chaxles Hamel. 
 8vo. Paris: 1868. 
 
38 The Elections of the Clergy. [chap. 
 
 birth to positions of importance, or conferred upon tliem a 
 great influence over their brethren. The rich abbey of Lions, 
 or Lihons, was conferred upon Jean Sifirein Maury, the son of 
 a cobbler of Valr^as, by the king himself, at the request of the 
 Parlement of Paris, as the reward for a single sermon preached 
 before that body in the Sainte Chapelle, and Henri Grdgoire, 
 the cure of Embermesnil, who was to be chief founder and 
 supporter of the constitutional Church established in France 
 in 1790, first made his name famous by his literary efforts. 
 In 1775 he had won the prize offered by the Academy of 
 Nancy for an essay on poetry, and, later, one off'ered by the 
 Academy of Metz for an essay on the regeneration of the Jews ; 
 and it was this literary reputation which enabled him, not only 
 to take the lead of the curds assembled in his own bailliage of 
 Nancy, but of all the curds in Lorraine, by means of his 
 " Circulaire imprimde," and his " Nouvelle lettre aux Curds," 
 published in 1788 and 1789, in which he remarked that, if a 
 Church only possessed Spanish bishops and French curds, it 
 would be perfectly administered. The great number of able 
 men which time proved to be contained among the curds of 
 France in 1789 is very noticeable ; not only Grdgoire, but 
 Massieu, Thomas Lindet, Jean Baptiste Royer, and Jean Pierre 
 Saurine, were all curds at that time, while the monasteries 
 could only reveal unscrupulous intriguers like the Capuein 
 Fran9ois Chabot, or half-witted enthusiasts like the Carthusian 
 Dom Gerle. 
 
 It will be remembered that the representatives of the 
 clergy of Dauphind had been chosen, with the exception of 
 the Archbishop of Vienne, by the diocesan council of Grenoble, 
 which had elected four abbds ; but, to avoid similar mistakes, 
 the curds of Dauphind earnestly counselled the curds of 
 Brittany and of all France to beware of leaving the elections 
 in the hand of their superiors. In Brittany itself, when the 
 dignitaries of the Church refused to act, the curds, or, as they 
 are locally called, the recteurs, met by themselves in accordance 
 with the reglement, and the clergy of that province were 
 represented in the Estate of the clergy at Versailles by twenty- 
 
I-] The Elections of the Clergy. 39 
 
 four recteurs. A curious instance of the poverty of the clergy 
 and of their attitude towards the wealthy abbes appears ia 
 an account of the elections of the bailliage of Chaumont, in 
 which there was no bishop's see, where Dom Eaucourt, the 
 rich abbot of Clairvaux, was elected president of the electoral 
 assembly of the clergy, because he alone could entertain the 
 whole body at dinner.^ He kept open house in vain, for 
 when the day of election came he was passed over, and two 
 curds were elected deputies. In most bailliages, however, 
 there was a bishop's see, and the great question was whether 
 the bishop, who presided ex-offi-cio, should be elected a deputy 
 or not. They generally presided with great vigour, and made 
 many long sermons and harangues ; indeed, one prelate, the 
 Bishop of Nevers, who attempted to preside at two elections, 
 at Nevers and Saint Pierre-le-Moustier, with but a slight 
 interval between them, died of over-exertion.^ But never- 
 theless, less than one-third of the total number succeeded in 
 securing their election. The good influence of Mgr. de la 
 Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, in maintaining the unanimity 
 of the three orders at Langres, has been mentioned, and the 
 Bishops of Nancy and of Blois attempted to act in a similar 
 manner. Mgr. de Thymines, indeed, the Bishop of Blois, 
 propounded ideas of reform of a most thorough character, 
 and published a most curious and interesting electoral pam- 
 phlet, under the title of " Instructions et Cahier dii hameau de 
 Madon." * A typical election was that at Evreux, where the 
 Bishops of Evreux and Lisieux were both present.* After 
 the general assembly, the cures collected together in the crypt 
 of the cathedral and decided on whom their choice should 
 fall. They selected one extremely wealthy curd, who had 
 private property, M. de la Lande, curd of Illiers I'Eveque, 
 
 1 Hisfoire de Chaumont, by E. Jolibois, 1836 ; Memoir es du Oomie 
 Beugnot, toI. i. p. 109, 2nd edit. Paris : 1868. 
 
 2 Labot's Cahiers, proces-^erhaux, etc., du Nivernois et Bonziois, p. 318. 
 
 3 Published at Blois, 1789. In British Museum, 910 b 1. 
 
 * Notices historiqufs sur la Bevolution dans le Departement de VEure, by 
 . Boivin-Champeaux, pp. 24-28. Evreux : 1868. 
 
40 The CaJiier of Asnan. [chap. 
 
 and one poor parish priest, Thomas Lindet, cur^ of the 
 church of Sainte-Groix at Bernay, who was afterwards the 
 first constitutional bishop of Evreux, and whose brother, 
 Robert Lindet, though then only a poor notary at Bernay, 
 was in four years to be one of the rulers of France. When, 
 therefore, the assembly of the clergy proceeded to the election 
 of its deputies to the States-General, the two bishops were 
 surprised to find that they were rejected, and that these two 
 cur^s were at once elected by a large majority. The cahiers of 
 the clergy contained many complaints of the wealth of the 
 bishops and the monasteries, and showed but little respect 
 for the sanctity of their superiors ; for the curds all seemed to 
 have acknowledged the truth of the remark, which the cur^s 
 of Dauphin^ made to the reeteurs of Brittany, " The bishops 
 are but citizens as you are ; " and further, some of the clerical 
 cahiers even contained a recommendation for the toleration 
 of all religions. The cahiers of the laity were even more 
 decided on matters of Church reform, and Jerome Petion did 
 not hesitate, in his "Avis aux Franjais," to demand the 
 immediate abolition of the celibacy of the clergy. 
 
 If the course of the elections in the provincial assemblies 
 of the noblesse and the clergy, and the cahiers drawn up in 
 ttiem, exhibited the signs of the times, still more was this 
 the case with the tiers etat. From the smallest village, as 
 well as from the largest city, came demands for absolute 
 political freedom, which prove how universally the ideas of 
 Voltaire and of Rousseau had permeated through every class.-"- 
 The cahiers drawn up in the primary assemblies, or adopted by 
 them from some printed pamphlet or one of the innumerable 
 " Modeles de Cahier," have already been mentioned ; but the 
 cahier of the village of Asnan,^ which has been recently 
 
 ' There are seven volumes of cahiers of the bailliages published as 
 vols. 1-7 of the Archives Parlementaires de 1787 a 1860, printed by order of 
 the National Assembly, and edited by MM. Mavidal and Laurent (Paris : 
 1868-75) ; and a list of the printed cahiers to be found in the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale and the Archives is published in Chassin's Le Qenie de la Revo- 
 lution, vol. i. pp. 361-.365. 
 
 2 Labot's Cahiers, proces-verbaux, etc., du Nivernoia et Donziois, pp. 
 251-262. 
 
I.] The Primary Elections of the Tiers Etat. 41 
 
 printed, is far more interesting than they are, for it gives an 
 authentic picture of village troubles in 1789. The little 
 village only contained 135 houses, and yet it could boast of 
 six procureurs, six notaries, and four huissiers or officers of 
 the law courts, and possessed eight inns, besides beer-houses. 
 The village taxation was entirely in the hands of the 
 procureur iiscal, who was therefore dreaded by the villagers, 
 and every year elected to the office of syndic or village 
 magistrate. The baker made bad bread, and there was no 
 redress; the cure had but £,¥) a year, while a certain 
 Benedictine monastery managed to procure £1000 a year 
 from the tithes of the parish. In this particular parish the 
 syndic was elected with another lawyer to represent the 
 village at the general assembly of the tiers ^tat of the balliage 
 at Nevers, and that the election was typical is proved by the 
 immense number of country lawyers, generally syndics of 
 villages, who appeared not only in the electoral assemblies, 
 but in the States-General itself. It was fortunate for the 
 destinies of France that these lawyers, however gi-asping in 
 their villages, were yet men, who had studied their Eousseau, 
 and who were therefore far more conscious of their rights of 
 citizenship, and far more fit to combat the influence of the court 
 and the privileged orders than the down-trodden agricultural 
 labourers, who might otherwise have been elected. The 
 primary elections in the cities and towns do not exhibit the 
 same paramount influence of the lawyers, for the bourgeois 
 had been for generations accustomed to assemble in their 
 guilds to transact business„and the artisan class were entirely 
 omitted in the reglement, and had no votes unless they 
 happened to be householders. The urban primary assemblies 
 consisted, as a rule, entirely of shopkeepers and small 
 employers of labour, who, with the proverbial selfishness of 
 the French bourgeois, looked after their own interests and 
 neglected the grievances of their poorer fellow-citizens. At 
 Lyons, the wealthiest manufacturing city of France, the great 
 manufacturers all voted in the assembly of the noblesse, 
 as having been ennobled by holding municipal office ; and the 
 
42 Electoral Troubles of the Tiers Etat. [chap. 
 
 elections of the tiers dtat were chiefly influenced by a book- 
 seller named Perisse Duluc and a printer named Milanais,^ who 
 were both enthusiastic believers in the mystical doctrines of 
 St. Martin, and the Martinists managed to elect among the 
 deputies for the baiUiage of Lyons the great Parisian avocat 
 Bergasse, who was a native of Lyons and a leader among the 
 illuminati of Paris. 
 
 The higher standard of education in the towns naturally 
 caused a great difl'erence between the electors of the towns 
 and of the country districts in the electoral assemblies of the 
 tiers ^tat, a difference which sometimes led to blows. From 
 their numbers the country lawyers were able to command the 
 issue of the elections, and many were the protests sent in by 
 the greater cities that they would not be adequately repre- 
 sented at the States-General. This struggle is well illustrated in 
 the elections of the baiUiage of La Montague, where Frochot, 
 afterwards Napoleon's prefet of the Seine, and then a country 
 notary at Aignay-le-Duc, combined the country electors and 
 persuaded them to elect deputies from their own number.^ 
 Maxmilien de Robespierre, too, who had only been chosen 
 fourteenth elector for the city of Arras, recognized the impor- 
 tance of the country electors, and it was by their votes that 
 he was elected fifth deputy for Artois.^ There is also, in 
 an account of the elections at Soissons,* a curious protest 
 against the interference of the mar^chaussee, or police, which 
 is extremely noteworthy. The very presence of a pro- 
 vost of police at the first general assembly of the electors 
 caused a riot in the cathedral of Soissons, which was with 
 difficulty suppressed, and a similar riot took place at Chau- 
 mont,^ where certain of the grand bailli's guards knocked 
 
 1 Histoire politique et militaire du Peuple de Lyon pendant la Rdvolw- 
 Hon Fratigaise 1789-1795, by A. Balleydier, vol. i. p. 5. Paris, 1845, 1846 ; 
 Histoire de Lyon depuis la Bevolution de 1789, by Jerome Morin, voL i. 
 p. 23. Paris and Lyons, 1845. 
 
 " Frochot, Prefet de la Seine, by Louis Passy, p. 5. lllvreux : 1867. 
 
 8 Arras so^itsla Revolution, by E. Lecesne, vol. i. pp. 40-59. Arras : 1882. 
 
 * Lea Procis-verbaux et Cahiers du BaiUiage de Soissons 1789, published 
 in vol. XX. of the Bulletins of the Societe historique et archeologique of 
 that city. ' Beugnot's Memoires, vol. i. p. 108. 
 
I.] Incidents in the Elections of the Tiers Etat. 43 
 
 down some of the electors. The want of practice of the 
 French people in elections was to be seen the moment the 
 electors of the three orders separated to draw up their cahiers 
 and elect their deputies. Etienne Dumont^ mentions that 
 when he was travelling from London to Paris with Duroveray, 
 another Genevese exile, in March, 1789, they stopped at an 
 inn at Montreuil-sur-Mer, and found that the general assembly 
 of the bailliage had just met, and that no one knew how to 
 proceed. The two Swiss radicals accordingly delayed their 
 journey, instructed the electors of the tiers ^tat what to do, 
 and kindly drew up their cahier for them. In certain in- 
 stances, as when Frochot had combined the country electors 
 of La Montagne, or Malouet prepared the way at Riom, all 
 went smoothly ; but generally, as might have been expected in 
 a mixed assembly of lawyers and labourers, bourgeois and 
 country doctors, confusion reigned supreme. The first point 
 always was as to who should be elected to draw up the 
 cahier in the name of the assembly, and it was in drawing up 
 the cahiers that the men most worthy to be elected deputies 
 generally showed their capacity. In a few instances com- 
 paratively unknown individuals were at once elected deputies 
 from the number of their friends among the electors, and 
 there was always an attempt to elect the lieutenant-general 
 of the bailliage, who presided over the assembly of the tiers 
 ^tat, ex-offido, whether popular or unpopular. He was gene- 
 rally elected unless there was some specific reason alleged 
 against him, as when M. Cagniart de Rotoy was rejected at 
 Laon for having wished to hang over again a woman who 
 had recovered after her execution.^ Family connections, how- 
 ever distant, had also some weight ; for instance, at Evreux 
 a young and unknown avocat, named Buzot, was elected a 
 deputy for the tiers ^tat merely because he had married a 
 
 1 Souvenirs swr Mirabeau, by Etienne Dumont, pp. 21, 22. London : 
 
 1832. 
 
 2 Les Medians de 1789 aux Mtats-Generaux pour le Bailliage de Ver- 
 mandois, publiSes par la Sociite Acadimique de Laon, avec Notice par E. 
 Flewry, Laon: 1872. 
 
44 Popularity of the Parlements. [chap. 
 
 distant connection of Barentin, the keeper of the seals.^ The 
 cahiers of the general assemblies of the tiers dtat were, like 
 those of the primary assemblies, in many instances copied 
 from one of the numerous printed models which had been 
 circulated throughout France with a few additions of local 
 grievances. These grievances arose chiefly from the extended 
 influence of the guilds in the towns and the bnfair weight of 
 taxation in the villages, and very often from the recently 
 concluded treaty of commerce with England. This treaty, 
 though most advantageous to the wine-growers of southern 
 France, and extremely popular at Bordeaux and the wine 
 centres, had nearly ruined the northern provinces, and many 
 were the demands from Normandy, Picardy, and Artois that 
 it should be at once annulled. In some instances, as at Chau- 
 mont and Nemours, the affection of the electors for the par- 
 lements, which they somehow regarded as the guardians of 
 their liberties, was curiously displayed. At Nemours, when 
 Dupont, the economist, wished to insert in the cahier a clause 
 demanding the abolition of the parlements, his colleagues on 
 the committee for drawing up the cahier tried to throw him 
 out of the window, and would have succeeded if he had not 
 made them laugh by catching hold of a very fat man to act as 
 his pillow; while a similar proposition secured the rejection 
 of Bcugnot at Chaumont.^ The article which Necker had 
 inserted in the " R^sultat du Conseil " allowing the assemblies 
 of one order to elect individuals belonging to another, was not 
 much acted upon by the tiers ^tat, but it may be remarked that 
 the Marquis de Rostaing, a friend and comrade of Lafayette, 
 was elected by the tiers ^tat of the bailliage of the Forez, 
 assembled at Montbrison,^ and that the Comte de Chambors, 
 who was elected both by the tiers ^tat and the noblesse of 
 Couserans, preferred to be deputy for the former Estate.* 
 
 ' Boivin-Champeaux, La Revolution dans le Dipartement de I'Eure, p. 30. 
 
 2 Beugnot's Memoires, vol. i. pp. 118, 120. 
 
 5 Soanne pendant la Bevulution, by Franoisque Pothier, p. 17. 
 Eoaniie : 1808. 
 
 * Histoire de la Revolution Frangaise dans le pays de Foix et dans 
 VAriege, by Paul de Casteras, p. 64. Paris : 1876. 
 
i-J Malouet. 
 
 45 
 
 Very few members of the tiers ^tat made their names known 
 beyond the limits of their provinces during the electoral opera- 
 tions ; chief amongst those who did was Malouet, who was the 
 only man, besides Mounier, who was elected a deputy by 
 acclamation, and who obtained a great reputation during the 
 elections at Riom in Auvergne. 
 
 Pierre Victor Malouet^ was the only son of the bailli of the 
 little village of Oliergues, in Auvergne, and was born there in 
 1740. In his youth he had lived a gay life in Paris as a 
 second-rate poet, and had then accompanied the French Am- 
 bassador to Lisbon as his secretary. In 1760 he had entered the 
 commissariat, and in 1762 the colonial service, and spent some 
 years in French Guiana and San Domingo. On his way home, 
 in 1778, he was taken prisoner by an English cruiser, and 
 spent a year in England as a prisoner of war, during which 
 he had an opportunity for studying English institutions. In 
 1781 he had been appointed intendant to the fleet at Toulon, 
 and in 1788 he determined to obtain a seat in the States- 
 General. Neither he himself nor the Government service 
 were particularly popular at Toulon, so he went down to his 
 native province and offered to use his influence with the 
 Government in asserting the rights of Riom to be capital of 
 Lower Auvergne against Clermont-Ferrand. His conduct at 
 Paris in upholding the cause of their city had made him very 
 jwpular among the citizens of Riosj, and he had no difficulty 
 in becoming the leader of the tiers dtat there. He had accu- 
 mulated some wealth in the public service, which he found of 
 great use in enabling him to issue numerous pamphlets, to 
 keep open house, and to make a personal canvas. His pamphlets 
 spread beyond the limits of Auvergne, and his popularity also ; 
 and when the electoral assembly met, a cahier, which he had 
 drawn up, was at once accepted as the cahier of the bailliage, 
 and he was elected by acclamation first deputy for the tiers 
 e'fcat of Riom, and he then tried to rival Mounier as a leader 
 of the tiers etat of France. 
 
 Besides Mounier and Malouet, several of the deputies 
 1 Malouet's Memoira. Paris : 1874. 
 
46 Election of Mirabeau. [chap. 
 
 elected by the tiers 6tat were men whose names were to become 
 universally famous. Some, like Merlin of Douai, Maximilien 
 de Robespierre, Barere, Potion, Defermon des Chapelliferes, Rew- 
 beU, Salicetti, Thouret, and Le Chapelier, owed their elections 
 to their popularity as avocats or procureurs in the cities of 
 Douai, Arras, Toulouse, Chartres, Rennes, Colmar, Bastia, Rouen, 
 and Nantes ; Goupil de Prefeln was judge-royal at Alen9on ; 
 La,njuinais was a professor of law at Rennes ; Blin and SaUe 
 were doctors at Nantes and Nancy ; Rabaut de Saint-Etienne, 
 as the Protestant champion, was elected at Nimes ; Garat, the 
 writer of " Eloges," and professor of history at the Lycde of 
 Paris, at his native place. Labour, although he had never been 
 there since he left home, a poor boy, to seek his fortune at 
 Paris; Dupont, the economist, at Nemours; and Bergasse, as 
 has been said, at Lyons. 
 
 But the greatest gain of the tiers ^tat in the elections was 
 that it was at this time that Mirabeau threw in his lot with 
 them. He was the only man of real political ability who had 
 yet appeared. Beside him, Mounier, Malouet, and the rest 
 were mere theoretical politicians and visionai-ies ; and it was 
 to no deep-laid scheme, but to mere chance, that be owed his 
 election to the Estate of the tiers 6tat. It would be idle to 
 consider what might have been the course of the French revo- 
 lution if Mirabeau had been elected by the noblesse of his 
 bailliage ; but their haughty rejection of a man of bad character, 
 on the ground that he was not in possession of a fief, when Le 
 claimed to enter their assembly, made him turn to the tiers 
 ^tat as the only class which could give him the political 
 opening he had so long wished for, and for which he was so 
 well fitted. With constitutional energy he threw himself into 
 the strife, and secured his election both at Aix and Marseilles. 
 But his triumph was more than his own personal victory ; it 
 embodied the great principle of the election of the fittest. 
 Almost unknown at Marseilles, and not known favourably at 
 Aix, his character had not been such as to win esteem or 
 afiection from the bourgeois of those cities, but when once he 
 had spoken, the hot-headed people of the south recognized their 
 
1-3 Election of Mirabeau. 47 
 
 born leader. Whether or not he set up a draper's shop at Mar- 
 seilles to qualify himself as a member of the tiers dtat is a matter 
 of no importance ; but he identified himself as much as if he 
 had with the commercial classes, and not only with them but 
 with the populace of the great city also, over which he at once 
 obtained an enormous influence, which assisted his election 
 even more than his popularity with the bourgeois. While the 
 elections were being held, riots caused by the dearth of bread 
 and the hard times broke out all over the city of Marseilles, 
 and Mirabeau, by his voice alone, was able to pacify t?ie 
 excited people when the presence of the troops was of no 
 avail, and to save the lives of the bishop and of the contractor, 
 whom the populace had attacked.^ On this occasion he 
 showed that hatred of anarchy which was his guiding political 
 principle through life, and managed to quell the riots without 
 being hooted by the rioters. His double election gave him 
 double strength; he felt himself not merely deputy for 
 Marseilles or for Aix, but the representative of the whole 
 tiers ^tat of France. His election caused more enthusiasm 
 than any other individual election in all France. From Mar- 
 seilles he was escorted to Aix, for which city he had preferred 
 to sit, by five hundred bourgeois on horseback, three hundred 
 carriages, and a vast crowd on foot ; and the citizens of Aix, not 
 to be behindhand in enthusiasm for their deputy, entertained 
 the whole expedition in a field without their walls.^ It was 
 this enthusiasm which gave Mirabeau strength to despise the 
 cold attitude of his fellow-deputies when he took his seat in 
 the States-General, and to assume the leadership of the tiers 
 ^tat at Versailles, when Mounier and Malouet failed in the 
 hour of difficulty. 
 
 If the progress of the elections at Marseilles and aU over 
 France deserve to be studied with attention, the elections at 
 Paris were the most important and most noteworthy of all. 
 
 1 Despatch of the Duke of Dorset, English Ambassador at Paris, to 
 the Marquis of Carmarthen, Secretary of State, March 28, 1789. 
 
 2 Histoire de Marseille, by Auguatin Fabre, vol. ii. p. 420. Marseilles: 
 1829. 
 
48 Elections of the Noblesse of Paris. |_chap. 
 
 For in Paris at that time, more than in any other capital in 
 the world, was concentrated all that was best and worst, all that 
 was richest and poorest, all that was most cultivated and most 
 ignorant in the whole country. Paris was allotted no less than 
 ten deputations, or forty deputies ; its elections began far later 
 than those of the rest of France, and were followed with 
 breathless interest by the newly elected deputies from the 
 provinces, who had already assembled in the capital. 
 
 The noblesse of Paris began by electing 208 electors in the 
 sixty districts, into which the sixteen quarters of the city had 
 been divided for electoral purposes, who, with ten owners of 
 fiefs within the walls, formed the general assembly of the 
 noTDlesse of Paris, upon which attention was at first fixed. 
 But as soon as it was known at Versailles that the Comte de 
 Clermont-Tonnerre ^ had been elected president, and M. Duval 
 d'Espremesnil and the Comte de Lally-Tollendal secretaries 
 of the assembly, there was little doubt but that most of the 
 deputies would belong to the liberal nobility. Nevertheless, 
 the electors decided to draw up their cahier separately by 195 
 votes to 21,2 and the committee of twelve appointed for that 
 purpose included two of the Duke of Orleans' chief friends, 
 Adrien Duport, and the licentious novelist, Choderlos de Laclos, 
 as well as the Due de la Rochefoucauld, the Marquis de Con- 
 dorcet, secretary to the Academy of Sciences and biographer 
 of Turgot, the Marquis de Montesquiou, and Hugues de 
 S^monville. When their work was done, the election of the 
 ten deputies was proceeded with. They were headed by the 
 Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, and included the Due de la 
 "Rochefoucauld, the Comte de Lally-Tollendal, Dionis de S^jour 
 the astronomer, Adrien Duport, Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, 
 and the Marquis de Montesquiou. The Duke of Orleans was 
 himself elected, but preferred to sit for Crdpy-en-Valois. The 
 ten deputies supple'ants included the Marquis de Beauharnais, 
 the Vicomte de Sdgur, Hugues de Se^monville, the Comte de 
 
 • Duke of Dorset's despatch of April 29, 1789. 
 
 * Proch-verlal de l' Assemble des Citoyem Mobles de Farts B M — 
 F.E. 30. (12.) 
 
I.] Elections of the Clergy of Paris. 49 
 
 Montholon, and the Comte de Puget de Barbentane ; but it is 
 to be remarked that neither Condorcet nor Choderlos de Laclos, 
 although they had assisted to draw up the cahier, were 
 included among them. 
 
 The clergy of Paris did not exhibit the same liberal ideas 
 as the noblesse,^ and Bailly remarks in his " Memoirs," that 
 while during the primary elections the assembly of the tiers 
 ^tat of his district received many messages from the primary 
 assembly of the noblesse, it received none from the clergy. 
 The ten clerical deputies, as might have been expected from this 
 conduct, were all of conservative tendencies, and were headed 
 by Antoine Leclerc de Juign^, Archbishop of Paris. They in- 
 cluded the Abbd de Montesquiou, Mgr. Chevreuil the chan- 
 cellor of the cathedral, Mgr. Dumonchel the rector of the 
 university, only two curds, those of the parishes of St. Nicholas 
 de Chaudmont and of St. Gervais, and only one monk, Dom 
 Chevreux, general of the monks of St. Maur. 
 
 The primary elections of the tiers dtat in the sixty districts 
 of Paris are minutely described in their proces-verbaux, which 
 were generally published; but the most interesting account 
 is that contained in Bailly's " Memoirs." ^ He left his home 
 at Chaillot before eight o'clock on the morning of April 21 
 and when he entered the church of the Feuillants, the head- 
 quarters of his district, "he breathed a new air." The people 
 collected there refused to allow the king's agent to preside, and 
 elected Bailly in his stead; they then occupied themselves 
 in verifying the titles of those present to be members of the 
 assembly, and at 7 p.m. elected a committee of seven, including 
 Bailly and Marmontel, the novelist and academician, to draw 
 up the district cahier. This was done by 10 p.m., and the 
 assembly then spent the rest of the night in electing seven 
 electors to the general assembly of the tiers (^tat of Paris, amongst 
 whom were Bailly, Marmontel, and Dusaulx, the translator 
 of Juvenal. On the next day BaiUy went to the Hotel de 
 
 1 Cahier des doUancea et rimontrances du Ghrg6 de Paris intra muros 
 B.M.— F.R. 36. (23.) 
 
 2 Memoires de Bailly, ed. Berville and Barriere, vol. i. p. 9. 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
50 Elections of the Tiers Etat of Paris, [chap. 
 
 Ville, where he found the electors hard at work verifying 
 
 their powers. On April 23 the general assembly of the three 
 
 orders met under the presidency of the provost of Paris, and 
 
 the tiers ^tat expressed its desire that the three orders should 
 
 draw up their cahier in common. But the privileged orders 
 
 thought otherwise, and on April 26 the assembly of the 
 
 electors of the tiers dtat met separately,^ and, after refusing 
 
 to allow the lieutenant-civil of the city to preside over them, 
 
 elected Target, the greatest lawyer in Paris, to be their 
 
 president, and the Jansenist Camus as second president. 
 
 BaiUy himself was elected secretary, with Dr. Guillotin as 
 
 his assistant. The 405 electors of the tiers ^tat of Paris 
 
 were found to contain 183 lawyers, 10 academicians, 36 
 
 doctors and surgeons, 10 financiers, 7 architects, 4 soldiers, 
 
 93 shopkeepers, of whom 11 were drapers, 10 printers and 
 
 publishers, and 9 grocers, and 50 individuals classed simply 
 
 as bourgeois.^ On April 27 a committee of thirty-six — 
 
 including the men of letters, Marmontel, Lacretelle, BaUly, 
 
 and Suard, the lawyers Camus, Target, and Desfeze, Dr. 
 
 Guillotin, the publisher Panckoucke, and the manufacturer 
 
 R^veillon — was chosen to draw up the cahier of. the tiers ^tat 
 
 of Paris, who spent a week in drawing it up, and another 
 
 in reading it over to the assembly. On May 8, Target 
 
 announced to the electors the news of the suppression of 
 
 Mirabeau's journal, and a vote of censure was passed with 
 
 only one dissentient voice, that of Marmontel, who thus lost 
 
 his chance of becoming a member of the States-GeneraL On 
 
 May 12, eight days after the opening of the States-General 
 
 at Versailles, the electors of the tiers ^tat proceeded to their 
 
 most important duty, and elected BaiUy first deputy for 
 
 Paris. The elections occupied more than a fortnight, and, 
 
 when completed, the deputation consisted of nine lawyers, 
 
 including Camus, Tronchet, and Treilhard; six tradesmen, 
 
 ' Froces-verhal de rAssemblee du Tiers Mat de la Ville de Paris intra 
 
 muros, 104 pp. B.M.— F.E. 37. (15.) 
 
 ^ Tahleau dta 405 Elcdeurs du Tiers Mat, nommfy par les Votans des 
 60 Districts des 16 Quartiers de la Ville et Fauxhourgs de Paris. B.M. — 
 PR. 33. (13.) 
 
!•! Bailly. 5 1 
 
 namely, two drapers, a grocer, a printer, a jeweller, and a 
 •wine-merchant; the receiver-general of finances Anson, the 
 academician Bailly, the censor-royal Desmeuniers, Dr. Guillotin, 
 and the Abbd Sidyfes.^ Of this deputation, by far the 
 most important men, and those who played the greatest 
 part in the history of the Kevolution, were the first and 
 the last elected, Jean Sylvain BaiUy and Emmanuel Joseph 
 Sidyfes. 
 
 Jean Sylvain BaiUy ^ was the only son of Jacques Bailly, 
 keeper of the royal pictures in the galleries of the Louvre, and 
 was bom at Paris in 1736. He was educated by his mother 
 at home, and when only sixteen wrote two long tragedies, 
 which were promptly condemned by the actor Lanoue, a 
 friend of his father, who convinced the boy that he was not 
 a poet. At that time a well-known geometer, named Mon- 
 carville, offered to give him lessons in geometry in return for 
 drawing lessons to be given by Jacques BaiUy to his own son. 
 In the study of geometry Jean Bailly found scope for his 
 peculiarly retentive memory and inexhaustible patience, and 
 after a thorough training his attention was directed towards 
 astronomy by an acquaintance with the great astronomer 
 Lacaille. With Lacaille he observed the transit of Venus in 
 1761 and the comet of 1762, and in recognition of his reduction 
 of the 515 stars observed by Lacaille in 1760 and 1761, he 
 was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1763. 
 He then patiently observed the satellites of Jupiter froin a little 
 garret on the roof of the Louvre for eight years, and established 
 his reputation as a practical astronomer. In 1773 he became 
 a candidate for the office of coadjutor to the secretary of the 
 Academy of Sciences, but though supported by Buffbn, he was 
 defeated by the young Marquis Caritat de Condorcet. BaiUy 
 now turned from the practice to the history of his favourite 
 science, and between 1775 and 1787 pubUshed, in five volumes, 
 
 1 Tableau dea 20 Deputes, et des 20 Suppleants du Tiers Mat, nommes 
 •par les 405 Electeurs des Districts de Paris. B.M.— F.R. 37. (U.) 
 
 2 The best biography of BaiLy is that by Frangois Arago, published 
 in 4to, 1852, and. reprinted in vol. ii. of the Memoires hiographigues in 
 Barral's complete edition of Arago's works. 
 
52 Bailly. [chap. 
 
 his histories of ancient, modern, and Indian astronomy. The 
 style of this work was universally admired, and in 1783 the 
 author was elected a member of the Acaddmie Frangaise, and 
 in 1785 of the Academy of Inscriptions, for his researches into 
 ancient astronomy and his letters to Voltaire on the Atlantis 
 of Plato. He was thus a member of all three academies, an 
 honour only attained before by FonteneUe. But high as his 
 reputation as an astronomer and a graceful writer stood, it 
 was not as a man of science or a man of letters that Bailly 
 was best known to his fellow-citizens, but as the secretary 
 and reporter of two famous commissions. In 1784 he had 
 drawn up and published the report of the committee which 
 had been appointed by the Academy of Sciences to examine 
 into the miraculous cures alleged to have been effected by 
 Mesmer and Deslon. The committee included such famous 
 men as Franklin and Lavoisier ; the subject excited the greatest 
 interest in France, and Bailly 's report, in which he disproved 
 the existence of the miraculous power claimed by Mesmer, 
 was universally read. He had further become favourably 
 known as a philanthropist by his report on the horrible 
 mismanagement of the Hotel Dieu, the chief hospital of Paris. 
 In it he showed in glowing language the utter neglect of the 
 patients and the absence of all sanitary precautions, and his 
 personal popularity was at its height when he walked up 
 from Chaillot to the primary assembly of the district of the 
 Feuillants. In his modesty he did not expect to play any 
 important part, and his astonishment may be believed when 
 he found himself elected first deputy for the tiers dtat of Paris. 
 But his nomination brought no good fortune to himself or to 
 France, for without administrative experience or political 
 knowledge he was suddenly called upon to fill a great and 
 difiicult position in public life. Like all other Frenchmen of 
 the period, he did not believe in the necessity of any apprentice- 
 ship to politics, and his' unfortunate administration of Paris 
 and his pathetic death were directly due to the delusion that, 
 because he was an amiable and a learned man, he was there- 
 fore fitted for public duties. The fault was not his alone j the 
 
1-3 Sidyh. 53 
 
 people of France could not trust the servants of the old 
 despotism; new administrators had to be found, and it was 
 Bailly's misfortune rather than his fault that he was forced 
 into a conspicuous position when strength of character and 
 experience were needed, and in which he found that know- 
 ledge of the stars had not taught him knowledge of men. 
 
 Emmanuel Joseph Siey^s,^ the twentieth and last deputy of 
 the tiers ^tat of Paris, but yet the man who had more influence 
 on the course of the Revolution than any of the rest, was born 
 at Fr^jus on May 3, 1748. He was educated at the Sorbonne 
 for the Church, and there studied the works of Locke, Condillac, 
 and other political and metaphysical thinkers, in preference 
 to theology. His reputation for learning soon obtained him 
 a canonry in Brittany, and he then became vicar-general 
 and chancellor of the diocese of Chartres, and a member of the 
 Council of the Clergy in France. In 1788 he published three 
 political pamphlets, which were circulated through the length 
 and breadth of France by the money of the Duke of Orleans, 
 of which the most famous, " Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat ? " has 
 been already mentioned. His answer to the question which 
 he put was, " Everything ! " " What has it been hitherto ? " 
 was his next question. " Nothing ! " " What does it desire ? " 
 " To be something." He had afterwards published the model 
 of a cahier and a plan of deliberations, which had had a large 
 sale and great influence in the provinces ; but from the very 
 principles he professed he had failed to be elected to the 
 States-General by his own order. He would certainly have 
 been left without any seat whatever in the great assembly, 
 whose composition he had so much affected, had he not been 
 remembered by the electoral assembly of the tiers dtat of 
 Paris when it was proceeding to the election of its last 
 deputy. Even then some question as to whether they should 
 
 1 The best biography of Sidyes is that contained in Mignet's Notices 
 historiques, vol. i., Paris, 1853 ; and consult also the Etude sur Sieyes, by 
 E. de Beauverger, printed at the end of his Tableau historique des Progris 
 de la Pliilosophie politique, which was favourably reviewed in an interest- 
 ing article by Saiute-Beuve in the Causeries du Lundi, vol. v. 
 
54 Bailly and Sidyh. [chap. i. 
 
 elect an abbd waa raised ; but the memory of his great services 
 to their cause, and his high reputation as a patriot and a 
 supporter of the tiers ^tat, procured his triumphant election, 
 though only as twentieth deputy. 
 
 Bailly and Si^yfes were the two most distinguished deputies 
 of the tiers ^tat of Paris, and if a knowledge of political 
 theories and a belief in political ideals were to characterize 
 the deputies of the tiers dtat, there would have been little 
 hope that that Estate could have striven successfully against 
 the two privileged orders; but, fortunately for France, Pro- 
 vence had. sent to Versailles a much greater man, one more 
 competent to guide their deliberations aright, who would soon 
 make the tiers ^tat what Si^yfes wished it to be — '" everything." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE MEETING OF THE STATES-GENERAIi. 
 
 Want of union among the deputies of the tiers dtat— Introduction to the 
 king— The Bishop of Nancy's sermon-^Opening session of the 
 States-General— Policy of the Tiers Iiltat until June lo— The Tiers 
 iStat declare themselves the National Assembly — Oath of the Tennis- 
 Court, June 20 — The Sdance Royale, June 23 — Mirabeau— Union 
 of the orders — The Breton Club— Mounier and Malouet lose their 
 influence — Camus — Rabaut de Saint- Etienne—Grdgoire — Concentra- 
 tion of troops — Dismissal of Necker. 
 
 The elections in Dauphin^ had been completed as early as 
 January 2, 1789, while the elections in Paris had lasted far 
 beyond the day appointed for meeting.- Between these 
 dates the whole of France had been busied with electoral 
 operations, and all France, in the beginning of May, 1789, 
 turned eagerly to Versailles, to see how far the deputies who 
 had been elected with such high hopes and such enthusiasm 
 would be able to enforce the demands for reform contained 
 in the cahiers. But chiefly was the mind of the French people 
 stirred with the great question of vote "par ordre" and vote 
 "par t4te." On this question the privileged orders and the 
 tiers dtat were in direct opposition : every cahier of the tiers 
 etat demanded vote " par tete ; " every cahier but one of the 
 noblesse demanded vote "par ordre." When, therefore, the 
 deputies of the tiers etat began to a-ssemble in Paris in 
 the course of April, 1789, this question was in aU their 
 thoughts; but as yet among these men of difierent races, 
 diflPerent classes, and various education there existed no 
 common bond and no organiaation, which would enable them 
 to combine and consider how best to accomplish their ends. 
 
56 Want of Union among the Deputies. [chap. 
 
 The noblesse were better organized ; many of them had served 
 in the army or held court appointments, and were personally 
 acquainted with each other ; the hberal party met in the 
 salons of their ladies of fashion, and recognized Lafayette, 
 or Lameth, or the Duke of Orleans as their leader; the 
 noblesse of the robe naturally united at the houses of the 
 leaders of the various parties in the Parlement of Paris, while 
 the majority knew well that, upon the question of voting, 
 the privileged orders were bound, if they believed in their 
 own separate existence, to be united. This want of a common 
 centre and of any organization among the deputies of the tiers 
 dtat must have led to their complete failure, if the ministers, 
 the court, or the leading members of the majority of the 
 noblesse had taken any trouble to divide them by personal 
 solicitation. Fortunately, however, for the future of the tiers 
 ^tat, men were very far from foreseeing what a struggle was 
 about to arise, and, full of a foolish complacency, the nobles 
 of the court neglected to make friends of the poor country 
 deputies, who were thronging into Paris and Versailles. The 
 conduct of the wealthy dignitaries of the Church was very 
 different : as soon as they perceived that their order would 
 be represented by no less than 205 cur^s to 101 bishops, 
 monks, and canons, they began to make friends of the curds 
 in whose hands the power of the estate of the clergy so 
 evidently lay. Mirabeau at once understood the disadvan- 
 tages of the want of union among the deputies of the tiers 
 etat, and in order to bring about some cohesion he issued 
 the prospectus of a new journal, to be entitled Les Etats- 
 Generaux, which should lay down a plan of operations. For 
 it must be remembered that the deputies to the tiers dtat of 
 the States-General, unlike those returned to the subsequent 
 political assemblies, were simply men of local reputations and 
 local ambitions. There had been no general conference for the 
 selection of candidates and no electoral organization, such as 
 exists in every country in which representative assemblies have 
 been the custom, and the deputies of the tiers dtat resembled 
 rather members of an English Parliament in the reign of 
 
II. J The Bishop of Nancy's Sermon. 57 
 
 Edward III., "when the constituencies were bound to elect 
 local men. 
 
 Differing entirely in character, age, and degree, the de- 
 puties of the tiers ^tat remained scattered about in Paris until 
 they received an order to appear, on May 2, in black coats, 
 waistcoats, knee-breeches, and stockings, with white bands, at 
 the palace of Versailles, to be introduced to their king. Louis 
 XVI. received them with all the kindness of his nature ; but 
 the insolence which they met with from the hands of the 
 court officials, who kept them waiting, admitted them only by 
 side doors, and even proposed that they should fall on their 
 knees before his Majesty, according to the ancient precedents 
 of the fifteenth century, caused them to feel a common senti- 
 ment of resentment against the court on the very first occasion 
 of their being collected together, and formed them into a body 
 united by disgust at common insults. Social feeling has 
 always had very great influence amongst Frenchmen, and a 
 little courtesy or a little forbearance of their social privileges 
 would have enabled the court and the noblesse to win the 
 affection of the tiers dtat, and perhaps to obtain great political 
 advantages. On the morning of May 4 the deputies of the 
 three orders marched in procession to the great Church of 
 St. Louis, at Versailles, to hear mass and listen to a sermon 
 from the Bishop of Nancy, and thus prepare for their duties. 
 Mgr. Anne Louis Henri de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, who has 
 been mentioned as one of the distinctly liberal prelates, and 
 who was to spend twenty-four years in exile, become a cardinal 
 and Archbishop of Sens, and eventually preached the sermon 
 at the coronation of Charles X., in 1826, directed his sermon 
 against the weight of taxation upon the poorest class, and 
 dwelt with eloquence upon the poverty of the people ; and his 
 conclusion, "All this is done in the name of the best of kings," 
 was received with loud applause from all parts of the church, 
 in spite of the sacred character of the place and of the pre- 
 sence of the king and queen. That sanctity, indeed, had been 
 already violated before the commencement of the service by 
 an unseemly squabble between the deputies of the noblesse 
 
58 The Meeting of the States-General. [chap. 
 
 and those of the tiers dtat, caused, according to a member of 
 the noblesse, by the insolent desire of the tiers dtat to share 
 the seats allotted to their betters in the nave of the church, 
 instead of humbly going into the aisles^ The tiers dtat had 
 headed the procession, and as they entered the church had 
 seated themselves in the nave, and Larevellifere-Lepaux, one of 
 the deputies for Anjou, had absolutely refused to move at the 
 request of the master of the ceremonies, the Marquis de Dreux- 
 Br^zd, until persuaded to do so by other deputies of his order, 
 in order to avoid an open disturbance.^ The applause which 
 had greeted the bishop's attack upon the existing system of 
 taxation encouraged the king to believe that his gxeat aim of 
 consolidating and reorganizing the finances of France would 
 receive immediate attention, and he at least returned to 
 his palace from the church with a happy and contented 
 heart. 
 
 On May 5 the whole of the States-General, with the ex- 
 ception of the deputies of the tiers ^tat of Paris, who had 
 not yet been elected, assembled in the hall of the king's 
 " lesser pleasures," where the twelve hundred deputies were 
 ranked according to their orders. In marked contrast to the 
 sombre black dress which had been declared the official costume 
 of the deputies of the tiers ^tat, appeared the clergy on the 
 right of the throne, in their vestments, and the noblesse on the 
 left, in their magnificent doublets, studded with jewels, after 
 the fashion of the reign of Henri Quatre, the cost of which, 
 amounting to at least thirteen hundred livres, seriously im- 
 poverished the poorer deputies of the order.^ The galleries 
 were filled with the foreign ambassadors, among whom shone 
 out conspicuous the English representative, the courtly Duke 
 of Dorset, with the great ladies of Paris, dressed after the latest 
 Paris fashions, and with visitors from all parts of the world, 
 
 1 Journal du Baron de Gauville, d6putS de VOrdre de la Noblesse aux 
 Etais-Generaux, p. 5. 12mo. Paris : 1864. 
 
 2 Passage cited from the only copy of the printed but unpublished M6- 
 moires of^Larevelliere-Lepaux, in the Revolution Frangaise, for November, 
 1883. 
 
 ' Gauville, Journal, p. 5. 
 
II.] The Opening of the States-General. 59 
 
 including very many Englislimen. When the king entered, 
 accompanied by the queen, with her ladies-in-waiting and 
 maids of honour, by the great officers of the royal household, 
 and the body-guards in their splendid uniforms, with all the 
 pageantry which makes a court, he was received with en- 
 thusiasm, and all waited expectantly to hear his wishes. M. de 
 Barentin, the Keeper of the Seals, was heard with indifference 
 and impatience, through a series of platitudes; but when 
 Necker arose, all was silence. As his speech proceeded, blank 
 amazement came over the faces of the black-robed deputies 
 who sat directly opposite to him, when they heard no word of 
 great constitutional reforms, no allusion to the establishment 
 of a representative government, no hint of an attempt to 
 remedy the poverty and misery of the labouring classes, but 
 only heard that the king's treasury must be filled, and that the 
 deficit, which the extravagance of the court had caused, must 
 be met by them with stiU further taxation. This was not 
 what the tiers ^tat had expected. They had hoped from their 
 " good King Louis," the father of his people, as the peasants of 
 the provinces termed him, and from Necker, the great reform- 
 ing minister, something better than this. They had heard in 
 their country homes that the king loved his people and wished 
 to relieve their burdens, and now they were told that he 
 desired only to increase them ; and, above all, they were filled 
 with consternation that no mention was made of the great 
 question of which their hearts were full— ^whether they were 
 to be but one order, outvoted on every question by the noblesse 
 and the clergy, or whether they were to have their fair weight 
 in regulating the taxes which they had to pay. The king, on 
 the conclusion of Necker's speech, moved away with his court ; 
 the noblesse flaunted out; the clergy slowly retired, though 
 many of the cur^s cast longing looks towards their brothers of 
 the tiers ^tat ; the galleries were emptied, and the black-robed 
 deputies were left alone to find their way out of the hall as 
 best they could. 
 
 The very next day appeared the first number of Mira- 
 beau's new journal, and the day after an edict for its sup- 
 
6o The Tiers Etat determine to wait. Lchap. 
 
 pression. The excitement caused by that suppression among 
 tlie electors of Paris has been noticed, and Mirabeau, who 
 bad been shunned by his fellow-deputies upon May 5, began 
 to be ranked amongst their leaders. On May 7 the tiers 
 ^tat found themselves alone in the great hall of the " lesser 
 pleasures," and the question arose whether they were to con- 
 stitute themselves at once, and thus recognize that they 
 formed but one of three orders, or not. They determined to 
 do nothing which would imply this separation, and to wait 
 passively imtil the deputies of the other two orders should 
 join them. But while the tiers ^tat were prepared to await 
 the course of events, the clergy and the noblesse at once 
 organized themselves, and elected as their presidents the Car- 
 dinal de la Eochefoueauld, Archbishop of Rouen, and the Due 
 de Mailly. In both Estates a motion was brought forward in 
 favour of a union with the tiers dtat, but while the clergy only 
 decided against union by 133 votes to 114, the motion of 
 Lafayette in the chamber of the noblesse to the same effect 
 was rejected by 188 to 47, and the noblesse began verifying 
 individual elections, hearing election petitions, and forming 
 committees. To their vigour was opposed the obstinacy of the 
 tiers ^tat, and for more ■ than a fortnight this deadlock con- 
 tinued. B}'- that time it had been decided by the king that 
 a conference should take place between commissionei's of the 
 three orders, to see if any compromise could be arrived at, and 
 sixteen commissioners of the tiers ^tat were elected, with 
 Rabaut de Saint-Etienne, the Protestant champion, at their 
 bead, including Target, who had taken his seat for Paris 
 extra Tnuros, Le Chapelier, Mounier, Thouret, Volney, Garat, 
 Bergasse, Salomon, and Bavnave. The conference led to no 
 result, and on May 26, Rabaut de Saint-Etienne, Target, 
 and Mounier reported the failure of the attempt to come to 
 an understanding. About this time Mgr. de la Luzerne, 
 Bishop of Langres, proposed, as a solution of the difficulty, 
 that the deputies of the two privileged orders should com- 
 bine and form one chamber, on the analogy of the English 
 House of Lords. This wise and temperate proposal was 
 
II.] Three Cur is join the Tiers Etat. 6i 
 
 simply ignored by the king, who ordered that the conference 
 between the commissioners of the three estates should be 
 renewed in the presence of Necker, Barentin, Montmorin, and 
 the other ministers ; but their influence could effect no com- 
 promise, and, on June 1, Rabaut de Saint-Etienne reported 
 the fresh failure. At last, on June 10, on the motion or 
 Sidyfes, whose title to lead was generally recognized, the tiers 
 ^tat sent a final invitation to the clergy and noblesse to join 
 them, and declared that if they refused, they themselves would 
 at once verify their own powers as the States-General of 
 France, not as a separate order.^ 
 
 Meanwhile public opinion in Paris had been watching 
 the silent struggle with the utmost interest. On June 12, 
 BaUly, the first deputy for Paris, who had acted as dean of 
 the tiers ^tat since June 3, was elected provisional president 
 and the deputies of the difi'erent bailliages were called over 
 in alphabetical order, when no deputies of either the clergy 
 or the noblesse answered the call. However, on June 13, three 
 cures of Poitou, named Lecesve, Ballard, and Jallet, had the 
 courage to break away from the Estate of the clergy, and thus 
 acknowledge that the three orders formed but one assembly, 
 and then popular feeling showed itself in tumultuous applause 
 from the Parisians, who fiUed the galleries of the hall. But if 
 the tiers dtat was not any longer a single Estate, was their 
 assembly a meeting of the States-General of France? This 
 question was raised on June 15, in the arguments of Mounier 
 and Malouet, who were both terrified at the boldness of the 
 proposed measures ; but the ■ deputies, after being excited by 
 the eloquence of Barnave and Mirabeau, declared themselves, 
 by an immense majority, to be the National Assembly of 
 France. They followed up this step by declaring all taxes 
 hitherto exacted illegal, but ordered that they should continue 
 
 1 The opinion of the Duke of Dorset, the English Ambassador at Paria 
 at this time, is worth noting. He writes in a private letter to the Duke 
 of Leeds, the Secretary of State, on June 11, " The ministers seem to 
 have no plan whatever, and are letting themselves be bullied by a few 
 hot-headed lawyers of the Tiers liltat." Leeds Correspondence in British 
 Museum ; Add. MSS. 28064, p. 126. 
 
62 The Oath of the Tennis-Court. [chap. 
 
 to be levied for the present. Their rapid progress was noted 
 with dismay by the court. The queen, indeed, in the depth 
 of her mourning for the Dauphin, who had died on June 4, 
 did not interfere, but the friends of the Comte d'Artois, the 
 king's younger brother, loudly demanded that an example 
 should be made of these insolent provincials. The tiers ^tat 
 were, therefore, ordered to suspend their sitting until a "stance 
 royale," or royal session, which was fixed for June 22, should 
 be held. 
 
 But the tiers dtat would not obey. On June 20, when 
 the deputies found themselves unable to enter their haU, 
 they ran in a crowd to the largest building they could find in 
 Versailles, namely, the tennis-court. There, in the tennis-court, 
 under the presidency of Bailly, the newly elected president of 
 the National Assembly, they swore that they would never 
 separate until a constitution had been drawn up. The oath 
 was all but unanimous, and the one deputy who opposed it, 
 Martin of Auch, was permitted to state his opposition by the 
 universal respect held for liberty of opinion. The oath of the 
 tennis-court had now given to the National Assembly that 
 bond of cohesion which it had hitherto lacked. The deputies 
 were no longer an assembly of provincials, without a knowledge 
 of each other and with no fixed aim, without leaders and 
 without experience ; they had now, by their serious opposition 
 to the commands of the king, formed themselves into a body of 
 rebels — rebels who would not fail to be punished if they did 
 not hold together. 
 
 On June 22, after hearing that the stance royale had 
 been adjourned, the National Assembly met in the Church 
 of St. Louis, because the tennis-court had been engaged for 
 a game at tennis by the Comte dArtois; and here, in the 
 church where the Bishop of Nancy's sermon had been preached, 
 149 of the deputies of the estate of the clergy, headed by the 
 Archbishops of Vienne and Bordeaux, and the Bishops, of 
 Chartres and Ehodez, as well as two liberal deputies of the 
 Estate of the noblesse of Dauphind — the Marquis de Bla9ons 
 and M. d'Agoult — ^joined the tiers dtat, and acknowledged the 
 
ii.j The Sdance Royale. 63 
 
 existence of the National Assembly. Yet the king and his 
 advisers could not perceive the serious consequences of this 
 union, and on June 23, at the stance royale, Louis XVI., 
 after promising, " of his ovsm goodness and generosity," to 
 levy no further taxes without the consent of the representa- 
 tives of the people, nevertheless stated that the financial privi- 
 leges of the noblesse and the clergy were unassailable, and 
 finally directed that the three orders should continue to 
 deliberate apart. When the king and the majority of the 
 noblesse and the minority of the clergy had left the hall, the 
 scene was very different to the scene which had taken place 
 in the same haU on May 5. No longer were the deputies of 
 the tiers ^tat conscious that they were disuftited. They were 
 now the National Assembly of France, and felt their powers 
 redoubled by the applause of the galleries, and they deter- 
 mined never to retreat. There was one moment in which the 
 Assembly might have given way, but Mirabeau and Sidyfes 
 thrust themselves into the breach. Mirabeau imperiously 
 stated to the Marquis de Dreux-Breze, grand-master of the 
 ceremonies, that "the commons of France would never retire 
 except at the point of the bayonet ; " while Sieyfes declared to 
 the Assembly, "Gentlemen, you are to-day what you were 
 yesterday." On Mirabeau's motion the persons of the deputies 
 were declared inviolable, and the National Assembly of France 
 was at open issue with the king and the court. That so much 
 had been done was due, more than to any other man, to Honore 
 Gabriel de Eiqueti, Comte de Mirabeau. He was the one man 
 who showed himself a statesman, who had seen that retreat 
 was impossible, and had thus assured the formation of a new 
 French constitution, and the power of the National Assembly. 
 Honor^ Gabriel Eiqueti ^ was sprung of no ancient Floren- 
 tine race, as he proudly believed, but descended from a wealthy 
 bourgeois family of Digne and Marseilles, which had purchased 
 
 * For the family of Mirabeau, see £es Miraheau, by Louis de Lom^nie, 
 2 vols., Paris, 1878 ; for hia life, see the Mknoires de Mirabeau, published 
 by Lucas de Montigny, his adopted son, in 8 vols., 1834; and the article 
 on him in the 9th edition of Encytlopcedia Britannica. 
 
64 ' Mirabeau. [chap. 
 
 the domain and castle, and with them the title, of Mirabeau from 
 the family of Barras. His family had been famous for three 
 generations for violent passions and great abilities, and the 
 quarrels of Mirabeau with his father, and of his father with 
 his mother, were of world-wide notoriety. It is not necessary 
 to go through the record of his early transgressions, for it was 
 not until they had been expiated by years of imprisonment 
 that he began to show himself the great man he really was. 
 He was bom in 1748, and, after serving for a short time in the 
 army, he succeeded by his excesses in being frequently im- 
 prisoned by " lettres de cachet." It has been customary to 
 blame his father, the Marquis de Mirabeau, for this severity 
 against his son; but if lettres de cachet were at aU justifiable, 
 there certainly could be no man who more thoroughly deserved 
 his punishment by them than Mirabeau himself. The period 
 of his reformation may be dated from 1781, when he left the 
 prison of Vincennes after three years' confinement. There he 
 seems to have at last worn out the grossness of his passions, 
 and there he wrote his first valuable work on the subject of 
 lettres de cachet. In this book first appears that union of 
 hot enthusiasm, eloquence, and vast historical learning with a 
 practical purpose, which is the key-note of his political great- 
 ness. When he left Vincennes he formed a connection with a 
 Dutch lady, Madame de Nehra,^ which sweetened his hfe and 
 raised it from the depths into which he had sunk. He had 
 now some one to work for, and up to the time that the French 
 Revolution commenced he had steadily improved in power 
 and political knowledge. He spent the first months of this 
 period in England, where he was introduced by an old school- 
 fellow. Sir Gilbert Elliot,^ who was then a leading Whig and a 
 member of the House of Commons, to many of the most dis- 
 tinguished English politicians of the time. They were nearly 
 aU Whigs of the type of Sir Gilbert Elliot, and the greatest of 
 
 1 Mirabeau et Madame de Nehra, by Louis de Lom^nie, published in 
 his Esquisses historiques et litUraires, 1879. 
 
 2 lAfe and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, first Earl of Minto, 3 vols., 
 1874 See particularly pp. 87 and 88, vol. L 
 
ii.J Mirabeau. 65 
 
 them were Lord Lansdowne and Samuel Romilly. H was 
 in London that he first studied practical politics. It ■« -*s in 
 England also that he learnt that perfection was impossible 
 in governments, and that the great faults to be avoided alike 
 in constitutions and administrations were narrowness and 
 unyielding rigour, for Lord Lansdowne was tbe first of the new 
 Whigs, who looked upon the English constitution as leaving 
 room for improvement, and recognized that its power of being 
 improved was its finest quality. With Romilly he lived in 
 greater intimacy, and for many months saw him nearly every 
 day ; and Romilly, in a passage in his " Memoirs," declares that 
 the reports o£ his immorality were greatly exaggerated by his 
 enemies, and adds, " I have no doubt that, in his public con- 
 duct as in his writings, he was desirous of doing good, that 
 his ambition was of the noblest kind, and that he proposed 
 to himself the noblest ends." ^ After some months in London, 
 Madame de Nehra made his peace at Paris, and he returned 
 to France, with the hope of obtaining employment from the 
 French Foreign Ofiice, which was then in the hands of an 
 able statesman, M. de Vergennes. Mirabeau was not disap- 
 pointed, and in 1786 was sent on a secret embassy to Berlin, 
 when he showed conclusively his want of capacity as a 
 diplomatist, for he had none of the self-restraint necessary in 
 one who is to examine the thoughts of others and not reveal 
 his own. After his return from Berlin he gave the greatest 
 evidence of his literary power, and at the same time of hia 
 untrustworthy character, by the publication of his great work 
 on the " Prussian Monarchy " and of his " Secret Letters from 
 the Court of Berlin." The first of these books was chiefly com- 
 posed by a Prussian, Major Mauvillon, who had accumulated 
 a quantity of valuable statistics, which Mirabeau treated ia 
 such a manner as to throw interest into the driest details by 
 his literary power. But whatever literary fame he might 
 have acquired by this great work, he lost in reputation by the 
 publication of his private letters from Berlin, which was a 
 
 1 Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, written ly Uviself, vol. i. 
 pp. 78-85. London : 1840. 
 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
66 Mirabeau. [chap. 
 
 distinct breach of faith with the government. Some notice, 
 too, must be taken of his numerous financial writings. After 
 his return from England he got mixed up with a certain shrewd 
 speculator, named Panchaud, who represented to Mirabeau 
 that stock -jobbing was the source of the financial embarrass- 
 ment of France and the ruin of many families. A Genevese 
 exUe, named Clavi^re, supplied him with facts, and Mirabeau 
 boldly attacked, not only the whole practice of stock-jobbing, 
 but particular companies, such as the Banque de St. Charles, 
 and individual stock-jobbers. There is, of course, no real value 
 in these pamphlets, but they exhibit Mirabeau's courage in 
 attacking institutions and individuals, however rich or power- 
 ful, when he believed such attacks to be justified. He was 
 brought into a controversy with Beaumarchais, which degene- 
 rated into violent personalities, in which Beaumarchais did not 
 get the best of it.^ Mirabeau's libellous language made it 
 necessary for him to fly beyond the frontier, but nevertheless 
 he presented himself as a candidate for the post of secretary 
 to the Assembly of Notaljles in 1787, and in 1789 he hoped to 
 become a deputy to the States-General for the noblesse of his 
 native place, Aix. But the noblesse refused to admit into 
 their assembly a libeller of bad character, at issue with his 
 father, separated from his wife and hated by his brother, and, on 
 the plea that he was not the owner of a fief or a proxy, refused 
 to listen to him. Outraged by this rejection, he had secured 
 his election both at Aix and Marseilles, as much from the 
 enthusiasm felt for his person by the populace of these cities 
 as from the infiuence of his eloquence over the educated 
 bourgeois. It was with high hopes that he had been present 
 on May 5. Any man of less confidence in himself than 
 Mirabeau would have been daunted by the murmur of reproba- 
 tion^ which met him when he appeared among his feUow- 
 deputies, and by the manner in which he was shunned ; but he 
 felt within himself a power of eloquence which made him 
 
 1 Beaumarchais et son temps, by L. de Lom^nie, vol. ii. pp. 371-381. 
 Paris : 1856. 
 
 2 Etienne Dumont's Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 34 
 
n.J Union of the Three Estates. 6^ 
 
 confident that the men who hooted him now and cheered 
 Mounier would eventually follow him and reject the guidance of 
 theorists. And so it was ; hardly had he uttered a single speech 
 when ho was felt to be a leader of men, and his position as 
 the greatest of the deputies in the Assembly, in eloquence, in 
 courage, and in political knowledge, was finally established by 
 his memorable answer to the Marquis de Dreux-Br^z^ on 
 June 23. 
 
 The courage of the Assembly won the victory. The king, 
 with no real statesman to advise him, gave way. On June 25 
 forty-seven members of the liberal noblesse, headed by the 
 Duke of Orleans, joined the Assembly, and, by the king's com- 
 mand, the rest followed two days later. The majority of the 
 noblesse very unwillingly obeyed this command, and pretended, 
 even in the hall of the common assembly, to sit as a separate 
 order, with the Due de Luxembourg, their president, at their 
 head. Still more consistent was the conduct of the Baron de 
 Lup4 deputy for the noblesse of Auch, who continued to sit by 
 himself in the former chamber of the noblesse, and, when that 
 was closed against him, to walk up and down the corridor 
 outside it for a certain number of hours a day.' The majority of 
 the clergy, the minority of the noblesse, and the tiers dtat began 
 at once to make preparations for drawing up a new constitution 
 for the kingdom, and a committee was appointed, of which 
 Mounier was the chief spirit, to arrange an order of procedure 
 for the discussion of the proposed new constitution ; and, at the 
 same time, the members of the Assembly began to get better 
 known to each other, and to combine into clubs, and to form 
 sections, which afterwards became important parties. 
 
 The club of the greatest importance was that known as 
 the Breton Club. After the election of the Breton deputies, a 
 committee of correspondence had been elected in all the cities 
 of Brittany, in order to correspond with their chosen deputies 
 at Versailles. These deputies, for the purpose of more easily 
 drawing up their correspondence and reporting political events 
 
 1 Somenirs d'un- page de la cour de Louis XVI., by the Comta 
 d'H^^ecques, p. 296. Paxis : 1873. 
 
68 Mounter Loses his Influence. [chap. 
 
 to their constituents, formed a small society. From the dis- 
 tinguished character of Lanjuinais, Defermon, and Le Chapelier, 
 the society was soon joined by others who had similar duties 
 to perform, and on June 9, Boull^, deputy for Ploermel, wrote 
 to Pontivy, " Our salon has been every evening for some days 
 the rendezvous of all good citizens." ^ From the Breton Club 
 finally arose the Jacobin Club, and from the correspondence 
 and from the keenness of the provinces to receive this corre- 
 spondence, arose the affiliated Jacobin clubs. 
 
 As early as June 23 Mounier had lost that great ia- 
 fluence which he naturally expected, and which all France 
 believed would belong to him. Great as he had been in Dau- 
 phin4 and invaluable as had been his services during the 
 electoral period, he failed from a want of courage when face 
 to face with a national crisis ; and the leadership of the 
 Assembly had left him, and had fallen to Mirabeau. He per- 
 ceived this quickly enough, and refused at once to follow any 
 man's lead, and above all Mirabeau's. However, his vanity 
 made him conceive that the power which Mirabeau by his 
 eloquence had won from him would be regained by his political 
 knowledge in drawing up a constitution ; but he looked on the 
 idea of a new constitution as a pedant might, full of elaborate 
 theories and ideas of logical sequence, and hoped to make 
 his name as famous as those of the first leaders in the United 
 States of America. Around him were grouped a few theorists, 
 overawed by his great reputation ; but he was unable, from 
 want of persuasiveness, to form a party. Malouet, the other 
 chief leader of the tiers ^tat during the electoral period, also 
 failed at 1ihis crisis. He could not get rid of his natural 
 feeling of respect for the government in whose service he had 
 been for so many years, and was shocked at the daring proposi- 
 tion of the deputies of the tiers dtat to form themselves into 
 a National Assembly. Many felt as he did, especially the 
 numerous lieutenants-civil and lieutenants-general, who had 
 been elected, and who believed the admiaistrative edifice to 
 
 ' Philippe Muller, Glula et eluUstes du Morbihan, in the Bevue de la 
 Revolution, March, 1885, p. 234. 
 
II.J Camus. 69 
 
 be too strong to be divided and too valuable to be over- 
 thrown. Yet, though the germ of a party of reaction among 
 the deputies of the tiers ^tat itself was to be seen in Malouet 
 and his immediate friends, the party was at present of no real 
 importance. Mounier and Malouet having dropped from the 
 position of leaders, their places were taken by Mirabeau and 
 certain other more courageous deputies, among whom the chief 
 supporters of Mirabeau were, besides Si^yfes, Camus, Rabaut 
 de Saint-Etienne, and the Abb^ Gr^goire. 
 
 Armand Gaston Camus,^ the recognized leader of the 
 Jansenists in France, was born in Paris in 1740. He became 
 an avoeat in Paris, but first established his reputation as the 
 translator of Aristotle's " Natural History," which had secured 
 his election to the Academy of Inscriptions. He was then 
 appointed avocat-general for the clergy, who, as has been 
 mentioned, were much influenced by Jansenist opinions, 
 especially since the suppression of the Jesuits. The influence 
 of the Jansenist ^ party has often been overlooked, but a study 
 of the social condition of the wealthy bourgeois classes shows 
 that its only rival influences were the mystic ideas of the 
 Martinists,* and the still more incredible doctrines of Mesmer,* 
 St. Germain, and Cagliostro. The Parlement of Paris and 
 most of the provincial parlements had been infected with 
 Jansenism as early as the reign of Louis XV., and in the struggle 
 with the Jesuits the lawyers of the Parlements began to hold 
 Jansenist tenets, rather from political than from religious 
 causes. The sound morality and sober garb of the Jansenists, 
 
 1 Woge de M. A. G. Oamus, by the Oomte Toulongeon, printed in the 
 edition of his Lettres mr la profession d'avocat, published in Paris, 
 
 1818. , . ^ , 
 
 2 The most interesting account of Jansenism and its development is 
 contained in Sainte-Beuve's Port Royal, published in 5 vols. Paris : 
 
 1840-61. , ., -u T 
 
 3 Sairvt-Martin, le philosophe inconnu, sa vie et ses ecnts, by Jacques 
 
 Matter. Paris: 1862. . 
 
 * For the trifling political influence possessed by these enthusiasts, 
 see Mourner's Ussai sur Vinfluence attribuie aux philosophes, aux franc- 
 macons et aux illumiiih aw la Involution frangaise. Paris : 1882. 
 
•JO RabaM de Saint-Etienne. [chap 
 
 which made them appear the Puritans of the Roman Catholia 
 Church, suited well the quiet character of the richer members 
 of the bourgeoisie, and that there were such quiet bourgeois 
 cannot be denied, though memoirs and letters are chiefly fiUed 
 with the lives of their gayer brethren. But this Jansenist 
 party, though not obtrusive, though not striving to make 
 converts, or, for the matter of that, holding extremely strong 
 religious convictions themselves, were yet a very great power 
 in the greater cities of France. Camus was a typical Jansenist. 
 Strictly moral, not so much by conviction as by temperament, 
 quiet and self-controlled, and extremely laborious, not gifted 
 with eloquence or quickness of apprehension, but making his 
 influence felt by quiet industry rather than by brilliant 
 achievements, he was exactly the man to have great influence 
 among the richer bourgeoisie of Paris. He was, therefore, elected 
 second president of the assembly of the electors of the tiers 
 dtat of Paris, and had been chosen a deputy for the capital on 
 the next day to Bailly. Just as Bailly had been elected first 
 president of the National Assembly on its constituting itself, 
 so Camus had been chosen its first secretary. In that capacity 
 he had acted at the tennis-court, and had immediately after- 
 wards been appointed archivist to the Assembly — an office 
 which he held until his death, in 1804. His services were 
 at this time invaluable to Mirabeau, whom he generally 
 supported, for his honourable character gave him a personal 
 influence with many more moral members, which Mirabeau 
 could not expect otherwise to obtain. 
 
 Jean Paul Rabaut de Saint-Etienne ^ was the recognized 
 champion of the French Protestants. He was born at Nimes, 
 the chief centre of French Protestantism, in 1742, and his 
 father was a very famous wandering and persecuted Huguenot 
 preacher. He himself had been educated in Switzerland, and 
 had become a Protestant pastor, and, after showing literary 
 ability in numerous published sermons and poems, became 
 
 ^ Notice 8ur la vie de Rabaut de Saint-Etienne, by his colleague in the 
 Constituent Assembly, Boissy d'Anglas, in the edition of Le vieux Ceverwl, 
 printed at Paris in 1846. 
 
II.] Rabaut de Saint- Etienne. 71 
 
 intimate with Boissy d'Anglas, and made the acquaintance 
 of Lafayette. He had won still greater popularity by the pub- 
 lication of " Le Vieux Cevenol," in 1780. This novel described, 
 in the wandering life of a Protestant pastor, the persecutions 
 which had been for many years and were still undergone by 
 the Protestants in France. The excitement it caused enabled 
 him to demand from the king civU rights for his persecuted 
 religion, and in 1787, chiefly through the influence of Lafayette, 
 the king had granted the ordinary rights of citizenship to the 
 Protestants. Rabaut was thus the hero of the French Protes- 
 tants, and had also become well known, when at Paris, to Bailly 
 and many others of those with whom he waa now to co-operate. 
 Li 1789 he was naturally elected at the head of the poll by 
 the tiers dtat of Nimes, and had published, just before his 
 election, a pamphlet on the rights and duties of the tiers ^tat. 
 He was, next to Mounier and Camus, the most important 
 deputy of the tiers ^tat at the conference with the represen- 
 tatives of the other Estates, and was the most inflexible of them 
 aU in insisting on the supreme power of his own order. He 
 was at this time more radical in his ideas than any other 
 deputy, and upheld a wide programme of reform, including 
 liberty of the press and liberty of conscience, which he hoped 
 to succeed in carrying. To Mirabeau he was, like Camus, of 
 the greatest assistance, for, though from his religion he had 
 not the personal influence of Camus, he had a much greater 
 power of oratory, and nearly as much industry. Throughout 
 the session of the National Assembly he played a very impor- 
 tant part, but was towards the end eclipsed by younger orators 
 and more radical thinkers. He was not only a frequent speaker, 
 but a hardworking journalist, and was to the last day of his 
 life a contributor to the Moniteur and other journals. His 
 courageous behaviour in the Convention and his sad death 
 present him in a very different light ; but at this time he was 
 not only a man of great distinction, but a leader of great 
 importance. 
 
 Henri Gregoire^ was at this time recognized as the 
 
 1 NvUc6 m/r la vie de Gr^oire, by Hippolyte Carnot, in his edition of 
 
72 The Abbi Grdgoire. [chap. 
 
 typical representative of the cur(53, as Camus was of the 
 Jansenists, and Rabaut de Saint-Etienne of the Protestants. 
 He was born near Lun^ville, in Lorraine, in 1750. He had 
 been educated by the Jesuits at Nancy, and distinguished 
 himself, when hardly of age, by his wonderful eloquence. The 
 cures of Lorraine were, he states in his " Memoirs," of a much 
 higher type than other provincial cur& ; but whether that was 
 so or not, it is certain that they produced a very large number 
 of distinguished men during the Eevolution. Nancy, which 
 had been for many years the capital of the independent duchy 
 of Lorraine, where Stanislas Leczinski held a little court, 
 abounded in literary society, and Gregoire, whose eloquence 
 was at this time extremely florid, became one of the shining 
 lights of the local Academy. His early sermons resemble those 
 of the English preachers of the reign of Charles II. ; the prin- 
 ciples insisted on are but few, but morality is dwelt upon in 
 every variety of flowery speech. That Gregoire was a man of 
 few religious principles does not imply that they were not very 
 deep ; he was a sincere Christian, but not a bigoted ultramon- 
 tane Roman Catholic. His travels from his little country 
 parish of Embermesnil, in 1784, 1786, and 1787, had given 
 him a wider knowledge of the world than most cur^s possessed, 
 and his literary reputation from his essays, which had won 
 prizes from the Academies of Nancy and Metz, had made him 
 quite a leader among them. The part he played in drawing 
 up the civil constitution of the clergy is the most important 
 passage in his life ; but he was now the influential leader of 
 the country curds, who had to show their sympathy with the 
 people in the National Assembly as they had done in the 
 separate chamber of the clergy. Though not the first to join 
 the Assembly, this was due, not to lukewarmness of opinion, 
 but a successful attempt to bring others with him. As a 
 leader of the curds, he might have won a great position and 
 great wealth from the bishops, who did all they could to bribe 
 
 Gr^goire's Mimoires, published in 2 vols., Paris, 1857. See also OrSgoire, 
 ein Lebenshild aus der franzosischen Revolution, by Paul Bohringer, Basel, 
 1878 ; a sliort but interesting study. 
 
n.] Dismissal of Necker. 73 
 
 the Estate of the clergy to follow them ; but Gr^goire was 
 more of a patriot than a Churchman, and in these early days 
 it is as a patriot alone that his influence has to be considered. 
 These were the men who helped Mirabeau in his uphill 
 task of guiding the inexperienced and excitable Assembly, and 
 these were his chief coadjutors in helping him to face a yet 
 greater crisis than any which had yet arisen ; for the court 
 had at last worked upon the king to act more violently than 
 he had formerly done, and while Mounier was preparing the 
 basis of a constitution, and the rest of the Assembly receiving 
 petitions and answering congratulations, troops, and generally 
 foreign troops in French pay, were being concentrated from all 
 parts of France upon Versailles, and no one could fail to per- 
 ceive that it was by the help of these troops that the king 
 intended to crush the newly bom liberties of France. The 
 excitement at the approach of these troops was as great in 
 Paris as at Versailles. The Parisians feared a repetition of 
 former sieges ; the Assembly feared the immediate arrest of 
 all its leaders ; and at this very moment, when apprehension 
 was in every heart, the news suddenly arrived, on July 12, 
 that Necker had been dismissed from the ministry, and was 
 already on his way towards the frontier. An old courtier, the 
 Baron de Breteuil, had been appointed Minister of the House- 
 hold, and the Mar^chal de Broglie Minister of War and marshal- 
 general commanding the troops round Paris. Breteuil had 
 been Minister of the Household under Calonne, and was the 
 very last man from whom the French people could expect any 
 assistance. At this time it was again Mirabeau who led the 
 Assembly, who called upon it to send a deputation to the 
 king, demanding the withdrawal of these foreign troops, who 
 did not fear to utter words which might cost him his life, and 
 who had no idea of retiring from the great position he had 
 won. Even at this time he might have sold his services to 
 the court, who would have paid him a great price, which he 
 sorely needed. But he proved himself to be a great and 
 courageous statesman as well as an eloquent speaker, and kept 
 the Assembly true to itself and to France. Yet no amount of 
 
74 The Greatness of Mwabeau. [chap. ii. 
 
 personal courage could have protected the Assembly against 
 the foreign troops of De Broglie, had not the Parisians struck 
 a blow which secured for ever, not only the independence of 
 the Assembly, but the political liberty of France, on the 
 great day of July 14. But if the greatest fame is due to 
 the citizens of Paris, the front of unyielding firmness shown 
 by the Assembly and its great leader must not be left unrecog- 
 nized as an important factor at this crisis of the history of 
 France and of the French Revolution. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE COUBT AITD THE MIKTISTEY. 
 
 The king — Necker — Montmorin — ^Why were they unsuccessful? — The 
 Comte de Provence — The Duke of Orleans — The friends of Orleans 
 and his party — The queen — The Comte d'Artois and his policy — 
 The Mar^chal de Broglie — Concentration of troops — Mirabeau's 
 speech — The new ministry — The first emigration. 
 
 Of all the enthusiastic hopes which had greeted the summons 
 of the States-General, none were more sincere and more con- 
 fident than those of the king. He had ever wished to deal 
 justly and fairly with his people. He felt the burden of 
 financial distress as keenly as the meanest of his subjects, 
 and he possessed all those qualities of economy, courtesy, and 
 kindness which would have made him an admirable king 
 under a settled and representative government ; and this good 
 disposition manifested itself in spite of the most adverse 
 circumstances in his education. Louis XVI. was born in the 
 year 1757, and had been brought up without anj"^ preparation 
 for the high office which he was one day to hold. He could 
 not boast of a F^n^on, or even of a Fleury, as his political 
 tutor, and his constitutional ideas arose from his own sensible 
 nature. In his grandfather's lifetime and reign he had been 
 regarded as a simple nonentity imtil his marriage, in 1770, 
 with the Archduchess Marie Antoinette. He did not at once 
 succumb to her influence, as has been commonly believed, but, 
 on the contrary, her gaiety and liveliness were in the early 
 
76 The Influence of the Queen with the King. [chap. 
 
 years of his marriage most distasteful to him.^ Previous to 
 his grandfather's death he had been content to live entirely 
 aloof from political parties, and had amused himself with hunt- 
 ing and lock-making, and on his accession he had no personal 
 friends, or favourites whom he wished to benefit. His opposi- 
 tion to the wishes of his queen was shown by his refusal to 
 recall the Due de Choiseul, the friend of the Austrian alliance, 
 who had negotiated the marriage of Marie Antoinette, to the 
 ministry, though he so far yielded to her wishes as to dismiss 
 the ministry which Madame Dubarry had set up. The queen's 
 influence was always of this nature with him. She was able 
 by fear, and later by persuasion, to make Louis act contrary to 
 his own wishes, but not to make him adopt her views. He 
 was, directly after his accession to the throne, chiefly influenced 
 by his aunts,^ who persuaded him to make the Comte de 
 Maurepas his first Prime Minister, and Maurepas called Turgot 
 to his counsels. M. Turgot was overthrown by the queen for 
 his attempt to reduce the expenditure of the court, but left 
 office with the sympathies, not only of the whole people, but 
 of the king himself. Necker's first administration inspired the 
 king with a strong belief in his financial abilities, but Necker 
 too had to give way before the opposition of the queen and 
 the court. The subsequent ministers, especially Calonne and 
 Brienne, were by no means favourites with him, but he sub- 
 mitted to them, and did obediently whatever they required 
 of him. It was only after the birth, of his first son that 
 he became personally attached to the queen, who, however, 
 laughed at her good-natured and uxorious husband, whose 
 slowness of intellect and awkward gait excited her ridicule. 
 Though slow to study and understand the signs of the times, 
 
 1 Marie, Antoinette : Correspondance secrete entre Marie TMrese et le 
 Oomte de Mercy Argenteau, avec les lettres de Marie TUrese et de Marie 
 Antoinette, puUie'e avec une introduction et des notes, by the Ritter von 
 Arneth and M. A. Geffroy (Paris, 1874, 3 vols.), the great storehouse of 
 facts for the early married life of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. 
 
 =" Mesdames de France, Miles de Louis XVI., by :^douard de Barthi^- 
 lemy, chap. xL Paris : 1870. 
 
III.] Tlie Character of Louis XVI, 77 
 
 Louis had read the story of Charles I. of England, and deter- 
 mined that, whatever might happen, he would never run counter 
 to the wishes of his people, and never engage in a civil war. 
 Beyond this he was easily satisfied with the gi-atification of 
 his enormous appetite and with his favourite amusement of 
 hunting, and would not share in the gay, frivolous pleasures 
 of the queen. So devoted was he to the chase, that when 
 the council of ministers were discussing before him what 
 city should be selected for the meeting-place of the States- 
 General, he at once decided, " It must meet at Versailles, be- 
 cause of the hunting," ^ a decision which influenced the whole 
 course of the Kevolution. When the States- General met, he 
 was ready to agree with the representatives of the people in 
 establishing a new form of government; but here again the 
 wishes of the queen prevented him from carrying out the 
 whole of his programme, Good-natured and amenable to 
 advice, he preferred a quiet life even to doing what he knew 
 to be right, and the chief blame which can be attached to him, 
 throughout the course of the later years of his life, was that 
 of seeking his own personal ease and comfort before the pros- 
 perity of his country. Yet he was a true Frenchman at 
 heart, and an adherent to the hereditary Bourbon policy of 
 enmity with Austria, and he had ever opposed the queen's 
 desire of a close political alliance with her brother, the Emperor 
 Joseph, especially with regard to the scheme of exchanging 
 the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria.^ In the recall of Necker, 
 in August, 1788, the king had exercised his own will, and 
 when the States-General met he was thoroughly satisfied with 
 Necker's ministry. 
 
 Jacques Necker^ was born at Geneva, in 1732, and had 
 made a colossal fortune as managing partner in Paris of the 
 
 1 Bardoux, Comtesse de Becmmont, p. 107. 
 
 2 Le Dipartement des Affaires etrangeres pendant la Revolution, by F 
 Masson, chap. ii. Paris, 1877 ; L'Europe et la Bevolution frangaise, by 
 Albert Sorel, p. 300. Paris, 1885. 
 
 3 La we privie de M. Necker, by Madame de Stael, 1804 ; article in 
 the 9th edition Encydopoedia Britannka. 
 
78 Necker. [chap. 
 
 great bank of Thelusson and Necker, of London and Paris. 
 He had no thought of mixing in. politics until his marriage, in 
 1764, with Suzanne Curchod, the daughter of a Swiss pastor at 
 Lausanne, who had been engaged for some years to a pupil 
 of her father's, Edmund Gibbon, the historian.^ She was an 
 accomplished and ambitious woman, and, after making Necker 
 give over his share in the bank to his brother Louis, induced 
 him to take an active part in the management of the French 
 East India Company, and also to oppose Turgot's free-trade 
 schemes in his " Essai sur la legislation et le commerce des 
 grains " and his " Dialogue sur les bids." His success in 
 improving the financial position of the company led men to 
 believe that Necker could deal as successfully with the finances 
 of the country. But he was too apt, by his early training, to 
 treat the revenues of the country like the affairs of a company 
 or bank. He could not comprehend that larger interests than 
 the mere consolidation of a deficit into a national debt were 
 involved in the prosperity of a great country. That he had 
 a great idea of a representative government and the advantages 
 of the system being applied to France is shown in the 
 measures which he took for the convocation of the States- 
 General. But he was no statesman. He failed to perceive 
 that some responsibility must be incurred by a responsible 
 minister, and he was too apt to leave things to work them- 
 selves out. Had he originally decided in favour of vote " par 
 tete " when he prepared to summon the States-General, the 
 wrangling, which embittered the months of May and June, and 
 the subsequent combination of the whole of the tiers 6tat into 
 a league which found it necessary to force the king into 
 measures of which he really approved, might have been 
 avoided. Necker had not acted in compliance with his own 
 convictions, and preferred that other people should bear the 
 responsibility of failure, and to this want of courage must be 
 attributed the downfall of his second ministry and the loss of 
 his popularity. He had, like Choiseul, a great idea of con- 
 sulting public opinion, of entei-taining and making friends of 
 1 Gibbon's Autohiography. 
 
III.] Neckers Colleagues, 79 
 
 the chief literary; men of his time, and in this he was aided by 
 the abilities of his wife, and of his yet more famous daughter, 
 Madame de Stael. When the States-General was summoned, 
 Necker must have known that it would wish to proceed to 
 great and radical reforms ; yet he preferred to lay before it 
 only the financial difficulties of the country, and did not see 
 that, by so doing, none of the popularity of initiating reforms 
 would revert to the king. His moral ideas were sound, but 
 narrow ; and, as will be seen later, he refused to co-operate 
 with Mirabeau on account of the latter's bad character, which 
 lost him a fair opportunity for establishing a truly repre- 
 sentative government. His colleagues — De Paule de Barentin, 
 who had succeeded Lamoignon de Basseville as Keeper of the 
 Seals and practical Minister of Justice, owing to the exile of 
 Maupeou, the old Chancellor ; Laurent de Villedeuil, Minister 
 of the Household, who was really Minister of the Interior; 
 the Comte de Puys^gur, War Minister ; and the Comte de la 
 Luzerne, brother of the Bishop of Langres, Minister of the 
 Marine, — with the exception only of the Comte de Mont- 
 morin. Minister for Foreign Afiairs, were all nonentities. In 
 the council of ministers, Barentin, Villedeuil, and Puysdgur 
 formed the conservative section, and had opposed the double 
 representation of the tiers dtat, while Necker had been sup- 
 ported by La Luzerne, Montmorin, and the Comte de Saint- 
 Priest, who had been admitted into the council of ministers 
 without portfolio in December, 1788. 
 
 Armand Marc, Comte de Montmorin-Saint-Hdrem ^ had far 
 more influence over the mind of the king than Necker himself, 
 not only because he was a French nobleman, but because he 
 had been gentleman-in-waiting to Louis when Dauphin. Mont- 
 morin had been educated for the career of diplomacy, and had 
 spent some years as French Ambassador at Madrid, when he 
 was suddenly summoned to the government of Brittany, and 
 
 1 Pauline de Montmorin, Comtesse de Becmmoni : Mtudes sur la fin du 
 XVIIIiime siecle, by A. Bardoux, Paris, 1884, which contains a defence 
 of Montmorin's policy ; and Masson's D^partement des Affaires etrangeres, 
 etc., chap. iL 
 
8o The Comte de Montmorin. [chap. 
 
 in 1787 to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the death of the 
 Comte de Vergennea. Vergennes was a foreign minister of 
 peculiar and exceptional ability. He had caused France to 
 play a great part in continental politics, in spite of her financial 
 distress and the bad condition of her army, and had success- 
 fully concealed her weakness from all Europe. Never had 
 France appeared greater than at the close of the American 
 War of Independence, and proportionately difficult was Mont- 
 morin's task in succeeding Vergennes. He had none of 
 Vergennes' ability, but had inherited his skill in concealing 
 the real condition of France ; and, though the part played by 
 France in the Dutch troubles of 1788 could not be called 
 glorious, war had been avoided, and the French party in 
 Holland only overthrown by English diplomacy and a Prussian 
 army. He was a devoted admirer of Necker's policy in home 
 affairs, and echoed his words and thoughts, and it was through 
 his Minister for Foreign Affairs that Necker himself main- 
 tained his influence over the king. 
 
 Louis XVI. and Necker were in every way ready to accept 
 a new constitution, and, had either of them been men of 
 sufficient strength of will to take the initiative in proposing 
 a representative assembly and certain necessary reforms, the 
 Revolution might have been a bloodless one. But there were 
 reasons why they could not do as they wished ; for two great 
 parties, headed by the Duke of Orleans and by Marie Antoinette, 
 were both opposed to anything like peaceful concessions, and 
 some notice must also be taken of the position of the Comte 
 de Provence, who, though he showed no very great interest 
 in political affairs and formed no party, yet hoped eventually 
 to sit upon the throne of France. 
 
 Louis Stanislas Xavier, Comte de Provence,'^ and next 
 brother to the king, commonly known as Monsieur, had for 
 many years been heir presumptive to the throne, and his dis- 
 appointment at the birth of two sons to the king was manifest 
 
 ' Vie de Louis XVIII., by Alphonse de Beauchamp, 1832; and 
 Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette et le Comte de Provence era face de la Bivolvr 
 tion, by L. P. Todiere. Paris : 1863. 
 
iii.^ The Comte de Provence. 8i 
 
 to all the court. He had been from the very first the de- 
 clared enemy of the queen, and, with his friends, had spared 
 no pains to destroy her reputation as a woman, and to diminish 
 her influence with the king. He believed that it was yet 
 possible for himself to come to the throne, and hoped that, 
 even if the king died leaving issue, he might be able to form 
 a junction with the new constitutional party and obtain his 
 nomination as regent, if not as king. His character was quiet 
 and inoffensive, cautious but malicious, and he possessed great 
 influence with his brother, Louis XVI., because their tem- 
 peraments were very similar. He, too, feared civil war as the 
 greatest disaster which could befall France, and was not dis- 
 inclined to let things go on without interference from himself. 
 His sole object of hatred was the queen, who laughed at his 
 quiet, pedantic ways and his ugly wife. His one consolation 
 was Horace, whose maxims on the uncertainty of human 
 affairs and the capriciousness of fortune he was to find well 
 justified in the varied events of his own life. That he really 
 had statesmanlike ideas was shown afterwards in his being the 
 medium through which the plans of Mirabeau for saving the 
 court from the results of its folly, and securing the permanency 
 of monarchy in France, were first communicated to the king. 
 The very words he used to Mirabeau after submitting his plan 
 showed the small opinion he had of the king's stability. He 
 said, and truly, that to persuade the king to be steadfast in 
 any course of action was like "trying to hold a number of 
 oiled billiard balls steadily together." He cannot be reckoned 
 a dangerous enemy of the king and Necker, but he was per- 
 fectly ready to take advantage of any mistake which the queen 
 might make to put himself forward as a candidate for the 
 throne or for the regency. 
 
 The most dangerous declared opponent of the king and his 
 ministry was the Duke of Orleans, whose party was deter- 
 mined to prevent a peaceful termination to the existing 
 excitement. The duke had in early life been a debauchee, and 
 he stiU remained an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales. 
 He had brought back from London the worst traits of English 
 VOL, I. G 
 
82 Tlie Duke of Orleans. [_chap. 
 
 society. He it was who set the fashion of Anglomania to the 
 young noblesse of France : he introduced English jockeys, Eng- 
 lish gambling, English horse-racing, and English drunkenness ; 
 and wished that he could enjoy a similar position in France to 
 that of the Prince of Wales in England. He knew how often the 
 English Parliament had paid the debts of the Prince of Wales, 
 and would haye liked to be a constitutional monarch to enjoy 
 a similar advantage. His party pursued a regular plan, by 
 which they hoped he might become King of France. This plan 
 was to force the king into such opposition to the National 
 Assembly that he should be deposed, and by lavish expenditure 
 to secure the election of Orleans as a constitutional king. This 
 scheme was highly approved by his sycophants, of whom the 
 leaders were the Marquis de Saint-Huruge and Choderlos de 
 Laclos, but were hardly formulated even in his own mind. 
 " The Duke was a man of pleasure," writes Mrs. Elliott, " who 
 never could bear trouble or business of any kind, who never 
 read or did anything but amuse himself I am certain that 
 he never at that time had an idea of mounting the throne, 
 whatever the views of his factious friends might have been. 
 If they could have placed him on the throne of France, I 
 suppose they hoped to govern him and the country." * By their 
 advice he had offered himself as candidate in no less than five 
 bailliages, but had only succeeded in securing his election at 
 Crepy-le-Valois, Villers-Cotterets, and Paris. It was his wealth 
 at this period which proved of the greatest use to the popular 
 leaders, for it was by his means that the works of Si^yfes were 
 circulated throughout France, and he showed himself ready 
 to assist in the circulation of even much more revolutionary 
 cahiers. It would have been of no advantage for these schemes 
 foi him to be regarded as a public leader in the States-General, 
 as long as the king maintained his personal popularity, and to 
 destroy that yet more treacherous means were used. There 
 is little doubt that it was in accordance with the wishes, 
 if not with the direct orders, of the party of Orleans that 
 
 1 Journal of My Life duriiig the French Revolution, by Grace Daliymple 
 Elliott., pp. 27, 28, London : 1859. 
 
III.] The Agents of the Dtike of Orleans. 83 
 
 many of the riots in Paris broke out. Whether they hired 
 bands of brigands to raise disturbances in the provinces or to 
 attack the manufactory of R^veillon is indeed most improb- 
 able ; but they certainly did not disapprove of these outbreaks 
 of popular feeling. At a later period it was suspicious, to 
 say the least of it, that Saint-Huruge was always at the head 
 of every Parisian riot. But if the duke trusted to Saint-Huruge 
 to make the king's position more diiEcult by riots in Paris, 
 it was the counsellor of the Parlement of Paris, Adrien Duport, 
 who was his most trusted adviser, and who led his party in 
 the National Assembly. 
 
 Adrien Duport was a leader of the Parlement of Paris in 
 the struggle with Brienne, and had been early attached to 
 the service of Orleans. He it was who suggested to the duke 
 the idea of becoming a constitutional king. He himself 
 expected to be Prime Minister under the new regime, and if 
 he was ignorant of the behaviour of Saint-Huruge, there can 
 be no doubt that he approved of its results. He had first 
 formed a small party in the Assembly, of whom the most 
 distinguished members were Barnave and the two Lameths, 
 who believed him when he told them that the Duke of Orleans 
 was ready and willing to be a constitutional king. Even 
 Mirabeau was communicated with by this profound intriguer ; 
 but Mirabeau, though for a moment tempted by the idea, was 
 too true a statesman to wish to involve France in a civil war, 
 consequent on a disputed title to the throne. Saint-Huruge 
 was a partisan of a very different type.^ He was an admirable 
 leader of a street mob. With an enormous frame and a bawl- 
 ing voice, which gave him -the nickname of ''Bull" Huruge, 
 he was able to direct popular excitement in whatever direction 
 he wished. In every important riot throughout the first 
 years of the Revolution, Saint-Huruge was at the head of the 
 rioters. Noisy and debauched, he could not be called a poli- 
 tician, but made a most useful servant, and if much odium 
 fell on the party of Orleans through his conduct, he was never- 
 
 ^ Anatole de Gallier, Les Smeutitrs de 1789, in the JRevue des Questions 
 Hiatm-igues, July, 1883, pp. 131-134 
 
84 The Dttke of Orleans and the Palais-Royal, [chap. 
 
 theless invaluable to it. Choderlos de Laclos was of yet 
 another stamp.^ As the author of " Les Liaisons dangereuses," 
 one of the most licentious novels which has ever been written, 
 he was of course welcome at the Palais-Royal, and had a great 
 reputation among the dandy debauchees, who assembled there. 
 After the meeting of the States-General he filled the same 
 position at Paris as Duport did in the Assembly, and his 
 greatest services to the party of Orleans were performed in the 
 Breton and afterwards in the Jacobin Club. He was a fluent 
 speaker and a ready writer, but his licentious character kept 
 his power from being real, and though his aid was not to be 
 despised, yet, had Orleans had as able a leader as Duport to 
 conduct his cause in Paris, a much more formidable party 
 might have been formed among the bourgeoisie of the capital. 
 All these satellites of Orleans were men who were not likely 
 to arouse any real enthusiasm, but their influence in discrediting 
 the honest endeavours of the king and Necker to bring about 
 reforms must not be underrated in considering that unpopu- 
 larity of the king which ensured his downfall. It may be 
 thought strange that any weight could be attached to such a 
 man as the Duke of Orleans, but it was rather his wealth than 
 his character which made him of political importance, and 
 that great wealth being lavishly dispensed helped to increase 
 Necker's difliculties at the most critical period. The contem- 
 porary writers and contemporary journalists attributed too 
 much, no doubt, to the intrigues of Orleans, to whom every 
 riot, every public demonstration, and every boisterous petition 
 was always assigned. The man was so vain that a little 
 flatter}' on the part of the queen, who would not conceal her 
 contempt for him, or a little evidence of favour from the king, 
 might easily have turned his hostility into real friendship, 
 which, though it might not have contributed any moral sup- 
 port to the Crown, would yet have neutralized a most powerful 
 source of opposition, for it was the Palais-Royal, rather than 
 the Duke of Orleans, which possessed real political important- 
 
 1 Anatole de Gallier, Xes &mutiers de 1789, in the Bevue des Questiom 
 Historiques, July, 1883, pp. 131-134. 
 
III.] Marie Antoinette. 85 
 
 ance. To its salons were attached all those who had won fame 
 in the Assembly by their eloquence, like Barnave ; or reputation 
 by their pens in Paris, like CamiUe Desmoulins ; while in its 
 garden were held those public meetings, which often resulted 
 in bloodshed and disorder. But if the Comte de Provence and 
 the Duke of Orleans were obstacles to any peaceful solution 
 of the difficulties of the time, still more was the great body 
 of the courtiers under the guidance of Marie Antoinette and 
 the Comte d'Artois. 
 
 Marie Antoinette ^ was bom on the day of the great 
 earthquake of Lisbon, November 2, 1755, and had been 
 destined from her cradle by her mother, the Empress- 
 Queen Maria Theresa, to be Queen of France. It was a part of 
 the Empress Maria Theresa's policy to establish her daughters 
 aU over Europe as supporters of the Austrian alliance. 
 Thus Marie Caroline had become Queen of Naples, Marie 
 Am61ie Queen of Sardinia, and Marie Charlotte Duchess of 
 Parma, while Marie Christine, the eldest daughter and Duchess 
 of Saxe-Teschen, governed the Austrian Netherlands with her 
 husband. With these daughters, as well as with Marie 
 Antoinette, the empress-queen kept up a continuous corre- 
 spondence, and always tried to keep them Austrians at heart, 
 of whatever nationality they might have become by marriage. 
 Marie Antoinette had been married to the Dauphin of France 
 when but a child of fourteen years old, and had since then had 
 nothing to direct her but her own wishes and caprices, the 
 solemn advice of her first lady-in-waiting, the Duchesse de 
 Noailles, whom she nicknamed Madame Etiquette, and the 
 numerous letters which she received from her mother and 
 her brother Joseph. Though not of a iad disposition, from 
 too early indulgence of her own wiU she had become unable 
 to exercise self-controL When she first came to France 
 
 1 For a list of ■works on Marie Antoinette, see ia maie Marie Antoi- 
 nette, by M. de Lescure, 1863. Many of the letters in the published 
 collections of Comte d'Hunolstein, 1864, and M. Feuillet des Conches, 
 1865, are forged, but the various works of Von Arneth can be depended 
 upon. See also the article upon her in the 9th edition of the Encydopcsdia 
 Britannica, 
 
86 Marie Antoinette. [chap. 
 
 slie was entrusted to the care of the experienced Austrian 
 ambassador at Versailles, the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau/ 
 and his first complaints of her behaviour are to the effect that 
 she would not clean her teeth and would lose large sums of 
 money at the gaming-table. These faults may be trivial 
 enough in themselves^ but they showed the want of self- 
 repression which ruined her character. She exhibited no 
 affection for her foolish but loving husband, and made no 
 attempt to overcome his early indifference to her, until her 
 mother and brother persuaded her to feign affection for their 
 own political purposes. The presence of Mercy and the affec- 
 tion she felt for her brother Joseph kept her always Austrian 
 at heart. This alone would have ensured her unpopularity 
 in Fiance, but her recklessness was used to condemn her still 
 more strongly. Though in all probability faithful to her 
 marriacre vows, she yet took undisguised pleasure in flirtation, 
 and was often caught in equivocal positions. The marked 
 favour she showed to handsome young foreigners like Count 
 Fersen, Lord Strathavon, afterwards Marquis of Huntly, and 
 Count Esterhazy, was interpreted to her disadvantage by the 
 Comte de Provence and his ugly wife, who both hated her. 
 Her extravagance was also commented upon ; but the immense 
 sums she squandered at the gaming-table, or in buying palaces 
 which she did not want, were rather ' the result of utter 
 thoughtlessness than of deliberate wastefulness. It is unfair 
 to lay weight upon her low standard of morality, considering 
 the age in which she lived and the manner in which she had 
 been educated, but even such excuses fail to palliate her delight 
 in licentious jests and in loose conversation, and her having 
 an obscene novel bound up in the covers of her missal.^ Her 
 choice of friends, too, cannot be commended, for women of 
 worse character than the Polignaes could not have been found 
 at court, and her persistent kindness to them and payment 
 
 1 Von Arnetli and Geffrey's Correspondance secrete entre Marie 
 Therhe et le Comte de Mercy-Argenteau. 
 
 ^ Lundis jRevolutionnaires, by Georges Avenel, 1873. The book is 
 still preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. 
 
III.] Marie Antoinette. 87 
 
 of their debts not unnaturally reacted against herself. That 
 her reputation was so bad throughout France must be 
 attributed to the many enemies she had made at court. She 
 broke down the old barriers of etiquette, which offended the 
 old courtiers who held to the traditions of Louis le Grand, and 
 substituted instead a careless licence, which was unfavour- 
 ably contrasted with the polished debauchery of Louis XV. 
 Her wild night-drives to Paris, her appearances incognito at 
 masked balls, her persistence in the society of unworthy friends, 
 aU contributed to make the people of France believe, after 
 the scandalous affair of the diamond necklace, that she would 
 have yielded, for a present of jewels, to the solicitations of the 
 Cardinal de Rohan.^ With such caprices Marie Antoinette 
 could not have been expected to show the strength of character 
 she did at trying periods of her life. Yet it is hard to blame 
 her, for her faults arose from the position in which she had 
 been placed ; and if the queen must be blamed, who preferred 
 her pleasures to the love of her husband and the esteem of 
 her adopted country, the little princess must be pitied, who 
 had received no education to teach her better, and who at 
 times showed the real generosity of a noble nature. Capricious 
 as the queen was, she had the power of attaching to her any 
 one whom she wished — a power ever indicative of a strong 
 nature. The devotion felt for her by such men as the Count 
 Fersen^ and the Baron de Batz, the hearty respect with 
 which she inspired Mirabeau, and the devotion which a single 
 interview could breathe into Barnave, all are proofs that she 
 must have been a woman of singular charm. It was natural 
 that she should fail to understand her husband's feelings of 
 responsibility, and should think that the world was made 
 for her pleasure rather than that she had duties to perform 
 in it. Much of this feeling had been encouraged by her 
 
 1 For the affair of the necklace, see Oarlyle's Miscellaneous Works, 
 voL v., and V Affaire du Collier, by E. de Campardon, 1877. 
 
 ^ Le Comte de Feraen et la cour de France : JExtraits des papiers du 
 Grand Marechal de Suede, J. A. de Fereen, by K. M. de Klinckowstronx. 
 2 vols. Paris : 1878. 
 
88 The Comte d'Ariois. [chap. 
 
 unfortunate intimacy with the king's young brother, the Comte 
 d'Artois. 
 
 Charles Philippe, Comte d'Artois, whose life was to be the 
 most chequered in modern history, was at this time a young 
 selfish dandy, with good looks but hardly any .other good 
 quality. He had not even, to relieve his selfishness, the 
 occasional bursts of generosity which occurred during the 
 life of Marie Antoinette. He had been brought up to 
 despise his elder brothers, and wished to have himself regarded 
 as a leader of fashion in Paris. Besides his selfishness, he 
 possessed great obstinacy of character, and, without any idea 
 of the responsibility of princes or any fear for the future, 
 thought that the world was bound to go on as it had done 
 hitherto. In such an idea he was encouraged by the young 
 courtiers who surrounded him, and who looked upon the 
 movement for reform as a passing nuisance, and regarded the 
 king and Necker as weak fatalists in yielding to it. They 
 themselves had no doubt that the movement for reform could 
 be easily crushed by force of arms, and that at the appearance 
 of the army, or even of the noblesse, the rabble, as they termed 
 not only the populace of Paris and the provinces but also the 
 respectable bourgeoisie, would disperse and beg for mercy. 
 This dependence on the army, and belief in its power to 
 repress discontent, Artois inspired into the queen. She had 
 often heard of the devotion shown to her mother by the 
 Hungarian nobility, and even by the fierce soldiery of the 
 numerous states of Austria, and did not seem to understand 
 that the bulk of the French army were but Frenchmen, and 
 thought of her as other Frenchmen did. When the States- 
 General first met, the queen and the Comte d'Artois were 
 satisfied with laughing at its ideas of reform ; but when the 
 queen was plunged into grief by the death of the dauphin, 
 the Comte dArtois began to take things more seriously, 
 and at the advice of his young companions persuaded the 
 queen, even in the midst of her maternal grief, to influence 
 the king to use the army against the Assembly. The con- 
 tempt shown by the court noblesse towards the deputies of 
 
Ill- J The Mar^chal de Broglie. 89 
 
 the tiers 6tat appeared in the Church of St. Louis as early as 
 May 4, and still more so on May 5, and perhaps most of all 
 in the occupation of the tennis-court for a game on the 
 day after the famous oath of June 20. But when they heard 
 that the king had given in and had ordered the noblesse 
 and clergy to join the tiers 4tat in one assembly, and thus 
 sanctioned the vote "par t^te," then laughing contempt 
 changed into fear and dislike, and they loudly cried for open 
 repressive measures. The Comte d'Artois persuaded the 
 queen that if she wished her son ever to possess the same 
 power as his father, she must act promptly at all hazards 
 upon Louis, and insist upon the dismissal of Necker, the 
 arrest of the leaders of the Assembly, and the defeat of the 
 malcontent population of Paris by force of arms. Almost 
 without the king's consent, and certainly against his wishes, 
 the queen then directed the old Mardchal de Broglie to con- 
 centrate upon Paris aU the troops he could collect. 
 
 Victor Franyois de Broglie, the second duke of that title, 
 was descended from the Italian family of Broglio, and both 
 his father and grandfather had attained the rank of Marshal 
 of France. He was just seventy years old when he was 
 summoned by the Comte d'Artois to take the lead of the 
 reactionary party, and had first seen service in Italy in the 
 War of the Austrian Succession in 1734. He had been made 
 colonel of the regiment of Luxembourg in 1735, and had dis- 
 tinguished himself in leading the storming-party at Prague, 
 with Chevreuil, in 1742. Throughout the war of 1742-48 he 
 distinguished himself, and after serving at Roucoux, Lauffeld, 
 and Maestricht, had become a lieutenant-general in 1748. In 
 the Seven Years' War he played a great part, and won the 
 only important victories gained by the French during the 
 war with Frederick. His victory at Berghem, on April 19, 
 1759, with 28,000 Frenchmen over 40,000 Prussians and 
 Hessians, won him the rank of Prince of the Empire, and after 
 conducting the retreat of the French after the defeat of Minden, 
 he was made a mar.shal of France at a younger age than any 
 one since Gassion, the companion of the great Condd Then 
 
90 Concentration of Troops round Paris, [chap. 
 
 came his command in Germany witli Soubise, his disgrace to 
 save Soubise, and the immense popularity which followed his 
 disgrace. His brother. Count Charles de Broglie, was a far 
 abler man than himself, and had for many years directed the 
 secret policy of Louis XV., and he had impressed the marshal 
 with his own dislike of England. During the reign he had 
 mentally stood still, and with extreme self-confidence, in spite 
 of the entreaties of his son, the Prince de Broglie, and his 
 nephews, Charles and Alexandre de Lameth, he accepted Artois' 
 invitation to court, and became the queen's nominee for the 
 command of the army round Paris. The old marshal had been 
 a great general and a great soldier in his earlier years, but he 
 had not understood how the world had progressed. He be- 
 lieved the soldiers now encamped on the Champ de Mars were, 
 as devoted to the king as the soldiers who had fought under 
 him at Berghem, and that the officers were as trustworthy ; he 
 still believed implicitly in the monarchy, and thought every 
 one else was as loyal as himself; and so, expecting an easy 
 victory, he surrounded himself with a large stafi^, and rejoiced 
 in his promised title of Marshal-General, which had not been 
 conferred on any French marshal since Marshal Saxe. 
 
 De Broglie, when summoned to court by the queen, at 
 once directed the foreign troops, which were chiefly stationed 
 in the frontier provinces of France, to march upon Paris ; and 
 on every side cavalry, artillery, and infantry were set in motion. 
 De Broglie, in spite of his prejudices, could not help recognizing 
 that there would be some danger in using French soldiers 
 against the French populace, but believed that the Swiss and 
 German troops in the service of France would feel no such 
 repugnance. The concentration was skilfully directed, and 
 almost before the Parisians knew what was happening, a large 
 and increasing camp of foreign* soldiers was stationed on the 
 Champ de Mars ; and when they did recognize that there had 
 appeared a guiding mind among their opponents, they were 
 smitten at first with an indescribable terror. The situation was 
 indeed critical. The National Assembly was quite unguarded ; 
 the populace of Paris was quite unarmed; and though any 
 
III.] The Broglie and Breteuil Ministry. 91 
 
 violent measure must have driven France to instant re- 
 bellion, it would at first have paralyzed the progress of the 
 Revolution. 
 
 At this crisis Mirabeau, be it said, alone retained his 
 courage and presence of mind, and displayed as much fearless- 
 ness as that shown by his grandfather, Mirabeau Silverstock, 
 at the battle of Cassano, where a Broglie had commanded. 
 When every deputy feared to speak, in a raised voice, of the 
 concentration of troops, Mirabeau startled and delighted them 
 by a great speech, in which he asked, Why were these troops 
 assembled in the vicinity of the National Assembly, and 
 whether the majesty of the people was to be attacked ? and 
 demanded that one hundred deputies should instantly bear a 
 petition to the king, requesting the withdrawal of the soldiers. 
 The motion brought matters to an issue. The king, whose 
 feelings had been worked upon by the queen, and who did 
 not feel his former confidence in Necker, was persuaded to 
 return but vague answers to the deputation, and after doing 
 so was at last harassed into consenting to dismiss Necker and 
 part of his ministry. 
 
 The news of the dismissal was received with joy by the 
 court noblesse. De Broglie, as Artois had desired, was ap- 
 pointed Minister of War, Marshal- General, and Commander-in- 
 Chief of the troops before Paris ; Breteuil, Calonne's Minister 
 of the Household, succeeded De Villedeuil ; Laporte and the 
 Due de la Vauguyon were appointed to succeed La Luzerne 
 and Montmorin, but hardly took up oflSce ; Barentin retained 
 office ; and Foullon, a particularly obnoxious official, who, it 
 was said, had declared that the people could Hve on grass, was 
 nominated in the place of the popular idol, Necker. Such was 
 the new ministry which the queen and Artois had set up. 
 Could it by any possibility have been successful in retarding 
 the course of the Revolution ? The question is unanswerable, 
 for De Broglie never had a fair chance. He might, with his 
 artillery, have played the part of a Bonaparte in the streets 
 of Paris ; or he might, like the great Cond^, have wasted his 
 strength and his army before the obstinacy of the capital. But 
 
92 The First Emigration. [chap. hi. 
 
 he was not given the opportunity, for the Assembly, by its 
 firmness and calmness, daunted the king and even Artois, while 
 the people of Paris answered with their greatest contribution to 
 the restoration of French liberty by the capture of the Bastille. 
 The result of that act was the immediate fall of the Broglie 
 ministry and the recall of Necker. But that fall not only 
 signified the final failure of the policy of open resistance, but 
 also that no other attempt, not based on secret intrigue, 
 could be made to stay the progress of the Revolution. 
 
 The failure of De Broglie acted in very difierent ways 
 upon the queen, and upon Artois and his friends. The 
 Comte d' Artois and the court noblesse fled instantly^ fi-om 
 France, and established themselves in an angry coterie at 
 the court of Turin, where they breathed nothing but im- 
 potent hatred against France, and contempt for the French 
 deputies, which only inflamed the French people the more 
 against the court. But the queen could not so easily escape 
 the result of her scheme ; she could not, and she would not, 
 leave the king and her children ; she had to stop and bear the 
 brunt of the unpopularity and the hatred which fell upon the 
 court for its attempt to obstruct the wishes of the French 
 people. If, before the convocation of the States-General, 
 she had been regarded as the chief support of the Austrian 
 alliance and of a German despotism, still more was she so 
 when left to bear the concentrated blame for the attempt 
 against the Assembly, which fell entirely upon her. Of De 
 Broglie there is little more to be said. The old marshal 
 attempted to raise the provinces and to test the fidelity of the 
 garrisons, and then, discouraged by his failure, he left France 
 and lived in exile. But his family was to pay a bitter tribute 
 to the Revolution in the person of his son, the accomplished 
 young Prince de Broglie, who was to perish on the guillotine, 
 as a sacrifice for the behaviour of the old mai'shal at this 
 crisis. 
 
 1 The first emigration is called the "Emigration joyeuse" by H. 
 Fomeron, Eistoire genirale des Emigris, vol. i. pp. 211-217. Paris : 
 1884. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAEIS— THE "WOKKSHOP OF THE REVOLUTIOH". 
 
 Paris before the Revolution— Journalism — The publishers, Panckoucke, 
 Prudhomme, Lejay, Momoro— Types of journalism— Mirabeau as 
 a journalist — Volney — Barfere — Brissot — Loustallot — Reporters : 
 Lehodey and Maret — The royalist, ministerialist, Orleanist, revo- 
 lutionary, literary, and scientific salons— Clubs — Popular societies — 
 Assemblies of the districts— The Palais-Royal — The Gardes Fran- 
 daises — Political views of the farmers-general, the lawyers, and the 
 literary and scientific men — The bourgeois — The working classes — 
 The charities of Paris— Politics of the poor — Causes of riots —Sack 
 of Reveillon's house — Mutiny in the Gardes Frangaises — The news 
 of Necker's dismissal. 
 
 It was the city of Paris which foiled the well-laid schemes of 
 the Mardchal de Broglie, and which, by a stroke of audacity, 
 succeeded in causing the withdrawal of the troops encamped 
 upon the Champ de Mars; and the origin of its patriotic 
 enthusiasm, which was of a far more unselfish nature in Paris 
 than even in the great provincial cities, must be attributed to 
 the exceptional position which Paris had always held with 
 regard to France. As early as the time of the Hundred Years' 
 War with England, Paris had attracted to itself all that was 
 most ambitious and most patriotic in France, and the process 
 of centralization had been fostered by the policy of Louis 
 XIV. and his ministers. To Paris had always flocked 
 every youth who conceived that he had any capacity to gain 
 literary, scientific, or political fame; from Paris had issued 
 the innumerable pamphlets of the time of the Fronde; in 
 
94 Paris before the Revolution. [chap. 
 
 Paris were written the biting satires against the despotism 
 of Louis XIV. and the debauchery of Louis XV., though they 
 were mostly printed, for fear of the censure, in the capitals of 
 free countries, such as London and Amsterdam. The literary 
 activity of Paris had been particularly productive during the 
 eighteenth century, when it had become the literary capital 
 not only of France but of Europe. Side by side with the life 
 of pleasure which Paris has always afforded to voluptuaries 
 of every age, clime, and station, there had existed a crowd of 
 literary and scientific men, who laboured to gain their fame 
 in garrets, and who, when they had gained it, became 
 powerful in the salons of wealthy ladies and foreign am- 
 bassadors. The literary life of Paris, which culminated in 
 the production of the Encyclopedie, and the circle of great 
 writers which that enterprise assembled, had been favoured 
 by the deliberate policy of the king himself. Louis XV. 
 believed that if men were allowed to speak and to write 
 freely, they would not desire to act. The literary energies 
 of the encyclopsedists had not been immediately directed to 
 the political reformation of France. They had described in 
 glowing terms the constitutions of Greece and of Rome ; they 
 had analyzed and praised the constitution of England; they 
 had admired the progress towards freedom of the United 
 States of America ; they had even published many Utopian 
 theories of representative governments ; but whether from 
 fear of the censure or a belief in the impossibility of change, 
 they had never deliberately schemed to upset the French 
 despotism. The political economists, who formed an impor- 
 tant group about the middle of the eighteenth century, went 
 out of their way to praise, not only in their books but in 
 their journals, the rule of a benevolent despot, as being best 
 fitted to advance the prosperity of a nation. It is, therefore, 
 no wonder that when the electoral excitement had found its 
 way throughout France, the old literary heroes of the time, 
 instead of assisting, looked with pessimistic eyes on the 
 ideas which they saw promulgated around them. The most 
 daring pamphlets of that period were nearly always the work 
 
IV.] Journalism before the Revolution. 95 
 
 of new men — young men who had been educated in the ideas 
 of the encyclopaedists, and who longed to apply those ideas 
 to their own country. And when the States-General had 
 actually met, these new writers felt, as if by one single 
 impulse, that the time for pamphlets had gone by and that 
 the time for journals had arrived. 
 
 Journalism has always particularly flourished in times of 
 political excitement; and it was during the period of the 
 Fronde that the Gazette de France, the oldest journal in France 
 which had been founded under the patronage of Richelieu, 
 first became of importance. At that epoch Renaudot,^ who 
 had a patent for the Gazette, accompanied the court to Saint- 
 Germain, and left his son to publish another journal, the 
 Courrier Frangois, in Paris, showing even at that early time the 
 tendency of owners of political journals to be on both sides 
 at once. The period of despotism which followed the Fronde 
 was not propitious to the establishment of new journals or to 
 the development of journalism. The chief journal of the 
 reign of Louis XIV. was the Mercure, which was, until the 
 days of the Revolution, rather of a literary than a political 
 character. The reign of Louis XVL^and the approach of 
 the Revolution had caused the production of pamphlets 
 rather than of journals, of which latter the best known 
 was the Annates Folitiques et Litteraires, rather from the 
 character of its editor, Linguet, the prisoner of the Bastille, 
 than of its own contents. Linguet was a born political 
 journalist, and his description of his frequent imprisonments 
 in the Bastille had given him a European reputation. Another 
 curious enterprise was the Courrier de V Europe, which was 
 published simultaneously at London and Boulogne, and which 
 was chiefly edited by Brissot de Warville, and was an attempt 
 to familiarize the English mind with French politics, and 
 France with English constitutional ideas. But it was the 
 actual meeting of the States-General which first brought forth 
 an abundance of important journals, of which the first in 
 
 * Thdophraste Benaudot d'apris des documents inddits, by G. Gilles de la 
 Tourrette, 1884. 
 
96 The Publishers of Paris. [chap. 
 
 point of date was Mirabeau's lies Etats-Generaux, a title 
 which was altered, after the royal edict of suppression, to 
 Lettres a mes Commettants. 
 
 These journals could not have been started had there not 
 been a powerful class of publishers, printers, and booksellers 
 in existence, and also a numerous constituency of readers and 
 purchasers. The most noted publishers of this date were the 
 great Panckoucke, Lejay, Momoro, and Prudhomme. 
 
 Charles Joseph Panckoucke came of an old publishing 
 family of Lille, where his father had issued many topogra- 
 phical works. He was born there in 1736, and came to Paris 
 in 1754, where he married an extremely accomplished woman, 
 whose sister was the wife of the academician Suard. His first 
 investment in journalism was the purchase of the Mercure, the 
 oldest literary journal in France, and before 1789 his chief 
 interest was in literary, not political, affairs. He published 
 the works of Buffon and other naturalists, and filled his 
 journal with scientific gossip. The approach of the Revolution, 
 in which he, and more particularly his wife, took a very great 
 interest, made him decide to enter upon political journalism. 
 He transferred the editorship of the Mercure to a Genevese 
 exile, named Mallet du Pan, who was afterwards the medium 
 between the reactionary party in Paris and the dmigrds in 
 Germany. But the Mercure could never succeed as a purely 
 political journal, and Panckoucke therefore purchased the old 
 Gazette de France, and, in order to stand well with the 
 authorities, appointed Jean Gaspard Dubois-FontaneUe, a 
 writer of obscene plays, who was extremely popular at court, 
 to be its editor. A little later, but not until after the capture 
 of the Bastille, the shrewd publisher started the famous 
 Moniteur, but without changing the editorship of the Gazette 
 de France, and so managed to make money out of both sides 
 without definitely pledging himself to either. 
 
 Louis Marie Prudhomme was a publisher of very different 
 character, who did not watch events with a mere business 
 view, but threw himself heart and soul into the great political 
 strife on the popular side when it was at its weakest. 
 
IV. j Tlie Publishers of Paris. 97 
 
 He was bom at Lyons in 1752, and had begun life in his 
 native city as a bookseller's boy. He had, like Panckoucke, 
 come up to Paris when a mere youth, and had risen from 
 being a bookbinder to become a bookseller, and finally a 
 publisher. His political principles determined the nature of 
 his business, and between 1787 and 1789 he had published 
 no less than fifteen hundred revolutionary pamphlets, and, 
 had the Revolution not succeeded, he was marked out for 
 imprisonment and persecution. At the time of the meeting 
 of the States-General his " Resum^ des Cahiers," which em- 
 phasized the revolutionary demands of the various electoral 
 assemblies, was seized by the police ; but he had confidence 
 in the cause, and on July 12 appeared the first number of 
 his famous weekly journal, the Revolutions de Paris, which 
 was the model of the yet more famous journals of Marat and 
 Camille Desmoulins. 
 
 Lejay was a publisher of no importance in himself, but 
 his wife had formed a liaison with Mirabeau, and pro- 
 cured the publication of his works for her husband ; indeed, 
 it had been through her instrumentality that the secret 
 letters from Berlin had been given to the world. In this 
 capacity Lejay had published the suppressed Etats-Gend- 
 raux, and his shop became the meeting-place of all those 
 who wished either to see the great oi'ator himself, or hear his 
 political views. Momoro, who was destined to go further 
 than them all on the democratic side, and to be sent to the 
 guillotine as an enrage Jacobin, was net in 1789 as fervent 
 in the cause as Prudhomme, and, previous to July 14, 
 utterly refused to publish Camille Desmoulins' " La France 
 Libre," for fear of the consequences. Though these were the 
 most important political publishers in the summer of 1789- 
 it must not be thought that they monopolized the trade. On 
 the contraiy, the Palais-Royal abounded in small speculators, 
 who issued floods of pamphlets, generally with the simple 
 inscription, " Aux arcades de bois ' (in the wooden arcades), of 
 whom Gattey, Desenne, Denn^ and Devaux appear to have 
 done the largest business with Baudouin, an elector of Paris 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 Mirabeau as a yournalist. [_chap, 
 
 and printer to the National Assembly, and Me'quignon in the 
 Palais-Marchand. 
 
 The fii'st journalists were of three distinct types. Some, 
 like Mirabeau, Volney, and Barere, were deputies to the 
 National Assembly, and wished to support their opinions 
 outside its walls ; others, like Brissot and Loustallot, were 
 professional politicians ; others, again, like Lehodey and Maret, 
 were simply reporters of the debates in the Assembly. 
 
 Mirabeau's journalism was, like his oratory, based upon the 
 efforts of others. He was never ashamed to use other men's 
 labours, arid would have endorsed Moli fere's remark, " Je 
 prends mon bien, ou je le trouve." But though he made use 
 of other men, he directed and transformed their work by the 
 power of his own genius. The first number of the Etats- 
 Generaux, as well as of the Lettres d, mes Commettants, 
 and probably of the Courrier de Provence, was entirely his 
 own work ; but as other journals were established, and his 
 principles were likely to be canvassed by others without its 
 being necessary for him to advocate them in the press, he left 
 his journal to some of his coadjutors, such as the Genevese 
 exiles Duroveray and Etienne Dumont. Duroveray, who was 
 a man of ability, did not care to be simply Mirabeau's mouth- 
 piece ; but he speedily found that when he wrote without the 
 authorization and sanction of the great man, the sale of the 
 journal went down to zero. The Courrier de Provence 
 remained, therefore, to the end of his life the exponent of 
 Mirabeau's political ideas, and it is easy, in looking over its 
 volumes, to see which articles he inspired, and which Duroveray 
 himself compiled. 
 
 Constantin Fran9ois Chasseboeuf de Volney ^ had made him- 
 self famous by a single book, namely, the " Voyage en Syrie," 
 published in 1785, to obtain the materials for which he had 
 travelled in the East. His reputation as a journalist and 
 pamphleteer stood very high, and through it he had secured 
 his election for the tiers ^tat of his native place, the 
 
 1 Mignet, Notices histmiques, vol. ii. ; Bougler's Mouvement Provincial 
 m J 789, vol. i. pp. 150-170. 
 
IV.] Ba7-ere as a JouTnalisL 
 
 99 
 
 ancient city of Angers. His chief journalistic enterprise dated 
 from 1788, when he established himself secretly at Rennes and 
 started the Sentinelle du Peuple. He afterwards set up his 
 press in the ruined Chateau de Maurepas, which was believed 
 to be haunted, and sent his sheets into Rennes every morning.' 
 This journal had had an enormous influence in Brittany and 
 Anjou during the electoral period ; but when Volney came to 
 Paris he confined himself to literary contributions to the 
 Mercure and political ones to the Chroniqm de Paris. 
 
 Bertrand Barere de Vieuzac,^ who was to commence his 
 long and much-maligned career during the Revolution as a 
 journalist, was born in Tarbes in 1755. He came of a legal 
 family, and was called to the bar of Toulouse, where he won 
 great fame for eloquence both aS an avocat and as a member 
 of the Academy of Toulouse, the " Jeux Floraux." He had paid 
 a visit to Paris in 1788, when he had been welcomed to the 
 revolutionary salons, and had in the following year been 
 elected deputy for Bigorre to the States-General. On 
 June 17, when the debates in the Assembly were attracting 
 universal attention, he started a daily journal, called the 
 Point du Jour, which contains the best contemporary reports 
 of the proceedings of that period in the Assembly. He had 
 not shown at the first any republican sentiments, but upheld 
 rather the ideas of constitutional monarchy. His journal was 
 largely read in the south of France, where his name had first 
 become known, and where he was venerated and loved to the 
 day of his death. David, in his famous picture of the " Oath of 
 the Tennis Court," has made an error in introducing Barfere 
 as transcribing for posterity the proceedings of that famous 
 day ; but the mistake is trivial, and expresses a great truth, 
 when it shows a member of the National Assembly occupied 
 in describing its own proceedings. The interest of the 
 
 1 Pitre Chevalier's La Bretagne Moderrie, ed. 1860, p. 18.5. 
 
 ' Notice on his life by Hippolyte Carnot, prefixed to the first edition 
 of his Memoires, published 1836. Macaulay's review has no historical 
 value, because, though it exposes many errors in the JUimoires, it unjustly 
 condemns the man. 
 
lOo Brissot. [chap. 
 
 journals conducted by deputies, however, lies rather in their 
 authors than in their contents; and to understand con- 
 temporary opinion outside the walls of the Assembly it is 
 necessary to consult the labours of the more professional 
 journalists. 
 
 Of these, without doubt the foremost in point of influence 
 and of time was Jean Pierre Brissot.^ This important politi- 
 cian was born at Ouarville, which he always spelt " Warville," 
 a village in Normandy, in 1754. His father was a wealthy 
 innkeeper, who sent his son up to Paris, where he became a 
 pamphleteer, and where, in 1780, he published his " Theorie des 
 Lois Criminelles." This book caused him to be imprisoned in 
 the Bastille, and after his release he travelled in the United 
 States, and finally settled in England. There he lived in 
 Pimlico, which he describes as a " healthy suburb," and lived 
 on terms of intimacy with Marat, and many Frenchmen who 
 had been exiled for advanced political opinions. There it was 
 that he had established the Gounner de l' Europe, with Swinton 
 and Thfeveneau de Morande. This journal had great success, 
 but it was not so much to it as to his establishing, in the year 
 1788, the "Soci^td des Amis des Noirs" that he owed his 
 political reputation. This society was founded in Paris for the 
 purpose of procuring the emancipation of the negroes in the 
 West Indies, on the model of the more famous " Society for 
 the Abolition of Slavery " started by Wilberforce and his 
 friends in London. The same spirit of philanthropy which 
 had made the question of negro slavery of importance in 
 England operated also in France. Brissot's " Socidt^ " was 
 joined by men of every type of opinion, and included Mirabeau 
 Lafayette, Clavifere, and Volney. Its importance as a political 
 club appeared later; but Brissot was not contented with such 
 influence alone, and had projected, in the April of 1789, a daily 
 political journal. One number was published in May, but it 
 was suppressed, like Mirabeau's Mats Generaux. Brissot did 
 not despair, but produced his journal regularly after July 
 
 1 Memoires de Brissot, published by his son, and edited by F. de 
 Montrol. Paris: 1830-32. 
 
IV.] Brissot as a y oiirnalist. loi 
 
 28. The Patriote Fran^ais, as his journal was called, is 
 of very great importance, as showing the course of political 
 opinion in Paris and the provinces among that part of the 
 intelligent bourgeoisie which was to form the party of the 
 Girondina. The leading ideas of Brissot, as of the Girondin 
 party, were those of humanity and philanthropy towards men 
 of every description and of every colour. Their philanthropy 
 was far-reaching. Brissot preached against barbarous punish- 
 ments, against unfair trials, against slavery, against forced con- 
 scription, and from the very first advocated the social equality 
 of all men as his leading tenet. The unpractical quality of his 
 mind, and those of his supporters and admirers, appeared from 
 the very first. They considered that, if a course of action were 
 justified, it must be pursued without regard to consequences, 
 and were profuse in declarations which embarrassed the cause 
 of good government, but advanced their own wishes. Besides 
 this, Brissot could boast of an extended knowledge of one 
 subject which was generally neglected by the politicians of 
 France ; he had a very competent knowledge of foreign affairs, 
 and the state of foreign countries. His sojourn in the United 
 States had familiarized him with republicanism, and he has 
 been called the first republican of the Eevolution ; while his 
 residence in London had taught him that the people of England 
 were not so free as their neighbours supposed them to be, but 
 were heavily trammelled by their aristoc^racy and the terms of 
 their constitution. This knowledge became of greater im- 
 portance when Brissot had to take a share in the duties of 
 government ; but even at this period his acquaintance with 
 England and America and other countries made the foreign 
 correspondence in his journal peculiarly interesting. 
 
 Elysde Loustallot,^ the youngest and perhaps the greatest 
 of the journalists of this period, was never able to carry his 
 ideas, as Brissot did, into active political life. He was born 
 at St. Jean d'Angdly in 1761 ; his father was syndic of the 
 avocats there, and young Loustallot became himself an avocat 
 
 1- Notice swr Elysde Loustallot, by Marcelin Pellet, 1872. 
 
I02 
 
 Loustallot. [chap. 
 
 at Bordeaux. While there he was suspended for six months 
 for attacking the local government, and had then entered him- 
 self at the Paris bar at the beginniDg of 1789. In the capital, 
 however, he obtained no practice, but occupied himself in 
 writing pamphlets for Prudhomjne, translating English books, 
 and frequenting public debating clubs. Prudhomme was the 
 one publisher whose democratic ideas made him in the eyes of 
 his colleagues appear extremely rash ; and when he decided, in 
 conjunction with a literary hack, named Tournon, to establish a 
 weekly political journal to advocate his own views, he selected 
 Loustallot, whose merit and principles he knew, to be his chief 
 contributor. Loustallot had had none of that practical expe- 
 rience in journalism, and none of the extended knowledge of 
 foreign countries and foreign constitutions possessed by Brissot, 
 but he was far superior to him both as a writer and a publicist. 
 His articles are certainly the most interesting to read of any 
 published between July, 1789, and his lamented death in Sep- 
 tember, 1790. While a sincere democrat and lover of freedom, 
 he showed much of that perspicacity which distinguished 
 Mirabeau, and had he ever been able to feel the responsibility 
 of office, might have made a very great statesman. As it was, 
 his irresponsibility often made him violent when his youthful 
 eloquence was not curbed by his publisher. It was to Lous- 
 tallot's influence that the establishment of Desmoulins' journal 
 was due ; it was from Loustallot that the orators of the Palais- 
 Royal learnt their arguments ; and it was from his articles that 
 the provinces learnt what Paris was thinking and doing. 
 The Revolutions de Paris had an enormous success ; its sale 
 rose to nearly two hundred thousand copies a week, which, 
 when its price is considered and the difficulty of transport to 
 the provinces, seems almost miraculous. Loustallot was a 
 journalist pure and simple, belonging to no particulai party, 
 but represented the views and extent of knowledge possessed 
 by the average Frenchman, who read the Revolutions de Paris 
 and felt his own opinions expressed in it. He was the em- 
 bodiment of the party of movement, and his early death is 
 more to be regretted than that of any of the band of youthful 
 
IV.] Lehodey's Reports of the Debates. 103 
 
 writers whose names and names alone have been reported to 
 posterity. 
 
 The fact that two of tlie leading deputies owned-and edited 
 journals has been noticed, but even in them, and still more in the 
 ordinary Paris journals, the reports of the proceedings in the 
 Assembly were confined to mere descriptions of striking inci- 
 dents.or occasionally to themore salient traits of famous speeches; 
 yet when all eyes were turned to the Assembly something more 
 than this was felt to be necessary, and to toeet the desire for 
 a faithful report of each sitting, two journals, or rather series 
 of reports, were founded.'^ The earliest in point of date was 
 the Journal des Etats-Generaux, of which the first number 
 was published by Lehodey on June 1. This journal pretended 
 to give a strict transcript of all that passed. At first, accuracy 
 was impossible ; but in time Lehodey organized a band of 
 writers, who, without knowing shorthand, copied down, word 
 for word, every sentence spoken in the Assembly, and eventu- 
 ally became very expert. In January, 1791, Lehodey changed 
 the title of his reports to the Journal Logograpkique, which 
 however retained, like its predecessor, the colourless accuracy 
 of the modern Hansard in England. Accurate certainly these 
 reports are, but they do not describe the interruptions, the 
 excitement, and harangues on points of order which give life 
 to the reports in the Moniteur. 
 
 It has been said in England that every great judge has 
 produced a great reporter, and similarly the debates in the 
 first great National Assembly of France produced a spirited 
 and faithful transcriber in Hugues Bernard Maret,^ who was 
 born at Dijon in 1763. His father was secretary to the pro- 
 vincial academy there, which had had the honour of awarding 
 a prize to Rousseau when still an unknown man. In 178.3 
 he had come to Paris, where his compatriot Vergennes was 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs. Maret was by him intended for 
 
 * This subject has been most thoroughly and competently treated by 
 M. F. A. Aulard, in his V Eloquence Parlementaire pendant la Revolution : 
 Les Orateurs de I'Assemhlee Constituante, pp. 15-24. Paris : 1882. 
 
 " Vie du Due de Bassano by the Baron Ernouf, 1878. 
 
I04 Maret and his Bulletins. |_chap. 
 
 a diplomatic career, and studied international law under 
 Professor Koch, at Strasbourg, with students from many dif- 
 ferent countries, including Lord Elgin. He was on his way 
 to Germany for further study when his pati-on, M. de 
 Vergennes, died in 1787. He then returned to Paris, where, 
 through his father's large acquaintance with men of letters, 
 he found many friends. He was proposed for the Lycde, a 
 select literary club, by Buffon, Lact^pfede, and Condorcet, but 
 chiefly associated with younger men of letters, among whom 
 Marie Joseph Ch^nier, the future dramatist, was his greatest 
 friend. He became a very regvilar attendant at the chief 
 literary salons, and was particularly well known at Madame 
 Panckoucke's. When the States-General met, he made up 
 his mind to attend regularly at its sittings, and every evening 
 wrote from memory a complete description of what had 
 passed. These first bulletins he used to read aloud in the 
 various literary salons of Paris, and they became so popular 
 that on July 1 he published his first Bulletin de VAssem- 
 blee Natiori'ile. This work was extremely hard. He took 
 a garret close to the meeting-place of the Assembly, and, 
 after noticing carefully all that went on in the sitting, went 
 home and wrote his description from memory. He did not 
 attempt an accurate report of every speech, but gave with 
 great vivacity the movement and excitement which prevailed. 
 When he had begun his publication, he met an able assistant 
 in Mdjan, and attempted with him to copy Woodfall's well- 
 known reports of the proceedings in the English Parliament, 
 which were for many years written by Samuel Johnson. He 
 aimed at describing scenes rather than giving a colourless 
 report, and between Lehodey and Maret it is possible to trace 
 accurately the first proceedings of the National Assembly. 
 His Bulletins had gained such popularity that in October, 
 on the motion of a deputy, he was voted a special seat in the 
 body of the Assembly, and in January, 1790, his friend Panc- 
 koucke persuaded him to merge his separate publication in the 
 newly founded Moniteur, of which, however, Maret refused the 
 editorship. It is strange to think that the Due de Bassano, 
 
V.J The Salons of Paris. 105 
 
 the diplomatist and Foreign Minister of Napoleon, should have 
 begun life as the reporter of the debates in the Constituent 
 Assembly. 
 
 But if public opinion is depicted in the journals, and the 
 proceedings of the National Assembly transcribed in the 
 reports, public opinion was created and events criticized in 
 social groups of aU classes, from the highest to the lowest. 
 The meeting-places of the higher classes were the famous salons 
 of the French ladies. The salon had become an institution in 
 France in the reign of Louis XV". Before that time, indeed, and 
 even before the Fronde, well-known literary ladies like Madame 
 de Rambouillet and Ninon de Lenclos had entertained in their 
 salons men famous for talent and wit. These literary coteries 
 had grown in importance until they formed the chief attraction 
 of Paris in the days of Horacp Walpole ; but the literary ladies 
 who entertained the academicians and the authors of the 
 Ewydopedie, gave way at this period of public excitement 
 to politics. The various fashions which chased each other 
 through the years previous to 17s9 are marked by the various 
 complexions of different salons. Political economy drove out 
 literary style ; Rousseau succeeded political economy ; elec- 
 tricity and mesmerism next monopolized ladies' minds; and 
 in 1789 politics became the ruling fashion. 
 
 The two ladies who collected round them the shining lights 
 of the court and the reactionary party, were Madame de 
 Chambonas^ and Madame de Sabran. In the rooms of the 
 former there met to gamble, as much as to mock at the 
 deputies of the tiers ^tat, all the wits who were most in 
 favour. There Rivarol and Champcenetz drank and played 
 and composed epigrams, while the Comte de Tilly confined 
 himself to losing heavily at the gaming-table. Of a more 
 intellectual type were the friends of Madame de Sabran.^ The 
 
 1 For Madame de Chambonas' salon, see Bivarol et la SocietS Frangaise 
 pendant la Rdoolution et V Emigration d'aprh des Ducuments inedlts, by M. 
 de Lescure. Paris : 1883. 
 
 2 Correspondance du Chevalier de Boufflers et de Madame de Sabran, by 
 De Magnieu and Prat. Paris : 3875. 
 
io6 The Salon of Madame de Sabran. [chap. 
 
 chief stars of her salon were the Chevalier de Boufflers and 
 the MM. de S(^gur. Boufflers, although an ecclesiastic and a 
 canon, was suspected of having cast eyes of too warm an 
 admiration on the queen, and had been, to the regret of 
 court circles, named governor of Senegambia, Senegal, and 
 Goree. On his return he had presided, with his usual wit and 
 tact, as grand bailli of Nancy at the electoral proceedings 
 there, and had succeeded in getting himself elected a deputy 
 of the noblesse. His wit was of a finer and more delicate 
 character than that of the authors of the Actes des Apotres, 
 and he was the chosen favourite of every fashionable circle. 
 Philippe Comte de S^gur was not only a wit, but a politician 
 of some experience and much ability. He came of a famous 
 ministerial family. His father had been Secretary for War, and 
 he himself had in early life been, appointed ambassador to the 
 court of St. Petersburg. His handsome person and polished 
 wit had attracted the attention of Catherine of Russia, who 
 had chosen him to accompany her in her famous progress to 
 the Crimea, and he had secured the predominance of the 
 French over the English interests at St. Petersburg. Flushed 
 with his diplomatic success, and, like many other of the young 
 liberal noblesse, full of generous ideas, he had returned to 
 France, utterly ruined by the expenses of his embassy, in the 
 course of 1789, and at once became an habitue of Madame de 
 Sabran's salon, where his brother Alexandre, Vicomte de Secrur, 
 was an established favourite. The Vicomte was not so distin- 
 guished a statesman, but he was a well-known writer of society 
 verses and little comedies, and was a favourite among the 
 ladies of Paris. With such guests among them, the frequenters 
 of the salon of Madame de Sabran were not so violently 
 royalist as those of Madame de Chambonas, and maintained 
 a polished rather than a coarse opposition to the Revolution. 
 
 The friends of the ministers naturally assembled in the 
 salon of Madame Necker,i of which the chief ornament was 
 the young Madame de Stael. Madame Necker, herself a 
 
 1 Le Salon de Madame Necker, by the Vicomte d'Haussonville. 2 vols. 
 Paris: 1882. 
 
IV.] The Salon of Madame Necker. 107 
 
 ■woinan of great ability, was a sincere Protestant, and, like 
 most Swiss, an admirer of republicanism. But she admired 
 her husband more than Protestantism or republicanism, and 
 made friends of all who believed that the presence of Necker 
 at the finances was all-important to France. Madame de 
 Stael had not yet begun her literary career, but she was 
 already versed in politics. Her marriage had been the subject 
 of much diplomacy, and the Baron de Stael-Holstein had only 
 won her hand on the condition that the King of Sweden 
 would make him Swedish Ambassador at Paris.* In Madame 
 Necker's salon three distinct groups of friends were generally 
 to be found : distinguished foreigners, especially from the Pro- 
 testant nations of England, Prussia, and Sweden ; literary 
 celebrities who were much sought after, and much attracted 
 by the wit of the daughter of the house ; and the great 
 financiers of France, who naturally met at the palace of the 
 Minister of Finance, who had been originally but one of them- 
 selves. From Madame Necker and Madame de Stael men 
 of these different groups imbibed a belief in the ability of 
 Necker, and the necessity of maintaining him in ofiBce. To 
 attack him or his ideas was tantamount to treason. It was 
 here that Mirabeau was denounced, not for his immoral life, 
 but because he opposed the great Necker ; here that the king 
 was praised because he was said to love the minister, and the 
 queen despised and lampooned because of her distaste for him. 
 It is strange that Madame Necker, knowing the importance 
 of the good opinion of the National Assembly to her husband, 
 did not do more to attract its leading members to her salon ; 
 but she was afraid to admit any possible rival, and satisfied 
 herself with the frequent attendance of the Abbd Si^y^s, the 
 phrase-maker of the Revolution, and of the Comte de Cler- 
 mont-Tonnerre, the first deputy of the noblesse of Paris, and 
 the leader of the party which desired a constitution after the 
 English pattern. 
 
 1 Correspondance du Baron de Stael-Eolstein, published by L^ouzon 
 Leduc, Paris, 1881 ; Gustave III. et la cour de France, by M. A. Geflfroy. 
 2 vols. 1867. 
 
lOS The Salon of Madame de Genlis. [chap. 
 
 As Madame Neeker entertained the ministerialists, so did 
 Madame de Genlis ^ the friends of the Duke of Orleans at 
 the Palais-Royal. The notorious governess of Pamela and the 
 children of the duke had seen herself surpassed in his affec- 
 tions by many successors, and at this period was eclipsed by 
 Madame Buffon, the one real love of the debauchee prince, and 
 she now only maintained her intimacy with him as lady of 
 honour to the Duchesse de Chartres, his daughter-in-law. She 
 had turned Christian and moralist, and maintained a severe 
 tone, which was hardly congenial to the duke's most intimate 
 friends. In her blue-and-gold salon Saint-Huruge was not so 
 much at home as in the drinking-shops of the Palais-Royal ; 
 but Laclos often brought with him young writers who could 
 help the ambition of Orleans, and among them might early be 
 perceived Camille Desmoulins. Madame de Broglie in like 
 manner made her salon the rendezvous of Barnave, the two 
 Lameths, the Vicomte de Noailles, the Due d'Aiguillon, and 
 other friends of her husband, the young Prince de Broglie; 
 and it was there that was formed the famous triumvirate, of 
 which Barnave was said to be the mouthpiece. Mirabeau 
 was not a great attendant at ladies' drawing-rooms, but was 
 generally to be found in Lejay's back parlour; and if he did 
 go abroad, it was more often to the house of Adrien Duport, 
 who was at this time trying to win him over to the cause of 
 Orleans, than to any lady's abode. 
 
 Three ladies were at this time the hostesses of the poli- 
 ticians and journalists of the extreme revolutionary party. 
 At the house of Madame de Beauharnais ^ were to be seen the 
 survivors of the Encyclopsedists, who were of her age and 
 time. Foremost among the habitu6s of her salon were the 
 dramatists of a bygone era, Dorat, Coll^, and Cri^billon, who 
 did not despise the good suppers given by the hissed authoress 
 of the "Fausse Inconstance.'' With them used to assemble 
 
 1 Mimoires of Madame de Genlis ; Hisioire de la Societd Frangaise 
 pevdant la Revolution, by E. and J. de Goncourt, 3rd edit., p. 11. Paris : 
 1SC4. 
 
 • De Concourt's Societe Frangnise pendant la Revolution, pp. 8-11. 
 
IV. J The Salon of Madame Talma. 109 
 
 Bailly, the Abbd MaMy and Dusaulx, with Mercier the author 
 of the popular " Tableaux de Paris," Vicq d'Azyr the queen's 
 physician, and Rabaut de Sain+.-Etienne. More remarkable 
 still were Dorat-Cubiferes, who used to act as host ; Alexandre 
 de Beauharnais the deputy, whose Creole wife, Josephine, was 
 destined for an extraordinary career ; and the Prussian baron, 
 John Baptist Clootz, who was to deny his nationality, and 
 become laughable rather than famous as Anacharsis Clootz. 
 At the house of Madame Julie Talma,^ the wife of the famous 
 actor at the Theatre Fran9ais, were to be found the young 
 men of literary ability who were now beginning to mingle in 
 politics with old admirers of her husband's talents. There 
 was to be seen Joseph Marie Ch^nier, pressing his new tragedy, 
 " Charles IX.," on the notice of the influential actor of the 
 Fran9ais ; Roger Ducos with a criticism ; and Ducis with a 
 new translation of an English play ; together with the painter 
 Greuze and the great chemist Lavoisier, who were both sincere 
 admirers of the stage. But they all talked of politics as much 
 as the theatre, and among them was often to be seen a friend 
 of Chdnier's who was to win fame on a greater stage than the 
 Theatre Fran^ais, the great orator, Pierre Victorien Vergniaud. 
 The third meeting-place of the revolutionary deputies was the 
 small house of Mademoiselle Th^roigne de M^ricourt. This 
 beautiful Liegeoise, Anne Terwagne of M^ricourt, near Lifege, 
 was at the head of the demi-monde of Paris. She had in 
 early life been deceived by a young nobleman, and had been 
 driven from her father's house. After a melancholy career, 
 first in London and then in Paris, she had adopted extremely 
 revolutionary ideas, and made her house a free-and-easy meet- 
 ing-place for the revolutionary deputies after their labours in 
 the Assembly. At her salon used to assemble Mirabeau, when 
 the jealousy of Madame Lejay allowed him to leave her side. 
 Potion the avocat of Chartres, Target, and Populus, whom the 
 royalist journals were fond of twitting as Thdroigne's favoured 
 lover on account of his name ; and there, too, occasionally 
 went the young society poet and deputy for Artois, Maximilien 
 ' De Gonoourt, p. 14. 
 
I TO TMroigne de Mdricourt. [chap. 
 
 Robespierre. Th^roigne's share in the Revolution was far 
 more active than that of any other woman whose name has 
 been mentioned ; and her pathetic career was one marked by- 
 traits of heroism, which made her for a time the idol of the 
 poorer women of Paris. She was not only, as will be seen 
 later, a leader of the demi-monde, but starving mothers were 
 ready in the month of October to follow her to Versailles. A 
 last revolutionary salon must be mentioned, rather from the 
 fact that it was established by an English nobleman than 
 from the importance of its frequenters. • The Duke of Bedford ■"■ 
 had warmly espoused the cause of reform in France, and partly 
 from an old rivalry with the Duke of Dorset, the English 
 Ambassador, but chiefly from a desire to show the sympathy 
 of the English Whigs with the new ideas, he had established 
 himself in Paris, and spent a portion of his great wealth in 
 sumptuous entertainments. The regular attendants of his 
 salon consisted only of the rank and tile of the revolutionary 
 party, with such ladies of doubtful reputation as Madame de 
 Saint-Amaranthe, and the Englishwoman Grace Dahymple 
 Elliott, who had been brought to Paris by the Duke of Orleans, 
 but at his splendid balls met all the great revolutionary leaders 
 of every section, and ladies of every rank. 
 
 Besides these regular political salons must be mentioned the 
 two chief meeting-places of literary and scientific men, where, as 
 Arthur Young says, politics had taken the place of literature and 
 science. The home of the litterateurs was naturally the house 
 of Madame Panckoucke,^ the wife of their chief publisher. At 
 her Thursdays always appeared Marmontel, Sedaine, La Harpe, 
 Suard, and Garat, who were all contributors to her husband's 
 journal, the Mercure. Thither, too, came Barere, the editor of 
 the Point du Jour; Maret, who was to help in the foundation 
 of the Moniteur ; Condorcet, Mallet du Pan, Fontanelle, and 
 all the other literary men who had business relations with 
 Panckoucke. More interesting to men of science and philoso- 
 phers was the home of the widowed Madame Helvdtius ^ at 
 Auteuil, from its historical associations. There she had in her 
 
 1 De Goncourt, p. 16. " Rid., p. 13. ^ j^i^ p_ j2. 
 
IV.] The Clubs. 
 
 Ill 
 
 husband's lifetime assembled Diderot and the Encyeloptedists ; 
 there Franklin had been a frequent guest ; and there were now 
 to be seen all the most thoughtful and philosophical writers in 
 France — Volney, Bergasse, Cabanis the chemist, and chief of 
 all, though his name was yet hardly known to metaphj'^sicians, 
 Antoine Destutt, Comte de Tracy, deputy to the States-General 
 for the noblesse of the Bourbonnois. 
 
 The place of salons among the upper was filled by clubs 
 and popular societies among the middle and lower classes. 
 The fashion of clubs had been introduced into Paris by the 
 admirers of English social customs, but previous to the Eevo- 
 lution they had been chiefly literary, and the most important 
 were the " Lyc^e," where Condorcet often presided, and the 
 " Soci^t^ des Amis des Noirs," which Brissot had founded. 
 Both these clubs had now become political. The Lycde soon 
 became unimportant, but at the meetings of the " Amis des 
 Noirs " were present all the chief writers and orators of the 
 time, who, though nominally met together to prepare public 
 opinion for the emancipation of negro slaves, really occupied 
 themselves in general political discussions. The usefulness of 
 this society to the revolutionary cause suggested a further 
 development of the club-system, and small clubs sprang up 
 among the bourgeois all over Paris. These clubs were rather 
 debating societies than anj'thing else, and did not last long ; for 
 when the Breton Club, which at first consisted solely of deputies, 
 came to Paris with the National Assembly in October, 1789, and, 
 after establishing itself in the Jacobin convent, decided to admit 
 others besides deputies to take part in its debates, the smaller 
 clubs were soon absorbed by it. Nevertheless, even such clubs 
 as these were not intended for the lower classes, however much 
 they might be frequented by the bourgeois, who liked to think 
 they had a share in governing public opinion. 
 
 Their place was taken among the lower classes by the 
 popular societies, whose meeting-place was the wineshop or 
 the street, which abounded in the poorer faubourgs. Some- 
 times a group of women might be seen in the street listening 
 to the impassioned harangue of one of their own sex against 
 
1 1 2 The Assemblies of the Districts. [chap. 
 
 the queen, the king, and all established authorities ; workmen 
 assembled in their cabaret would be exhorted to exact by- 
 threats better pay from their employers; the sacking of the 
 bakers' shops was openly preached ; and many of these popular 
 societies were attended by speakers of a higher class, who used 
 to try to enrage the half-starved and discontented work- 
 people for the profit of their own particular clique or party. 
 The meetings of these popular assemblies usually ended in 
 drawing up violent resolutions to be presented by certain of 
 those present to the assembly of their district. 
 
 These assemblies of the districts had their origin in the 
 electoral operations of the months of April and May. The 
 citizens of every district had assembled to choose their electors 
 and draw up their district cahier, and after they had done this, 
 instead of dispersing, as the rfeglement had directed, they 
 continued to meet in order to watch over the conduct of their 
 representatives. Many of these district assemblies in the richer 
 quarters of Paris consisted almost entirely of bourgeois, and 
 their importance afterwards became manifest; but in the 
 districts of the poor faubourgs of St. Antoine and St. Marceau 
 they became centres of popular discontent. In these assemblies 
 only those qualified to vote had a right to appear, but it was 
 not long before any discontented man, inhabitant or not, found 
 his way there. In them the mob learned who were to be their 
 leaders; before them the delegates of the popular assemblies 
 laid their demands for bread and arms ; and from them were 
 issued many revolutionary manifestoes to encourage the radical 
 deputies in the National Assembly. The districts of the Fau- 
 bourg St, Marceau especially found a convenient centre in the 
 newly formed club of the Cordeliers, which had grown out of 
 the primary assembly of the district Theatre Fran^ais in that 
 faubourg by the addition of non-voters and the influence of 
 the popular lawyer Danton. 
 
 Besides the streets and the assemblies of the districts, a 
 more commodious meeting-place was afibrded by the gardens 
 of the Palais-Royal, which had been thrown open to the people 
 by the Duke of Orleans, when, to recruit his finances, he let out 
 
IV.] The Palais-Royal. 113 
 
 the ground floor of his palace for shops in 1783. Here, from 
 the month of May, were assembled workmen out of work, 
 young avocats without practice, and political agitators of every 
 description, to give vent to their feelrngs and listen to their 
 chosen orators. In the Palais-Royal from morning till night, 
 from night till morning, there was always an immense crowd, 
 largely supplied by the surrounding caf^s and wineshops and 
 gambling hells. Here there were frequent disturbances, espe- 
 cially when an unfortunate police agent or a servant wearing 
 the livery of some hated courtier was seized and ducked in 
 the fountain. Here all the journals were sold, and most of their 
 publishing offices were under the wooden arcades which sur- 
 rounded the gardens. Here, above all, was the appointed 
 rendezvous of the agents of the Duke of Orleans. To the Palais- 
 Royal was brought, by their means, the first news of every- 
 thing which happened at Versailles. In its gardens men felt 
 encouraged by their numbers to say aloud the most treasonable 
 things and to pass the most treasonable resolutions, and it was 
 recognized as the centi-e of political opinion in Paris. From 
 a rendezvous of Orleanists, it became a general gathering-place 
 for aU who wished to hear the news, discuss it, or hear it dis- 
 cussed. Previous to the Revolution it had been the centre of 
 dissolute Paris, and many are the allusions in the royalist 
 journals to the former abandoned character of the chosen 
 head-quarters of the revolutionary party in Paris. The dis- 
 turbances in the gardens often led to fighting, and it occasion- 
 ally became necessary for the Gardes Fran9aises who had to 
 maintain order in the capital, to enter it and clear it of every 
 individual. 
 
 Order was maintained in Paris, as in every other capital in 
 Europe at the time, by the troops, and the police of Paris 
 consisted only of spies and a few officers of the law-courts, 
 for the idea of an organized force for the preservation of order 
 had not then occurred to any statesman. By old prescription 
 the garrison of Paris consisted of a force of three thousand men, 
 known as the Gardes Fran9aises, who were Frenchmen by birth 
 and generally Parisians. They had distinguished themselves in 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
114 The Gardes Frangaises. [chap. 
 
 many campaigns, but when the Eevolution broke out had not 
 left Paris for more than twenty-five years, and the men 
 forming the battalion had naturally deteriorated by living so 
 long in a gay capital -without seeing active service.'^ They 
 did not hold exactly the same position as the brigade of 
 Guards in London ; for the king always lived at Versailles, 
 and was surrounded there by his household troops ot the palace, 
 which did not include the Gardes Fran9aises. At the same 
 time commissions were always eagerly sought in the battalion 
 from its being always stationed in Paris, and were considered 
 next in honour to commissions in the body-guard. Being 
 in close personal relation by birth and marriage with the 
 people of Paris, no force could be less depended upon to act 
 against them, and yet the government made the fatal mistake 
 of incensing the guardians of order. The officers, like those 
 of the Guards in London, lived away from their men, and the 
 maintenance of discipline was entrusted to the non-commis- 
 sioned officers, who were a particularly fine body of soldiers, 
 in entire sympathy with their men, and amongst whom there 
 served the future generals Hoche, Friant, and Hulin, and 
 the future marshal of France, Fran9ois Joseph Lefevre. 
 
 It has been seen how opinions as to the great political 
 events passing at Versailles were formed in Pai-is, and how 
 they were fostered by the growth of political journalism, but 
 it remains to be seen with what preconceived views different 
 classes in Paris might be expected to look upon the progress 
 of the Revolution. 
 
 The aristocracy of Paris was essentially an aristocracy of 
 wealth and ability. The old court noblesse chiefly dwelt at 
 Versailles, or, if they lived in Paris, regarded themselves 
 rather as being in the capital than of it, while it was the 
 piide of the great financial and legal families, and of the 
 men of letters and science, to be true Parisians. The great 
 wealth accumulated by the financiers was chiefly due to the 
 
 ' Vie. de Hoche, by Rousselin Saint-Albin, p. 13, ed. 1795, who describea . 
 how Hoche, when a grenadier in the Garde Franjaise, used to draw 
 water for the gardeners and dig to get money to buy books. 
 
IV.] The Farmers-general. 115 
 
 practice of letting out the taxes to farm. At a very early 
 date the farmers of the revenue became of extreme importance 
 to the government. Under the regency M. Law, the Scotch 
 adventurer, whose speculations caused an excitement equal to 
 that of the South Sea Bubble in England, had attempted to 
 buy them out, and in the memoirs of the Cardinal de Bernis 
 the dependence of the unfortunate minister on the brothers 
 Paris-Duverney and Paris-Montmartel is laughably shown. 
 To get money for the war which had been determined on by 
 Madame de Pompadour, the minister had to spend hours and 
 days in the ante-rooms of these great princes of finance, and, 
 to quote his own words, " to lose twenty-four hours in the week 
 in coaxing one of them, and in begging him for the love of God 
 for money for the king." ^ The wealth of the farmers-general 
 had not decreased during the tenure of office by successive 
 ministers. They had practically made themselves indispensable 
 by advancing enormous sums to the king, who always forestalled 
 his revenue by at least three years. In exchange for ready 
 money, the king and his ministers were ready to mortgage the 
 whole revenue of the nation, and the collection of all the taxes 
 fell into the hands of the farmers-general. Looking on the 
 taxes rather as security for their personal advances than as 
 the hard-earned property of the people, they could not fail to 
 be harsh in collecting them. Many of the farmers-general 
 were as individuals men of a kindly and charitable disposition. 
 Helv^tius the philosopher, and Lavoisier the great chemist, 
 were both of them farmers-general, and neither of them in 
 private life cruel or avaricious men. It was the system, 
 rather than the men which was to be blamed ; but it cannot 
 be wondered at that the people, who had to pay, could not 
 make so clear a distinction. Their great wealth was generally 
 misused, and their unpopularity cannot be wondered at. 
 Their daughters often made great marriages both with the court 
 noblesse and the legal families; but the sons who succeeded 
 their fathers as members of the company of farmers-general 
 
 ' Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, vol. viii., p. 26. 
 
1 1 6 The Farmers-general and the Revolution, [chap. 
 
 had and used every opportunity to indulge in the gay and 
 licentious life of Paris. The way in which these young and 
 generally ill-educated men had raised the price of all Parisian 
 luxuries was bitterly satirized by the older noblesse, but there 
 were never wanting some to favour projects of charity and 
 assist deserving individuals. As a body they could not be 
 expected to look upon the revolutionary movement with 
 favour ; but individually they knew, none better, that with a 
 free and representative government men of wealth would 
 find far greater scope for the employment of their money 
 than under an absolute monarch. Necker himself knew that 
 confidence and credit were necessary for the success of any 
 commercial speculation, and knew, too, that capital could 
 never be safe in a country where revolution was imminent 
 and riots of daily occurrence. Safety and good administration 
 are necessary for the development of individual and national 
 resources, and therefore the great French flTianciers were 
 individually favourable to a scheme of responsible government. 
 Necker knew that his old Swiss associate, Thelusson, had 
 made a far larger fortune in London than he had been ever 
 able to make in Paris, and understood that before France 
 could hope to rival England, or even supply herself with 
 necessaries, capitalists must be able to use their capital 
 without undue restrictions and with confidence. Besides, 
 Necker and the financiers saw clearly that if matters were 
 ■ allowed to go on as they had done, national bankruptcy must 
 be the result; and who could sufier more from such bankruptcy 
 than the great companies which had lent the government 
 such immense sums ? It is therefore only fair to say that 
 although the financiers felt that their great gains must cease 
 with the establishment of a new form of government, they 
 knew also that a change was necessary, and the sooner and 
 more peacefully a new system could be established, the sooner 
 they would be able to obtain, if not such immense gains, at 
 least safe and profitable investment for their money. 
 
 If the great financiers formed one class of the aristocracy 
 of the city of Pai'is, the lawyers formed another, and in their 
 
iv.] The Lawyers of the Parlement. 1 1 7 
 
 own opinion the chief section. The legal profession in France, 
 and especially in Paris, had, in the absence of political life, 
 been more favoured in producing great men than any other. 
 The French lawyers, ever since the time of Cujas and L'Hopital, 
 had been world-famous ; the French law universities were 
 known to possess the most learned professors, and the pleadings 
 at the Paris bar were studied all over Europe. And this fame 
 was not undeserved. Since the days of L'Hopital there had 
 always been great lawyers in France, and at the outbreak of 
 the Revolution the acknowledged chief of the Parlement of 
 Paris, Lamoignon de Malesherbes, well sustained their repu- 
 tation. The influence of the great provincial parlements, and 
 the afifection in which they were held, has been noticed when 
 discussing the elections to the States-General, and will be 
 further examined when the later history of the Revolution 
 in the provinces is considered, and the provincial parlements 
 had often produced great thinkers and great men — greatest 
 of all Montesquieu, president of the Parlement of Bordeaux. 
 The Parlement of Paris had at the time of the Fronde 
 attempted to make itself a political power, and was tilled with 
 a mixed desire to imitate the privileges and obtain the same 
 power as the English Parliament, and to act on the same 
 principles as the Senate at Rome. The lawyers of the Fronde 
 had claimed great privileges ; they declared that though 
 places in the Parlement were either hereditary or purchased, 
 they were yet to be regarded as the representatives of the 
 people of France. The claim was of course untenable, but the 
 recollection of the Fronde had nerved the lawyers of Paris 
 during more than one struggle with the court. In the reign 
 of Louis XV., when most lawyers were Jansenists, they had 
 been constant in attacking the Jesuits, and had been at last 
 successful; yet towards the end of his reign they had been 
 banished, and an attempt made to abolish the existing system. 
 Maupeou, who at this time, though in exile, was still Chancellor 
 of France, had planned to abolish for ever the hereditary 
 parlements, and to establish new courts of law, the judges of 
 which were to be nominated by the king. From the point of 
 
ii8 The Parlement and the Revolution. [chap, 
 
 Tie-w of affording greater facility and speed in the adminis- 
 tration of justice, the change would have been of advantage to 
 the suitors ; but the pebple of France were not prepared to look 
 calmly upon the abolition of their old courts by the king and 
 Maupeou. The popularity of the parlements had increased 
 during the reign of Louis XVI. Having either inherited or pur- 
 chased their offices, the counsellors felt that they had a freehold 
 right in them, and were not afraid to beard the king and his 
 ministers. When they did so they always gained popular 
 applause, and were not only regarded, but regarded them- 
 selves, as the real representatives of the French people. Their 
 popularity was shown in the failure of the attempt to forcibly 
 eject Dupont, the economist, when drawing up the cahier of 
 his bailliago, and Beugnot had lost his election for a similar 
 reason.^ Yet this very belief in their popularity was a source 
 of danger to the parlements of France. They had often 
 petitioned for, and had at last obtained, the summons of the 
 States- General without foreseeing that it would effectually 
 deprive themselves of the position they claimed to hold ; but 
 when the States-General met, and the tiers dtat proclaimed 
 itself the National Assembly, the Parlement of Paris began 
 to protest. Duval d'Espr^mesnil, who had been imprisoned 
 for protesting against Brienne's decrees, and who had then 
 been the hero of the populace of Paris, had now become a 
 chief leader of the noblesse, and his example was followed by 
 others of the leaders in former parliamentary struggles. The 
 lawyers believed that a States-General of the old form would 
 simplify matters of government, and then retire for another 
 century and leave the Parlement possessed of its old and 
 many new privileges. But wl>en the States-General was 
 turned by the victory of the tiers (^tat into a National 
 AsiSembly, and claimed a right to draw up a new constitution 
 for France, and even showed a disposition to interfere with 
 the administration of justice, the lawyers thought things had 
 gone too far. The feeling, therefore, among the old legal 
 families and the judges of the Parlement at this time was 
 * Chapter i. p. 44. 
 
IV.] The Literary and Scientific Men. 119 
 
 one of undisguised surprise and hostility — surprise at the 
 temerity, and hostility to the success, of the reformers in the 
 Assembly. It must always be remembered that the judges 
 in France are not recruited, as in England, from the bar. 
 Most of the counsellors of the parlements were noble either by 
 office or by tenure, and very many of them sat in the Estate 
 of the nublesse ; while the avocats and procureurs, who seldom 
 had such wealth and hardly ever such position, formed 
 the bulk of the tiers ^tat. These avocats and procureurs 
 looked by no means with favour on the ancient administration 
 of justice ; they believed that a new system would lead to an 
 increase in their fees, and increased facilities for the practice 
 of the law. In Paris, therefore, while the leaders of the 
 Parlement, such as B'Espremesnil, were in open opposition to 
 the revolutionary movement, the avocats, who included among 
 them such men as Danton and Camille Desmoulins in Paris, 
 and Robespierre and Potion in the provinces, were at the head 
 of every movement towards further and more complete 
 reform. 
 
 The new generation of literaiy men, who had great influence 
 in the society of Paris, were nearly in a body in favour of the 
 new ideas. From the example of England they ought not to 
 have been so, for when political life is open, the people are apt 
 to think more of their politicians than of their writers. On 
 the other hand, the literary men of France could not have been 
 in a more enviable position. When not persecuted by the 
 court, they made great incomes, not so much by the sale of 
 their books as in their pensions from their own and foreign 
 monarchs. Voltaire had made large sums as an army con- 
 tractor, and had died Marquis de Ferney; Rousseau's wants 
 were supplied by ladies of all ranks, and pensions were freely 
 given to every man of letters of any standing. Science was 
 equally protected, and the thinkers of England had good cause 
 to be jealous of the position and influence of the thinkers of 
 France. Nevertheless, with exception of the older men, the 
 learned classes were in favour of reform. Bailly, the astro- 
 nomer and member of the three academies, was president of 
 
I20 The Bourgeois of Paris and the Revolution, [chap. 
 
 the National Assembly; Condorcet was an elector of Paris; 
 Marmontel might have been a deputy for Paris ; and it seemed 
 as if in future times the new French government would be 
 largely composed of great writers and savants of established 
 reputations. The number of them who contributed to the 
 numerous journals has been mentioned, and those who did not 
 were as enthusiastic as those who did. Exception must be 
 made of a few wits about the court. Men of wit love a court, 
 for their sallies, even if not of the most refined kind, always 
 meet acceptance there. Rivarol, though but the son of an inn- 
 keeper, was as great a supporter of the divine right of the King 
 of France as if he had come of the ancient family to which 
 he pretended to belong. Certain court poets were similarly 
 impressed into the service of absolute monarchy ; but as a class 
 it may fairly be said that every writer or thinker of any note, 
 except a few of the former generation, was a warm and hearty 
 supporter of the revolutionary movement at its beginning. 
 
 The middle class, who formed the bourgeoisie in France, 
 whose fortunes had been made in trade, had and always have 
 had far more of a class feeling than in any other country. 
 Their numbers in French towns are always great, for habitual 
 thrift makes it possible for large numbers of shops and manu- 
 factories to exist, yielding but very small profits. This class 
 in Paris was particularly large, for its tradesmen had not only 
 to supply the demands of a large population and an extrava- 
 gant court, but to send all over Europe articles de Paris ; and 
 this class was still further increased in numbers by the great 
 desire possessed by every Frenchman to retire when he shall 
 have made a suflScient competency. Among the 405 electors 
 there were, with 183 lawyers and 93 shopkeepers, no less than 
 50 bourgeois, who had simply made their little fortunes in 
 trade and sold their shops. The bourgeoisie, especially the 
 portion of it which had retired; had plenty of time for 
 political speculations, and formed an important factor to be 
 considered in the future government of Paris. Fairly well 
 educated, they were nearly all enthusiastic for a representative 
 system of government in which they believed they must have 
 
IV. J The Bourgeois and the Revolution. 121 
 
 the greatest weight. In the elections in Paris and all the 
 great towns, by the very terms of the rfeglement the bourgeois 
 had the preponderating influence. It was the offshoots of the 
 bourgeoisie who became avocats and formed the majority of the 
 six hundred deputies of the tiers dtat. The bourgeois of Paris 
 were proud of the bourgeois deputies, and were ready to do all 
 in their power to assist them in gaining their cause. It maj- be 
 said that the whole movement, from the year 1789 to the year 
 1791, was a movement of the bourgeois against the court and 
 the aristocracy. The movement of the people was yet to 
 come. But yet, if the bourgeoisie of Paris and the provincial 
 towns was anxious for the establishment of a popular govern- 
 ment, which would give them not only a share in the elections 
 but the chief influence in future assemblies, they wished yet 
 more ardently for something else, the safety of their little 
 properties. To this must be ascribed the establishment of the 
 Garde Nationale, their organization in municipalities, their 
 sincere support of a reorganization of the finances ; but to this, 
 too, must be ascribed that selfishness which made them and their 
 leaders fail when the crisis of the Revolution arrived. Many 
 great men sprung from this class. Of all the leaders of the 
 Kevolution not more than one or two can be said not to have 
 belonged to the bourgeoisie ; but yet as a class they failed to 
 be equal to those great sacrifices which the attempt to win a 
 victory for a great cause must always entail. Before the 
 taking of the Bastille, all the bourgeois of Paris were expecting 
 great things from the action of their deputies at Versailles, and 
 believed that a triumphal period had arrived for them. What, 
 therefore, was their consternation and surprise, when they heard 
 that Necker was dismissed, and that the dissolution of the 
 National Assembly would shortly follow ! Yet it was not the 
 bourgeois who took the Bastille and stayed the progress of 
 reaction, but the ouvriers, or working men of Paris. 
 
 The condition of the working classes in Paris before the 
 outbreak of the Revolution is most difficult to describe. 
 Records they left none ; memoirs speak of them either as 
 brigands or poor starved creatures; and the chief means by 
 
122 The Ouvriers of Paris. [chap. 
 
 which to gauge their condition is to examine the price of food 
 and necessaries at that period. In most towns such an exami- 
 nation satisfactorily fixes the condition of the working classes, 
 but in Paris an exceptional state of affairs existed. Not only 
 were there many thousands of working men employed regularly 
 or irregularly in the various trades and manufactures of Paris, 
 but to Paris flocked unemployed workmen from the whole of 
 France. It was quite possible, as is shown in the sketch of 
 her early life by Madame Roland,^ for a workman, if he knew 
 his trade, to live fairly comfortably throughout the eighteenth 
 century, and occasionally by industry to raise himself to the 
 position of a bourgeois. The members of the guilds were at 
 least always able to live ; the very existence of trade guilds, 
 which dated in many instances for centuries back, assured the 
 existence of certain lixed wages. Every employment, even 
 down to the water-carriers and flower-sellers, was carefully 
 regulated by statute, and the numbers of guild brothers and 
 sisters were carefully kept down to such numbers as could be 
 certain of fair wages and of employment. But this interference 
 with natural economical laws must necessarily have increased 
 the amount of unemployed and badly remunerated labour. 
 Every man could not be a guild brother, and for his free 
 labour he could obtain no fair salary, and often he could obtain 
 no employment at all. He was not allowed to undersell a 
 guild brother, or to obtain employment in opposition to him. 
 Turgot had seen that the abolition of guilds was one of the 
 things most necessary before the establishment of a happy 
 and prosperous industrial class. It might reduce the wages 
 of the guild brothers, but it would fix the remuneration of all 
 labour at its proper rate. The existence of guilds, then, was 
 the chief cause of the waste of labour in France, and this had 
 recently been increased by the conclusion of the commercial 
 treaty with England. Side by side with the importation of 
 cheap English goods came the introduction of English ma- 
 chinery, and a similar war against machinery to that which 
 was then going on in England was beginning to break out in 
 ' Memoires de Madame Doland, ed. Dauban, p. 3, 1?64. 
 
IV,] The Charities of Paris. 123 
 
 France. The unemployed workmen, whether from the guild 
 system, the treaty with England, or the introduction of 
 machinery, all flocked to Paris, where they could obtain no 
 work, and where they had to beg. These crowds of able- 
 bodied beggars, who had every inclination to work, increased 
 the danger of riots in Paris ; and it must never be forgotten 
 that where there is poverty among those strong enough to 
 work, there must be stiU greater distress amongst those who, 
 from their sex, age, or infirmity, are still less able to find work. 
 It was this mass of unemployed labourers who supplied the 
 rioters of the Palais-Hoyal and the conquerors of the Bastille. 
 It was the thought of the starving wives and children at 
 home which drove them to madness, riot, and insurrection. 
 These were the men who received the pay of Orleans and 
 listened to Saint-Huruge's harangues. These were the men 
 who sacked R^veillon's factory and murdered FouUon. The 
 distress in Paris had particularly increased in the spring of 
 1789. Bad harvests and a curiously bad system of taxation 
 had raised the price of bread enormously high, so that even 
 labourers in regular work found it difiicult to live. How 
 much worse, then, was the condition of those who had no 
 chance of getting work ! For these starving masses the 
 only resources which existed were charity and the royal 
 prisons. 
 
 The organization of the charities of Paris was at that time 
 extremely good, as it is stilL The various almanacks for the 
 year 1789 contain, at the end of their lists of the deputies to 
 the National Assembly, the patronesses of the various charities 
 of Paris. The ladies, as, for instance, Madame Necker and 
 Madame Lavoisier, alternated the gaiety of their salons and 
 the pleasures of the theatre with very real labour amongst the 
 poor and suffering. Nor were the men behind them. Santerre 
 in particular, the wealthy brewer of the Faubourg St. Antoine, 
 gained his popularity before the convocation of the States- 
 General by his liberahty to all the poor about him. But it 
 private charity did much to alleviate the distress, government 
 did very little. True, there were many establishments and 
 
124 ^/^^ Ouvriers of Paris and the Revolution. 1_chap. 
 
 hospitals provided, but they were generally so badly adminis- 
 tered that the advantages they offered gave but little relief. 
 At the famous Hotel Dieu, virhich was supposed to be the 
 most splendid building in Europe for its purpose, the advan- 
 tages were minimized and the chances of cure very slight, 
 owing to the filthy condition of the wards and the scarcity of 
 attendance. The best-managed hospital of all was that of the 
 " Enfants Trouv^s," managed by the Sisters of Mercy, whose 
 administration was seldom, if ever, complained of. The govern- 
 ment spent its energies rather in taking measures to expel the 
 unemployed from Paris, to send them to prisons or impress 
 them into the army, than in assisting them by superintending 
 its own charitable institutions. 
 
 Side by side with all the wealth and gaiety of Paris 
 existed a depth of misery which has never been exceeded. 
 In the very worst days of the Revolution some sort of employ- 
 ment could be obtained, but in 1789 every chance of earning 
 bread seemed to be closed against the starving ouvrier. It 
 was no wonder, then, that political events moved them deeply. 
 It was true that the ouvrier was entirely omitted from the 
 Reglement du E.oi, and that he had no vote for the deputies 
 who were to regenerate France. Yet, like the peasant, he 
 expected all good things from the Assembly, and, like the 
 peasant, he was ready to give up his life, which indeed could 
 be of little value to him, rather than that the Assembly should 
 be hindered in its work. The Assembly was to give the 
 ouvriers bread, was to give them work. They cared little for 
 the franchise, yet it was easy to stir them up to a riot by a 
 whisper that the king was going to dissolve the Assembly. 
 Next to the Assembly, Necker and Mirabeau were their 
 idols. Necker was in their eyes the good minister who had 
 called the Assembly, and would make the king and the queen 
 give them bread ; Mirabeau was their '' little father " Mira- 
 beau, who loved the people, and preferred to sit amongst their 
 representatives than with his own order. Even when craving 
 for food, the promise of it from some mob orator was better 
 than being hunted from the city; and though they had little 
 
IV,] The Rdveillon Riot, 125 
 
 but hope to live upon, yet that little hope they would not be 
 deprived of by any nobleman or aristocrat in Paris. 
 
 Granted a discontented class of ouvriers in Paris and riots 
 there, is there any need to look for a further link ? It has 
 been asserted that the Duke of Orleans paid the ringleaders of 
 the riots, and there is no doubt that his satellite, Saint-Huruge, 
 was popular among them and frequently their leader; but 
 it may be safely asserted that he rather pointed out what 
 objects they should attack than originated the outbreaks 
 themselves. No doubt Saint-Huruge did pay, and pay well, 
 those who distinguished themselves in popular riots, but if 
 the duke had paid at ever so low a rate all the rioters, his 
 large fortune would not have lasted long. The hired brigands, 
 against whom the court always directed its proclamations, did 
 not exist, and had there been no Duke of Orleans, similar 
 popular movements would have taken place, even though their 
 direction might have been slightly altered. 
 
 The first riot of importance, with regard to which the 
 word "brigand" was mentioned, was the attack upon the 
 manufactory of one Rdveillon, an elector for Paris. On 
 April 28, the day of the fashionable races at Longehamps, 
 an attack was made on a manufactory of wall-papers, the 
 proprietor of which was at the time sitting as an elector 
 at the Hotel de Ville. It was said that R^veillon had 
 declared that there was no starvation among the people, and 
 that three sous a day was quite sufficient for a man to live 
 upon. Enraged by such reports, the populace of St. Antoine, 
 headed by certain " brigands," attacked the manufactory and 
 completely sacked it. The unfortunate proprietor complained 
 to the electors of Paris, who sent Santerre, whose influence 
 and popularity was well known, to attempt to quell the riot. 
 The Gardes Fran^aises were also ordered out, but their officers 
 deemed it prudent not to attack the rioters, because they 
 could not trust the disposition of their own soldiers. This riot, 
 which seems to have arisen solely from disgust at the reported 
 heartless speech of R^veillon, was declared to be the work 
 of the Duke of Orleans. This is in every respect improbable, 
 
126 The Mil tiny among the Gardes Frangaises. [chap 
 
 and still more that the radical leaders had any share in i 
 The time was not yet come when a riot would assist tL...j 
 cause of Orleans, and the electors of Paris were sure enough 
 to return deputies of advanced opinions without being 
 threatened by the fear of riots. From the point of view of 
 expediency it was far more likely that the court iplght have 
 stirred up the riot to enlist the bourgeoisie or. the side of 
 order. The simplest explanation is here piobably the correct 
 one. A crowd of hungry workmen hear of a speech which 
 seems to mock their poverty, and try to wreak their vengeance 
 on the wealthy mocker. The success of the Rdveillon riot 
 and the unwillingness of the Gardes Fran9aises to act, proved 
 to the popular leaders how much could be done at a crisis 
 by a riot and its important political effect. The ouvriers felt 
 that their numbers gave them strength, and that if they 
 deteimined to act, nothing existing could stop them. They 
 therefore met in the Palais-Royal and in the streets with 
 renewed hope, and they openly said that if the National 
 Assembly could not help them, they should help themselves, 
 and during the first sessions of the States-General the working 
 classes were with difficulty prevented from going to the help 
 of the deputies at Versailles, but refrained from a belief that 
 the good king meant well towards his people. 
 
 There might formerly have been some fear felt of the 
 Gardes Fran9aises, but this speedily vanished after the mutiny 
 in that regiment. The popular societies, which were being 
 established all over Paris in the months of May and June, 
 saw the importance of gaining over the soldiers, and a popular 
 club had been formed among the Gardes Fran9aises themselves, 
 with the help of one of their captains, the Marquis de Valady. 
 Most of the officers lived apart from them, and the society 
 had made considerable progress when an attempt was made 
 to check it on June 30 by the unpopular colonel, the Due du 
 Chatelet, who arrested eleven of the chief members, and sent 
 them to the prison of the Abbaye. But the mischief had gone 
 too far ; the Gardes Francjaises knew their strength, and broke 
 out of barracks, and, after being joined by a crowd in the 
 
IV.] IVews of Neckers Dismissal. 127 
 
 Palais-Royal, forced their way into the prison, and, amid 
 popular rejoicings, released their comrades.^ The news of the 
 mutiny was received with delight by the habitues of the 
 Palais-Royal, who feted the Gardes Fran9aises and were 
 feted by them in return, and all hope of the soldiers being 
 an effectual police in Paris quite disappeared. 
 
 The more sagacious leaders of the National Assembly also 
 saw their advantage, and knew that they could count upon 
 Paris to back them up in the last extremity. Such was the 
 situation of Paris, when, on July 12, a young man covered 
 with dust rushed into the gardens of the Palais-Royal, and 
 reported from Versailles that Necker had been dismissed. 
 
 1 Belation de ce qui s'ed passe a VAbhaye Saint-Gmmain k 30 Juin cm 
 soir. B.M.— F. 83a (17.) 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TAKING OI" THE BASTILIiE. 
 
 The news of Necker's dismissal — Camille Desmoulins— July 12 — The 
 electors at the Hotel de Ville — July i3^The morning of July 14 
 — The Hotel des Invalides — The Bastille — The storming of the 
 Bastille^Release of the prisoners — Incidents at the Hotel de 
 Ville — The Assembly on July 12 and 13 — ^Lafayette vice-president 
 — The king visits the Assembly — The fifty deputies at Paris — 
 Preparations — The king enters Paris — Lally-ToUendal — The first 
 emigration — Bailly's troubles — -The National Guard — Lafayette — 
 Murder of Foullon — Measures of the Assembly — The Assembly 
 wastes time — The session of August 4 — How the provinces imitated 
 Paris. 
 
 The 12th of July was a Sunday, and the crowd at the Palais- 
 Royal was therefore greater than usual. In addition to the 
 workmen out of work and the usual loungers, were assembled 
 the better fed and better clothed individuals of the prosperous 
 bourgeois and ouvrier class. But all alike were excited by 
 the news ; and when the young man leapt upon a table in 
 the gardens of the Palais-Royal, and harangued the holiday 
 crowd and the frequenters of the wineshops and gambling- 
 houses on the subject of the dismissal of Necker, the whole 
 crowd became animated by one impulse, and that was a desire 
 to show their strength. They declared it was no longer 
 possible to expect their good king to carry out reforms, or 
 to foster the designs of the Assembly, because the queen and 
 the courtiers had determined once more to establish the old 
 despotic and tyrannical system. The young man who had 
 
CHAP, v.] Camille Desmoulins. 129 
 
 set alight the flame of resentment burning in every heart 
 was one who had to play a great yet pathetic part in the 
 future history of the revolution. It was Camille Desmoulins. 
 Benott Lucie Simplice Camille Desmoulins ^ was the type 
 of the young avocats out of work, who had at present only 
 recruited the ranks of journalism and the popular clubs, but 
 who were to form the nucleus of the great band of the leaders 
 of the Convention. In every respect, in disposition and in 
 real genius, Camille differed from the group of young avocats 
 who were to form the bulk of the Girondin party. His wit 
 was keen enough to see through the utopian theories of Brissot, 
 and of his old college friend Robespierre, and it allied him in 
 later life to Danton, the great practical statesman of the second 
 period of the Revolution. He was born at Guise in 1760. 
 Guise was a small provincial town, the capital of certain 
 domains of the Prince de Cond^, and his father held the post 
 of lieutenant-civil of the town, and was in fact local a^ent for 
 the princely owner. But the emoluments of his office were not 
 great, and had it not been for a relative, named Defiefville des 
 Essarts, also an avoeat, but a very rich one, Camille would not 
 have had the education which enabled him to make his mark 
 as an author. As it was, M. des Essarts obtained for him a 
 bursarship or scholarship at the great college of Louis le Grand 
 at Par's. It was there that he made the acquaintance of 
 Maximilien Robespierre, who was also a scholar, and struck 
 up an intimate acquaintance with him. Camille is a good 
 example of one side of the influence of the education given in 
 the old seminaries on the ideas of the future great men of the 
 Revolution. The mode of teaching pursued at such colleges 
 as preserved the tradition of the Jesuits was entirely based 
 on the study of the classics. The classical languages were not 
 only studied by mastering the meaning of authors, but in the 
 practice of composition. These compositions, which were called 
 condones, were very different from the Lafin prose in modern 
 
 1 Camille et Lucile Desmoulins, d'apres des documents nouveaux ou 
 inedits, by Jules Claretie, 1875 ; and CEuvres de Camille Desmoulins, ed, 
 by Jules Claretie. 2 vols. 1874. 
 
 VOL. L K 
 
130 Camille Desmoulins. Lchap. 
 
 English public schools.^ Instead of writing a translation or 
 a theme upon some given subject, the pupils had to read or 
 speak harangues after the manner of Cicero ; and it is from the 
 practice of writing such compositions in imitation of the flowery 
 style of Cicero, and speaking them aloud, that the florid style 
 of eloquence which prevailed in the Convention was learned. 
 But Camille not only mastered a fine style of Latin eloquence, 
 like many of his contemporaries, but had studied with more 
 care than was usually bestowed certain of the less florid 
 and more instructive writers. Tacitus seems to have been 
 his favourite classical author, and it was from Tacitus that the 
 most eloquent passages in the " Vieux Cordelier " derive their 
 inspiration. Camille was, of course, destined for the bar ; but 
 he showed no desire to settle down in the provinces, and 
 determined to try his fortune at the bar of Paris. There he 
 made the acquaintance of Danton, but failed hopelessly as an 
 avocat. His stuttering and stammering were so greatly againsf 
 him as to win him a nickname among his intimates ; but 
 at the great crisis of his career, on July 12, all traces of 
 his infirmity seemed to have disappeared, and he must have 
 spoken clearly, distinctly, and eloquently, to guide the mob as 
 he did on that occasion. Though he had failed at the bar, 
 literature was still open to him ; but Camille had none of the 
 laborious industry which had won fame for Camus. He pre- 
 ferred to wander about in the Palais-Royal, or by the banks 
 of the Seine, dreaming of a new era for France, or else in the 
 gardens of the Luxembourg, hoping to see again the face of the 
 girl he loved but was too poor to marry, Lucile Duplessis. 
 He was to be the greatest journalist of the Eevolution, and 
 indeed the greatest journalist France had ever produced ; but 
 the censure of the press was too heavy before 1789 for him 
 to find his career. On the news of the summons of the States- 
 General he had hurried back to Guise, and probably written 
 one or two electoral pamphlets there, and had taken very 
 great interest in the local elections. Guise was the head- 
 quarters of a secondary- bailliage, dependent on the grand 
 
 * Aulard's ies Orateurs de la Ccnstituante, p. 6. 
 
V-J Camille Desmoulins. 131 
 
 bailliage of Laon. At the head of the poll in the tiers dtat was 
 elected Camille's father ; but the elder M. Desmoulins had no 
 desire to cut a figure at Paris, and though unanimously elected, 
 refused the honour of representing his bailliage at Laon. In 
 his place M. des Essarts was returned as first deputy, and 
 Camille himself was elected twenty -fourth elector for Guise out 
 of seventy-five who were to go to Laon. There M. des Essarts 
 was elected second deputy to the States -General, and bitter are 
 the complaints of Camille that his father had not sufficient 
 ambition to accept such an honour. On his return 10 Paris 
 his discontent was increased, when he heard from every bailliage 
 of the number of young avocats who had been elected deputies, 
 and especially that his old college friend Maximilien de Kobes- 
 pierre had been elected deputy for Artois. Nevertheless, the 
 electoral operations had increased Camille's chance of public 
 employment. M. des Essarts was a man of influence, and 
 Camille could sign himself " Elector of Laon." Under this 
 title he published a short " Ode to the States-General," of 
 which neither the poetry nor the sentiments are particularly 
 remarkable. During the months of May and June he was 
 getting more and more excited over political affairs, but 
 knowing no publisher like his friend Loustallot, he was unable 
 to publish his opinions on public affairs. The very day 
 before the July 12, which was to make him a public character, 
 he had offered Momoro, "the first printer of liberty," and 
 future Hdbertist, the manuscript of " La France Libre," but 
 Momoro had not sufficient confidence in liberty to venture to 
 print the strong language of Camille Desmoulins. Eloquent, 
 with more wit than industry, and a facile power of expression 
 in charming and well-chosen words, Camille Desmoulins was a 
 born journalist, and his career as a pamphleteer and journalist 
 was short, but very remarkable ; but at present he was a pam- 
 phleteer with a pamphlet in his pocket only, and a journalist 
 with the idea of a journal in his head ; which makes it the more 
 remarkable that a provincial avocat, with a jjrovincial accent 
 and a stutter, should have been able to make so deep an 
 impression upon the mob of the Palais-Royal upon July 12i 
 
132 Ctirtius and his Busts. Lciiap. 
 
 As Camille finished his harangue, some one shouted to 
 him, " What colours shall we wear ? " which he answered by 
 tearing down a green bough from a neighbouring tree, and his 
 example was followed by all the crowd present. The memor- 
 able Sunday ended by attacks upon various shops, gunsmiths 
 and bakers alike; but previous to these attacks there took 
 place a solemn procession through the streets, and the crowd, 
 led by Camille, thronged to the shop of Curtius, No. 20, 
 Boulevard du Temple. Curtius was a Swiss doctor of Berne, 
 whose beautiful anatomical studies in wax had attracted the 
 attention of the Prince de Conti when in Switzerland.^ The 
 prince persuaded him to come to Paris, and to set up as a 
 modeller in wax. Under siich patronage he soon became 
 fashionable, and made a good income by his busts, and by 
 buying and selling pictures of the old masters. His niece, 
 who afterwards became Madame Tussaud, had also learnt to 
 model, and had for some months lived at court while she 
 taught Madame Elisabeth, and it was from his shop that she 
 brought to London the models which formed the basis of her 
 famous collection. Curtius himself, like all the Swiss, was 
 a sturdy radical, and his shop was full of busts of all the 
 popular leaders. The three busts selected by the people to 
 be carried in procession were those of the king, Necker, and 
 the Duke of Orleans. The king was still regarded by the 
 starving population of Paris as willing to help them if his 
 court would permit him ; Necker was the great minister who 
 was to find the people food ; Orleans was the liberal owner of 
 the Palais-Royal. The three idols of July, 1789, were all to be 
 detested by those very people who wished now to carry their 
 busts in triumph. Necker was to fall from power unregretted ; 
 Orleans was to follow Marie Antoinette to the guillotine ; and 
 the king to fall a sacrifice for the sins of his ancestors. 
 
 Curtius readily gave the leaders of the mob two busts of 
 Necker and Orleans, but as he had only a full-length model of 
 the king, he was afraid it would fall to pieces, and refused to 
 
 • Memoirs and Beminisceiices of Madame Tussaud, edited by F. HetvA 
 London : 1838. 
 
v.j Lambescs Charge. 133 
 
 lend it.^ The procession, with the two busts carried before 
 it, marched through the streets without opposition until it 
 arrived at the Place Louis XV. In that square the people found 
 drawn up a German cavalry regiment, the Royal AUemand, 
 under the command of the Prince de Lam base, a descendant of 
 the house of Lorraine, with orders to protect the statue of 
 Louis XV. from insult. The mob pressed round the troopers, 
 and, after insulting words, began to stone them, when suddenly 
 Lambesc ordered his men to advance at a trot arid disperse 
 the procession. At the advance of the troopers towards the 
 TuUeries gardens, where respectable bourgeois were walking 
 and their children playing, the mob fled; the busts were 
 smashed, and several of the crowd, particularly one old man, 
 were badly hurt by cuts from the sabres of the soldiers. The 
 charge was suddenly stopped by a number of the Gardes 
 Fran9aises falling in and preparing to receive cavalry, and 
 on seeing this readiness for civil war, Lambesc feared to go 
 further without specific orders, and galloped slowly back to 
 the rest of the army encamped on the Champ de Mars. 
 
 But the procession had only occupied a portion of the 
 seething populace, and that Sunday night saw many sections of 
 the mob banded in different directions. One section, the more 
 patriotic, sacked the shops of the gunsmiths and seized arms ; 
 others regarded the opportunity as a good one for pillage, and 
 sacked first the bakers' and butchers' shops, and then the 
 taverns. A third section attacked the barriers, at which octroi 
 duties on all imports into Paris were levied, under the leader- 
 ship of an octroi clerk, Jacques Ren^ Hebert. The bourgeois 
 saw v/ho would suffer by this pillaging of the shops, and, as if 
 by magic, patrols of armed bourgeois appeared in the streets, 
 without orders, uniform, or commanders, but in sufficient force, 
 especially in the streets of the rich shops, the Rue Richelieu 
 and the Rue Vivienne, to overawe the rioters. The night of 
 July 12 was one long remembered in Paris. It was the first 
 of many a terrible night which the Parisians were to pass 
 through during the next ten years. It was a night of sleep- 
 1 Madame Tussaud's Memoirs, p. 86. 
 
134 '^The Electors at the Hotel de Ville. [chap. 
 
 lessness for all in Paris, while the smoke rose from the burning 
 barriers, and perpetual encounters between armed pickets and 
 drunken rioters were heard. But with morning came a deter- 
 mination that Paris should never again be subjected to such 
 scenes, and the official government of the city having shown 
 its incapacity to maintain order, it was for the citizens to 
 discharge that duty for themselves. 
 
 In the early morning of the 13th, the electors of Paris, 
 by one common accord, flocked to the Hotel de Ville. 
 They had been elected, as has been said, by the sixty 
 districts for the purpose of electing deputies to the States- 
 General, and ought then to have dispersed. But this they 
 refused to do, and when Paris seemed to be without any 
 recognized government, the chosen electors of the districts 
 took the responsibility on themselves. The provost of the 
 merchants, M. de Flesselles, welcomed the assistance of the 
 electors, and the municipal officers seemed glad to have some- 
 body they might obey. During July 13 the electors were 
 entirely occupied with forming the National Guard of Paris. 
 This National Guard was to consist primarily of two hundred 
 volunteers from every district in Paris, which was to be 
 eventuallj'^ increased to eight hundred, or, in round numbers, 
 twelve thousand men, to be increased to forty-eight thou- 
 sand. The first twelve thousand were to elect their officers 
 in every district, and make arrangements for patrolling the 
 streets, .to maintain order, day and night. They had as yet 
 no head-quarters, no officers, no legal status, no royal patronage, 
 but were the spontaneous creation of the citizens of Paris, 
 created to maintain order when the government failed. 
 
 The 13th passed, according to a writer of the time, very 
 quietly, considering what a storm it had followed and what a • 
 storm was to follow it ; but it was the calm, not of quiet, but 
 of preparation. Throughout that day the agents of Orleans, 
 St. Huruge at their head, were busy organizing plans for the 
 morrow ; and there can be no doubt that the chiefs of the 
 revolutionary party of Paris, such as the members of the Club 
 of the Cordeliers, were as busily engaged. Both Orleans and 
 
v._ Preparations. 135 
 
 the revolutionary party saw that the government must be 
 frightened, and that, if fright did not succeed, there must be 
 civil war. Throughout the 13th leaders were being chosen, 
 pikes were being forged, guns were being distributed, and 
 every preparation made for some great stroke upon the moiTow, 
 though no man knew what that stroke might be. The troops 
 in the Champ de Mars were the natural resource of the court 
 when they heard of the riots in Paris, but De Broglie began to 
 fear for his well -laid schemes when he heard from the Baron 
 de Besenval, whom he had appointed commandant of the camp 
 without Paris, that not even the foreign regiments could be 
 trusted, and that in particular the Swiss regiment of Chateau 
 Vieux was disaffected. For this disaffection he had only him- 
 self to blame. He had made no efficient regulations for feeding 
 the assembled soldiers, and not only did purveyors have leave 
 to come to the camp, but soldiers might come into Paris. 
 The result was, that the soldiers of every regiment were 
 profoundly influenced by the Gardes Fran9aises, and could not 
 be trusted to act against the Parisians. Nevertheless, De 
 Broglie ordered Besenval to risk making one effort at least 
 to put down the mob. 
 
 But the mob on July 14 was of very different composition 
 to the undisciplined multitude which had followed Camille 
 on the 12th. On the 13th, preparations had been made in 
 three different directions. The troops on the Champ de 
 Mars had been got ready for action ; the revolutionary party, 
 under the agents of Orleans and of the popular clubs, had also 
 been prepared ; and the electors at the Hotel de Ville had 
 formed a powerful body of bourgeois into a Garde Nationale 
 for the maintenance of order. This body had been augmented 
 by many of the rioters of the night of the 12th, who now en- 
 listed themselves as maintainers of order ; and the hopes of the 
 bourgeois for good order were proportionately raised. There 
 remained only the three thousand Gardes Fran9aises, who had 
 been of old the police of Paris. These men had been imbued 
 so deeply with the ideas of the Revolution that they could not 
 be trusted again by the government. Anything like a return 
 
136 The Night of July 13. [chap. 
 
 to the old system would inevitably bring punishment on them- 
 selves as mutineers. They were, therefore, fully committed to 
 the cause of the Revolution, and supplied many of the leaders 
 who were to conduct the mob to victory on the 14th. 
 
 The night of the 13th is described by witnesses as one 
 presenting sights strange to every Parisian eye and sounds 
 new to every Parisian ear. From the perpetual countersigns, 
 from the steady march of the patrols, Paris might be believed 
 to be occupied by a military force. From the sacked shops 
 and ruined barriers, Paris might have been a recently captured 
 city after a hard-fought siege. But the glowing faces alike 
 of patrols and of every poor labourer showed Paris was not a 
 conquered city, but rather one about to conquer its own liberty. 
 At daybreak on the 14:th the tocsin was heard ringing 
 from every church tower. The shops were closed, and some- 
 thing, men knew not what, was going to happen. Did the 
 populace themselves know ? Certainly not. The wildest 
 ideas were floating about the city. Some said the populace 
 and the National Guard were going out to fight the troops on 
 the Champ de Mars — a ridiculous bravado which could only 
 have ended in failure; others were heard to say that the 
 people would march to Versailles and reinstate Necker by 
 main force ; others, again, were even heard to whisper that 
 the king must be deposed, and Orleans must be King of 
 France. But one thing all agreed upon, that there must be 
 no communication between Paris and Versailles for fear of 
 treachery. The people in the streets turned back every one 
 who tried to leave the city. Not even the messengers from 
 the electors at the Hotel de Ville could reach the g-ates, and 
 the electors themselves, the people's chosen, were suspected of 
 betraying the people's interests. They were closely surrounded 
 in the Hotel de Ville, where they had sat all through the 
 preceding day and night, by a tumultuous mob, which allowed 
 none of them to leave the building. While one mob yet 
 hemmed in the electors, and individuals were preventing any 
 one leaving Paris, two mobs of well-led and stout rioters were 
 on their way in two distinct directions. But their inten- 
 
v.] The Rioters advance. 137 
 
 tions this time were not pillage. July 14 -was not soiled by 
 the sacking of bakers' shops. On the contrary, the wishes of 
 the mob were now political; and while the starving work- 
 men were surrounding the H6tel de Ville, the disbanded 
 Gardes Fran^aises, the young avocats, and many of a yet higher 
 rank and position, swelled the throngs which were marching 
 on the Hotel des Invalides and the Bastille. Nor were they 
 without the countenance of the Church. The curd of St. 
 Etienne du Mont led his parishioners in the throng which 
 was marching to the Hotel des Invalides. The march of both 
 pai'ties was uninterrupted by the soldiery, for Besenval dared 
 not risk his troops in opposition to the excited mobs. The 
 edifices on which these well-organized bands of the populace 
 were now advancing had been built at very different dates 
 and for very different purposes. Seeing that both were now 
 approached for the same reason, it is a mistake to assert that 
 an attack upon the Bastille had been projected on the day 
 before. If there was any plan in the minds of the chief leaders, 
 it was to advance upon Versailles. They did not know that 
 their purpose would be as well advanced in Paris itself The 
 two attacks upon the Bastille and the Invalides were both sub- 
 servient to the main design, and it was intended only Cd force 
 their respected commandants to distribute the store of arms 
 collected in their arsenals to the people. 
 
 The Hotel des Invalides had been built in the Faubourg 
 St. Germain between 1670 and 1C74, after the designs of 
 Liberal Bruant, by Louis XIV. It was a large building, of the 
 regular character of the buildings of Mansart, and had indeed 
 been completed by J. H. Mansart himself, whose style corre- 
 sponded to the pseudo-classical style which was made fashion- 
 able in England by Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones. The 
 buildings of this period were all designed for appearance 
 rather than for defence, and the Hotel des Invalides was 
 no exception. It had been built by the direction of Louvois, 
 the famous Minister of War, and is one of the chief monuments 
 of his great organization of the French army. Louvois had 
 been the first to form a standing army. He had supplied that 
 
138 The Hotel des Invalides. [chap. 
 
 army with a corps of engineers, artillery, etc., and he had 
 established the H6tel des Invalides for old soldiers, and the 
 order of St. Louis for officers. But, like aU other French 
 institutions, its original intention had been corrupted during 
 the eighteenth century, and, until the vigorous ministry of the 
 Gomte de Saint-Germain, it had become a convenient alms- 
 house for the retired footmen of the nobility rather than a 
 hospital for disabled soldiers. At this period the building was 
 garrisoned by a few old invalids, under the command of the 
 Gomte de Sombreuil, a veteran officer. Against the Hotel des 
 Invalides, which was believed to contain 28,000 stand of arms, 
 moved a powerful mob, under the command of M. Ethys de 
 Corny and the cure of St. Etienne du Mont. When they 
 reached the Hotel, Sombreuil refused to surrender the arms, 
 and a collision might have occurred had it not been possible 
 for the rioters, by the very arcliitecture of the building, to 
 break in by many back ways and windows, and take peaceful 
 possession of the arms they required. Hardly had they been 
 successful when this mob, which had come chiefly from the 
 Faubourg St. Marceau, received news that their brothers of the 
 Faubourg St. Antoine had been refused arms and admission 
 to the Bastille, and they at once rushed to their assistance. 
 
 The Bastille was a monument of a very different epoch to 
 the Hotel des Invalides. It did not commemorate the glories 
 of Louis XIV., but rather the tyranny of his ancestors. It was 
 a fine type of the ancient castle, and had been originally built 
 to command the city of Paris. Similar castles had existed 
 near every great town of France, and it is one of Mazarin's 
 titles to fame as a destroyer of feudalism that he caused the 
 destruction of the greater part of these castles in the provinces. 
 But while the provincial castles, with a few exceptions, like 
 the Chateau d'lf, near Marseilles, had been destroyed, the 
 Bastille had become, by the time of the Fronde, a yet more 
 important fortress. The city of Paris had outgrown its 
 ancient limits, and the Faubourg St. Antoine had grown up 
 without the gate which the Bastille commanded. Around its 
 portal had been fought one of the fiercest battles of the 
 
v.] The Bastille. 139 
 
 Fronde. Turenne had driven Cond6 from the suburb of 
 St. Antoine, and his soldiers would have entered the city 
 pell-mell with those of Cond6, when the Grande Mademoi- 
 selle, the daughter of Gaston of Orleans, herself pointed the 
 guns of the Bastille against the pursuing enemy. Since the 
 time of the Fronde the Bastille had heard no sound of war, and 
 had been used only as a state prison. Under lettres de cachet 
 prisoners of every rank and every kind had been imprisoned, 
 and many accounts are extant of the regime practised in it. 
 One of the most entertaining is in the memoirs of Madame de 
 Staal Delaunay,^ who was imprisoned there for some months, 
 as a confederate in the conspiracy of the Due and Duchesse de 
 Maine. Since her time Latude had made his famous escape ; 
 Lally had been beheaded within its walls for failing in India, 
 and many a pamphleteer had languished there. The famous 
 work of Linguet ^ on the Bastille had made the state prison 
 notorious to all Europe, and though it was not so badly 
 managed as many a prison in other countries, and certainly 
 far better than the English prisons of Newgate or the Fleet, 
 it had attained a peculiarly detestable reputation. The 
 prisoners consisted chiefly of two classes,^ prisoners of state 
 and those imprisoned by lettres de cachet. The prisoners of 
 state were nearly all pamphleteers, and it became a title of 
 honour to a political opponent of the government to have been 
 in the Bastille. Not only Linguet, but also Brissot, had spent 
 some months there, and many a more obscure author had died 
 there. At present it contained but seven prisoners, together 
 with poor Rdveillon, the paper-manufacturer, whose factory 
 had been sacked, and who was now living within the fortress 
 for safety. The garrison consisted of eighty-two invalids, two 
 
 ' Memoires de Madame de Staal Delaunay, in vol. i. of Barriere's series 
 of Memoires. 
 
 * Mimoires de la Bastille, published 1782 ; and also La Bastile devoilUe. 
 9 parta. 1789-90. 
 
 3 See the Archives de la Bastille, by F. Ravaisson, Paris, 1866-83; 
 and the complete list of all prisoners confined in the Bastille during the 
 reign of Louis XVI. , with their offences, published by Gustave Bord, in 
 the Bemie de la Revolution, March-November, 1883. 
 
140 
 
 Plan of the Bastille, 
 
 [chap. 
 
 REFERENCE. 
 
 ^. KntyatHe io {he Ba$t{llt^ 
 B . Outer Court. 
 O.The Arsenal Gate. 
 
 D . The First Drn-vbrUlsem 
 
 E. The GoTernoi-'s CcurU 
 
 F. The Governor's House, 
 
 Q. The Terrace. 
 ^.T he Second Dravlrjifg^i, 
 V-.TheCieat Court. 
 U.Court'Hu Ptiits." 
 S.The Outer Walt. 
 
 TflB BASTir,LE IN 1789. 
 
^•J Thuriot at the Bastille. i^i 
 
 gunners, and thirty-two men of the Swiss regiment of Salis 
 Samade, under the command of M. de Launay, governor of the 
 castle. 
 
 Such was the condition and history of the fortress which 
 the men of St. Antoine, led by certain Gardes Fran9aises, 
 and old soldiers, had approached to ask for arras.^ De Launay 
 had been for some time expecting such a visit/ and had been 
 informed by Besenval that a reinforcement was under orders 
 for him, and that he was to hold the fortress at all costs. 
 After the late riots he had made every preparation for resist- 
 ance, and had mounted and loaded the guns of the fortress. 
 These preparations had terrified the peaceful inhabitants of 
 all the houses within range of the guns of the Bastille, and the 
 assembly of the district of St. Louis de Culture sent one of 
 their electors, an avocat of some reputation for eloquence, 
 M. Thuriot de la Rosiere, to the governor, begging him to at 
 once dismount the guns. He was accompanied to the first 
 drawbridge through the outer court, which was always left 
 unguarded, by a large crowd, who waited somewhat impa- 
 tiently for the return of their elector, and on his absence 
 began to murmur that he had been seized and imprisoned. 
 Thuriot's interview was a long one. The governor at once 
 positively refused to comply with the request of the inhabi- 
 tants of the neighbouring houses, and when Thuriot protested 
 that he also represented the electors of Paris, De Launay re- 
 fused to acknowledge their competence to command him, and 
 felt justified in this course by a letter from M. de Flesselles, 
 provost of the merchants of Paris, who had bidden him to 
 temporize until he should receive reinforcements. Thuriot was 
 civilly dismissed to go to the electors at the Hotel de Ville, and 
 to ask if they could and would hold the governor blameless 
 if he complied with their demands. As Thuriot was passing 
 out of the Bastille over the outer or advanced drawbridge, 
 exhorting the people to be patient while he went to the 
 
 ' For the taking of the Bastille, see the Memoires sur la Bastille, 
 in Barriere's series of Memoires ; La Prise de la Bastille, by Gustave 
 Bord, 1881 ; and La Prise de la Bastille et ses anniversaires, by Georges 
 Lecocq, 1881. 
 
142 The Attack on the Bastille. [chap. 
 
 Hotel de Ville, an unarmed but angry crowd rushed across 
 the drawbridge, demanding arms, into the governor's court of 
 the fortress. The drawbridge was raised, and a heavy fire 
 opened on the defenceless crowd in the courtyard. The 
 sound of firing, and the shrieks of the wounded in the court- 
 yard, roused the wrath of the men outside the walls and moat, 
 who made impotent attempts to scale the fortress, whilst it 
 summoned to their help many a Garde Fran9ais and national 
 guard, and also a contingent of the men of St. Marceau, who 
 had just armed themselves with the arms they had taken from 
 the Hotel des Invalides. These men were not long in recog- 
 nizing their leaders. The mass who could not know by 
 instinct how to handle their arms only made a clamour, 
 while the old soldiers, the Gardes Fran9aises and a few daring 
 spirits who understood how to obey and when to attack, 
 collected round two soldiers, named Hulin and Elie, opposite 
 the outer drawbridge, and proposed to obey their orders. 
 When the drawbridge had been raised, a plank had still been 
 left across the moat, and across it dashed two old soldiers, 
 Louis Tournay, late of the Regiment Dauphin, and Aubin 
 Bonnemere, late of the Eegiment Royal- Comtois, who soon 
 newed down the ropes supporting the drawbridge, and, 
 assisted by daring men, attacked the heavy door. During 
 this attack there was a momentary cessation of the general 
 clamour round the fortress, when Thuriot, accompanied by two 
 of the electors from the Hotel de Ville, brought a message 
 from the electors, and waved a white flag from the roof of a 
 neighbouring house. But De Launay, by firing three distinct 
 shots, refused to negotiate, and the struggle began again, 
 vaguely in most parts, but with stern determination at the 
 great gate by the drawbridge. The assailants soon broke down 
 the gate. Hulin and Elie, Tournay and Bonnemfere, closely 
 followed by Humbert, Rt^ole, Marceau, Rossignol, Arnfe, and 
 Cholat, rushed into the governor's courtyard of the Bastille. 
 
 This first conquest was signalized by an act of mercy. 
 Some of the mob in the governor's courtyard had seized a 
 young girl, Mademoiselle de Monsigny, and, believing she 
 
v.] Capture of the Bastille, 143 
 
 was De Launay's daughter, were about to burn her, when 
 Aubin Bonnemfere, merciful, like all brave men, snatched her 
 from the hands of the mob, and saved her life at his own 
 imminent peril. But the Bastille was not yet taken, for the 
 second drawbridge was up, and the towers were all capable 
 of long defence, and De Launay was determined to fight to 
 the last. The defection of his soldiers overthrew his last hope ; 
 an officer was seen to wave a piece of paper from the walls, 
 and Stanislas Maillard, a young man of singular bodily 
 activity, ran across a narrow plank over the inner moat and 
 took it from him. The paper contained the unconditional 
 surrender of the garrison. The inner drawbridge was let 
 down, and the conquerers of the Bastille occupied the great 
 court of the fortress. The fi.rst to enter were Humbert, Hulin, 
 Elie, and the handsome young president of the Parlement of 
 Paris, Herault de Sechelles, whose father had been a gallant 
 soldier, and died at the head of his regiment at Minden. 
 With theatrical earnestness the defenders of the fortress and 
 its assailants fell on each other's necks, when suddenly a few 
 shots were heard ; cries of vengeance for treason arose on all 
 sides, and in a few minutes three officers and four soldiers were 
 murdered. More murders would have followed had not Elie, 
 with stentorian voice, demanded that " there should be no 
 blood upon our laurels, and that the prisoners should swear 
 fidelity to the nation, not to the king." Elie had more diffi- 
 culty in saving the life of the governor, De Launay, who had 
 been seized by Arnfe, Cholat, and Maillard, after being frus- 
 trated in his scheme for blowing up the castle by his own 
 garrison, but was at last successful in forming his " conquerors 
 of the Bastille " into a compact body, and leading off the 
 prisoners to the H6tel de Ville. In the governor's court of 
 the Bastille were left eighty-three dead, and fifteen of the 
 assailants afterwards died of their wounds. 
 
 While De Launay and his feUow-piisoners were being 
 taken to the Hotel de Ville, the rest of the mob round the 
 Bastille swarmed over the fortress and released the prisoners, 
 who were but seven in number. One of them, Tavernier, a 
 
144 The Prisoners of the Bastille. [chap. 
 
 natural son of the financier, Paris Duverney, had been im- 
 prisoned for thirly years, for no reason that he was aware 
 of, and another, named Whyte, had lost his senses from his 
 prolonged imprisonment, and had to be taken straight to the 
 lunatic asylum of Oharenton. Before carrying the released 
 prisoners in triumphal procession round the city, they were 
 taken to the house of the popular brewer of St. Antoine, 
 Santerre, who had been wounded in the attack, and there 
 regaled with such dainties as they had not tasted for years. 
 The wrath of the populace then gave place, in most quarters 
 of Paris, to wild rejoicing, and the day ended in singing and 
 drinking " a la nation." 
 
 Meanwhile the square in front of the Hotel de Ville had 
 been filled with starving workmen and those dregs of the 
 populace who had not joined in the attack on the Hotel des 
 Invalides or the Bastille. Many of them had forced their 
 way among the electors themselves, and the electors were 
 in terror of their lives. In the interval between the difierent 
 attacks on the fortress the electors had tried to communicate 
 both with the governor of the Bastille and the leaders of the 
 crowd without. M. de Flesselles, the provost of the merchants, 
 who was the chief municipal officer of the city, had been 
 ordered to write to De Launay, bidding him surrender the 
 fortress ; but it was asserted that he had added a postscript 
 ordering the governor to resist to the very last, for help was 
 coming. This treachery had caused a terrible outcry in the 
 square, and the name of De Flesselles was greeted with shouts 
 and hooting. The deputation from the Hotel de Ville had 
 been headed by Thuriot de la Rosifere, the popular lawyer. 
 He reported that he had not been permitted to enter the 
 Bastille a second time, but from a neigbouring roof had waved 
 a white flag, and tried to obtain a truce. And now came 
 the news to the excited mob around the electors of the success 
 of the attack, and the news, too, that the governor and the 
 garrison were being conducted as prisoners of the people to 
 the Hotel de Ville. Whether the news pleased the electors 
 may be doubted, for they felt that their lives might have to 
 
v.] Murders of De Launay and Flesselles. 145 
 
 answer for the success of the people ; but it was unsafe to 
 show any fear. So they received Elie and his prisoners with 
 a show of rejoicing and with acclamations. But Elie had not 
 been able to bring them all safe to the electors. On the road, 
 De Losme, the major of the fortress, had been seized and 
 murdered; and on the very steps of the Hotel de Ville, a 
 cook of the name of Ddnot, who alleged he had been kicked, 
 murdered the unfortunate governor, M. De Launay.^ This 
 act of vengeance was followed by another. M. de Flesselles 
 was forced, by those of the mob who had got within the 
 precincts of the hall, out upon the steps, where he was 
 shot dead, and his head was immediately carried in triumph 
 on a pike, with those of De Launay and De Losme. These 
 acts of wild justice or of vengeance done, the occupants of 
 the square began to disperse, and scattered themselves over 
 the city ; but not to pillage, for the national guards who had 
 been embodied, though they did not attempt to check the 
 movement of the people against the Bastille, took good 
 care to protect their own shops. A few isolated instances of 
 pillage there may have been, but on the whole the great day 
 of the capture of the BastiUe was not signalized by the pillage 
 which had disgraced July 12. The capture of the Bastille 
 caused great excitement in other prisons, and though no 
 criminals were released, the prisoners for debt at La Force 
 and the Chatelet, including one Irish lord, the Earl of Masse- 
 reene, who had been for half his life a prisoner, broke out 
 and regained their liberty.^ So closed July 14, and the cajjture 
 of the Bastille was the great news to be communicated to the 
 king when he returned from hunting that evening. " Why," 
 said the king, "this is a revolt." "No, sire," answered the 
 Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, a nobleman of blameless 
 character who had been expelled from court for refusing to 
 aclcnowledge the Du Barry. " No, sire ; it is a revolution." 
 
 1 Claretie's Camilh Desmmilins, p. 63. 
 
 ^ Histoire de trois ouvriers Frangais, \>j the Baron Emouf, pp. 68, 69, 
 1867 ; and for Lord Massereene, the Oentleman's Magazine for July and 
 August, 1789. 
 
 VOL. I. I. 
 
145 Behaviour of the Assembly. [chap. 
 
 The news of the dismissal of Necker on July 12 had been 
 received with dismay by the members of the National 
 Assembly, but they were too deeply involved in the struggle 
 with the court to be able to recede. The dismissal of Necker 
 was to be followed, they were informed, by the arrest of the 
 leading deputies and the dissolution of the Assembly. To 
 guard against this they declared that the new ministers were 
 responsible to the country for any harm that might ensue ; 
 that the national debt was guaranteed by the country ; and 
 that the resolutions of June 17 and 23 remained unaltered. 
 Necker had thus for a moment gained a peculiar popularity 
 even with those who despised him, and. Mirabeau himself 
 was not slow to perceive this. The Comte de Lally-Tol- 
 lendal, who had established a reputation in the Assembly for 
 pathetic eloquence, lamented in set terms over the fall of 
 Necker and the virtues of the minister ; but the members of 
 the Assembly could not think at first of any decisive step it 
 might be necessary to take. The news of the riots on 
 July 12 filled them at once with hope and with dismay. It 
 filled them with hope, in that they felt they might be able to 
 make armed opposition to the court. But something more 
 than a mob — an army and a general — would be needed by the 
 people to fight the armies of the court. To supply the army 
 the favourite plan of the Garde Civile, or Garde Bour- 
 geoise, was discussed at length ; and on July 13, when the 
 electors of Paris were actually forming a Garde Civile, the 
 Assembly were discussing the advantages of establishing such 
 Civic or National Guards all over France. The question of 
 National Guards introduced the question of the establishment 
 of free municipalities, but in their present excited state this was 
 too vast a subject for the deputies to enter upon. But how to 
 find a general ? The general officers and all the marshals of 
 France were loyal to the court, and there was but one man 
 who had made a name as a republican general, and that was 
 Lafayette. 
 
 The Marquis de Lafayette had won his first laurels by the 
 side of Washington in America, and he was expected by his 
 
v.] Lafayette Vice-President of the Assembly. 147 
 
 countrymen to win fresh fame in France. He had shown 
 advanced liberal opinions in his native province in the pro- 
 vincial assembly of Lower Auvergne in 1787, and still more 
 in the electoral period of 1789, and had first suggested the 
 summons of the States- General in the Assembly of the Not- 
 ables. The cahier which he had drawn up for the noblesse of 
 Lower Auvergne had been freely copied by the young nobles 
 of the neighbouring districts. But nevertheless it had 
 abounded in sententious maxims rather than in projects of 
 practical reform. But now the deputies, even Mirabeau, felt 
 that Lafayette was the only man who had a reputation suffi- 
 cient to obtain for him the command of a volunteer army. 
 The project could hardly be mentioned without suspicion of 
 treason; but the Assembly proceeded to create the office of 
 vice-president of their body, and to elect Lafayette to fill it. 
 This gave at once a mark of their own confidence in him, 
 and pointed him out to the people of Paris as the military 
 representative of the Assembly. 
 
 July 13 was a day of comparative calm and prepara- 
 tion in Paris ; but it was one of anxious expectation both 
 •to the court and to the Assembly at Versailles. At court 
 the queen and Artois urged the king to complete his blow. 
 " It was not enough to dismiss Necker," they cried ; " the 
 Assembly must be dissolved, and its leaders imprisoned. It 
 would be no more difficult than the arrest of the leaders of 
 the Paris parlements in the old times." On the other side, 
 the Assembly knew that such advice was being given, and 
 in an attempt to prove themselves on the side of order, they 
 issued a proclamation to the people of Paris, begging them 
 to make no more disturbances, and to keep the peace. But 
 the leaders of the Assembly felt sure that their proclamation 
 would have small effect, and possibly did not desire it to be 
 strictly obeyed, for they decided to sit permanently day and 
 niffht and wait the issue of events. What the events of that 
 great July 14 were has been described; and at the news 
 both king and Assembly were violently affected. The king 
 determined immediately that he would try no more to check 
 
148 The King recalls Necker. [chap. 
 
 the public feeling which had been so markedly expressed in 
 Paris, and De Broglie, after reporting to the queen that it 
 was impossible in any way to count upon the army, sent in 
 his resignation. "While the court was thus giving way, the 
 Assembly was in a state of terror lest the revolution in Paris 
 should be put down to their account, and their fear was 
 justified by the knowledge which many of them possessed, that 
 some of their most conspicuous leaders, such as Adrien Duport, ' 
 had, instead of trying to check the revolution, been engaged 
 in it. Nevertheless, they determined to send a deputation 
 to the king, to request him to recall Necker, and to promise 
 him that they would do their best to procure the restoration 
 of order. But while the deputation was being named, the 
 news arrived that the king himself was coming down to the 
 Assembly. His appearance was now very different from that 
 of the haughty monarch who had annulled all that the depu- 
 ties had done, and bidden them discuss the subject of finance. 
 He now came humbly and submissively to say that he would 
 give in to the wishes of his faithful people, and reinstate 
 Neclcer and the other dismissed ministers, and in fact do 
 whatever he was wished. Such a triumph the leaders of the 
 Assembly had never expected, for they had thought the queen 
 would have made a longer struggle. They did not recognize 
 the fact that Louis could be obstinate on occasion, thoug-h 
 generally his obstinacy came too late to repair the damage 
 he had done by his temporary compliance with the wishes of 
 the queen. All fear from the side of the court being removed, 
 the problem of excited Paris was now to be faced, and on the 
 morning of the 15th, fifty deputies were ordered by the Assembly 
 to proceed to Paris and to report upon the state of things there. 
 The fifty deputies hardly recognized the city. It was over 
 burnt barriers that they had to advance into the streets. Every- 
 where they saw entrenchments thrown up, and preparations 
 for street-fighting. All shops were closed, and had been for 
 three days. No carriages, no individuals even, were permitted 
 to leave the city. Four travelling Englishmen who had been 
 stopping at an hotel in the Palais-Royal during July 14 
 
v.] The Fifty Deputies in Paris. 149 
 
 made three different attempts to leave the city, but though 
 armed vdth a passport from the electors at the Hotel de Ville, 
 and accompanied by two agents of police, they were three 
 times taken back, and were not permitted to depart until 
 July 19, and then only after a thorough search had been 
 instituted, and aU their pistols and other weapons had been 
 confiscated.^ Through streets filled with excited men, breaking 
 into houses and searching for arms, but where there was some 
 order kept by bodies of civic guards, not yet in uniform, but 
 easily distinguishable from their attempt to maintain order, 
 the deputies proceeded to the Hotel de Ville. There they 
 found the unfortunate electors, who had not left the great hall 
 since the 13th, so tired out that many of them were sleeping 
 upon the benches, and surrounded by a crowd of starving 
 workmen and half-naked rufiians, who threatened them with 
 aU sorts of penalties if they did not immediately find them 
 bread and arms. The electors who were awake were chiefly 
 trying to appease the crowd, by issuing orders for bread which 
 could not be obeyed, and by voting laurel crowns and other 
 rewards to the conquerors of the Bastille. The Bastille itself 
 Ihey had ordered to be destroyed, and had in vain demanded 
 its keys, which, however, now lay in the house of Santerre, 
 the popular elector and brewer. In spite, or perhaps because, 
 of his wound, Santerre was the most popular and most 
 powerful man in Paris at this time. Not only had the civic 
 guard of the Faubourg St. Antoine elected him their com- 
 mandant, but the whole mob of that faubourg would have 
 followed him, if he had ordered them to sack the city, kill the 
 electors, and advance on Versailles. But Santerre was not a 
 mere brigand. He knew the value of order, and used his great 
 influence to appease rather than to excite the people. The 
 arrival of the deputies was greeted with shouts from the crowd 
 in the square before the Hotel de Ville, and the shouts were 
 mincrled with cries of " Long live the National Assembly ! " 
 and " Where is the king ? " The electors declared there could 
 1 Br. Bighy's Letters from Francein 1789, edited by Ma daughter, Lady 
 Eaatlake, pp. 76-84. London : 1880. 
 
1 50 The King consents to go to Paris. [chap. 
 
 be no real order in Paris unless the king himself came to the 
 capital, and showed that he did not intend to punish the city 
 for its recent behaviour. With heavy hearts the deputies re- 
 turned to Versailles, for they never expected that the king would 
 trust himself in the excited city, and indeed they thought it 
 doubtful that he would ever come out again if he did venture 
 to enter his own capital. Such was the report which was read 
 to the Assembly on the night of July 15. It was determined 
 to beg the king to make the desired entrance into Paris, and 
 also that a hundred members of the Assembly should accom- 
 pany him, to throw over him the safeguard of their popularity. 
 The king consented, and July 17 was fixed for the public 
 entrance of the descendant of Henry IV. into the capital. The 
 whole of the next day the deputies were busy in making arrange- 
 ments for the maintenance of order. The National Guards 
 were legalized, and ordered to be established in every district 
 of France. A decree for the regulation of new municipalities 
 was proposed, and a committee was appointed to inquire into 
 the question of the price of bread and of food in general. 
 
 On the same day, July 16, Montmorin, Puysdgur, and La 
 Luzerne were installed once more in their old offices, and 
 Barentin and Laurent de Villedeuil, who had always shown 
 reactionary tendencies and had adhered to the plans of 
 Breteuil and De Broglie, were dismissed. Their successors 
 were, however, not yet appointed, and it was not until after 
 the return of Necker, that Mgr. Jerome Champion de Cic4 
 Archbishop of Bordeaux, and one of the four prelates who had 
 headed the majority of the Estate of their Clergy in their re- 
 union with the tiers dtat, was made Keeper of the Seals in suc- 
 cession to Barentin, that the Comte de Saint-Priest was made 
 Minister of the Household, or Interior, and that the Marquis 
 de la Tour du Pin was made Minister for War in succession to 
 Puysegur, whose health did not permit him to continue in office. 
 
 In the early morning of the 17th, the king, who was not 
 wanting in personal courage, took the sacrament and made his 
 will, and, in spite of the entreaties of his wife, set out for Paris. 
 He was accompanied by the hundred deputies who had been 
 
v.j The King in Paris, 
 
 151 
 
 appointed by the Assembly as escort, and by a very few of his 
 body-guards. At the head of the procession was Bailly, the 
 president, and the other deputies of the tiers ^tat of Paris, 
 Lally-ToUendal, Lafayette, and all those who had won a name 
 in the recent discussions except Mirabeau, who was prevented 
 from attending by the death of his father during the previous 
 week.^ The journey to Paris was very slow, and more than once 
 the friends of the king feared that some accident might have 
 befallen him, and it was rumoured among them that Orleans 
 had plotted that some ruffian in the crowd should kill the king, 
 and make way for the appointment of himself as regent. But 
 there was no such plot, and the king reached Paris in safety. 
 Through the streets of Paris he was accompanied by shouts of 
 " Welcome ! " up to the square of the Hotel de Ville. Eound 
 him, instead of angry he saw smiling faces ; for the populace 
 of Paris believed that in some unexplained way the presence of 
 the king would bring them food, and the leaders in the recent 
 events looked upon his presence as a guarantee of their own 
 personal safety. When he reached the Hotel de Ville, the old 
 company of merchants, with their provost at their head, were 
 not there to meet him, but instead the new informal body of the 
 electors of Paris. Around him everywhere he saw the tricolour 
 cockade ; for Camille's proposition of green as the national colour 
 on July 12 had been rejected on the next day, when it was 
 remembered that green liveries were worn by the servants of 
 Comte Artois.^ The deputies who accompanied Louis were 
 
 * Paasy's Frochot, p. 55. 
 
 " Many theories have been propounded as to the origin of the tri- 
 colour cockade as the national emblem of France, and especially of 
 revolutionary France. The colours red, white, and blue were used in 
 both the French army and the French navy, as in the English navy until 
 a recent date, as the special insignia of certain regiments or certain ranks. 
 Thus all the regiments of which the king was colonel wore red facings, 
 and admirals hoisted red, white, or blue flags according to their ranks. 
 "Dans tous les cas," says Susane (Histoire de la cavalerie frangaise, vol. i. 
 p. 309), "I'emploi simultane des trois couleurs blanche, rouge et bleue 
 est aussi vieux que la France. . . Le drapeau blanc est n^ en 1793 apres 
 la mort de Louis XVI." There are many stories as to the origin of the 
 tricolour cockade. One is that the new National Guard of Paris assumed 
 
152 speech of Lally-Tollendal. [chap. 
 
 not to be satisfied with a simple progress, but were deter- 
 mined that some step of political importance should be taken. 
 The great question of municipalities and National Guards 
 must be settled from the king's own mouth. At first, with a 
 smile, he fastened in his hat the cockade which had been 
 handed to him, and then, appearing on a balcony, muttered 
 a few inaudible words to the vast crowd in the square. But 
 if his own words were inaudible, those of Lally-Tollendal were 
 not. The young Irishman had now his day of triumph ; for it 
 was he who carried off the palm of oratory, he who beguiled 
 the unwilling king into the recognition of a free municipality of 
 Paris, and he who obtained the nomination of Bailly as first 
 mayor of Paris, and of Lafayette as commandant of the 
 National Guard. His concluding words, " that once a king had 
 conquered Paris, but now Paris had conquered her king," 
 were received with shouts of enthusiasm ; and if the poor king 
 wished himself in the place of his great ancestor, he was 
 careful not to express that wish, even in his countenance. 
 The words of Lally-Tollendal put every one into a good 
 humour, and when he declared that Paris should no longer be 
 I'uled by a provost of the merchants, but by a mayor — as great, 
 maybe, as the Lord Mayor of London — cries of assent were 
 heard from every side ; and when he turned his expressive 
 face towards Bailly, a universal shout of " Bailly, first Mayor 
 of Paris ! " arose, and Jean Sylvain Bailly found himself elected 
 by acclamation to the new office. A question then arose as to 
 the city colours, red and blue, and that it was a bicoloured cockade which 
 Bailly presented to the king, and which became tricoloured by his placing 
 it on his own white cockade. Another derivation, the one adopted by 
 Littrd in his dictionary, is that the tricolour represented the union of the 
 three orders, the red for the people, the white for the noblesse, and the 
 blue for the clergy. Lafayette, in his Memoires, asserts that he sug- 
 gested the bicolour, because red and blue were the colours of Orleans as 
 well as of the city of Paris (Memoires, vol. ii. p. 267), and it is pos- 
 sible that white also formed part of the duke's livery ; for Mrs. Swinburne 
 on July 16, the day before the king's entrance, writes to her husband, 
 " They have taken the colours of the Duke of Orleans' livery for their 
 cockade,— blue, red, and white" (The Courts of Europe at the close of the 
 last century, by H. Swinburne, vol. ii. p. 89). 
 
v.] Lally-Tollendal. 153 
 
 who "was to command the new National Guard ; and Lafayette 
 was similarly appointed, and -received with cheers by the 
 crowd. Lafayette then said, in returning thanks, that it was 
 not a Civic, but a National Guard, which he was going to 
 command, and a few days later he made his famous remark 
 that the tricolour cockade should make the tour of the world. 
 These appointments were very real political advantages, and 
 were the first great results of the capture of the Bastille. 
 These appointments confirmed, the king attended mass in the 
 Church of Ste. Genevieve, where he heard an eloquent abbd, 
 Claude Fauchet, preach a funeral sermon in honour of those who 
 were slain on the 14th, and then returned slowly to Versailles, 
 delighted with his reception and not understanding that he 
 had established two powers which were to overthrow his throne. 
 Trophime Gerard, Comte de Lally-ToUendal, who was the 
 real hero of the day, had won fame by his eloquence and 
 filial affection before July 17. He was the grandson of Sir 
 Gerard Lally, an Irish Roman Catholic, who called himself 
 Baron of Tullendally, and who had entered the service of 
 Louis XIV. with his cousins, the Dillons, after James II. had 
 been driven from Ireland in 1689. His father, the Comte de 
 Lally, after winning the battle of Fontenoy with the Irish 
 brigade, had nobly supported the reputation of France in 
 India, but failed in re-establishing her power there from want 
 of money and of reinforcements, and had been executed for that 
 failure in the Bastille in 1766. The son had only learnt his 
 father's name the day before his execution, and had spent the 
 years of his early manhood in striving to obtain the reversal 
 of the sentence which had condemned that father as a traitor. 
 He had first to prove his own legitimacy, and then to fight the 
 case against D'Espr^mesnil, the grandson of Dupleix, before 
 the Parlements of Paris, Rouen, and Dijon. His eloquence 
 had been successful, and the sentence had been reversed in 
 1778 ; but Lally-Tollendal had not relied on oratory alone to 
 gain his cause, and had spent much time in England collecting 
 evidence in favour of his father. In England he had lived 
 chiefly with Pitt and Burke, and had imbibed a sincere 
 
154 The First Emigration. [chap. 
 
 admiration for the English constitution. Instead of studying it 
 in books alone, like Mounier, he had studied its workings on 
 the spot ; and when he heard that a new States-General had 
 been summoned, and that a new French constitution would 
 probably be drawn up, he had determined to use his utmost 
 efforts to make it an imitation of that in England. He had 
 been rejected by the noblesse of the little baiUiage of Dourdan, 
 though he had there effected some alterations in their cahier,^ 
 but had been elected in Paris as some requital for his services 
 as secretary to the electoral assembly of the noblesse of the 
 capital. He had not at first any opportunity of declaring his 
 political views at length, but the fame of his eloquence pre- 
 ceded him to the States-General. In the chamber of the 
 noblesse at Versailles, he had taken his seat by the side of the 
 Gomte de Clermont-Tonnerre, whose political views resembled 
 his own, and had accompanied him, with the rest of the minority 
 of the noblesse, to the National Assembly on June 23. There 
 his emotional eloquence had had a great success on the question 
 of the dismissal of Necker ; and now, on July 17, he had reaped 
 the fullest reward that eloquence can obtain — the sympathy 
 of a whole city — at the Hotel de ViUe of Paris. But he had 
 done more. He had not only moved the people ; he had not 
 only made a memorable speech ; but he, and he only, had made 
 Bailly Mayor of Paris, and Lafayette commander of the National 
 Guard, and thus taken the first step towards the establishment 
 of a limited monarchy. 
 
 The laurel wreath which Lally-Tollendal had won had not 
 yet faded when he reported to the Assembly the great events 
 of the day. The Assembly was rejoiced that it had passed 
 over without bloodshed, and gladly confirmed the nominations 
 of Bailly and Lafayette. But if the Assembly was rejoiced, 
 the court was filled with consternation. The queen could no 
 longer conceal from herself how intensely unpopular she had 
 made herself by her recent proceedings, and the Gomte d'Artois 
 knew that his life was in peril. The recall of Necker and the 
 visit of the king to Paris were the signals for a general stampede 
 * Gauville's Jounial, p. 3. 
 
v.] Baillys Troubles. 155 
 
 out of France, which may be called the first emigration. Turin 
 was the meeting-place of these first exiles, and there arrived 
 in quick succession the Comte d'Artois, the Prince de Lambesc, 
 and the Prince de Conti. The queen, though she did not 
 fly herself, yet advised her intimate friends, the Polignacs, to 
 leave France as quickly as possible, for she had heard that 
 they were marked out for the vengeance of the people.^ She 
 had many reasons to regret her intimacy with them. The 
 Duchesse Jules de Polignac and the Oomtesse Diane de Polignac 
 were both women of very bad character, and had more than 
 once been threatened with expulsion from court, but on 
 each occasion the queen had forced the king to pay their 
 enormous debts. It was no wonder that the exasperation of 
 the people was more loudly expressed against the unworthy 
 favourites than against the queen herself ; and had it been in 
 her nature to alter her course of action and adopt the ideas 
 of her husband, her own previous behaviour would only have 
 been punished in the punishment of her friends. But though 
 Artois and many of his friends had fled, there were yet plenty 
 of youthful noblemen and old courtiers left about the court 
 to encourage the queen in the idea of further resistance to her 
 husband's wishes. 
 
 The news of the first emigration was received with delight 
 by the journalists and the populace of Paris. " The rats were 
 leaving the sinking ship," they cried, "and victory was 
 assured." Paris could not cool down at once after the excite- 
 ment of the last few days, and it was only by slow degrees 
 that it began to recover its usual tenor of life, and that it did 
 so recover was mainly due to the efibrts of Bailly and the 
 National Guard. Bailly's position was a most difiicult one. 
 He was Mayor of Paris, but there was no legally constituted 
 municipality. Madame Bailly and he went to live at the 
 Hotel de Ville, and on him alone fell the whole responsibility of 
 the government of the city. The electors of the tiers ^tat were 
 tired of the responsibility which had been thrust upon them, 
 and open murmurs that their powers were illegal were to be 
 1 See note, p. 168. 
 
156 The National Guard of Paris. [chap. 
 
 heard on all sides. But Bailly had not only the reluctance 
 of the electors to face ; he had to answer the thousands of 
 petitions presented to him from all the sixty districts of Paris, 
 and from most of the innumerable clubs which had sprung up. 
 These petitions were nearly all for food, and what could Bailly 
 do ? As chairman of a committee " des subsistances," estab- 
 lished at the Hotel de Ville, he sent out agents to buy corn, 
 and sold it at a reduced price to the bakers, in order to lower 
 the price of bread ;^ but such an expedient could not last, and 
 Bailly earnestly begged his friends in the National Assembly 
 to devise some way to assist him. Had he been a man of 
 strong character, or in any way accustomed to administration, 
 he might at this time have achieved a great success ; but he 
 was essentially a stay-at-home man of science, and did not 
 understand that if his position was to give him any power 
 whatsoever to alleviate the general distress, he must have the 
 supreme control of the National Guard, which was to form 
 the police of Paris. The National Guard and its commandant, 
 the Marquis de Lafayette, were the greatest thorns in the 
 situation of the first Mayor of Paris. 
 
 When, upon July 13, the electors had issued orders that 
 two hundred men in every district of Paris should take arms 
 and patrol the streets to maintain order, there was no in- 
 tention that a bourgeois or class guard should be established. 
 As the numbers of the new Civic Guard increased during the 
 next few days, many old soldiers and many workmen out of 
 work gladly enlisted themselves on the side of order, and were 
 ready to help to disperse the men whom they had assisted on 
 the night of the 12th. The Civic Guard was, indeed, merely 
 the expedient for a troubled time. There had been no attempt 
 at organization further than the election in every district of 
 a commandant to direct the patrols. But, on July 17, the 
 civic guard had been changed from a temporary expedient 
 to a permanent force, and a powerful National Guard was 
 tacitly sanctioned by the king, and a commander-in-chief 
 elected in the person of Lafayette. Lafayette understood the 
 institution of the National Guard in a very different sense 
 • Bailly's Menioirea. 
 
v.] Lafayette and the National Guard. 157 
 
 from the electors of Paris. He regarded the maintenance of 
 order, as they did, as the most important duty of the new 
 force, but he had further political ideas ; and if the new force 
 was primarily to maintain order in Paris, it was intended by 
 its new commandant to combine eventually aU the National 
 Guards in France, and* so form a powerful volunteer army to 
 support the reformers in the National Assembly. It was this 
 intention of Lafayette's which changed the whole character 
 of the National Guard of Paris. He made no attempt to 
 establish only as small a police force as should be necessary 
 for the maintenance of order. On the contrary, it was his 
 plan to swell the numbers of the National Guard in Paris to 
 the greatest possible extent. It was hardly necessary to have 
 sixty thousand men to maintain order in the city, and yet 
 that was the number of men which Lafayette desired to have 
 under his command. Further, he desired that this new 
 National Guard should be drawn from one class. He had 
 noticed that it was the bourgeois who had hitherto been most 
 keen in the desire of a new constitution, and also that they 
 were chiefly interested in the maintenance of some form of 
 constitutional monarchy. He had no sympathy whatever 
 with the proletariat. The starving workmen he regarded 
 as socialists in embryo, and socialism he detested as much as 
 he did tyranny. If the proletariat were to take up arms 
 and form the nucleus of the new National Guard, he felt sure 
 that his own term of command would be but a short one. It 
 was to the bourgeois, therefore, that he appealed, and on the 
 bourgeois that he relied. It was impossible for him to state 
 these ideas, but he ensured their being adopted by making 
 such an expensive uniform indispensable for a member of the 
 National Guard that a poor man could have no power to 
 purchase one. He further adopted a very military organi- 
 zation. Up to a certain grade the officera were to be elected, 
 but the staff of what may be called the army of Paris was 
 nominated by himself, and consisted either of young nobles 
 who had served with him in America, or representatives of 
 the wealthy bourgeois class who liked the idea of playing 
 at soldiers. In order to get his volunteer army more en- 
 
158 Lafayette. [chap. 
 
 tirely under his control,, he proposed the incorporation of 
 the Gardes Fran9aises into a paid battalion of the National 
 Guard, who were to be subjected to military discipline and 
 under his own immediate command. The bourgeois acquiesced 
 in this proposition, for they did not want to have three 
 thousand unpaid and disbanded Gardes Fran9aises wandering 
 about the city, and ready to take the lead in every desperate 
 enterprise. Besides this paid battalion of the National 
 Guard, Lafayette formed a regiment of volunteer cavalry, of 
 which every private had to. provide his ovra horse and arms, 
 which closed the ranks to all but decidedly wealthy men ; and 
 this regiment he hoped also to have under his immediate 
 influence. When once he had organized his powerful army, 
 his policy was to get it thoroughly devoted to himself ; and 
 this he did in many ways. He never failed to support any 
 member of the National Guard in every possible way against 
 Bailly, or the attacks of any journal or pamphlet. He was 
 always ready to be present at their social gatherings ; he stood 
 godfather to their children, and drank their healths, and lost 
 no opportunity of ingratiating himself with the rank and file. 
 He possessed two qualities which specially fitted him to 
 command a body of bourgeois volunteers. He was able to use 
 fine language in addressing them about the service they 
 rendered to the. city and the cause of freedom, and they liked 
 to be told tnat they were the saviours and regenerators of 
 France. At the same time he never failed to remind them 
 that they were also the supporters of order, and that, if they 
 did not implicitly obey him, the proletariat would make short 
 work of their rich shops and well-furnished houses. He 
 earnestly devoted himself to this work of winning the hearts 
 of the bourgeois National Guard, and entirely did he succeed ; 
 but in all his measures, all his speeches, and all his ideas 
 appeared the incurable vanity of the man. 
 
 Marie Jean Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Mottier, Marquis de 
 Lafayette,^ was descended, as the number of his names might 
 
 ' There is no good biography extant o£ Lafayette ; the best apprecia- 
 tion of his character is that contained in Sainte-Beuve's Portraits Litt&- 
 
V.J Lafayette in America. 159 
 
 indicate, from one of the oldest families in France. The men 
 of the family had always been soldiers, and so many of them 
 had been killed on the field of battle that their ill luck had 
 passed into a proverb. His father had not belied the proverb, 
 for he was killed at the battle of Mind en, at the head of the 
 Grenadiers de France, when his son was only two years old. 
 Gilbert du Mottier, Marquis de Lafayette, was born at the 
 chateau of Chavaniac, in Auvergne, on September 6, 1757, and 
 had been educated there by his paternal grandmother and 
 an aunt, Mdlle. du Mottier. In his boyhood he had shown a 
 taste for deeds of chivalry, and had desired to hunt down the 
 monster of the Gevaudan, a fabulous beast, with the same 
 legendary history as the dragon of Wantley. In 1768, when 
 only eleven years old, he was sent to his mother, who lived at 
 Paris with her father, the Marquis de la Riviere, and was 
 educated for four years at the College du Plessis. While still 
 at school he entered the Mousquetaires in 1770, and was 
 married to a granddaughter of the Mardchal-Duc de Noailles 
 in 1771. In 1773 he inherited an income of some £5000 a 
 year from his grandfather, and then began the regular life of 
 a young officer in the army. He burned to distinguish himself 
 in war, and was in garrison at Metz when he heard of the 
 rebellion of the American colonies against Great Britain. His 
 chivalrous imagination was stirred by this rebellion of a few 
 poor colonists against a wealthy nation, and he determined to 
 offer them the assistance of his sword. The French govern- 
 ment did not wish to get embroiled with England, and 
 attempted to prevent his departure. But he escaped their 
 vigilance, and chartered a merchant vessel, which took him 
 safe to America. He was received with open arms by 
 Washington, who regarded him as the harbinger of substantial 
 help from France, and was, on July 3, 1777, made a major- 
 
 raires, voL ii. For his life, see Souvenirs swr la Vie prime dM Gineral 
 Lafayette, by Jules Cloquet, Paris, 1836 ; La Faniille, I'enfance ef la 
 premiere jeunesse de Marquis de Lafayette, by Henri Doniol, Orleans, 1875 ; 
 and, above all, the fragment of autobiography contributed by Bdmond 
 de Lafayette to the number of La Haute Loire for September 6, 1883. 
 
i6o Character of Lafayette. [chap. 
 
 general in the American army by Congress, If his birth and 
 wealth and natural disposition had not made him vain, the 
 reception he met with in America would have been enough to 
 turn any young man's head. Though he was but twenty, and 
 without a fragment of military experience, Washington en- 
 trusted him with most important commands, but always took 
 care to send with him one of his more experienced oiEcers, 
 who did the work for which the young French nobleman re- 
 ceived the glory. He exhibited great personal courage on 
 more than one occasion, but gave no signs of any military 
 ability. The policy of Washington, to win the active help of 
 France, was on every occasion to couple Lafayette's name with 
 his own, and he thus acquired as much fame, not only in America, 
 but in Europe and in France, as Washington himself When, 
 therefore, he returned to France in 1779, to beg for the assist- 
 ance of a French army, he found himself regarded as a great 
 hero, and was given by the king the command of the Royal 
 Dragoons. He then returned to America more conceited than 
 ever, served through the last campaigns there, and was in 
 command at the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown. 
 On his second return to France, after the conclusion of the war, 
 he found himself regarded as a great soldier and a great general. 
 He was flattered at court, received with loud acclamations in 
 the streets and the theatres of Paris, and worshipped in the 
 salons ; and, regarding this flattery as his due, he became so 
 conceited as to impair his judgment, which was never of the 
 best. He wished even to be considered a leader of the gay 
 young French nobility, as well as a great general, and a good 
 story is told of him which illustrates this form of vanity. 
 One day he had managed, with great exertion, to get drunk, 
 and his last words, as he was being helped into his carriage, 
 were, "N'oubliez pas de dire &, Noailles comme j'ai bien bu." 
 (" Do not forget to tell Noailles how well I have been drink- 
 ing.") ^ The convocation of the States-General had, he believed, 
 opened a way for him to become " the liberator of both worlds," 
 as he was afterwards grandiloquently styled ; but, to his disgust 
 ' Correspondance entre Mirabeau et la Ma/rck, vol. i. p. 48. 
 
'^•^ The Aims of Lafayette. i6i 
 
 and surprise, he did not at first find himself so great a man as 
 he expected. In the electoral assemblies of Auvergne he had, 
 indeed, been paramount, but the Estate of the noblesse at 
 Versailles considered him a traitor to their cause. Neverthe- 
 less, he struggled for some time with the majority of his 
 Estate, and at last headed the minority of the noblesse, forty- 
 seven in number, when it joined the National Assembly 
 on June 23. In the Assembly he proposed a Declaration 
 of the Rights of Man, after the American fashion, on July 
 11; but he did not think his merits had been sufiiciently 
 appreciated until the struggle with the court was at its height, 
 when, as has been said, his reputation as a general caused him 
 to be elected vice-president of the Assembly. Now, on July 
 17, had come the opportunity for which he had longed, 
 when he was proclaimed, by acclamation, commandant of the 
 National Guard. His schemes were great, his self-confidence 
 greater, and he hoped to win for himself the greatest power 
 in France. The first step towards this eminence was to secure 
 for himself the affection and obedience of the National Guard, 
 and the measures which he took to make himself popular have 
 been described. To analyze his political aims is impossible, 
 for he himself hardlj' knew what he wanted; but anyhow, 
 his paramount desire was to be the most powerful man in 
 France. He had a vague idea that he would like a limited 
 monarchy, under which he should be a sort of mayor of the 
 palace; a constitutional monarchy established by him, saved 
 by him, and subservient to him. On the other hand, he was 
 certainly desirous that there should be no great democratic 
 development. He did not care about the political wishes of 
 the lower classes, and felt certain that they wou'ld not be ready 
 to follow him. But if he had no positive plans in his head, 
 he had certain very positive dislikes. A great statesman 
 should have no preconceptions which might endanger the 
 attainment of his end. Mirabeau knew this ; Lafayette did 
 not. The men whom Lafayette most thoroughly disliked were 
 Mirabeau himself and the Duke of Orleans. Mirabeau had 
 outshone him in the Assembly — an unpardonable oflence ; and 
 VOL. I. M 
 
1 62 The Vanity of Lafayette. [chap. 
 
 further, he was a man of terribly bad character, whom the 
 moral Lafayette would hardly recognize as an acquaintance. 
 The character of the Duke of Orleans was as bad, and whispers 
 had gone abroad that the liberator of America had been 
 actually laughed at in the salons of the Palais-Royal. It may 
 be said that the most positive inclinations he had at present 
 were to induce the Assembly, by his power in Paris, to pass such 
 measures as he wished, and draw up such a constitution as he 
 approved ; to induce the court to recognize its saviour and the 
 king to welcome his advice, and follow it on every occasion ; 
 and to foil all the hopes of Orleans, and all his plans for be- 
 coming regent, or constitutional king. Such were the ideas of 
 the Marquis de Lafayette ; such was the vain character of the 
 man whom circumstances had invested with the greatest 
 power in France. How he failed ; how by his vanity he missed 
 his opportunities ; how the career, which seemed to have been 
 so great in America and might have been so great in France, 
 dwindled away into a typical career of failure, affords one 
 of the most instructive lessons in the history of the first 
 three years of the French Revolution. Had he been able to 
 think of France, or of Paris, before himself and his own glory, 
 he might have obtained as great fame as George Washington 
 did in America. No man with such great opportunities used 
 them so ill ; while of Mirabeau, his rival, it may be said that 
 no one with so few opportunities used them so well. 
 
 The work of organizing the National Guard could not be 
 completed in a moment, and the temper of the mob of Paris 
 was to be displayed on yet another memorable day. On July 
 21, while Bailly was trying to do something to lower the 
 price of bread, and while the electors were listening to aU 
 sorts of petitions, which they could not understand and did 
 not answer, the news arrived that FouUon, the temporary 
 successor of Necker on July 13, who had declared that the 
 people might eat grass, had been seized at the country 
 house of M. de Sartines, the ex-minister of police, and was 
 being brought to Paris for judgment. The unhappy old man 
 was dragged into the Hotel de ViUe, to the great embarrass- 
 
v.j Murder of Foullon and Berthier. 163 
 
 ment of the -worthy M. Bailly ; and soon after FouUon's son-in- 
 law, M. Berthier de Sauvigny, the intendant of Paris, was 
 brought to join him. Again the great square was filled with 
 an angry and hungry crowd. If the mayor and the electors 
 could not give them food, at least they could give them the 
 lives of these evil counsellors. BaiUy stood aghast at the idea 
 of being turned into a judge ; the electors refused to share the 
 responsibihty ; Lafayette was conveniently out of the way, and 
 the few national guards on duty were quite indifferent. Bailly 
 stammered out some syllables about the unfortimate captives 
 being taken to the Abbaye and being judged by the proper 
 courts. But Bailly had not yet learnt the temper of the people. 
 No court of law could satisfy their revenge ; and before his 
 very eyes, and after cliuging to his knees, the two unfortunate 
 scapegoats of the people's hunger were dragged out into the 
 great square before the Hotel de Ville and hung on the lamp- 
 irons. The deed done with all the ferocious cruelty of a mob, 
 the heads of the victims ^&yq struck off, and with grass in the 
 mouths were paraded on pikes up and down the streets of Paris. 
 The dismay which the news of these murders caused in 
 the Assembly can hardly be imagined. Lally-ToUendal and 
 many another had thought that every one in Paris would be 
 quite satisfied now that they had a mayor and a National 
 Guard, and the king felt that the vengeance of the people was 
 brought very near to him. In this extremity the Assembly 
 determined to strengthen Bailly's hands with a legally elected 
 municipality instead of the body of electors. A proclamation, 
 bidding the Parisians refrain from such outbreaks, was again 
 issued, and Lafayette was ordered to do whatever he thought 
 right to prevent such enormities for the future. To his credit 
 be it said, that Lafayette, though he had not interfered to 
 protect Foullon and Berthier, had yet saved, by his great 
 personal popularity, more than one certain victim of the 
 popular fury — chief among them the Baron de Besenval, who 
 had commanded the troops in the Champs de Mars, and whose 
 trial and condemnation were eagerly demanded. On July 
 31 the municipal elections took place, and three hundred 
 
1 64 Lafayette's Measures, [chap. 
 
 municipal councillors were elected from the sixty districts 
 of Paris, who at once appointed two or three committees, 
 particularly a new committee " des subsistances," to assist 
 Bailly in obtaining food for Paris. Lafayette, not to be out- 
 done in energy, and not without some feeling of his old 
 animosity towards Orleans, ordered the gardens of the Palais- 
 Royal, the focus of all disturbance, to be cleared at sunset 
 and its gates guarded all night by pickets of the National 
 Guard. These measures of Lafayette's, and the establishment 
 of the new municipality, restored some appearance of order to 
 Paris; but it was only an appearance. The causes of the out- 
 break, in which the Bastille had been taken, were still at 
 work, and if food and employment could not be found for the 
 starving masses, a riot of yet greater importance than that 
 of July 14 was to be expected, in spite of Bailly and La- 
 fayette, town councillors and national guards. If starvation 
 was not enough, new journals were daily springing up, which 
 inflamed the minds of. the populace with more advanced 
 political ideas than any which had been broached. The tran- 
 quillity of Paris was merely temporary; the fire of the revolu- 
 tion was still unquenched ; the same causes were stiU at work ; 
 and it rested not so much with Bailly and Lafayette, as with 
 the National Assembly, to determine what measures should 
 be taken to quiet the minds of the people. 
 
 The members of the National Assembly, with the exception 
 of one single man, did not recognize the gi-avity of the situa- 
 tion. They had had far greater power thrown into their 
 hands than they could ever possibly have expected. The 
 king had been publicly foiled in an attempt at reaction, and 
 the Assembly was obviously able to do whatsoever it would ; 
 but, great as the opportunity was, no use was made of it, and 
 the people of Paris saw clearly that the Assembly would never 
 do what it was wanted to do until it sat in Paris and acted 
 under the eyes of the Parisians. For what was the Assembly 
 doing at this period, when Paris was waiting in expectation, 
 and the capture of the Bastille was being imitated all over 
 France ; when chateaux were burning, and nobles flying into 
 
V.J The Question of the Rights of Man. 165 
 
 exile ; when there was positive civil war in many a district, 
 and anarchy in every province ? Why, the Assembly was 
 discussing whether or not the new constitution of France 
 should be prefaced by a Declaration of the Rights of Man. In 
 the discussion of this extremely important question were 
 wasted the precious days which followed July 17. The 
 first question was, Should there be any Declaration of the 
 Rights of Man at all ? All who admired the American con- 
 stitution said that, of course, there must be one, and that no 
 respectable constitution could be possibly drawn up without 
 an elaborate declaration prefixed to it. "What about the 
 duties of man?" was remarked by Gri^goire and Camus. 
 "The duties of man are obvious," was the reply; "the rights 
 of man must be defined." Only one man spoke out clearly 
 during these foolish discussions. This was Mirabeau. He 
 said, "If you must haye a declaration of the rights of man, 
 put it at the end of your constitution; proceed at once to 
 business, for you are wasting precious time." But the Assembly 
 was full of theorists ; they did not understand what practical 
 legislation meant ; they thought, when the country was in a 
 state of anarchy, and famine was rife everywhere, when 
 there was no authority able to suppress the riots which are 
 the inevitable result of famine, that men would be satisfied 
 by learning that they had certain defined rights. 
 
 The complacency of these theorists was rudely shaken on 
 August 4, when Salomon read to the Assembly the report 
 of the Comity des Recherches, or Committee of Researches, 
 on the state of France. A terrible report it was. Chateaux 
 burning here and there ; millers hung ; tax-gatherers drowned • 
 the warehouses and dep6ts of the gab.elle burnt ; everywhere 
 rioting, and nowhere peace. Even wranglers, who wished 
 their declaration of the rights of man to be framed according 
 to the supreme ideas of Diderot or Voltaire, Rousseau or Mon- 
 tesquieu, could not but be moved at what they heard was 
 happening in their homes in the provinces. Among those who 
 listened to the clear and forcible report of Salomon were 
 certain of the young liberal noblesse who had just been dining 
 
1 66 The Night of August 4. [chap. 
 
 with the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, a wise and 
 enlightened nobleman. At their head was the Vicomte de 
 Noailles, a young man of thirty-three, who had disting-uished 
 himself at the head of his regiment under his cousin, 
 Lafayette, in America. By his side sat the Due dAiguillon, 
 son of the friend and minister of the Du Barry, who now 
 strove to compensate for the evil his father did by a true 
 nobility, which stamped him of the family of Richelieu. Close 
 by were Comte Mathieu de Montmorency, the Vicomte 
 Alexandre de Beauharnais, Charles and Alexandre de Lameth, 
 the Baron de Menou, and the Due de L^vis, and their hearts 
 burnt within them when they heard of the evils under which 
 France was suffering. The Vicomte de Noailles was the first 
 to rush to the tribune. " What is the cause of the evil which 
 is agitating the provinces ? " he cried ; and then he showed 
 that it arose from the uncertainty under which the people 
 dwelt, as to whether or not the old feudal bonds under which 
 they had so long lived and laboured were to be perpetuated 
 or abolished, and concluded an impassioned speech by pro- 
 posing to abolish them at once. One after another the young 
 liberal noblemen, and then certain deputies of the tiers ^tat, 
 followed him with fresh sacrifices. First the old feudal rights 
 were abolished ; then the rights of the dovecote and the game 
 laws; then the old copyhold services; then the tithes paid 
 to the Church, in spite of a protest from Sidyfes; then the 
 rights of certain cities over their immediate suburbs and 
 rural districts were sacrificed ; and the contention during that 
 feverish night was rather to ramember something or other to 
 sacrifice than to suggest the (Expediency of maintaining any- 
 thing which was established. In its generosity the Assembly 
 even gave away what did not belong to it. The old dues paid 
 to the pope were abolished, and it was even declared that the 
 territory of Avignon, which had belonged to the pope since 
 the Middle Ages, should be united to France if it liked ; and 
 the sitting closed with a unanimous decree that a statue 
 should be erected to Louis XVI., "the restorer of French 
 Liberty." Well might Mirabeau define the night of August 4 
 
V.J The Valine of the Concessions of August 4. 167 
 
 as a mera "orgie." Lally-ToUendal, who was then one of 
 the secretaries of the Assembly, saw to what excesses en- 
 thusiasm was leading the deputies, and sent a note to the 
 president, "Nobody is any longer master of himself; adjourn 
 the sitting." But the president, Le Chapelier, was one of the 
 Breton deputies, who were all distinguished for their advanced 
 opinions, and he encouraged rather than restrained the en^ 
 thusiasm of the Assembly. Noble indeed were the intentions 
 of the deputies. For republican historians to assert that it was 
 not difficult to give up what Salomon's report showed had 
 been already lost, is extremely ungenerous. Legally, the fact 
 that a lord's dovecote had been burnt did not affect his right 
 to maintain one. Yet the results of this night of sacrifices 
 were bad rather than good. As Mirabeau pointed out, the 
 people of France were told that all the feudal rights, dues, and 
 tithes had been abolished that evening, but they were not 
 told at the same time that there must be taxes and other 
 burdens to take their place. It was of no use to issue a pro- 
 visional order that all rights, dues, and taxes remained in force 
 for the present, because the poor peasant would refuse to pay 
 what was illegal, and would not understand the political 
 necessity of supporting the revenue. The waste of time in 
 the Assembly, and the senseless verbosity of many of the 
 deputies, had caused them to pass in a few hours important 
 resolutions which ought to have been discussed for whole 
 days. The question of the abolition of tithes is very typical. 
 " Why," said the Abb^ Si(^yfes, " you are making a present of 
 seventy millions of francs to the landowners of France." But 
 the Assembly was far too heated to care for Sidyfes' well-turned 
 phrases, and hurried on in its wild career of abolishing every- 
 thing that was suggested to it. This ill-considered mass of 
 resolutions was what was thrown in the face of France in 
 a state of anarchy to restore it to a state of order. 
 
 For at this moment all France was expectant ; the people 
 were waiting for something to be done, though they knew not 
 what. Paris had frightened the court into submitting to the 
 will of the people. What was now going to be done for the 
 
1 68 How the Provinces imitated Paris. [chap. v. 
 
 people, and who was there to satisfy the people's expectation ? 
 The National Assembly had proved itself incompetent to 
 suggest practical remedies, and was to prove its want of 
 readiness on many other occasions. 
 
 The poor king had no administrative power, aijd Necker 
 was a theorist of the theorists. Necker's panacea for satisfying 
 France was to raise an immense tax of one-fourth of all incomes, 
 to put an end to the financial embarrassment of the Treasury ; 
 but starving people could hardly be expected to see how the 
 surrender of one-fourth of their incomes would help them to 
 buy bread. Not only Paris, then, but all France, was expectant ; 
 for while the Parisians had stormed the Bastille, the people of 
 France had in nearly every district stormed their local Bastilles, 
 and struck their blow for freedom. The whole of France was 
 tingling with the news of the capture of the Bastille, and if at 
 first that news and that example led to unparalleled anarchy, 
 yet it must be seen how that anarchy was faced, and how the 
 innate spirit of order in man reasserted itself, and how without 
 help from the Assembly, and of course without help from 
 Neeker, a new state of things was established, which proved 
 that, if not interfered with, no body of police can maintain 
 order so certainly as a law-loving people. In the provinces the 
 taking of the Bastille had as great results as in Paris itself; 
 for if Paris led France on the road of revolution, each district 
 and each town has its own revolutionary history, interesting 
 in itself, and interesting also as showing that a great country, 
 divided into many provinces, speaking different tongues, and 
 having no common origin, had been welded together more by 
 the excitement of revolution than they had been by centuries 
 of despotic government and irresponsible tyranny. 
 
 A curious instance of the popular feeling against the Polignacs is 
 given in a letter from Mr. Trevor, the British Minister in Switzerland, to 
 the Duke of Leeds, dated July 31 : "Unluckily for Mrs. Trevor, she was 
 taken at Besaugon for Madame de Polignac, and was kept a 'prisoner 
 some hours at the inn. Her courier was carried to the Hotel de Ville to 
 be examined, nor was it until her passports had been read aloud to the 
 people that they could be satisfied, and would allow her to continue. She 
 arrived safe and well on the 28th." — Leeds MSS.— B.M Add. MSS 
 28064, p. 192. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PEOVIlfCES IH" 1789. 
 
 Eagerness for news in the provinces— Effect of Necker's dismissal— De 
 Broglie's ride — War against the chateaux — Land tenure in France— 
 Mdtayer tenure— High price of bread— The " great fear "— Estabhsh- 
 ment of National Guards — Suppression of the peasants by the bourgeois 
 — Classification of riots— Riots at Troyes, Caen, Rouen, Strasbourg, 
 and Vernon — Federations of National Guards— Re-establishment of 
 local authorities — Incapacity of the Assembly — Ouvriers— Lyons. 
 
 The great events which had been happening at Paris and 
 Versailles had excited the keenest interest in aU the provinces 
 of France ; but, as during the time of the elections, that interest 
 was more intelligent in the great cities and towns than in the 
 rural districts. The citizens, who had generally received a 
 fair education, and who had some ideas as to politics from 
 their study of the classical historians in their school days and 
 of more modern authors, were better fitted to comprehend what 
 was happening than their rural neighbours. The peasants, 
 indeed, as they showed in their primary elections, entertained 
 the wildest hopes. They believed that the States-General was 
 to make them full proprietors of their farms, to free them 
 from taxes, and generally improve their position. To this 
 difference between the mental attitude of citizens and peasants 
 must be attributed the different course of the events in different 
 provinces which followed the news of the storming of the 
 Bastille. From May to July the ■ citizens in every city had 
 made a practice of assembling to listen to the news of what 
 was happening at Versailles and Paris. The struggle which 
 had ended in the union of the three orders into the National 
 
1 70 Eagerness for News. [chap. 
 
 Assembly had been narrated to them in the numerous journals 
 which were springing up in Paris, and they had followed each 
 step with breathless interest. Many special journals were 
 established for this express purpose of keeping the inhabitants 
 of the provincial towns well informed as to the course of 
 events. It was with this idea that Mirabeau changed the 
 title of his journal from Lettres db mes Commettants to the 
 Courrier de Provence, while Barfere and Volney specially edited 
 their journals with a view to their circulation in Languedoc 
 and Anjou. It is noticeable, however, that no attempt was at 
 first made to supply the rural villages with news, and it was 
 not till October, 1790, that Cerutti and Condorcet started their 
 enormously successful Feuille Villageoise for this express pur- 
 pose. In many cities besides those of Brittany corresponding 
 committees had been formed, generally consisting of the deputies 
 suppliants, and chief electors, to correspond with their deputies 
 at Versailles, and these committees formed in nearly every 
 case the nucleus of the popular societies, which were eventually 
 to be af&liated to the Jacobin Club at Paris. It is a curious 
 and interesting fact that the Journal des Debats originated in 
 the daily correspondence of the deputies of Clermont-Ferrand 
 with their constituents in that city.' On the arrival of the 
 daily letter from their deputies, aU the 'people of Clermont- 
 Ferrand rushed to the theatre, where they were read again 
 and again to different audiences, " who," writes Dr. Monestier, 
 in a letter of the time to Gaulthier de Biauzat, the deputy, 
 dated August 7, " listen to these reports with far more interest 
 than they had ever shown in the masterpieces of the French 
 drama." " Indeed," writes the same correspondent, " the public 
 would rather go without food for forty-eight hours than miss 
 their daily news-letter from Paris. No one thinks of supping 
 till he has heard the latest news." It is most necessary to 
 comprehend this absorbing iaterest in public affairs in order to 
 rightly understand the events in the provinces which followed 
 the news of the capture of the Bastille. 
 
 1 Les fondateurs du Journal des Debats en 1789, by Franoisque Mege, 
 Paris, 1865. 
 
VI.] Effect of the Dismissal of Necker. 171 
 
 The great news of the dismissal of Necker caused different 
 expressions of opinion in different towns. At Grenoble,'^ the 
 capital of the province of Dauphin^, which had struck the first 
 note of the success of the revolution in its assemblies at Vizille 
 and Romans, the burghers collected in the great Church of St. 
 Louis, and there passed a solemn resolution that they would 
 pay no more taxes if any attempt were made to dissolve the 
 Assembly. At Rennes,* the turbulent law-students, led by 
 Moreau, at the news of Necker's dismissal, which arrived on 
 July 13, stormed the barracks where the arms were kept, and 
 armed themselves. The Comte de Langeron, the commandant, 
 ordered his troops to fire on the students ; but they fraternized 
 together, and their conduct might have proved to the king, 
 even if the behaviour of the troops before Paris had not done 
 so, that he could not depend upon his army to oppose the 
 wishes of his people. At Brest, the mob, assisted by 2,000 
 sailors and rope-makers, occupied the neighbouring forts.^ 
 In the Forez the electors of the three orders assembled at 
 Montbrison and swore "to spend all their property and the 
 last drop of their blood to repress the abuses of authority." * 
 In many towns the dismissal of Necker was hardly known 
 before the news was followed by the greater and more startling 
 news of the capture of the Bastille. Such was the fear of the 
 new ministry that there would be a popular rising in the city 
 of Troyes,^ that they sent, by special courier, copies of the 
 king's declaration of July 15, in order to undo the effect of the 
 news of Necker's dismissal there as soon as possible. At 
 Lyons^ the news of the minister's fall had united all the 
 
 1 Eistoire Parlemeniaire, vol. ii. p. 139. 
 
 ' Relation de ce qui s'est passi a, Beunes lors de la nouvelle du renvoi de 
 M. Necker. In B.M.— F. 833. (4.) 
 
 ^ Revolution authentique et remarquahle arrivSe a Brest en Bretagne avec 
 la prise dufort de VAmi/ral, du Becouvrance, et dufort Gonete. B.M. — F- 
 941. (6.) 
 
 * Pothier'a Roanne pendant la Rdvolution, p. 29. 
 
 * Babeau's Troyes pendant la Bevolutum, vol. i. p. 192. 
 
 " Balleydier's ilistoire du Peuple de Li/on pendant la Revolution, voL i.p. 7. 
 Morin's Lyon depuis la Revolution, vol i. pp. 62-65. 
 
172 De Broglie at Sddan. [chaf. 
 
 citizens, both bourgeois and ouvriers, in one common act of 
 protestation. There had been great popular fetes at Lyons on 
 July 2 and 3 to celebrate the union of the three orders, which 
 ended, as such fStes commonly did, in riots and attacks upon 
 the barracks. These riots had caused the formation of a civic 
 guard of eight hundred young bourgeois, who called themselves 
 the Garde Bourgeoise, and who were called by the people the 
 " Muscadins," from the scent they used — a term which was to 
 have a more extended application at a later date. In other 
 cities the formation of National Guards followed, not preceded, 
 the news of the capture of the Bastille. At Lons-le-Saulnier ^ 
 the news of the minister's dismissal had collected nearly three 
 thousand citizens before the H6tel de Ville on July 19, and 
 was fallowed, on July 22, by the establishment of a National 
 Guard. But fortunately for the king, who did not wish to 
 see his "whole people in rebellion against him, the news of the 
 capture of the Bastille had so quickly followed the news of 
 Necker's dismissal, that loyalty, if not order, speedily re- 
 appeared. 
 
 The Mardchal de Broglie, though beaten at Paris, could 
 not believe that the troops would fail everywhere, or that 
 the soldiers of the different garrisons would be as strongly 
 declared in favour of the revolution as in Paris. He there- 
 fore started off at once towards the eastern frontier, and, 
 though his servants were reviled on the way and his carriages 
 attacked, he reached Sedan before the great news from the 
 capital. In the middle of the night of July 16, M. Pilard,^ 
 a wealthy bourgeois of Sddan, was roused by a loud knocking 
 at his hall door. Madame Pilard, with the curiosity of her 
 sex, told her husband to go at once and find out what was 
 the matter. He was informed that two strangers, evidently 
 of high rank, had just arrived at the fortress, and that the 
 chief barber of the town had that moment gone to wait 
 
 1 Histoire de la Piivolution dans le Jura, by A. Sommier, pp. 22-25. 
 Paris : 1840. 
 
 2 Souvenirs d'un vieux Sidanais, by 0. Pilard, part i. p. 7. SsJdan • 
 1873. 
 
VI.] De Broglie leaves France. 173 
 
 upon them. With certain other curious bourgeois, M. Pilard 
 awaited the return of the barber, who informed them with 
 pride that he had just had the honour of trimming the beard 
 of a marshal of France. On the morning of the I7th the 
 inhabitants of S^dan were ordered to bring all their arms 
 into the old castle ; but most of the bourgeois refused to obey 
 the order, and M. Pilard, for instance, hid his musket in a tall 
 hall-clock. On the evening of the 17th a rich jeweller from 
 Paris brought the news of the capture of the Bastille, and 
 declared that the marshal, who had been issuing these orders, 
 was really a fugitive. At this news the people of Sddan 
 collected together and attacked the castle. They soon forced 
 their way in. The soldiers of the garrison shouted, " Vive le 
 tiers etat," and the marshal owed his escape to the clever 
 assistance of the wife of one of the officers. Broglie seeing 
 that the events of July 14 at Paris were repeated on the 
 17th at S^dan, went on to Verdun, and tried to make the 
 citizens surrender their arms ; but Verdun was even more 
 revolutionary in its sentiments than S^dan, and, the troops 
 once more failing him, the castle of Verdun was seized, and 
 Broglie was for a short time in danger of his life, until he 
 was rescued by the courage of some of the old city militia. 
 From Verdun he went on to Metz, his old head-quarters, but 
 the troops there refused even to admit him, and finding there 
 was no hope of a counter-revolution in the provinces, the 
 old marshal crossed the frontier and retired into exile at 
 Luxembourg. 
 
 The example of the people of S^dan and Verdun in seizing 
 their castles had its parallel in nearly every other garrison 
 town in France. Mazarin had destroyed the feudal castles in 
 very many towns, and his work was now completed in many 
 more by the action of the people. Everywhere the soldiers 
 fraternized with the people, and showed how thoroughly they 
 sympathized with the classes from which they sprung. This 
 first patriotic movement of imitation of the capture of the 
 Bastille in the towns was soon soiled by an imitation in 
 the country districts of the murders which had accompanied 
 
174 ^'^^ ^^ Guerre aux Chateaux" Lchap. 
 
 the famous Parisian revolt. For it cannot be said that the 
 rural populations stormed and destroyed the chateaux of 
 their lords from pui-ely patriotic motives. They understood 
 that a great castle had been destroyed in Paris, and to every 
 peasant his lord's chateau seemed a little Bastille. Whether 
 this universal '' guerre aux chateaux " vras organized in Paris, 
 or whether it was a simultaneous rising of peasants all over 
 France, can never be certainly ascertained, but its very 
 universality seems to prove the truth of the simpler hypo- 
 thesis. Yet some traces exist of an attempt among the 
 Orleanist party in Paris to organize such a movement, and at 
 the time, Adrien Duport, the trusted counsellor of Orleans, was 
 thought to be at the bottom of this peasants' revolt. In the 
 Journal de la Gorrespondance de Nantes there is an item of news 
 which, though unconfirmed elsewhere, shows the general opinion 
 of the time at Paris. It is to the effect that a courier had been 
 arrested at Rouen, bearing over three hundred letters which 
 incited the peasants to burn their lords' ch^teaux.^ But the 
 movement was too universal, too simultaneous, and might 
 have had too natural causes for it to have been necessarily 
 caused by any intrigue. In most, if not in all, instances the 
 attacks on the chateaux were not directed by any feelings 
 of revenge or hatred against the lords and ladies who in- 
 habited them. On one occasion, when a body of riotous 
 peasants heard that the lady of the chateau was ill in bed, 
 they contented themselves with seizing and burning the court- 
 rolls in the chateau, and then quietly departed. It was 
 against these court-rolls that the movement was chiefly 
 directed, and, to understand the reason, it is necessary to 
 describe the general system of land tenure in France before 
 1789. 
 
 That the great subdivision of France into small estates 
 was not caused by the revolution, has been conclusively 
 proved by De Tocqueville,^ and is even more clearly shown 
 
 1 Le District de Macheccml, 1788-1793, by Alfred Lalli^, p. 77. Nantes • 
 1869. 
 
 2 L'ancien Bigime ei la Rdvolution, by A. de Tocqueville. Paris : 1856. 
 
vi.j Land-tetture in France in 1789. 175 
 
 for one very poor province in the discussions of the Agricul- 
 tural Society of Limoges in 1775, when that society protested 
 against the existence of the innumerable small farms, a pro- 
 test fully adhered to by Turgot.^ Yet the holders of these 
 small properties were not really peasant proprietors. They 
 only held by a tenure somewhat resembling the English 
 copyhold. The farm was theirs to all intents and purposes ; 
 they could seU it ; they could mortgage it ; they could 
 bequeath it to their children ; but every minute sub- 
 division of land was accompanied by some small duty, often 
 infinitesimal in itself, to be paid by the tenant to the lord. 
 Sometimes the duty was only to pay a fowl or a pound of 
 cheese to the lord on the death of the owner, or the marriage 
 of the lord, or the birth of his eldest son ; but if this trifling 
 duty were neglected, the lord had generally some sharp agent, 
 who would take advantage of the omission to confiscate the 
 peasant's little property which he and his ancestors might 
 have spent years in improving. These small vexatious duties, 
 which just prevented the peasant-proprietor from being 
 undisputed possessor of his land, were regarded by him as 
 cruel and unjust taxes levied on his industry; and though 
 the lord may seldom have pressed his rights to entire con- 
 fiscation, yet he always demanded a heavy fine when they 
 were neglected. The origin of these duties had been so 
 entirely forgotten that they were regarded as exactions of the 
 lord unjustly wrung from the real owners of the land. But, 
 in fact, they were the almost nominal conditions which had 
 in past centuries been imposed by the lord on his serfs when 
 he granted them some of his land. Of a similar natuie 
 were those services of keeping the frogs quiet while the lord 
 slept, and of la premiere nuit, which have been so noisily 
 insisted on by a certain class of writers. It has been proved 
 in many instances that the inhabitants of a village had often 
 gained considerable advantages on the nominal terms, which 
 in old days implied no excessive degradation, that they should 
 aU go out on one specified night of the year, and beat the 
 * Seilhac's Jm Reoolution en Bas-Umousin , p. 101. 
 
176 Metayer Tenancy. [chap. 
 
 marshes to keep the frogs quiet. But by 1789 the lands and 
 the other advantages were regarded by the peasants as their 
 own property, and the duties and services demanded were 
 regarded as unjust exactions and cruel iasults on the part 
 of the lord. All over France the peasants held their land 
 by this sort of copyhold tenure, and when they heard 
 that the people of Paris had stormed a city fortress and 
 subdued a stronghold of oppression, they thought that they 
 were justified in attacking the chateaux of their lords and 
 burning the obnoxious court-rolls, which contained the records 
 of the services they had to perform. From this point of view 
 the insurrection of the peasants -in 1789 closely resembles the 
 peasants' revolt in England in the reign of Richard II. It was 
 acrainst the court-rolls rather than against the chateaux that 
 the peasants waged their war. But the one involved the other ; 
 for the lords refused in most instances to quietly surrender 
 their family papers, or rather the title-deeds of their lands, 
 and resisted the peasants, and their resistance led to bloodshed 
 and pillage. In every instance where the lord or his steward 
 surrendered the papers — and there is more than one instance 
 of their doing so — the chateau was left unhurt. 
 
 If the insurrectionary movement of the tenants who held 
 by copyhold can be thus explained, it is far easier to account 
 for the excitement among those who held as metayers. By 
 this tenancy the tenants were provided by their lords with 
 stock and seed, and had, instead of rent, to pay a certain 
 proportion of the produce of their farms. Mdtayer tenancy 
 always produces poverty. The farmer has no interest in 
 improving his land, and no capital with which to improve it 
 if he desired to do so ; and further, as he was not owner of 
 the farm, he had no security on which to borrow capital. 
 The tenants who held as metayers thought, by a natural but 
 illogical course of reasoning, that they ought to have as much 
 property in their farms as copyholders. It is only by in- 
 sisting on these points that it is possible to understand the 
 " war against the chateaux." The movement was not directed 
 by patriotic feeling, and, except in a very few instances, it was 
 
VI.] High Price of Food. 177 
 
 not directed by any desire for revenge, or any personal hatred 
 against the lords. It was simply a manifestation of the 
 common dosire which has been felt by farmers in every land 
 and at all times, that they should own the farms on which 
 they worked. This feeling of the injustice of rent is clearly 
 shown by an inscription placed on a gallows, erected just 
 outside the gates of the Chateau de Lissac, in the Limousin, 
 "Here shall be hung the peasant who pays any rent, and 
 the lord who receives any rent."^ At this date no political 
 ideas seem to have filled the peasants' minds, but there 
 is a trace of the hatred" of social distinctions in the burning 
 of the church pews. It had been the custom for the lord to 
 have an elevated pew for himself and his family in his parish 
 church, and the peasants, from their comfortless benches, 
 resented the ease of the lord at mass, and showed their resent- 
 ment by burning miscellaneously the lord's comfortable pew 
 and their own hard benches.^ In this they did not always 
 succeed; and M. de Malseigne, for instance, frightened his 
 vassals out of his church on one occasion by drawing his 
 sword, and praying aloud, " Pardon me, Lord, for the blood 
 I am about to shed." ^ 
 
 Side by side with these agrarian and social causes for 
 insurrection, the peasants had yet more powerful incentives 
 in their poverty and in the high price of food. This was 
 shown by their frequent attacks on cartloads of provisions on 
 their way to the cities, and even on the government convoys 
 to the garrison towns, which were always strongly guarded by 
 soldiers.* The leaders in these attacks were rather the 
 agricultural labourers than the small peasant-proprietors; 
 but in 1789 both classes were equally poverty-stricken, 
 because the famous hailstorm of July 11, 1788, had done 
 
 1 Sdnen et Portraits de la Revolution en Bas-Limousin, by the Comte de 
 Seilhac, p. 112. Paris : 1878. 
 
 2 lUd., pp. 109 and 113. . 
 
 3 L'Armde et la Garde Nationale, by Baron C. Poisson, vol. i. p. ^6^ 
 (note). Paris : 1858. 
 
 * Pilard«3 Soxwenirs d'un vieux Sedanais, part i. p. 12. 
 
 N 
 VOL. I. 
 
178 The Great Fear. \cnKV. 
 
 such immense damage that in very many districts there had 
 been no harvest whatsoever. Yet the evils of the high price 
 of food were even more perceptible in the towns than in the 
 country districts, and it was in the towns that the most serious 
 food-riots broke out. 
 
 The months of July and August may be ca-Ued the months 
 of the " great fear." Men were afraid, both in town and 
 country, of they knew not what. How this universal feeling 
 of terror arose cannot be proved, but it was actually deemed 
 necessary in some districts for a distinct denial to be published 
 to the report that the king had paid brigands to rob the 
 people.-' It was said at the time that these rumours of 
 brigands were spread by Mirabeau ; but spreading rumours 
 costs money, and Mirabeau had not at this time enough money 
 for his own personal wants, much less for political agitation. 
 This "great fear " was generally expressed in the words, " The 
 brigands are coming." Who the brigands were, whence they 
 came, or whither they were going, nobody knew ; but that the 
 brigands were coming, nobody doubted. Possibly the idea 
 of these brigands arose from the existence of bands of robbers 
 and smugglers who infested the great forests and the 
 mountains, and of bodies of beggars and starving peasants 
 who sacked convoys and upset private carriages ; but that 
 there was any organized army of brigands wandering 
 about France may be certainly denied. This terror of 
 brigands was felt intensely in solitary country houses and 
 convents, and the poor abbess of the convent of Notre Dame 
 des Pr^s, and her eleven nuns, were so terrified by their 
 own imaginations that in the very middle of the night 
 they tramped all the way to Troyes, and arrived there in 
 the early morning covered with mud.^ But it was in the 
 tovms that this strange terror was most keenly felt. In the 
 town of Gudret,^ July 29, 1789, was known for years after 
 
 ' Sommier's £a Hivolution dans le Jura, p. 26. 
 ^ Babeau's Troyes pendant la Bevohdion, vol. i. p, 199. 
 3 Archives Revolutionnaires du Departement de la Creuse, by L. Duval, 
 p. 45. GutJret.: 1875. 
 
VI.] The Great Fear. 179 
 
 as the day of the " great fear." Suddenly, at about five in 
 the afternoon of that day, a rumour arose that the brigands 
 were coming. The women rushed out of the town and hid 
 themselves in the thickets and ditches; while the men 
 assembled at the Hotel de Ville, and hastily formed them- 
 selves into an armed force to assist the town militia. Several 
 notables of the town took their seats with the municipal 
 officers, and formed a committee, which sent despatches to 
 all the neighbouring towns and villages for aid, and ordered 
 the bakers to bake all night so as to have bread ready for 
 their expected allies. These allies, to the number of 8000 to 
 10,000, flocked into the town, and were regaled at its expense ; 
 and when it was found that the brigands did not come, they 
 aU went home again. At Chateau-Thierry ^ news arrived, on 
 July 28, that 2500 " carabots," or brigands, were marching 
 along the Soissons road ; the tocsin rang, and the bourgeois 
 marched out to meet them. On their way a miller told them 
 that the brigands had just sacked Bouresches, which was in 
 flames; but when the partisans of order arrived there, the 
 flames were found to be only the reflection of the sun upon 
 the roofs of the houses. Then the brigands were descried in 
 the act of crossing the Marne at Essommes ; but when the tired 
 pursuers came up, they found that these new brigands were 
 the women of Essommes, who had been scared at their appear- 
 ance, and who believed them to be the real brigands. At 
 Chaumont * a man covered with dust appeared, and reported 
 that the brigands were close at hand, though he could not tell 
 when or where he had seen them. Nevertheless, the tocsin 
 was rung, and great preparations were made to receive the 
 unknown and non-existent enemy. At Brive the report was 
 that the English were coming from Bordeaux ; at Tulle, that 
 it was the Austrians who were coming from Lyons ; and the 
 citizens of Tulle, together with several thousand peasants, 
 marched out patriotically to meet the foe, but only caught 
 
 1 Eistoire de la Revolution dans le Deparlement de I'Aisne, by Alfred 
 Desmasures, pp. 86-89. Vervins : 1869. 
 
 2 Beugnot's Mimoires, vol. i. p. 137. 
 
i8o The National Guards. [chap. 
 
 three Italian priests, whom they would have hanged but for the 
 intervention of a popular lawyer, M. de Brival. At Uzerche, 
 at 4 a.m. on the morning of July 30, news came that 16,000 
 men, under the command of the Comte d'Artois, had marched 
 from Bordeaux, burning and sacking every town on their 
 way, and intended to dissolve the National Assembly. At 
 this terrible news the citizens lost their heads; they buried 
 their money, and the women fled into the woods. The men 
 assembled and sent couriers to Brivfe and Tulle, and the 
 country people, armed with spades and pickaxes, to the 
 number of 10,000, came in to help.^ 
 
 This universal scare had one very great result. It was to it, 
 much more than to the establishment of a National Guard at 
 Paris, that the creation of volunteer armed forces all over the 
 country was due. Madame de Stael speaks of it as a marvel 
 that in one week so many thousands of national guards were 
 enrolled ; but she, as well as many subsequent writers, has ig- 
 nored the existence of the old city militia in aU the principal 
 cities. Paris had, indeed, been deprived of its old local militia 
 many years before^ but in nearly every other important town the 
 institution still existed. At Gueret and Vernon, for instance, 
 the old city militia was several hundred strong, and formed 
 the nucleus round which the national guards were organized. 
 To take the proceedings at Gueret^ as typical, there the 
 committee, which had been elected under the influence of 
 the scare of July 29, issued orders that every man between 
 the ages of sixteen and sixty should be enrolled in the new 
 National Guard to assist the city militia. Four companies were 
 at once formed ; oflicers were elected, and the streets were 
 patrolled night and day. They elected as colonel and lieu- 
 tenant-colonel of the battalion two officers in the regular army, 
 and it is noticeable that in nearly every town regular officers 
 were thus elected. These national guards wore everywhere 
 enrolled to fight the brigands, and generally developed from the 
 irregular forces which had been assembled under the influence 
 
 "■ Seilliao's Mvolutlon an Ilas-Limozisin, p. 96. 
 
 2 Duval's Archives lievolutionnaires de la Creuse, pp. 48-51. 
 
VI.] Suppression of the Peasants by the Bourgeois. i8i 
 
 of the " great fear." Their first operation was generally to 
 take possession of the nearest barrack or fortress, and it was 
 at this time that the famous Chateau Trompette, near Bor- 
 deaux, surrendered to the ninety electors of that city.^ At 
 Lyons the attack of the people on the old chateau of Pierre 
 Seize, which was now used as a prison, was foiled by the 
 troops and the " muscadins,"^ and at Marseilles the inhabitants 
 were unable, from its impregnable situation, to take the 
 Chateau d'lf With these exceptions, nearly every fortified 
 place in France fell into the hands of the national guards. 
 If the provincial national guards had not been formed in 
 imitation of that of Paris, they nevertheless consisted of 
 much the same elements. There had generally existed a 
 bourgeois militia, and it had been strengthened by bourgeois 
 recruits into a Garde Bourgeoise. They were originally raised 
 to fight the brigands and to maintain order, and the mainte- 
 nance of order was made very difficult by the high price of 
 bread. In nearly every city the first work of the National 
 Guard was to put down bread-riots, in which they had always 
 been quite successful, and then, having provided for the main- 
 tenance of order, the inhabitants of the cities and towns turned 
 their attention to the condition of things in the rural districts. 
 The clear line of demarcation both in education and material 
 prosperity between the bourgeois of the cities and the peasants 
 has been noticed, and while the bourgeois despised the peasant, 
 the peasant hated the bourgeois. In the cause of order the 
 national guards in many districts marched from their cities to 
 put down the insurgent peasantry in their neighbourhood. In 
 French Flanders the National Guard of Douai arrested many 
 peasants, who were tried before the Parlement of Douai, and 
 twelve of them were at once condemned to be hanged.^ In the 
 districts of the Ma9onnais and the Beaujolais, the newly elected 
 committee of Ma§on accompanied the National Guard, and hung 
 
 1 Histo-ire de la Terreur a Bordeaux, by Aurelien Vivie, p. 25. Bor- 
 deaux : 1877. 
 
 2 Balleydier's Le Peuple de Lyon pendant la Bevolution, vol. L p. 7 
 ' Histoire Parlementaire, vol. ii. p. 251. 
 
1 82 Classification of Riots. [chap. 
 
 on the spot where they caught them some twenty peasants 
 without any legal condemnation.^ StiU more like civil war 
 was the expedition of the National Guard of Lyons against the 
 insurgent peasants of Dauphin^. They marched out in military 
 array, and in an engagement which followed, eighty peasants 
 were killed and sixty taken prisoners. After this gallant feat 
 of arms a column was erected by the citizens of Grenoble to 
 their brave comrades of Lyons.^ This war between the 
 peasantry and the national guards emphasized the difference 
 between them, and had important results. The whole city of 
 Lyons bitterly paid in after years, when it was sacked after 
 its memorable siege, for the cruelty of some of its inhabitants, 
 when the peasants, armed with their pitchforks and their 
 spades, marched up at the bidding of Couthon and CoUot 
 d'Herbois to wreak their vengeance. 
 
 A great distinction also must be made between the riots in 
 different provinces. In the MaQonnais and the Beaujolais, 
 where most chateaux were burnt, the metayer tenancy existed, 
 and the poverty of the peasants made them most desperate and 
 ferocious. So they were also in Franche Comt6, where on one 
 occasion the peasants defeated a body of national guards in 
 a pitched battle.^ But in French Flanders, which Arthur 
 Young describes as the best farmed and most prosperous 
 province in France, the rioters did not bend their energies 
 against the chateaux, but rather against the douanes or custom- 
 houses, and the depots of the gabeUe or salt tax.* In Nor- 
 mandy, where the peasants had been ruined by the commercial 
 treaty with England, the tendency was rather to destroy the 
 new-fangled machinery.^ In Alsace, and especially in the 
 Sundgau, the wrath of the peasants was expended on the 
 Jews, whose houses were burnt and pillaged.^ In the district 
 
 ' Histoire Parlementaire, vol. ii. p. 250. 
 
 * Balleydier's Histoire du Peuple de Lyon, voL L p. 9 ; and Histoire 
 Parlementaire, vol. ii. p. 252. 
 
 s Histoire Parlementaire, vol. ii. p. 246. * Ibid., p. 245. 
 
 * Boivin-Champeaux' La Revolution dans I'Bwre, chapter iii. 
 
 * Histoire de la Remhi.tionfran^aise dans le Departement du Haui-Bliin, 
 by M. V&on-R^ville, p. 9. JParis and Colmar : 1865. 
 
VI.] Cmises of Riols. 183 
 
 of Machecoul there were no riots at all ; but in the neighbour- 
 ing districts, which were afterwards to form the chiel centres 
 of the Vend^an war, the peasants sacked the chateaux of the 
 lords whom they afterwards served with such fidelity.^ 
 This fact, that the very peasants who burnt their lords' 
 chelteaux in July and August, 1789, fought under those lords 
 in 1793 and 1794, forms a curious commentary on the state- 
 ments of those writers who have dwelt on the love and 
 devotion with which the Venddan lords were regarded by their 
 peasantry. Many theories have been proposed as to the causes 
 of the universality of the peasant war, and amongst others 
 the influence of the freemasons has been suggested ; but an 
 examination of the number of lodges in France in 1789 shows 
 that freemasonry only existed in the greater cities and towns. 
 It was quite unknown to the peasants, though its due im- 
 portance wiU be seen at a later period, and more especially 
 the assistance given by the German lodges on the Rhine to 
 the advance of the revolution ; but it is absurd to suppose that 
 it had anything to do with the " war against the chateaux." 
 That the leaders of the various local insurrections came from 
 the towns, and were paid by the Duke of Orleans, has been 
 frequently asserted; but until it is possible to examine the 
 registers, if they exist, which contain the names of the men 
 tried and hung as ringleaders in different parts of France, it is 
 impossible to come to any certain conclusion. In one instance, 
 namely, at Troyes, where the name is known of an unfortunate 
 ringleader who was hanged on July 23, he is described as a 
 carpenter, not in the town of Troyes, but in a neighbouring 
 village.^ Until further evidence may be forthcoming, it is 
 only possible to say at present that the insurrection of the 
 peasants seems to have been a spontaneous outbreak, and not 
 the work of any organized band of emissaries. 
 
 The popular commotions which took place at Troyes^ 
 between the months of July and September have been care- 
 
 » Le District de Machecoul, by A. Lallie, 1869, p. 73. 
 » Babeau's Troyes pendant la Revolution, vol. i. p 195. 
 » Ibid., vol. i. pp. 185-243. 
 
1 84 The Riots at Troyes. Lchap. 
 
 fully analyzed and ably described by a local historian, and 
 what happened there is typical of what happened in many 
 other cities and towns. The news of Necker's dismissal had 
 been received with dismay by men of all classes in the city of 
 Troyes, and the municipal officers had at once reported the 
 excitement to the new ministers. When, therefore, the news of 
 the capture of the Bastille reached the city on July 16, it was 
 accompanied by printed copies of the king's speech of the 15th 
 which were distributed in the streets. The municipality, 
 following the example of the electors of Paris on July 13, 
 ordered the houses to be illuminated from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. the 
 next morning, in order to prevent any crowd collecting 
 unobserved in the streets. July 18 was market day, and when 
 the peasants arrived at the city gates they refused to pay the 
 usual dues on entering the city, because, they declared, the 
 octroi had been abolished at Paris. As they could not be 
 admitted without paying, and they would not pay, they all 
 went away, and their absence caused a great dearth of grain 
 in the market. At this, signs of a riot appeared, and it was 
 ordered that all the grain left in the city should be taken to 
 the Hotel de Ville. A turbulent crowd then assembled in the 
 great square, and the city militia was speedily recruited by 
 volunteers from the bourgeois class, who wished to assist in 
 keeping the peace. On the 19th, in spite of the volunteers, the 
 populace attacked the Hotel de Ville, and a serious riot was 
 only prevented by the distribution of bread at a very low 
 price. On the 20th the workmen forced the manufacturers and 
 masters to close their workshops, and paraded the streets ; 
 while the municipal officers at this juncture were assisted in 
 their deliberations by the chief notables of the town. On the 
 21st the country people, under the guidance of a village 
 carpenter, named Jobert, forced their way into the city ; but 
 Jobert was soon seized by the city militia, and hung on the 
 23rd. His widow, dressed in deep mourning, then wandered 
 up and down the neighbouring villages, demanding vengeance 
 and exciting the minds of the peasants. Further riots were 
 imminent, when Necker arrived, on July 27, on his way back 
 
vr.J The Riots at Troyes. 185 
 
 to Paris, and was received with great popular rejoicings. 
 Nevertheless, the municipal government felt so little confidence 
 in itself that it applied to the government for the assistance of 
 another regiment. The Royal Dragoons accordingly arrived on 
 August 8, and finding that the soldiers of the Regiment of 
 Artois had mounted the tricoloured cockade, the troopers, who 
 were all royalists, immediately began rioting with them. The 
 populace sided with the Regiment of Artois, and on August 9 
 the colonel of the cavalry regiment thought it wise to with- 
 draw from the city. On August 15 the old municipal officers 
 resigned, and a new committee was formed at the Hotel de 
 Ville ; but as this committee contained none of the popular 
 leaders, the populace were no more satisfied than they had 
 been before. The popular leaders saw that they must over- 
 throw this new committee, and especially the National Guard, 
 as the bourgeois who had joined the old city militia called 
 themselves. On August 26 a leader appeared for the working 
 men of Troyes, in the person of one of themselves, Benoit 
 Chaperon, under whose guidance the blacksmiths' and the gun- 
 smiths' shops were searched for arms ; and then the armed 
 populace paraded the streets without interruption from the 
 soldiers, who refused to fire on them. Dissensions gradually 
 rose to a great height between the bourgeois and the working 
 classes, which culminated on September 9 in the greatest riot 
 ever known in Troyes. Owing to the dearth of bread, the 
 bakers of Troyes had sent an agent, named Fran§ois Besan9on, 
 to England to buy rice ; but when the rice arrived, the bakers 
 did not like their bargain, and told the people that the rice 
 was poisoned. A mob soon collected, and, after pulling several 
 sacks of rice off the waggons, took its rather musty smell as 
 signifying the presence of poison, and loudly declared that 
 somebody must be punished. When the new municipal com- 
 mittee at the Hotel de Ville saw the howling mob around 
 them, the members were terrified and were ready to do what- 
 ever they were ordered ; but the popular leaders remembered 
 the fate of Jobert, and determined to permanently subdue the 
 bourgeois notables by making a fearful example. Forcing 
 
1 86 Riots at Caen and Rouen. [chap. 
 
 their way into the council chamber, they seized upon Claude 
 Huez, a man of blameless life, and of some literary as well as 
 administrative ability, who had been for many years mayor 
 of the city, and dragged him out upon the steps of the Hotel 
 de Ville, where he was beaten to death by the mob. Satisfied 
 with this exhibition of their power, the mob left the Hotel 
 de Ville, and all men in Troyes knew that Benoit Chaperon 
 was for the time the ruler of the city. 
 
 At Caen, in Normandy,^ another riot, ending in murder, 
 took place on August 12, which caused as much excitement in 
 Paris as the murder of Huez. In the streets of the city there 
 had appeared certain soldiers of the Eegiment of Artois, wear- 
 ing on their breasts medals given them in honour of their 
 sympathy with the popular cause. The soldiers of the Regi- 
 ment of Bourbon, encouraged, the people asserted, by their 
 junior major, the Comte Henri de Belzunce, attacked the 
 soldiers of the Eegiment of Artois and tore their medals from 
 them. The National Guard, which had been formed by the 
 bourgeois on the news of the capture of the Bastille, turned 
 out, and the soldiers were ordered back to barracks. The 
 tocsin was then rung from the church towers, and the barracks 
 were besieged by the populace and defended by the National 
 Guard. The success of the populace seemed so certain, that 
 the officers of the National Guard persuaded M. de Belzunce, 
 who was the object of the especial hatred of the people, to 
 surrender, and go under their escort to the Hotel de Ville. 
 He accompanied them as a prisoner, and the ofiicers believed 
 his life was saved, when the mob suddenly burst into the 
 Hotel de Ville, seized De Belzunce, and after a mock trial shot 
 him in the great square, and afterwards tore his body to pieces. 
 At Rouen, the capital of Lower Normandy, the result was 
 very difi'erent ; a great riot took place, but the cause of order 
 was triumphantly maintained. Bordier, the famous harlequin 
 of the Paris Varietes,^ for whom innumerable pantomimes had 
 
 1 L'Assassiinat du Major de Belzunce, by Eugene de Beaurepaire, in 
 the Revue de la Revolution for June and July, 1884. 
 
 2 De Goncourt, La Sociiti Fran^aise pendant la Bkiolution, pp. 36-40. 
 
VI.] Riot at Rouen. 187 
 
 been written, and who was the pet of a certain section of the 
 Parisian playgoers, had been ruined by his love of gambling, 
 and had, after the taking of the Bastille, borrowed sufficient 
 money to go to the popular watering-place of Forges to repair 
 his health. But politics had turned the actor's brain, and he 
 became a leader of the carabots of Normandy, who, like the . 
 English Luddites, waged war against the introduction of 
 machinery. At their head Bordier had besieged the house of 
 the intendant of Gisors. He was arrested and taken to Rouen, 
 but was released on his representation that he had been forced 
 to lead the carabots to save his own life. After this escape 
 Bordier again mingled in politics, and became a close ally of 
 Jourdain, an avocat of Rouen, who was the acknowledged 
 leader of the most revolutionary party in Rouen. With 
 Jourdain he posted a proclamation on the walls of the city, 
 demanding the heads of the first president of the Parlement of 
 Rouen, of the procureur-g^neral or attorney-general, and of the 
 intendant. During the night of August 3 the two headed a mob, 
 which burst into the Intendancy ; but there was no evidence 
 of such vigour at Benolt Chaperon's at Troyes, and the inten- 
 dant made his escape. The mob broke into the wine-cellars, 
 and in the morning the National Guard had no difficulty in 
 clearing out the drunken rioters, and in arresting Bordier and 
 Jourdain. Bordier was rescued by some of his admirers, but 
 was soon after again arrested on his road to Paris, and im- 
 prisoned with Jourdain. At the news of the imprisonment of 
 their harlequin, rumours were heard in Paris that thirty 
 thousand Parisians, with Saint-Huruge at their head, would 
 march to the rescue ; but the authorities at Rouen, nothing 
 daunted by the threat, put the two ringleaders on their trial. 
 Both were condemned to death, and in spite of the intercession 
 of Bailly and Lafayette on behalf of Bordier, both were hanged 
 at Rouen on August 21.^ In this instance the vigour of the 
 
 ^ Jmumal des principaux episodes de I'epoque revolutiomuiire a Bouen et 
 dans les envirens de 1789 a 1795, by E. Gosselin, pp. 23-29. Rouen : 
 1867. Histoire ewile, politique et miiitaire de Bouen, by H. Fouquet, pp. 
 690-69L Rouen: 1876. 
 
1 88 Riot at Strasbourg. [chap. 
 
 bourgeois of the city is plainly proved, and the weakness of the 
 authorities at Troyes and Caen as plainly manifested ; for while 
 the bourgeois of Rouen put down their rioters, and hanged the 
 leaders for an example, those of Troyes and Caen were unable 
 to prevent foul murder from being committed in their streets. 
 The cliief riots at Strasbourg had taken place at an earlier 
 date than those at Rouen, Caen, and Troyes, and were not 
 stained by bloodshed. The constitution of Strasbourg was 
 that of a free imperial city of the empire. It was governed 
 by two senates, a prsetor royal, and twenty tribes. The 
 German, or rather the native Alsatian element, constituted 
 the bulk of the bourgeois class, and the deputies for the 
 free city to the States-General were by their names, John 
 de Turckheim and Etienne Joseph de Schwendt, evidently of 
 German origin.^ But the majority of the working population 
 in the city were of French descent, and they had chosen for 
 their leader a great friend and correspondent of Turgot, 
 Mirabeau, and Condorcet, who was also an Alsatian by birth — 
 the Baron de Dietrich. He had noticed the excitement with 
 which the dissensions between the three orders at Versailles 
 had been followed at Strasbourg, and had reported it to Mira- 
 beau, and he had also foreseen that serious riots must take 
 place against the antiquated governing body of the city. On 
 the news of the taking of the Bastille, which had been received 
 on July 18, the populace ordered that every house should 
 be illuminated, and enforced the fulfilment of their orders. 
 The magistrates, indeed, were not overjoyed at the news, but 
 Dietrich persuaded them to acquiesce in the general illumina- 
 tion, and thus probably saved their lives. Of the riots which 
 followed there is an excellent account in the travels of Arthur 
 Young, who was at that time stopping at Strasbourg.^ The 
 populace regarded the town-hall, a beautiful building erected 
 in 1585, as their Bastille, and finding that the gari-ison, which 
 
 1 Strasbourg pendant la Biwlution, by E. Seinguerlet, chap. i. p. 33. 
 Paris: 1881. 
 
 2 Travels during the Years 1787, 1788, and 1799, by Arthur Young, 
 F.E.S., 2nd edit., vol. i. p. 156. 1794. 
 
VI.] Riot at Vernon. 189 
 
 was under the command of Rochambeau, an old fellow-soldier 
 of Washington and Lafayette in America, would not interfere, 
 a large mob attacked it, and entirely pillaged it on July 21. 
 Arthur Young says that the attackers contained persons de- 
 cently dressed, that the archives were destroyed, and a shower 
 of books, papers, pictures, and articles of furniture rained inces- 
 santly from the windows and were smashed. It was an act of 
 " wanton mischief " rather than of pillage, and had the intended 
 result of sealing the fate of the old close govei'nment of Stras- 
 bourg. On August 11 the old city officials resigned, and on 
 the 13th a new municipality was elected, which at once 
 organized a National Guard of seven battalions of infantry and 
 a squadron of cavalry to prevent riots in the future. The new 
 municipality was, of course, not legal, but ^/hen municipalities 
 were established all over France, the same individuals were 
 re-elected at Strasbourg, as in nearly every other town ; and 
 Dietrich, whose popularity had become very great, was the 
 first popularly elected mayor of Strasbourg. 
 
 The history of the events of the last months of 1789 at 
 Vernon, in Normandy, present two distinct points of interest, 
 because, though not in themselves so characteristic or typical 
 of the revolutionary movements as the riots of Rouen, Caen, 
 Troyes, and Strasbourg, they yet illustrate the rapid growth of 
 the feeling of universal suspicion, and also Lafayette's attempt 
 to obtain an influence in the provinces from his position at 
 Paris. Vernon was one of the towns which had been most 
 affected by the commercial treaty with England. The in- 
 troduction of machinery had reduced the wages of a weaver 
 from fifteen to two sous a day, and would have caused great 
 distress even without the competition of the English manu- 
 facturers.-' Ever since the year 1786 the distress of Vernon 
 had been increasing, and the inhabitants of the town had 
 only been kept from downright starvation by the liberality of 
 the Due de Penthievre,^ the hereditary seigneur, through the 
 
 1 Boivin-Champeaux' La MvolufAon dans VEme, chap. iv. pp. 89-115. 
 
 2 For the noble character of this prince, see Le Due de Fentkievre, sa 
 Vie et sa Mort, by Honore Bonhomme, 1869. 
 
igo 
 
 Riot at Vernon. [chap. 
 
 winter of 1788. His kindness has left his name still remem- 
 bered in the town, but no private fortune could permanently 
 relieve the distress. One day towards the end of July, after 
 the reception of the exciting news of the capture of the 
 Bastille, a man covered with dust rushed into the town. 
 Whether he reported the presence of brigands or not is 
 unknown, but his very appearance made the women fly to 
 the churches and the men to arms. On this occasion a riot 
 was prevented by the good order and good conduct of the old 
 town militia, which, as in other towns, was speedily augmented 
 by bourgeois volunteers. The next stage was to appoint a 
 permanent committee to assist, or rather to supersede, the old 
 municipality. On August 20 the new committee, with iU- 
 advised zeal, ordered that all the farmers round Vernon should 
 report to it what their harvest might be expected to yield. 
 This measure not only showed the people of Vernon how 
 much the scarcity was likely to increase, but also showed the 
 farmers how greatly they could raise their prices. Neverthe- 
 less, until the month of October all remained quiet, by which 
 time a corn-dealer, named Planter, had concentrated the wrath 
 of the people on himself. He had hired from the committee 
 the old town fort, which was almost in ruins, for a granary, 
 and the wrath of the people arose when it was reported that 
 he did not intend to sell his grain to the starving people until 
 prices rose yet higher. On October 27 the tocsin rang out, and 
 the populace, in spite of the efforts of the National Guard, 
 attacked the unfortunate Planter. His life was only saved by 
 the gallantry of a young Englishman, named Nesham, who 
 happened to be in the town at the time, and the National 
 Guard then managed to restore order. The committee were 
 then so afraid that order could not be. maintained much 
 longer without assistance that they appealed to Bailly and 
 Lafayette for help. Lafayette, who, in giving the bourgeois 
 volunteers of Paris the name of the National Guard, had 
 aimed at becoming himself commandant of the volunteer 
 army, not only of Paris but of all France, gladly seized the 
 opportunity of interfering, and at once sent a trusted officer 
 
vi.] Federation of Franche Comti. 191 
 
 of his, named Didrfes, with a strong force of Parisian national 
 guards to Vernon. Five of the chief rioters were arrested, 
 but it was rather to Bailly's present of grain than to the 
 Parisian national guards that the quiet which followed this 
 outbreak was due. Di^r^s soon returned to Paris, brino-jno' 
 with him Nesham, who was crowned with a civic crown for 
 saving the life of a citizen by Bailly at the Hotel de Ville of 
 Paris, and who was soon after made a citizen of Vernon. 
 
 This expedition of Lafayette's shows the course of action 
 which that general wished to adopt. Not satisfied with being 
 the most powerful man in Paris, he wished to be the most 
 powerful man in France, and wished to command all the national 
 guards of the whole kingdom. The bourgeois of the provincial 
 towns did not care about Lafayette, but the fear of an attempt 
 at reaction, and still more of a rising of the peasantry, made 
 them feel the need of combination. In November, 1789, the 
 national guards of the fourteen cities of Franche Comt6 
 bound themselves into a federation to assist one another,^ 
 and similar federations were formed in other groups of cities. 
 That of the cities of Franche Comtd had a local cause. M. de 
 Mesmay, a wealthy citizen, gave a dance and fete at his 
 chateau of Quincey, near Be3an5on, and while everything was 
 going on gaily a barrel of gunpowder, which had been got 
 for making fireworks, suddenly exploded, and many people 
 were killed and injured. In the suspicious state of men's 
 minds this explosion was believed to be intentional, and M. 
 de Mesmay was everywhere searched for by the populace and 
 the National Guard of Besan^on. Not finding him anywhere, 
 the National Guard of Besanpon communicated with the 
 National Guard of Lons-le-Saulnier, which accordingly pro- 
 ceeded to the Chateau de Visargent and searched it, but only 
 succeeded in finding the lady of the chateau hidden in a box 
 amongst some dirty linen, and the almoner concealed in a loft.^ 
 This free communication between the national guards and 
 permanent committees in different towns is in itself very 
 significant of the new departure of the French people. 
 1 Sommier's'-La Bevolution dans le Jura, p. 30. ^ Ibid., pp. 23-26. 
 
192 Behaviour of the Troops. [chap. 
 
 There "was as yet no law authorizing or regulating these 
 new permanent municipal committees. They had sprung up 
 of themselves ; generally, as in Paris, from the committees of 
 electors, who had, in disobedience to the rfeglement, continued to 
 meet after the meeting of the States-General. Though possess- 
 ing no legal or clearly defined powers, these municipal com- 
 mittees were able to enforce obedience to their orders through 
 the national guards, and were in every instance composed of 
 the leading notables and bourgeois of the town. That such 
 national guards and such municipal committees should have 
 sprung up so quickly is a proof of itself that the provinces of 
 France were ripe for revolution. There is no greater mistake 
 than to assert that the revolution was the work of Paris alone. 
 Both national guards and municipalities in the provinces 
 arose spontaneously, and had the party of reaction been able 
 to dissolve the National Assembly and conquer Paris, it would 
 then have had to face armed and organized France. Paris, to 
 be sure, led the way, but it is a mistake to believe that the 
 provinces were only at a later date forced by misery or the 
 contagion of example to follow the lead of Paris. It is equally 
 certain also that the bourgeois of the provincial towns saw as 
 clearly as those of Paris that for the preservation of their 
 property they must organize themselves, and must prepare to 
 defend themselves, if they were not to be overwhelmed by the 
 numbers of the working classes in the town and country alike. 
 Self-interest to as great an extent as patriotism had led to this 
 universal revolution in the provincial towns, bub neither could 
 have been successful had it not happened that the spirit of 
 patriotism infected the soldiers of the French army. There is 
 not a single instance of the troops firing upon or charging the 
 National Guard or the populace, while on the other hand there 
 are many instances of their failing to protect their own officers. 
 This decay of military spirit will receive a longer examination 
 elsewhere, but it must be noticed now as an important factor 
 in the development of the revolution in the provinces; and 
 it may be further noticed that the sympathies of the soldiery 
 were with the populace and not with the bourgeois. They 
 
VI. ^ Incapacity of the Assembly. 193 
 
 themselves had sprung from the populace ; and when, at a 
 later date, the populace came into collision with the bourgeois, 
 the soldiery to a man were found to be on the side of their 
 own kith and kin. That the new organization should have 
 come into existence, with its municipalities, national guards, 
 and federations, so rapidly and so effectually, is a proof of the 
 weakness of the old regime. Nowhere were the officials in 
 direct opposition to the new movement. Very often the 
 mayor, who had been appointed before 1789, was re-elected to 
 his office, and acted with the new municipality as successfully 
 as he had done with the old municipal officers ; and the king 
 must have felt how very small his power was when he heard 
 the daily reports from the provinces. The officials regarded 
 themselves as bourgeois rather than as royal servants, and had 
 no hesitation to cry " Vive la nation ! " instead of " Vive le roi ! " 
 to preserve their places. Also the very rapidity and success 
 of the new organization, which proves the weakness ot the 
 old regime, proves likewise the incompetence of the National 
 Assembly. The Assembly had not taken the lead in the new 
 organization, and the new municipalities were in full working 
 order before the Assembly had begun to discuss the question 
 at aU. For, while it was discussing the rights of man, the 
 cities of France were inventing the new order of things. 
 
 The same incapacity marked the policy of the Assembly 
 towards the insurrection of the peasants ; if it was nowhere 
 suppressed by the royal forces, still less was it affected by the 
 proclamations of the Assembly. The measures of August 4, had, 
 in the eyes of the nobles, only legalized the misconduct of the 
 peasants and had robbed themselves, while the abolition of 
 the tithes had freed the landholders from an impost without 
 relieving the poorer peasantry. With regard to the taxes, 
 the hated taille and the old obnoxious customs duties w*re 
 aU abolished, but were still to be levied until new arrange- 
 ments were made. The rural mind naturally failed to under- 
 stand the position. If these taxes were abolished, the 
 peasants were certainly not going to pay them for a time for 
 the purpose of relieving the king's necessities. The peasants, 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
194 Lyons in 1789. [chap. 
 
 like the bourgeois, wanted to get all they could for themselves, 
 and could not be made to understand that the revenue for the 
 future was to be raised for national purposes, and not merely 
 to pay for the expenses of the king and his courtiers. The 
 Assembly also did nothing, except issue proclamations to put 
 down the insurrections. Stern repression by the national 
 guards of neighbouring cities was not the way to prepare 
 France for general harmony ; it merely served to set the towns 
 against the peasants, and for allowing this the Assembly 
 deserves to bear the blame. 
 
 The condition of the working classes in the towns was 
 even more threatening to the cause of order than that of the 
 peasants. The causes of the poverty of the ouvriers of Paris, 
 and the reasons why many able-bodied men could get no 
 work and had to beg, have been noticed in discussing the 
 state of the working classes in Paris, which resembled that of 
 the working classes all over France. In purely manufacturing 
 cities new considerations, both social and economical, appear ; 
 and as Lyons was pre-eminentty the great manufacturing city, 
 it will be worth while to glance at the condition of the 
 working classes there."^ The city contained 150,000 in- 
 habitants, and its proportion to the other cities of France 
 may be estimated from the fact that it had one hundred and 
 fifty electors allotted to it in the electoral assembly of its 
 bailliage in 1789, while Bordeaux and Marseilles had only 
 ninety each. The line between the bourgeois and the ouvrier 
 class was very clearly drawn at Lyons. The bourgeois class 
 were extremely wealthy ; the municipal office of ^chevin or 
 sheriff conferred nobility, and thus nobility was within the 
 reach of every manufacturer. The system of manufacturing 
 was not that of large manufactures which now prevails. The 
 wealthy manufacturer who undertook a large contract let 
 
 1 Balleydier's Pewple de l^on pendant la Revolution, vol. i. chap., i. ; 
 Morin's Lyon depuis la Bholution de 1789, vol. i. chap. iii. , and particu- 
 larly the first numbers of a series of articles, L' insurrection et le siige de 
 Lyon, by A. Duvand, in the Revolution Franqaise for April, May, and 
 June, 1885. 
 
VI. J Lyons in 1789. 195 
 
 it out at once to numerous master-workmen, eacli of whom 
 had his own little workshop. The minute regulations which 
 ruled these workshops resembled those in force in the great 
 Flemish cities in the fourteenth century. No master-workmen 
 was allowed to employ more than two hired labourers and two 
 apprentices. The monopoly for each species of work, whether 
 dressing, weaving, or dyeing, was possessed by a guild, and 
 though the guilds were often collectively wealthy, the indi- 
 viduals belonging to them were often very poor. Wh«n work 
 had been plentiful, the position of a master-workman was not 
 bad ; but even then those who could not get work had often 
 no resource but to>starve. The punishment was often very 
 severe on any master who employed more than two hired 
 workmen, and thus the number of unemployed workmen 
 was, owing to the guild regulations, always large in Lyons ; 
 and when scarcity of work forced the master-workmen to 
 dismiss their journeymen, the number of the unemployed 
 was still further increased. Lyons had recently experienced 
 many bad years, owing to the Anglo-mania in Paris, which 
 had caused English cloth to be worn instead of Lyons sUk; 
 and though the wealthy bourgeois still lived very comfortably 
 in their luxurious villas round the city, and could afford to 
 wait for better times, scarcity of work meant to the ouvriers of 
 Lyons simply starvation. Even before the revolution a distinct 
 opposition existed between the bourgeois and the proletariat, 
 though their interest in obtaining work might seem to be iden- 
 tical, and it only remained for further starvation to bring about 
 a collision. The working men had also been profoundly influ- 
 enced by the freemasons and Martinists. Freemasonry, as it 
 has always been, was rather a mode o£ organizing charity 
 than anything else, and it was natural that the men who had 
 been helped by the freemasons and Martinists should be 
 ready to die for the opinions of their benefactors. The fetes 
 of July 2 and 3, the attack on the castle of Pierre Seize, the 
 Bastille of Lyons, and the formation of a bourgeois guard of 
 " muscadins," have all been noticed, and mention must now be 
 made of the sympathy felt by the working classes of Lyons for 
 
196 The Position of the Ouvriers. [chap. 
 
 the peasants outside the walls. While the bourgeois guards 
 of Lyons were helping the bourgeois of Grenoble and other 
 towns to put down the peasants of Dauphin^, many of the 
 unemployed workmen of Lyons escaped from the city and 
 joined the rioters. High prices always affected the ouvriers, 
 and especially the journeymen labourers first. The bourgeois 
 and even the master-workmen had always some savings on 
 which they could live till better times, but scarcity of work and 
 an increase in the price of bread meant immediate starvation 
 to the workmen. Yet the whole question of the subsistence 
 of the ouvriers was almost entirely ignored by the National 
 Assembly The deputies were nearly all of bourgeois families 
 themselves, and since the working men, although they had made 
 themselves disagreeable in murdering Claude Huez at Troyes, 
 and in other bread riots, had been kept from actual rebellion 
 by the vigorous action of the national guards, the dejraties did 
 not trouble about them. Therefore, while the Assembly, under 
 the influence of Salomon's report, was legislating for the peasant, 
 it neglected the working man in the great cities. Eousseau 
 and his sympathizers had written much about the poverty of 
 the tUlers of the soil ; but there was no romance about the 
 poor journeymen workmen, and while the sympathy of the 
 philanthropists and the Assembly was moved for the peasant, 
 it was not much exercised on behalf of the workman. 
 Bitterly was France to expiate the neglect of the Constituent 
 Assembly, for only four years later the condition of the 
 working men became the great critical question. This neglect 
 of the working classes proved once more the selfishness of the 
 bourgeois as a class, which appeared in the great mistakes 
 they made when they drew up a constitution appropriate 
 only to a France consisting of comfortable bourgeois. The 
 really democratic leaders were not slow to take advantage of 
 this mistake, and Danton declared in later days that from the 
 wealth and selfishness of her bourgeois France must turn to 
 the patriotism and the numbers of her ouvriers. 
 
 The chief lesson taught by the history of the troubles in 
 the provinces in the latter months of 1789 was that the 
 
VI.] Interest of the Provinces in Politics. 197 
 
 Assembly was utterly incompetent to deal with the grave 
 practical questions which were before it. It was all very 
 well to draw up a theoretically perfect constitution, while the 
 great economical causes which had produced the revolution in 
 the provinces were neglected with an entire neglect, which 
 sealed the fate of the new constitution. To the gradual 
 formation of that new constitution it is now necessary to 
 turn J but while following the progress of the revolution in 
 Paris and the history of the Assembly, it must never be 
 forgotten that every stage of this progress was followed 
 with the keenest interest in the proviaces, that the provincial 
 cities were marching forward as quickly as Paris itself, and 
 that any neglect of their particular grievances was sure to be 
 followed by risings of the peasants and ouvriers. All news 
 was eagerly devoured by the provincial populace. Journals 
 were started, like the Feuille Villageoise, to inform even the 
 most remote villages how matters were progressing at Paris ; 
 and when Mirabeau's great plan of an appeal to the provinces 
 is discussed, it will be found that public opinion in the pro- 
 vinces had advanced as quickly and as far as in the capital 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FIFTH AKD SIXTH OF OCTOBER. 
 
 Disorderly character of the debates in the Assembly — Debate on the 
 number of chambers — The question of the veto — Appearance of 
 parties — Duval d'Espr^mesnil — Mirabeau-Tonneau — The bishops — 
 The Archbishop of Aix — The right — Mounier and Malouet — The 
 left — The extreme left — The centre— Garat — Excitement in Paris 
 — New journals — Marat — The king and the army — The mob of 
 women — Their arrival at Versailles — Royal carriages stopped — 
 Arrival of Lafayette — Attack on the palace — Who was to blame ? — 
 Importance of events — Retirement of Mounier. 
 
 While the provinces were thus organizing national guards 
 and municipalities, and while the spirit of I'evolution was 
 spreading through France and declaring itself in every dis- 
 trict, the Assembly, which should have been the centre of all 
 revolutionary impulse, was continuing to waste precious time. 
 The causes of this singular lack of practical power, and of the 
 many failures to make use of great opportunities, are not only 
 to be found in the theoretical character of the political ideas 
 of individual members of the Assembly. It is true that the 
 majority of the deputies were theorists, whose desire was to 
 put into practice the various maxims of their favourite philo- 
 sophical authors ; but it was rather to the inexperience of the 
 Assembly, as an Assembly, than to the character of the depu- 
 ties, that the waste of time must be attributed. A striking 
 proof of this is afforded by the excellent work done by many 
 of the committees or bureaux of the Assembly. These com- 
 mittees consisted of but very few members, who appointed a 
 reporter, and many of their reports are models of careful and 
 
CHAP. VII,] Disorderly Character of Debates. igg 
 
 yet unpretentious work. Business was conducted in them 
 with despatch and thoroughness, while in the Assembly itself 
 business remained almost at a standstill. The want of method 
 in the proceedings of the Assembly -was soon perceived by 
 Mirabeau to be the source of all the waste of time, and he at 
 once sought a practical remedy. Throughout the month of 
 August,Paris had been crowded with Englishmen, who had come 
 over to see the city which had just been the scene of such 
 stirring events, and to hear a debate in the National Assembly. 
 Among them were most of the leading members of the Whig 
 party in the House of Commons, who sympathized with the 
 Revolution, but who were surprised at the unbusinesslike and 
 disorderly character of the sittings of the great Assembly. 
 There was no real order of procedure, and very httle attempt 
 to preserve silence ; every sort of obstruction and every 
 description of personal abuse was freely indulged in. The 
 Baron de Gauville mentions in his memoirs,^ that when a vote 
 was taken " par assis et leve," that is, by the voters for or 
 against a motion rising or retaining their seats, it was the 
 custom of those who retained their seats, either to drag their 
 neighbours down by their coat-tails, to the great detriment of 
 their coats, or to make them rise by the application of a smart 
 kick. To remedy these evils, Mr. Samuel Romilly,^ the emi- 
 nent Whig lawyer, who was afterwards solicitor-general, at the 
 request of his friend Mirabeau compiled a careful digest of the 
 rules of procedure observed in the English House of Commons, 
 which Dumont translated into French, and Mirabeau himself 
 presented to the Assembly. The National Assembly, how- 
 ever, was far too French to wish to copy English procedure, 
 and preferred to go on in its own disorderly fashion. Extreme 
 confusion was the result. Deputies, instead of speaking from 
 their places, had to climb up into a lofty pulpit or tribune, 
 and while one member was delivering his oration, others would 
 be on the steps on either side trying to drag him down, or 
 sometimes to throw him over. When an orator did get a firm 
 footing in the tribune, he persisted in speaking at great length, 
 1 M&mmres, p. 23. * Romilly's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 104. 
 
200 Waste of Time in the Assembly. pHAP. 
 
 and with such tiresome verbositj', that, on August 5, Charles 
 rra.n9ois Bouehe, a deputy for Aix, proposed that no speech 
 shoald be allowed to last more than five minutes, which would 
 have certainly facilitated business, but also have checked the 
 eloquence of Mirabeau and Cazal^s. The individual deputies 
 were so little known by sight that the strangers, who walked 
 about the hall during a debate, often took the opportunity of 
 voting. Further, the sittings were largely occupied with the 
 reading of numerous letters and petitions on every imaginable 
 subject, and with listening to long and tedious addresses from 
 deputations of all sorts — sometimes from a mob-meeting in the 
 Faubourg St. Antoine, or from the hairdressers of Paris, or at 
 another time from the compatriots of the oldest man in 
 France, the centenarian of Mount Jura, presenting him to the 
 Assembly. These childish performances were of themselves 
 enough to hinder work, and along with it there was carried 
 on a course of systematic obstruction, chiefly by certain of the 
 young nobles, who, much against their wiU, formed part of the 
 Assembly. All this obstruction and confusion was intensified 
 by the fact that the Assembly was not yet divided into par- 
 ties, though similarity of opinions had already formed small 
 knots of friends and partisans. 
 
 The debates on the form of the Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man had been long and violent, but real party spirit did not 
 begin to appear until two important practical questions arose — 
 whether under the new constitution there should be one or two 
 chambers in the new French legislature ; and whether the king 
 should have a veto on all measures passed by that new legis- 
 lature. The discussion on the Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man, which dragged its weary length through the month of 
 August and part of September, had not indicated any marked 
 difference of party ; but it had shown the strong line of de- 
 marcation between the supporters of different philosophical 
 writers. It had, above all, proved clearly that a very large 
 number of deputies believed implicitly in the doctrines of 
 Rousseau, and they wrangled over the particular words to be 
 used in the declaration, as if each word contained soine car- 
 
VII. J Debate on the Two Chambers. 201 
 
 dinal point of a new religion. But when, in the month of 
 September, the two new questions of the number of chambers 
 and of the king's veto were proposed, political instead of 
 philosophical diiferences began to appear. A committee, under 
 the title of the Comity de Constitution, or Constitutional Com- 
 mittee, had been elected on July 14, to draw up the bases of a 
 new French constitution. It consisted of Mounier, Talleyrand, 
 Sidyfes, Clermont-Tonnerre, LaUy-Tollendal, the Archbishop of 
 Bordeaux, Le Chapelier, and Bergasse, and had at once elected 
 Mounier its reporter, and prepared to follow his guidance. In 
 September he brought up a report recommending that there 
 should be two chambers in the new French legislature, as there 
 were in England ; but before any explanation was made of the 
 nature of the proposed chambers, a very warm debate arose. 
 That there were many admirers of English institutions in France 
 has been noticed, but they were gi-eatly outnumbered in the 
 Assembly by those Frenchmen who thought it derogatory to 
 copy England, and who wished to strike out something very 
 original and very perfect, all by themselves. The great majority 
 of the earher leaders of the Assembly were, like Mounier, in 
 favour of the creation of two chambers; but new orators 
 came to the front, who advocated the single chamber, and on 
 September 11 the proposition of the committee that there 
 should be two chambers in the new French legislature was 
 rejected by 849 to 89. On the rejection of his scheme, Mounier 
 at once resigned his seat on the constitutional committee, as 
 did also Bergasse, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Clermont-Ton- 
 nerre, and LaUy-Tollendal, and their places were filled on 
 September 14 by Target, Thouret, Desmeuniers, Tronchet, 
 and Rabaut de Saint-Etienne. Mounier even contemplated 
 resigning his seat in the Assembly, and was only partly 
 propitiated by being elected president of the Assembly on 
 September 28. 
 
 The question of the two chambers did not affect the 
 deputies or the populace of Paris so much as the question of 
 the king's veto. Those who wished to imitate the English 
 constitution of course proposed that the king should have the 
 
202 The Question of the Veto. [chap. 
 
 power of vetoing any measure passed by the new legislature, 
 while the more radical deputies insisted that there was no 
 resemblance between the position of a constitutional king 
 of England and that of future kings of France. The new 
 school of journalists in Paris were equally violent on this 
 subject, and whether the veto should be granted or not became 
 the question of the month of September in salon and tavern. 
 It need hardly be said that Mirabeau supported the absolute 
 veto, and made an admirable speech in its favour on Sep- 
 tember 1, of which the arguments were derived from a little 
 pamphlet by the Marquis de Casaux, who was a Fellow of the 
 Royal Society of London, and thoroughly understood English 
 institutions.^ He declared that, if the veto was rejected, supreme 
 executive power must pass from the king to the Assembly, 
 and that he would then rather live at Constantinople than at 
 Paris, because France would have twelve hundred tyrants 
 instead of one, and he preferred one. His strenuous support 
 of the absolute veto won him no approval from the court, while 
 it made the popular leaders in Paris suspect that he had 
 betrayed their cause. Yet there was no treachery in his 
 position and no approach to the court. Mirabeau, as has 
 been said, was an intensely practical statesman, and he saw 
 that practically the centre of power must be in the people, and 
 that it mattered very little if the king had a veto or not, if 
 the great majority of the people really desired the passing into 
 law of any particular measure. He knew, from his study of 
 English history and contemporary politics, that if the King 
 of England persistently vetoed a bill on which the heart of the 
 people was set, he would very soon be overthrown, and that the 
 king would hardly dare, therefore, to veto a bill unless he felt 
 himself supported by the people. The veto, therefore, really 
 gave to the people, through the king, the means of checking 
 their own representatives. The absolute veto was then 
 advocated by Mirabeau with all his influence, and he might 
 possibly have carried the day had not Necker, with his usual 
 
 ^ Vn plagiat oratoire de Mirabeau, by F. A. Aulard, in tlie Antiales de 
 la FacuUe des Lettres a Bordeaux for December, 1880. 
 
VII.] The Suspensive Veto. 203 
 
 stupidity, interfered. Lafayette, not being a practical states- 
 man, was opposed to the absolute veto, and he imagined a 
 curious hybrid mode of procedure, which he called the sus- 
 pensive veto, in imitation of the limited veto given to the 
 President in the United States over the proceedings of the 
 Congress. According to this plan, the king might veto a bill 
 passed by the legislature, but his veto only suspended the 
 passing of the measure for six months, because at the end of 
 that time the bill became law, if the legislature passed it again, 
 even in spite of the king's renewed veto. Any more unstates- 
 manlike compromise could hardly have been imagined. It 
 would have simply given the king power to irritate the legisla- 
 ture by suspending their measures, while it deprived him of any 
 effectual authority, and made his weakness palpable. Necker 
 acted vainly and foolishly on the plan which Lafayette had 
 vainly and foolishly invented. As if on purpose to destroy 
 any credit the king might still possibly retain, he made the 
 king come down to the Assembly and declare with his own 
 mouth that he was in favour of the suspensive veto. This 
 settled the question, and the Assembly, after having wasted 
 months in discussing the rights of man, now commenced its 
 labours of constitution-making by a ridiculous compromise, 
 which was agreed to on September 11 by 684 votes to 325. It 
 was no wonder that Volney, who remained calm enough to see 
 the mistakes which were being made, proposed amidst loud 
 applause, on September 18, that the National Assembly should 
 dissolve itself, and make way for a new one elected on diflferent 
 principles. 
 
 The discussion on the veto had given for the first time 
 some means for analyzing the position of political parties 
 in the Assembly, and naming their leaders. Hitherto the 
 Assembly had only been divided into the tiers ^tat and the 
 two sections of the privileged orders, which had, willingly and 
 unwillingly, united with the National Assembly. To use the 
 modern French terms, it may be said that the extreme right 
 consisted of devoted royalists, and the extreme left of advanced 
 reformers; and that there was a centre of many sections 
 
204 D' Esprdmesnil. [chap. 
 
 between the two. The deputies on the extreme right were at 
 this time occupied, as they were until the dissolution of the 
 Assembly, in the pleasing labour of obstruction. It was headed 
 by Duval d'Esprdmesnil, a counsellor of the Parlement of PariS; 
 and the Vicomte de Mirabeau, younger brother of the great 
 statesman, who was commonly known as " Mirabeau-Tonneau," 
 or "Barrel Mirabeau," from his rotundity and capacity foi 
 containing liquor. 
 
 Jean Jacques Duval d'Espr^mesnil was the son of an 
 administrator of the French East Indies, who had married the 
 daughter of Dupleix, and was born at Pondicherry, the capital 
 of the French East; Indies, in 1746. He inherited a handsome 
 fortune, and, after gaining some reputation as an avocat at the 
 court of the Chatelet, had purchased the office of a counsellor in 
 the Parlement of Paris. He at once determined to make some 
 noise there, and was most active in the affair of the diamond 
 necklace, when he freely commented on the conduct of Marie 
 Antoinette, and in opjiosing the reversal of the sentence on 
 the Comte de Lally. He then took the lead in opposing the 
 registration of Biienne's May edicts, and was in consequence 
 imprisoned in the castle of Mount Saint Michel, near Saint Malo. 
 On his return to Paris, after the dismissal of Brienne, he sup- 
 ported the theory of the majority of the Parlement of Paris, 
 that the new States-General must be exactly like the old 
 States-Generals of former centuries. Vote " par tete " seemed to 
 him monstrous, but yet he was elected a deputy for the noblesse 
 of Paris because of his bold opposition to the court in previous 
 years. He had almost at once taken the lead of the con- 
 servative noblesse in the month of May, and only joined the 
 tiers dtat with the majority of his estate, at the king's especial 
 command, when he became the chief leader of those deputies 
 who sat on the extreme right, and were opposed to all reform. 
 He had very real historical learning and some eloquence, but 
 had become factious from sitting long in a minority. He was 
 seriously convinced that France could not continue to prosper 
 if the old systems of law and government were abolished; 
 but his words seldom had any effect, from the general conviction 
 
vii.] Mirabeau- Tonneau. 205 
 
 that his policy was entirely instigated by selfish motives, and 
 that he hoped to become keeper of the seals. His personal 
 reputation was very low ; and he was sincerely disliked by 
 the courtiers, who submitted to his leadership with reluctance. 
 He "n as, moreover, a profound believer in Mesmer and Cagliostro, 
 and Mirabeau cleverly hit off his factious turbulence, with its 
 want of sincere purpose, in the nickname of " Crispin-Catilina." 
 Louis Auguste Riqueti, Vicomte de Mirabeau, or Mirabeau- 
 Tonneau, was a politician of a very different type. He was 
 the second son of the Marquis de Mirabeau, and younger 
 brother of the Comte de Mirabeau, and had been from his 
 boyhood as much beloved by both his parents as his brother 
 had been detested. He had, of course, entered the army like 
 other young nobles, and been conspicuous for every sort of 
 vice which can be learnt in the idle dissipation of a garrison 
 town, but particularly for his drunkenness, which he affirmed 
 was the only vice his brother bad left for him. He had served 
 in America with distinction, and was one of the officers selected 
 by Washington for the American order of Cincinnatus. On 
 his return to France he had been made colonel of the Regiment 
 of Touraine, and made some noise in Paris with his drunken 
 escapades. During the elections he had sat among the nobles 
 of the Haut-Limousin as proxy for his mother, who had large 
 estates in that province, and had been elected by them deputy 
 to the States-General. General attention had been drawn 
 upon him by his brother's fame, and he lost no time in proving 
 the wide difference which existed between them. He was 
 intensely jealous of his brother's reputation as an orator, and 
 occasionally tried to rival him in lengthy speeches. These 
 were failures ; but he was more successful in interrupting the 
 progress of business by practical jokes and drunken freaks. It 
 was calculated a little later that the Vicomte de Mirabeau 
 could generally waste one sitting a week ; and that the rules 
 of the Assembly provided no means for suppressing such a 
 nuisance was one reason for its waste of time, the more espe- 
 cially as his friends tried to follow his example, and carried 
 out a regular system of obstruction. 
 
2o6 The Archbishop of Aix. [chap. 
 
 D'Espr^mesnil and Mirabeau-Tonneau headed only a small 
 body of nobles and courtiers, who were opposed to any sort of 
 reform in the government of France, and who strove in every 
 way to make the Assembly ridiculous, together with a very 
 few deputies of the tiers dtat who were sincere believers in the 
 advantages of irresponsible monarchy, such as Charrier, deputy 
 for the sendehauss(^e of Mende in Languedoe, who was after- 
 wards to lose his life as the leader of a desperate royalist 
 rising. Of far more importance was the compact body of 
 bishops, who had formed the minority of clergy, who were 
 nearly one hundred in number, and who sat on the extreme 
 right, in the belief that the Church in France was in as great 
 peril as its monarch. These bishops did not rank themselves 
 among the followers of D'Esprdmesnil, but preferred a leader 
 of their own, the learned and accomplished Archbishop of Aix. 
 Jean de Dieu Raymond de Boisgelin de Cuc^ came of a 
 very old Breton family, and was born in 1732. He had 
 always from his youth a predilection for the priesthood, and, 
 after surrendering his rights as eldest son to his next brother, 
 had been ordained in 1755. His birth assured his rapid pro- 
 motion in the Church, and he became successively Grand-Vicar 
 of Rouen in 1700, Bishop of Lavaur in 1765, and Archbishop 
 of Aix in 1770 He was in every respect superior to the 
 ordinary French prelate, and was both a scholar and a politician. 
 His learning, though not of the very greatest, was sufficiently 
 notable in a French prelate to secure his election to the 
 Acaddmie Fran9aise in 1776 ; and in 1786 he published a 
 graceful verse translation of the Heroides of Ovid, who seems 
 to have been the favourite poet of the French bishops. He 
 had some experience of politics in his diocese, for the Arch- 
 bishop of Aix was the perpetual president of the communaut^s 
 of Provence, who had continued to meet for local purposes 
 after the suspension of the Estates of Provence in 1639. As 
 the revolution approached he gained much reputation and 
 popularity in Provence, and was elected to the States-General 
 for the clergy of Aix. He had played a conspicuous part in the 
 Estate of the clergy in May and June, 1789, but had attached 
 
VII.] The Moderate Right. 207 
 
 himself rather to the party of the Cardinal-Archbishop of 
 Kouen than to the followers of the more violent Archbishop of 
 Paris. When the three orders united at the king's command, 
 he became still more prominent, for the more prudent bishops 
 now distrusted the Archbishop of Paris; and he eventually 
 became their leader in the place of the Cardinal de la Rochefou- 
 cauld, whose great age prevented his constant attendance at 
 the stormy meetings of the National Assembly. The Arch- 
 bishop of Aix was too experienced a politician to advocate the 
 obstructive tactics of Mirabeau-Tonneau, and while intending 
 to support the prerogatives of the king and the inviolability 
 of the Church with all his might, he saw no advantage in 
 exasperating the majority of the Assembly. He therefore 
 boldly attacked feudal privileges on August 4, and hoped to 
 delay the time when it might be necessary to defend the 
 Church. But event followed event more quickly than he 
 expected, and he was soon obliged to use his whole contingent 
 of bishops in a persistent opposition to the measures proposed 
 to the Assembly. 
 
 On the right, as opposed to the extreme right, of the 
 Assembly sat the more thinking supporters of the monarchy. 
 These men were not fanatical admirers of the old system of 
 government ; but they argued that it should serve as a basis 
 for reform, that the reforms should not be excessive, and that 
 the Assembly should try rather to simplify the present system 
 than to develop a new one. The great orators of this party, 
 Maury, Cazales, and Montlosier, had not as yet become leaders, 
 and Montlosier had indeed only just taken seat, and the right 
 was at present led by Mounier and Malouet. It was this party 
 which had the majority in the first constitutional committee, 
 and which had drawn up the first plan of a constitution. Now 
 that the two chief points of this constitution had been rejected, 
 its authors felt their weakness in the Assembly, and were 
 wrathfully preparing to resign their seats. But the right 
 contained abler politicians than the disappointed constitution- 
 makers ; and while Mounier, Bergasse, and Lally-ToUendal had 
 been drawing up constitutions, Malouet, Clermont-Tonnerre, 
 
2o8 Malouet and the King. [chap. 
 
 and the Bishop of Langres had been examining the political 
 situation, and attempting to form a party. In the month of 
 August a committee of fifteen had been formed out of the 
 leading members of the right, and each answered for twenty 
 supporters, making a compact party of three hundred moderate 
 reformers firmly attached to the monarchy, who could sway 
 the Assembly. Unfortunately, the vote on the question of the 
 veto proved that this expectation was far too sanguine, and 
 that even with the conservative nobles and the bishops only 325 
 votes could be mustered for assuring to the king a position at 
 aU superior to that of the President of the United States. The 
 committee saw that the king's influence in the Assembly was 
 bound to diminish while it sat within a few miles of the 
 excitable Parisians, and three of its members, Malouet, Eedon, 
 and the Bishop of Langres, requested Necker and Montmorin 
 on their behalf to see the king, and to beg him to remove the 
 Assembly twenty leagues further from Paris. The poor king 
 utterly failed to comprehend the wisdom of this advice ; he 
 either went to sleep, or pretended to go to sleep, and when 
 he woke up abruptly said " No," and left the Council.^ The 
 constitution of Mounier and the policy of Malouet sufficiently 
 characterizes the party of the right at this time. The leaders 
 were monarchists, supporters of the absolute veto, and of the 
 retention of some influence by the king. Their weakness lay 
 in the fact that they had got no party together in spite of 
 the efforts of Malouet, and so were unable to do anything 
 but plan and scheme, while at the same time, from the very 
 number of these leaders, they were unlikely to co-operate long, 
 and a spirit of jealousy was sure to arise among them. The 
 right was, in fact, disorganized by the vanity of Mounier, and 
 was not to play a worthy part until its greatest orator and 
 representative, Cazalfes, gave evidence of his great capacity. 
 
 The great party of the left was no better organized than 
 
 the right, and not much stronger numerically, but it contained a 
 
 far greater number of influential politicians. It was not as yet 
 
 split up into sections, and contained men of every possible 
 
 * Malouet's Mlmoires, pp. 303, 304 
 
VII.] The Left. 209 
 
 type, who differed on every conceivable point. Among them 
 must be noted Sidyfes, whose importance arose from the recollec- 
 tion of his past services ; Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun ; Rabaut 
 de Saint-Etienne, the Protestant leader ; Camus, the Jansenist ; 
 Le Chapelier and Lanjuinais the Bretons ; Target, Thouret, 
 Treilhard, D'Andrd, and Tronchet, the great lawyers; and a 
 group of liberal grand-seigneurs, such as the Due de la 
 Rochefoucauld, and the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. 
 Among them must not be forgotten the leader of the cur^s, 
 Gregoire. AH these politicians derived their influence from their 
 oratory and power of carrying the votes of the centre; for though 
 the party of the left was not much stronger numerically than 
 the party of the right, it always succeeded, on taking a vote on 
 an important question such as the veto, in gaining a majority. 
 It could not be said that the left had such fixed political ideas 
 as the right, but all the leaders were agreed in a policy of 
 utterly overthrowing the present system of government, and 
 establishing a new one on what they believed to be true 
 political principles. 
 
 The extreme left consisted, like the extreme right, of a 
 very small number of deputies, who were as convinced of the 
 necessity of establishing a really democratic government, as 
 D'Esprdmesnil was of maintaining the absolute power of the 
 king. They were as violent politicians as the deputies of 
 the extreme right, and as utterly contemptuous of the centre, 
 which declined to follow their extreme councils. This small 
 knot of believers in democracy contained many men whose 
 names were to be famous throughout the history of the Revo- 
 lution; among them Maximilien de Robespierre, deputy for 
 Artois, Jerome Potion, Merlin of Douai, Prieur of the Marne, 
 Rewbell, Larevellifere-Lepaux, Vadier, Salle, Lepeletier de 
 Saint-Fargeau, and Fran5ois Nicolas Buzot, deputy for Evreux. 
 Between the left and the extreme left sat a group of young 
 nobles, who held very extreme opinions, and who were later 
 to obtain the command over the deputies of the centre, which 
 was now held by more moderate men. This brilliant little 
 group was now being formed under the leadership of what 
 VOL. I. P 
 
2IO 
 
 The Centre, [chap. 
 
 -was called the triumvirate, Adrien Duport, Antoine Pierre 
 Joseph Marie Barnave, and Charles de Lameth. To them 
 adhered all the brilliant young nobles who had served in 
 America, notably Alexandre de Lameth, Alexandre de Beau- 
 harnais, the Due d'Aiguillon, the Prince de Broglie, the Vicomte 
 de Noailles, and the talkative but amusing Baron de Menou. 
 The triumvirate had not yet, however, obtained the influence 
 which it was to exercise at Paris, and its followers had not 
 entirely separated themselves from the deputies of the left and 
 extreme left. Finally, it must be noticed that in the month 
 of September, 1789, the whole left was united in favour of 
 the suspensive veto ; no distinction between extreme and 
 moderate parties could be drawn as on the right ; it was not 
 until they had won the victory, when the Assembly was at 
 Paris and the king discredited, that the victors began to 
 quarrel among themselves. 
 
 These were the chief party leaders and parties which had 
 begun to show themselves in the September of 1789, but it 
 would be a very great mistake to suppose that every deputy 
 in the Assembly was ranked in some party or other. Party 
 spirit and party government are to be found in England alone, 
 and have an interesting history of their own. In an Assembly 
 where the ministers have no seats in the legislature, party 
 government is impossible; and even if they had had seats, 
 it is very doubtful if party government could have been 
 established in the National Assembly. In every French 
 Assembly, in the Constituent, in the Legislative, in the Con- 
 vention, in the Council of Ancients, and in the Council of 
 Five Hundred, a very large proportion of the members, 
 generally a good half, sat in what was called the "centre." 
 These men bound themselves by no political obligations, and 
 voted either according to their own convictions, or from a 
 desire not to offend the possessors of power. Malouet recog- 
 nized this when he wished the king to remove the Assembly 
 to a distance ; Lafayette knew it when he wished the Assembly 
 to come to Paris ; and Mirabeau again and again experienced 
 it. Yet the men who sat in the centre were by no means the 
 
VII. J Garat. 211 
 
 least able of the deputies ; among them -were to be found 
 philosophers like Destutt de Tracy, economists like Dupont 
 de Nemours, wits like Brillat-Savarin, the author of the 
 "Physiologie du Gout," and men of letters, like Garat. It was 
 the powerful voting influence of the centre which every 
 orator strove to gain. It was ready to follow the advice of 
 Mirabeau or Sieyes, Rabaut de Saint-Etienne or Lanjuinais, 
 according to the arguments which pleased it best at the 
 moment. It could not be said to have any leader, for it did 
 not form a party, but its spirit is best shown in such men as 
 Barfere, the excitable but prudent young editor of the Point 
 du Jour, and Garat, the popular professor of history at the 
 Lyc^e of Paris. 
 
 Dominique Joseph Garat was born at Bayonne in 1749 
 and was the son of a doctor in the Pyrenees. He was educated 
 for the legal profession, and became an avocat at Bordeaux. 
 But he had no taste for the law, and one day set off for Paris 
 with a tragedy in his pocket. He at once went to Panekoucke, 
 the famous publisher, who did not publish his tragedy, but, 
 recognizing his literary ability, took him on the staff of the 
 Journal de Fans, and introduced him to his brother-in-law 
 Suard, and the other men of letters who met at his house. 
 He soon became acquainted with Diderot, D'Alembert, and 
 Baffon, and obtained his first literary success in 1779, when 
 he won the prize offered by the Acaddmie Frangaise for the 
 best Eloge on Suger. He followed up this success by winning 
 similar prizes, in 1781 and 1784, for Eloges on Montausier and 
 Fontenelle. In 1786 he was appointed professor of history 
 at the Lyc^e, and the eloquence of his lectures soon attracted 
 all Paris to hear him. He became the fashionable ladies' 
 lecturer of the day, and was welcome in every literary salon. 
 When the States-General was summoned, he had not offered 
 himself as a candidate anywhere, but his compatriots had not 
 forgotten him, and, to his own surprise, the electoral assembly 
 of the tiers dtat of Labour elected the brilliant professor, 
 the fame of whose lectures and dloges had reached even to the 
 Pyrenees, their deputy, together with his brother. In the 
 
212 Garat mtd Barere. [chap. 
 
 National Assembly he had taken his seat in the centre, and 
 was a typical representative of its political conduct. Through- 
 out the whole session of the Assembly he never made himself 
 conspicuous as a partisan, though he was a ready speaker, but 
 his vote was always given with the majority. This was not 
 from any cowardice or motive of self-interest, but was due rather 
 to a singular facility for being convinced. Like Barfere, his 
 temper was easily stirred by any enthusiastic demonstration; 
 without any fixed political principles, they both regarded every 
 motion proposed by itself, and not with reference to a general 
 scheme of policy. Neither of them ought to be accused of 
 inconsistency; they were both equally liable to be carried 
 away by their feelings, and forgot the import of their yester- 
 day's vote in the excitement of the debate of to-day. Very 
 representative were they of the hot-headed and excitable but 
 the brave and generous Frenchmen of the South ; both had the 
 power of inspiring personal affection ; both played great parts 
 throughout the history of the Revolution, and outlived it ; and 
 both died peacefully in their native villages, and were followed 
 by mourning crowds of neighbours to an honoured grave. 
 Barfere and Garat were typical of the deputies who sat in the 
 centre of the National Assembly in this very facility of con- 
 viction ; they were excited by every burst of eloquence in the 
 Assembly and every manifestation of popular feeling without 
 its walls, and could not be expected to preserve the calm 
 judgment of an average English member of Parliament sitting 
 in a House which has learnt moderation from the lessons of 
 its long history. 
 
 The debate on the veto had had the effect of bringing to 
 light the great differences of opinions which existed among the 
 deputies to the National Assembly, but the excitement in the 
 Assembly was nothing to the excitement in Paris. Until 
 the month of August the Parisians had been chiefly occupied 
 in criticizing their new municipal government, and in laughing 
 at Lafayette on his white horse, whom nevertheless, in spite 
 of ridicule, the bourgeois were beginning to trust and to obey. 
 All through August Paris had been crowded with foreigners 
 
VII. J Excitement in Paris. 213 
 
 and country cousins, to the great profit of the Parisians, and 
 the novelty of their having some voice in the government of 
 the city had not yet worn off. But in the month of September 
 winter seemed to be very near at hand, and the people of Paris 
 of all classes began to consider whether anything had yet been 
 done by the Assembly to mitigate the severity of the usual 
 winter famine. The king's visit, on July 17, had had a good 
 effect, but the influence of the queen was too weU known for 
 any confidence to exist. On the contrary, a rumour was again 
 Circulating that troops were being concentrated on Paris, which 
 had its origin in the fact that the Regiment de Flandre was 
 going into garrison- at Versailles. In addition to their distrust 
 of the court, the Parisians were very dissatisfied with the 
 dilatory behaviour of the Assembly. It seemed to them to be 
 merely wasting time in useless discussions, instead of carrying 
 out practical reforms, or doing anything to restore the disorder 
 of the finances. This distrust of the court and discontent 
 with the Assembly was fostered by the numerous new journals 
 which had been established in Paris since the taking of the 
 BastiUe. " Only bring the king and the Assembly from Ver- 
 sailles to Paris," the new journalists repeated, " and have them 
 under your own eyes, and you wiU see that the Assembly will 
 not be so slow, and that the price of bread will go down." The 
 debate on the veto gave them a new subject for argument, and 
 they really made the populace believe that if the absolute veto 
 were granted to the king the price of bread would rise. The 
 bourgeois did not believe this, but they were as persistent as 
 the working classes in demanding the removal of the king and 
 the Assembly to Paris. They knew that, if the king were at 
 the Tuileries, he would be a sort of hostage against any 
 royalist attack being made upon Paris from the provinces, and 
 felt, with Lafayette, that they and he would never have the 
 influence over the Assembly which they desired until it sat 
 in Paris, and was bound to depend upon the National Guard 
 for protection against the mob. They therefore joined in the 
 demand for the removal to Paris, and abused the supporters of 
 the absolute veto ; while the iDeople, with theii- keen sense of 
 
214 iVkzy Journals. [chap. 
 
 ridicule, contrived to associate the obnoxious idea with the king 
 and queen, by always terming them Monsieur and Madame Veto. 
 The new journals had had much to do with exciting this 
 feeling against the veto in all classes, and though none of those 
 which appeared for the first time between July 14 and October 5 
 equalled the Kevolutions de Paris either in circulation or 
 ability, many of them had special features which ought to be 
 noticed. Passing over the Observateur of Feydel, a dry 
 but useful summary of facts, and the Journal Universel 
 edited by one Pierre Jean Audouin, who signed himself " the 
 revolutionary sapper," and whose journal must have circulated 
 only among his friends of the working class, a very notable 
 journal is the Journal d'Etat et du Citoyen, of which the 
 first number appeared on August 13. It was edited by a 
 Breton lady, Louise Anne de Kdralio, who had accompanied her 
 father to Paris on his election to the States-General. She 
 had been inspired by the numerous journals which were being 
 started around her to attempt one herself, and had such 
 success, that in the month of December a journalist named 
 Robert, who had an eye to business, married her, and merged 
 her journal with his, under the title of the Mercure National. 
 Far more remarkable than these journals were the Ghronique 
 de Paris, the Journal des Debats et des Becrets, and the Ami 
 du Peuple. The Ghronique de Paris was established to meet 
 a real need. There was no journal existing which appealed 
 exclusively to the bourgeois. The Revolutions de Paris often 
 went too far for them, and the Point du Jour, the Patriate 
 Frangais, and the Courrier de Provence were too exclusively 
 devoted to explaining the sentiments of Barrere, Brissot, and 
 Mirabeau to be influential among the whole bourgeois class. 
 The editors of the new journal were not particularly dis- 
 tinguished men, and succeeded in obtaining a large circulation 
 by not obtruding their own ideas. They wisely engaged a 
 large body of contributors to write for them, instead of con- 
 fining themselves to one or two, and thus contrived to give 
 great variety to every number. Among the writers they 
 engaged were such distinguished men as Condorcet and 
 
VII.] The "Journal des D4bats" 215 
 
 Rabaut de Saint-Etienne, and throughout the sitting of the 
 Constituent Assembly they managed to exactly suit the 
 bourgeois taste, not only in Paris but in the provinces, so that 
 their paper, though not a power in the land, like the Revolutions 
 de Paris, was widely read, and had considerable influence in 
 forming the opinions of the whole bourgeois class. The 
 Journal des Debats, which still exists, arose in a very different 
 fashion. Mention has been made of the corresponding com- 
 mittees established in every important town in France after 
 the election of the deputies to the States-General, and of the 
 eagerness with which they demanded information as to what 
 was being done at Paris and Versailles from their deputies. 
 Especially eager for information were the rival cities of Riom 
 and Clermont-Ferrand in Lower Auvergne, and very competent 
 was at least one deputy for the latter city, Gaulthier de Biau- 
 zat, to give it well and succinctly. The popularity of Gaul- 
 thier's reports, which were read aloud in the theatre of 
 Clermont-Ferrand,^ made him think of printing them, and 
 from this idea arose the Journal des Debats. In the month 
 of August, Gaulthier de Biauzat and Huguet, deputies for 
 Clermont-Ferrand, and Grenier, deputy for Riom, agreed to 
 write a new weekly journal without pay, on condition that 
 copies should be sent gratis to Auvergne, while Baudouin, 
 the printer to the Assembly, and an elector for Paris, agreed 
 to print and publish it on these conditions. The journal 
 soon attained a wide provincial circulation, for it was very 
 ably written, and its account of the debates in the Assembly 
 and of events in Paris, without being so fuU as the Monlteur, 
 was undoubtedly the best published in any weekly journal. 
 
 On September 12 appeared the first number of a journal, 
 which was soon to change its name to the Ami du Feuple, 
 and to be the most characteristic journal of the whole revolu- 
 tionary period. Its founder was one of the most maligned 
 men of his time, and as he typifies a large class of persons at 
 this period, it is worth while analyzing his career somewhat 
 1 See chap, vi p. 170 ; and Mege's Lea Fondatewrs du Joimial des 
 Debate. 
 
2i6 Ea7'ly Life of Marat, [chap. 
 
 minutely. Jean Paul Marat was bom at Boudry, near Neuf- 
 chatel, in Switzerland, on April 13, 1742.^ His father, who 
 spelt his name " Mara," was a physician of some ability, and, on 
 being exiled from his native island of Sardinia for abandoning 
 the Roman Catholic religion, had taken up his residence in 
 Switzerland and married a Swiss Protestant. Jean Paul was 
 the eldest of three sons; his next brother settled down as 
 a watchmaker at Geneva, and his youngest brother entered 
 the service of the Empress Catherine, and distinguished him- 
 self in the Russian army under the title of the Chevalier de 
 Boudry. Jean Paul was from his childhood of an intensely 
 sensitive and excitable disposition, and also so quick at his 
 books that he became a good classical scholar, and acquainted 
 with most modern languages. As his chief taste, however, 
 seemed to be for natural science, he was intended to follow 
 his father's profession, and was, at the age of eighteen, sent to 
 study medicine at the University of Bordeaux. He there 
 obtained a thorough knowledge of his profession, but devoted 
 himself particularly to the sciences of optics and electricity. 
 From Bordeaux he went to Paris, where he effected a remark- 
 able cure of a disease of the eyes, which had been abandoned 
 as hopeless both by physicians and quacks, by means of 
 electricity. From Paris he went to Amsterdam, and finally 
 to London, where he set up in practice in Church Street, Soho, 
 then one of the most fashionable districts in London. He 
 must soon have formed a good practice, for he stopped in 
 London, with occasional visits to Dublin and Edinburgh, for 
 ten years, and only left it to take up an appointment at the 
 French court. While in London he wrote his first book, and 
 in 1772 and 1773 he published the first two volumes of a 
 philosophical and physiological " Essay on Man." The point 
 he discussed was the old problem of the relation between body 
 and mind, and he treated it in a very interesting manner 
 from the physiological point of view. He held some extra- 
 ordinary theory about the existence of some fluid in the veins 
 which acted on the mind, which, however, does not impair the 
 » ilforai, .£'spntj5oZi<i</ue, by F. Chevremont. 2 vols. Paris : 1880. 
 
VII.] Marat in England. 217 
 
 interest of his inquiries into the cause of dreams, or diminish 
 the respiect felt for his wide reading and extensive knowledge 
 both of ancient and modern philosophical and medical authors. 
 He shows a wide knowledge of Latin and Greek literature, and 
 while writing in good English freely quotes French, German, 
 Italian, and Spanish writers. In one part of his book he 
 declared that it was ridiculous for any one to make psychical 
 researches without having some knowledge of anatomy and 
 physiology, and openly attacked Helv^tius for despising 
 scientific knowledge in his famous "De I'Esprit." Voltaire 
 naturally took the side of Helvetius, and did the young author 
 the honour of noticing, and very severely criticizing, his book. 
 Marat himself translated it into French, and published it at 
 Amsterdam in 1775. His next work was of a political character. 
 He had got mixed up with some of the popular societies in 
 England, which were striving to obtain a thorough reform of 
 the representation of the people in the House of Commons, 
 and in 1774 published a work, which he entitled " The Chains 
 of Slavery." In this book, which is partly historical and partly 
 political, he begs the electors to take more care in the choice of 
 their representatives. It is written in a very declamatory 
 style, and strikes the note of the responsibility of representa- 
 tives to their constituents, which is the key-note of all his poli- 
 tical ideas. The book is published in quarto, and is printed 
 on fine paper, so that it can hardly have been meant to appeal 
 to the populace ; but it nevertheless procured him the honorary 
 membership of the popular societies of Newcastle and other 
 great northern cities. Subsequently he again returned to his 
 profession, and after publishing a medical tract in 1775, of which 
 no copy is known to exist, he published " An Inquiry into the 
 Nature, Cause, and Cure of a Singular Disease of the Eyes," in 
 1776.^ In this little pamphlet there is no violent language ; it 
 describes the disease and the cases he had cured in perfectly 
 simple language, and shows at least that he was no mere quack, 
 but a scientific physician. On June 30, 1775, he had, while on 
 a visit to Scotland, received the honorary degree of M.D. firom 
 » See Academy of September 23, 1882. 
 
2i8 Marat in Paris. [chap. 
 
 the Univensity of St. Andrews for his eminence as a doctor, and 
 had probably received similar compliments from other univer- 
 sities, because, on June 24, 1777, Jean Paul Marat, " medecin 
 de plusieurs facult^s d'Angleterre," was appointed, for his good 
 character and high reputation as a doctor, physician to the 
 body-guard of the Comte d'Artois, with a salary of a thousand 
 livres a year and allowances. To take up this court appoint- 
 ment he moved to Paris, and soon acquired a large practice 
 there, and the name of "physician of the incurables," from 
 the number of hopeless cases he was successful in treating. He 
 also moved in the best society about the court, and won the 
 affections of the Marquise de I'Aubespine for saving her life. 
 For some reason or other, most probably because he had 
 obtained a competent fortune and desired to satisfy his ambi- 
 tion, he resigned his court appointment in 1783, and devoted 
 himself to science. He had long observed the phenomena of 
 heat, light, and electricity, and in the course of the next five 
 years published the result of his experiments, and presented 
 them to the Academy of Sciences. His hard work won him 
 the friendship of Benjamin Franklin, but the violence with 
 which he attacked his adversaries, and his audacity in doubt- 
 ing the conclusions of Newton, prevented him from obtaining 
 a seat in the Academy of Sciences. When he recognized that 
 the hostility to himself prevented due recognition of his work, 
 he determined to win the approbation of the Academy by 
 concealing his name ; and his translation of the " Optics " of 
 Newton, which was covered by the name of M. de Beauzde, 
 and published in 1788, was at once crowned by the very 
 Academy which had rejected him. His political work 
 during these years was confined to a treatise, in imitation of 
 Beccaria, on the subject of punishments. The approach of the 
 States-General, however, revived his political enthusiasm, and 
 in the- March of 1789, when he believed himself to be dying, 
 he published his " Offrande a la patrie," which was followed 
 in quick succession by a supplement and other pamphlets. Of 
 these distinctly the most able is the " Tableau des Vices de la 
 Constitution Anglaise," which he presented to the Assembly in 
 
VII.] The ''Ami du Peuple" 219 
 
 September, 1789. In it he points out wliat he had learnt in 
 the popular societies of England, that the English people was by 
 no means so weU. governed as it was supposed to be ; that the 
 influence of the king and the ministry was overwhelming 
 through the extent of patronage, and that the rich there 
 bought seats in the House of Commons as they bought estates. 
 Marat then felt that he could not express himself frequently 
 enough in pamphlets, and on September 12 appeared the first 
 number of a journal written entirely by himself, called the 
 Journal du Peuple, which title was changed to that of Ami 
 du Peuple, or The People's Friend, with the fourth number. 
 To understand the man, it is necessary to get rid of precon- 
 ceived ideas. Suspicious and irritable, excitable and sensitive 
 to an extreme, he attacked everybody, and attacked them 
 all with unaccustomed violence; but with all this he was 
 in private life a highly educated gentleman. The extent of 
 his attainments appears from his numerous works, and it must 
 be remembered that he could not for years have been a fashion- 
 able physician an"d held a court appointment without being 
 perfectly polite and well bred. His faults arose . from his 
 irritable and suspicious nature, and years of persecution made 
 him half-insane towards the end of his life ; but in September, 
 1789, he was in perfect possession of his senses, and the very 
 popularity of his journal showed how congenial his gospel of 
 suspicion was to the Parisians. 
 
 Was there any ground for the distrust entertained by the 
 people of Paris and fostered by the journalists towai-ds the 
 court ? Undoubtedly there was. The king was being again 
 and again pressed to leave Versailles for Compiegne or Fon- 
 tainebleau, and was certain to yield at last to the solicitations 
 of the queen. She had not been crushed by the failure of 
 Broglie's scheme, and now rested her entire hopes upon the 
 Marquis de Bouille, who, as commander-in-chief on the eastern 
 frontier, had his head-quarters at Metz. The Comte d'Estaing, 
 the commandant of the National Guard of Versailles, was ready, 
 not only to connive at the escape of the royal family, but even 
 to cover it, and had for that purpose got leave from the 
 
220 The Banquet m the Theatre. [chap. 
 
 municipality to be free to act against any movement from Paris 
 on Versailles. Any attempt to escape would be useless with- 
 out the hearty co-operation of the king's body-guard and of 
 the garrison of Versailles. To prove and inflame their loyalty, 
 the king, queen, and royal family came to witness the great 
 banquet which was given, on October 1, by the body-guard 
 to the Regiment de Flandre in the theatre of the Chateau. 
 Their reception was most enthusiastic; and the delighted 
 soldiery sang with fervour Blondel's song out of Gr^try's opera, 
 " Richard Coeur de Lion," " Richard, mon Roi, I'univers 
 t'abandonne." Then, in their royalism, they tore off their tri- 
 coloured cockades and mounted white ones.^ The war against 
 tricoloured cockades continued all the next day, when the 
 maids of honour pinned white ones on every courtier's breast, 
 and Laurent Lecointre, the rich draper of Versailles and one of 
 the captains of the local National Guard, was publiclj' insulted 
 in the palace. This news fed the flame of suspicion among the 
 Parisians ; they now felt no doubt that the king would retire 
 into some garrison town and collect forces to besiege and 
 punish them. The journalists fanned this mood of suspicious 
 anger, and all Parisians, from the wealthy bourgeois to the 
 poorest starving ouvrier, were determined that the king should 
 come to Paris, though they did not know exactly how he could 
 be compelled to do so. Lafayette was equally desirous to 
 achieve the same result for his own purposes, but also did 
 not know how to manage it. The terrible starvation which 
 was increasing in Paris settled the difliculty, and also gave 
 Lafayette an opportunity to pose as the saviour of the 
 monarchy. 
 
 On October 6, at about six o'clock in the morning, the 
 tocsin began to ring in Paris.^ National guards began to 
 
 1 Miot de Melito's Memoires, vol. i. pp. 15, 16. 
 
 2 For the events of October 5 and 6, see the Memoires of Miot de Melito, 
 vol. i. pp. 18-29 ; the Correspondance entre Miraheau et La Marck, vol. i. 
 pp. 82-86 ; Lafayette's IJemoires, vol. ii. pp. 339, 340, and 347-349, 
 Paris, 1837 ; and Les journees des5 et & Octobre, 1789, — a letter written to 
 his wife on October 6, by an eye-witness, the Marquis de Paroy — in the 
 Ilevue de la llevohdion for January, 1883. 
 
VII.] The Morning of October 5 in Paris. 221 
 
 appear in the streets, and a woman collected other women 
 round her in the market by beating a big drum. Yet the 
 rabble of Paris did not accumulate with the same vivacity of 
 July 14; the national guards had done their work of main- 
 taining order thoroughly, and had terrified them, while a 
 month or two's imprisonment for trying to get up a riot on 
 the subject of the veto had made Saint-Huruge more cautious, 
 and other leaders afraid to suffer a similar punishment. The 
 women of Paris knew no such fears. How they were collected 
 together in the great square before the Hotel de Ville no one 
 has been able to explain. Whether it was by some secret 
 machination of Orleans or Lafayette, or owing to the maternal 
 instinct, which would not let them see their children starve 
 before their eyes, that they had assembled, matters little; 
 the fact remained that there were some five thousand women 
 in the Place de Gr^ve in a state of frenzied excitement, many 
 of them starving, and all desirous that some one should be 
 punished for their sufferings. Bailly and the municipality 
 were at their wits' end, and occupied themselves in sending 
 out messengers for Lafayette every few minutes. The starving 
 women would not wait for the commandant of the National 
 Guard, but seized an unfortunate abb^ at the Hotel de Ville, 
 and were proceeding to hang him, when a man of energy 
 appeared on the scene. It was Stanislas Maillard,^ one of the 
 conquerors of the Bastille, and now a captain in the volunteer 
 corps which bore that name, who happened at about seven 
 o'clock to be going to the municipality to make some requisi- 
 tion. He was a man of great energy and perfect presence 
 of mind, as he had proved in the capture of the Bastille, and 
 was to prove again in the massacres of September, and took 
 in the state of affairs at a glance ; he at once seized a drum, 
 and, shouting " A Versailles ! " said exactly what the women 
 wanted, and reminded them then that there would be bread 
 enough in Paris if the king were only there. They dropped 
 their victim at once, and, crowding together under leaders 
 of their own, among whom stood pre-eminent Theroigne de 
 * Stanislas Maillwrd, by Alexandre Sorel, p. 12. Paris : 18C2. 
 
222 The Women at Versailles. [chap. 
 
 M^ricourt with a naked sabre, followed Maillard with loud 
 cries on the road to Versailles. They were accompanied by 
 a crowd of the lowest and poorest of the rabble of Paris, and 
 followed at a little distance by the conquerors of the Bastille, 
 marching in regular order, not to co-operate in their movement, 
 but to protect them if necessary. The municipality ordered 
 Lafayette to follow at once in order to prevent bloodshed. He 
 ordered the paid battalion, the former Gai'des Fran9aises, to 
 get under arms, and concentrated various volunteer battalions 
 in different quarters, but delayed ordering an advance till 
 about four o'clock in the afternoon. He wished to be the 
 saviour of the king, and it would not be sufficiently glorious 
 to forestall the danger. 
 
 Meanwhile the news that the tocsin was ringing in Paris, 
 and that a mob was marching on Versailles, was brought to 
 the king, while he was hunting in the forest of Rambouillet, 
 at about half-past one. He received the news with his usual 
 indifference, but nevertheless returned at once to the palace, 
 where he found all the four companies of the body-guard, six 
 hundred in number, drawn up in order of battle in the Cour 
 des Ministres, and the Regiment de Flandre along the Place 
 d'Armes. On the left of the Place d'Armes also, in the 
 former barracks of the Gardes Franpaises, which were now 
 their head-quarters, had collected some two hundred of the 
 national guards of Versailles. Between three and four o'clock 
 the women reached Versailles, covered with mud,for the weather 
 was very bad, and it had been raining all day. ^ Some went at 
 once to the palace and demanded food, which was readily given 
 to them; but the greater part, still under the leadership of 
 Maillard, went to the hall where the Assembly was sitting, 
 under the presidency of Mounier. Maillard addressed Mounier 
 on behalf of the women, demanding that the price of bread 
 should be lowered by a decree, and the Assembly then decided 
 that a deputation of their own members should accompany a 
 deputation of the women to the king. The deputations were 
 most graciously received by Louis with all the goodness of his 
 * The Marquis de Paroy's letter, p. 3. 
 
VII. J Plan of the CM(emi of Versailles. 223 
 
2 24 Lafayette at Versailles. [_chap. 
 
 heart; but, on getting outside the palace gate, the women were 
 nearly torn in pieces by their sisters for submitting to that 
 gracious reception. Many of the women had remained in the 
 Assembly, filling the galleries and even the body of the hall^ 
 and they now cried out for the members to go on doing 
 something, and above all to contrive to give them all plenty 
 of food in Paris; but Mounier behaved courageously, and 
 declared that the Assembly would not deliberate under pres- 
 sure. Many of the women then made their preparations to 
 spend the night in the Assembly, which passed a motion that, 
 considering the gravity of the situation, it would sit en 
 'permanence. 
 
 During the evening the crowd round the palace gates had 
 been swelled by new-comers from Paris, who wished to see 
 what was going on, and two or three slight disturbances had 
 taken place. At last, between six and seven o'clock, the 
 royal travelling carriages were seen by the national guards 
 of Versailles, who still remained under arms, to be coming 
 across the Place dArmes from the Great Stables to the 
 private entrance of the Orangerie ; and the cry at once arose 
 that the king must not be allowed to leave the palace. Several 
 of the national guards then dashed forward and insisted on 
 the carriages being driven back again. Soon after, the addi- 
 tional troops, such as the Regiment de Flandre, were seen to 
 march off to their quarters, for both king and queen had 
 recognized that it was too late to escape, and that they must 
 wait for Lafayette. An hour afterwards the body-guard, who 
 had been intended to accompany the king's flight, trotted across 
 the Place d'Armes towards their barracks in the Avenue de 
 Sceaux, and on their way they were fired upon by -the national 
 guards of Versailles, and one of their horses was killed, which 
 was immediately roasted and eaten by the Parisian mob.^ 
 
 At last, at about eleven o'clock, Lafayette arrived with 
 
 the greater part of the National Guard of Paris, including the 
 
 paid battalion, and several guns. He at once had an interview 
 
 with the king, and, after assuring him of his power and his 
 
 1 Miot de Melito'a Memoires, p. 23. 
 
VII.] The Attack on the Palace. 225 
 
 willingness to protect him, demanded his unconditional accept- 
 ance of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. . The king 
 complied, and requested Lafayette to look to the safety of the 
 palace, but absolutely refused to admit his men into the 
 palace, alleging that his guards would keep watch there as 
 usual. Greatly chagrined, Lafayette told off his men to sleep 
 in the various churches of Versailles, and left the Cour Royale 
 at about a quarter past twelve, on the rumour ot an attack on 
 the barracks of the body-guard, in the Comte de la Marck's 
 carriage. The carriage was checked on entering the Cour 
 des Ministres by crowds of drunken men, ready for any daring 
 enterprise, who had broken through the outer gate of the 
 palace, and was finally stopped at the entrance of the 
 Avenue des Sceaux. Lafayette then returned to the Cour 
 des Ministres, and, on paying a visit to the Comte de Mont- 
 morin, had the assurance to say that all was well, and that as 
 he was very sleepy, he must at once go to bed. He accordingly 
 left the palace, and went off to sleep at the Hotel de Noailles.^ 
 As might have been expected from a crowd of the lowest 
 rabble of Paris, after a night spent in dancing, drinking, and 
 eating horseflesh, an attack was made upon the palace with 
 the dawn ot the morning of October 6. About five o'clock 
 some of the mob, who had got into the gardens, found a back 
 door, opening on the Parterre d'Eau, unguarded, and soon 
 forced their way into the Cour des Marbres, while Lafayette 
 continued to sleep peacefully. They tried to make their way 
 straight to the queen's room, and killed two of the body- 
 guards who defended the antechamber and staircase. How- 
 ever, two body-guards, Miomandre and Victor Maubourg, 
 managed to defend her bedchamber until she had time to 
 escape by a private staircase to the king's own room. At the 
 noise of this fighting the paid battalion of the Parisian National 
 Guard, which was on duty under the command of Colonel 
 Cardignan, and of which Lazare Hoche was sergeant-major, 
 quickly arrived at the palace, and cleared it in a very few 
 1 Corresporidance entre le Comte de Mirabeau et le Comte de la March, 
 ed. by A. de Baoourt, vol. i. p. 85. Brussels : 1851. 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
2 26 Who Contrived the ^th and 6th of October, [chap. 
 
 minutes. At about seven o'clock appeared Lafayette, wide 
 awake to the advantages of his position; he first persuaded 
 the king, queen, and royal family to appear on the balcony to 
 the people. They were greeted with shouts of " Le Roi h, 
 Paris ! " and Lafayette then urged the king to comply with the 
 wish of the people. The king knew he must give way, and 
 acquiesced; and Lafayette then announced to the people that the 
 king unconditionally assented to the Declaration of the Rights 
 of Man, and that he would come to Paris that afternoon. 
 MaUlard, with a body of followers, including men carrying 
 the heads of the slaughtered body-guards, started off at once 
 to take the good news to Paris, where he was warmly received 
 by the municipality. At a little past one the royal carriages 
 left Versailles, and late in the evening, escorted by Lafayette 
 on his white horse, the Parisian National Guard, and the mob, 
 reached the capital. The royal family first went to the Hotel 
 de Ville, where they had to listen to an harangue from Bailly, 
 and then went to the Tuileries, which had been so Ions un- 
 occupied that there were not even sufficient beds to sleep in.* 
 Thus ended the memorable days of October 5 and 6, 1789, to 
 the great glory of General Morpheus, as the royalists called him, 
 and to the real destruction of monarchical power in France. 
 
 Who were the contrivers of the events of October 5 and 6 ? 
 Mirabeau and Orleans were most strongly suspected at the 
 time. But there is direct evidence that Mirabeau spent the 
 evening of October 5, and dined with the Comte de la 
 Marck;^ and a quotation from the journal of Mrs. Elliott 
 not only shows that Orleans was not present, but illus- 
 trates the attitude of the court towards him. "The Duke 
 of Orleans," she writes, "was certainly not at Versailles 
 on that dreadful morning, for he breakfasted with company 
 at my house when he was accused of being in the queen's 
 apartment disguised. ... He expressed himself as not 
 approving of the bringing of the king to Paris; 'that it 
 
 1 Mimoires de la Diichesse de Tmwzel, edited by" the Due des Cars 
 vol. i. p. 23. Paris : 1883. 
 
 2 Correspondanoe entre Mirabeau et La March, vol. i. p. 82. 
 
VII.] The Second Emigration. 227 
 
 must be a scheme of Lafayette's,' but added, 'I dare say- 
 that they will accuse me of it, as they lay every tumult to my 
 account. I thiuk myself this is a mad project, and like aU 
 Lafayette does.' " ^ On the other hand it is proved that 
 Lafayette did not do his best to prevent the exodus of the 
 starving women ; that, instead of following them quickly with 
 his forces, he allowed many hours to elapse before he began 
 his march after them, and that at the critical time of the 
 early morning, when the rabble were breaking into the gardens, 
 he was enjoying his night's rest. The municipality of Ver- 
 sailles also must bear part of the blame. As soon as he heard 
 the report of the march of the women to Paris, Laurent 
 Lecointre, the wealthy linen-draper, begged the municipality 
 to prepare lodging and food for them, and, had his advice been 
 listened to, the mob would not have remained in the Place 
 d'Armes all night, and Lafayette would never have had his 
 opportunity of saving the royal family. 
 
 The events of October 5 and 6 close the second period of 
 the Revolution. They form a complement to those of July 14. 
 Had the Assembly or had the king taken advantage of the 
 capture of the Bastille to establish a new and strong constitu- 
 tion, the events of October would never have taken place. 
 But the Assembly wasted its time, and the king made no 
 effort, so that a further step in the road of revolution was 
 bound to foUow. They were days of great importance, for in 
 them the union between the history of the Revolution and the 
 history of Paris was sealed. Paris had engulfed the king and 
 the Assembly ; and this was due in the first instance to the 
 journalists and mob orators who had excited the populace into 
 the belief that the presence of the king and the Assembly 
 would ensure food for themselves, and in the second to the 
 extreme vanity of Lafayette, who wanted them there merely to 
 increase his own honour and glory. 
 
 The events of October 5 and 6 were followed by a second 
 panic for emigration. Many of the noblesse who had made 
 1 Journal of my Life during the French Revolution, by Grace Dalrymplo 
 EUiott, pp. 37, 38. 
 
228 Retirement of Mounter. [chap. vii. 
 
 themselves obnoxious in any way retired to Turin or Brussels, 
 London or Spa, -which became the head-quarters of the ^migrds. 
 By most of them emigration was regarded as a pleasant foreign 
 trip, which would soon be over ; but when they felt impatience 
 because it lasted so long, they occasionally used menacing words 
 about foreign intervention, which only exasperated Frenchmen 
 and patriots the more against them. More curious than the 
 second emigration was the resignation of Mounier and friends. 
 On October 8 Mounier resigned both the presidency and his seat 
 in the Assembly, and his example was followed by Bergasse, 
 Lally-ToUendal, and twenty-three other deputies of the right. 
 Thus ended the political career of Jean Joseph Mounier. No 
 man had done more for the cause of the Revolution ; no man 
 at the meeting of the States-General had received or deserved 
 a warmer greeting ; no man had possessed so high a political 
 reputation ; and no man could have failed more entirely than he 
 had done. His failure was due to both intellectual and moral 
 deficiencies. He was essentially a theorist, and when his 
 theories were not approved of, he lost his temper and abused 
 the deputies who did not agree with him. It is sad to think 
 that a man whose career had promised to be so distinguished 
 should have closed it at so early a period of the Revolution 
 he had done so much to bring about, from a mere infirmity of 
 temper. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE ASSEMBLY AT PARIS. 
 
 The Assembly at Paris — The Manage — Parties become more defined — 
 Talleyrand — The right : the Comte de Montlosier, the Abb^ Maury, 
 Cazal^s — The left : the triumvirate, Adrien Duport, Bamave, 
 Charles de Lameth — The followers of the triumvirate — Mirabeau 
 enters into communication with the court — His plan — Proposes new 
 ministers — Decree of November 7 — Mirabeau's manner of work — 
 Assistants — Collaborators — Policy — Detested and distrusted — 
 Increased bitterness of political feeling — Political duels — Theatrical 
 and artistic politics — The " Cercle Sociale" — The Jacobin, 1789, and 
 Cordelier Clubs — Camille Desmoulins founds the Revolutions de 
 France et de Brabant — Marat and Aini du Peuple — Royalist 
 journals — The Actes des Apotres — Attitude of Continental powers 
 — ^Attitude of England and America — Why no one interfered — The 
 four men in power — Position of Bailly, Lafayette, and Necker — 
 Mirabeau's first appeal to Lafayette — He is summoned by the court. 
 
 The result o£ the removal of the Assembly to Paris, which 
 followed the events of October 5 and 6 as a matter of course, 
 was exactly what Lafayette had anticipated. It now debated 
 under the eyes of the Parisians, who were able to influence its 
 deliberations in more ways than one. At Versailles it had 
 sat in the enormous hall of the king's " lesser pleasures," and 
 the inconveniences pf so large a meeting-place had been keenly 
 felt in the earlier sessions. On the very day of meeting, the 
 words of the king and of the keeper of the seals could 
 hardly be heard by the deputies of the tiers dtat, and com- 
 plaints were made all through the debates on the Declaration 
 of the Rights of Man of the impossibility of hearing many of 
 the chief speeches. The vastness of the hall had another 
 
230 The Mandge. [chap. 
 
 serious inconvenience, which has already been noticed. It 
 allowed strangers to force their way into the body of the 
 place, join in the general hubbub, and occasionally to vote. 
 In Paris no such place of meeting was obtainable, and these 
 inconveniences disappeared. When the king took up his 
 residence at the Tuileries he had at once ordered the National 
 Assembly to follow him to Paris, and the committee of 
 deputies appointed for the purpose reported in favour of the 
 Manege, or riding-school, as the best place they could find for 
 the home of the Assembly in Paris. The Manage was an 
 oblong building, some 240 feet in length by 60 feet in width, 
 and was situated on the north side of the Tuileries gardens, 
 exactly where the Rue de Rivoli now joins the Rue Castig- 
 lione. As will be seen by the plan,^ it stood in no main street, 
 and could only be reached either by a long walled court 
 stretching along the Tuileries gardens from the royal stables 
 at the end of the Rue du Dauphin, or by a narrow passage 
 leading from the Rue St. Honor^ between the convents of 
 the Feuillants and of the Capucins, exactly where the Rue 
 Castiglione now runs. It was one of the four royal riding- 
 schools established by Louis XIV. for the instruction of the 
 young nobility, in which not only riding, but dancing, fencing, 
 and mathematics were taught; but the expense of education 
 there — for each pupil had to have his own governor, tutor, and 
 servant- — had caused it to be deserted for the more economical 
 ecole militaire, and it had been shut up for many years. It 
 consisted only of one long narrow hall without any rooms 
 adjoining, so that the committee-rooms, library, and archives 
 had to be established in the neighbouring convent of the 
 Feuillants. In front of this convent, along the Rue St. 
 Honor^, stretched a broad terrace, the Terrasse des Feuillants, 
 which soon became the regular lounging-place of the deputies 
 and seekers after news, who assembled there day after day 
 to discuss the debates and report the last bon mot. Very 
 different to the bustle on this terrace was the gloomy silence 
 of the gardens of the Tuileries, which were now closed to 
 1 See plan of the Tuileries, vol. ii. chap. iii. 
 
VIII.] The Assembly at Paris. 231 
 
 the public and strictly guarded. "While the Manage was being 
 adapted for its new purpose by the architect PS,ris, the As- 
 sembly sat in the great hall of the archbishop's palace, where 
 the electors of the tiers 6tat of Paris had sat in the month of 
 May, when a terrible accident there hurried on the building 
 operations. On October 26, one of the temporary galleries gave 
 way, and a deputy of Lorraine was severely injured, and several 
 othsrs hurt. All despatch was now made, and on November 9 
 the National Assembly sat for the first time in its new abode. 
 When the alterations were completed, it was found that 
 the new building was much better adapted for debating than 
 the great haU of Versailles, but a diificulty at once arose as to 
 the management of the three large galleries which had been 
 erected. At first the Assembly declared in grand language 
 that the whole nation might be present at the debates, but the 
 inconveniences of such magnanimity were soon manifested. 
 Throughout the day the populace of Paris, and especially the 
 women of all classes, crowded these galleries, taking the keenest 
 interest in the proceedings, and applauding or hissing as 
 seemed best to them. Among them fruit-seUers and news- 
 paper-girls wandered about with discordant cries, and the 
 galleries much resembled the gallery of a theatre. People of 
 higher rank, bourgeois or noblesse, had at first to share the seats 
 with the first-comers ; but after a time the admission to one, 
 and at last t6 all the three galleries, was by ticket only. This 
 regulation was often broken on days of exciting debates, when 
 the mob forced its way in, ticket or no ticket. On these days 
 the resemblance to the gallery of a theatre was completed by 
 the sale of front seats by the poor men, who had seized them, 
 to those more wealthy and with greater interest in politics 
 than themselves. The Assembly sat openly before all Paris, 
 and the Parisians must bear their share of the blame poured 
 on the Assembly for its waste of time. But did the change 
 of locality influence the Assembly in any other way than by 
 crowding the building and overlooking its transactions ? 
 Undoubtedly it did, both by indirectly encouraging the popular 
 orators to make more and more radical motions and more and 
 
232 Development of Parties. [chap. 
 
 more revolutionary speeches, and at the same time by forcing 
 many deputies, who at Versailles were inclined to measures of 
 reform, into violent opposition from fear of mob rule. 
 
 It has been noticed that parties began to appear during 
 the debates on the veto, and at Paris they became yet more 
 clearly defined. The centre continued to hold the balance, 
 but both the right and left became more fully organized 
 under their different leaders. These leaders had even obtained 
 sufficient authority to be able to communicate with each other 
 in the name of their parties on matters of procedure ; and, for 
 instance, to avoid degrading the Assembly by frequent contested 
 elections, it was agreed that deputies of the right and left 
 should be alternately elected presidents of the Assembly at 
 the fortnightly election. The disappearance of the moderate 
 group, inclined to the establishment of a well-balanced con- 
 stitutional monarchy, had simplified the position of parties 
 considerably, and, in opposition to the triumvirate consisting of 
 Duport, Barnave, and Charles de Lameth, which for the next 
 year and a half led the left, there had been formed a sort of 
 triumvirate on the right, consisting of the Comte de Montlosier, 
 Cazays, and the Abb^ Maury, which, while it did not join in the 
 obstructive tactics of D'Esprdmesnil and Mirabeau-Tonneau, 
 was yet resolutely opposed to further reform, and desirous only 
 of consolidating the reforms already consented to by the king. 
 But, besides these two groups, there was one little deformed 
 man in a clerical dress, who belonged by birth and profession 
 to the right, and who yet sat upon the left, though without 
 leading it — a cripple who was to have a long and eventful life, 
 and who was now gaining a great position in the Assembly ; 
 a man whom no one trusted, and yet worthy of some study — 
 Charles de Talleyrand-Perigord, Bishop of Autun. 
 
 Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-P(^rigord, who during the 
 next few months played a part of supreme importance in 
 the Assembly, was born at Paris on February 13, 1754 His 
 family was one of the oldest in France, and had had its share 
 of the rich preferments in the Church and State which were 
 allotted to successful courtiers. He was the eldest son of the 
 
viii.] Talleyrand. 233 
 
 Prince de Talleyrand-P6rigord, and would naturally have 
 inherited the title and wealth of his family; but his weak 
 health and deformed body determined his father to leave the 
 family to be represented by a younger brother, and to make 
 his elder son a dignitary of the Church. He was educated at 
 the College d'Harcourt and at the Sorbonne, but was so little 
 loved at home, that he once said he never remembered sleeping 
 at home until he had entered the world as the Abb6 de Peri- 
 gord. He took orders when very young, and was present as 
 the Abbe de Perigord at the coronation of Louis XVI. ; but in 
 his youth he desired rather to enjoy the gay life of the salons 
 of Paris than the intrigues of the court at Versailles. The 
 " little Abb6," as he was called, soon made himself immensely 
 popular. His wit, and still more his character for gallantry, 
 caused his presence to be welcome to all the literary ladies of 
 Paris, and he began to win the reputation for bons mots and 
 epigrammatic sayings which he retained to the end of his life. 
 Though he did not himself push his fortune at court, his great 
 family influence procured him, in 1780, the lucrative appoint- 
 ment of agent-general of the clergy, which was always a step 
 to a bishopric. In the American war he fitted out a privateer 
 to serve against the English, which was a great financial 
 success ; and in 1788 he was consecrated Bishop of Autun. He 
 had hardly time to show his qualities as a bishop, and it may 
 be doubted whether he would have set a particularly good 
 example to his flock ; but he did succeed in making himself 
 very popular with the bourgeoisie and smaller noblesse of his 
 province. In 1789 he presided at the electoral assembly of 
 the clergy of the sendchaussee of Autun, and succeeded in the 
 diflBcult task of pleasing both the clergy and the tiers etat. 
 His speeches were loudly applauded, and printed as pamphlets, 
 and his election as deputy to the States-General was almost 
 unanimous. In the separate assembly .of the Estate of the 
 clergy at Versailles he did not play a very prominent part, 
 and was not one of the four bishops who joined the tiers etat, 
 with 145 other clergy, on June 22. He was contented to wait 
 for his opportunity. He had, however, formed an intimacy 
 
2 34 Talleyrand. [chap. 
 
 with Mirabeau, which was strengthened when he became more 
 aware of Mirabeau's statesmanlike ability. He had gained 
 sufficient popularity, after the reunion of the orders, to be 
 elected, on July 17, a member of the committee appointed to 
 draw up the bases of a new French constitution, and had acted 
 on that committee in opposition to Mounier, and on the side of 
 Si^yfes. At Versailles he still kept rather in the background, 
 but when the Assembly came to Paris, and he perceived which 
 was the successful side, he made himself conspicuous by a 
 motion that the property of the Church belonged to the nation. 
 This motion opened the way for the sale of the Church 
 property and the civil constitution of the clergy, and through- 
 out the discussion on these questions Talleyrand remained one 
 of the most influential members of the Assembly. He was not 
 so much distinguished for his eloquence as an orator, as for the 
 boldness of his conceptions and the logical arguments with 
 which he supported them. That he had some really statesman- 
 like ideas is shown by his close intimacy with Mirabeau. 
 With that great man he continued intimate till his death, when 
 he read to the Assembly the speech Mirabeau had not Hved to 
 deliver. His career during the reign of Napoleon is more 
 generally known, but at this period it must be remembered 
 that he was the only distinguished Churchman who deliberately 
 planned the overthrow of the Church in France. It cannot be 
 said of him, as it can of Gregoire, that he believed a national 
 Church would teach a higher and purer Christianity ; he saw 
 only that by leading the attack on the Church, in which he 
 was himself a dignitary, he would win for himself the greatest 
 consideration and popularity. 
 
 Of very varying careers and temperaments were the three 
 orators who practically led the right of the Assembly after 
 the retirement of Mounier and the manifestation of the whole- 
 sale and factious opposition which the extreme right had 
 adopted. These three orators were the Comte de Mont- 
 losier, the Abb^ Maury, and Cazalds. Fran9ois Dominique 
 de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier, was the twelfth and 
 youngest child of a poor nobleman of Auvergne, and was 
 
vin.] Montlosier. 235 
 
 bom at Clermont-Ferrand in April, 1755. He was educated 
 at the Jesuit College at Clermont-Ferrand, where his great 
 ability and unaccountable mysticism were both perceived, 
 and then went to Paris for a short time. There he made the 
 acquaintance of D'Alembert and other men of letters, but 
 was particularly interested in the phenomena of mesmerism. 
 He found he did not love the city, and determined to retire 
 once more to Auvergne, and there live and die. He accord- 
 ingly married in 1781 a wealthy widow fifteen years older 
 than himself, because she happened to own an old house of 
 his ancestors, and lived a hermit life. Having some know- 
 ledge of geology, he set to work to study the geological 
 features in his own neighbourhood. The result of his inves- 
 tigations appeared iu his " Thdorie des Volcans d' Auvergne," 
 published in 17S9, and won him more than a local reputation, 
 which showed itself in his election as deputy " suppliant " 
 for the noblesse of Lower Auvergne to the States-Geaeral. 
 In September one of the deputies for his bailliage resigned, 
 and he took his seat in the National Assembly. He naturally 
 seated himself on the right, and entered into a close alliance 
 with his compatriot, Malouet. With Malouet he opposed 
 any further reforms, not because they were not wanted, but 
 because he beheved they were coming too quick and too soon, 
 and feared for the maintenance of the Catholic religion ; for, 
 strange to say, his love for geology had not affected his 
 religious belief, and he remained a very earnest Catholic. 
 He was eventually to make his name famous by a magnificent 
 apostrophe, but at present he was only beginning to be 
 distinguished as an orator, and in ideas generally followed his 
 friend Malouet. 
 
 Jean Siffrein Maury, who was the chief defender of the 
 Church against the attacks of Talleyrand, was one of 
 the ablest orators and readiest debaters in the Assembly. 
 He was as loose a Churchman as Talleyrand himself, and if 
 more distinguished as an orator, possessed none of Talleyrand's 
 wonderful perspicacity in seeing how the wind blew. He was 
 the son of a Protestant cobbler, who had been driven from 
 
236 Maury. [chap. 
 
 French soil after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and 
 was born at Vah-^as, near Avignon, in 1746. His cleverness 
 was perceived by the priest of the parish, who sent him to 
 the Jesuit College of Avignon, where he took orders; but, 
 finding that Church preferment could only be obtained at 
 Paris, he started for the capital without a penny in his pocket, 
 in 1766. He there gave lessons, and sent in, but .without 
 success, essays for the various prizes ofiered by the Academic 
 Fran9aise. At last the Bishop of Lombez heard of his ability, 
 and made him his secretary, and a canon of his cathedral. 
 His growing reputation had secured him an introduction 
 into some salons, and in 1772 he was selected to preach the 
 panegyric on St. Louis before the Parlement of Paris. His 
 success was so great, that a deputation from the Parlement 
 at once went to the king and requested that their preacher 
 might be given a good abbey. The king complied, and Maury 
 became the Abbd de la Frenade. He was then for some years 
 the most popular preacher in Paris, and in 1776 preached 
 at court. After his sermon, the king said the only witty 
 thing recorded of him — that the Abb^ Maury had shown in 
 his sermon a vast knowledge of classics, of metaphysics, and of 
 every science and branch of literature except theology. He 
 had made oratory his especial study, and particularly pulpit 
 oratory, by which he hoped, in spite of his birth, to rise to 
 high dignity ; and in 1777 published the result of his reflec- 
 tions on the subject in his " Essai sur I'Eloquence de la Chaire," 
 which still remains a French classic. The style is hardly 
 pleasing, but the critical power displayed is of a high order. 
 Maury was the first critic who noticed the immense superiority 
 of the pulpit oratory of the reign of Louis XIV. to that of 
 his own century, and he rightly ranks Bossuet above Fldchier 
 and Bourdaloue. He then co-operated with the Abb^ de 
 Boismont in his " Lettres secretes . sur I'Efcat actuel de la 
 Religion et du Clergd en Fra.nce," which won him the friend- 
 ship of his collaborator, to whom he became coadjutor, and 
 eventually successor in the headship of the rich monastery of 
 Lihons, or Lions, in Artois. His literary merits were further 
 
VIII.] Maury. 237 
 
 recognized in 1785 by his election to the Acad^mie Fran9aise 
 in the place of Lefranc de Pompignan, the adversary of 
 Voltaire. The electoral period of 1789 gave him a further 
 opportunity of distinguishing himself; ho went down to his 
 abbey, and though almost unknown in Artois, by his ability 
 and reputation soon won a commanding position among the 
 cur^s of the united bailliages of P^ronne, Roye, and Mont- 
 didier. He showed the most liberal tendencies, and influenced 
 the clergy to co-operate with the noblesse and tiers 6tat 
 of his bailliages to draw up their cahier in common. But 
 the length of time taken over the joint cahier prevented the 
 clergy from co-operating for long, for the cur^s had to be in 
 their parish churches on Sunday to say mass ; so the clergy 
 drew up a short cahier under the influence of Maury, and 
 separated after electing him and the Abbd de Dupont their 
 deputies. This cahier^ of the Abbd Maury's proves how 
 liberal his ideas were, and how thoroughly he had assimilated 
 the reforming ideas of the Parisian salons. In it he demanded, 
 in the name of the clergy of the united bailliages of P^ronne, 
 Montdidier, and Roye, that the States-General should be 
 summoned every Ave years, that there should be no more 
 privileges in matters of taxation, that lettres de cachet should 
 be abolished, that every one should be eligible for public 
 employment, and that no loan should be raised without the 
 previous consent of the States-General. When the States- 
 General met at Versailles, the Abb^ Maury was expected to 
 be on the side of the reformers, and the disappointment was 
 proportionately more keen when it was found that the orator 
 strenuously opposed the reunion of the three orders. It is 
 almost impossible not to believe that he took up this position 
 from a hope of obtaining promotion from the court, for in 
 the month of May he could not plead fear of mob-rule as his 
 excuse. The general conviction that he was a renegade from 
 the liberal party from motives of self-interest caused him 
 to be especially detested in Paris, and in the meetings iu the 
 Palais-Royal he was held up to execration with Broglie and 
 ^ See La lievolution a Peronm, by G. Eamon, pt. ii. pp. 73-99. 
 
238 Maury. [chap, 
 
 the Polignacs. He felt his danger so keenly that, after the 
 taking of the Bastille, he attempted to leave France ; but he 
 was recognized at P^ronne, and arrested there on July 26. 
 His ready wit saved him from any harm, but he was ordered 
 to return to Paris to his duties as a deputy, and by his 
 courage throughout the next two years amply disproved any 
 charge of personal cowardice which might have been brought 
 against him. His eloquence cannot be compared for power 
 with that of Mirabeau and Barnave, still less with that of 
 Vergniaud, but it was always ready and pointed, and his 
 lively sallies made him popular even with his opponents. 
 He was several times in danger of his life when walking 
 the streets of Paris, but always managed to conciliate his 
 assailants by some well-turned though often very obscene 
 iest. He was certainly the readiest political speaker of the 
 right, but the universal disbelief in his earnestness or honesty 
 prevented his arguments from having much weight. He 
 cannot be called a professed obstructionist, like Mirabeau- 
 Tonneau, but it must be confessed, nevertheless, that he very 
 often did obstruct the progress of business. His importance 
 during the debates on the civil constitution of the clergy 
 was only second to that of Talleyrand, and it is characteristic 
 that the first attack upon it and its defence should have 
 fallen into the hands of two Churchmen so little worthy by 
 their lives either to attack or defend it. 
 
 Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazal^s, who, if not so ready 
 a debater as Maury, was a more eloquent orator, because his 
 oratory came from his heart, was born at Grenade-sur-Garonne 
 in 1758. His family had been of doubtful nobility until the 
 seventeenth century, when its head held municipal office at 
 Toulouse, and his father was only a counsellor at the provincial 
 parlement of Toulouse. The young CazaMs had obtained a 
 commission in the cavalry in 1773, and had early taken an 
 interest in polities, if the report that he was for some months 
 in prison at Lourdes for taking a conspicuous share in some 
 demonstration against the Parlement Maupeou can be believed. 
 He had been distinguished in his regiment as an extremely 
 
viitj Cazalds. 239 
 
 indolent young officer, with a taste for drink and play, and 
 also for studying history and abstract political philosophy, 
 and was only a captain in the Dragoons of Deux Fonts 
 in 1789. In that year he was infected with the universal 
 political enthusiasm of the time, and determined to offer 
 himself as a candidate for the States-General. He was rejected 
 by the noblesse of Toulouse and Cahors, but was at last elected 
 by the noblesse of the little new bailliage of Rivifere- Verdun. 
 The cahier in which he must have had a share is not extant, 
 but it would be extremely interesting to see, for it must have 
 embodied the amount of reform he deemed necessary. After 
 the meeting of the States-General, he strenuously opposed the 
 reunion of the orders, and, believing the monarchy lost on 
 July 14, he tried to emigrate, like the Abbe Maury, but was 
 stopped at Caussade, as Maury was stopped at P^ronne. On 
 his return he took his seat on the right of the Assembly, and 
 though he did not speak often was soon recognized as an 
 orator. His intense laziness and his fondness for play pre- 
 vented him from ever becoming a great political leader ; but, 
 whenever he could be prevailed upon to speak, his eloquence 
 made him listened to, and often warmly applauded by the 
 very opponents who outvoted him. It is greatly to be 
 regretted that he was too indolent either to leave any memoirs 
 on the occurrences in which he played so prominent a part, 
 or even to correct his own speeches, and it is only possible to 
 come to any conclusion as to his political opinions from the 
 reports of his speeches in the Moniteur and other journals. 
 His view seems to have been that the best government for 
 France would be a constitutional monarchy, with a freely 
 elected chamber and responsible ministers; but he strongly 
 objected to having any new form of government forced 
 upon the king, and again and again declared that to have 
 an unwilling king at the head of the new constitution would 
 ensure the failure of that constitution. His peculiar detes- 
 tation was mob-rule. " Let us attack," he said, "the tyranny 
 of the people as well as the tyranny of kings." It is 
 extraordinary, considering his great powers, that his ambition 
 
240 The Triumvirate. [chap. 
 
 did not overcome his laziness, and that he did not play a 
 greater part; but any such ambition was effectually ex- 
 tinguished by the coldness with which the nobility on the 
 right of the Assembly looked upon this poor scion of an 
 insignificant family of Languedoc. At court he was regarded 
 without favour, because he openly declared that he believed 
 the old monarchy had lived its life, and must make way for 
 a new one — a doctrine not at all acceptable to the haughty 
 Marie Antoinette. " I do not think," he once said, " that the 
 king holds his crown from God and by his good sword, but by 
 the free will of the French people." With such champions as 
 Maury and Cazalds, a dissolute abbe and a young officer 
 unsupported by the court, it cannot be wondered at that the 
 right made so poor a fight against the revolutionary party in 
 the Assembly. 
 
 The triumvirate which directed the policy of the left for 
 more than a year and a half, until the flight to Varennes, 
 when it was horrified at the state of France, and tried to 
 induce the deputies who had followed its advice to retrace 
 some of their steps and strengthen the monarchj^, consisted 
 of Adrien Duport, Barnave, and Charles de Lameth ; and of 
 this triumvirate it was said that Duport was the brain, 
 Barnave the tongue, and Lameth the hand. 
 
 Adrien Duport de Prdlaville was, without exception, the 
 ablest party leader, who appeared dui'ing the session of the 
 Constituent Assembly, if not during the whole Revolution. 
 While other men were satisfied to head small cliques, or, 
 like Robespierre, to boast of their independence, and insist 
 upon following no leader, and voting upon every question 
 according to their consciences, Duport perceived that without 
 party government representative assemblies must remain 
 mere conglomerations of individuals, and not useful machines 
 with definite rights and duties. To this knowledge of the 
 advantages of party government he added extraordinary 
 qualifications for a party leader — a real knowledge of men, 
 a power of making others see things from his point of view, 
 great patience and social qualities, which enabled him to make 
 
VIII.] Duport. 
 
 241 
 
 and keep many friends. Bom at Paris, in 1759, of a legal 
 family, he was only thirty years of age at the commencement 
 of the Revolution, and had inherited a good property, and 
 the office of counsellor of the Parlement of Paris. He had 
 thro-wn himself into the struggle of the Parlement against 
 Brienne with great ardour, and had, in the summer of 1788, 
 collected a party around him which included Lafayette, the 
 Due de la Rochefoucauld, the Vicomte de Segur, Talleyrand, 
 Freteau de Saint- Just, and Hugues de S^monville. His skill 
 in forming a party and his ability in managing it greatly 
 struck the Duke of Orleans, who resolved to attach him to 
 himself. Duport was delighted with the opportunity thus 
 afforded of being able to use the name, influence, and wealth 
 of a prince of the blood in forming his party, and threw 
 himself into the idea of making Orleans a constitutional 
 king, with himself as prime minister.^ With this idea he 
 had secured his election to the States-General for the noblesse 
 of Paris, and had gradually formed a compact party among 
 the young noblesse who first joined the tiers 6tat, and had also 
 denounced the banquet in the Orangerie, and laboured for the 
 removal of the National Assembly. But he soon discovered 
 that the Duke of Orleans was not to be depended upon as a 
 political patron, and determined to use the party which he had 
 formed entirely for his own advancement. His policy was to 
 outbid aU other leaders of the left in lavish promises to the 
 people, and to support all the most unpractical schemes which 
 charmed the majority of the Assembly, and thus establish 
 for himself such an influence that the king would at last 
 be obliged to call him to ofiice, when he would be a great 
 constitutional minister, and undo any mischief which might 
 have been done in these early days. Duport was bom at 
 a wrong time, and acted on a wrong principle. In the early 
 days of the Revolution enthusiasm was everything, and a 
 calm, calculating statesman had no chance. To be a real 
 leader of the people in a time of revolution, a man must 
 feel as the people do; it is only in times of peace and 
 * See chap. iii. p. 83. 
 VOL. L B 
 
242 Barnave. [chap. 
 
 tranquillity that credit will be given to a man of reason 
 rather than a man of enthusiasm. Duport was soon to feel this. 
 When at last he understood the extent of the harm he had 
 done, and tried to turn back and strengthen the executive, he 
 found on how slight a basis his popularity had been built up, 
 and that, after the flight to Varennes, Robespierre and Pefcion 
 had become the idols of Paris in place of Barnave and himself 
 His later life was marked by no political success; Danton 
 saved him from massacre by releasing him after he had been 
 arrested in August, 1792, and he emigrated. He returned 
 after Thermidor, and again attempted to form a party, but 
 the coup d'etat of Fructidor sent him once more into exile, 
 and he died at Appenzell, in Switzerland, in 1798. 
 
 Antoine Pierre Joseph Barnave, the orator of the trium- 
 virate, was two years younger even than Duport, and was 
 born at Grenoble in 1761. His father was a wealthy avocat 
 of Grenoble, and he himself joined the bar there in 1782. 
 His excitable temperament and loving disposition showed 
 itself in early youth, in the deep grief which he evinced at 
 the death of his brother, and in his duel at the age of seventeen 
 because he believed his mother had been insulted. He had 
 established a reputation for eloquence at the bar, and in 
 1788 threw himself ardently into the movement in Dauphin^ 
 and as a disciple of Mounier was elected to the States- 
 General. At Versailles he soon gave up his admiration for 
 his former leader, whose vanity and insufficiency were only 
 too palpable, and when Duport offered him his friendship 
 he at once accepted it. Of an ardent and poetical character, 
 he soon cemented his political alliance with Duport, and the 
 latter had no difficulty in instilling his own ideas into 
 Barnave's head and getting him to develop them in the 
 tribune. With all the southern excitability of his nature, he 
 imbibed a violent admiration for the queen, after bringing 
 the royal family back from Varennes, and his communica- 
 tions with her and his intrigues for her led to his death 
 upon the guillotine on November 30, 1793. But in the 
 latter months of 1789 he had no such admiration of Marie 
 
VIII.J Charles de Lameth, 243 
 
 Antoinette, and was ready to give utterance to all Duport's 
 insinuations against the court, by which Duport hoped to win 
 himself popularity both in the Assembly and among the 
 people, and win his way to office. 
 
 The Comte Charles Malo Francois de Lameth, the hand 
 of the triumvirate, was also a most frequent speaker in the 
 Assembly, though not such an orator as Barnave. He was the 
 third son of the Marquis de Lameth, who had been killed in 
 Hanover in 1762 when chief of the staff, and was a nephew of 
 Marshal de Broglie. The dauphine, Marie Antoinette, had 
 adopted the sons of the general, and the Broglie influence 
 rapidly advanced them all in the army. Comte Charles de 
 Lameth had served as quartermaster-general to Rochambeau's 
 army in the War of the American Independence, and had been 
 wounded at Yorktown ; and on his return he had been made 
 colonel of the Cuirassiers du Roi, and had married a rich 
 heiress. In America he had imbibed the current notions 
 about politics, and was full of admiration for Washington and 
 Lafayette, and in 1789 had been elected to the States-General 
 by the noblesse of Artois. At Versailles he soon fell under 
 Duport's influence, and, in spite of abuse for his ingratitude, 
 violently attacked the court. Though gifted with eloquence, 
 and a man of ability, he was really a tool in the hands of 
 Duport, who used his popularity with the liberal noblesse to 
 strengthen his party in that quarter. 
 
 The most distinguished followers of the triumvirate were 
 all members of the young nobility, and nearly all belonged to 
 the great families of the vieille noblesse and held commissions 
 in the army, while the voting power of the party consisted of 
 lesser known deputies of the tiers ^tat, who were glad to 
 follow these leaders instead of the less conciliatory speakers of 
 the extreme left, to whose ideas the majority had not yet been 
 educated. Foremost among these young noblemen were the 
 Chevalier Alexandre de Lameth, brother of Comte Charles, 
 and the Due d'AiguiUon, son of the notorious Foreign Minister 
 of Madame du Barry at the end of the reign of Louis XV. ; 
 and conspicuous among the rest were the Baron de Menou, the 
 
244 Mirabeau and La Marck. [chap. 
 
 Due de Luynes, and the Marquis de Latour-Maubourg among 
 older men, the enormously wealthy Marquis de Laborde de 
 Mer^ville, the young Prince de Broglie, and the Vicomte de 
 Noailles. 
 
 Above all these men in oratorical power and statesmanlike 
 ability stood Mirabeau. As time went on, his conspicuous 
 superiority to every other member of the National Assembly 
 became more generally manifest. The court might hate him, 
 the people might distrust him, but all parties had to acknow- 
 ledge his marvellous powers; and it is now necessary to examine 
 closely Mirabeau's attitude in the latter months of 1789, for in 
 studying his policy, his plans, and his rebuffs, the incompetence 
 of the Assembly and the short-sightedness of the court will 
 most clearly appear. As early as the end of May, 1789, 
 Mirabeau had been introduced to Malouet by Duroveray, and 
 after saying that he wished for a free constitution, and not 
 the destruction of the monarchy, had begged Malouet to 
 contrive an interview for him with Necker. Necker con- 
 sented, but after a few words the orator and the minister 
 parted, mutually disgusted with each other,^ and Mirabeau 
 owed his first opportunity of being useful to the court to 
 Louis Auguste, Comte de la Marck, a young prince of the 
 ancient Flemish house of Aremberg, colonel of a proprietary 
 regiment in the service of France, and a particular friend of 
 Marie Antoinette, as a native of one of her dear brother 
 Joseph's dominions. Her friendship with La Marck had never 
 been associated with the scandals surrounding her intimacy 
 with Esterhazy and other young foreigners, but his influence 
 with her was well known. In 1788 he had at his own request 
 been introduced to Mirabeau by Senac de Meilhan at the house 
 of the Prince de Poix.^ He was struck with the statesmanlike 
 power and practical tendencies of the great orator, and feeling 
 how serviceable he could be to the queen, determined to keep 
 up the acquaintance. The acquaintance quickly ripened into 
 friendship and intimacy, for no man had such power of win- 
 1 Malouet's Memoires, vol. i. p. 282. 
 ' Correapondance entre Mirabeau et La Marck, vol. i. p. 63. 
 
VIII.] Mirabeai£s First Note for the Court. 245 
 
 ning devoted friends as the immoral Mirabeau, who was 
 despised by the great men and women of the Paris salons, 
 When La Marek became more intimate with Mirabeau, he 
 urged the queen to make an effort to win the orator's assist- 
 ance, and was at last authorized by Monsieur, the Comte de 
 Provence, to request Mirabeau to draw up a memoir as to 
 what course the king had better pursue in the present emer- 
 gency. This was early in October, just after the transference 
 of the king and the Assembly to Paris. Mirabeau was over- 
 joyed at the opportunity afforded him, and in two days drew 
 up a wonderful state paper, which must ever remain a monu- 
 ment of his perspicacity and sound judgment. 
 
 He commenced with the assertion that a new constitution 
 was necessary for France, and that all which had been hitherto 
 done by the Assembly must be ratified and regarded as an in- 
 tegral part of the new French constitution. No backward step 
 must be taken, but the initiative, for the future, in framing 
 the new constitution must come from the king and not from 
 the irresponsible talkers in the Assembly. He then proceeds 
 to show that the only way in which the king can manage the 
 Assembly and thus direct the formation of the new consti- 
 tution, is to select a responsible ministry from the leading 
 members of the Assembly, who, being both servants of the 
 king and representatives of the people, would, after the fashion 
 of an English ministry, try to strike out a practical form 
 of government, which would at once satisfy the people and 
 preserve the efficiency of the executive. When once such a 
 ministry was formed all would go smoothly. There would then 
 be a legitimate bond of connection between the king and the 
 Assembly, and a good and effectual system of government 
 would be devised. But there was yet another feature in the 
 case to be considered. The king was really a prisoner of 
 the Parisian mob, which was also in a position to overawe 
 the Assembly, arid the executive had lost all power since the 
 month of July. This must be remedied. The king ought to 
 leave Paris and go to some provincial capital, best of aU to 
 
 * CorrespondMyx enbre Mirabeau et La March, vol, i. pp. 254-264. 
 
246 Miraheau proposes New Ministers. L*^hap. 
 
 Rouen, summon the Assembly to him there, and, if it would 
 not come, convoke a new Assembly with which to draw up 
 the new constitution. Provided that the king would publicly 
 and authoritatively declare his adherence to the principles at 
 present sanctioned by the National Assembly, and that he 
 would appoint men who had the nation's confidence as his 
 ministers, Mirabeau declared that he felt certain that if in that 
 case the mob of Paris attempted to resist, the people of France 
 would support their king. But matters had not come to such 
 a pass yet. It was possible that the king and the present 
 Assembly might yet be able to act together. To do so the 
 first thing necessary was to form a responsible ministry from 
 among the leaders of the Assembly. 
 
 Mirabeau had all along foreseen this contingency, and with 
 a just confidence in his own powers felt that he himself would 
 make the best possible minister at this crisis. He had tried to 
 ally himself both with Necker and Lafayette ; but these two 
 vain men, wrapped up in their virtue and their present popu- 
 larity, had refused to negotiate with him. Nevertheless, he 
 was far too great a man to show signs of petty spite at a time 
 of national crisis, and the first ministry, which he recommended 
 to the king directly after his state paper of October 15, con- 
 tained the names of all the most prominent politicians of the 
 time.^ He proposed that Neeker should be Prime Minister, 
 " because he will then be as powerless as he is incapable, and 
 yet preserve his popularity for the king ; " and that Lafayette 
 should be Marshal of France, with a seat in the council, and 
 generalissimo to recognize the army. The Archbishop of 
 Bordeaux, Champion de Cic6, was to be Chancellor; the Due 
 de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt Minister for War, "because 
 he has honour, firmness, and personal affection for the kino-, 
 which will give him security ; " the Due de la Rochefoucauld 
 Minister for the Interior and the city of Paris, with Thouret 
 under him; the Comte de la Marck Minister for the Navy, 
 " because he cannot have the War Office ; " the Comte Philippe 
 de Segur Minister for Foreign Affairs; and Talleyrand 
 1 Correapcmdance entre Mirabeau et La Marck, vol. i. pp. 280 281. 
 
VIII.] Mirabeaus New Ministers. 247 
 
 Minister of Finance, " a place which his motion on the estates 
 of the clergy has fairly won for him, and which no one could 
 fill better." The Comte de Mirabeau was, he further recom- 
 mends, to have a seat in the council without a department, 
 "because the government must show clearly that its first 
 assistants shall be good principles, character, and talent," and 
 he would undertake the general management of the Assembly. 
 Montmorin was to be made a duke and have his debts paid. 
 Target was to be Mayor of Paris, Mounier keeper of the 
 king's library, and Le Chapelier Minister of Public Works. 
 When the impossibiUty of including both Necker and La- 
 fayette was proved to him, Mirabeau proposed a second scheme, 
 by which the Due de la Rochefoucauld was to be Minister of 
 Justice, Talleyrand Minister for Foreign Afiairs, Lambert 
 Minister of Finance, La Marck Secretary for War, and Si^yfes 
 Minister of Public Instruction, which proved equally imprac- 
 ticable. But the whole scheme, the idea of his forming a 
 responsible ministry and taking the initiative in drawing up 
 the new constitution, was far too vast for the mind of the poor 
 king, which, as Monsieur said upon this occasion, could no more 
 grasp such a collection of ideas than oiled billiard balls could 
 be held together.^ As to the queen, she detested Mirabeau as 
 the favourite of the people, and would not hear of any compro- 
 mise between the absolute monarchy and an Assembly she 
 despised. But even yet Mirabeau might have forced the hand 
 of the court. He had at least one strong supporter there. La 
 Marck might have persuaded the queen. Monsieur would do 
 his best with the king, and the influential Austrian ambas- 
 sador, the Comte de Mercy- Argenteau, thoroughly understood 
 the greatness of his schemes, and was ready to support them, 
 when the ill-advised jealousy of the other deputies in the 
 Assembly spoilt the whole plan. 
 
 Li the first days of November a rumour had spread abroad 
 
 through Paris that Mirabeau was to be appointed minister, 
 
 with other deputies for his colleagues. There was a general 
 
 murmur. The court was trying to buy over the representa- 
 
 1 Carrespondance entre Mi/rabemi et La Marck, vol. i. p. 90. 
 
248 The Decree of November 7. [chap. 
 
 tives of the people, was the cry-; the new ministry would 
 obtain a powerful sway over the Assembly, and there would 
 be an end of the new constitution. The majority of the 
 deputies could not understand that governments and consti- 
 tutions exist not for the purpose of encouraging logical legis- 
 lation, but for the maintenance of good order, in order that 
 every man, of whatever grade or class, might be able to do 
 his work in security as long as he did not injure his neigh- 
 bour. This feeling of suspicion grew so strong that on 
 November 7 Lanjuinais, deputy for Rennes, proposed that it 
 should be declared iUegal for any member of the Assembly 
 to take office under the crown while he held his seat in the 
 Assembly, or for six months after his resignation. It was 
 useless for Mirabeau to protest. The theorists carried the 
 motion, and this great opportunity for procuring reform 
 without resorting to revolution failed. How heavy this blow 
 was to the great man against whom it was directed need 
 hardly be stated. His hope of securing without bloodshed a 
 new and strong government for France vanished. But the 
 buoyancy of his mind, and his knowledge that oftentimes 
 mistakes bring about good results in the end, kept him ready 
 to renew his schemes. The decree of November 7 was not 
 only of paramount importance in itself, but gives another 
 admirable instance of the incompetence of the Assembly. 
 Indeed, the mistake they made was so obvious that it is hardly 
 necessary to dwell upon it, and it strikes the key-note of the 
 consistent policy of the Assembly to divorce the executive 
 from the legislative power, and thus to make all harmony 
 between them impossible. The secret of good government is 
 to maintain the two powers in harmony, and centuries of 
 compromise have fairly solved the question in England, where 
 the executive being chosen from the legislative power is an- 
 swerable to it, and if in opposition to it has to resign office. 
 At the same time, in all matters of administration the execu- 
 tive can act on its own responsibility, and the legislative does 
 not interfere in every small administrative detail. Well might 
 Mirabeau have despaired. The communication with the court 
 
VIII.] Mirabeaus Manner of Work. 249 
 
 was temporarily broken off. La Marck went away to his 
 regiment, and Mirabeau was left with only the consciousness 
 that he had made his warning voice heard, and had made one 
 bold attempt to stave off the anarchy ■which was inevitably 
 approaching. Before La Marck left Paris, he made every 
 arrangement for renewing the communication between the 
 court and Mirabeau when necessary. The great orator was 
 terribly extravagant and terribly poor. He had, indeed, suc- 
 ceeded to his father's estates on the death of the Marquis 
 de Mirabeau on July 13, but they were heavUy mortgaged, 
 and he would not leave his duties in the Assembly for 
 a single day to regulate his own affairs. The profits of his 
 journal went into the voracious pockets of Madame Lejay, 
 and he often had not money enough to get a dinner. La 
 Marck was very rich, and could not bear to see his friend in 
 pecuniary embarrassments, and asked him to accept as a loan 
 a sum of six louis a week, which Mirabeau accepted with 
 thanks and promises to be useful to the lender whenever it 
 should be in his power. 
 
 When La Marck left him, Mirabeau continued to work as he 
 had done during the summer of 1789, but with better organized 
 strength. He attached to himself a group of men who bear 
 the proud title of the collaborators of Mirabeau, and in ex- 
 amining his labours it is necessary to notice this group of 
 friends. First of all, before seeing how much help he received, 
 a remark which Goethe made to Eckermann, after reading 
 Etienne Dumont's " Souvenirs de Mirabeau," deserves to be 
 quoted : " The French look upon Mirabeau as their Hercules, 
 and they are perfectly right. But they forget that even the 
 Colossus consists of individual parts, and that even the Her- 
 cules of antiquity is a coUeetive being — a great supporter of 
 his own deeds and those of others." ' The amount of assistance 
 which he received was very great ; but everything which was 
 written for him, whether it was a speech or an article in a 
 journal, he managed to illuminate with the light of his own 
 
 1 Conversations of Ooetlie with Eckermarm, voL ii. p. 419. London : 
 1850. 
 
250 Mirabeaus Collaborators. [chap. 
 
 genius. This use of the collaboration of others had been a 
 common practice with him long before the outbreak of the 
 Revolution. He had, when working as a literary hack at 
 Amsterdam, before he was imprisoned in Vincennes, spent his 
 days in translating, and among other translations completed 
 one of Watson's " History of the Reign of Philip III.," with 
 the help of Decrest. This practice of iranslating may have 
 led him on insensibly to his own peculiar method of work. 
 His tract " Sur I'Ordre de Cincinnatus," which he wrote in 
 England after his release from prison, and which Romilly 
 translated into English for him, was merely a version of an 
 American pamphlet published at Charlestown in the year 
 before. Certain officers in the American army had conceived 
 the idea of an order with a regular chapter, knights, badges, and 
 other paraphernalia. Some anonymous individual wrote a 
 pamphlet showing that such an institution would be contrary 
 to the spirit of the American Republic, and would undermine 
 republican ideas. Mirabeau saw this pamphlet. He did not 
 literally translate it, but he gave its arguments in his own 
 declamatory style, with additional thoughts suggested by 
 himself He then sent the pamphlet to Target, who illustrated 
 it with legal and historical notes, and he then published it as an 
 essay by the Comte de Mirabeau. Similarly his great work on 
 the Prussian monarchy was based entirely on documents thrown 
 into shape for him by the Prussian Major, Mauvillon, and the 
 ideas as well as the facts which underlie his financial pamphlets • 
 against the stock-jobbers and the Banque de St. Charles were 
 supplied to him by Panchaud and Clavifere. When he came 
 up to Paris as a deputy in April, 1789, the two speculators 
 received him cordially, and Claviere introduced him to two 
 other Genevese exiles, Etienne Dumont, who brought a letter of 
 introduction from Romilly, and Duroveray, who were destined 
 to be his chief collaborators. 
 
 Both these men were great admirers of Mirabeau's talents, 
 and were proud to be able to render him any assistance in his 
 labours. . Dumont, for instance, happened to be in the gallery 
 of the Assembly when the concentration of the troops round 
 
VIII.] Mirabeaus Speeches. 251 
 
 Paris formed the chief topic of discussion, and he it was who 
 di-ew up the famous address to the king which Mirabeau pro- 
 posed with so much eloquence and so much success/ Duroveray's 
 assistance was rather in journalism. Mirabeau had only time 
 or patience enough to write the first two or three numbers of 
 the Lettres d, mes Commettants, which afterwards became 
 the Courrier de Provence, and soon left the editorship en- 
 tirely to Duroveray, who for his labours received a small 
 salary from Lejay. From this slight beginning Mirabeau had, 
 by the time the Assembly was established in Paris, collected 
 round him a veritable workshop of authors and compilers ; 
 but before giving any notice of their various capacities, the 
 advantages of the enthusiastic friendship of Nicholas Frochot 
 must be mentioned. This young avocat was born in 1761, 
 and had been elected to the States-General by the bailliage 
 of La Montague in Burgundy. He first entered into com- 
 munication with Mirabeau after October 5 and 6, and soon 
 became one of his nearest friends. He did for the orator 
 in the Assembly much what La Marck did for him at court, 
 and spent his time in trying to persuade individual deputies 
 to support Mirabeau on this or that question, in explaining 
 away any offence that might have been given, and in acting 
 generally as his agent there. 
 
 Who wrote Mirabeau's speeches ? ^ This important work 
 was confided chiefly to five individuals. Etienne Dumont, 
 the friend of Romilly and the future secretary and interpreter 
 of Bentham, wrote the chief political speeches. He used to go to 
 Mirabeau when some political motion was going to be moved, 
 learn his view of things, and then write the speech, which 
 Mirabeau would deliver from the tribune. Clavifere, with the 
 occasional help of Duroveray, wrote the financial speeches ; and 
 the Abbe Lamourette, whose name chiefly survives as the pro- 
 poser of the " baiser Lamourette " in the Legislative Assembly, 
 composed those on the civil constitution of the clergy. Pellenc, 
 
 1 Souvenirs sit/r Mirabeau, by Jltieime Dumont, p. 76. London : 1832. 
 * For an examination of this question, see Aulard, Lea orateurs de la 
 Constiintante, pp. 130-170. 
 
252 Mirabeaus Policy. [chap. 
 
 who was Mirabeau's private secretary and lived in the same 
 house with him, made himself useful in compiling ; and Reybaz, 
 another Genevese exile, actually wrote the famous speeches on 
 the assignats, on the right of making war and peace, and even 
 the speech on the devolution of the property of intestates, which 
 Talleyrand read as the dead orator's posthumous work to the 
 Assembly. In his letters to Reybaz, Mirabeau makes more 
 than one confession that he has such confidence in him that he 
 reads off his compositions straight to the Assembly without a 
 previous perusal. Notice especially, "I kiss the hand of 
 your fair secretary, Mademoiselle Reybaz, but I must request 
 her to write a little larger, as I could not read her manuscript 
 very distinctly the other evening." He took no shame to 
 himself for thus appropriating the labours of others. It was 
 their pride to work for him ; they took no pay, and each of 
 them was rewarded by feeling that he was making his voice 
 heard on some great French constitutional question through 
 the mouth of the great orator. Certainly no other man ever 
 lived who found so many men willing to efface themselves 
 merely to contribute to his glory. 
 
 A typical instance of Mirabeau's treatment of political 
 subjects at this period is to be found in his two speeches on 
 Necker's financial proposals of August and November. In 
 August, 1789, Necker proposed that a tax of one-fourth should 
 be levied on all descriptions of property. There was a general 
 murmur, but Mirabeau rose and said that he should support 
 the proposal, not because it was a good one, but because 
 something must be done, and nobody had any other plan to 
 propose. But when, in November, Necker came down to the 
 Assembly and proposed that the collection of all the taxes for 
 five years should be granted to a bank in which he himself 
 was interested — the Caisse d'Escompte — in consideration of its 
 meeting the deficit, Mirabeau exclaimed against the proposal 
 for political reasons. He asked " whether the Assembly 
 wished to hand over the government of the country to a 
 private bank for five years ? " and this redvxitio ad absurdum 
 secured the rejection of Necker's proposals. The same states- 
 
VIII.] Mirabeau's Unpopularity. 253 
 
 manlike spirit with which he had discussed the veto he 
 exhibited in the debate on the king's right to make peace and 
 war in May, 1790. He argued that an executive which was 
 intended to be of any use at all must have some power ; that 
 the Assembly could not always be sitting, and even if it was, 
 that a large body of men could not adequately treat minute 
 and delicate questions of foreign affairs, the state of which 
 differed from day to day and almost from hour to hour. By 
 a skilful parliamentary manoeuvre he was successful in May, 
 1790, though he had failed on the question of the veto in the 
 previous September. 
 
 Personally Mirabeau was detested by most of the leading 
 deputies in the Assembly, and distrusted by the people of 
 Paris. His practice of giving nicknames was particularly 
 disagreeable to sensitive individuals. Lafayette he termed 
 " M. Grandison-CromweU " — a happy epithet which exactly hit 
 off the general's hopes and his punctilious politeness ; while 
 Si^yfes he called "Mahomet," D'EspremesnU " Crispin Catilina," 
 and Camiis " Drapeau Rouge," or " Red Mag," from the bright 
 colour of his nose. Suspicion of his communications with the 
 court had further made him unpopular with the radical 
 leaders of the type of Robespierre, who were advocates for the 
 strictest severity and purity, not only in private, but also 
 in political life. His personal unpopularity with men who, 
 though not such purists as Robespierre, were yet observers of 
 the decencies of life, such as Lafayette, Necker, and Bailly, 
 can only be explained by the licence he gave himself in little 
 matters, according to his maxim, "La petite morale est 
 ennemie de la grande morale." * He tried to coalesce in turn 
 with Necker, Lafayette, the court, and the deputies of the 
 left; for as long as he could obtain some prospect of quiet 
 and order for the country, he cared not what influence he 
 made use of. Well did he know that it was his former im- 
 moral life which really prevented the success of his great 
 ideas in politics, and sadly did he say to Dumont, " The sins 
 
 * Romilly's Memoirs, p. 80. 
 
254 Increase of Duelling. [chap, 
 
 which I committed in my youth are giving me their full 
 punishment now." 
 
 Mirabeau's fame seemed to throw all others into the shade, 
 but other reputations were made in Paris at this period, and 
 a difference must be noted between those which were made 
 in salons and in the popular clubs. The influence of the salons 
 had increased after the transference of the court and the 
 Assembly to Paris, for they were then in closer communication 
 with the leading politicians, and that closer connection with 
 the Revolution led to increased bitterness, social as well as 
 political. As the revolutionary party became more successful, 
 its opinions becarne more marked, and at the same time the 
 courtiers became more violent. This increased bitterness in 
 politics appeared not only in polite society, but in popular 
 clubs and in the journals. The chief salons which were in 
 vogue increased in power and in bitterness, and the excite- 
 ment of the stirring scenes and startling changes of the time 
 naturally increased the vivacity of life. Pleasure was pursued 
 more ardently than ever when its monopoly by the wealthier 
 classes seemed to be approaching its end. Gambling-houses 
 sprang up aU over Paris, and members of both sides of the 
 Assembly — Mirabeau and Cazal^s alike — might be seen losing 
 every penny they possessed at the same table. All the other 
 vices seemed to grow in magnitude. The theatres were more 
 thronged than ever, and the more dissolute the plays the 
 larger were the audiences. 
 
 One result of this increased sense of the shortness of life, 
 and the need to obtain all the pleasure possible, was shown 
 by the great increase of duelling in the upper class. Duelling 
 had always been fashionable in France, but it now reached 
 a greater height than ever. Most of these duels arose from 
 gambling or other disreputable causes, but some had a political 
 meaning and a real political influence. Notable among these 
 was the famous duel of the Due de Castries with Charles de 
 Lameth, in which the latter was badly wounded. Cazalds 
 similarly fought with Barnave, after which they became warm 
 and attached friends ; and the rivalry between the towns of 
 
VIII.] The Salon of 1789. 255 
 
 Riom and Clermont-Ferrand, as to which should be capital of 
 the new department of the Puy de Dome, ended in a duel 
 between the Comte de Montlosier, deputy for Eiom, and Hu- 
 guet, deputy for Clermont-Ferrand, who had called Malouet, 
 the friend of Montlosier, an ordinary intriguer. 
 
 The keenness with which men of letters followed the early 
 days of the Revolution has been noticed, and the new bitterness 
 which had been inspired into politics appeared in their rivalries. 
 Particularly was this noticeable in theatrical quarrels. To 
 the directors of the Com^die Fran^aise, a young litterateur, 
 Marie Joseph Chenier, had offered a new play, bearing the 
 title of "Charles IX." The play was full of innuendoes 
 against royalty, and was calculated to throw great discredit 
 on the king, and more particularly on the queen, by a vivid 
 representation of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the 
 interest taken in it by Catherine de' Medici and her son. 
 Whether the play should be accepted or refused was violently 
 debated among the soci^taires of the Comedie, and a schism 
 appeared between the revolutionary and reactionary actors. 
 At the head of the revolutionary party was Talma, the greatest 
 tragedian of his day, who was supported by Dugazon and 
 Mademoiselles Sainval and Desgarcins. The opposition were 
 Naudet and Dazincourt, who had always played the kings,, 
 with most of the actresses, including Mademoiselle Contat anc^ 
 Mademoiselle Raucourt. The piece was accepted and first 
 played on November 4, 1789, and every attack on royalty 
 was enthusiastically taken up by the crowd which filled the 
 pit, which often came to blows with the more aristocratic 
 occupants of the boxes. Occasionally a turn of wit won the 
 day, and Mademoiselle Contat received universal applause 
 when she skilfully turned a line directed against Catherine 
 de' Medici in favour of the queen.^ 
 
 But if theatrical feeling was divided, the painters of Paris 
 nearly aU showed their revolutionary sympathies in their 
 pictures. In the Salon of 1789,^ Moreau, the historical painter, 
 
 1 Le tUal/re de la BevoluUon 1789-1799, by Henri Welschinger, pp. 
 47-52. Paris : 1881. 
 
 ^ De Goncourt, La soMU fram^aise pendant la BivohUign, pp. 43, 44. 
 
256 The Jacobin Club. [chap. 
 
 exhibited two pictures of the States-General; while Louis 
 Charles David, who was to revolutionize the art of painting 
 in France, exhibited " Les Amours de Paris et H^lfene," painted 
 for the Comte d'Artois, and a picture of " Brutus et ses fils," of 
 a different character, and well calculated to inflame republican 
 feelings. Side by side were landscapes by Joseph and Carle 
 Yernet, flower-paintings by the famous Van Spaendonck, with 
 some feeble portraits by the fashionable lady-painter of the 
 day, Madame Vig^e-Lebrun. In ladies' dress also could be 
 shown sympathies with the court or the Revolution; they 
 carried on their fans, instead of scenes by Watteau, either 
 pictures of the storming of the Bastille or portraits of the 
 queen. The tricolour cockade was ingeniously worked into 
 every portion of ladies' dress; and hair-dressers, not to be 
 outdone, introduced the coiffure h la liberty. 
 
 If there was violence in theatrical, literary, political, and 
 fashionable salons, there was still more in the various clubs 
 and cercles. The cercle differed from the political club in that 
 it was supposed to be purely social ; and Claude Fauchet, 
 the eloquent abbd, whose sermon on the martyrs of the Bastille 
 had been listened to by the king on his first visit to Paris 
 after that memorable day, had established a cercle, which he 
 called the " Cercle Sociale." This was intended to be merely 
 a place of meeting for men of all classes, and was to improve 
 the manners of the lower classes by allowing them to mix 
 with their superiors in education ; but it proved a failure, for 
 wealthy bourgeois of the better class attended it for the pur- 
 pose of conversation, and the lower classes chiefly for the cheap 
 food provided. The conversation in such cercles must have 
 been tame compared with the excitement which existed in 
 political clubs. 
 
 The transference of the Assembly to Paris had increased 
 the importance of the Breton Club, which now began to hold 
 its meetings in the hall of the Jacobin Convent. The chief 
 orators who attended, and had the ear of the club, were, in 
 addition to the founders, the Lameths, Barnave, and Laclos, 
 the friend of Orleans. The great change which altered this 
 
VIII.] The " Revolutions de France et de Brabant." 257 
 
 committee of a few deputies into an important political organ- 
 ization began by their admission to their sittings of any one 
 who took an interest in politics. The haU of the Jacobins 
 became then the meeting-place of all those bourgeois of Paris 
 and of those journalists who sympathized with the radical 
 party in the Assembly, and Barnave there explained to them 
 what steps he was going to take in the Assembly, and how he 
 could best be assisted by deputations and petitions. The influ- 
 ence of the Jacobin Club became so great upon popular opinion 
 in Paris, that in the summer of 1790 the king contributed 
 funds for the establishment of a rival club, to be called the 
 " Club of 1789," of which the first presidents were BaiUy and 
 the Due de la Rochefoucauld. It was intended to support the 
 idea of constitutional monarchy, but it had so little of the spirit 
 of life in it that Mirabeau, who was president in July, 1790, 
 soon left it for the Jacobins, and it at once expired. As in- 
 teresting as the foundation of the Jacobins was that of the 
 Club of the Cordeliers, which was the chief meeting-place of 
 the popular party in the Faubourg St. Marceau, and it was 
 there that Danton at this time began to win his great reputa- 
 tion, and to be regarded, like his friend Camille Desmoulins, 
 as an agent of Orleans ; and there could be little doubt that he 
 was in close communication with Laclos, Orleans' trusted friend. 
 Nevertheless, Danton made no attempt at open insurrection in 
 his favour, and when he came to the front, in July, 1791, it was 
 not as an Orleanist but as an extreme radical, and the future 
 supporter of a strong government under a new regime can be 
 perceived. The bitterness which infected the salons appeared 
 also in the political clubs, and many an inflammatory speech 
 was made in them, demanding the lives of traitors and threaten- 
 ing popular outbreaks. 
 
 This increased bitterness was still more manifested in the 
 popular journals. It was on November 28 that Camille 
 Desmoulins published the first number of the Bevolutions de 
 France et de Brabant, which was distinctly an imitation of 
 Loustallot's weekly Bevolutions de Paris. Its interest does 
 not consist in the news it contains, but in the lively saUies 
 
 VOL. I. * 
 
258 The "Ami du Peuple." [chap. 
 
 of Camille Desmoulins, his keen insight into humbug, and 
 his tendency to laugh at everything, good or bad, whether 
 steps backward or forward on the path of liberty. 
 
 Far more serious was the journal of Marat, the Ami du 
 Peuple, which had been established in September, 1789.^ It 
 was before anything else a journal of suspicion ; it continually 
 warned the people of Paris to beware of treachery, and declared 
 that there were traitors in the Assembly, traitors in the court, 
 traitors in the municipality of Paris, and traitors in the popular 
 clubs. Marat suspected every one, but the particular objects of 
 his enmity were Bailly and Lafayette. It was enough that they 
 were in power for Marat to suspect them, and his suspicions 
 appear in every number of his journal. But not satisfied with 
 inculcating a general suspicion of every one in power, his 
 journal became the receptacle of suspicions against individuals, 
 and was made to play somewhat the same part as the famous 
 " Lion's Mouth " at Venice. Any one who suspected any one 
 else of doing any evil, either in public or in pi-ivate life, was 
 encouraged to send his suspicions to Marat, who at once 
 published them. He declared that if the suspicion was 
 unfounded, and it could be proved untenable, he would apolo- 
 gize, and the suspected person would not suffer, but would be 
 considered all the more a good citizen. On the other hand, if 
 the accused person made no attempt to prove his innocence to 
 Marat, the journalist never ceased to attack him, and cried out 
 for punishment. Nothing was too great and nothing too 
 trifling for his suspicious pen — from a plot to blow up the 
 Assembly, to the robbery of a small sum of money from a till. 
 Everything was denounced to the people, who were told they 
 were to be upon their guard, and that they were to trust 
 nobody. This tendency to suspicion had become a sort of 
 mania in Marat's mind, but side by side with it he had many 
 great qualities for a popular journalist. Every one knew he 
 was never afraid to attack the powerful, and even the people 
 itself. "0 foolish Parisians!" he exclaims; "ye dreaming 
 Parisians ! ye Parisians, who pride yourselves on your know- 
 1 See chap. vi. pp. 217-219. 
 
vni.J Royalist Journals. 259 
 
 ledge, yet are ignorant as asses ! " is his perpetual cry to them ; 
 and yet the populace of Paris never took his abuse in bad part, 
 and Camille Desmoulins contented himself with laughing 
 at " poor M. Marat." His attacks on Lafayette brought him 
 into more serious trouble. Like all vain men, Lafayette was 
 intensely and pecuharly sensitive to ridicule. The attacks of 
 Marat and the sallies of Camille made him take many uncon- 
 stitutional steps. On one occasion he called out a whole 
 battalion of the National Guard to arrest Marat and smash his 
 press ; but the libeller escaped quite easily. Yet the perpetual 
 persecution of Lafayette caused Marat to spend his life in 
 hiding ; he had to live in the sewers, and publish his paper 
 where and how he could, and it is pathetic to see the dirty 
 scraps which he was so often obliged to use for conveying 
 his suspicions. The mind of the man became embittered 
 by persecution ; his attacks became more cruel than ever. 
 Lafayette had overshot his purpose, and the persecution of 
 Marat only made the journalist appear a martyr and a hero to 
 the populace of Paris. 
 
 The influence of the journals was now too obvious to be 
 neglected by the court, and the three most important royalist 
 journals, all of which were largely subsidized by the court, 
 were the Atni du Roi edited by Royou, the Petit Gauthier 
 edited by Brune, the future republican general and marshal of 
 Napoleon, and, chief of all, the Aotes des Apotres. These 
 journals had in common a large vocabulary of abuse and a 
 great deal of wit. The abuse which they poured on the 
 leaders of the Assembly was of the very grossest type, and 
 most of it is absolutely unreadable. The wit was of the most 
 obscene character, and the Pere Duchesne, which has been 
 held up to execration as the filthiest journal ever published, is 
 moral by the side of some of the numbers of the Ades des 
 Apotres. Of the Petit Gauthier little need be said, though 
 it is rather more decent than the others. The Ami du Roi 
 was suggested by Marat's Ami du Peuple. Not satisfied with 
 issuing forged numbers of the ATui du Peuple, the court was 
 delighted with the idea of an Ami du Roi; but incomparably 
 
26o The "Ades des Apotres." [chap. 
 
 the most witty and decidedly the most obscene of the three 
 is the Actes des Apotres, of which the first number was 
 published on November 2, 1789. Some notice of its editors 
 and characteristics will give a fair idea of royalist journalism. 
 
 The chief writers were five in number.^ Jean Peltier, the 
 son of a shopkeeper of Nantes, who acted as editor; Antoine de 
 llivarol, the son of an innkeeper at Bagnols, who pretended to 
 be a count and became a friend of D'Alembert's before 1781 ; 
 the Chevalier de Champcenetz, a lieutenant in the Rdgiment 
 de Flandre ; the Vicomte de Mirabeau, brother of the great 
 Mirabeau; and Souleau, an old school-friend of CamiUe Des- 
 moulins, who had been in the hussars and had then become an 
 avocat. All these were men of the most abandoned character, 
 but all had a great reputation for wit. Peltier alone simply 
 sold his pen to the best buyer, but the others were more or 
 less in earnest. Rivarol, Champcenetz, and Mirabeau-Tonneau 
 were generally drunk, and composed most of their witty sallies 
 in the caf6s of the Palais-Royal. Nearly all their numbers are 
 unreadable, and too indecent to afford quotation, but it may be 
 said that Th6roigne de M6ricourt was their special subject for 
 abuse and obscene wit. The description of her marriage with 
 Populus, a deputy, whose name made him a good object for 
 royalist ridicule, is described in a most amusing fashion, and 
 the characteristics of Sieyfes are well hit off; but the full 
 description cannot be quoted. The Actes des Apotres was not 
 only written by professed wits and confined to ribald person- 
 alities, but it contained various long articles on subjects of 
 foreign policy and finance. It may be said that these articles 
 are as unreadable from their dulness as the others from their 
 obscenity. The principal collaborateurs of Peltier in this line 
 can be named. They were Beigasse, the Martinist deputy 
 for Lyons, and old opponent of Beaumarchais, the Comte de 
 Lauraguais, and Montlosier, one of the leading deputies of the 
 right. Though these journals have little historical value in 
 themselves and seldom give any assistance in the comprehension 
 
 » Un journal royciKste en 1789. Les Actes des ApStres, by Marcellin 
 Pellet. Paris: 1873. 
 
viii.J Attitude of Continental Monarchs. 261 
 
 of the course of events, yet they exhibited the nature of the 
 opposition the royalists offered to the progress of the Eevolu- 
 tion. It was an opposition not based on argument or reasoning, 
 but one which consisted for its force on witty abuse, and 
 attempts to make its opponents ridiculous. Peltier, like so 
 many others, was deserted by the Bourbons, whom he had 
 served so bravely in their hour of need. He died of starvation 
 in the Rue Montmartre in 1825, nine years after the Cardinal 
 Maury had died in the dungeons of the Castle of St. Angelo at 
 Rome. Most of the other writers on the Ades des Apotres 
 paid with their lives for their wit. Champcenetz was guil- 
 lotined in 1794, and Souleau was assassinated by Th^roigne 
 de Mericourt for his insults to her, on August 10, 1793. 
 
 The contents of the royalist journals showed the real weak- 
 ness of the cause of absolute monarchy in France. While the 
 revolutionary journals were distinguished by their earnestness 
 and entire belief in the success of their cause, the royalists 
 contented themselves with laughing both in and out of season. 
 A more important danger threatened the Revolution from the 
 Emigres, who were now filling with their murmurs many of the 
 chief capitals of Europe. Foreign princes had, strange to say, 
 generally looked with favour on the French desire for reform. 
 The age which preceded the Revolution was the age of 
 benevolent despots, when everything was to be done for the 
 people by the king, and not by the people themselves. This 
 had been the main point of the internal policy of Frederick 
 the Great in Prussia; the finances were to be improved, justice 
 to be well administered, and order maintained, all by the 
 absolute will of the king. Whether from his example or from 
 the general diffusion of the new philosophy, most of the 
 monarchs of Europe at this time were distinctly reformers. 
 Joseph II., the emperor, projected the most widely reaching 
 reforms of any man of his day. He conceived the idea of a 
 national German Church ; he desired to unite his dominions by 
 one common bond of similarity of language and administration ; 
 and to improve his finances he did not hesitate to alter the 
 hereditary policy of the house of Austria, and to dissolve many 
 
262 Attitude of Continental M anarchs. |_chap. 
 
 monasteries and convents of begging friars. His example 
 was followed by his brother Leopold, the Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany, who, with the help of Scipio de Ricci, Bishop of 
 Pistoia, had reorganized the entire government of Tuscany, and 
 had attempted to put the maxims of the French school of 
 economists into practice. In every state there was either a 
 reforming king or a reforming minister. Besides Joseph and 
 Leopold, must be mentioned Charles III. of Spain and the 
 Count d'Aranda, the great reformer Tannucci of Naples, and 
 De Mauprat at Parma ; and the great administi-ative reforms 
 of Catherine of Russia should not be forgotten. This universal 
 feeling of the need of some reform in the old system of absolute 
 monarchy, and these numerous attempts to meet that need, had 
 caused foreign princes and ministers to receive with great joy 
 the news of the various schemes of Turgot and Necker for the 
 reform of France. They began to feel a little more doubt 
 when they heard of the summons of the States-General, for 
 none of the potentates who have been mentioned ever dared 
 to meet an elected assembly of their own people ; but they 
 expected that all would go well, and that the force of the king, 
 backed by his nobles, his Church, and his army, would be 
 sufficient to prevent the reformers from going too far. The 
 news of the capture of the Bastille rudely shook their equani- 
 mity. The most truly liberal in mind, such as Charles III. 
 and Leopold of Tuscany, were not disturbed; but Catherine of 
 Russia, and stiU more the small Italian and German princes, 
 and the dukes of the Rhine, were greatly disgusted at the 
 bold action of the people of Paris. Their disgust increased as 
 the 6migr6s began to arrive at all their little courts with terrible 
 reports of the indignities to which they had been subjected — 
 that their carriages had been broken and sometimes mud 
 thrown at themselves, that the soldiers refused to obey their 
 officers, that the peasants were burning their chateaux, and 
 generally that the old world was rapidly coming to an end, 
 since noblemen and their property were no longer sufficiently 
 respected. 
 
 In England and in America the very news of the conster- 
 
VIII.J Attitude of Pitt and Burke. 263 
 
 nation in Russia, Italy, and Germany was received with 
 transports of wild enthusiasm. A model of the Bastille and 
 a representation of its capture was sent to Washington by his 
 friends at Paris, and the Americans prided themselves at 
 having set an example which their former allies were about to 
 follow. In England the same feeling was perceptible, and the 
 English people, and more particularly the English statesmen, 
 did not doubt that the French people were going to imitate 
 their example and their constitution. The close connection 
 of most of the leaders of the Revolution with America and 
 England has been noticed, and their numerous friends in both 
 countries watched the progress of the Revolution with delight. 
 Mention, too, has been made of the crowd of Englishmen who 
 filled Paris in the months of August and September, and the 
 interest of the English people was sufficiently shown in the 
 length of the reports of the proceedings in France which filled 
 the English newspapers. The events of October somewhat 
 dashed the enthusiasm in England, and increased the dismay 
 on the Continent. The rejection by the Assembly of the 
 system of two chambers and of the absolute veto showed the 
 English that the French were not going to ' imitate their own 
 institutions, and the presence of Lally-ToUendal in London 
 further testified to the extreme measures the Assembly was 
 taking. Akeady English statesmen began to be afraid that 
 France was going too far, and would establish a constitution 
 with such freedom of election that the English system of 
 rotten boroughs would seem more objectionable than ever. 
 But this feeling was not shared by the prime minister, Pitt, 
 who was too great a man not to perceive that each country 
 must develop in its own way ; and perhaps he would not have 
 been sorry if the French reforms had brought about that 
 change in the system of representation which he had vainly 
 advocated. The news of the forced entr}'- of the king and the 
 queen into Paris, aiid the manifest power of the Parisian mob, 
 had already affected all those who, like Burke, were inclined 
 to look on the dramatic aspect of the struggle of a court with 
 a nation, and who themselves were possessed with a holy horror 
 
264 Wky Foreign Powers did not interfere. |_chap. 
 
 of mob rule. But if even in free England the events of October 
 had worked such a transformation, they had still greater effect 
 on the Continent. These events were utterly inconsistent with 
 the idea of any harmonious action between the king and the 
 people, and every monarch felt that perhaps his turn might 
 come next. Every month brought more refugees belonging 
 to the second emigration to the smaller capitals, and rumours 
 were already afloat that the French people must be taught to 
 respect their own monarch by the soldiers of other nations. 
 Such rumours were circulated in the courts of princes like the 
 Eang of Sweden, who were too far from the scene of action for 
 successful interference, or in petty courts where too few troops 
 were maintained to do anything. More powerful monarchs 
 had serious business on their own hands. 
 
 The Emperor Joseph was in the midst of a struggle with 
 the Belgians which his reforms and his disregard of their 
 nationality had provoked, and which bore a sufficient resem- 
 blance to events in France for Camille Desmoulins to term his 
 journal Les Revolutions de France et de Brahant ; the King 
 of Prussia was too busy with his own court intrigues to wish 
 to spend his money in foreign interference ; and the King of 
 Spain, though himself a Bourbon, and bound to the King 
 of France by the " Facte de famille," ^was still too liberal a 
 monarch to wish to interfere unless matters made a further 
 progress. The feeling of anxious discontent noticeable at 
 foreign courts exasperated the French people, and made them 
 even at this early date fear that the murmurs of the emigrfe 
 might induce foreign kings to interfere in their affairs. 
 
 During the early months of 1790 there were four men 
 in Paris more conspicuous than the rest, and their relation to 
 each other and the causes of their respective positions must be 
 analyzed to understand not only the growth of public opinion 
 in Paris but in the provinces. The Parisians well understood 
 that they had assumed the lead of the Revolution as a result not 
 so much of the capture of the Bastille as of the events of 
 October 5 and 6, and this knowledge made Paris concentrate 
 within itself the chief interest of the period. The provinces 
 
VIII.] Position of Bailly. 265 
 
 were eagerly listening for news from Paris, and were ready to 
 act as before in harmony with the Parisian leaders. The four 
 men whose influence was now paramount were Bailly and 
 Lafayette, Necker and Mirabeau. 
 
 Bailly, as Mayor of Paris, represented the bourgeois of 
 Paris and the municipality rather than the people. The legal 
 municipality, which had replaced the assembly of the electors, 
 had been elected at the end of July ; but the definite scheme 
 of a Paris municipality was not assented to till February, 1790. 
 On April 1 the municipal council under the new act was 
 elected. Paris was divided for municipal purposes into forty- 
 eight sections, on the motion of Gossin, instead of sixty districts, 
 and it was hoped that this arrangement would desti'oy those 
 district assemblies whose existence so much harassed the 
 unfortunate mayor. It has been remarked that the appoint- 
 ment of Lafayette had deprived the mayor of the great duty 
 of the maintenance of order, and he found that his principal 
 function — and a most vexatious one it was — was to provide 
 cheap bread for the Parisians. This could only be done by 
 means of large loans from the State. Bailly sent messengers 
 all over Europe, and especially to England, to buy corn, which 
 he sold to the bakers much below cost price, on the condition 
 that they sold cheap bread ; but all his eS'orts could not pre- 
 vent bread from being very scarce occasionally, and then the 
 ferocious temper of the mob appeared. On October 21 there 
 was an especially violent riot, when an unfortunate baker, 
 named Francois, was hung in the Place de Greve. In spite of 
 his great efforts, Bailly found himself, by the illogical and 
 vivacious temperament of the mob, charged with being the 
 author of the scarcitj'' of food. His own vanity, and still more 
 that of his wife, laid the mayor open to ridicule both in the 
 royalist and revolutionary journals ; and it is quite certain that, 
 mocked at by all parties alike, universally despised, and with- 
 out any real power, he found his mayoralty anything but a 
 pleasant time. And as if the attacks in the journals were not 
 enough, his own municipal council would not leave him alone, 
 and he had every day to hear petitions from the more radical 
 
2 66 Position of Lafayette. [chap. 
 
 sections demanding his own dismissal. The weakness of 
 position mainly arose from his not possessing the command of 
 those forces which maintained order, and he had to bear the 
 responsibility of office without its compensating power. 
 
 That power was entirely in the hands of Lafayette, whose 
 popularity increased from day to day among the members of 
 his own force and among the bourgeois, who looked upon him 
 as the impersonation of the bourgeois revolution, and of the 
 cause of order. Lafayette was as much abused in the journals 
 of all sides as Bailly. The queen detested him, the more witty 
 courtiers and royalists laughed at his airs and graces, and the 
 advanced revolutionists declared that he was sold to the court. 
 Yet he had to compensate him the consciousness of real power, 
 for he was vnthout doubt the most powerful man, not only in 
 Paris, but in France. To be sure, his idea of the confederation 
 of all the National Guards under his command did not seem 
 to progress ; but occasionally, as in his interference at Vernon,' 
 he managed to exhibit his power in the provinces. But his 
 intense vanity and sensitiveness to ridicule made him lose 
 sight of the great aims he might have attained, and he cared 
 more to arrest an obscure journalist, and to influence the 
 Assembly by a fine parade, than to labour to attain a really 
 good administrative system in the capital. Sometimes, as in 
 the case of the riot which ended in the murder of Fran9ois, 
 the baker, he found that, even with his National Guard, he 
 could not entirely control the mob. The best instance of his 
 weakness is shown at the time of the murder of the Marquis 
 de Favras, in the month of February, 1790. The marquis was 
 an old political intriguer, and was now a friend of Monsieur, 
 the Comte de Provence, and was arrested for trying to raise a 
 loan from the Paris bankers for Monsieur in order to arrano-e 
 his own affairs. Monsieur declared, on his honour, that the 
 money was not raised in order to enable him to emigrate ; and 
 Favras was acquitted by the Court of the Chatelet, which had 
 been appointed ad interim to try cases of high treason. The 
 people believed him to be guilty, and, some said inspired by 
 the friends of Orleans, the mob seized upon him and hung 
 ' See chap. vi. p. 190. 
 
VIII. 1 Position of Mirabeaii. 267 
 
 him on a lamp-iron in the Place de Grfeve. The absence of 
 Orleans, who had been sent to London after the events of 
 October 5 and 6, at the demand of Lafayette, had removed a 
 serious obstacle to the general's ambition ; but the friends of 
 Orleans were still in Paris, and yet hoped to show that their 
 patron's money had not been wasted. Nevertheless Lafayette's 
 position was certainly extremely difficult, and he made it more 
 so by voluntarily magnifying trifles, and thinking more of 
 securing the establishment of his own importance than of pro- 
 curing such arrangements as would ensure the defeat of the mob. 
 It is to be feared that his vanity and love of popular admiration 
 was at the bottom of this neglect, and by shiUy-shallying between 
 his desire to obtain universal applause and the confidence of 
 his own followers, he failed to be entirely trusted by either side. 
 Necker, though still director-general of the finances, found 
 his popularity fast waning. Not only the Assembly but the 
 people found that his financial abilities had been greatly over- 
 rated, and that his presence at the finances did not bring about 
 the prosperity which had been promised. On the contrary, he 
 showed himself but a poor deviser of schemes for real improve- 
 ment, and was satisfied with any trifling expedient. The 
 defeat of his motion to hand over the collection of the taxes to 
 the " Caisse d'Escompte," and still more the proposal itself, had 
 discredited him with all thinking politicians; and the man 
 whose dismissal in July, l789,had set the whole country in a fer- 
 ment had now but very little weight in anybody's estimation. 
 - Mirabeau was the real ruler of the situation, and the one 
 man who could have established some system of order which 
 might have lasted, but the unfortunate motion of November 7, 
 1789, prevented him from using his great abilities in the way 
 which would have been most useful to the country. As has 
 been said, he had tried to unite himself in turn to Necker 
 and Lafayette, but every attempt had been spurned by those 
 vain and conceited men. In October, 1789, after having ex- 
 perienced the insults of Necker, he made his first appeal to 
 Lafayette. " Whatever may happen," he wrote, " I shall be yours 
 to the end, because your great qualities have much attracted 
 me, and because it is impossible for me not to take the keenest 
 
268 Mirabeaus Appeal to Lafayette. [chap. viii. 
 
 interest in a destiny so fair in itself, and so closely bound to 
 the Revolution which is leading the nation to liberty, as yours. 
 If you have at all reflected on the treacherous collusion of the 
 ministers with the brutal, or rather the insane pride of the con- 
 temptible charlatan ^ who has brought the throne and France 
 itself to the very verge of ruin, and who is determined to 
 complete that ruin rather than recognize his own incapacity, 
 you will no longer believe that I, of all men, could be their 
 assistant." 2 Mirabeau thought that it was the general's 
 political allies who prevented him from cordially co-operating 
 with himself, but, alas ! it was not Lafayette's friends who 
 traduced Mirabeau to him, but Lafayette's own vanity, which 
 feared that the assistance of so great a man might eclipse him- 
 self; and when he returned no answer to Mirabeau's appeal, 
 the great man determined no longer to try to treat with those 
 who would not give up their petty prejudices for the service 
 of the state, and who thought only of their own aggrandizement. 
 Such were the principal men in Paris and in France during 
 the latter months of 1789 and the earlier months of 1790, 
 while the Assembly was developing the constitution and 
 drawing up the civil constitution of the clergy, and the people 
 of Paris were becoming more and more revolutionary in their 
 tendencies ; and as abstract measures took precedence in the 
 Assembly of practical reforms, the need of these practical 
 reforms became more and more manifest. When the Assembly 
 had completed some six months' discussion, the court again 
 renewed, at the desire of the Comte de Mercy- Argenteau, its 
 communications with Mirabeau, and yet another attempt was 
 made by the great statesman to stop the country on the road 
 to anarchy along which it was proceeding, and once more to 
 set before the eyes of king, Assembly, and people the para- 
 mount necessity of maintaining order, peace, and good govern- 
 ment, instead of wasting time in dissensions among themselves, 
 which would only prolong the terrible crisis through which 
 France was now passing. 
 
 1 Necker. 
 
 2 Corres2)07idance entre Mirabeau et La March, vol. i. pp. 268, 269. 
 
CHAPTER IX, 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COITSTITUTION'. 
 
 Constitution-making — The colonies of France — Colonial policy of the 
 Assembly— The constitutional committee— Target— Thouret — The 
 new constitution— The old provinces — The new departments — The 
 new local government — The procureurs-syndics — Mania for election 
 — Active citizens — " Loi des trois jours de travail" — "Loi du marc 
 d'argent" — Universal condemnation of the parlements— Confusion of 
 old French law— New system of judicature — High Court for cases 
 of high treason at Orleans — Weakening of the executive — Distrust of 
 the royal power — Good intentions of the Assembly. 
 
 While making many mistakes in administration, mostly 
 caused by its inexperience, and many from a real spirit of 
 philanthropy, the Constituent Assembly, as its title indicates, 
 regarded its real duty as the formation of a constitution, and 
 many of its administrative mistakes arose from its belief that 
 a good constitution could cure all the ills of France, and that, 
 if the new constitution were only thoroughly just and logical, 
 local troubles would at once cease, and France would soon 
 settle down to enjoy the benefits of a new and representative 
 system of government. But the Assembly did not understand 
 that, if such a constitution could have been successful, service- 
 able, and warmly welcomed in the month of June, 1789, it 
 would be quite inadequate to meet the aspirations of the 
 people in September, 1791. The delay in drawing up the new 
 constitution, and the piecemeal manner in which it came into 
 force, were obstacles to its success, which could hardly have been 
 avoided. A single lawgiver, or a junto of three or four, might 
 be able to issue an elaborate system of government in a few 
 
2 70 ConstihUion-making. [chap. 
 
 hours, but an assembly of twelve hundred members, most of 
 whom had their word to say, and many of whom wished only 
 to obstruct, was not fitted for the speedy promulgation of an 
 entirely new system of government, while its progress in its 
 work was still further impeded by the necessity for entering 
 into details of administration. Its unpractical character in 
 these matters has been so much insisted upon that weight 
 must now be laid on the great advantages which it obtained 
 for France, and on some of the really admirable results of its 
 deliberations. Before examining the division of France into 
 departments, the elaborate system of local self-government, 
 the abolition of the old courts of justice, the establishment of 
 a representative constitution, and the lengthy discussion of 
 these great reforms, it will be advantageous here to examine 
 its colonial policy, and to notice the terrible mistakes which its 
 philanthropy and want of practical experience caused in that 
 department of affairs. 
 
 It has often been asserted that France is not in its nature 
 a colonizing country. To be sure, England, Spain, and Portugal 
 have all formed greater colonies than France, but this is rather 
 the result of accident than of any inherent deficiency in the 
 French character. On the contrary, the importance of colonies 
 was earlier recognized in France than in England, and French 
 statesmen of even the most debased ages of the French 
 monarchy took more trouble and spent more money on their 
 colonies than the English ministers had ever dreamed of doing. 
 No colonies in the middle of the eighteenth century were so 
 prosperous or so well-governed as the royal colonies of 
 Canada and Louisiana, which were really created by the French 
 government, and supported by the royal treasury ; while the 
 Enghsh colonies along the eastern sea coast of America had 
 either sprung from the individual enterprise of great men, 
 who had desired to find a secure home for their co-religionists 
 in the New World, such as Lord Baltimore and William Penn, 
 or if at first founded by royal assistance, had soon been left to 
 their own resources. The origin of the French infiuence in 
 the Canadas has been attributed to the French Jesuits, but 
 
IX.] The French Colonies. 271 
 
 the entei'prise of the French seamen, such as Jacques Cartier, 
 encouraged by the ministers at home, must not be underrated. 
 Great concessions were made to the colonists ; large sums of 
 money were spent in conciliating the Red Indians, and es- 
 tablishing forts ami factories, and the keenest interest was 
 shown by Louis XIV. in his establishments beyond the sea. 
 Louis XV. had been equally interested, and when Montcalm 
 arrived in Canada, it seemed possible that his great plan of 
 uniting Louisiana and the Canadas, and thus hemming in 
 English progress towards the West, might be successful ; but 
 the elder Pitt also knew the advantages of colonial enterprise. 
 He it was who sent Amherst and Wolfe to subdue JVIontcalm ; 
 he it was who insisted that French influence in North America 
 should be extinguished by the cession of their American pos- 
 sessions at the peace of Paris, in 1763. In this quarter, then, 
 French influence had been checked ; but it was still very great 
 in the East and West Indies, and in the East Indies Dupleix, 
 Labourdonnaie, and Lally had fought on more than equal terms 
 with the servants the Honourable East India Company, and 
 had it not been for the greatness of Clive and the policy of 
 Warren Hastings, the French East India Company might 
 have obtained that influence which was reserved for the Eng- 
 lish Company in Leadenhall Street. Want of money and the 
 absence of support from home had prevented the French from 
 getting a secure hold upon India ; and when the Revolution 
 broke out, the chief outlets of colonial enterprise in the East 
 were the islands of Mauritius and of Bourbon. In them many 
 wealthy French planters had settled, and made the colonies 
 both rich and prosperous. They were well governed and well 
 administered, because a large amount of local authority was 
 left to the colonists themselves ; and the beauty of the islands 
 was proverbial throughout France, even before Bernardin St. 
 Pierre had immortalized it in " Paul and Virginia." But the 
 colonial wealth of the Mauritius was nothing compared to that 
 of the island of San Domingo. The West Indies had, during 
 the seventeenth century, been pretty well occupied by the 
 various European powers; England, under Cromwell, had 
 
272 San Doiumgo. [chap. 
 
 seized Jamaica, and had long held Barbadoes and some of the 
 smaller islands; Spain pretended to own them all, but only 
 really kept up establishments in Cuba, Porto Rico, and Trini- 
 dad ; France not only possessed the greater part of San 
 Domingo, next to Cuba the largest and most fertile of all the 
 islands, but also many of the smaller ones, such as St. Lucia, St. 
 Vincent, and Martinique ; and even smaller nations, such as 
 Denmark, Sweden, and Holland, had established themselves 
 at St. Kitt's, St. Croix, St. John, and St. Thomas. Of all these 
 nations, France had spent the most money on her West Indian 
 possessions, and had brought them to the highest pitch of pros- 
 perity. The eagerness with which, at every war with France, 
 the English ministry seized the smaller islands, was a manifest 
 proof of their value, but they had never been able to suc- 
 cessfully subdue San Domingo. In 1789 San Domingo reached 
 the climax of its prosperity; its wealth and capabilities can 
 be studied in the " Memoirs " of Malouet, who was for many 
 years in the colonial service there, and the progress of Mar- 
 tinique is traced in the "Memoirs" of Bouill^ who was for 
 many years governor of that island. The wealth of the San 
 Domingo planters was as proverbial in France as that of the 
 " nabobs '' in England, and many wealthy Creoles, like Jose- 
 phine de la Pagerie, made matches with the highest nobility 
 in France. Nantes and Bordeaux, the two chief centres of the 
 West Indian trade, derived their wealth almost entirely from 
 their communications with San Domingo, and the prosperity 
 of the island was jealously observed by both English and 
 Spanish statesmen. As in every other island, the work of the 
 sugar-plantations in San Domingo was entirely done by slaves, 
 but the slaves there were not treated so badly as in the 
 English and Spanish West India islands, as the very lai'ge 
 number of mulattoes, descendants of Frenchmen by negro 
 women, conclusively proves. But the mere fact of the exist- 
 ence of slavery was sufficient to excite the French as well as 
 the English philanthropists. Mention has been made of the 
 "Socit^ts^ des Amis des Noirs," established by Brissot, in imi- 
 tation of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery, which was 
 
IX.] Colonial Policy of the Assembly. 273 
 
 flourishing in England under Wilberforce and Clarkson. The 
 objects of both societies were the same. Declamations on the 
 subject of the cruelties of slavery, and the right of every man 
 to be free and to the produce of his own labour, were equally 
 common in both of them, and the French enthusiasts had the 
 first opportunity of putting their views into execution. 
 
 During the very first sitting of the States- General, certain 
 individuals, calling themselves deputies of San Domingo, asked 
 to be permitted to have seats in the great Assembly, but were 
 met by a question whether they had been elected by the free 
 vote of both black and white inhabitants. Such an idea 
 seemed preposterous to all who had ever been in the West 
 Indies, and the deputies were permitted to take their seats. 
 The events of June and July had been followed with interest 
 in San Domingo by all the French colonists there, and they 
 had proceeded to elect committees and establish National 
 Guards similar to those in the principal cities of France. But 
 the " Soci6te des Amis des Noirs " thought far more about the 
 slaves than of the French colonists, and noisily demanded from 
 the Assembly that all slaves should be instantly freed ; nay, 
 more, should be permitted to have all the rights of citizenship. 
 Ridiculous as this idea was, it was received with applause by 
 the philanthropic and unstatesmanlike Assembly, and measures 
 were at once ordered to be taken to secure the emancipation 
 of the slaves. The idea was universally scouted by all states- 
 men, including, of course, Mirabeau ; but the motion was passed. 
 At first there were none to tell the slaves of the great ad- 
 vantages which an Assembly in a distant country had been 
 pleased to grant them. But the news was eagerly received by 
 the mean whites and the poorer Creoles of the cities. These at 
 once claimed a share of the government, and made themselves 
 so obnoxious that many of the respectable inhabitants began 
 to leave the island. The seeds of mischief were thus sown ; 
 for these classes, as well as the mutinous soldiers, soon spread 
 the news of their coming emancipation among the slaves. 
 During the exi3tence of the Constituent Assembly, the de- 
 struction of all trade, which was threatened by their measures, 
 VOL. I. T 
 
2 74 The Constitutional Committee. [chap. 
 
 did not come to pass, but four distinct parties had already 
 appeared in San Domingo — the committees of planters and 
 ■wealthy inhabitants, those of the mean whites, the mulat- 
 toes, and the slaves. The slaves had not done anything of 
 political importance, but when the time comes to speak o^ 
 the terrible slave war in San Domingo, it will be necessary to 
 refer back to these measures of the Constituent Assembly. 
 Their policy in this reg-ird is distinctly typical of their policy 
 with regard to the Church, and still more with regard to the 
 army, for in both instances the desire for logical completeness 
 entirely destroyed both institutions. Enough insistence has 
 now been laid on the mistakes of the Assembly, and it is time 
 to consider their more lasting work. 
 
 The constitutional committee, which had been appointed 
 in the month of July, had proposed certain bases and a certain 
 mode of procedure for the drawing up of the new French con- 
 stitution. It has been seen^ that on the rejection of the two 
 chambers and of the absolute veto the majority had resigned, 
 and had been succeeded by Target, Thouret, Desmeuniers, 
 Rabautde Saint Efcienne, and Tronchet; and the new members, 
 as well as Le Chapelier and Talleyrand, were greatly under 
 the influence of Si^yfes, and inclined rather to a constitution 
 based on his own peculiar theories than an imitation of 
 English institutions. The two most important constitution- 
 makers now became Target and Thouret. 
 
 Gui Jean Baptiste Target was born in Paris in 1733, and had 
 early become an avocat in the capital. There he made himself a 
 great name at a very early date, and had spread his reputation 
 not so much by his pleadings as by his publication of historical 
 and political works. The beauty of his literary style ensured 
 his election to the Academic Fran9aise in 1785, and he had by 
 that time won not only a reputation in the salons but among 
 the real literary leaders. He supplied the legal and historical 
 notes to Mirabeau's " Considerations sur I'Ordre de Cincinna- 
 tus," and his friendship with Mirabeau was of old standing. 
 His reputation was more than French, it was European, and 
 ^ See chap. vii. p. 201. 
 
IX.] Target 275 
 
 his opinions were quoted by the greatest English lawyers, and 
 especially by Sir Samuel Romilly. After becoming the leader 
 of the Paris bar, his opinion was considered of supreme weight 
 on every question concerning the general principles of equity. 
 His knowledge of these general principles was very great, and 
 he stood at the head of the law-reformers, who from the middle 
 of the eighteenth century were striving to deduce from the 
 philosophies of Montesquieu, Beccaria, and Rousseau some- 
 thing which would effectually remedy the injustice of a stern 
 and rigid system of law. This knowledge of equity made him 
 a valuable member of the National Assembly, to which he was 
 elected a deputy by the tiers ^tat of Paris extra muros, or 
 without the walls. He had preferred to sit for this constitu- 
 ency instead of for Paris itself in order to be present at the 
 first meeting of the States-General, but continued to preside at 
 the Hotel de Ville over the elections of the city. He was 
 elected a member of the constitutional committee on its first 
 formation in June, 1789, but had at first been outvoted by the 
 constitutionalists, who under Mounier commanded the majority 
 of the committee. When the supporters of the imitation of 
 the English constitution resigned. Target came to the front, 
 and was generally i-egarded as the real maker of the new con- 
 stitution. To be sure, in most instances. Target only carried 
 out the suggestions of Si^yes, who was the inventor of the 
 various electoral expedients and of the elaborate system of 
 counter-checks; but the credit for the establishment of tlie 
 jury and of the new tribunals belongs to Target himself, and, 
 had it been possible, he wished to draw up a new code of law. 
 Target was not at all an effective speaker in the Assembly, but 
 left the ofiice of reporter rather to his colleague Thouret ; but 
 he was well known to be the most industrious member of the 
 constitutional committee, and, if by nothing else, his impor- 
 tance is proved by the perpetual sallies against him made by 
 the royalist journals, and especially by the Actes des Aj)utres, 
 in which it was always declared that the new constitution was 
 the unwieldy and ill-formed child of M. Target of Paris. He 
 refused to defend the king in later life, and during the Terror 
 
276 Thoit,ret. [chap. 
 
 acted as secretary to the revolutionary committee of his 
 section, and used his position to save many lives. His experi- 
 ence of political life had not made him desirous to become a 
 member of the Legislative, the Convention, or any other poli- 
 tical assembly, by which he probably saved his own life, and 
 in 1798 he was appointed a judge of the Tribunal of Appeal. 
 Napoleon recognized his great merits as a lawyer, and made 
 him one of the three commissioners who drew up the Code 
 Napoleon. As he was never an extreme radical or advanced 
 revolutionist, he led the quiet life of a jurist and thinker 
 throughout the days of the empire, and died peacefully in 
 Paris, in the full enjoyment of his great powers and repu- 
 tation, on September 7, 1807. 
 
 Jacques Guillaume Thouret, who was the reporter of the 
 constitutional committee, and therefore the mouthpiece of 
 Si^yfes and Target, was the greatest provincial lawyer elected 
 to the States-General, and was early recognized as one of 
 the ablest speakers in the Assembly. He was born at Port 
 I'Eveque, in Normandy, in 1746, was educated at Caen, and 
 became an avocat at Rouen, and in time the leader of the 
 bar there. He was in 1789 elected first deputy for the tiers 
 ^tat of Rouen. He was doubtful at first as to which side 
 he should take in the Assembly, and had shown such reac- 
 tionary tendencies that he was forced, by his general unpopu- 
 larity, to resign the presidency of the Assembly, to which he 
 had been elected on August 3, 1789. On September 15 he 
 had been appointed a member of the constitutional committee, 
 and in October became its spokesman. He was the chief 
 contriver of the suspensive veto, and also proposed the abo- 
 lition of the parlements. In January, 179U, he was president 
 of the Assembly, and declared that the king was only the 
 first public functionary of the realm. After the flight to 
 Varennes, his opinions again became less revolutionary, and 
 he assisted in the final revision of the constitution. His 
 share in drawing it up was so universally recognized that 
 he was elected the last president of the Assembly in Sep- 
 tember, 1791, and in that capacity presented the Act of 
 
IX.] The New Constitution. 277 
 
 Constitution to the king for his assent. In 1791 he was 
 elected president of the Court of Appeal, and was re-elected 
 under both the Legislative Assembly and the Convention in 
 August, 1792, and in November, l/!»3, during the Terror. 
 But his reactionary tendencies during the latter months of 
 the Constituent Assembly were not forgotten, and on April 
 22, 1794, he was guillotined with Le Chapelier, his former col- 
 league in the constitutional committee, d'Espr-^mesnil, the old 
 supporter of the parlements, and Malesherbes, the defender 
 of the king. His importance in the Assembly arose rather 
 from his being reporter of the constitutional committee than 
 from any great capacity he had exhibited. He was certainly 
 inferior as a jurist to Target, but seems, as president of the 
 Court of Appeal, to have shown himself an upright judge. 
 
 The logical mind of Sieyfes made him peculiarly fitted to 
 superintend any complete system of reorganization, but he 
 represented the general mind of the Asserably in its most 
 unpractical shape. Instead of studying the work of constitu- 
 tion-making in the chronological order, in which the new con- 
 stitution was actually drawn up, it will be better to discuss, as 
 a whole, the progress which was made in the latter months of 
 1789 and the earlier months of 1790. This is the more neces- 
 sary, as every part of the constitution formed in the minds of 
 the constitution-makers part of one consistent whole, though 
 circumstances caused certain portions to be promulgated 
 before others. For instance, the regulations for the creation 
 of the new municipalities and of local self-government was the 
 first part of the constitution to be minutely prescribed, because 
 France was at the time under the rule of provisional commit- 
 tees, which had no legal status and no definite powers. The 
 question of municipalities, which was the most pressing, was 
 the first to be treated, and as early as April, 1790, the new 
 local governments were in full legal operation, while the final 
 recfulations as to the connection between the king and future 
 assemblies was not settled till the year 1791, and even the 
 question of municipalities was unavoidably mixed up with 
 that of the formation of the larger units of local government. 
 
278 The Old Provinces. [chap. 
 
 It was agreed on all sides that the old system of provinces 
 and provincial governments must cease. By their very exist- 
 ence they perpetuated the recollection of past differences of 
 nationality, and tended to encourage provincial patriotism in 
 preference to national feeling. Instances of the strength of 
 provincial feeling and the dissensions between province and 
 province, town and town, during the electoral period, have 
 been given.* Moreover, every individual province had its 
 own peculiar local customs and its local history. In Brittany 
 the old Breton constitution, which had been guaranteed at 
 the marriage of Anne of Brittany, was still in full force, 
 though the excitement of the electoral period had shown the 
 existence of a strong popular feeling against it. Franche 
 Comt^, which had only been united to France for little more 
 than a century, had preserved its local independence under both 
 Burgundian and Spanish rule, and had thus been severed in 
 opinion and feeling from the rest of France. Alsace, again, 
 had retained many imperial customs, which had been guaran- 
 teed to Strasbourg and the ten imperial cities when Alsace 
 had been annexed by Louis XIV. Lorraine, under King 
 Stanislas, had preserved its independence until the year 1766, 
 and was as distinctly German in its government as Alsace. 
 The customs and government of French Flanders again re- 
 sembled those of the imperial cities, and in the south the 
 province of Roussillon was Spanish both in language and 
 nationality. The provincial spirit had been encouraged by the 
 existence of the old governor-generalships, and independence 
 of thought by the difficulty of communications with Paris, 
 and the establishment of provincial parlements and provincial 
 academies in the chief provincial capitals. The old system 
 of taxation also had preserved the traditions of the various 
 origins of the provinces of France. There were three distinct 
 divisions of the country for purposes of customs duties. There 
 was France proper, including the centre of the country; the 
 provinces "reputes ^trangeres," comprising Burgundy and 
 other provinces united to France in the sixteenth and seven- 
 * ChaiD. i. p. 24. 
 
IX.] The Old Provinces. 
 
 279 
 
 teenth centuries; and the provinces " dtrangferes," such as 
 Alsace, which had only been conquered by Louis XIV. In local 
 government there was again to be perceived a distinct differ- 
 ence between the " pays d'^leetion " and the " pays d etats." 
 In the " pays d'dlection " the supreme authority had been 
 given to the intendants, while each "pays d'etat" had con- 
 tinued to possess its local assembly, which had the regulation 
 of provincial affairs and the apportionment of certain taxes 
 for provincial purposes. But the system in each " pays d'etat " 
 was different. The Estates of Brittany consisted of three 
 chambers of the three orders ; in Languedoc there were t\^o 
 chambers, the one consisting of clergy and noblesse, the other 
 of petite noblesse and deputies of the towns ; in B^arn there 
 were also two houses of assembly, which exactly corresponded 
 to the two houses of the English Parliament. These anomalies, 
 though interesting in themselves to the historical student, 
 were utterly repugnant to the logical ideas of Si^yfes and 
 his chief coadjutors, who did not fail to perceive that 
 the weakening of provincial spirit would contribute to the 
 strengthening of the national feeling of patriotism. As early 
 as September 29, therefore, Thouret, the deputy for Rouen, 
 moved that a new division of France should be made for 
 administrative purposes, and on November 12 a division 
 into eighty equal departments, governed only by considera- 
 tions of natural boundaries, was voted. 
 
 It was some months before the various committees ap- 
 pointed to decide on the new divisions sent in their reports, 
 but by the month of February the new lines of demarcation 
 had been marked out. The system had naturally been strongly 
 opposed by the deputies of the right, who hoped they would 
 thus gain an increase of popularity in their provinces, and the 
 details were discussed and even fought over for a long time. 
 The new arrangements were always made on the recommen- 
 dation of committees, consisting of all the deputies of each 
 province, and most bitter were the disputes which took place 
 about the limits to be chosen and the towns to be selected 
 for provincial capitals. Occasionally the dissensions ran high, 
 
28o The New Departments. [chap. 
 
 and the duel between Huguet, deputy for the tiers ^tat of 
 Clermont-Ferrand, with the Comte de Montlosier, deputy for 
 Eiom, which grew out of the animosity between these two 
 cities as to which should be the capital of the new department 
 of the Puy de D&me, has been noticed. The departments 
 were to be named from rivers and mountains, in order not 
 to perpetuate either the influence of any particular town or 
 any historical recollection. Thus Auvergne was divided into 
 the departments of the Puy de Dome and the Gantal, and the 
 department in which Paris was situated was termed the 
 department of the Seine. This system met with the entire 
 acquiescence of the deputies of the left, who hoped it would 
 effectually extinguish all old remembrances, and make all 
 Frenchmen feel themselves to be Frenchmen, and not Picards 
 or Provenpals, Gascons or Bretons. It was found, however, 
 that France could not be divided into eighty perfectly sym- 
 metrical departments, and the Assembly had to assent to the 
 formation of eighty-two, with an eighty-third for the island 
 of Corsica. According to the original scheme, France was to 
 be divided peremptorily into eighty departments, each of 
 which was to be divided into nine districts with separate 
 government districts, each district into ten cantons, and each 
 canton into ten municipalities, thus splitting up France into 
 seventy-two thousand municipalities. But, as in the case of 
 the departments, the country would not easily lend itself to 
 this methodical idea of equal subdivisions, and various local 
 exigencies caused the deputies to modify the rigorous lines 
 of division, which Si^yfes and his friends would have liked. 
 The various units of government decided upon, the next 
 question was as to the different functions with which the 
 local authoi'ities should be entrusted. 
 
 There was to be a departmental government in every 
 department, a district government in every district, a cantonal 
 government in every canton, and independent municipalities 
 in every municipality. This perpetual subdivision, and this 
 creation of innumerable communities of government, was a 
 further proof of the inexperience and utterly unpractical 
 
IX.] New System of Local Government. 281 
 
 character of tlie Assembly. Nevertheless, the constitutional 
 committee showed the greatest ingenuity in complicating the 
 mode of formation of every little government, and meting 
 out to each certain small functions. The members of the 
 municipalities were to be directly elected by the citizens 
 of the municipality, and the citizens of the canton were 
 further directly to elect the cantonal government, but appoint- 
 ments to the district and departmental offices were far more 
 complicated. A body of electors was to be elected by all the 
 citizens of each department, and to them were to be proposed, 
 in every district and in every department, a list of candidates 
 for district and departmental offices. The electors were to 
 elect the various officers and then depart, and Si^yes imagined 
 that he had thus carefully provided a mixed system of election 
 and selection which would meet every necessary requirement. 
 There was also similar elaborate machinery provided for 
 watching the departmental and other officers at their duties. 
 There were to be councils-general in every department, which 
 were to appoint directories, and councils in every canton and 
 district, and so on vith the most minute elaboration. That 
 such a system could not possibly work, and would allow only 
 intriguers to take the trouble to secure appointments, which 
 needed so much canvassing and so many candidatures, did not 
 seem to enter the minds of the members of the constitutional 
 committee; nevertheless the elaborate system proposed de- 
 lighted the logical members of the Assembly, and it was 
 voted by acclamation. At first, delighted with the idea of 
 exercising local power, there were plenty of candidates for 
 office, and no difficulty in obtaining eligible officers. The 
 elections in the department of the Seine were, of course, the 
 most interesting. Talleyrand, Sieyfes, La Rochefoucauld, and 
 Mirabeau were all elected to the council-general of the depart- 
 ment of the Seine, and afterwards to the directory; but 
 Mirabeau was defeated in his attempt to become procureur- 
 general-syndic by Pastoret, and for the presidency of the 
 directory by the Due de la Eochefoucauld. 
 
 The system of procureurs and procureurs-syndic deserves 
 
282 The System of Procureurs. [^chap. 
 
 an additional notice of itself. Every department was to 
 elect a procureur-general-syndic with two sub^stitutes ; every 
 district a procureur-syndic ; every canton and every munici- 
 pality a procureur. The functions of these procureurs and 
 procureurs- syndics were very badly defined, but circumstances 
 threw into their hands, in the critical year of 1792, the com- 
 plete powers of the various local governments. Indeed, from 
 the elaboration of the system, it would be inevitable that in 
 every unit there should arise one man who would absorb 
 most power. The procureurs were originally intended to 
 have a general superintendence of the maintenance of order 
 in their governments, and were supposed to act also as public 
 prosecutors, and in general as assistants to the various mayors 
 and presidents. When the various councils-general and direc- 
 tories were not sitting, their powers were exercised by the 
 procureur, so that at critical times, when it was impossible 
 to collect even comparatively small consultative bodies, the 
 procureur had to act on his own authority. What an im- 
 portant part Roederer, as procureur-general-syndic for the 
 Seine, played on August 10, 1792, is well known, and his 
 conduct on that occasion had its counterpart in nearly every 
 department of France. 
 
 The idea of establishing these innumerable officers and 
 small councils was that they might all act as checks upon 
 each other, and the result was a terrible confusion of powers 
 everywhere. Thus, for instance, the municipality of Paris 
 and the department of the Seine each claimed the same 
 powers, and the result of a struggle between them was the 
 entire victory of the municipality or commune of Paris, 
 though not until its personality had been considerably changed 
 by the introduction of more advanced revolutionists. The very 
 advantages which might have been expected from local self- 
 government entirely disappeared before this over-elaboration, 
 and the care taken to restrain officers, if they attempted to 
 exercise functions which did not belong to them, effectually 
 prevented those officers from doing anything at all, or else 
 enabled them, if strong men, to entirely overrule the advice 
 of their supervisors. This sj-stem was made even more un- 
 
IX.] The Idea of Active Citizens. 283 
 
 workable by the mania for election which posaessed the 
 leading members of the constitutional committee ; e%'ery 
 officer, and every council in every district, canton, and 
 department, was to be elected, after a long and elaborate 
 series of electoral contests, by an absolute majority. It 
 seemed as if the deputies were so delighted at having once 
 been elected themselves that they were enamoured of the 
 very idea, and a large portion of the time of any one taking 
 an interest in politics must have been consumed every year 
 in electing various people to various offices and various 
 councils. But there was a further fault in this system, one 
 far more important than the mania of election, which by 
 itself would probably only have resulted, as it has done in 
 America, in the abstinence of all respectable people from 
 public affairs, and the promotion of political intriguers, for it 
 deliberately opposed the bourgeois to the working classes, and 
 that was the introduction of the two laws of the " trois jours 
 de travail" and of the "marc d'argent." 
 
 It was decreed that no one should be allowed to vote even 
 for the appointment of the most insignificant official if he was 
 not an " active citizen," that is, if he did not pay taxes equal 
 to the amount of three days' wages in the locality in which he 
 resided. This effectually prevented any working man who 
 might happen to be out of work from any share in the 
 government whatever, though it permitted peasants who 
 resided in their own hovels, and were thus householders, to 
 have a voice in public affairs. By the other law no individual 
 might be elected to any council or any office who did not pay 
 taxes equivalent to a mark of silver. This regulation dis- 
 franchised even comparatively wealthy workmen in regular 
 employment, and carefully restricted all office to the bourgeois. 
 That these regulations created a perfect outburst of indignation 
 among the journalists of Paris cannot be wondered at, for it 
 disfranchised the whole of them at a blow, and they truly 
 declared that the Assembly was merely looking to the interest 
 of that bourgeois class from which the majority of them had 
 sprung. The unworkable nature of the new constitution, and 
 the passing of these two laws, were enough of themselves to 
 
284 Condemnation of the Parlements. [chap. 
 
 show that the great constitution which the Constituent 
 Assembly was drawing up with so much care could not last, 
 and that it would have very soon to give way to some more 
 practical form of government. 
 
 Having effectually treated the question of local government 
 and administration to their satisfaction, the constitutional com- 
 mittee proceeded to draw up a reformed judicial system, based 
 upon the new administrative arrangements devised by Sieyfes. 
 The old parlements, which had, just before the elections of 1789, 
 obtained such an immense popularity that the mere suggestion 
 of their abolition nearly led to serious consequences, had sealed 
 their fate by their opposition to the new Assembly ; but had 
 they been ever so compliant, the anomalies implied in their 
 existence, the hereditary character of their offices, and their 
 close connection with the old provincial organization, would 
 have ensured their destruction. Even before the capture of 
 the Bastille their opposition had been declared. Nearly every 
 parlement had formally protested against the union of the 
 three orders, for it must never be forgotten that the individual 
 presidents and counsellors of the parlements were all noble 
 by tenure or by office, and that the large legal element in the 
 tiers ^tat was supplied by the avocats and procureurs, and not 
 by the counsellors of the parlements. All their threats of 
 ceasing to administer justice were now laughed at and dis- 
 regarded. In former days the threat had been a serious one, 
 for the sympathies of the people had gone with the parlements 
 and not against them. Headed, for legal reasons, by Target 
 and Thouret, and followed by Lanjuinais, Le Chapelier, and all 
 the most distinguished lawyers of the Assembly, the avocats 
 and procureurs, who roughly corresponded to the English 
 barristers and solicitors, had many a grievance against the 
 parlements. They complained that justice was not administered 
 strictly according to law, and still less according to the wide 
 . principles of equity which had been derived from the works 
 of modern philosophers, but rather according to the influence 
 which could b^ brought to bear upon individual counsellors. 
 As their income depended upon fees, it was to the interest of 
 the judges of the parlements to drag on cases as long as possible, 
 
ix.J Old French Law. 
 
 2 85 
 
 and many a case before the Parlement of Paris had as lengthy 
 a history as an English suit in Chancery. 
 
 The objections of the leading avocats, many of whom were 
 great jurists like Lanjuinais and Target, to the procedure 
 of the parlements were augmented when the law itself, which 
 they administered, was considered. The provinces of France 
 were roughly divided into provinces, where the " loi du droit 
 ^crit " and the " loi du droit coutumier " were respectively 
 followed. The written law was supposed, as in Italy and 
 Germany, to be the Roman law ; but, as a fact, it was more 
 necessary to master certain of the most respected commen- 
 taries on the Roman law rather than the law itself. Great 
 and enduring as the Roman law must ever be as a monument 
 of legal knowledge, yet the world had expanded in its needs 
 and requirements since the days of Justinian, and in many 
 departments, as in those of criminal and commercial law, 
 were quite out of consonance with modern ideas. The 
 "droit coutumier" partook rather of the character of English 
 common law, and rested on precedents derived from the 
 Middle Ages, and the justice which regulated it was, therefore, 
 as mysterious, unintelligible, and often as grossly unjust as 
 decisions under the old common law of England during the 
 last century. The complexity of the various glosses on the 
 Roman law, and of the whole of the '' droit coutumier," natu- 
 rally left room for injustice in allowing innumerable appeals 
 in which wealth was certain to carry the day. The great 
 lawyers of the constitutional committee, who were supported 
 by the legislative committee including Charles Franpois 
 Lebrun, the future consul, who had been secretary to 
 Maupeou, and who now sate in the Assembly for the tiers 
 dtat of Dourdan, Durand de Maillane, and Merlin of Douai, 
 wished, therefore, not only to reform the system of administer- 
 ing the law, but also to draw up one consistent and in- 
 telligible code for the whole of France. The great ideas of 
 the Code Napoleon were in the minds of the great lawyers 
 of the Constituent Assembly ; and of the authors of the code, 
 Target, Tronchet, and Merlin of Douai were all members 
 of the Constituent Assembly. But alas ! the inexperienced 
 
286 The New Judicial Sydem. [chap. 
 
 Assembly, with practical difficulties before it, was not fitted 
 to discuss and pass such a great reform in law as the Code 
 NapoMon afterwards effected. 
 
 Nevertheless, it established a very effective new system 
 of judicature. Every department was to have its own 
 criminal and civil tribunal ; every canton and every district 
 was to have its own cantonal and district courts, with appeals 
 Jying to the departmental tribunals ; while in Paris there was 
 to be a High Court of Appeal, which should receive in the 
 last instance appeals from the whole of France. All this 
 was truly admirable. Instead of its being necessary for 
 every trifling case to be tried by the parlement many miles 
 from the scene of the dispute, there would be all over France 
 tribunals at easy distances which should do justice. The old 
 system of payment by fees, which always induced judges to 
 spin out cases, was abolished, and the j udges were to be paid 
 out of the revenues of the department or district. The jury 
 system was introduced from England, and juries were estab- 
 lished for criminal cases alone. Lastly, small criminal cases, 
 which had hitherto been judged by the old feudal courts of 
 the bishop or the lord, were now to be brought before the 
 juge de paix of the municipality or commune, who was 
 appointed in imitation of the English justice of the peace. 
 He was to do summary justice in all small cases brought 
 before him, and had to report all more serious cases to the 
 proeureur or his substitute, when prosecution was to be insisted 
 at the public expense if the facts demanded it. Nothing could 
 be more admirable than these reforms, and had the excitement 
 of the time permitted the drawing up of such a code as the 
 Code Napoleon, there is little doubt but that the Constituent 
 Assembly, whatever faults it may have committed, would 
 have left an enduring monument. But these reforms were 
 vitiated by the mania of the majority of the deputies for 
 election. Not only were the juges de paix and the judges 
 of the departmental and other tribunals to be elected, but 
 the very j uries were to hold office for a stated time, and were 
 to be elected likewise. This was simply ridiculous, for the 
 
IX.] The New Judicial System. 287 
 
 men most fitted to be judges are not generally likely to 
 succeed at the hustings. Yet at first the system worked well. 
 Merlin of Douai, the great lawyer, was elected president 
 of the Criminal Tribunal of the department of the Nord ; 
 Target, president of one of the civil tribunals, and Treilhard 
 of the Criminal Tribunal of Paris ; Bigot de Prdameneau, 
 judge of the fourth arrondissement of Paris; and Thouret was 
 elected president, and Maleville a judge, of the High Court 
 of Appeal. But the subordinate offices of juge de paix and 
 district judge were not always so well filled. To give but 
 a single instance, although it was necessary that a juge de 
 paix should be a lawyer, there was no regulation about his 
 assessors, and at Provins, as if in mockery, six cobblers were 
 elected assessors, who, it may be added, did their work very 
 satisfactorily.^ Bad as the idea of election is when applied 
 to the administration, of justice, it is still worse when the 
 appointments are made for six years only, for then there 
 must always be a feeling in the judge's mind that he must 
 administer justice so as not to prejudice his re-election. 
 This mistake vitiated the whole scheme of Target and 
 Thouret. But, faults though there were, it must be con- 
 fessed that the attempt of the Assembly to reorganize the 
 law courts contained more elements of success than that of 
 their reorganization of the administrative system. The 
 numerous lawyers in the Assembly also tried their best to 
 spread a knowledge of the law, by proposing law universities 
 in the chief towns and law professorships all over the country. 
 Efficient, however, as the new system might be for general 
 purposes, the important question as to what court was to try 
 eases of high treason, or treason against the state, caused a 
 violent discussion in the early days of the Assembly. Soon 
 after the capture of the Bastille the question had arisen, and 
 the Assembly had decreed that Besenval and others of the 
 royalist leaders should be tried by the Court of the Chatelet. 
 This court was one of the old feudal courts, with special juris- 
 diction in certain districts of Paris, and so was by no means 
 * Histoire de Proviiis, by Fdlix Bourquelot, p. 321. Provins : 1839. 
 
288 The High Court of Orleans. [chap. 
 
 fit in itself to examine such important cases. Its acquittal 
 of Besenval disgusted the people, and its practical acquittal 
 of Orleans and of all who were accused of participating 
 in the events of October 5 and 6 made it distrusted by 
 the court, and it was necessary to devise some new tribunal. 
 The Parisians declared that there was no need for a special 
 tribunal, that the people would do justice on traitors, and 
 that the ordinary Parisian judges would be quite competent to 
 treat such affairs. But the Assembly thought otherwise, and,- 
 fearing the influence of the Parisians, ordered that a High 
 Court should be established at Orleans with jurisdiction in 
 cases of high treason, of which the jurors should be elected 
 by the departments, and the judges nominated by the king, 
 and the sentences revised by the Assembly itself. 
 
 Many merits can be perceived so far in the work of the 
 Assembly, but their attempts to provide for the government 
 of the whole country, as distinguished from that of a depart- 
 ment, were miserable failures. From the examples of past 
 centuries most of the deputies were impressed with something 
 like terror of the executive power, and every means was 
 taken to weaken and check the executive in every possible 
 way. The king was only to have a suspensive veto, and was 
 not allowed in any way to interfere with the administration 
 of justice or the local government of the country. The 
 ministers were to be responsible under tremendous penalties 
 to the legislative power, and were to have hardly any initiative 
 of their own. In fact, had the system devised by the Con- 
 stituent Assembly been drawn up for the express purpose 
 of reducing the efficiency of the government of the. country 
 as much as possible, it could not have been better planned. 
 How the deputies could ever have expected any one to become 
 a minister under their projected regime is most extraoidinary ; 
 but if the executive was to be so weakened and so hampered 
 and on the other hand the legislative power was to be 
 supreme, no minister with any self-respect or common sense 
 would hold office more than a month. The deputies to the 
 future legislative assemblies were to be elected by the body 
 
IX.] The Weakening of the Executive. 289 
 
 of electors, who were chosen in the various local subdivisions 
 to elect councils-general and procureurs-syndic ; and the 
 Constituent Assembly seemed to think that much the same 
 class of men was wanted in the legislature of the kingdom 
 as in the councils-general of a department. That there 
 was a great and wide difi'erence between local and national 
 business they failed to understand. When the Assembly 
 was elected, it was to have supreme power of legislation and 
 interference. Thus the deputies could order ministers to be 
 tried before the High Court of Orleans, and could not become 
 ministers themselves until they had resigned their seats for 
 at least six months. It was thus carefully contrived that 
 men who had gained the confidence of the country in their 
 legislative capacity should not attempt to undertake office 
 at all, with the natural result of a rapid succession of ridicu- 
 lously weak ministries ; and most of the troubles which ensued 
 may be attributed to the fact that it was impossible for 
 any ministry to cope with the anarchy which was showing 
 itself. Though they were not to have seats in the Assembly, 
 the ministers were to be permitted to come down and address 
 the deputies when they wished; but they were not allowed 
 to act without due authorization, or if they did, their lives 
 were held responsible. This ridiculous weakening of the 
 executive and the carefully devised separation between the 
 executive and the legislative powers stamped the Constituent 
 Assembly, in spite of its industry and the many great qualities 
 its members displayed, as . utterly unfitted for the task of 
 constitution-making which it had set itself. 
 
 Any real power which a constitutional king might and 
 ought to possess had been taken from the King of France by 
 the passing of the suspensive veto, and the discussion as to 
 who should have the right of making peace and war wiU 
 show the same distrust of royalty pervading the Assembly, 
 though its weakness was shown more clearly in May, 1700, than 
 in September, 1789. The distrust of the Assembly can be well 
 explained by the repugnance of the queen and court to the 
 new ideas ; but, as Mu-abeau himself remarked, the government 
 VOL. I. ^ 
 
290 Good Intentions of the Deptittes. [chap. ix. 
 
 of France had been declared to be monarchical, and yet the 
 monarchy was to be a figure-head and nothing more. 
 
 In the course of the next chapters the policy of the 
 Assembly with regard to the Church, the finances, and the army 
 will appear, and the same faults and merits which it showed 
 in the drawing up of the constitution will then be seen. There 
 was the same longing for logical completeness rather than for 
 that effectiveness which should be the aim of good government. 
 There is the same desire to attribute great insight into men, 
 and great experience of affairs to every individual citizen, 
 which the knowledge of human nature possessed by the 
 deputies of the Assembly should have taught them not to 
 have expected. All men are not born statesmen or politicians, 
 and the best form of government is that which brings the men 
 best fitted to be statesmen to the head of affairs, just as the 
 best system of judicature is that which produces the best 
 judges and the best advocates. Yet the merits of the majority 
 of the deputies to the Constituent Assembly will appear in 
 the ensuing chapters ; their real longing to try to contrive 
 such a mode of government as would give every Frenchman 
 some interest both in legal and imperial affairs ; their desire 
 that equal justice should be meted out to every man, whether 
 rich or poor ; their wish that birth and wealth should not be 
 the only passports to education and political power ; their 
 earnest hope that the new state of France should be something 
 better than the old ; their belief that men were not made to be 
 governed, but to govern themselves, and that, if France was 
 to be made happy, great, and prosperous, it could only be so 
 because every Frenchman was himself fairly governed and 
 justly taxed, and could feel himself no unimportant unit in 
 his fatherland. Yet the Constituent Assembly forgot that the 
 poor working man was just as much a Frenchman as the 
 wealthy shopkeeper, and that, if its noble aims were to be 
 realized, every working man should feel himself of as much 
 political and social importance, and that he had as much right 
 to a share of the government and a vote, as the most comfort- 
 able bourgeois of them all. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE CIVIIj COISrSTITUTIOM" OP THE CLERGT. 
 
 Policy of the Assembly towards the Church — The Church in France — 
 The idea of a Galhcan Church — Christianity attacked by Voltaire, the 
 Encyclopaedists, and Rousseau— Weakness of the Church in France — 
 The king would not reform it — First debates on the Church ; its 
 property declared to be national — Suppression of religious houses 
 — Dom Gerle's motion — The civil constitution of the clergy — Its 
 weak points — -The oath imposed on the clergy — Tolerance of the 
 Assembly in matters of conscience — Clergy who took the oath — 
 Leaders of clerical opposition — The Cardinal Archbishop of Rouen — 
 The Archbishop of Aix— Dom Gerle— The Abb^ Gouttes— The Abbd 
 de Montesquiou — The Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. 
 
 The formation of the new constitution was the great work of 
 the Constituent Assembly, and it encountered many difficulties 
 by having at once to destroy and to construct, and further 
 by having every day to take part in dealing with actual 
 administrative details. Many mistakes were unavoidable 
 with an inexperienced assembly of lawyers and theoretical 
 politicians ; and the essentially unpractical character of the 
 new constitution has been already pointed out. But there 
 is one point of stiU greater importance, about which the 
 Assembly made a succession of blunders, hardly paralleled by 
 their conduct with regard to San Domingo, and this was their 
 attempt to reconstitute the French clergy as a national body 
 paid by the State, and elected by the citizens, who were to be 
 as much servants of the State as the judges and administrators. 
 The idea of a national Church has existed at different 
 
292 The Church in France. [chap. 
 
 periods in every country which has adopted Christianity. In 
 the Middle Ages the supremacy of the pope, as the spiritua] 
 ruler of the world, governing in harmony with the emperor, 
 had sometimes worked well, but the degradation of the Papacy 
 during its exile at Avignon finally destroyed this theoretical 
 completeness of design, and by the fourteenth century all 
 Christian nations had, side by side with their acknowledg- 
 ment of the papal superiority, a desire to maintain their 
 national Churches and their national institutions. 
 
 In England, from its distance from Rome, the idea of a 
 national Church had taken deepest root and had been most 
 successful ; but it also appears not only in France and Germany 
 but stiU. more markedly in Hungary and Spain. During the 
 residence of the Papacy at Avignon, the popes had become 
 merely nominees and servants of the kings of France, which 
 had of itself indisposed other nations to recognize its authority; 
 and the old pretensions of governing the world did not again 
 appear until the popes had safely re-established themselves at 
 Eome. A new vitality was given to the Papacy by the Refor- 
 mation. The success of the movement in England, France, and 
 Germany made it obvious to the Papacy that it must set its 
 house in order, and the rise of the order of the Jesuits marks 
 the reorganization. There were no more glaring scandals at 
 Rome, and the popes of the seventeenth century met the 
 progress of the Reformation by inculcating purity of life to 
 their priests, and entirely re-organizing the system of educa- 
 tion. How, under this new movement of reaction, the Reforma- 
 tion was stamped out in Spain and Italy and driven back 
 from Southern Germany is well known, but in France the 
 overthrow of the Reformation was due not so much to the 
 revived strength of the Papacy as to the junction which was 
 formed between the kings of France and the popes. The 
 policy of Richelieu really cemented the Roman Catholic 
 Church in France far more than the massacre of St. Bartholo- 
 mew. Richelieu only followed in the steps of Henri IV. in 
 combining the power of the Papacy with that of the throne 
 in destroying the political power of the Huguenots. He paved 
 
X.] The Idea of a Gallican Church. 293 
 
 the way for the entire sway of the Church of Rome. The 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the unavoidable con- 
 sequence of the capture of La Rochelle, and Louis XIV. was 
 only completing the work of Richelieu. Yet Louis XIV. 
 desired to unite the character of a national Church in France 
 with the power he could obtain from a union with the Papacy, 
 and this union was consummated in the famous concordat of 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 The despotic government of the Catholic Church of Rome 
 was highly pleasing to the despotic temper of Louis XIV. ; yet 
 he did not fail to see the strength which could be derived from 
 encouraging the old Galilean Church. By the concordat he 
 obtained the power of nominating the bishops and abbds of 
 France, whom the pope was bound to appoiat canonically in 
 return for being officially recognized as head of the Church. 
 Thus the royal power of appointment and the supremacy of 
 Rome in matters of doctrine were both preserved. It must 
 be said at once that the leaders of the Gallican Church in no 
 way dissented from any articles of doctrine laid down by 
 Rome ; and the Gallican Church would only have resembled 
 the English Church in its government, not its doctrine. The 
 practical destruction of the Huguenots by the revocation of 
 the Edict of Nantes, and the dragonnades, was the reward 
 which the king gave the pope for acquiescing in his govern- 
 ment of the national Church. In the eighteenth century 
 the idea of independent national Church government was 
 allied with Jansenism, and a distinct epoch is marked in 
 the history of the growth of the Gallican idea. This is not 
 the place to discuss at length the tenets of Jansenism, which 
 had a curious affinity to Calvinism, but it must be remembered 
 that the Jansenists not only wished for a greater stringency 
 of doctrine, but also for independent Church government. The 
 struggle between the Jesuits and the Jansenists formed a 
 great part of the history of the reign of Louis XV., but as 
 time went on a new factor appeared which threatened more 
 injury to the Roman Catholic Church than internal dissensions. 
 The struggle had ended, and the Jansenists seemed to have 
 
294 Attacks on Christianity. [chap. 
 
 won a great victory, wlieii the order of the Jesuits was 
 suppressed ; but at that time the nation was no longer divided 
 between two religious sects, but into the two great divisions 
 of the Christians and the unbelievers. Rousseau had preached 
 a new religion, which for the time had superseded both 
 Catholicism and Jansenism. 
 
 Christianity was attacked on three distinct lines by the 
 thinkers of the eighteenth century, and the varying methods 
 of these different attacks are best shown by noticing the 
 attitude of the three great leaders of French thought — ^Diderot, 
 Voltaire, and Rousseau. The influence of Diderot and the 
 Encyclopaedists was rather negative than positive ; they sup- 
 plied not only to France but to Europe new interests, which 
 superseded in men's minds the old absorbing interest of 
 religious theories. They preached the gospel of science ; they 
 tried to show in lucid style what great things science had 
 done, what great aims it had achieved, and what fair promises 
 it made for the future ; and a scientific impulse was given to 
 the French people. Like all men of science, they were apt to 
 think only of absolutely proving their points, and since the 
 truths of Christianity could not be scientifically proved, they 
 held them to be untrue. Voltaire's attack was at once more 
 direct and more violent, but it was not as purely negative as 
 that of the Encyclopaedists. Voltaire mocked at the Chris- 
 tianity and the pretended infallibility of Catholic dogma; but 
 he recognized what the Encyclopsedists did not, that there are 
 many subjects which absorb men's minds which cannot be 
 proved. He did not propose any actual substitute for Chris- 
 tianity, but ever laid weight in his writings on the feeling of 
 humanity. The poverty and wickedness of mankind were 
 ever his favourite themes, and he attacked rather the illiberal 
 persecution by which the Roman Catholic Church tried to 
 maintain its waning supremacy, than the existence of the idea 
 of religion. It is this breadth of human sympathy which 
 makes Voltaire's works so deeply interesting, and gave them 
 such great eflfect. How he erected a church with the super- 
 scription, " Deo erexit Voltaire," is well known, and shows that 
 
X. Influence of Rousseau. 295 
 
 he felt how great an influence the idea of a divinity had upon 
 men's minds, and though he preached no religion of humanity, 
 he yet showed that charity for mankind could exist apart 
 from Christianity. Kousseau, the third great thinker of the 
 eighteenth century, admitted a direct substitute for Christianity. 
 He did not spend his powers in reviling the want of logic or 
 want of charity in the Christian Church so much as in preach- 
 ing a new religion of humanity. The " Profession of Faith of 
 a Savoj'^ard Vicar " included at once the idea of a true minister 
 of the people and of the human faith which had inspired him. 
 By laying weight on the idea of a supreme Being, and ever 
 harping on the necessity that men should love each other, he 
 was able to strike the imagination of those whose imagination 
 was stronger than their reasoning powers. Of all the blows 
 dealt at Christianity in the eighteenth century, Kousseau's was 
 the hardest ; for he was able to rouse enthusiasm, while the 
 other thinkers only won admiration for themselves and 
 mild approval of their doctrines. 
 
 The immense influence of these philosophical attacks did 
 more than internal dissensions to weaken the Church. The 
 very priests and still more the dignitaries of the Church were 
 not ashamed to draw its revenues and deny its doctrines. 
 The wealthy bishops enjoyed Voltaire's sallies ia Paris while 
 drawing their immense incomes from the Church, and the poor 
 cur6 who could not live upon his stipend taught his flock 
 the "Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar." The clergy 
 being themselves thus aflected, how could it be expected that 
 the laity would still remain sincere Christians? One other 
 factor in creating dissatisfaction with the Church was implied 
 by the very existence of Protestants in France. The perse- 
 cution which they long imderwent, their being refused the 
 common rights of citizens and even of men, remained as 
 a glaring proof of the intolerance of the Roman Catholic 
 Church. Their numbers were not great, except in certain 
 districts, but their influence was very great in proportion to 
 their numbers. The persecuted pastors of the Huguenots had 
 by their very persecution bound their flocks closer to them in 
 
296 Louis XVI. and the Church. [chap. 
 
 an exceptionally loving bond. The Catholic Church in France 
 was, therefore, weakened both from without and from within, 
 and its doctrines attacked both as heretical and as belonging 
 to an altogether false religion. 
 
 Its existence in France depended mainly on the assistance 
 it could give to the king's government. Louis XIV. had used 
 the Church as the means of government, and Louis XVI. con- 
 tinued the same tradition, although in his time the Church 
 had lost whatever governing influence it had once possessed. 
 In describing the elections of the Estate of the clergy, some 
 notice has been taken of the excessive inequality between the 
 incomes of the bishops and abbots, who had httle work to do, 
 and the cur6s, who really laboured among their people. This 
 inequality was so glaring that, although reform of the organi- 
 zatioa of the Church in France was strongly advocated by many 
 who had the true interests of religion at heart, in opposition to 
 such a reform there could only be found those who were or 
 hoped to be wealthy dignitaries. But the court and the 
 ministry had a distinct motive for supporting the older con- 
 stitution of the Church; without the rich Church benefices 
 how could the younger children of the nobility be provided 
 for ? Just as had happened in the administration and the 
 army, abuses were supported by the court ia order that it 
 might be able to supply the extravagances of its noblesse. In 
 the reign of Louis XIV. it was, indeed, necessary to provide 
 rich offices for noblemen, in order to deprive them of political 
 ambition, and keep them from disturbing the royal despotism ; 
 and Louis XVI. failed to recognize that things had changed, 
 and that the noblesse would no longer have been able to have 
 any effect on politics, no matter how loudly they murmured. 
 But Louis XVI. had no wise adviser at hand to tell him this 
 truth, and assure him that, if he attempted of his own power 
 to reorganize the Church, he would meet with the enthusiastic 
 support of every Catholic in the kingdom, and would only 
 have to put up with the sullen discontent of a powerless 
 nobility. The need of reform was so obvious, that in every 
 cahier drawn up by the electoral assemblies of the tiers 6tat 
 
x."j Abolition of Tithes. 
 
 297 
 
 it had been proposed that some radical change should be made 
 in the government of the Church. None were found bold 
 enough to advocate the non-recognition of the Christian 
 religion, but all wished that it should be more adequately 
 preached. For, as always happens, men who in their wisdom 
 believed themselves to be without any need of religion, yet 
 wished that religion should be taught to the poorer classes. 
 
 Theking, then, would not and could not interfere to reorganize 
 the Church. Could the Church reorganize itself? It is enough 
 to refer to the unanimous protest of the convocation of the 
 clergy in Paris, in 1787, against the recognition of the unfortu- 
 nate Protestants as citizens, to show how the dignitaries of the 
 Church failed to perceive the necessity for reform. The need 
 for reorganization was fully acknowledged by the humbler 
 class of the cur^s who were not represented among the digni- 
 taries at Paris, and to the preponderating influence of the curds 
 in the elections to the Estate of the clergy must be attributed 
 the cordiality with which a large proportion of that Estate 
 welcomed the idea of a thorough reform being made by the 
 Constituent Assembly. Yet it was not a desire to reform the 
 Church, but rather to appropriate the Church revenues for the 
 relief of the financial necessities of the State, which brought 
 about the first interference of the Constituent Assembly. 
 Many of the cahiers had suggested that the Church property 
 should be resumed by the State, and the desire chat the 
 Assembly should deal with it appeared on the night of August 4. 
 In the delirium of generosity which then possessed the deputies, 
 a decree was passed that tithes should no longer be paid to the 
 Church. In vain was it for Sidyfes to point out that by this 
 decree the Assembly was merely making a present of 120,000 
 livres a year to the landed proprietors, and to urge that the 
 tithes should be redeemed and not recklessly given away. The 
 economic knowledge of the Assembly was too slight to under- 
 stand this fact, and by one single blow the Church was deprived 
 of a portion of its income, and the landed proprietors only 
 relieved in proportion. It was in the debate on the abolition 
 of the tithes that the theory that the estates of the Church had 
 
298 Debates on Church Property. [chap. 
 
 been given to the Churcli by the State was first distinctly de- 
 clared, and the question was then shelved by the Assembly, while 
 the more important question of the words of the Declaration of 
 the Eights of Man was being discussed at length. But the needs 
 of the treasury were so great that in September the idea was 
 again mooted, and on September 24 the Abb6 Maury, who had 
 a large revenue from his benefices, and hoped for a larger, 
 distinguished himself by his opposition to the idea of resuming 
 the Church estates. Maury declared that the treasury ought 
 to protect the dues of the clergy, and even to pay back to the 
 Church the tithes which had been due to it up to August 4. 
 Such impertinence could not stave off the event, and after the 
 Assembly had gone to Paris, Mirabeau, on October 14, moved 
 a decree containing two distinct propositions ; firstly, that the 
 goods of the Church were the property of the nation at large, 
 as lonoc as a sufficient income was afforded to maintain 
 the decency of public worship ; and secondly, that no cur6 
 should have less than twelve thousand francs a year and a 
 house. A long and heated debate took place. Talleyrand, 
 Bishop of Autun, repeated the motion ; Montlosier, a fervent 
 and sincere Catholic, supported it on the one condition that 
 all vested rights should be respected. The excitement which 
 followed the murder of the unfortunate baker, Fran9ois, put 
 off the subject until October 23, when Talleyrand introduced 
 the subject in the same terms as Mirabeau. He was supported 
 by Camus, Barnave, and Thouret — a Jansenist, a philosophical 
 orator, and a lawyer ; and still more powerfully by many of 
 the clergy who sat on the left of the Assembly. Not only did 
 Gr^goire and the Abb6s Rastignac and Dillon speak warmly 
 in favour of the proposition, but the Abb6 Gouttes made an 
 appeal on behalf of the Church which well embodies the ideas 
 of the reforming clergy. " The wealth of the clergy," said he, 
 " has done much harm to religion, for it has introduced into 
 the clergy men who have no other call than the love of a living. 
 It is on account of such people that the Church deserves the 
 persecution which it is now undergoing ; it is on their account 
 that the contempt deserved only by a few ecclesiastics is poured 
 
X.] Suppression of the Monasteries. 299 
 
 upon all pastors, and it is the pastors who are the most useful 
 class of the clergy. But," he added, " the cur^s ought not to be 
 paid out of the treasury for fear of the risks that religion might 
 thus run." The motion was violently opposed by Maury, 
 Malouet, and the Bishops of Clermont and Uzfes ; and Maury 
 quoted, amid great applause, a line from Cr^biUon — 
 
 " Ah ! peut-on Writer de oeux qu'on assaasine." 
 
 The debate continued until November 2, when Mirabeau's 
 motion was carried by 568 votes to 346. The principle once 
 decided, it was not long before the wealth of the Church was 
 required for the necessities of the treasury, and in December, 
 1789, assignats to the value of four million francs were issued 
 on the security of the royal and Church property. 
 
 By the terms of the decree of November 2, a new constitu- 
 tion of the clergy had been implied, but the Assembly was for 
 some time too busy in developing other parts of the constitution 
 to undertake this most difficult task. Nevertheless, it showed 
 a wide liberality of opinion by decreeing, on December 24, that 
 Jews, Protestants, and actors should no longer be under any dis- 
 ability, and in spite of Maury they were all declared capable of 
 holding any civil or military position. On February 13, 1790, 
 the actual reconstitution of the Church was begun by the sup- 
 pression of all monastic vows and religious houses. The property 
 of the monasteries was naturally the first to be appropriated. 
 Their existence had long been a subject of discontent in France, 
 and the reforms of the earlier part of the reign of Louis XVI. 
 had augmented this discontent. He had attempted, as Joseph 
 II. afterwards attempted in Austria, to diminish the number 
 of monks and friars, but he had not dared to touch their pro- 
 perty. The result of the royal reform of the religious houses 
 was that a very few abbots and monks shared their enormous 
 wealth instead of a large number. The motion was most 
 warmly supported by Paul Louis Roederer, who won for him- 
 self a prominent position in this debate, and he was followed 
 by Barnave, the Due de la Rochefoucauld, and Petion, who at 
 the beo-inning of 1789 had proposed in his " AvLs aux Fran- 
 
300 Dom Gerle's Motion. [chap. 
 
 gais " 1 the abolition of the celibacy of the clergy. By the same 
 decree it was determined that for the present the monks and 
 nuns should remain in their monasteries and convents on a pen- 
 sion until further arrangements were made, and that the orders 
 specially devoted to nursing the sick and to public education 
 should be maintained. On April 9 Chasset brought up a report 
 of the ecclesiastical committee that it was time for the Assembly 
 to hand over to the departments the management of Church 
 property, and also to decree fixed salaries to all the clergy. 
 The budget demanded for their maintenance was no less than 
 134,000,000 francs. This proposition was violently opposed by 
 all the clerical party, headed by Mgr. Boisgdlin de Cuc6, Arch- 
 bishop of Aix. In the midst of a violent debate, a Carthusian 
 monk, named Dom Gerle, who united strong republican 
 principles with religion, proposed that the Catholic, Apostolic, 
 and Koman religion should always be that of the nation. His 
 proposition was readily applauded by the right, and at the 
 instance of his Jacobin friends he withdrew it the next day ; 
 but the subject once proposed was warmly taken up, and the 
 motion was only rejected at last after an eloquent speech by 
 Mirabeau, who reminded the Assembly of the intolerance of 
 Louis XIV., and pointed with a grand gesture to the window 
 whence King Charles IX. had given the signal for the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew, The debate created much excitement in 
 Paris, and Mirabeau-Tonneau and the Abbe Maury with diffi- 
 culty escaped from the hands of the populace. The motion 
 was rejected, and the right showed their weakness by getting 
 up a protest which was only signed by 297 members, of whom 
 more than 250 belonged to the order of the clergy. 
 
 Again the question of the new constitution of the clergy 
 was adjourned by the important debate on the subject of 
 the right of declaring peace and war ; but on June 17 
 Camus, on behalf of the ecclesiastical committee, brought up 
 the' project of the new constitution of the clergy. According 
 to this the number of bishoprics was to be reduced, and there 
 was to be but one bishop for every department, and one cur6 
 * See chap. i. p. 40. 
 
X.] The Oath of the Clergy, 301 
 
 for every commune. The bishops were to receive from 12,000 
 to 50,000 francs a year, and the cur^s from 6000 to 12,000 
 francs. So far the new arrangement was admirable. The 
 ridiculous disproportion between the bishops' salaries and those 
 of the cur<^s was abolished. The new constitution of the Church 
 was to correspond with the new administrative division of 
 the kingdom, and incomes sufficiently liberal were allotted to 
 all the clergy. But the plan of the committee contained two 
 ridiculous propositions which completely destroyed any chance 
 of vitality in the new organization. Both bishops and cur^s 
 were to be elected, and before consecration or institution were 
 to take, in the presence of the people, an oath to support in 
 every way the new constitution of the coimtry, which was 
 not yet completed. , 
 
 These two ridiculous propositions were, of course, passed 
 by the Assembly, and the civil constitution of the clergy 
 was finally decreed on July 12. On both these points the 
 Assembly gave way to its mania for election and taking 
 oaths, and had failed to recognize that their new constitutional 
 Church must, if it was to exist at all, be in regular suc- 
 cession to the old Catholic Church of France. The Jan- 
 senists, and still more the philosophers, said that there was 
 no reason why the pope should not confirm duly elected 
 bishops and cures, as he had for so many years confirmed 
 prelates appointed by the king ; but they did not perceive 
 that the Church of Rome could not be expected in any way 
 to assist an Assembly which had not agreed to the terms of 
 the concordat. By announcing its willingness to annex Avig- 
 non, which would be flat robbery of an old possession of the 
 pope's, and by abolishing the religious orders, the authority 
 of the pope had been deliberately defied, and yet the pope 
 was to be expected to confirm the new constitution. Still 
 more was the clause of the oath a proof of legislative 
 incapacity, for the constitution was not yet completed, and 
 the new cur^s and bishops were to swear to uphold in every 
 way what was not yet in existence. The strength of the 
 Roman Catholic Church lies in its carefully graduated hier- 
 
302 Clergy who took the Oath. [chap. 
 
 arcliy, and the very idea of election was a distinct attack on 
 that hierarchy. To be sure, Gr^goire and the other eccle- 
 siastics, who were full of the idea of a national Church, 
 believed that, when once the new Church was constituted, 
 it would eventually be recognized by the pope if it proposed 
 no new doctrine; but the nationalists did not sufficiently 
 recognize that many of the clergy would refuse to take the 
 oath, and that there woiUd arise in France two distinct 
 bodies of clergy, fundamentally opposed to each other, not 
 in doctrine but in theory of government. Further, by the 
 second title and nineteenth article of the new civil constitution, 
 newly elected bishops were distinctly forbidden to apply to 
 the pope for the confirmation of their appointment, and all 
 priests were submitted in every respect to the civil authorities. 
 Thus in two more points the necessity of applying to Rome 
 for confirmation was formally denied. The power of the 
 pope was formally attacked, and it can hardly be wondered 
 at that the debate was very violent. The new constitution 
 once decreed by the Assembly, it was hoped that the king 
 would use his veto; but, though his feelings were much 
 worked upon by the ecclesiastics in whom he trusted, lie yet 
 confirmed the new constitution on August 24, though it is to 
 be feared that, at the same time, he made a mental reserva- 
 tion which caused considerable trouble and even violent riots 
 during the Holy Week of 1791. 
 
 That the new civil constitution would produce dissension 
 was so obvious, that on July 24 it was declared that no bishop 
 or cure could remain in office without taking the oath; and 
 since they still continued to act, it was decreed on November 
 27, 1790, that all bishops and cures who did not take the 
 oath in one week should be at once dismissed, and if they 
 still continued to officiate, should be prosecuted before the 
 district tribunals as disturbers of the public peace of the Church 
 of France. Only four beneficed bishops took the oath out of 
 135; the Cardinal Archbishop of Sens, the worthless Lomenie 
 de Brienne, who had done so much to bring ruin on France, 
 and was now eager to break the laws of his Church ; Mgr. de 
 
X.] Liberty of Conscience, 303 
 
 Jarente, Bishop of Orleans ; Mgr. Lafont de Savines, Bisliop 
 of Viviers ; and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun ; and also three 
 bishops in 'partihus inJideliuTn who were acting as coadjutors 
 — -Mgr. Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, who was to apostatize when 
 first constitutional bishop of Paris ; Mgr. Mirondot, Bishop of 
 Babylon ; and Mgr. de Lomenie de Brienne, nephew of the 
 cardinal-bishop, and Bishop of Trajanopolis. This decree was 
 sanctioned by the king on December 26, 1790, and finally 
 established once for all a great schism between the dilFerent 
 parties in the Church, which added to the obvious probability 
 of a civil war. Finally, in August, 1790, on the motion of the 
 Abb6 Montesquiou, as reporter of the ecclesiastical committee, 
 the Assembly at once took over the management of the 
 Church property. 
 
 In discussing the animated debates and following the 
 regular order of them, which ended in the civil constitution of 
 the clergy, two important motions with regard to religion have 
 been omitted. On February 19, 1790, Foucauld proposed that 
 the Jesuits should receive the same pension as the monks. 
 Considering that the order of the Jesuits had been formally 
 suppressed in France twenty years before, this was a signifi- 
 cant sign of the impression they had made on the country, and 
 it also shows a real spirit of liberality and tolerance in the 
 Assembly, which knew well enough that the Jesuits would be 
 most violently opposed to all their new ecclesiastical decrees. 
 It knew that the strength of the Papacy in France had always 
 depended upon the Jesuits ; yet, in memory of the great 
 services the order had rendered to education, it granted them 
 liberal pensions. The second motion to be noticed is that 
 proposed by the Due de la Eochefoucauld-Liancourt on April 
 13 : " That the Assembly had not and never could have any 
 power over men's consciences and their religious opinions ; 
 that the majesty of religion and the respect due to it prevented 
 it from becoming a subject of deliberation." This motion was 
 agreed to, although the Assembly showed its preference for 
 the Catholic, Apostolic, and Boman mode of worship, and 
 prepared to spend an enormous amount of money upon its 
 
304 The Framers of the Civil Constitutions, [chap. 
 
 maintenance. The broad spirit of tolerance thus displayed 
 by the Assembly on this motion does it the very greatest credit, 
 and it is to be regretted that it spoilt its noble plan of a new 
 and well-organized rehgious establishment by insisting on the 
 process of election. 
 
 The interest of these debates lies not so much in the 
 inherent importance of the subject as in the illustration it 
 afibrds of the Assembly's mode of work. The same keen sense 
 of the necessity for radical reform, and the same courage in 
 proposing wide and comprehensive schemes, which appear in 
 the general development of the constitution, are clearly visible, 
 and also the same adherence to theories, which ruined any 
 chance of the existence of the general constitution, appears in 
 the civil constitution of the clergy. Yet it was in itself a 
 grand attempt to form a genuine national Church for France. 
 The Assembly had to deal with many great abuses. It care- 
 fully avoided interference with dogma, and deserves credit for 
 wide and comprehensive tolerance. During these debates 
 many deputies for the first time made their mark, and many 
 others maintained the high distinction they had worn As the 
 foremost framers of the civil constitution of the clergy, may be 
 mentioned Camus, Talleyrand, and Grdgoire — a strange trio ; 
 the first a violent Jansenist, whose opportunity had at last 
 come, and possessing all the earnestness of a fanatic; the 
 second the most dissolute of dissolute prelates, who hoped only 
 for personal advancement, and saw in the new constitution a 
 means to rid himself of the hated clerical garb ; while the 
 third, from his modesty and learning, as well as from his 
 oratorical powers and noble uprightness and purity of life, 
 was one of the shining lights of the whole history of the 
 Revolution. If Henri Grdgoire could only be taken as a type 
 of the men who made the civil constitution of the clergy, no 
 greater benefit could ever have been bestowed in France than 
 its promulgation, and no greater damage could ever have been 
 done to the cause of pure religion than its overthrow by 
 Napoleon. Unfortunately, Grdgoire had but few equals. Most 
 of the new bishops and cures were ambitious men, who obtained 
 
X.J Leaders of Clerical Opposition. 305 
 
 their election by flattering the electors, and who used their 
 office to overthrow the religion of which they were the 
 ministers, and many of whom, like Gobel, not only denied 
 their religion, but professed atheism, and indulged in the worst 
 excesses of the worship of the goddess of reason. In contra- 
 distinction to these unworthy bishops could be distinguished 
 many of a higher character, such as the learned theologian 
 Claude le Coz, Bishop of Rennes, and Jean Louis Jacob, 
 the ignorant Bishop of St. Brieuc, who was beloved by his 
 flock, and died of a fever caught in visiting the sick in the 
 hospital. 
 
 Besides the regular leaders of the Assembly, certain deputies 
 made themselves very conspicuous during the debates on the 
 Church. The two archbishops who led the clergy in their 
 opposition to the establishment of the civil constitution, and 
 who afterwards refused to take the oath, were the aged 
 Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, celebrated throughout France 
 and loved throughout Normandy for his charity and muni- 
 ficence, and the Archbishop of Aix,i who was an unwearied 
 speaker on clerical subjects, though by no means possessing the 
 character of the Archbishop of Rouen. He had on August 4 
 boldly attacked the feudal privileges, but when the idea of 
 seizing the Church property was mooted, he came to the 
 front and led the clerical opposition. He was the unwearied 
 opponent of every reform, and he it was who drew up the 
 " Exposition des Principes de la Constitution civile du Clerg4" 
 which most clearly expressed the reasons of the orthodox 
 clergy for their repugnance to the new scheme. The two 
 archbishops were able to command a considerable number of 
 votes on Church questions, for although the majority of the 
 curds had refused to obey them in June, 1789, when the 
 subject of vote " par tete " was debated, they sympathized in 
 the opposition to the new civil constitution. More than two 
 hundred and fifty out of the three hundred deputies of the 
 clergy had protested against the rejection of Dom Gerle's 
 motion, and quite the same proportion refused to take the 
 1 See chap. vii. p. 206. 
 VOL. I. X 
 
3o6 Dom Gerle. [chap. 
 
 oath, among whom were men no less pure in life and upright 
 in character than Grdgoire. 
 
 It fell to the lot of a monk to propose that the Catholic 
 religion was to be for ever the religion of France. Antoine 
 Gerle was born at Riom, in Auvergne, in 1736, and was thus 
 a compatriot of Lafayette and Malonet. In early life he entered 
 the convent of the Chartreuse of Porte St. Marie, and became 
 in 1775 the prior of the monastery. He was sent by his order' 
 to the electoral assembly of the clergy of Auvergne at Riom, 
 and elected, on March 27, deputy suppliant to the States- 
 General. He was, therefore, not present at the Oath of the 
 Tennis Court, though David inserts his portrait in his great 
 picture. He did not join the Assembly till December 11, on 
 the resignation of a cur^, the Abbd de la Bastide. He spoke the 
 very next day on the uncertainty in which the monks were left 
 because of the decree of November 2, and he spoke with such 
 success that he was at once elected a member of the ecclesi- 
 astical committee. The poor monk who had been mewed up 
 in a monastery for nearly forty years quite lost his head in 
 the turmoil of Paris, and, half-mad with excitement, became 
 one of the leading orators of the Jacobin Club. On April 12 
 he moved his famous motion on the Catholic religion ; but, on 
 being upbraided by the Jacobins, withdrew it on the following 
 day. The excitement his motion caused drove him yet more 
 mad, and he became acquainted with Suzanne Labrousse, a half- 
 mad countrywoman, who declared that she could foresee the 
 future. He occupied the latter months of 1790 in supporting 
 her extraordinary visions, and even quoted her in the Assembly. 
 Dom Gerle took the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, 
 and was at once declared an apostate by the general of the 
 Carthusian order. He was appointed Grand- Vicar of Meaux, 
 but refused the office and remained in Paris. In the course of 
 1791 he quietly gave away to the poor all the property of his 
 monastery, and when the Constituent Assembly was dissolved 
 he was afraid to return to Auvergne for fear of being prose- 
 cuted, and lived in Paris on a pension of nine hundred francs. 
 He was an elector of Paris in 1792, and then became acquainted 
 
X.] The Abbd de Montesquiou. 307 
 
 with Catherine Thdofc. This mad -woman declared herself the 
 mother of God, and said that Dom Gerle was her prophet. He 
 used to initiate the votaries of Catherine Th^ot with extra- 
 ordinary ceremonies, and was arrested in 1794! as a conspirator. 
 After the 9th Thermidor he remained in prison, and was not 
 released until 1795, when Catherine Thdot had died in prison. 
 Dom Gerle then lived very obscurely in Paris, occupied with 
 some secret business, probably as a spy, under the Minister of 
 the Interior, and died there about the year 1805. Though a 
 half-mad enthusiast, he had occasional bursts of eloquence, 
 which made him popular at the Jacobin Club. 
 
 Two other clerical members of the ecclesiastical committee 
 deserve some notice. The Abb^ Gouttes was a priest after the 
 manner of Gr^goire, and had but one sincere desire, which was 
 to reorganize the Church to its primitive character. Jean 
 Louis Gouttes was born at Tulle, in 1740, and had served for 
 many years in the dragoons before he took orders, and was 
 then appointed cur^ of Argilliers, in Languedoc. He was 
 elected to the States-General by the clergy of Beziers, and 
 at once joined the left and followed the lead of Gr^goire. 
 From his career he could not be called a learned priest, but his 
 earnestness and frankness gave him great weight as a speaker, 
 and in 1791 he was elected Bishop of Autun, in the place of 
 Talleyrand. He did not long maintain his place, for he 
 violently opposed the Republic, and was guillotined in Paris 
 on March 26, 1794. 
 
 The Abb^ de Montesquiou was a priest after the manner of 
 Talleyrand. He was born at Auch, in 1757, of the noble family 
 of the Dues de Montesquiou-F^zensac, and became the agent- 
 general of the clergy in succession to Talleyrand, in 1785. He 
 was elected deputy for the clergy of Paris in 1789, and was 
 one of the most energetic members of the ecclesiastical com- 
 mittee. He was president of the Assembly in January, 1790, 
 and discharged his duties well. He defended the religious 
 orders in February, but moved the final alienation of the 
 goods of the Church in August, 1790. In November, 1790 
 he was made to speak against the oath, but would most 
 
3o8 The Due de la, Rochefoucauld- Liancouri. [chap. 
 
 ■willingly have taken it. In the ecclesiastical committee he 
 tried to manage matters so that while the Church seemed to 
 be disunited it might really attain great power; and Mirabeau, 
 seeing his intention, remarked of him with truth, " Distrust 
 that little serpent, or he will certainly seduce you." 
 
 The Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt was the type of a 
 grand seigneur; but while personally a sincere Catholic, he 
 desired entire toleration of all religions throughout France, 
 and for that purpose had moved his famous motion in April. 
 Be was born in 1749, and served in the Carbineers. In 1768 he 
 first visited England, and shortly afterwards became assistant to 
 his father as Master of the Wardrobe. In 1770 he was dis- 
 graced by Louis XV. for adhering to the Due de Choiseul, and 
 ordered to retire to his estate at Liancourt. This estate he tried 
 to manage after the fashion of the English noblemen whom he 
 had known in England. He improved agriculture in every way; 
 he established schools of design, and finding that the invention 
 of the spinning-jenny had thrown many people out of work, 
 he set up a large manufactory at Liancourt. He was decidedly 
 a liberal in opinion of the English type, and was a particularly 
 intimate friend of Turgot. Louis XVI. liked him and trusted 
 him, and when, in 1789, he was elected deputy for the noblesse 
 of Clermont, he took a leading position in the Estate of the 
 noblesse. He was elected the third president of the National 
 Assembly after Bailly and the Archbishop of Vienna, as a 
 testimony of the great respect in which he was held. In 
 1791 he was Governor- General of Normandy, and earnestly 
 supported Mirabeau's plan that the king should leave Paris 
 and establish himself at Rouen. In 1792 he was mai'ked 
 out for arrest with his cousin, the Due de la Rochefoucauld, 
 but escaped to England, and spent some years at Bury St. 
 Edmund's, near his old friend, Arthur Young. It was now 
 that he met the reward of his great charity and munificence ; 
 for two friends of his, Lazouski and Charles Lacretelle, who 
 had joined the republicans, saved what of his property they 
 could and sent it to him in England. Further than that, 
 the department claimed from the Convention the estate of 
 
X.J The Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. 309 
 
 Liancourt and the school which the duke had established as 
 public property, urging that they would be most useful to the 
 State. He had become Due de la Rochefoucauld, in Auo-ust 
 1792, and on receiving the money from Lazouski travelled in 
 America. In 1799 he returned to France, and his old depart- 
 ment with joy returned to him his great estate of Liancourt 
 untouched and indeed improved. He refused to recognize 
 Napoleon, or to mix any more in politics ; but the emperor 
 insisted on giving him the Legion of Honour for his great 
 services as a manufacturer, and for introducing vaccination 
 into France. On the return of the Bourbons, Louis XVIII. 
 did all he could to induce him to take office, but the duke 
 lived happily on his country estate, and, unlike mest of the 
 nobUity, cared more for the love of his neighbours than the 
 favour of the king. He died in 1827, and although his body 
 was insulted by the police, under the direction of the govern- 
 ment of Charles X., thousands of his poor retainers followed their 
 benefactor to the grave.^ He was a fine type of the liberal 
 grand seigneur, and had immense weight in the early days of 
 the Revolution from his well-known personal intimacy with 
 the king, and his high principles. He did not interfere much 
 in political questions, but confined himself rather to doing 
 what good he could to assuage the poverty and famine among 
 the people. Had more of the nobility of France been like 
 the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, not only would the 
 noblesse have kept their estates untouched and their property 
 unhurt, but the Church of France might have been widened by 
 the introduction of liberal ideas ; and a civil constitution of the 
 clergy, supported by such bishops as Gregoire and Le Coz, and 
 by such laymen as the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, 
 might have survived the terrible crisis into which it was to 
 be plunged by the ill-considered measures of the National 
 Assembly. 
 
 1 Vie, du Dug die la Eoche/oucauld-Liancov/rt, by the Marquis de la 
 Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. Faiis : 1827. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MIEABEAU AND THE COUET. 
 
 Weakness of the court — The Comte de Mercy-Argenteau — The Comte 
 de la Marck — Negotiations between Mirabeau and the court — 
 Mirabeau's letters to the king and to Lafayette — His opinion of La- 
 fayette — Debts paid by the king — The affair of Nootka Sound — The 
 debate on the right of declaring peace and war — Interview at St. 
 Cloud — Mirabeau's knowledge of foreign politics — The foreign policy 
 of the Assembly — Mirabeau and Montmorin — Mirabeau reporter of 
 the diplomatic committee — Danger of anarchy — The four enemies 
 approaching — Mirabeau's thirtieth note for the court — Extravagance 
 — New assistants — Health gives way — Return of Orleans — The 
 riot at the H6tel de Castries — -The new ministry — Mirabeau's new 
 partisans — The fete of the Federation — Mirabeau's great plan — 
 Could it have succeeded ? 
 
 The first months of the year 1790 had been passed by the As- 
 sembly in developing its new constitution and in preparing the 
 great measure of the civil constitution of the clergy. It had also 
 interfered in many points with the administration, and had 
 made clearly manifest the intention of the majority of the 
 deputies to reduce the king to be merely the first servant of 
 the nation. It might have been perfectly possible to have 
 proved to the people of France how unpractical and utterly 
 devoid of vitality was the work of the National Assembly; 
 but, instead of doing this, the court and the ministry alike 
 occupied their time in personal squabbles. The queen spent 
 her money in hiring libellous hack-writers to attack the 
 leading members of the left ; and the ministers, with Necker 
 at their head, tried to temporize in order to stand well with 
 
CHAP, XI.] The Comte de Mercy. 311 
 
 all parties. Such policy, or rather such want o£ policy, was 
 steadily leading the court to a position of utter impotence, 
 which encouraged those radicals in the Assembly and in Paris 
 who were now beginning to dream of a French republic. 
 Marie Antoinette had at least one able adviser by her side — 
 the Comte de Mercy- Argenteau, who had been ambassador at 
 Paris since the year 1766, and had arranged the marriage of 
 the queen, and who had been practically her guardian through- 
 out her residence in France. He had seen her, both when 
 dauphine and queen, every day for man}'^ a long year, and had 
 reported her daily conduct and mode of life to her imperial 
 mother. Naturally it was to the Comte de Mercy- Argenteau 
 that the queen appealed, when she found her own influence 
 inadequate to check the progress of the Revolution. 
 
 Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy- Argenteau* was born 
 in 1722 at Lifege, and had succeeded to the great Mercy estates 
 in Hungary and Lorraine on the death of his father, who had 
 been chosen heir to the last Field-Marshal de Mercy, the de- 
 scendant of the great general of the Thirty Years' War in 
 1723. He had been appointed ambassador at Turin in 1757, 
 and had been naturalized a Frenchman for his Lorraine pro- 
 perty. He had been appointed Austrian ambassador at Paris 
 in 1766. He there formed an important link in the pohcy of 
 Maria Theresa and her minister, the Prince von Kaunitz, 
 whose lifelong wish was to humble Frederick of Prussia by 
 forming a cloSe alliance with France. The Due de Choiseul, 
 who was chief minister of France, entered thoroughly into 
 the policy of the empress-queen, and to the Pacte de Famille, 
 which united the courts of France and Spain, he desired to 
 add a close union with the house of Austria. Mercy- Argen- 
 teau and Choiseul arranged the marriage of the Archduchess 
 Marie Antoinette with the dauphin, and when the princess left 
 Vienna, Maria Theresa requested him to direct her daughter's 
 conduct, and ordered her to obey him in every respect as hei 
 most confidential friend. The daily reports of the ambassadoi 
 
 1 CorrespoJidance entre Miraheau et La March, vol. i. pp. 198-205. 
 
312 The Comte de Mercy. [chap. 
 
 to the empress ^ show how minutely he supervised everything 
 connected with the household of Marie Antoinette ; and when 
 she became queen of France his influence proportionately 
 increased with hers. But he was a very wise counsellor, and 
 while pointing out to the queen how she could best assist the 
 policy of Austria, he gave her the best advice as to how to 
 win the hearts of the people of France. Her frivolity and 
 extravagance astounded him, and he did all in his power by 
 frank remonstrance to check it. His advice was not always 
 followed by the headstrong queen, but in every situation of 
 difficulty she applied to him. He had earnestly advised her, 
 whatever else she did, to be sincere in her politics, for he de- 
 clared that plots would only bring discredit on her fame ; and 
 he tried as much as possible to identify himself with France 
 by selling his large Hungarian estates, and purchasing property 
 in San Domingo. Such was the character and such had been 
 the career of the statesman to whom Marie Antoinette applied 
 in her great distress. His long residence at Paris had made 
 him thoroughly acquainted with all French statesmen, and 
 had given him an insight into French character. He per- 
 ceived, as clearly as Mirabeau himself, that the only way for 
 the French monarchy to continue to exist was for it to obtain 
 authority over the Assembly by making a close alliance with 
 the leaders of the Assembly, and he also perceived that Mira- 
 beau was the one man best fitted for this post. He therefore 
 earnestly begged the queen to open a communication with 
 Mirabeau, to trust him wholly, to attach him to herself by 
 uniting his interests to hers, and to give him carte blanche to 
 direct the Assembly towards limited monarchy. He knew, 
 what Marie Antoinette never could understand, that absolute 
 monarchy in France was over, and, that nothing could ever 
 bring back the old feudal ide,as. His desire was to establish 
 a strong ministry with Mirabeau at its head. He therefore 
 begged the queen to open communications with Mirabeau, and 
 
 1 Corrupondanx.e de Marie Antoinette avec Marie TUrese, accompagnde 
 des rapports secrets du Comte de Mercy, publide par M. d'Arneth et M. 
 Geffi-oy. 3 vols. J 874. 
 
XI.] The Comte de la Marck. 313 
 
 that La Marck should be asked to act as intermediary. The 
 queen consented, and Mercy wrote to La Marck in the middle 
 of March, inviting him to come at once to Paris. 
 
 Auguste Marie Raymond, Prince d'Aremberg and Comte 
 de la Marck,^ came of an old Flemish family which had long 
 been distinguished in the service of Austria. His father, 
 though a prince of the empire, had served as field-marshal in 
 the Austrian army during the Seven Years' "War, and had 
 won great distinction under Marshal Daun. His mother was 
 the daughter of the last Comte de la Marck, the direct lineal 
 descendant of the " Wild Boar of the Ardennes." Prince 
 Auguste was the second son, and had at an early age served in 
 the Austrian army in Belgium, and had a good opportunity of 
 studying Marshal Lacy's new organization, which was modelled 
 on that of Frederick the Great. In 1768 he was adopted by 
 his maternal grandfather, the last Comte de la Marck, and 
 in 1770 went to France to commence his service in the 
 proprietary regiment which his grandfather owned in the 
 French service. He had been particularly recommended to 
 the young dauphine by Maria Theresa, and was cordially 
 received by her as a son of one of her mother's = favourite 
 generals. He did not remain long with his regiment, and 
 succeeded his grandfather in 1775. He then went to court, 
 where he became the intimate friend of the Vicomte de NoaiUes 
 and other brilliant young courtiers. He commanded his regi- 
 ment in India under the Comte de Bussy, and on his return 
 became inspector-general of infantry, and assisted in the reor- 
 ganization of the French army, which had been initiated by the 
 Comte de Saint-Germain and carried out under his immediate 
 superintendence. He married Mademoiselle de Cernay, a great 
 heiress in French Flanders, and had been elected in 1789 by 
 the noblesse of Quesncy to the States-General. He had been 
 introduced to Mirabeau in the year 1788, by S^nac de Meilhan, 
 at the house of the Prince de Poix, and had become very 
 intimate with him. He had determined to use this intimacy to 
 serve the queen, and had, in September, 1789, promised to allow 
 * Correspnndance enire Mirabeau et La March, vol. i. pp. 31-24. 
 
314 Mirabeau and the Court. [chap. 
 
 Mirabeau fifty louis a month to assist him in his great pecu- 
 niary need. It was through him that Mirabeau had been asked 
 to draw up a memoir for the court in October, 1789, which he 
 presented to Monsieur, the Comte de Provence. He had then 
 taken a great part in the conferences which took place at the 
 end of October, when the idea of a ministry containing Necker, 
 Lafayette, and Mirabeau was talked of; but after the fatal 
 decree of November 7 had been passed, Mirabeau became 
 greatly discouraged, and La Marck left Paris for Belgium. 
 There he remained until he received the important letter of 
 the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau demanding his presence at 
 Paris. 
 
 La Marck arrived on March 16, and at once had a long 
 interview with the ambassador ; but he refused to make any 
 overtures to Mirabeau, or in any way interfere in the matter, 
 unless Mercy himself agreed to give Mirabeau an interview, 
 and asserted that the orator had been greatly disgusted by the 
 manner in which he had been treated in the previous October. 
 The ambassador showed great reluctance to meeting Mirabeau, 
 and thus surrendering his duty as ambassador to interfere in 
 French politics ; but after a fortnight's delay he agreed to meet 
 Mirabeau, and had a secret interview with him, in the begin- 
 ning of April, in La Marck's house.^ La Marck next had an 
 interview ^ with the king and queen, in the apartment of the 
 first bedchamber-woman, Madame Thibaut, when their majes- 
 ties declared that they would be very glad to receive advice 
 from Mirabeau, but declared also that they would only com- 
 municate with him secretly. La Marck felt that this restric- 
 tion would almost destroy any chance of Mirabeau 's doing any 
 good, for it clearly showed the distrust the queen felt of the 
 tribune, and that she felt towards him the same antipathy 
 which she had expressed in the previous year. She refused 
 even to listen to his advice until La Marck assured her that 
 Mirabeau had dined with him on October 5, and that he 
 would swear himself that Mirabeau had nothing to do with 
 the events of October 5 and 6. After this assertion the queen 
 1 CorresTpondance, vol. i. p. 102. ^ Ihid., p. 103. 
 
XI.] Mirabeaus Letters to the King and Lafayette. 315 
 
 begged La Marck to ask Mirabeau to advise the court as to 
 their future conduct. Mirabeau expressed to La Marck his joy 
 at being at last of some service to the cause of order, for he 
 perceived that in the present state of affairs matters vp^ere 
 going from bad to worse, and, in his oft-repeated expression, 
 " if something was not done at once, the people would trample 
 on the corpses of the king and queen." ^ 
 
 Mirabeau thereupon wrote to the king, on May 10, 1790, a 
 letter,^ in which he declares that the re-establishment of the 
 legitimate authority of the king was the first need of France, 
 arid' the" only means of saving her. "He saw clearly that 
 anarchy was approaching with rapid steps, and that the only 
 means to check . it was to give the king real power to exe- 
 cute the law. He continued, " I must have two months to 
 coUect, or rather to make, means of action, to prepare men's 
 spirits, and bring back to reason all prudent citizens. I will 
 maintain in every department an influential system of corre- 
 spondence, and will report the results to the king. My move- 
 ments will be unperceived, but I shall every day make one 
 step forward. A quack promises an immediate cure and kills ; 
 but a real physician observes, and acts systematically, doses, 
 measures, and sometimes cures." He had before this made 
 one more attempt to form a coalition with Lafayette, who was 
 still incomparably the most powerful man in France. He felt 
 that Lafayette had treated Euii very badly in the negotiations 
 of the previous October, but hoped that he might now think 
 differently, and be willing to join him. He wrote to him on 
 April 28,^ that he had only been separated from him because 
 Lafayette's political friends were worthy of neither of them ; 
 but he continued, " These motives of separation exist no longer ; 
 the Barnaves, Duports, and Lameths fatigue you no longer by 
 their active inaction. Monkey-like, it is possible to simulate 
 cunning, but not strength. Great things can be done with 
 machines, and even the noise of thunder can be imitated, but 
 thunder cannot be made. . , . The real perils which menace 
 the State are the long struggle with anarchy, the want of 
 1 Vorrespondance, vol. i. p. 81. ^ Ibid., p. 318. * Ibid., p. 312. 
 
3i6 Mtrabeau's Appeal to Lafayette. [chap. 
 
 respect for the law, all the blows which might dismember the 
 empire, aU the differences of public opinion, the quarrels of 
 the new administrative bodies, and, above all, the judgment 
 which this kingdom and Europe will pass upon the edifice 
 of that constitution, from which the scafiblding, that does not 
 yet permit us to see the whole, wUl soon disappear. . . . 
 Nobody knows better than I do the elements of fear and 
 hope which attract to you the most moderate people of 
 France." 
 
 The communication with the court once opened, La Marck 
 felt it necessary that the union should be made firm, and, 
 at the suggestion of the Comte de Mercy, agreed to ask 
 Mirabeau what terms he would desire. Mirabeau declared 
 that he would be quite happy if his debts could be paid, and 
 if he could himself receive an income of one hundred louip 
 a month. The queen agreed, and a schedule, of Mirabeau . 
 debts was sent to her. They amounted in all only to 208,000 
 livres — a sum by no means excessive, when it is considered 
 that his father's property afforded an income of 50,000 livres 
 a year. The schedule included many curious items, especially 
 a debt for Mirabeau's wedding suit, which had never been paid 
 for. The orator threw himself with his wonted enthusiasm 
 into the cause, believing that he had at last a chance to do 
 something. He continued to appeal to Lafayette to treat him 
 openly as his ally. " Oh ! M. de Lafayette," he exclaimed, in 
 his letter of June 1,^ " Richelieu was Richelieu against the 
 nation and for the court, and though Richelieu did much harm 
 to the public liberty, he did great good to the monarchy. Be 
 Richelieu for the nation on behalf of the court. You will 
 restore the monarchy by consolidating public liberty. But 
 Richelieu had his Capucin friar, Joseph. Do you, too, have 
 your gi-ay cardinal, or you will lose yourself and not save us. 
 Your great qualities need my directing energy, and my direct- 
 ing energy needs your great qualities. You believe in little 
 men who, for little considerations, by little manoeuvres, and 
 with little views, wish to make us useless to each other." On 
 * Corrcspondance, vol. i. p. 324. 
 
XI.] Mirabeatis Debts paid. 317 
 
 the same day, June 1, he sent to the court a long memoir,^ in 
 which he declared that he had " always been the defender of 
 the monarchical power, regulated by the law, and the apostle 
 of liberty guaranteed by the monarchical power. It has been 
 said of the divinity," he remarks, " that to work is to pray 
 to it ; it should be said of kings that to serve them is to 
 recognize their benefits." He continued to discuss the power 
 and character of Lafayette,^ "whose policy," he said, "will 
 always be to fear and flatter the people, to partake its errors 
 from hypocrisy and self-interest; to support, whether right 
 or wrong, the most numerous party; to terrify the court by 
 popular riots which he himself had planned, or had inspired 
 the fear of, in order to render himself necessary ; to prefer the 
 public opinion of Paris to that of the rest of the kingdom, 
 because his strength does not come from the provinces. The 
 man," he continued, "though no demagogue, will always be 
 dangerous to the royal power so long as the public opinion of 
 Paris, of which he can be but the instrument, continues to 
 be a law to him." 
 
 Mirabeau had given such proofs of h[ s_desire_to_assist_tlie 
 court by his attempt to ally himself with Lafayette, thoughjie 
 well understdddTEe "vuiuTand weaE character _of J;he inan^ and 
 shown so much political wisdom in his nqtes^ that the g^ueen, 
 although she did not . for . ona .moment intend to. .trust . him, 
 readily agreed to th§ Oomte de Mercy's proposition, that Miffl- 
 beau's debts should be paid^ and_a monthly income allowed 
 him. She pressed La Marck to under?aEe"this task ; but he 
 said that the necessary visits to the court would be so frequent 
 that suspicion would fall upon Mirabeau ; and Mgr. de Fon- 
 tanges. Archbishop of Toulouse and Almoner to the queen, was 
 let into the secret^ and given the important commission. Mgr. 
 de Fontanges wag a good specimen of the French ecclesiastic ; 
 though not so witty as Talleyrand, so dissolute as Dillon, so 
 able as De Cice, or so intriguing as De Boisgelin, he was the 
 one archbishop whose character stood fairly hi^^h both with 
 the queen and with the people. He had obtained his rapid 
 1 Correspondance, vol. L pp. 326-330. ^ Ibid., p. 328. 
 
3 1 8 The Affair of Nootka Sound. [chap. 
 
 promotion by being the great-nephew of the famous Cardina 
 de Bernis, minister of Madame de Pompadour, and somewhat 
 resembled him in character. He not only accomplished the 
 payment of Mirabeau's debts skilfully, but handed him four 
 promissory notes for 250,000 livres each, signed by the king, 
 which were to be cashed on the termination of the Constituent 
 Assembly, if Mirabeau had fulfilled his promises. 
 
 In these very months of May and June Mirabeau dis- 
 tinguished himself in the Assembly in the great debate upon 
 the light~of~declaring peace ~anrwar~" He wouTT^rtainly 
 have "takenTlTe" vTew he did whether he had been in com- 
 munication with the court or not, for it was in strict con- 
 sonance with his character, and especially with his conduct 
 with regard to the veto. The question arose out of a dispute 
 between England and Spain on the subject of Nootka Sound. 
 Throughout the eighteenth century, Spain had perpetually been 
 attempting to prove that she was a great power by interfering 
 with England in America ; but it always ended in her backing 
 out of the matter, to the great credit of English statesmen. 
 On this occasion the Spaniards had claimed the English 
 settlement of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island, off the 
 west coast of North America, on the ground of precolonization, 
 and had roughly treated some of the English colonists, and the 
 captain of an English ship of war. Pitt, who was a great 
 believer in threats, made a great noise as to what he should 
 do, and ordered a large fleet to be prepared, which is known 
 in English naval history as the Spanish Armament. The 
 court of Spain blustered loudly, and appealed to the court of 
 France for assistance under the terms of the Pacte de Famille 
 which had been concluded by Choiseul. By the Pacte de 
 Famille, France and Spain were bound to assist each other in 
 every foreign complication whatever, and the king of France 
 felt himself morally bound to comply with the demand of 
 Spain. Naturally the Pacte de Famille was violently attacked 
 in the Assembly, and Mirabeau pointed out to the king ^ 
 how he could escape from the difficult position in which he 
 * Cm-respondance, vol. i. pp. 338-345. 
 
XI. J The Right of Declaring Peace and War. 319 
 
 was placed. He declared that on all grounds the Facte de 
 FamiUe should be dissolved, since it must necessarily often 
 involve France in unjust wars brought about by Spain alone 
 for Spanish interests, and he recommended that an ordinary 
 treaty of alliance should be concluded instead. By this 
 expedient he believed the Spanish difficulty could be got 
 over, for Spain in her present position must consent to 
 whatever the king of France requested, and he himself knew 
 enough of Spanish policy to know that the probability of war 
 with England was very slight. On this understanding, after 
 an extremely diplomatic speech by Mirabeau, in which he 
 managed to offend neither Spain nor England, the vote for the 
 completion of sixteen new ships was carried. 
 
 The debates on the question of the Nootka Sound dispute 
 brought on a yet more important debate on the subject of 
 the right of declaring peace and war. This right, Mirabeau 
 declared, must necessarily belong to the king, as head of 
 the executive. It was impossible for an Assembly, or even 
 for a committee of an Assembly, to carry on secret negotiations, 
 and follow from hour to hour the rapid changes of diplomacy, 
 and he pointed out that the favourable moment for making 
 peace or war must often be lost when a large number of 
 individuals had to be consulted, and very often long debates 
 to be listened to. The wisdom of his remarks was obvious, 
 but the radical majority of the Assembly entirely failed to 
 perceive their importance. The Lameths, and stUl more 
 Eobespierre, thought that if the king had the right of declaring 
 peace and war, France would often be plunged into wars for 
 merely dynastic purposes, and that the wealth of the kingdom 
 would be squandered in projects which did not concern the 
 nation. Mirabeau was too thorough a statesman to insist 
 rigidly on every detail of his plan, but he managed to carry 
 the essential part of his proposition, namely, that the king 
 should have the power of initiative, both in peace and war, 
 while the Assembly should have the right of ratifying or not 
 the royal initiative. He knew that public opinion would 
 seldom allow a war, when once entered upon, to be suddenly 
 
320 Interview at Saint Cloud. [chap. 
 
 stopped, or that a peace should not be ratified unless it 
 were obviously and flagrantly imprudent. On this question, 
 therefore, the French Assembly received very much the same 
 power as the English Parliament, which, while it can censure 
 ministers for their conduct of foreign affairs, cannot of itself 
 direct the course of diplomacy or of war. Mirabeau, by his 
 conduct in this important debate, had well proved again his 
 title to the rank of a great statesman. He had shown the 
 value of his assistance to the court, and had earned the hatred 
 of the extreme radicals and of the populace of Paris, who 
 even planned attempts upon his life and his popularity. Even 
 while he was speaking upon the subject, the cry of the news- 
 boys was heard without, "For sale, a new pamphlet, en- 
 titled ' The Great Treason of the Gomte de Mirabeau.' " 
 
 His conduct earned him on this occasion the thanks of the 
 queen, who consented to have an interview with him, on July 3, 
 at Saint Cloud.^ To Saint Cloud the court had retired for 
 a short period, and Mirabeau had also left Paris to stay with 
 his niece, Madame d'Aragqn, at Auteuil. After a long secret 
 interview, of which the radicals got some hint, but which they 
 could not prove, had taken place, Mirabeau was greatly im- 
 pressed by the manly attitude of the queen. " Nothing shall 
 stop me," he said afterwards to La Marck ; " I will die sooner 
 than not fulfil my promises." But the^ queen unfortunately 
 was not equally impressed by iSirabeau; she declared 'that 
 the very sight of ^him^ had filled her witF horror, though^she 
 now believed him devoted to the cause of the monarchy, and 
 that she had even suffered a slight indisposition as the result 
 of the interview with the man whom she persisted in assopmt-^ 
 ing with the events of October 5 and 6. 
 
 Mirabeau's complete mastery of foreign politics had appeared 
 during the discussions of the difficult Nootka Sound question, 
 and he soon proceeded to take the entire management of the 
 foreign policy of France, which he regulated until his death 
 in the following year. He had studied foreign politics more 
 thoroughly than any living Frenchman. From his sojourn 
 • Correspondanee, vol. i. p. 134. 
 
XI.] ' The Assembly's Foreign Policy. 321 
 
 at the court of Berlin, and keen observation in his early days, 
 he had completely mastered German politics, and knew exactly 
 what was necessary to prevent Germany from interfering in 
 the internal affairs of France. His stay in England and his 
 many English friends made him equally a master of English 
 politics. At the same time, he was the only man who under- 
 stood how peculiarly dangerous was the extraordinary dis- 
 regard of the ordinary processes of diplomacy which was 
 sanctioned by the Assembly, and how it had damaged France 
 in the eyes of foreign countries. He knew that the one thing 
 necessary for the Revolution to come to a quiet and peaceful 
 termination was that it should develop without interference 
 from foreign nations. He knew also that the German princes 
 were watching affairs in France with the keenest interest, for 
 they feared that the example of the French people would be 
 infectious, and that they would have trouble at home. In fact, 
 all that the German states required at this early period was 
 a pretext for interfering, and that they should not have that 
 pretext was the great desire of Mirabeau and all thiaking 
 men in France. 
 
 The high-handed disregard of foreign treaties and foreign 
 nationalities, shown by the Constituent Assembly with refer- 
 ence to Avignon and the German princes whose estates lay 
 in Alsace and Lorraine, made it probable that a sufficient 
 pretext would be given for German interference. Avignon 
 had nearly been declared united to France without the consent 
 of its ruler, the pope, though innumerable treaties had recog- 
 nized his sovereignty. Robespierre and other deputies of the 
 extreme left said that the people of Avignon spoke French, 
 and therefore ought to become French citizens, whether the 
 pope objected or not. The rights of the princes of the empire 
 in Lorraine and Alsace had been recognized also by numerous 
 treaties, and even the most extreme members of the Assemblj' 
 acknowledged that these rights could not be taken away 
 without due compensation. It was very doubtful whether 
 the princes of the empire would accept any compensation at 
 all, and it was a curious and difficult question of international 
 VOL. I. Y 
 
322 Mirabeau and Montmorin. [chap. 
 
 law whetlier they could be made to surrender their rights^ 
 even on receiving a good compensation. But the Assembly, 
 with its ideas about the rights of man, ignored the difficulty 
 and settled the matter its own way. A fortunate combination 
 of circumstances at this time gave Mirabeau the opportunity 
 to take the whole management of foreign affairs into his 
 own hands, and thus kept France from suffering at once for 
 the headstrong policy of the majority of the Constituent 
 Assembly. 
 
 The Comte de Montmorin Saint Herem,'' the Minister for 
 Foreign Affairs, was quite incapable of managing his depart- 
 ment eiSciently in a time of ciisis, and was not sorry to have 
 such an adviser as Mirabeau to help him. He had had a good 
 deal to do with the great statesman before the meeting of the 
 States-General, and had not been favourably impressed with 
 his character. It was to him as Foreign Minister that Mira- 
 beau had sold one manuscript of his " Secret History of the 
 Court of Berlin," on condition, according to Malouet,^ that he 
 should not become a candidate for the States-General, and the 
 minister was naturally chagrined that Mirabeau had not only 
 secured his election, but also allowed Lejay to publish the book 
 from another manuscript. He had been exceedingly wrath at 
 this breach of faith, and had, in 1789, proposed to ship Mira- 
 beau off to India to get him out of the way. His position as 
 Necker's chief supporter in May and June, 1789, has already 
 been noticed; he was dismissed from office, with Necker, 
 on July 12, and returned with him after the taking of the 
 Bastille. But even Montmorin, though no great politician, had 
 perceived the weakness of Necker, and had, by the end of 1789, 
 ceased to believe in him as thoroughly as before. It was not 
 so much vacillation of principle as a desire to be ever on the 
 side of the strongest which made Montmorin incline to the 
 society of the chief members of the left. He hated to oppose 
 anything, and conferred with Barnave' and his friends rather 
 in order that he should not be perpetually reprimanded and 
 
 1 See chap. iii. pp. 79, 80. 
 
 2 Malouet's Memoires and Correspondance, vol. i. pp. 238-242. 
 
XI.] Mirabeau and the Diplomatic Committee. J23 
 
 harassed in the Assembly, than from any adherence to their 
 principles. He was, in the summer of 1790, allowed to 
 perceive that there was some bond of union between Mirabeau 
 and the court, though he was not completely initiated into 
 the secret alliance until the following September ; but as 
 early as July he perceived that he was expected in every way 
 to listen to Mirabeau's advice. 
 
 In July, 1790, after the affair of Nootka Souud, a diplo- 
 matic committee was elected by the Assembly, primarily to 
 examine all existing treaties between France and foreign 
 powers, and also to communicate and report to the Assembly 
 upon all questions of foreign affairs.^ Mirabeau was elected 
 reporter of this committee, and soon obtained such ascendancy 
 over the other members, that he often wrote his reports with- 
 out submitting them to the sanction of the committee at all. 
 Montmorin's character made him quite willing to transfer the 
 burden of foreign politics to Mirabeau, who thus became in 
 effect a constitutional foreign minister. He directed Mont- 
 morin what to write in his despatches, and what to say to 
 the Assembly when summoned before it, and was able 
 to defend despatches which he had himself inspired, and 
 measures which he had recommended to the Assembly itself 
 Had every department of the State been similarly managed, 
 the difficulty of carrying on the executive government might 
 have been greatly relieved, and every department would thus 
 have had its spokesman in the Assembly. But there was 
 only one Mirabeau, and he had as much as he could do in 
 directing the foreign policy of France in addition to his other 
 labours. 
 
 But notwithstanding the immense amount of time taken 
 up by the management of foreign affairs, Mirabeau never lost 
 sight of the, great evil which was threatening France, namely, 
 the increase of anarchy. This was the point he had so 
 strongly insisted upon, in his first communications with La- 
 fayette, and at the conferences of Poissy in October, 1789, and 
 
 1 Le De2Jartement des Affaires ^tranghres pendant la Bivolution (1T87- 
 1804), by F. Masson, 1877, chap. iii. 
 
J 24 Incapacity of the Ministry. [chap. 
 
 again in his letter of April 18 to Lafayette. He saw very 
 clearly that Lafayette was not doing his best to put down 
 the anarchy which reigned in France, because it was for his 
 own advantage that it should last until he became a veritable 
 mayor of the palace. In a note, dated June 20, 1790,^ Mira- 
 beau explained the position of affairs in one short sentence. 
 He wrote, " The army gives means for brigandage to whoever 
 cares to take up the trade of robbery on a large scale. Mandrin 
 could to-day become king of one and even of many provinces." 
 Mandrin was the greatest robber and brigand France had ever 
 seen in the eighteenth century, and the words of Mirabeau 
 were as true as they were strong. But if Lafayette would 
 not act, neither would the ministry. The ministers were 
 afraid to take any strong measure for fear of being condemned 
 and dismissed by the Assembly, and their sole desire was to 
 remain in office. In the same note Mirabeau speaks of^ "the 
 utter impotence of the ministry which is more cowardly than 
 feeble, more and more swallowed up in its own vanity every 
 day instead of being occupied with urgent business, more and 
 more directed to this one object, of maintaining itself in power 
 a few weeks longer, and of attempting to oppose, not the 
 Revolution, but the revolutionists, instead of trying to render 
 one real service to the king." 
 
 In his sixteenth note for the court, dated AuoTist 13,* 
 Mirabeau begins, " Four enemies are advancing with redoubled 
 speed — taxation, bankruptcy, the army, and the winter. It is 
 necessary to take some decided step. I mean by that, that 
 we must either prepare for events while we wait for them, 
 or else provoke events while we direct them. In two 
 words, civil war is certain and perhaps necessary. Does the 
 court wish to attack or to be attacked ? Can it or will it 
 wish to prevent its breaking out ? " In this memoir Mirabeau 
 shows his appreciation of the difficulties, which were rapidly 
 producing a state of anarchy. As to the great financial ques- 
 tion, he_ had long known the utter incompetency of Necker, 
 and hojyJie was wasting all the great opportunities which the 
 ' Cm-respmdance, vol. i. p. 334. 2 JUii^^ p. 335. 3 /Ji^.^ p_ 334 
 
XI.] Approach of Anarchy. 325 
 
 Assembly threw into his hands. Mirabeau himself had neither 
 leisure nor inclination to undertake the management of the 
 finances of the kingdom in addition to that of its foreign 
 affairs; yet he did his best to hurry on the fall of Necker, 
 and to secure the retirement of at least one incompetent minister, 
 who had entirely lost all the popularity which he had enjoyed 
 in the previous July. The whole question of the economic 
 condition of France must be treated separately to understand 
 the difficulties with which Necker had to contend, and the 
 manner in which financial distress was forcing on a political 
 crisis. With regard to the army, Mirabeau was equally at 
 issue with the whole policy pursued by the Assembly, but 
 perceived that, to strengthen the executive, it was necessary 
 to in some way secure at least a portion of the army for the 
 personal safeguard of the king. The only troops which could 
 be depended upon were the Swiss; and in August, 1790, 
 Mirabeau earnestly begged the court to appoint an inspector- 
 general of the Swiss, a post which was authorized by the 
 National Assembly, and to form them into a distinct corps 
 which could be depended upon to protect the king, and he 
 proposed for the office his friend La Marck.^ This subject 
 he insists upon more and more towards the end of the year, 
 for it formed an integral part of the great plan which wa» 
 slowly forming in his mind, and which he felt it necessarj. 
 that the court should at once adopt. The last great danger 
 which was approaching was the winter, and the winter meant 
 starvation to many of the poorer classes. These great dangers, 
 Mirabeau insisted again and again, could only be avoided by 
 foUowing his advice and complying with his great plan; but 
 the~queen would" not 'aii^ conHTioi"l;rusrKm,,,jjid^ 
 of all e^jis ^]war^^^_hurrying her husband and her- 
 self to^ their doom. Shejyould pnlyJoJlow^Mirabea^s" advice 
 just so'far asjt jj^d^er,_J)ut^ wmdd^iwt^ v^^ irust.him. 
 
 On discovering that, in spite of his great services, his 
 advice was treated in this way, Mirabeau sent to the court, on 
 October 14, 1790, the famous note which is numbered 30 
 1 CorrespondMnce, vol. i. p. 386. 
 
326 The Thirtieth Note for the Cotirt. [chap. 
 
 in his correspondence with La Marck.^ This contained a 
 regular profession of political faith. In it he discusses four 
 questions. Firstly, What ought to be understood by the bases of 
 the constitution? To this he answers, Monarchy, hereditary in 
 the dynasty of the Bourbons ; a legislative assembly, periodi- 
 cally elected and confined to legislative functions ; the unity" 
 of the executive power, which is to be supreme in all matters 
 of administration, execution of the law, and in the direction of 
 the army ; the maintenance of the new divisions of the king- 
 dom ; the power of the legislative assembly to arrange taxation; 
 liberty of the press ; gratuitous justice ; responsibility of minis- 
 ters ; sale of royal and Church lands ; establishment of a civil 
 list ; and the utter abolition of all privileges and of the feudal 
 system. Such he declares to be what he understands by the 
 bases of the constitution. The second question he- asks is, 
 What is meant by the popular party ? The really popular 
 party is that which wishes to maintain the constitution. If 
 the court would only abandon entirely the old magistracy, the 
 noblesse, and the clergy, it will be able to influence the majority 
 of the Assembly, and to acquire the right means to direct it ; 
 and to direct is to govern. He thirdly discusses the question of 
 a ministry. If the new ministry was chosen from among the 
 Jacobins, they would prepare the whole country for a republic ; 
 if from other than the Jacobins, the Jacobins would make 
 government impossible, and the present state of anarchy would 
 be continued. Therefore it would be best if the decree of 
 November 7 could be repealed, and some ministers chosen from 
 the Jacobins and some from another section of the popular 
 party ; for, says Mirabeau, identity of powers is a great means 
 of reconciliation and union. The fourth question is. Who shall 
 be sent amongst the departments to instruct the provinces as 
 to what is going on in Paris ? To this he answers that literary 
 men should be sent, with a salary of one thousand livres a 
 month, to consult all the better class of citizens and to explain 
 to them what mistakes the Assembly had made, and that a 
 great change was necessaiy if a durable constitution was to be 
 \ Corresjpondance, vol. ii. pp. 14-17. 
 
XI.] Mirabeaus Extravagance. 327 
 
 established. Mirabeau had not long sent in this important 
 note, when he discovered that Marie Antoinette was taking 
 the advice of Bergasse a^jvell, as^hiiTosm, and even preferring. 
 B"ergasse~toTiimself. His contempt for this " mesmeric idiot," 
 as"Ee called him, was expressed in a violent letter to La 
 Marck,^ in which he says, " What can be expected from a 
 court which seeks for the remedy of its evils on the tripod 
 of the illuminati." No wonder that Mirabeau was often dis- 
 couraged in the formation of his great plan, and no wonder 
 that, in spite of aU his greatness, the Revolution was bound to 
 make steady progress, and that the queen, with the stubborn 
 obstinacy of a wilful woman, was driving the king directly 
 towards destruction. 
 
 All through the latter months of 1790 Mirabeau's influence 
 with the people and the Assembly somewhat diminished. His 
 communications with the court were suspected though they 
 could not be proved, and he gave the best grounds for their 
 being suspected by breaking out suddenly into luxury with 
 the money he had received. The sudden payment of the 
 debts of such an utterly ruined man would alone have raised 
 suspicions, and they were increased by his taking a splendid 
 mansion and setting up a large establishment. In vain did 
 La Marck beg him to live in his old style, and merely to move 
 to larger apartments. Throughout his life Mirabeau had been 
 so poor and so unable to indulge his taste for spending money, 
 that when he had the opportunity it was too sweet for him to 
 surrender. Yet, after all, the money granted to him by the 
 court was not so very great in extent. It consisted of one 
 hundred louis a month, and three hundred livres for M. de 
 Comps, his copyist, who had to copy all his notes for the court, 
 and who was necessarily greatly in his confidence. Pellenc 
 had also to be paid a considerable salary, but not by the court ; 
 and Mirabeau's expenses, without keeping up a luxurious 
 household, would have been enough to consume a much larger 
 income. Notwithstanding the perpetual rumours about his 
 communica1<ions with the court, he remained a great favourito 
 • Correspcmdance, vol. ii. p. 21. 
 
328 Mirabeaus Assistants. [chap. 
 
 with that section of the Parisian populace who loved him 
 rather for his oratory and turns of witty expression than for 
 his political opinions, and who recognized the great man with- 
 out troubling themselves about the details of his conduct. 
 From his newly acquired income he was able to entertain on 
 a great scale, and the company entertained was not always of 
 the highest quality, though it often included such men as La 
 E arck, the Vicomte de Noailles, the Prince de Poix, and the 
 Archbishop of Toulouse. 
 
 The assistance which he now received from Dumont and 
 Duroveray and Clavifere was much less than it had been 
 formerly. Dumont had returned to England to superintend 
 the education of the eldest son of the Marquis of Lansdowne ; 
 Duroveray had more than once quarrelled with Mirabeau, and 
 was now conducting the Courrier de Provence pretty mach as 
 if it were his own and he was its original founder ; while 
 Claviere was forming a bond of union with men of more 
 extreme and republican opinions than Mirabeau altogether 
 approved. Their places were taken by other valuable 
 coadjutors, foremost among whom were Pellenc, De Comps, 
 Lamourette, and Reybaz.^ Joachim Pellenc, who had been 
 secretary to Mirabeau throughout his career in the Assembly, 
 now became more than ever necessary to his political existence ; 
 he understood his master's style so thoroughly that Mirabeau 
 had only to express a few ideas for Pellenc to work them out 
 exactly after his own fashion. He was also a somewhat 
 learned publicist, and had a wide knowledge of history with 
 which to assist Mirabeau in cases of difficulty. De Comps was 
 a very young man, who came of an ancient but ruined family 
 of Provence. In 1788 he had attached himself to Mirabeau, 
 and became his copyist, but he does not seem to have been 
 trusted with any independent work. He was theatrically fond 
 of his master, and either went mad or pretended to go mad for 
 a short time after Mirabeau's death. The Abbe Lamourette 
 had come to Mirabeau's assistance during the discussions on the 
 civil constitution of the clergy, and had written his speeches 
 * See chap. viii. pp. 251, 252. 
 
xi.J Mirabeaus Health, 329 
 
 on that subject for him. He quite understood Mivabeau's 
 opinion, that a national Church was desirable rather for the 
 distribution of charity than for religion and education, and that 
 the constitutional clergy should receive a fixed salary from the 
 State in order to prevent them from again becoming an order, 
 or anything but the paid subjects of the State. But Mirabeau 
 and Lamourette both had too much knowledge of the history of 
 the Roman Catholic religion, not to see that the compulsory 
 imposition of the oath would necessarily cause an important 
 schism. Reybaz^ was the most useful coadjutor of Mirabeau at 
 this period. He was a Genevese like Dumont and Clavifere, 
 but was far more modest than either of them. Exiled from his 
 own city for his advanced republican principles, he lived in 
 great obscurity in Paris with his daughter, until one day he 
 was fortunately introduced to Mirabeau. The orator found 
 the sentiments of the modest Genevese were greatly in con- 
 sonance with his own, and requested him to assist him in his 
 work. Reybaz had long desired to have his say on the subjects 
 which interested him, and gladly accepted Mirabeau's proposal. 
 Some of the greatest speeches which Mirabeau delivered, par- 
 ticularly those on the assignats, were written word for word 
 by Reybaz, and yet there is never any sign of the author's 
 claiming any credit for his work. It is amusing to read how 
 Mirabeau apologizes to Reybaz for occasionally omitting a 
 word or two of his written speeches ; how delicately he com- 
 pliments the writer on the praise which he himself is winning, 
 and how he begs that the fair secretary of Reybaz will write 
 a little larger. 
 
 Mirabeau's health sufiered seriously this summer, and he 
 had the first attack of the internal disease which was 
 at last to terminate fatally. It is quite unfair to attribute 
 Mirabeau's illness to excesses, for he was no notorious 
 drunkard, and, as Mirabeau-Tonneau remarked, " drunkenness 
 is the only vice Honor6 has left to me." His immensely 
 strong constitution had sufiered severely from his long im- 
 prisonment at Vincermes. His labours ever since the meeting 
 1 Vn Cullaboraiewr de Mirabeau, by Ph. Plan, 1879. 
 
330 Mirabeaus Character. [chap. 
 
 of the States-General had been immense, and in spite of the 
 well-known help of so many distinguished men, the com- 
 munications with the court and his management of foreign 
 affairs had rendered them quite colossal. It is not to be won- 
 dered at that his health began to give way. In July, 1790, he 
 had had a very severe attack, from which he feared he would 
 not recover, and hurriedly sent for La Marck, to whom he 
 gave all his correspondence,^ and asked him to preserve it 
 and publish it after his death, in order to show what his 
 political principles really were. During this attack his eyes 
 had become affected, and he became nearly blind, which made 
 it impossible for him to write. This it was which rendered 
 it necessary that De Comps should be paid by the court. 
 Such was the life of Mirabeau during the latter half of 1790, 
 keenly enjoying every pleasure, the friend of Talma the 
 actor, admired and painted by David the artist, and adored 
 by the circle of his intimate friends. It did not matter 
 with whom he came in contact, every one, except the queen, 
 was charmed by the frankness, openness, and the wonderful 
 sweetness of his nature. There was a breadth in his character 
 which prevented him from remembering, or seeming to 
 remember, any small or petty injury, or taking any account 
 of malicious sayings. He was always ready to forgive, not 
 from any great charity in himself, but because forgiveness 
 came easy to him. Often, indeed, he bitterly declared to La 
 Marck what harm the immorality of his youth was doing to 
 France, but he never said a bitter word against those who 
 were ever ready to hold him up to reprobation, and to attack 
 him with a libellous fury, which would have enraged beyond 
 endurance any other man of the period. It was this breadth 
 in his mind, in his character, and in his political opinions 
 which made him the great man he was. 
 
 It is necessary to notice his conduct in certain small 
 
 matters in order that stress should not alone be laid upon 
 
 his political plans, for he was a great man in little things as 
 
 well as in great. Particularly admirable is his advice to the 
 
 ' Correspondance, voL i. p. 374. 
 
XI. J Mirabeau on Orleans. 331 
 
 queen, -when the news arrived that the Duke of Orleans had 
 left England and was to present himself in the Assembly. 
 He had no reason to love Orleans, but despised him heartily. 
 He had suffered much from having his name associated with 
 that of the duke in connection with the events of October 
 o and 6. Yet his advice is tendered without any trace of 
 personal animosity or contempt. He advised the court and 
 the queen ^ to receive the duke open-handed, and to allow 
 him to take his seat in the Assembly, and then to say that 
 they hoped that the first prince of the blood-royal would not 
 forget what a duty he owed to his sovereign. By this means, 
 said Mirabeau, Orleans might be converted into a very useful 
 friend. There was no need to ask his advice, but if the queen 
 received the duke and his friends graciously, they would 
 certainly not spend money in discrediting the court, but 
 rather in attacking Lafayette. The queen agreed, and re- 
 ceived Orleans with kindly words ; but the officious stupidity 
 of the courtiers made them insult him beyond all endurance, 
 and made him a very dangerous enemy. Yet, as Mirabeau 
 had foreseen, he did spend part of his great wealth in attack- 
 ing Lafayette, and it is a strange thing that before the duke 
 had been two months in Paris the populace actually hissed the 
 great man on the white horse, though his bourgeois national 
 guards were still ready to follow him. On the question of 
 the abolition of titles and liveries Mirabeau showed himself 
 equally broad-minded. He did not care for the baubles 
 themselves, but, as he pointed out, the inborn vanity of man 
 prevents absolute equality from ever existing ; and if old 
 historical titles were abolished, new ways of distinguishing 
 one class from another would soon grow up. He saw clearly 
 through the foolish idea of social equality which was having 
 such weight, and remarked that " the notion of equality is 
 only a violent fit of the revolutionary fever." ^ It is in these 
 short remarks that La Marck, who in this year acted towards 
 the great man the part of Boswell towards Johnson, has 
 preserved for us Mirabeau's very spirit as well as the actual 
 1 Correspcmdance, vol. i. p. 351. * Ibid., p. 141. 
 
332 The Attack on the Hotel de Castries, [chap. 
 
 letters which he wrote. In many other instances Mirabeau 
 proved his freedom from prejudice. His speeches on army 
 reorganization and on the behaviour of Bouille at Nancy will be 
 described in their places, but his practical good sense appears 
 in his motion of October 19, that the tricolour flag should be 
 adopted in the royal navy. A mutiny had just broken out 
 at Brest among the sailors, more for want of pay than political 
 grievances,^ and Menou, a great friend of Lafayette and 
 an excitable man, who was to run through every phase of 
 opinion, serve every kind of government, profess every kind 
 of religion, to become a Mahometan pacha in Egypt and die 
 a general under Napoleon, produced a somewhat ridiculous 
 report on the subject. Mirabeau showed that one flag for the 
 army and another for the navy was simply absurd, and that, 
 instead of going in for minute changes in ranks and pay, the 
 navy must be reorganized, and recognized to be a national 
 service as well as the army. 
 
 Still more characteristic was Mirabeau's conduct on the 
 affair of the sacking of the H6tel de Castries. The excitement 
 of public life in Paris, added to the usual code of honour in 
 polite society throughout Europe, had caused a great number 
 of duels between deputies who sat on the right and the left 
 of the assembly. Many of them were caused simply by 
 personal disputes, but some arose out of political bitterness. 
 The most notable political duels were those between Mont- 
 losier and Huguet in January, 1790, between the Vicomte 
 de Mirabeau and Latour-Maubourg; between Barnave and 
 Cazalfes, between Charles de Lameth and Labourdonnaye, 
 and now in October, 1790, between Charles de Lameth and 
 the Due de Castries. In this duel Lameth was wounded, 
 and a rumour spread among the people that there was a 
 regular plot on foot among the deputies of the right to murder 
 those of the left. A riot broke out, which might have arisen 
 from the natural indignation of the people, but which La 
 Marck asserts^ was got up by Feydel, the editor of the 
 
 1 Cliap. xiii. p. 403. Corresjpondance, vol. ii. pp. 27-29. 
 * Ibid., vol. i. p. 15L 
 
XI.] Miraheau supports Lafayette. 333 
 
 Ohservateur franqais, Par6 Danton's clerk, and Gilles Cler- 
 mont, who was afterwards a royalist spy. Anyhow, the fact 
 is certain that the Hotel de Castries was attacked and 
 completely wrecked, and that Lafayette, with a battalion 
 of national guards, stood by and looked on without making 
 any attempt to interfere. La Marck also asserts, on the 
 authority of an eye-witness, that the wrecking was done by 
 bourgeois and well-dressed wrong-doers, and that the populace 
 had been so cowed by Lafayette's vigorous military dis- 
 positions that it merely looked on and took lessons for the 
 future. This hardly appears probable ; but it is very likely 
 that Lafayette was prevented from interfering by the re- 
 spectable character of the wreckers and by a fear of losing his 
 influence with the bourgeois class. On this subject Mirabeau, 
 almost for the last time in his life, supported Lafayette, and 
 opposed a motion for an inquiry into his conduct before the 
 Assembly. Why he did so cannot be explained ; but it is very 
 notable that he had the broad-mindedness to defend a man who 
 had refused to accept his services or in any way to co-operate 
 with him, instead of doing his best, as he might have done, 
 to ruin his power for ever. 
 
 As early as June, 1790, the king had told La Marck that 
 he wished to change his ministry, but this wish was to be kept 
 strictly secret, and the ministers were to know nothing of the 
 communications between Mirabeau and the court. Mirabeau 
 expatiated in note after note on the feebleness of the ministry, 
 and when at last Necker resigned, in August, 1790, it was 
 obvious that a great change was at hand. Mirabeau's advice 
 was, as has been seen, that a ministry should be chosen from 
 the different sections of the popular party in the Assembly, 
 Jacobins as well as members of the moderate centre, because 
 the fact of sitting in one ministerial council would insensibly 
 modify their opinions. First of all, however, an attempt 
 should be made to repeal the disastrous decree of November 7. 
 To this effect he managed to put into currency an idea that 
 it would be a good thing to revise the constitution even as far 
 as it had already gone ; and he found that the idea was warmly 
 
334 The New Ministry. [chap. 
 
 taken up by many members of the centre, who felt that per- 
 haps they were going too far in destroying the power of the 
 executive. To make this revision effective it must be carried 
 by a majority of the Assembly ; but Lafayette perceived the 
 drift of the idea, and thinking that it might tend to make 
 Mirabeau a minister, threw in the weight of his opinion against 
 it. So nothing was to be hoped from the project of revision. 
 Mirabeau again begged the king to appoint as ministers men 
 who had no affection for or dependence on Lafayette. He also 
 recommended that the king should persuade the present minis- 
 ters to give in their resignations, and that they should not be 
 forced to resign by a vote of the Assembly. For, if that took 
 place, he pointed out that the king would exhibit more markedly 
 than ever his own weakness. His advice, as usual, was only 
 partially followed. All the ministers except Montmorin, who 
 was indeed in the secret as regarded Mirabeau, and who had 
 made himself agreeable to the Assembly, resigned between 
 October and December, 1790, and a new ministry was at once 
 appointed. But, in spite of the remonstrances of Mirabeau, the 
 composition of the new ministry was greatly influenced by La- 
 fayette, and in particular the new minister of justice, Duport- 
 Dutertre, the procureur-substitute of the commune of Paris 
 who succeeded the Archbishop of Bordeaux as keeper of the 
 seals, was a mere satellite of Lafayette, and expressed his 
 willingness to try the queen herself even, for great offences, on 
 the smallest provocation.^ The other new ministers were Du- 
 portail ^ at the War Office, at the special request of the king ; 
 Valdec de Lessart, at the Finances, and afterwards Minister of 
 the Interior; and Claret de Fleurieu, Minister of the Navy. 
 
 1 'Relation de ce qui s'est passi a VHCtel de Ville ce mardi soir 
 23 Novembre, 1790, relativement a M. le Nouveau G'arde-de-Sceaux 
 B.M.— F. 835. (3.) 
 
 2 See the mention of a letter from Louis XVI. to Duportail, Novem- 
 ber 12, 1790, ending " J'espere, monsieur, que voua passerez par-dessus 
 vos repugnances, et vous me feriez une veritable peine de ne pas vous 
 rendre a mes instances," in a Catalogue d'unepHcieuse collection des Lettres 
 Autographed, issued by M. Etienne Charavay for a sale on April 15 and 
 16, 1885. 
 
xi.[| Mirabeau forms a Party. 335 
 
 None of ttese men had great -weight in themselves, or any- 
 great ability ; for -w-ho -would accept office in a ministry -which 
 -was deprived of all po-wer, and afforded every probability that 
 its possessor would be held up to the execration of the people ? 
 This -was not at all -what Mirabeau -wanted, and, as he re- 
 marked in one of his notes, it -was no use his going on giving 
 advice -which -was not foUo-wed. 
 
 Under the pressure of circumstances, he then made an 
 attempt to form a new party among the left who would support 
 the king and back up his own measures. The new party was 
 to be headed by certain friends of Lafayette, who were discon- 
 tented with him, and who now wanted to show their power 
 against him. The leaders of this section were Talon, Sdmon- 
 -ville, and Duquesnoy. None of them had great ability, but 
 all were clever intriguers. Talon had been advocate-general at 
 the court of the Ch4telet, and had long acted as intermediary 
 between the court and Lafayette. He had taken great interest 
 in the negotiations of October, 1789, and now, in October, 1790, 
 definitely deserted the party of Lafayette. S^monville, though 
 an able intriguer, was little better than a spy, and it is very 
 doubtful whether his negotiations with Mirabeau were not 
 solely instigated by a desire to discover what was the nature 
 of Mirabeau's connection with the court. Duquesnoy, the 
 deputy for Nancy, was a more able man. He had distinguished 
 himself as president of the Assembly, and had long been one 
 of the chief speakers of Lafayette's party in the Assembly ; 
 but he was now disgusted with his behaviour, and entered 
 into communications with Mirabeau. Without trusting any 
 of the three entirely, Mirabeau made use of them to form a 
 party, and even had some interviews with Barnave himself. 
 He found the young deputy of Dauphin^ was almost frightened 
 at the extent to which he had gone, and showed every dis- 
 position to place his eloquence at the service of the new party. 
 But Mirabeau did not dare to trust him entirely, for he feared 
 that the young man might be led away by his old connections. 
 Had a new party been formed and a revision of the consti- 
 tution carried, it is possible that the Assembly might have 
 
S36 The Federation of July 14, 1790. [chap, 
 
 remedied some of its terrible mistakes ; but there was a general 
 feeling of distrast between all the associates which prevented 
 the results of their union being as great as they expected them 
 to be. Mirabeau, however, though annoyed by the failure, was 
 not wholly disconcerted by it, for it only strengthened in his 
 own mind the necessity that the court should adopt the great 
 plan which he had at first formulated in his note of October, 
 1789, and which he had developed during 1790. 
 
 Considering their love of dramatic display, the French 
 people, and the Parisians in particular, were not likely to 
 allow the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille to pass 
 without some great fete, and this anniversary Lafayette de- 
 termined to use as a means for consolidating his power over 
 the whole of France. It was agreed that every department of 
 France should send certain representatives, and still more, that 
 every National Guard should send certain of its members to be 
 present at the great fete in Paris. All Paris, including duchesses 
 and grisettes, soldiers and bourgeois, laboured in the Champ 
 de Mars to dig up the soil and prepare the ground for the 
 ceremony. In the presence of a vast assembly, on a great 
 altar erected there, the king heard mass sung by Talleyrand, 
 and swore to be faithful to the constitution which was not 
 yet completed; and the f^ddr& from the provinces shouted, 
 " Vive Lafayette ! " Never had his power appeared more mani- 
 fest. The cries of " Vive Lafayette ! " drowned the cries of 
 " Vive le Roi ! " and Mirabeau used this fact as yet another 
 proof of the necessity of adopting his great plan. 
 
 It will be remembered that, in October, 1789, Mirabeau had 
 recommended that the king should leave Paris and should call 
 upon the provinces to assist him. He still recommended that 
 course, but now elaborated his plan to a greater extent, and 
 completed it in many details. This was the more necessary 
 as the state of the provinces had considerably altered since 
 October-, 1789, and since Lafayette's power had considerably 
 increased by the more complete organization of his forces. 
 Directly after the fete of the Federation of July 14, Mirabeau 
 begged ^ the king to go at once to Fontainebleau. Go in the 
 1 Note of July 17, 1790, Corresijondance, vol. i. pp. 371-374. 
 
XI.] Mirabeau's Advice. 2)i7 
 
 light of day, he wrote ; no one can restrain you. Go, as you 
 have just gone to Saint Cloud, to Fontainebleau, another of 
 your palaces, and there issue a proclamation that the Assembly 
 is too much under the control of one city, and that it is not 
 legislating for the good of the people. Confirm most of the de- 
 crees which have hitherto been passed, and announce that you 
 will consent to many which your own judgment disapproves of, 
 if a new legislature insists on it. There is no need of force. 
 The country is enthusiastic for Louis,'the restorer of the liberty 
 of France ; and you will find it no hard task to summon around 
 you men who will be willing and able to re-establish the royal 
 authority. The provinces groan under the anarchy which 
 exists, and will gladly come at your summons to help you 
 against Paris. But when the king did not comply, and matters 
 went from bad to worse, and he became more and more a 
 prisoner in his capital, Mirabeau's language became stronger. 
 " Why should we fear civil war ? " ^ he said to La Marck. " Civil 
 war ! it will be the means of saving the king, who will be lost 
 without hope if he continues to stop in Paris." Foreign war, 
 indeed, was to be feared, but civil war would only prove how 
 greatly the country loved order. Civil war tempers the spirit 
 of union, and revives political enthusiasm, which might other- 
 wise be lost, when a country has had its fill of political reforms. 
 As the year passed on, civil war became more and more present 
 to his mind as the only expedient, and he saw that the pro- 
 vinces were not so much to be depended upon as he had thought, 
 and that the king must have troops about him to restore order. 
 That was the reason why he recommended that the Swiss 
 regiments should be formed into one corps, under the command 
 of La Marck, who should also make out a plan by which the most 
 trustworthy troops could be posted along the frontier in such 
 a way that they could readily concentrate on Rouen, where 
 the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, the commander-in- 
 chief, was devoted to the king, and at the same time to the 
 cause of the constitution. Once at Rouen, he thought, and with 
 troops around him on whom he could rely, the king should 
 1 Correspondance, vol. i. p. 141. 
 VOL. I. Z 
 
33^ Would the Provinces support the King? [chap. 
 
 appeal to the good sense of the country, and order the Assembly 
 to j oin him there in a few days. If the Assembly refused to j oin 
 him, let the king summon a new one, and the Assembly in Paris 
 would lose its power. At Rouen he would be near the faithful 
 provinces of Brittany and Anjou, and he would also be able to 
 command the food supply of Paris, which came up the river 
 Seine from England and America to the capital. With a little 
 pressure from foreign powers, and a bold face backed up by 
 ten thousand good troops, Paris would give way without a 
 blow; and if Lafayette determined to fight, the populace, pressed 
 by famine, would soon put a stop to his efforts. Indeed, it 
 might be possible by that movement for the king to make 
 himself exceedingly popular in Paris. If he himself was at 
 Rouen, he could hurry provisions up to the capital, and could 
 take the credit of feeding the people, and say that he had 
 left the capital only to provide the better for its sustenance. 
 Mirabeau's plan was not adopted, because the queen distrusted 
 him, because she refused to recognize that the character of the 
 French monarchy was for ever changed, and because she deemed 
 it more courageous still to stand in the breach of the attack in 
 Paris. It would have shown greater courage at this time for 
 her to have used her influence with the king to induce him to 
 take Mirabeau's advice. The one doubtful point was how far 
 the provinces would do what Mirabeau expected ; and as each 
 month went by, it became more and more doubtful whether 
 they were imbued with the conviction that the power of the 
 king must be maintained, and that order must be restored. 
 This was the weak point of Mirabeau's plan. Certain it is 
 that in the month of October, 1789, and possibly in January, 
 1790, the provinces would have looked upon the king as the 
 maintainor of order. But in July, 1790, it was generally 
 perceptible that the provinces would trust rather to the 
 Assembly than to the king, and regard the' monarch, as the 
 affiliated Jacobin clubs were taught by the Jacobin club of 
 Paris to regard him, rather as the destroyer than the restorer of 
 ordei-. A more thorough discussion of the condition of the pro- 
 vinces in 1790 wiU show to what extent they might have been 
 
XI.] Harm done by Mirabeau's ReptUation. 339 
 
 depended upon ; but nevertheless the greatness of Mirabeau's 
 conception cannot be denied. He had struck the key-note of 
 a policy which might have united France against Paris, and it 
 must have at least improved the king's position and reputation. 
 Well might Mirabeau exclaim about the harm that the immo- 
 rality of his youth was doing his country ; for though his de- 
 voted friends believed he could do anything, he knew well that 
 the bourgeois class still remembered the immorality of his early 
 life, and that the queen withheld her confidence from him. 
 These considerations do not tend to make Mirabeau's reputation 
 as a statesman stand less high, but only show of what impor- 
 tance good personal character is to a politician. Statesmen of 
 the style of Alcibiades, though they may occasionally have 
 great successes, and though they may often see more clearly 
 than other men, can never obtain the power of inspiring that 
 general confidence by which alone a ruler of men can govern 
 public opinion. 
 
 It is useless to speculate on what might have been — whether 
 the provinces would have acted as Mirabeau hoped, whether 
 there would have been civil war, whether Lafayette would 
 have fought against the king, or whether the Assembly would 
 have followed him. The course of the revolution was to go 
 on like a perpetual torrent. New obstacles were to arise only 
 to be surmounted. Europe in arms was to be fought ; France 
 was to pass through her long agony, out of which she was 
 indeed to arise triumphant at last over all foreign enemies, 
 but subject to the sway of a military despot. But not for 
 five and twenty years did a fresh opportunity arise for the 
 Bourbons to reconstruct their monarchy on modern principles ; 
 for by Mirabeau alone, and acting on his advice alone, could 
 the most ancient royal family in Europe have continued to 
 maintain the place it had so long held, as absolute monarch s 
 of a great country and the adored tyrants of twenty-one 
 mniions of men. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE FINANCIAIj DIPriCTJLTT. 
 
 Importance of the financial question — Taxation and internal douanes^ 
 Colbert's protective system — Effect of Law's schemes, and rise of the 
 study of political economy — Establishment of agricultural societies — 
 The physiocrats — Turgot, Necker, and Calonne — Necker's financial 
 proposals, and the financial policy of the Assembly in 1789— 
 Economic state of the country, and scarcity of specie — Necessity of 
 feeding Paris — Where was the State to find money ? — Errors with 
 regard to the value of Church property — Manner in which Church 
 lands were sold — Mirabeau proposes a new issue of assignats in 
 August, 1790 — Resignation of Necker — Minor points of the Assembly's 
 financial policy — Economic state of France in 1790 — The Marquis de 
 Montesquiou— Dupont de Nemours — Mirabeau as a financier. 
 
 In September, 1789, while the Assembly was still at Versailles^ 
 Goupil de Pr^feln, deputy for the tiers dtat of Alen5on, who 
 in point of age was the oldest deputy in the Assembly, and who 
 sat on the extreme left, ended a speech by declaring in impas- 
 sioned tones that " Catiline was at the gates, and yet ye 
 deliberate." Mirabeau replied, with a fine oratorical turn, 
 "Catiline is not at the gates, and never will be; but bank- 
 ruptcy, horrible, hideous bankruptcy, is staring us in the face." 
 This phantom of bankruptcy had had very great influence on 
 the summons of the States-General, and without the prospect 
 of bankruptcy it is very doubtful whether the States-General 
 would have been summoned in 1789 at all. The States- 
 General, as Necker told the deputies in his opening speech on 
 May 5, met to relieve the kiner's financial necessities, and to 
 
CHAP. XII.3 The Financial System of France. 341 
 
 make some arrangements for the liquidation of the increasing 
 national debt. Again and again political events and stirring 
 incidents threw the great financial question into the shade ; 
 but it was perpetually cropping up, and presented an element 
 of danger which the real statesmen in the Assembly could not 
 fail to perceive. How the National Assembly acted in matters 
 of finance, and how the deputies treated the great question 
 which had caused their convocation, is of much interest, because 
 the numerous financial mistakes which marked the progress 
 of the French Revolution derived their origin from the errors 
 committed by the Constituent Assembly ; and to understand 
 what was the financial policy of the Assembly, it is neces- 
 sary to examine the economic state and financial history of 
 France, in order to comprehend how the difficulties arose 
 which it had to meet. 
 
 The economic evils existing in France in 1789 had grown 
 up from two distinct sources, the feudal system and the 
 despotic royal power. All the old oppressive feudal dues and 
 rights, most of which had been abolished or commuted in 
 England at a very early period, and which had been finally 
 bought up by the House of Commons in 1661, existed in 
 France right up to the very time of the Revolution. They 
 consisted of tolls and rights of market, duties on mills, and 
 innumerable small fees to be paid to the lord at various stages 
 of the tenant's life. The immense extension of the tenure, 
 called copyhold, in France has been noticed, and it was chiefly 
 maintained in order that the lord might get occasional dues 
 on slight mistakes or instances of neglect on the part of the 
 tenant. All these feudal dues, which were exceedingly tire- 
 some and unjust in their nature, though perhaps not yielding 
 a very large revenue to the lords of the land, did much to 
 check agricultural prosperity, and remained in full force side 
 by side with royal taxation. The various modes of collecting 
 the ro3^al taxes and administering them plainly manifested the 
 despotic power of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and showed the 
 utter absence of any moderating influence such as was sup- 
 plied in England by the existence of Parliament, and they 
 
342 The System of Taxation. [chap. 
 
 also can be explained only by reference to the internal policy 
 of those monarchs. Direct taxation did not count for much in 
 the royal revenue, and it was chiefly confined to one poll-tax, 
 known as the taille. In itself such direct taxation is not 
 unjust ; but Louis XIV., whose policy it was to maintain the 
 wealth of the nobility, while attracting it to Versailles, and 
 destroying its power in the provinces, had always upheld 
 its freedom from the weight of personal or direct taxation. 
 The obvious injustice of four-fifths of the taille being paid 
 by the poor had struck all inquirers into the financial con- 
 dition of France from the time of Marshal Vauban ^ to that 
 of Necker, and in the electoral assemblies, which elected 
 the deputies to the States-General, the privileged orders in 
 nearly every instance agreed to surrender their privileges 
 in matters of taxation, which they knew must at once fall 
 when the States-General met. After all, direct taxation formed 
 but a small portion of the revenue of the country. Its bulk 
 was derived from indirect taxation. Of the indirect taxes, 
 the most important were the gabelle and the customs duties. 
 The gabelle was a salt tax, varying in amount in different pro- 
 vinces, extremly difficult to collect, and very harsh in its 
 incidence on the lower classes. Turgot declared that an army 
 of ()0,000 collectors had to be paid for its collection, and that 
 every year more than 20,000 men were condemned to the 
 galleys for smuggling or refusing to pay. What made it 
 seem most harsh was, that if every peasant or ouvrier did not 
 buy a certain amount of salt for himself and his family every 
 month, he was at once assumed to buy from the smugglers 
 and his house was searched accordingly. The expense of 
 collecting this tax was so great that not more than one-fifth 
 of the money paid by the taxpayer reached the royal treasury. 
 Still more disastrous in their effect upon the country were the 
 internal customs duties. France was divided for customs 
 purposes into three distinct divisions,^ which crossed and re- 
 crossed each other — the provinces proper, the provinces "reputed 
 
 1 Vauban, La Dime Royale, 1703. 
 
 ' Revue Eistorique, January, 1882. 
 
XII.] The Internal Douanes. 343 
 
 foreign," and the provinces "foreign." The "foreign" pro- 
 vinces, by which title were designated Alsace, Lorraine, 
 Franche Comt^, French Flanders, and all the conquests of 
 Louis XIV., paid no duties on importations from foreign 
 countries, but had to pay heavily when they sent their 
 produce or manufactures into France itself The provinces 
 "reputed foreign," such as Brittany, were those which had 
 been united to France by marriage or otherwise during the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and were for customs pur- 
 poses entirely separated from the rest of the country. The 
 maintenance of these internal douanes was very prejudicial 
 to trade, and caused an immense amount of smuggling, as it 
 was impossible to guard sufficiently the long lines of provincial 
 frontiers. The necessity of enforcing such customs regulations 
 filled France with bands of brigands, who were so severely 
 punished by the law when they were caught, that their 
 resistance caused more loss of life to the army and mar^chauss^e 
 than many a foreign war. In addition to the internal douanes, 
 every city had its own octroi and its own system of duties, 
 merely for purposes of raising a municipal revenue. There were 
 also heavy duties on wines, spirits, and tobacco, and a restrictive 
 tariS" on importations from foreign countries, in order to pro- 
 tect the manufacturing interests, which seriously increased the 
 price of cloth and other necessaries. These taxes were chiefly 
 let out to farmers-general, who had obtained complete com- 
 mand over the finances of the country by advancing money 
 to the government when any need arose. The farmers-general 
 naturally contrived to get considerable profit on their con- 
 tracts, and insisted on being supported by the full- power of 
 the law. The result of this complicated system of taxation 
 was that the people, and especially the lower classes, were 
 very severely taxed both directly and indirectly, while the 
 royal treasury only received a very small proportion of the 
 money paid. 
 
 Owing to this system of taxation, the treasury received but 
 a small revenue, while the economical condition of the country 
 was so much aflected that France, though naturally one of the 
 
344 Colbert's Protective System. [chap. 
 
 richest countries in Europe, was at this period one o£ the very 
 poorest. The condition of modern France has shown how 
 possible it is for the country to yield an enormous revenue 
 and yet remain extremely prosperous. The French people are 
 essentially thrifty, and under proper financial arrangements 
 can afford to meet very heavy demands. The utter absence of 
 any knowledge of political economy had, however, prevented 
 the successive French kings and ministers from regulating 
 the collection of the taxes so as to improve the economical 
 condition of the country. Mention has been already made 
 of the treatment under which agriculture had fallen to its 
 lowest possible degradation in the France of the eighteenth 
 century, and this degradation was due to the mismanagement 
 of the taxation. Colbert, possessed by the one idea of making 
 France capable of supplying itself by its own manufactures, 
 had greatly neglected the agricultural portion of the com- 
 munity, and had not seen that France is essentially an agri- 
 cultural and not a manufacturing country. The mischievous 
 system of internal douanes, with the extreme badness of 
 communication throughout France, often caused famine in 
 certain districts, while others not many miles off were rejoicing 
 in abundant harvests. This degradation of the aoricultural 
 interests had naturally brought the attention of thinking men 
 in France to the subject, and there had Arisen a very important 
 school of political economists, whose influence will have to be 
 analyzed, for it extended beyond merely the system of agri- 
 culture. This great school not only treated the subject of 
 agriculture, but almost by accident found out the important 
 doctrine of free trade. 
 
 Vauban, the great marshal of Louis XIV., and the man 
 who built and fortified all the great fortresses of France, was 
 the first to call attention to the false principles shown in the 
 collection of the taxes,i and in his " Dime Royale " showed how 
 small a proportion of what was paid by the people reached the 
 treasury. The royal power was too great to allow his opinions 
 to be acted upon, and the old marshal was at once disgraced. 
 ^ La, Dime Boyale, 1705. 
 
XII.J The Physiocrats. 345 
 
 The regency of Orleans was marked by the speculative mania 
 ■which was started by Law, and which is in many points a 
 counterpart of the South Sea Bubble in England. But it had 
 a far worse effect upon the economical condition of France 
 generally than the South Sea Bubble had on that of England. 
 For in England the mania for speculation affected rather the 
 wealthy mercantile class in the towns and the shopkeepers 
 of London, whereas in France many, if not most, of the land- 
 owners not only sold their property, but sunk in this visionary 
 speculation money which they had managed to save, and 
 which would otherwise have been invested in improving their 
 land. What profits were made, were made by the bourgeois 
 in the towns, the farmers-general of the revenue, and the 
 speculatoi's on the Paris stock exchange, while the landowners 
 were permanently the poorer for their speculations. It was 
 after the breaking of the Mississippi Bubble that the agricultural 
 condition of France went from bad to worse, until the state of 
 the provinces imperatively called the attention of philosophers 
 to it. From the spectacle of this great wretchedness arose the 
 first physiocrats.-^ This name they gave themselves because 
 one of their main tenets was that taxation should be levied 
 as much as possible on the increase of nature. They had 
 perceived the immense waste caused by the collection of the 
 innumerable taxes, and proposed that, instead of numerous 
 taxes, the revenue should be raised by one single great tax 
 paid by the owners of land. They argued that it was only 
 from agriculture that a positive increase in wealth was 
 attained. If one pound's worth of seed were planted in a 
 field, ten pounds' worth of wheat might grow from it, and 
 therefore taxes ought only to be imposed on those who had 
 the advantage of producing this wealth. This theory of the 
 physiocrats led to unexpected results. If the agriculturist 
 alone actually produced wealth, while the manufacturer only 
 chano-ed wool into cloth and produced nothing, all taxes were 
 
 1 lies Eeciiomiates frangaia du dix-huitieme siecle, by L^once de 
 Lavergne, 1870 ; Collection des muvres despriiicipaux Mconomistes du ISieme 
 tiide, by Eugene Daire, 1847. 
 
346 Agriculhiral Societies. [chap. 
 
 in reality paid either directly or indirectly by the agricul- 
 turist. All taxes, except the land tax, should therefore 
 be abolished as being merely taxes exacted from the agri- 
 culturist in a circuitous manner, which would indeed have 
 simplified the collection of the taxes ; but the fallacy was 
 obvious, and was shown by Voltaire in his clever pamphlet, 
 " L'Homme aux quarante Ecus." -^ The propositions of the 
 physiocrats did great good, not only in concentrating the 
 attention of French thinkers upon the condition of the soil and 
 of the agricultural interest, but in inducing them to consider 
 what national wealth really was, and the first result was au 
 immediate improvement in agriculture. 
 
 Agricultural societies were started all over France in every 
 little provincial capital,^ but unfortunately, as Arthur Young, 
 who was an honorary member of most of them, pointed out,^ 
 most of the members of these societies were bourgeois and 
 residents in towns, who did not own a single acre of land, 
 and who occupied themselves in discussing theories as to what 
 farmers ought to do. Only a very few of the great seigneurs 
 acted upon the impulse given to the scientific knowledge of 
 farming by the physiocrats, notably, the Due de la Eoche- 
 foucauld-Liancourt and the Due de Charost-B^thune, the 
 descendant of Sully. These great nobles did try to manage 
 their estates like English noblemen. They encouraged the 
 introduction of agricultural machinery, presented improved 
 ploughs to their neighbours and tenants, and tried to convince 
 them that it was not necessary for their fields to lie fallow every 
 third year in order to produce an adequate crop. The members 
 of these agricultural societies did much to spread a better know- 
 ledge of the true principles of farming through France, and to 
 their influence may be particularly attributed the increased 
 popularity of sheep and the improvement of the breed by the 
 
 1 L'hmnme aux quarmite ecus— urn apologue, by Voltaire. Paris : 1776. 
 
 2 See, for the Agricultural Society of Paris, Lavergne's Les &cmwmistes 
 frangais, pp. 439-475. 
 
 3 Arthur Young's Travels during the Tears 1787, 1788, atid 1789, vol. i. 
 pp. 15, 16. 
 
XII.] The Physiocrats. 347 
 
 introduction of the Spanish merinoes. They also took a great 
 interest in the first planting of potatoes, and Arthur Young 
 describes a curious visit which he paid, with certain other 
 members of the Agricultural Society of Paris, to some large 
 gardens, where Parmentier was making experiments in potato- 
 growing, only the day before the Oath of the Tennis Court.^ 
 But, though the attempts to improve agriculture were the most 
 important actual results of the influence of the physiocrats, 
 their primary aim was to simplify taxation by the imposition 
 of one great land tax. 
 
 The founder of the school of the physiocrats was Fran9ois 
 Quesnay, a man of exactly the same age as Voltaire, who 
 was physician to Madame de Pompadour, and had apartments 
 at Versailles beneath those of the royal mistress, Avhere he 
 received the enthusiastic supporters of his ideas. He did not 
 comraence his literary career until he was more than sixty, 
 and then contributed the articles on " farming " and " grains " 
 to the Encyclopedie. These articles attracted great attention, 
 and he followed them up by two small books, the " Tableau 
 dconomique," printed in the palace of Versailles in 1758, 
 under the personal supervision of Louis XV., and the " Maximes 
 g^ndrales du Gouvernement ^conomique d'un Royaume 
 agricole," in 1760, in which he insisted again that all labour 
 not connected with agriculture was sterile. Quesnay 's chief 
 disciple was the Marquis de Mirabeau, father of the great 
 Mirabeau, who had always paid great attention to agriculture 
 on his paternal estates, and threw himself with all the ardour 
 of his family into the task of spreading the doctrines of 
 Quesnay, of whom he termed himseK the prophet. His 
 chief works were the "Ami des Hommes ou Traits de la 
 Population," the " Thdorie de I'lmpSt," which brought about 
 
 1 " Dined with Parmentier at the Hotel des Invalides. After dinner 
 to Sablon, to see the society's potatoes and preparations for turnips, of which 
 I shall only say that I wish my brethren woidd stick to their scientijlc 
 farming, and leave the practice to those who understand it. What a sad 
 thing it is for philosophical husbandmen that God Almighty created such a 
 thing as couch {triticum repens)." — Arthur Young's Travels, vol. i. p. 115. 
 
348 Popidaiily of Political Economy. [chap. 
 
 his imprisonment at Vineennes for attacking the farmers- 
 general, and his " Philosophic rurale," and by his energetic 
 character and the eloquence of his writings he made Quesnay's 
 speculations famous throughout Europe. Unfortunately the 
 early physiocrats united a political -with their financial creed. 
 Quesnay went out of his way to praise the government of 
 China in his " Despotisme de la Chine," and argued that such 
 a great scheme as he proposed could only be carried out by an 
 absolute monarch, and that, therefore, it was expedient to 
 increase and not to diminish the royal power in France. 
 From the teaching of Quesnay arose a group of thinkers of 
 far greater economical importance. Quesnay had asserted 
 that all taxes must be levied on agricultural property, and 
 that in consequence all other taxation must be abolished. 
 The abolition of other taxation, which implied the doctrine 
 of free trade, was the point of the new school taken up by 
 Vincent de Gournay, who had been for many years commercial 
 resident at Cadiz, and who had there seen the financial ruin 
 caused both to Spain and her American possessions by the 
 rigour of the protective system. 
 
 Gournay was, after his return to France, brought into 
 official connection with Turgot, and imbued him with many 
 of his economical ideas. Turgot was the one great practical 
 physiocrat and the greatest thinker of the whole school. 
 Without rushing to theoretical extremes, he had in his ad- 
 ministration of the Limousin done all in his power to improve 
 agriculture and to make carriage easier between district 
 and district by maintaining good roads, and when he entered 
 the ministry at the commencement of the reign of Louis XVL, 
 he endeavoured to carry into practice some of the chief ideas 
 of Gournay, notably his scheme for the abolition of internal 
 douanes. By this time political economy had become the 
 popular topic of the salons and the lecture halls, and just 
 as the great ladies raved at different times about Rousseau 
 and electricity, they now made the study of political economy 
 the fashion, and every one liked to talk upon the subject with 
 great glibness, if without much knowledge. The physiocrats 
 
XII.] Iiifiuence of tlie Physiocrats. 
 
 349 
 
 then became very influential. They had their regular organs, 
 of which the chief, the Eph^merides du Citoyen, was edited 
 first by the Marquis de Mirabeau and then by Dupont de 
 Nemours, and they had disciples in every land. One of the 
 sect, Rambaud, was summoned to St. Petersburg by the 
 Empress Catherine to take charge of Russian trade ; Gus- 
 tavus III. of Sweden sent the Marquis de Mirabeau the cross 
 of the Order of Vasa, and Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, 
 corresponded with him, and accepted the dedication of his 
 "Philosophie rurale." But the most important development 
 of the ideas of the physiocrats is to be found in Adam Smith's 
 " Wealth of Nations," which the Glasgow professor had 
 intended to dedicate to Quesnay if the old French physician 
 had lived long enough. Of what enormous importance Adam 
 Smith's work has been to the science of political economy 
 need not here be remarked; but it was from it that the 
 younger Pitt derived his economical ideas, and on it he 
 based the great economical improvements which he effected in 
 the condition of England. To the influence of the economists 
 may also be attributed the commercial treaty between England 
 and France concluded in 1786, the result of which was to 
 ruin the Norman weavers, and to make claret supersede port 
 in England. The general results of the speculations of the 
 physiocrats and the propagation of their ideas was an im- 
 provement in the condition of French agriculture, and truer 
 ideas regarding foreign trade ; but they had no effect what- 
 soever on the collection of the taxes or the regulation of 
 finance, and the influence of the physiocrats, though very 
 great in the salons, had not much effect on the French 
 financial administration previous to 1789. 
 
 Had Turgot remained in office, it is possible that some 
 great reforms might have been efi'ected; but the first con- 
 dition that great statesman demanded was that there should 
 be a reduction in useless court expenses, and real harmony 
 between the king and himself. The poor king, indeed, 
 remarked to his minister, "You and I, M. Turgot, are the 
 only two Frenchmen who really love France ; " but the queen 
 
350 Necker and Calonne. [chap. 
 
 did not at all approve of the stern minister who wished to 
 curtail her extravagance, and insisted on his dismissal. After 
 Turgot's fall, financial ministers took charge of the treasury, 
 who had no sympathy with the economical ideas in vogue, 
 and who carried on the financial management of France very 
 much on the old bases. The greatest of them was Jacques 
 Necker, and his career as well as his character made him look 
 upon the finances of the country from a banker's point of 
 view,, and not aa economist's. In his business capacity he 
 had shown every quality necessary for a successful banker — 
 courage in speculation, a cool head, and a real knowledge 
 that money was not to be looked upon as so much actual 
 gold and silver, but that it had a fluctuating value according 
 to circumstances. He tried to carry on the affairs of France 
 like a banker, and his great aim was to issue a good balance- 
 sheet. To do this he had to meet the same difiiculties as 
 Turgot; but he was far too prudent to openly attack the 
 queen's extravagance, and contented himself with trying to 
 arrange the system on which loans were raised. This he 
 did admirably. His personal acquaintance with the chief 
 French and English bankers enabled him to raise money 
 at a lower rate of interest than had been possible before, and 
 he made more than one attempt to fund the floating debt. 
 But however he might try to steer clear of unpalatable 
 truths which might hurt the royal ears, he had to insist on 
 some retrenchments, and, like Turgot, was dismissed by the 
 influence of Marie Antoinette. When out of ofiiee he em- 
 ployed himself in drawing up and publishing his famous 
 " Compte Rendu." This was simply the balance-sheet of 
 France, and however much he may have falsified many items, 
 there can be no doubt that he gave a very correct description 
 on the whole of the amount of the revenue of France, and of 
 how utterly it must necessarily fail to meet the expenses. 
 Calonne, who succeeded Necker after an interval, was a very 
 pleasant financial minister for the court. His idea was above 
 all things to keep up appearances, and thus get plenty of 
 credit. He did keep up appearances, much to the delight 
 
XII.] The Extent of the Deficit. 351 
 
 of the queen and courtiers, and when he had exceeded his 
 credit he left France with a much larger yearly deficit than 
 Necker had bequeathed to him. Brienne continued, with 
 less ability and smaller knowledge, to imitate Calonne ; but 
 eventually, like Necker and Turgot, he had to insist on 
 retrenchment. When Necker returned to office in 1788, the 
 States-General had been universally demanded, and he hoped 
 he would be able to secure from the States-General means 
 for setting the balance-sheet of France right. What political 
 ideas he might have entertained have been noticed, but his 
 desire for the States-General was directed rather by a wish 
 to prove himself a miraculous financier than a great political 
 reformer. He convinced the king that it was necessary to 
 make an appearance of retrenchment in order to give an 
 appearance of economy, and the king agreed, on March 24,^ 
 1789, in the midst of the elections, to abolish the post of 
 grand -falconer of France, and to discharge forty-two valets. 
 
 At the meeting of the States-General on May 5, Necker 
 had declared that the purpose for which the States-General 
 had been called was to relieve the existing financial distress, 
 and he horrified the members of the Assembly by informing 
 them to what an extent the deficit had grown. In 1786 the 
 income of the State had been computed at 357 millions of 
 livres, and its expenditure at 442 millions, to which must be 
 added twenty-seven millions of pensions and seventy-two 
 millions of arrears from the year before, making a total 
 discrepancy of 184 millions, or, in other words, showing that 
 the income for that year only met two-thirds of the expenses. 
 The administration of Brienne had not improved matters, and 
 Necker had to announce a yearly deficit of 125 millions of 
 livres without calculating arrears, in spite of Brienne's procla- 
 mation of partial bankruptcy on August 16, 1788, by which 
 aU debts of the State, pensions and pay, were to be paid only 
 three-fifths in money, and two-fifths in notes of the Caisse 
 d'Escompte. The most striking point in Necker's speech 
 is the complacent manner, in which he looks upon the deficit 
 » B.M.— Tracts, 28 d. 2, No. 1. 
 
352 Neckers Financial Proposals. [chap. 
 
 He seems to have thought that it could be easily met without 
 any particular effort on any one's part. The privileged orders 
 were to pay the taille for the future, the king was to discharge 
 a few more valets, and all would be well. Because the States- 
 General acted in harmony with the king, the national credit 
 would be restored, and new loans could be easily raised and 
 the old ones liquidated. The events of May and June, and 
 the absolute refusal of the States-General to pass any decree 
 with regard to the finances, or pay any attention to poor 
 Necker, instead of improving, quite destroyed the State's 
 credit and Necker's hopes. The Assembly and the people of 
 France were far too busily engaged in watching the great 
 political struggle between the three orders to pay any atten- 
 tion to the financial complications until the capture of the 
 Bastille had definitely established the status of the Assembly. 
 The decrees of August 4 had effectually destroyed most of 
 the old means of revenue. The abolition of tithes, as has 
 been said, only benefited the landed proprietors, but did 
 not help the State, though the Abbd Sidyes had advocated 
 that the tithes should be redeemed by the landowners. On 
 August 4 not only were tithes abolished, but pretty nearly all 
 the customs duties on which the State had depended were 
 also abolished. The gabelle and the system of the internal 
 custom-houses were bound to go, and something had to be 
 done immediately if any money was to be raised for the 
 current expenses of government. On August 7 Necker 
 informed the Assembly that hardly any taxes had been 
 paid for the last three months. In the month of June, in the 
 heat of the struggle between the orders, the Assembly had 
 declared that all taxes should be paid provisionally until 
 the Assembly had time to legislate upon them. But the 
 people simply refused to pay taxes which had no longer the 
 weight of law in their favour and which were no loneer 
 collected by main force, and the state of the treasury was 
 worse than ever. Necker, therefore, proposed that the 
 Assembly should allow him to raise a loan of thirty millions 
 of livres at five per cent. The Assembly changed the rate to 
 
xii.J Patriotic Gifts. 353 
 
 four and a half per cent., and the loan was taken up. Three 
 weeks afterwards, on August 29, Necker asked for a loan of 
 eighty millions at five per cent, but only thirty -three millions 
 were subscribed. It was obvious that the credit of the State had ' 
 entirely disappeared, and that the system of loans had failed. 
 Necker then, knowing it was impossible to raise taxes, 
 practically gave up taking any trouble, and as the enthusiasm 
 which greeted his return had entirely evaporated, he did 
 nothing for some time. During the month of September the 
 State subsisted chiefly on patriotic gifts, which included not 
 only the magnificent present of 100,000 livres from the Due 
 de Charost-B^thune and of the royal plate, but also the 
 jewellery of many great ladies of Paris, down to the very 
 smallest gifts of little silver ornaments. The members of 
 the Assembly gave up their silver shoe-buckles, and deter- 
 mined for the future they would only wear paste. But the 
 government of the State could not be carried on by such 
 means, and on September 29 Necker came down to the 
 Assembly and demanded a grant of twenty-five per cent, or 
 one quarter of all incomes, which, if it could have been collected 
 at once on a proper valuation, would, though an extreme 
 measure, have given a sufiicient sum to the State to have 
 carried on the government. But Necker added to his pro- 
 position that the tax should be payable any time within 
 three years on the taxpayer's own valuation, clauses which 
 efiectually destroyed the chances of any considerable sum 
 being collected at once. Ridiculous as the scheme was with 
 these additions, Mirabeau supported it, and when other deputies 
 were loud in their opposition, he rose and said, " The case 
 is desperate, and something must be done. Nobody has 
 proposed any other measure. I do not believe that this is 
 a good one, but since there is no better in the field I will 
 support it." After this speech the motion was carried, but 
 such a tax naturally produced next to nothing ; and in October, 
 1789, the expedient of taking possession of the estates of the 
 clergy was proposed by Talleyrand. The excited debates 
 which preceded the carrying of the motion on November 2 
 VOL. L 2 A 
 
354 First Idea of Assignats. [chap. 
 
 have been described, and it was then decided that the property 
 of the Church belonged to the nation. These abstract motions 
 would not produce money, and Necker continued to borrow 
 from the Caisse d'Escompte, which he had himself established, 
 and which had lent money to the State during the last year; 
 and as his sole idea of finance was to raise loans, the minister 
 proposed in November that the whole collection of the taxes 
 should be handed over to the Caisse d'Escompte in con- 
 sideration of an annual sum. Mirabeau opposed this pro- 
 position, which he said would simply hand over the govern- 
 ment of the country to the Caisse d'Escompte, and proposed 
 instead that paper money should be issued on the security of 
 the Church lands, and that Necker's motion should be rejected. 
 In this speech appears the first idea of assignats, and the idea 
 of paper money had been first suggested to Mirabeau by 
 Claviere,^ one of his Genevese friends, who had a thorouoli 
 knowledge of banking, and more original financial genius 
 than Neeker. Mirabeau warmly supported the idea of paper 
 money, and believed it to be a far more efficacious means of 
 relieving the distress of the State than perpetual loans. In 
 the beginning of December the Marquis de Montesquiou, who 
 was throughout the session of the Assembly the reporter 
 of the financial committee, of which the reports were chiefly 
 drawn up by Dupont de Nemours, the last of the physiocrats, 
 brought up a report from that committee, that four hundred 
 millions of livres should be raised on the lands of the clergy, 
 and on December 19 the sale of Church lands to that amount 
 was decreed. 
 
 Such was the history of the financial measures of the 
 Assembly in 1789, and naturally the economic state of France 
 in the month of December was far worse than it had been in 
 the previous May. The farmers, indeed, had received great 
 and substantial benefits; the internal douanes had been 
 abolished, and under a decree proposed by a physiocrat, 
 Heurtault de Lamerville, in 1791, absolute liberty had been 
 given to them to grow whatever crops they pleased, instead 
 * See vol. i. chap. ii. p. 66. 
 
XII.] Scarcity of Specie. 355 
 
 of being dictated to on the subject by the intendants ; ^ but 
 very great damage on the other hand had been done by the 
 anarchy which had existed ever since the month of July. It 
 was all very well for the armed peasants to burn chateaux, 
 but they further did serious harm to the agricultural interest 
 by destroying the lords' cattle wherever they found them. 
 The cattle were houghed and hcrses destroyed because they 
 were the lords', and it would have been far better for the 
 wealth of the nation if they had been simply appropriated. 
 The- political excitement, further, had affected men's liking 
 for work, and the peasant found it more agreeable to burn 
 chateaux or attend political meetings than to work in the 
 fields. A similar state of things existed in the towns. There 
 the workmen had received great theoretical advantages, but 
 there was no work for them to do. In the present state of in- 
 security, no manufacturer or employer of labour would spend 
 his capital in starting fresh works, but was ready to terminate 
 aU his contracts as quickly as possible. The difficulty was 
 partially met in Paris and the larger towns by the establish- 
 ment of State workshops, where a fixed amount of wages was 
 paid ; but the workmen, naturally, only appeared at the work- 
 shops on pay-day. The state of insecurity was paralyzing 
 capital, as Mirabeau perceived, and it made him wish to 
 establish as soon as possible some order in the French finances. 
 Another difficulty was, even at this early date, beginning to 
 appear ; the 6migr^s took with them out of the country all the 
 money they could get hold of in specie, and even the bour- 
 geois and bankers, who did not emigrate, felt it safer to have 
 their valuables in foreign banks, and especially in London. 
 The smaller bourgeois, too, began to show a tendency to bury 
 their money instead of lending it to the State, or extending 
 their operations with it, and a serious difficulty was fore- 
 shadowed at this early date. It was this scarcity of specie which 
 Mirabeau, on the advice of Claviere, proposed to meet by the 
 issue of paper money. 
 
 Some idea may be formed of the great additional expense 
 
 1 Lavergne, Lei llconomistes franqais, pp. 87, 88. 
 
35^ Necessity for feeding Paris. [_ciiap. 
 
 incurred by the government, when it is mentioned that Paris 
 spent 360,000 livres a month upon her public workshops, and 
 there had to be lent, in the months of January and February, 
 1790, no less than 17,000,000 livres with which to buy corn. 
 From a financial point of view, lending money for the pur- 
 chase of corn was simply and absolutely unjust, for it practi- 
 cally made the honest taxpayer support the working classes; 
 but, for political reasons, the ministiy and the Assembly did 
 not dare to refuse to give Paris as much corn as she asked 
 for. This necessity for the State to feed Paris had been recog- 
 nized ever since July, 1789. Bailly, the new mayor, declared 
 it impossible to prevent the Parisians from rising in insurrec- 
 tion unless he was able to provide them with cheap bread, and 
 a committee was appointed at the Hotel de Ville, the sole duties 
 of which were to purchase corn and sell it to the bakers at a 
 low rate. When it is remembered that this committee con- 
 sisted, not of experienced men, but principally of politicans like 
 Bailly, who six months before never dreamed of public duties, 
 there can be no wonder that the money which they obtained, 
 with great difficulty, from Necker was wasted. They purchased 
 wheat by means of corn-brokers in England and Germany, and 
 in the rest of France, and the natural result of their doing so 
 was to send up the price of wheat considerably. Sometimes 
 the provincial towns, which were capitals of large agricultural 
 districts, objected to part with their corn, and thus reduce 
 themselves to famine, and the populace of Provins, for instance,^ 
 with the help of a detachment of soldiers, arrested two electors 
 of Paris, who had come to buy their corn, in August, 1789, and 
 only released them on the approach of eight hundred national 
 guards from Paris. The result of this policy was that the 
 provincial cities were not likely to try to provide for them- 
 selves when they saw how easily Paris could get assistance by 
 the threat of riots, and it became rather an advantage for a 
 town to have a large number of rioters and starving work- 
 people. The State had to pay for all this; the State had 
 to compensate the nobility for the feudal rights which had 
 
 iffistoiredePromns, by F^lixBourquelot, vol. ii. p. 320. Provms : 1839. 
 
XII. 1 The Value of the Church Property. 357 
 
 been abolished; the State had to pay the expenses of the 
 court, and also enormous interest on all its loans; and the 
 State was applied to for money in every difficulty. How, 
 then, was the State to get money ? 
 
 The sale of the Church lands was the solution proposed by 
 the majority of the Assembly. Elaborate calculations were 
 made that the whole debt of France could be paid if this 
 proposition was at once adopted. But errors abounded in 
 these calculations. The property of the Church was computed 
 to yield 70 millions of livreS a year, and this, at thirty-three 
 years' purchase, was calculated to produce a lump sum of 
 2310 millions of livres. The deputies then went on to discuss 
 what should be done with the 2310 millions, and particularly 
 with the surplus, after paying off the national debt. The 
 most important errors in this calculation were, that of the 
 70 millions of annual income, 20 millions belonged to schools 
 and hospitals, which it had been unanirxiously agreed must be 
 maintained, and that even the other 50 millions were not 
 worth anything like thirty-three years' purchase. The Church 
 property was not all land ; much of it was in State paper, 
 debts, mortgages, and similar kinds of property, which were 
 now of very little value, and even the value of what lands 
 there were could not be kept to such a price when a very 
 large amount was at once thrown into the market. But the 
 ordinary laws of political economy were quite unknown to the 
 majority of the Assembly, which was quite prepared to vote a 
 yearly budget of 134 millions of livres for maintaining the 
 Church, in addition to 16 millions as compensation to monks 
 nuns, Jesuits, and members of other religious corporations, and 
 yet believed it was making a good bargain. On March 6 
 Necker came down to the Assembly, and stated that he would 
 need 2-50 millions for the coming year's expenses, in addition 
 to the regular revenue, and also told the Assembly that the. 
 Church lands were not selling at all well. In fact, every one 
 who wanted to purchase land hoped that by waiting he would 
 get it much cheaper, if not have it granted to him for nothing 
 at all. Meanwhile the peasants and small farmers were squat- 
 
358 How the Church Lands were sold. [chap. 
 
 ting on the lands of the Church and of the noblesse, and taking 
 possession of them without any title, or paying any rent. 
 
 On March 10 Bailly came down to the Assembly, and said 
 that the city of Paris was willing to purchase the Church 
 property within its walls, estimated at 140 millions of livres, 
 for 100 millions, and for the remaining 40 millions would build 
 a beautiful palace for the National Assembly. This was rather 
 too much even for the majority of the Assembly ; but it was 
 decreed that the municipality of Paris should be allowed to 
 undertake the sale of this Church property, and should receive 
 one-sixteenth of the proceeds of the sale for its own use. This 
 seemed a convenient way of getting rid of the Church pro- 
 perty, and on March 17 it was resolved that the 400 millions* 
 worth which had been ordered to be sold in the previous 
 December should be disposed of in the same manner, and that 
 at the same time 400 millions' worth of paper money, to be 
 redeemed by this sale, should be issued under the title of 
 assignats. They were intended by Mirabeau and Clavifere to 
 act as banknotes, and none were to be of less value than 
 fifty livres. In April the Assembly further agreed to take over 
 the debts of the Church, amounting to 149 millions of livres, 
 and it became obvious that, as the Church was also to have a 
 budget of 134 millions, it would make a good profit by getting 
 rid of its property. In April the assignats were accordingly 
 issued, and the stipulated portion of Church property handed 
 over to the municipalities, and it was soon perceived that 
 they did not intend to seU the Church lands at the best value 
 for the State, but in the most profitable manner for themselves. 
 They sold the lands which they had taken over, and it is to 
 be noticed that the first 400 millions' worth of Church property 
 disposed of consisted entirely of land, at a very low price, and 
 gave possession as soon as one small instalment had been paid. 
 Payment was also allowed to be made to the municipalities in 
 assignats, which were received at their nominal value, and 
 every reason was therefore given for speculators to try to 
 depreciate them, and to such efi'ect did they work, that by the 
 month of May, 1790, assignats were already depreciated ten 
 
xii.J Second Issue of Assignats. 359 
 
 per cent. By the month of August, 1790, there was again no 
 more money in the treasury, but plenty of municipal obliga- 
 tions ; for the municipalities did not pay the treasury in cash 
 for the Church lands they received, but in bonds issued by 
 themselves, which they did not intend to pay. The Church 
 property which had been sold was itself speedily depreciated 
 in value ; for it was the custom of the purchaser, as soon as he 
 had paid his first instalment, either in assignats or some old 
 depreciated State paper, to cut down the timber on his new 
 estate and get as much immediate profit out of it as possible 
 before the second instalment became due, at which time he 
 disappeared and went to buy more Church property in a distant 
 province. To such an extent had this spirit extended, that it 
 was a common thing for the purchasers of houses belonging to 
 the Church, in towns, to pull them down immediately and sell 
 the material for building purposes, by which they made a 
 good profit before the second instalment became due. During 
 the summer of 1790 many large fortunes were made by skilful 
 speculations in Church property, and the French became a 
 nation of gamblers. 
 
 When Necker informed the Assembly of the condition of 
 the treasury in August, he announced the fact in his usual 
 calm manner, and stated that the sale of the Church lands had 
 produced next to nothing, but that he hoped it would finally 
 produce a great deal, and made no suggestion as:- to the future. 
 Mirabeau, instigated as usual by Claviere, came to the rescue. 
 He said that in such an extremity recourse must be had to 
 Herculean expedients. There was no advantage in getting 
 small sums of money and spending them, and allowing the 
 national debt to increase unchecked. Something must be 
 done at once, and he proposed that eight hundred millions- 
 worth more of assignats should be immediately issued under 
 certain regulations. A decree must first be passed that there 
 shall never be more than twelve hundred millions of livres in 
 assignats in circulation at once, and that it was intended to 
 reduce that amount as quickly as possible. Such a decree of 
 the Assembly was necessary, according to Mirabeau, in order to 
 
360 Mirabeau on the Finances. [chap. 
 
 reassure the owners of assignats and prevent further machina- 
 tions on the stock exchange, and to secure the gradual reduction 
 of the amount, it should be further decreed that whenever an 
 assignat was paid into the treasury, whether by a munici- 
 pality or an individual, whether in payment of taxes, of debts 
 to the State, or for the purchase of Church lands, that assignat 
 should be at once burnt and no new one issued in its place. 
 Had that been done, the value of assignats would have been 
 effectually kept up, and if not always at par, they would not 
 have fallen below ten per cent, discount. The treasury would 
 not probably be very greatly relieved, but French credit would 
 rise. He next pointed out that the rate of exchange was 
 terribly against France, and that the amount of specie in the 
 country was rapidly diminishing, and declared emphatically 
 that uncertainty as to the future was destroying credit, and 
 that specie would continue to disappear until a system of good 
 government was firmly established. Mirabeau's motion for the 
 creation of new assignats was opposed by Talleyrand, who was 
 afraid of the effect of such a sweeping measure, by the Abbe 
 Maury as a matter of course, and by Dupont de Nemours, who 
 imfjlored the Assembly to reject his proposition and to try 
 to make up the deficit in the revenue by increased taxation 
 on land. Mirabeau elaborately explains and defends his 
 project, and suggests how it might be carried out in his 
 twenty-first note for the court,^ dated September 1, 1790. 
 " We cannot be too terrified," he writes, " at the prospect of 
 bankruptcy. The most powerful despotism cannot sustain its 
 shock. . . . Specie will not reappear until the horizon clears. 
 To prevent bankruptcy, order must be restored to the finances, 
 and perfect harmony established between the Assembly and 
 the finance ministry." By this he meant that such an under- 
 standing should be established between the minister of finance 
 and the financial committee of the National Assembly as had 
 been established between the minister for foreign affairs and 
 himself as reporter of the diplomatic committee. "Necker," 
 he continued, " will never direct the great operation of issuing 
 X Cwrespondxnce entre Mirabeau et La Marek, vcvL i. pp. 397-401. 
 
XII.] Resignation of Necker. 361 
 
 assignats as it ought to be directed. He did not conceive the 
 idea of them ; he is determined to oppose them, and he is no 
 longer acting in harmony with the Assembly. He no longer 
 governs public opinion. He was expected to do miracles, but 
 he could not break away from routine; his pride and his 
 prejudices have led him astray. His foresight never extends 
 beyond a single month." Necker, therefore, he tells the king, 
 must resign, and a new arrangement must be entered into at 
 the finance ministry. Then he passes to the general question, 
 and asks, " Is it possible to answer for the success of assig- 
 nats ? One can answer for nothing in a country like France, 
 a prey to many conflicting passions and prejudices. . . . An 
 administrator must be found who will devote himself to the 
 expedient of assignats so entirely as to be ready to expose 
 himself to the danger of failure. I only know one man who 
 would do this, the author of assignats — Clavifere." Clavifere, 
 he suggested, should become director of assignats ; for he be- 
 lieved in them, and would certainly do his best to make them 
 a financial success. Mirabeau's motion, in spite of much open 
 opposition and the secret opposition of Necker, was eventually 
 carried, mainly through the hearty support of the Marquis de 
 Montesquiou, the reporter of the financial committee. 
 
 The natural result was that Necker resigned on September 
 10, and left France unregretted. He is a strange iuitance 
 of the sort of man who gains popularity in quiet times and 
 loses it in times of revolution. In the July of 1789 there 
 was no more popular man in France than Jacques Necker ; 
 the news of his dismissal caused the capture of the Bastille. 
 He was venerated throughout the country, and believed to be 
 the only man who could make good the deficit which he had been 
 the first to reveal to the people of France. Now, in September, 
 1790, he left France without a word of regret from a single 
 person. He had shown himself unable to rise to the situation, 
 unable to devise expedients in an emergency, and quite devoid 
 of any original genius as a financier. Again and again Mirabeau 
 had shown what ought to be done, and that it was perfectly pos- 
 sible to arrange the finances ; but Necker was too puffed up with 
 
3^2 The Assembly s Financial Policy. [chap. 
 
 conceit and too utterly devoid of any capacity to perceive the 
 greatness of Mirabeau. He was succeeded, not, as Mirabeau 
 had suggested, by Claviere, but by Lambert, who did nothing 
 in particular, and resigned after a month in office. 
 
 Besides discussing the great financial crises of September 
 and December, 1789, and March and August, 1790, it is neces- 
 sary to examine some other decrees of the Assembly which 
 affected the finances. Most important of all, the hated gabelle 
 and the wine and spirit duties were abolished on the motion 
 of Dupont de Nemours, speaking on behalf of the financial 
 committee, and excise duties in general were attacked. Strange 
 to say, the system of lotteries was maintained, and in September, 
 1790, one for ten millions of livres was drawn.- It can hardly 
 be wondered at, however, when it is remembered that a spirit 
 of universal gambling had seized upon France. The drain 
 which the city of Paris made upon the treasury still con- 
 tinued, and it has been estimated that no less than seventy-five 
 millions of livres were lent to Paris by the State and spent 
 on the purchase of corn ; but the people of Paris were never 
 satisfied, and the provinces were extremely jealous of the 
 assistance given to the capital. Another mistake of the 
 Assembly, or perhaps of the treasury, was in issuing five-franc 
 assignats, in spite of the decree that they should never be under 
 fifty livres in value. This measure was quite eflfective in 
 depriving France of small silver and even copper coins, just as 
 the issue of the larger assignats had driven away gold, but had 
 given very little assistance to the treasury. The result was 
 that even the workmen were now paid for their daily labour 
 in paper money, and that specie was more than ever hidden 
 away or buried until assignats should be still further depre- 
 ciated. On the whole, the year 1790 closed very gloomily from 
 a financial point of view, and there was every probability that 
 1791 would be signalized by a further issue of assignats, in 
 spite of all the arguments of Mirabeau in the previous August. 
 
 The economical condition of France after these violent 
 measures was not much worse at the end of 1790 than it had 
 been in 1789, for however much the State had sufl^ered, indi- 
 
XII.] Economic State of France. 363 
 
 viduals in the country had distinctly profited. A large amount 
 of land had changed hands, and there was the inevitable 
 appearance of an increase in trade, which is always perceptible 
 after a large issue of paper money. But the appearance was 
 only factitious, for when it is felt that the value of paper 
 varies from day to day and from hour to hour, business must 
 take a more or less speculative character. Paper money only 
 maintains its value when there is a general belief that it can 
 be exchanged readily at a moment's notice for specie. The 
 moment it ceases to be so exchangeable it ceases in value. 
 The example in England of the forced currency of Bank of 
 England notes at the beginning of the nineteenth century 
 proves that it is possible for paper money to maintain 
 ninety per cent, of its nominal value even when specie cannot 
 be obtained on demand. But then there must be, as there was 
 in England, a firm conviction that even if the specie cannot 
 be obtained on demand, there is good security in the policy of 
 the government that full value will ultimately be obtained ; 
 and such security was not felt by the people of France. The 
 abolition of feudal dues and of the internal custom-houses 
 had had a great economical effect on the northern part of 
 France, and especially on Paris. Much land had hitherto been 
 kept in pasture to escape the heavy duties on wheat; but 
 now that the price of wheat was high, and the douanes 
 abolished, every peasant and small farmer had his plot of arable 
 land. Such arable land could not be expected to yield a good 
 crop, even after a large amount of labour, in the first year, and 
 the result was that numbers of the peasants sincerely regretted 
 that they had exchanged their good cattle for weak wheat. 
 In the south of France it was rather the abolition of the wine 
 tax which had afiiected the peasant. Every peasant had a 
 mania for growing vines, as he has to the present day, be- 
 cause they are not difficult to keep in order, and extremely 
 profitable in a good year. The south of France therefore came 
 nearly entirely under vines towards the end of 1790, and such 
 vines grown on bad soil, planted at the wrong season, and 
 ignorantly managed, naturally produced but little profit to the 
 
364 The Marquis de Montesquiou. [chap. 
 
 peasant for the first year. These are but instances of the great 
 economic changes produced in the country by the abolition of 
 internal customs duties, and though, of course, they went too 
 far, yet they were in the right direction, and the peasant 
 thought it was better to grow poor wheat or cultivate poor 
 vines on his own plot of land than to slave his life out on a 
 little farm, which might be taken from him if he forgot some 
 trifling due, or neglected some regulation of his lord. The 
 two chief financiers, who worked out the details of the policy 
 which has been described in the financial committee, were the 
 Marquis de Montesquiou and Dupont de Nemours. 
 
 Anne Pierre Marquis de Montesquiou-Fdzensac, though he 
 sat upon the left of the Assembly, must not be confounded 
 with the young and enthusiastic noblemen who made them- 
 selves conspicuous on August 4, and had then followed the 
 triumvirate. He was a man of fifty in 1789 ; a mar^chal de 
 camp in the army, though he had not served in America ; an 
 academician, though no great philosopher ; a playwright and 
 a favourite in the salons of Paris; and, above all, he filled 
 the office of first equerry to Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, 
 and was one of that prince's most trusted friends, and supposed 
 to advocate his views in the Assembly. He came of a family 
 of old noblesse in the Pdrigord, which must not be confounded 
 with that of the great philosopher Montesquieu, who belonged 
 to a parliamentary family of Bordeaux, and he was bom in 
 Paris in 1739. He was brought up at court with the royal 
 children, and, after a few years' service in the household troops, 
 was appointed colonel of the Regiment du Vaisseau at the age 
 of twenty-two, and in 1771 first equerry to Monsieur. This 
 situation at court gave him position, and he soon made himself 
 a reputation in the salons of Paris as a society poet, and pro- 
 duced a comedy, " Le Minutieux," at the Comddie Fran9aise, 
 in 1777. In 1780 he was promoted mardchal de camp, and in 
 1784 he was made a knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost, 
 and elected a member of the Academic Fran^aise. In 1789 he 
 began to take a part in politics, made himself conspicuous in 
 the electoral assembly of the noblesse of the bailliage of Meaux, 
 
XII.] Dupont de Nemours. 365 
 
 where he proposed that the noblesse should surrender its 
 privileges in matters of taxation.^ He was, however, beaten 
 there by D'Aguesseau, but was eventually elected a deputy by 
 the noblesse of Paris, when his brother, the Abbd de Montes- 
 quiou-F^zensac, was elected by the clergy of the capital. From 
 the time of the opening of the States-General he showed 
 the liberal principles he had learnt at the court of Monsieur, 
 and as a fluent speaker he soon won the ear of the Assembly 
 after the union of the three orders. He did not know 
 anything at all about political economy, but was so ready 
 to speak on financial subjects that he was at once elected on 
 the financial committee of the Assembly, when it was insti- 
 tuted in July, 1789, and by it he was for the same reason 
 Boon appointed its reporter. Without any fixed opinions of his 
 own, he was ready to expound the ideas of the committee in 
 well-chosen words, and soon acquired a great reputation as a 
 financier. That a grand-seigneur of liberal ideas, indeed, and 
 a cultivated mind, should be chosen as the spokesman of the 
 Assembly on the great question of finance is yet another proof 
 of the straits to which the Constituent Assembly was reduced 
 by the fact that the special qualifications of the deputies were 
 not known by previous experience. The Marquis de Montes- 
 quiou's success made him ambitious, and, after the flight to 
 Varennes, he resigned his equerryship and threw in his lot 
 with the popular party. He received his reward, and, after 
 the dissolution of the Assembly, was appointed general com- 
 manding at Lyons, and in that capacity he invaded and 
 conquered Savoy in September, 1792. 
 
 Pierre Samuel Dupont, generally known as Dupont de 
 N emours, was a man of the same age as the Marquis de Mon- 
 te squiou, but he made his reputation as a political economist 
 and a physiocrat long before the commencement of the Revo- 
 lution. He had written his first economical articles in 1765, 
 and had edited the Ephemendes du Gitoyen, the organ of the 
 physiocrats, from 1768 to 1772. He had been in ofiice with 
 ^ Eistmre de Meaux ef du pays Mddoia, by A. Caxro, pp. 394, 395. 
 Meaux: 1865. 
 
366 Dupont de Nemours. [_chap. 
 
 his friend Turgot in 1774, and had been disgraced with him, 
 and had then lived by his pen until Vergennes, who knew his 
 value and his great reputation as a political economist abroad, 
 selected him to draw up the bases of the commercial treaty 
 with England with Dr. Hutton, the English representative, 
 and afterwards appointed him commissary-general of com- 
 merce. In 1787 he had acted as secretary to the Assembly 
 of Notables, and in 1789 had been elected deputy to the 
 States-General by the tiers ^tat of Nemours. He took his 
 •seat in the centre of the Assembly when parties began to 
 be defined, and voted for the two chambers and the suspen- 
 sive veto ; but he soon gave up speaking on political questions, 
 and devoted himself to finance, on which he was recognized 
 as an authority. He was delighted with the opportunity of 
 putting the physiocratic theories into practice, and eloquently 
 advocated free trade and the abolition of the gabelle ; but, 
 though a learned economist, Dupont was no statesman, and he 
 violently opposed Mirabeau's schemes in August, 1790, which 
 he looked upon with the eyes of a physiocrat and not of a 
 politician. His subsequent career was long and eventful. 
 After becoming a royalist journalist, he was hidden during the 
 Terror in the Observatory of Paris by the great astronomer 
 Lalande ; he then sat in the Council of Ancients, and narrowly 
 escaped deportation; after a sojourn in America, where he 
 became the friend of Jefi'erson, he acted as president of the 
 Chamber of Commerce under Napoleon; and on the Restoration 
 he again retired to America, and died at Delaware in 1817. 
 
 Such were the men who, with Necker, shared the reputa- 
 tion of being the three chief financiers of France. Both Dupont 
 and Montesquieu were decidedly abler men than Necker ; but 
 there was one abler than any of them — Mirabeau himself 
 Not only was he the greatest statesman of the Revolution, but 
 he was also its greatest financier, and many of the measures 
 by which in after years Clavifere and Cambon gained credit 
 are suggested in Mirabeau's notes to the court. Great he was, 
 because he saw that finance, to be successful, must be based on 
 the right understanding of the course of politics in times of 
 
XII. J Mirabeau as a Financier. 367 
 
 Revolution. Finance cannot be separated from politics, and 
 for Necker to attempt to carry on his little plans without 
 regard to broad considerations of political expediency was 
 utterly ridiculous. Mirabeau was unfortunately too occupied 
 in the management of the department of foreign aifairs to be 
 able to interfere much with the finances ; for, great man as he 
 was, it was impossible for him to manage every department of 
 the State. Yet his financial speeches, and his notes to the 
 court on the subject of the finances, will remain a testimony 
 that if he had not been the greatest statesman of his age he 
 would have been its greatest financier. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ITHE FRENCH AKMT AJSTD ITAVT. 
 
 Disaffection in the army before 1789— Disproportionate number of generals 
 — The household troops— The proprietary regiments— The foreign 
 regiments— The infantry— The artillery— The cavalry— The militia 
 and the colonial regiments— Large proportion of the great generals 
 of the republic and of Napoleon either officers or soldiers in the old 
 royal army — The military committee of the Assembly— Dubois- 
 Crancd proposes conscription— Dubois-Cranc^— The new military 
 constitution, its mistakes and its results— The Marquis de Bouill(5— 
 The affair of Nancy— Opinions in the Assembly and in the clubs 
 about it— Disorganization and want of disciphne continue in the 
 army — The French royal navy in 1789 — Riots at Toulon and Brest — 
 The naval committee of the Assembly and the new naval constitution 
 — Disaffection continues — The old royal army and navy destroyed, 
 and the new schemes abortive. 
 
 MiRABEAU, as has been seen, knew the importance for the 
 success of his great plan of the co-operation of the army, but 
 he had to recognize at last, in September, 1790, that the 
 French soldiers could not be depended upon, and that, if the 
 king was to have any protection whatever, the Swiss troops 
 must be formed into a corps d'armee, and collected round 
 the royal persoti under the command of La Marck. This was 
 practically a confession on Mirabeau's part that the whole of 
 the French soldiery had ceased to be loyal, and had become 
 attached to the new principles of the Revolution instead of to 
 the person of the king. The disaffection of both the officers 
 and the men of the French army towards Louis XVI. dated 
 back to the administration of the Comte de Saint-Germain, 
 
CHAP. XIII.] Disaffection in the Army. 369 
 
 who was Minister for War at the commencement of the reisni. 
 from 1775 to 1777. Saint-Germain was a man of great ability, 
 and understood that if the French army was to hold its own 
 against the armies of Prussia or Austria, the rigid discipline 
 which Frederick the Great had introduced into Europe must 
 be imitated in France. For this reason he had issued an 
 elaborate system of field-manoeuvres, and instituted a new 
 drill, which was extremely oppressive to the men and utterly 
 hateful to the officers, who had hitherto had plenty of leisure 
 in time of peace ; and had attempted to reform the Hotel des 
 Invalides and the military schools. He had further discontented 
 the soldiers by giving their officers the power of beating them 
 with the flats of their swords, and offended the court noblesse 
 by abolishing the Mousquetaires and other bodies of the 
 ceremonial household troops; and one of his successors, the 
 Mar^chal de S^gur, had also disgusted the new noblesse by 
 an edict published in 1781, that no one who did not count 
 sixteen quarters of nobility, or was not son of a knight of 
 St. Louis, could hold a commission in the army. The most 
 distinguished and accomplished young officers, who might under 
 other circumstances have warmly welcomed the reforms of the 
 Comte de Saint-Germain, soon had their loyalty affected by their 
 service in America during the War of Independence. After 
 serving side by side with the American colonists, who were 
 fighting to overthrow the authority of a king, they lost respect 
 for their own monarch, and brought home to France very 
 advanced ideas as to the obedience they owed him. This feel- 
 ing may be seen, not only in the behaviour and attitude of 
 Lafayette, but in that of Rochambeau, the Vicomte de Noailles, 
 the Lameths, the Prince de Broglie, Custines, and all the officers 
 who had served in America, except the Vicomte de Mirabeau. 
 In 1787 another vigorous attempt was made to introduce the 
 new drill into the French army by the Comte de Brienne as 
 War Minister, acting under the influence of the Due de Guines, 
 the Comte de Guibert, and the Comte de la Marck, who was 
 then inspector-general of infantry, and had carefuUy studied 
 the reforms introduced into the Austrian army by Marshal 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B 
 
370 Disaffection in the Army. [chap. 
 
 Lacy. These reforms proved again to be most distasteful to 
 the officers, and still more so to the men. In 1788 two great 
 camps of exercise were formed at Saint-Omer and at Metz,^ 
 under the command respectively of the Prince de Conde and 
 the Marechal de Broglie, in which an attempt was made to 
 develop the new system on a large scale. In these camps 
 the most mutinous language was held by both officers and 
 men. The young officers, headed by the Comte Charles de 
 Lameth, colonel of the Cuirassiers du Roi, declared that 
 Brienne, who was then in office, intended to overthrow French 
 liberty by Prussian discipline, and the Comte de Guibert was 
 held up to universal execration as the chief author of the 
 reforms. The men were equally mutinous, for Frenchmen 
 cannot stand the same amount of weary drill and minute 
 regulations as the more stolid Germans, and they were much 
 disgusted by the perpetual praise bestowed on the Swiss 
 regiments of Salis Samade and Diesbach, which were the first 
 to master the new drill. The Comte de Guibert felt the efl'ect 
 of his unpopularity in the electoral assembly of the noblesse 
 at Bourges,^ while the officers, who had distinguished them- 
 selves by their opposition to the new military organization, 
 were everywhere elected to the States-GeneraL 
 
 The excitement caused by the last new regulations only em- 
 phasized the general discontent of the army with Louis XVI., 
 which foreshadowed the probability that it would never 
 heartily obey him ; but there were far more deep-seated reasons 
 for its disaffection towards him. As in the Church, the higher 
 ranks in the army were overpaid and filled entirely by the 
 court noblesse, who regarded the army as a second convenient 
 institution for providing incomes for their younger sons. The 
 regulation of the Marechal de S6gur had greatly increased 
 the general discontent of the new nobility; but it must be 
 remembered that even before its promulgation members of 
 the poorer noblesse, unless they could somehow obtain court 
 influence, never did rise above the rank of captain, and had to 
 
 * Miot de Melito, Memoir es, vol. i. pp. 2-6. 
 
 * See vol. i. chap. i. p, 31. 
 
XIII.] The Household Troops. 371 
 
 retire, after twenty-five years' service, -with the cross of Saint- 
 Louis and a very small pension. Such a practice effectually 
 prevented the promotion of the officers best fitted to command 
 both regiments and armies, and if it had been pursued under 
 Louis XIV., Catinat, to mention no others of his great generals, 
 would never have been a marshal of France. The greedy 
 desire of the court noblesse to draw high pay had brought about 
 a ridiculous disproportion between the number of the superior 
 officers and of the men. When the Comte de Saint-Germain 
 came into office, there were no less than 1295 general officers 
 in the army, and though by 1789 this number had been re- 
 duced to 976, there was even then no less than one general for 
 every 157 men, and very few of these generals had ever seen 
 service. They were extremely well paid, while the men were 
 only supposed to receive ten sous a day, of which the greater 
 part never reached them. The French army in 1789 was 
 divided into three broad categories, each managed after a 
 difierent fashion — the household troops, the proprietary regi- 
 ments, and the ordinary regiments of the line. 
 
 The Maison du Roi, or household troops, a magnificent 
 body of men, well paid and splendidly attired, which had in 
 former days done good service in the field, especially at Det- 
 tingen and Fontenoy, had become long before 1789 the most 
 costly support of the royal dignity. Louis XVI. had none of 
 the love of display which had characterized his two immediate 
 predecessors, and had allowed the reforming wax ministers, 
 the Comte de Saint-Germain and the Comte de Brienne, to 
 suppress four of the corps, which had formed part of what 
 were called the household troops of the palace, as opposed to 
 the Gardes Franpaises and the Gardes Suisses. The four sup- 
 pressed corps were the Mousquetaires, divided into two com- 
 panies, the grey and the black, each consisting of seventeen 
 officers and 198 privates of noble birth ;^ the Chevau-legers, 
 commanded by the Due d'Aiguillon, with their gorgeous 
 uniforms of red, white, and gold, who used to accompany the 
 kint^'s carriage on ceremonial occasions ; the Gendarmes de la 
 Dubms-Granci, by Th. lung, vol. i. p. 60 note. Paris : 1884. 
 
372 The Household Troops. [chap. 
 
 Garde, commanded by the Prince de Soubise ; and the Gardes 
 de la Porte, who had had to do duty at the palace gates during 
 the day, commanded \)j the Comte de Vergennes. There 
 remained only of the household troops of the palace, after 
 these sweeping reforms, the Gardes du Corps, the Cent Suisses, 
 and the police of the palace. The police of the palace were an 
 unpretentious body of men, few in number, commanded by 
 the Marquis de Sourches, as grand provost of the palace ; and 
 the Cent Suisses were a purely ceremonial corps, commanded 
 by the Due de Coss6 Brissac, corresponding to the beef-eaters 
 or yeomen of the guard in England, which derived its origin 
 from the selection made by Louis XI. of a hundred trusty 
 Swiss from his Swiss Guards for the special protection of his 
 person, and whose uniform was an ancient blue, red, and gold 
 costume of that period, and their arms the old-fashioned 
 halberts and partisans. Far more important were the Gardes 
 du Corps, or body-guards of the king, who had to do duty in 
 the palace and defend the person of the king, and who showed 
 how well they understood that duty in the terrible night of 
 October 5. They were thirteen hundred in number, and every 
 private had to prove sixteen quarters of nobility, that is, four 
 generations without a mesalliance, while the officers were 
 chosen from the most famous families of France. The privates 
 ranked as sub-lieutenants and lieutenants in the army, and the 
 corporals as captains, while the officers were all generals. 
 They were divided into four companies, the Scotch,^ the Ville- 
 roy, the Luxembourg, and the Noailles, and were commanded 
 in 1789 by the Due d'Ayen, the Due de Guiche, the Due de 
 Luxembourg, and the Prince de Poix. However devoted they 
 might be, the Gardes du Corps were very insubordinate to their 
 officers, and, on the very eve of the Revolution, demanded the 
 restoration to rank of a corporal who had been degraded for pre- 
 senting a seditious memoir.^ The household troops of the palace 
 also included the two companies of the Gardes du Corps of 
 
 1 Tlu Scots Men-at-Arms aiid Life-Guards in France, from their forma- 
 tion to their final dissolution, by W. Forbes-Leith. Edinburgh : 1882 
 ' D'Hezecques, Souvenirs d'un Page le la Cour de Louis XVI. 
 
XIII. 1 The Household Troops. 373 
 
 Monsieur, consisting of a hundred gentlemen each, in a 
 blue and red uniform, commanded by the Due de L6vis and 
 the Comte de ChabriUant ; and the two companies of the 
 Gardes du Corps of the Comte d'Artois in green, commanded 
 by the Prince d'Hennin and the Chevalier de Crussol, to which 
 Jean Paul Marat had been physician from 1782 to 1786, who 
 did duty in the apartments of their princes, but were not 
 allowed to accompany them out of doors. Quite distinct from 
 these corps of gentlemen, though included among the household 
 troops, were the two regiments of the Gardes Frangaises and 
 the Gardes Suisses. The Gardes Franjaises had their barracks 
 in Paris, and only sent a detachment to mount guard outside the 
 palace walls at Versailles. Their chief duty was to maintain 
 order in Paris ; but discipline had been almost entirely neg- 
 lected during the colonelcy of the Marechal de Biron, who had 
 commanded the regiment ever since the battle of Fontenoy 
 in 1745. The officers hardly ever saw their men, and had no 
 sympathy with them, while the men lived as they liked ; and 
 Hoche, for instance, was enabled to eke out his slender pay 
 by drawing water for the market gardeners, which he found 
 so profitable that he used to pay a comrade to mount guard in 
 his place.-' An attempt had been made to remedy this state 
 of things by the Due du GhS,telet, who had succeeded the 
 Marechal de Biron as colonel of the regiment in 1788 ; but his 
 stern and capricious measures only drove the men to mutiny, 
 and prepared their minds to play the great and important 
 part they did in the early daj'^s of the Revolution.^ The 
 Gardes Suisses had been carefully preserved from the con- 
 tamination of life in Paris by having their barracks placed 
 at Courbevoie and Rueil, and they too only deserved the title 
 of household troops because they sent a detachment to do 
 external duty at the palace of Versailles. The privates were 
 all of Swiss birth, and were recruited in Switzerland by the 
 Swiss officers, who were descended from families which had 
 been for generations in the service of France, and who were 
 
 * Rousselin de Saint-Albin, Vie de Hoche, p. 13 
 
 * See chap. iv. p. 126, and chap. v. p. 132. 
 
374 The Proprietary Regiments. [chap. 
 
 not permitted to marry a French subject without the royal 
 permission. They were not, however, so efficient in 1789 as 
 they used to be ; for their colonel, the General Louis d'Affi-y, 
 w£is an old man in his seventy-sixth year, who had indeed 
 distinguished himself in the Italian campaign of 1735, in the 
 War of the Austrian Succession, and in the Seven Years' War, 
 but who during his long command of the regiment, lasting 
 over twenty-two years, had allowed many abuses, especially 
 with regard to the pay of the men, to grow up, and left the 
 active duties of his post to his lieutenant-colonel, the Baron 
 de Besenval. 
 
 Next to the household troops in trustworthiness, and gene- 
 rally in efficiency, were the twenty-seven proprietary regiments 
 sixteen of infantry, two of heavy cavalry, five of hussars, and 
 four of dragoons. These regiments were some of those which 
 had been raised by foreign princes or great French noblemen 
 during the reign of Louis XIV., and had been bequeathed by 
 them as personal property ; but the tendency in the eighteenth 
 century had been to reduce their number. The colonels were, 
 in the case of the foreign regiments, appointed by the foreign 
 monarchs who owned the regiments, or else were the proprie- 
 tors themselves, and these colonels presented a list of officers 
 to the War Office for the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and 
 appointed to the other ranks whoever they pleased. The 
 colonels were paid a fixed sum per annum with which to 
 clothe and arm their men and obtain recruits, and the owner- 
 ship of a regiment was a very valuable source of income, 
 when the commissions were sold and every possible profit 
 made. Occasionally, however, the proprietors, as in the case 
 of the Comte de la Marck, took great pride in their regiments, 
 and spent much money on them in obtaining the best recruits 
 and best possible equipment, and these regiments were the 
 very best in France. The chief proprietary regiments belong- 
 ing to foreign princes were the Royal Suedois (of which the 
 Comte de Fersen was colonel). Royal Bavifere, Royal Deux- 
 Ponts, Darmstadt, and Nassau, and the most important of 
 those belonging to French or foreign noblemen were the 
 
XIII. J The Foreign Regiments. 375 
 
 Esterhazy, Lauzun, and Berchiny hussars, the Montmorency 
 and La Rochefoacauld dragoons, and the infantry regiments 
 of La Marck, Bouillon, Rohan, Dillon, and Noailles. 
 
 The household troops and the proprietary regiments 
 only formed a small portion of the French army; the bulk 
 of the infantry and cavalry and the whole of the artillery 
 were under the entire control of the War Office, and it is by 
 examining them and their administration that the willingness 
 of the soldiery to assist and not to oppose the progress 
 of the Revolution can be best understood. First of all, it 
 must be noticed that there were many foreign regiments 
 in French pay which were not proprietary regiments, and 
 which must be excepted from the general rule that the army 
 was disaffected to the king. There were among them several 
 German regiments, such as the Royal Allemand cavalry, and 
 the Alsace and Salm-Salm infantry, which were recruited 
 entirely from Germans, though their officers were French and 
 appointed by the War Ofiice, and the difference of the language 
 they spoke to that of the people among whom they were 
 quartered kept them from joining in any insurrection against 
 the royal authority. The same argument hardly applies to 
 the Swiss regiments of Chateau- Vieux, Diesbach, SaHs 
 Samade, Reinach, Castella, and the rest; but even amongst 
 them the difference of nationality inclined them to obey 
 their officers, and to take no part in politics as long as they 
 were well treated. 
 
 The whole infantry consisted in 1789,^ including both 
 proprietary regiments and regiments of the line, but excluding 
 the Gardes Fran9aises and Gardes Suisses as forming part of 
 the Maison du Roi, of seventy-nine French and twenty-three 
 foreign regiments, together with twelve battalions of light 
 infantry, under the name of Chasseurs a Pied, instituted by 
 the Comte de Saint-Germain. Each regiment consisted of 
 two battalions, except the Regiment du Roi, which contained 
 four; and the infantry, on a peace footing, was estimated at 
 1 Sistoire de I'Infaaterie fran^aise, by 0. A. V. Susane. 6 vols. 
 1876, 1877. 
 
376 The Infantry. [chap. 
 
 about 133,000 men. The foreign regiments were eleven Swiss 
 (ia which, however, Germans, Poles, Swedes, and Danes were 
 allowed to enlist), eight German, three Irish, and one Italian, 
 and their attitude towards the people among whom they dwelt 
 has been noticed. The seventy -nine French regiments formed 
 the real bulk of the infantry of the French army. The titles 
 of all, except the proprietary regiments and those which had 
 such special names as the Regiments du Roi, de la Reine, de la 
 Couronne, Royal Marine, and Royal de Vaisseau, showed their 
 local origin, such as the Regiments de Touraine, de Saintonge, 
 de Guyenne, or Royal Auvergne, although they were no longer 
 specially recruited from the provinces from which they had 
 originally been raised. These French regiments were entirely ' 
 kept up by voluntary enlistment ; but irregular pay and bad 
 administration caused the recruiting sergeants to pick up the 
 very dregs of the people from the crimps who thrived in every 
 large town and especially in Paris,^ and the soldiers were, in 
 the emphatic words of such different men as Saint-Germain, 
 Mirabeau, and Dubois de Cranc^ little better than brigands. 
 Yet among these brigands were many men of a higher grade in 
 society, whom the fascination of a military life drew into the 
 ranks, such as Moncey and Bernadotte, the future marshals 
 of France, who were the sons of lawyers at Besan9on and 
 Pau, and who ran away from their law* studies to enlist in 
 the ranks. The internal arrangements of each regiment 
 were entirely in the hands of the colonel and officers, who 
 embezzled the men's pay and made money out of them if 
 they were avaricious, who tyrannized over them if they were 
 cruel, and who neglected them if they did nothing worse. The 
 commissariat arrangements were in the hands of the " adminis- 
 tration of the army," a department as badly managed as the 
 rest ; the men had to sleep three in a bed, they were allowed 
 a few sous occasionally instead of food, and the barracks were 
 left utterly uncared for. The wonder is, not that the soldiers 
 
 1 For a curious account of the crimps of Paris, their various stratagems 
 for ensnaring recruits, and their haunts near the Pont Neuf, see Mercier's 
 TaUecm de Paris, part i. pp. 51-53 in the London edition of 1781. 
 
xiii.] The Artillery. 377 
 
 were brigands, but that so many of them were capable of 
 learning in such an army the elements of true military educa- 
 tion, and that, instead of being utterly degraded, they were 
 able to retain the elements of the military efficiency which made 
 them the nucleus of the splendid armies of the Republic and 
 Napoleon. It has been noticed how that, in June, 1789, the 
 soldiers of the French regiments had everywhere fraternized 
 with the people, and that in July the Marechal de Broglie had 
 had to recognize that not even the foreign regiments could be 
 relied upon. This feeling of disaffection steadily increased 
 during 1790, and even Mirabeau had to acknowledge that, for the 
 accomplishment of his purposes, the army could not be counted 
 an element of strength, but of weakness, to the royal cause. 
 
 Maladministration was not so rife in the artillery^ and 
 engineers, but the greater degree of knowledge required by 
 both officers and men in these scientific corps, while it made 
 their pay higher, yet made them think more about the de- 
 graded state into which the army had sunk, and made them 
 support with the ardour of thinking men, not with the senti- 
 mental enthusiasm of the infantry, the cause of the Revolution. 
 At a very early date it was observed that the gunners of the 
 National Guard, not only in Paris, but in the provincial cities, 
 who were nearly always old artillerymen, were the most 
 advanced republicans in the country, and their comrades of 
 the artillery of the line shared their sentiments. The artiUery 
 of the line consisted of seven regiments of two battalions 
 each, and the sappers and miners of fifteen companies, forming 
 a force of eleven thousand men, with nine hundred officers, 
 under the command or rather the inspector-generalship, of 
 the Comte de Gribeauval, in which the men and officers were 
 in complete sympathy with each other. The officers had 
 received a more thorough education than in the cavalry and 
 infantry, and were generally drawn from the ranks of the 
 poorer noblesse, for the cadets of the wealthier families did 
 not care for the hard work and simple uniform ; and therefore 
 these officers in a body had to look to their profession alone 
 1 Hiatcdre de I'Artillerie framfaiee, by C. A. V. Susane. Paris : 1874. 
 
378 The Cavalry. [chap. 
 
 for advancement, and enthusiastically supported schemes and 
 ideas of reform which would give them a fair chance of 
 promotion, and not confine the higher ranks of the army to 
 the court noblesse. To mention but a few of the artillery- 
 men and engineers who afterwards gained fame, not only 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, but Law of Lauriston, Senarmont, and 
 Montri chard, were all lieutenants iu the artillery in 1789 ; 
 Pichegru was adjutant-sous-officier, and Claude Perrin, after- 
 wards Marshal Victor, Joubert, and Verdier, had served in its 
 ranks ; while Meusnier de la Place was a lieutenant-colonel, 
 and Marescot, Cafiarelli du Falga, Camot, and C. A. Prieur- 
 Duvernois all lieutenants in the royal engineers. 
 
 The cavalry regiments^ showed exactly the opposite spirit ; 
 for it is a peculiar fact, which cannot be satisfactorily accounted 
 for, that cavalry soldiers have at all times and in all countries 
 been attached to monarchy and even tyranny. The French 
 cavalry consisted, in 1789, of twenty-six regiments of cavalry 
 proper (who were all cuirassiers, or heavy cavalry, except the 
 two battalions of carbineers), eighteen of dragoons, twelve of 
 chasseurs a cheval, and six of hussars, and amounted in all to 
 two hundred and six squadrons, or about twenty-six thousand 
 men. Eleven of these regiments were proprietary, and a 
 source of great pride to their owners ; but, even in those which 
 were under the direct control of the War Office, the spirit of 
 disaffection had made but slight progress, and it will be seen 
 that, when the spirit of emigration spread, whole cavalry 
 regiments deserted and showed their willingness to fight 
 against France. 
 
 This French regular army was recruited by voluntary en- 
 listment, that is, by means of crimps; but it was otherwise 
 with the militia, consisting of thirteen regiments of royal 
 grenadiers, sixteen provincial regiments, and seventy-eight 
 garrison battalions, 55,000 men in all, which was recruited by 
 conscription in the country districts. This conscription, from 
 which Paris was free by old prescription, was a terrible burden 
 
 1 Histoire de la Cavalerie frangaise, by 0. A. V. Susane. 3 vols. Paris ; 
 1874. 
 
XIII.] The Colonial Regiments. 379 
 
 upon the poorest dass of agriculturists, for not only were the 
 noble free from it, but any one with a little money could bribe 
 the municipal or the village officers, or come under one of the 
 thirty-nine classes of exemption,^ and then the lot would not 
 fall upon their sons. They had only to serve for seven years, 
 but during those years they were treated far worse even than the 
 ordinary infantry regiments. Worst of all, however, was the 
 condition of the colonial regiments. To fill their ranks men 
 were kidnapped and carried off by force, and suspected crimi- 
 nals were generally sent ofi" to San Domingo, the Mauritius, 
 or Pondicherry, as recruits. The Marquis de Sillery used very 
 strong language on this subject in the Constituent Assembly. 
 " The recruiting for the colonial regiments is managed," he 
 said, "with the concurrence of the lieutenant of police of 
 Paris. The citizens themselves assist in this vicious arrange- 
 ment, for they request him to enrol for the colonies any 
 children of whose conduct they may have to complain. These 
 young exiles, after serving their time, dare not return to the 
 country which has rejected them, and form that parasite class 
 called the mean whites, which has become one of the most 
 dangerous plagues of the colonies."^ The words of Sillery 
 were but too true, as the whole history of the French Revo- 
 lution in the colonies too plainly showed. 
 
 It is curious, after this examination of the state of the 
 French army in 1789, to see how many of the future great 
 generals of the Republic and of Napoleon were serving, or had 
 served, in the army of the ancien regime. Napoleon himself 
 was a second lieutenant in the artillery regiment of La Fere, 
 and was hard at work on his history of Corsica, with his eyes 
 turned rather upon the destinies of that little island than of 
 the great kingdom he was so soon to rule; and of the four 
 greatest generals of the Republic, Dumouriez was mardchal de 
 camp, a grade corresponding to that of an English major- 
 general, commanding at Cherbourg; Pichegru was adjutant-sous- 
 
 1 See these classes in Da JVance en 1789, by Alfred Pizard, pp. 238-240. 
 Paris: 1882. 
 
 2 Bonaparte et son temps, by Th. lung, vol. i. p. 132. Paris ; 1880. 
 
3S0 Great Generals serving in the Royal Army. £chap. 
 
 officier, the highest rank a non-commissioned officer could reach, 
 in the 1st Artillery ; Hoche was a sergeant in the Gardes 
 Fran§aises ; and Moreau alone was not in the army. The same 
 proportion of old soldiers appears in an examination of the 
 careers of the twenty-four French marshals of France ap- 
 pointed by Napoleon. Eighteen of them had served in the 
 royal army, eight as officers and ten in the ranks. The eight 
 ex-officers were Kellerman, who was mar^chal de camp ; Alex- 
 andre Berthier, a lieutenant-colonel attached to the head- 
 quarters staff; Serrurier, major in the Regiment de Beauce; 
 Perignon, sub-lieutenant in the garrison battalion of the 
 Lyonnais ; Macdonald, sub-lieutenant in the Regiment de 
 Dillon; Davout, sub-lieutenant in the Champagne cavalry; 
 Marmont, who received a commission in the garrison battalion 
 of Chartres in 1790, from which he exchanged into the ar- 
 tillery ; and Moncey, who, after serving in the ranks of the 
 Regiment de Conti, the Champagne infantry, and the Gen- 
 darmes of the Household, had received a commission as lieu- 
 tenant, not in the regular army, but in the legion of volunteers 
 of Nassau-Siegen, which, after the failure of the attempt on 
 Jersey in 1782, became the Chasseurs Cantabres. The ten 
 marshals of Napoleon who rose from the ranks of the ancient 
 army included the very greatest of his generals and two kings. 
 Five of them had retired before 1789, and owed their sub- 
 sequent promotion in the armies of the Republic to their 
 election to the command of volunteer battalions, and five were 
 still in the ranks. Augereau, after serving, according to some 
 authorities, in the Bourgogne cavalry, and, according to others, 
 in the Carbineers or in the dragoons of Artois, had entered the 
 Neapolitan army as sergeant-instructor, and afterwards estab- 
 lished himself as a fencing-master at Naples; Jourdan, after serv- 
 ing in the ranks through the American War of Independence 
 in the Regiment d Auxerrois, had become a draper at Limoges ; 
 Mass^na had retired from the Regiment Royal Italien as 
 adjutant-sous-officier in 1788 ; Gudinot had retired as a cor- 
 poral after serving in the Regiment de Medoc ; and Claude 
 Perrin, afterwards Marshal Victor, also quitted the service 
 
xiii.j Great Generals setvin^ in the Royal Army. 381 
 
 after attaining the same rank in the 4th or Grenoble regiment 
 of artillery in 1788.^ The five future marshals stiU in the 
 ranks in 1789 were Murat, private in the Chasseurs des Ar- 
 dennes; Bernadotte, sergeant-major in the Regiment Royal 
 Marine j Lefebvre, senior sergeant in the Gardes Franpaises ; 
 Soult, corporal in the Royal Infanterie ; and Ney, private in 
 the Colonel-General hussars. The proportion of former officers 
 and soldiers appears still more' markedly among the great 
 generals of the Republic. Besides Dumouriez and Bonaparte, 
 Montesquiou, Custines, Menou, Houchard, Dugommier, Dam- 
 pierre, Anselme, Barbentane, Canclaux, Schdrer, Dumerbion, 
 Kilmaine, Aubert-Dubayet, Latour-Maubourg, Desaix, Grouchy, 
 Baraguay d'Hilliers, Montbrun, and Dupont had all held com- 
 missions before 1789 ; while Marceau, Moreaux, Joubert, 
 Souham, Lecourbe, Vandamme, Bonet, Friant, Rapp, Doppet, 
 Rey, Richepanse, Verdier, Grenier, and Lapisse had all served, 
 or were still serving, in the ranks. The only important gene- 
 rals, always with the great exception of Moreau, who did not 
 learn their military education in the army of the monarchy, 
 were Kldber and Laharpe, who had held commissions in the 
 Austrian and Swiss armies respectively ; and such young men 
 as Bessiferes, Suchet, and Lannes, who were not twenty years 
 of age in 1789, but whose military tastes would certainly have 
 made them volunteer whenever a war broke out. Further excep- 
 tion might have been with regard both to Brune and Gouvion 
 Saint Cyr, who became marshals of Napoleon, but even in their 
 case the same argument of youth holds good, and admirers of 
 the ancien regime may fairly boast that the old French army 
 could not have been of such bad quality as has been com- 
 monly believed, and that if republican France produced the 
 soldiers, which defended her against the combined armies of 
 Europe, it was monarchical France which had trained and 
 disciplined the great generals, without whose skill all the 
 valour of the soldiers would have been useless. And it was 
 
 1 According to the Mats de service, published in Gavard's Galerie des 
 marechaux de France, 1839, however, Massdna did not quit the army until 
 September 30, 1789, and Victor not till March 1, 1791. 
 
382 Sympathy of the Soldiers with the People, [chap. 
 
 not only ge~nerals but administrators also that the old army- 
 supplied to republican France and to Napoleon. Not only 
 were Carnot and Prieur-Duvernois, the two military members 
 of the Great Committee of Public Safety, officers in the royal 
 army ; but the members of the topographical committee which 
 assisted them, d'Arjon, Montalembert, and Laffitte-Clav^ and 
 the great war ministers who preceded and succeeded them, 
 Louis de Narbonne, Servan, Boiichotte, Milet de Mureau, 
 Clarke, and Lacuna de Cessac, were all ofBcers, while Pdtiethad 
 been a commissary, and the real organizer of the republican 
 army Dubois de Craned had served in the Mousquetaires. 
 
 Such was the condition of the French army in 1789 
 containing many great men and great soldiers, whose value 
 was to become evident to all the world, but for the time 
 utterly worthless both for foreign war and the maintenance 
 of peace at home from its vicious organization. The dis- 
 inclination of the soldiers to obey their officers, and their 
 disposition to fraternize with the people, had shown itself in 
 the summer of 1789. The Gardes Fran9aises could not be 
 trusted, even in May, to put down the Reveillon riot,^ and had, 
 after the taking of the Bastille, been suppressed as a corps of the 
 household troops, and had become the paid battalion of the 
 National Guard of Paris ; ^ the Regiment d'Artois had in July 
 refused to fire on the people of Rennes,^ and had mounted the 
 tricolour cockade; the R(5giment de Bretagne * refused to 
 interfere with the rioters who attacked the Hotel de Ville 
 at Strasbourg ; and in August the Royal Dragoons had been 
 obliged to leave Troyes for fear that they would come to 
 blows with the infantry regiment there, which had fraternized 
 with the people.^ It was necessary that the Assembly should 
 at once take some step to put down this state of anarchy in 
 the army, and on September 30, 1789, it was decided to elect 
 a military committee of twelve, which should draw up, with 
 the Minister of War, the Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin Gouvernet, 
 a new military constitution. On October 3 the committee 
 I Chap. iv. p. 124. 2 chap. v. p. 156. s ohap. vi. p. 170. 
 
 ♦ md., p. 186. 6 Ibid., p. 183. 
 
XIII.] The Military Committee. 383 
 
 was elected, and consisted of eleven officers or ex-officers in 
 the army, and one avocat, Emmery, deputy for Metz. The 
 eleven officers were the Comte d'Egmont, lieutenant-general ; 
 the Vicomte de Panat ; the Marquis de Rostaing ; the Baron de 
 Wimpfen; the Baron de Flachslanden ; the Comte de Gomer 
 and the Marquis de Bouthillier, marechaux de camp, or major- 
 generals, who had all served in the Seven Years' War; the 
 Vicomte de Noailles and the Baron de Menou, colonels and 
 comrades of Lafayette in America ; Mirabeau, who had served 
 with the Regiment Royal Comtois in the subjugation of 
 Corsica, and been made an unattached captain of dragoons ; 
 and Dubois de Craned, who had belonged to the Mousquetaires 
 before their suppression. To them were afterwards added the 
 Marquis d'Ambly and the Marquis de Crillon, marechaux de 
 camp ; Colonel the Chevalier Alexandre de Lameth ; and Bu- 
 reaux de Pusy, captain in the engineers. From a committee in 
 which the majority were general officers of rank great schemes 
 of reform could not be expected, and on November 19 the 
 Marquis de Bouthillier, as reporter of the newly formed military 
 committee, read a report confirming the system of voluntary 
 enlistment for the army, and the Minister of War agreed 
 with the conclusions of the report on December 12. 
 
 It was then that Dubois de Cranc6 rose, and protested against 
 this conclusion in a vigorous speech, in which he laid down 
 the principle of conscription as the only possible means to 
 maintain a truly national army. " I tell you," he said, " that 
 in a nation which desires to be free, which is surrounded by 
 powerful neighbours and harassed by factions, every citizen 
 ought to be a soldier, and every soldier a citizen, if France 
 is not to be utterly annihilated. . . . How is it possible to 
 make a man march forth to battle whose indolence has 
 driven him into the ranks, who has in many cases become a 
 soldier to avoid the penalties of the law, who in fact has sold 
 his liberty for a price, side by side with the man who has 
 taken up arms to defend his liberty ? ... It is necessary to 
 establish a truly national conscription, which should include 
 every one from the second man in the empire in rank down to 
 
384 Dubois de Cranci. [_chap. 
 
 the last active citizen. ... If you once allow the system of 
 substitutes ... the profession of arms will again be despised ; 
 despotism wiU profit by it, and you will once more become 
 slaves. ... I now declare it to be an axiom that in France 
 every citizen ought to be a soldier, and every soldier a citizen, 
 or else we shall never have a constitution." ^ The ex-mous- 
 quetaire was supported in his conclusions by the Baron de 
 Menou, but was violently opposed, on December 15, by the 
 Due de Liancourt, the Due de Biron, and Mirabeau ; and when 
 Bureaux de Busy declared that conscription would be an 
 infringement of the rights of man, his case was lost, and on 
 December 17 the Assembly decreed that the French soldiers 
 of every arm should be enlisted as before, by voluntary 
 enrolment, for a fixed sum of money. But the speech of 
 Dubois de Crance remained in men's memories, and the time was 
 to come when his idea of a national conscription was obliged 
 to be adopted in order to save France from her enemies. 
 
 Edmond Louis Alexis Dubois de Granc6,^ the man who 
 first conceived the idea, which has changed the face of Europe, 
 of making every able-bodied citizen serve a certain period in 
 the army, and then form part of a national militia to be 
 available in time of serious peril, came of a good bourgeois 
 family in Champagne, and was born at Charleville, on October 
 17, 1747. He was the youngest of the fourteen children of 
 Germain Dubois de Crance, who had been first a commissary 
 and then an intendant of police and finance in the administra- 
 tion of the army, and had served twelve campaigns in those 
 capacities, and he was therefore accustomed to hear of military 
 matters from his childhood. His eldest brother had served as 
 a captain in the Dauphin cavalry, and had had his leg broken at 
 the battle of Crefeld and had eventually died from his wound, 
 a lieutenant-colonel and a kuight of St. Louis ; the second had 
 become a pi'iest and a canon in the cathedral of Chalons ; 
 
 1 lung's Duhois-Cranc6, vol. i. pp. 16-28. 
 
 2 Duhois-Craiici, mouaquetaire, constituant, conventionnel, giniral de 
 division, ministre de la guerre, by Th. lung, Colonel d'Artillerio. 2 vols. 
 Paris: 1884. 
 
XIII.] Dubois de Craned. 385 
 
 the third entered the administration of the army and became 
 a commissary, and spent two years in England as a prisoner of 
 "war ; "while the fourth entered the engineers. Edmond Louis 
 Alexis "was naturally also destined for the army, and in 1765, 
 before completing his fifteenth year, he entered the Grey 
 Mousquetaires, one of the noble corps in the Maison du Roi, 
 through the influence of his uncle Dubois de Loisy, "who held 
 the important court position of esquire to the Dauphine. He 
 remained in the Mousquetaires until their suppression in 1775, 
 and had among his companions in the company Alexandre de 
 Beauharnais ; the Marquis de Rostaing, "who "was to be his 
 colleague on the military committee of the Constituent 
 Assembly ; Jacques Coustard, the future member of the Con- 
 vention ; and De Grave, "who "was to hold office for a few 
 months as war minister. His early years at court were made 
 uncomfortable by a process, instituted by some of the inhabit- 
 ants of Chalons, to prove that the Dubois de Crancds had no 
 right to the letters of noblesse which had been taken out 
 in 1739. The case was tried, and in 1765 the sieurs Dubois 
 de Craned were forbidden to assume the title of noble, esquire, 
 or chevalier. This decree, however, did no harm to the young 
 mousquetaire, for from the ser-vnces of his father and grand- 
 father he was noble for military service, while it enabled him 
 in after years to take his seat in the States-General as a deputy 
 of the tiers etat. The troubles of this lawsuit had caused the 
 death of the old intendant of the army, and in 1764 Edmond 
 Louis Dubois de Cranc6 inherited the fine estate of Balham- 
 sur-Aisne from his father, with 80,000 livres. This fortune 
 enabled him to cut a good figure among his comrades at 
 court ; but he avoided excesses, and spent his leisure in reading 
 and dreaming. In 1772 he married an heiress. Mademoiselle 
 Marie Catherine de Montmeau, and on the suppression of the 
 Mousquetaires he retired to Balham and began to lead the 
 life of a country gentleman. His wealth made him able to do 
 good and his manners made him popular, and he was at once 
 elected a deputy to the States-General by the tiers 6tat of the 
 bailliage of Vitry-le-Franjais. At Versailles he soon made his 
 OL. I. • 2 
 
386 The New Military Constitution. [chap. 
 
 mark ; he warmly supported the vote " par tete ; " he was elected 
 a member of the financial and military committees, and on 
 November 24 secretary of the Assembly ; so that it was no 
 unknown man who, on December 12, demanded a national 
 conscription for the army. But Dubois de Crance was before 
 his time ; the Constituent Assembly were afraid to adopt his 
 grand schemes, and it was not until the days of the Convention, 
 when France had become a republic, that he could carry out 
 his great ideas. 
 
 The military committee of the Assembly did a great work 
 in laying down the basis of a new French armj^ but the 
 Assembly itself, by dwelling upon its favourite theories of 
 social equality and the rights of man, effectually destroyed 
 whatever respect for discipline was left, and entirely overthrew 
 the efficiency of the old army while laying the basis of the 
 new one. It waS decreed that the Maison du Roi should be 
 abolished and replaced by a " Garde Constitutionelle," con- 
 sisting of twelve hundred foot and six hundred horse, chosen 
 in the departments from among the sons of the active citizens, to 
 guard the king's person ; that the Gardes Suisses should remain 
 a separate corps, under the command of an inspector-general ; 
 and that the former Gardes Fran9aises should be split up into 
 three regiments of infantry of the line, two battalions of 
 chasseurs, and two of gendarmerie. Further, on the motion of 
 the Marquis de BouthiUier, it was decreed that the French 
 army should consist of 150,000 men with the colours recruited 
 by voluntary enlistment and receiving a fixed rate of pay ; that 
 one-fourth of the sub-lieutenancies should be fiUed by promo- 
 tion from the ranks, and the other three-fourths by examination 
 after a course in a military college ; that promotion to the rank 
 of lieutenant and captain should go by seniority in the regiment 
 and to the higher ranks by seniority in the army and selection, 
 and that there should be only ninety-four general officers in the 
 army instead of nearly a thousand. The militia was abolished 
 and replaced by a new gendarmerie to maintain order, and the 
 regiments of the regular army were to lose their old titles and 
 be known by numbers alone So far all was good, but all 
 
XIII.] The New Military Constitution. 387 
 
 power of maintaining discipline in this new army was ex- 
 tinguished by the Assembly's mistaken determination to look 
 upon a soldier as a citizen, possessing all the privileges of 
 citizenship. It was with difficulty that the deputies were 
 prevented from allowing the soldiers votes, and it was univer- 
 ' saUy agreed that they should be amenable to the civil courts, 
 except in regard to strictly military offences. The majority 
 in the Assembly was also greatly afraid of the necessary power 
 which must be possessed by the officers over their men ; the 
 regimental treasury was to be under the direct control of a 
 board consisting of two officers and three men elected by their 
 comrades, and soldiers were always to be allowed to appeal 
 to the nearest magistrate against their commanding officer. 
 Finally, the regiments were to be always at the beck and call 
 of the municipal authorities of the district or city in which 
 they were stationed, and the men were to be allowed to form 
 associations and clubs, and send petitions up to the Assembly. 
 In vain did Mirabeau protest that a soldier ceased for the time 
 being to be a citizen. In vain did he argue that for an army 
 to be efficient it must be disciplined, and that power must be 
 given to the officers to enforce discipline ; for the Assembly, 
 under the influence of their sentimental feelings, insisted on 
 the annihilation of all military subordination. The result of 
 this policy, added to the former feelings of discontent in the 
 ranks which had appeared in the summer of 1789, was to 
 weaken the army tremendously and make it utterly mutinous, 
 as numerous military riots and mutinies proved up to the time of 
 the affair at Nancy, which at last opened the eyes of the radical 
 deputies to the complete disorganization of the army. Desertion 
 increased to an incredible extent, for not only were deserters 
 not punished, but they were warmly received either as sergeant- 
 instructors or as simple" sergeants by the National Guards of 
 different cities, and protected by the municipal authorities. 
 To such an extent had desertion increased, that it was estimated 
 that thirty thousand soldiers left their regiments between 
 July and October, 1789. The municipality of Paris took three 
 hundred artillerymen of the Regiment de Toul into its pay 
 
388 Insubordination in the Army. [chap. 
 
 as paid gunners of tlie National Guard. Even officers took 
 advantage of the general laxity, and Lieutenant Napoleon 
 Bonaparte extended his three months' sick leave to a year, 
 while he planned attacks upon the citadel of Ajaccio. At Lille, 
 the regiments Eoyal de Yaisseau and de la Couronne came 
 to blows with the chasseurs de ISTormandie and the hussars 
 Colonel-General ; ' at Mmes, the soldiers of the Eegiment 
 de Guyenne tore off many white cockades ; the Eegiment de 
 Poitou arrested its colonel ; the Regiment de Languedoc refused 
 to leave Montauban ; the Regiment de Salm-Salm demanded 
 its chest at Metz; and the soldiers of the Royal Champagne 
 cavalry mutinied at Hesdin because the officers did not ask 
 them to dinner ! All these occurrences showed how things 
 were going ; but far more important in itself and in its results 
 was the affair of Nancy, after which all eyes were turned to 
 the Marquis de Bouill^, the court with enthusiastic hope, the 
 Jacobins with distrust and even terror, and the lovers of order 
 with satisfaction tempered with doubt. 
 
 Fran9ois Claude Amour, Marquis de Bouill^^ was certainly 
 one of the most distinguished generals in the service of France, 
 and had won great fame in the West Indies during the 
 American War of Independence, and his strong royalist prin- 
 ciples were so well known that it was universally expected 
 that if the army declared for the king, he would be the general 
 chosen to command it. He was born at Cluzel, in Auversne 
 in 1739, and fought his way up from a captaincy to a colonelcy 
 in the Seven Years' War. In 1768 he had been appointed 
 governor of the island of Guadeloupe, and in 1777 governor- 
 general of the Windward Islands, with his head-quarters at 
 Martinique. As soon as France decided to take an active part 
 in the American War of Independence, Bouill^ began to dis- 
 tinguish himself He took the island of Dominica, and was 
 promoted mar^chal de camp in 1778. He captured from the 
 
 1 Histoire de Lille et de la Flandre waMonne, by Victor Derode, vol. iii. 
 pp. 28-31. LUle : 1848. 
 
 2 Essai sur la vie du Marquis de Bouille, by his grandson, E&e de 
 BouiUe. Paris : 1853. 
 
XIII.] The Marquis de BouilU. 389 
 
 English during the following years Tobago, St. Eustache, St. 
 Kitt's, Nevis, and Montserrat, and was rewarded for his services 
 in 1784; by the rank of lieutenant-general and the Order of the 
 Holy Ghost. He had then been appointed governor of Metz 
 and commander-in-chief of the troops in the Messin, one of the 
 most important commands in France, from its proximity to the 
 eastern frontier. He had shown his attachment to the ancien 
 regime in the Assembly of Notables, and was warmly attached 
 to the king personally, and had been known to express a 
 very strong opinion in condemnation of the events of October 
 5 and 6. Lafayette knew his power and importance, and had 
 done all he could to make friends with him both in Paris and by 
 a special journey to Metz ; but Bouill6's firm loyalty kept him 
 from having any confidence in the commander-in-chief of the 
 Paris National Guard. Mirabeau strongly believed in BouilM, 
 and that he would be ready to help the king if called upon, 
 and the Jacobins distrusted him because they held the same 
 opinion ; but whatever his political ideas were, he was too 
 thorough a soldier and too good a general to allow any relaxation 
 of discipline., His firmness was severely tried by the conduct 
 of certain of the regiments of his garrison ; he had to punish 
 the Regiment de Picardie, and to meet a yet more formidable 
 mutiny in the Regiment de Salm-Salm, which demanded its 
 military chest, on which occasion the dragoons of Conde had 
 refused to charge, and he had crushed both mutinies by firmness 
 alone. BouilM had, in the early days of the Revolution, been 
 hated by all classes in Metz ; but he had ended by becoming 
 very popular after taking the oath to the Constitution and 
 saving the life of a citizen from a burning house, and had been 
 elected commander-in-chief of the National Guard of Metz, a 
 post which he refused. It was necessary that some attempt 
 should be made to restore discipline to the army. The War 
 Minister, the Marquis de la Tour-du-Pin Gouvernet, read a 
 report to this effect on August 6. " In the last few weeks 
 want of discipline has made threatening progress. Every day 
 deputations of soldiers bring petitions to the ministry without 
 the permission of their superior officers, containing the results 
 
390 The Affair of Nancy. [chap. 
 
 of the deliberations of their comrades, whom they call their 
 constituents. Everywhere the soldiers wish to carry off the 
 regimental treasure in order to divide it, and I have no doubt 
 that the evil will not stop there ; if they unite with the 
 populace the soldiers wiU soon make every city tremble, and 
 perhaps a portion of the kingdom. The danger is close at hand, 
 for seven regiments have already united and formed a military 
 congress."^ The Constituent Assembly, frightened at this 
 picture, revoked the decree allowing soldiers to form clubs and 
 deliberate, and the news of a serious mutiny at Nancy caused 
 every one to look towards Bouil]6 to see what he would do, 
 and towards the Assembly to wonder if it would sanction 
 vigorous measures on the general's part. 
 
 The city of Nancy, the ancient capital of Lorraine, was 
 garrisoned by the Regiment du Eoi, the only regiment in 
 the service with four battalions, the Swiss regiment of 
 Ch^teau-Vieux, so called from the name of its commanding 
 officer, and the cavalry regiment of Mestre de Camp.^ The 
 soldiers of all the regiments had been on very friendly terms 
 with the people of Nancy, and had cordially co-operated in 
 two great federative ceremonies on April 19 and July 14; 
 but great discontent existed among the soldiers of the 
 Regiment du Roi, which had been commanded up to 1788 by 
 the Due du Chateiet, whose occasional fits of iU-timed severity 
 produced the same feeling of disaffection among his men at 
 Nancy as they afterwards did among the Gardes Fran^aises. 
 By July, after the ceremony of the federation, this disaffection 
 had reached its height, and thirty soldiers were expelled the 
 regiment, and on August 2 the grenadier company mutinied 
 on__behal£ of a comrade, but were soon persuaded to return to 
 their duty by the Mardchal de Camp de Noue, governor and 
 
 1 L'Armee et la Oarde Nationale, by Baron Charles Poisson, vol. i. 
 p. 247. Paris : 1858. 
 
 2 For the afl'air of Nancy, see Histoire de Vaffaire de Nancy, by X. 
 Maire, Nancy and Paris, 18GJ ; Toisson's- L' Armee et la Garde Nationale, 
 vol. i. chap. viii. pp. 241-270 ; E^ne Bouillo's Essai sur la Vie du Marquis 
 de'BouilU; Histoire de Nancy, by Jean Cayon, pp. 318-326, Nancy : 1846. 
 
XIII. J The Affair of Nancy. 391 
 
 commandant at Nancy. On August 9, when the regiment 
 was on parade, two men from each company stepped out 
 of the ranks and demanded the accounts of the regiment 
 from 1767, when the Duo du Chatelet had assumed the 
 command. The officers agreed to hand over 170,000 francs, 
 and the regiment accepted it, and sent a deputation to Paris 
 to explain the circumstances. The Swiss of Chateau- Vieux 
 at once followed the example set to them; but the officers 
 were not so lenient, and had two men severely flogged. Then 
 the other regiments, the populace of Nancy, and even the 
 municipality, raised an outcry; all the officers were im- 
 prisoned, and eventually the two punished soldiers were 
 rewarded with one hundred louis each, and the officers paid 
 over 47,000 francs to their men, and the officers of Mestre de 
 Camp also paid over 24,000 francs. This money was at once 
 squandered in drink and debauchery, and all the dregs of the 
 neighbouring towns came in to help to spend it ; and it is 
 noteworthy, as showing the character of the ringleaders, that 
 Pomier, the chief of them, who became a commissary, was 
 years afterwards tried and shot in twenty-four hours by General 
 Serrurier for pillaging.^ The Assembly had heard with 
 equanimity of many similar disturbances, but even the 
 theorists there felt that this affair could not be passed 
 over. The eight delegates of the mutinous regiments were 
 imprisoned ; the Mardchal de Camp de Malseigne, lieutenant- 
 colonel of the Carbineers, stationed at Luneville, an officer 
 of stem and unbending disposition, was sent with full powers 
 to examine into the state of things at Nancy ; Bouille received 
 the command of Champagne, Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche 
 Comte, as well as of the Messin and the bishoprics, with 
 orders to use force to repress the mutineers ; and Lafayette 
 sent a circular to the National " Guards of the Meurthe, the 
 Moselle, and the Meuse, begging them to assist Bouille. On 
 August 25 M. de Malseigne reached Nancy, and on the 
 following day had to cut his way through the mutinous 
 soldiery, and galloped to Luneville, where his own regiment, 
 1 Cayon's Eistoire de Nancy, p. 319. 
 
392 The Affair of Nancy. [chap. 
 
 the Carbineers, was quartered. Outside Lundville a free fight 
 took place between his men and some troopers of the 
 regiment of Mestre de Camp which had followed him, and 
 sixty of the latter were taken prisoners. The news of this 
 skirmish greatly excited the riotous soldiery at Nancy, and on 
 the morning of August 29 three thousand of them encamped 
 in front of Luneville and demanded the surrender of Mal- 
 seigne. The mayor of the city, in terror at their threats, 
 begged Malseigne to sacrifice himself, and he accordingly 
 gave himself up to the mutineers. On the way to Nancy 
 he escaped, however, and returned to Luneville; but the 
 Carbineers had been infected with the same mutinous spirit, 
 and during the night of August 29 his own soldiers carried 
 him to Nancy, where he was imprisoned with the com- 
 mandant, De Noue. Meanwhile Bouille had not been idle. 
 He collected a force of four foreign battalions of the regiments 
 of Castella, Vigier, Diesbach, and Royal-Deux-Ponts, with 
 the hussars of Berchiny and Lauzun and eight guns, on 
 August 28, and, after adding six hundred grenadiers and six 
 hundred national guards at Toul, appeared before Nancy 
 with three thousand infantry and fourteen hundred cavalry 
 on the 31st. The mutineers sent out delegates, who were 
 informed that the three regiments must release the generals 
 at once, march out within one hour, and surrender four 
 ringleaders from each corps to be dealt with by the 
 Assembly. The hour passed, and at four o'clock in the 
 afternoon Bouille advanced to within fifty paces of the 
 Stainville gate.^ There he was joined by the released 
 generals, De Noue and Malseigne, with the news that the 
 mutineers were leaving the city by another gate. Officers 
 were then appointed to enter the city and arrange for the 
 billeting of the troops, and all was believed to be over. But 
 unfortunately the company on guard at the Stainville gate 
 had not understood the surrender, and loaded their artillery. 
 
 1 For a plan of Nancy in 1789, with its gates and streets, see Promt- 
 nodes historiques a travers les rues de Nancy, by 0. Courbe. Nancy ; 
 1883. 
 
XIII. J The Affair of Nancy, 393 
 
 In vain did the young Chevalier de Desilles, a lieutenant in the 
 Kegiment du Roi, rush in front of the guns and try to dissuade 
 the men from firing; he fell mortally wounded, and sixty of 
 Bouille's soldiers as well, at the first discharge. With a cry of 
 " Treachery ! " Bouille's soldiers stormed the gate, and engaged 
 for three hours in a murderous street fight with the Regiment 
 de Chateau- Vieux, six hundred of the Regiment du Roi and 
 the rabble, who had flocked to Nancy to help the mutineers 
 to spend their money, and had pillaged the arsenal, and who 
 now fired down upon the soldiers from the windows. By 
 half-past seven Bouilld reached the Place Royale, where the 
 barracks were situated ; he had lost forty officers and four 
 hundred men killed and wounded,^ and had taken five 
 hundred prisoners. His loss would have been greater still, if 
 the bulk of the Regiment du Roi, which had returned to Nancy 
 at the sound of the firing, had not been kept drawn up on 
 parade and prevented from engaging by its officers. The 
 Regiment du Roi was at once escorted out of the city by 
 Bouilld's son with thirty hussars, and encamped until the 
 Assembly should decide upon its fate; but a court martial, 
 composed, according to the ancient custom of the Swiss 
 regiments in the French service, of Swiss officers alone, 
 tried the mutineers of the regiment of Chateau- Vieux by 
 their own military code, and condemned the chief ringleader, 
 Soret, to be broken on the wheel, twenty-two others to be 
 hanged, and forty-one to be sent to the galleys for thirty years. 
 The vigorous action of BouiU^ was received with delight 
 by all the partisans of order in Paris, and his refusal of the 
 baton of a marshal for a victory over his fellow-citizens was 
 loudly applauded. The National Assembly decreed, after an 
 eloquent speech from Mirabeau, that the national guards had 
 done their duty nobly as well as the troops, voted thanks to 
 Bouille, and sent two commissioners, Cahier de Gerville and 
 Duveyrier, to Nancy, on whose report the regiments of Mestre 
 
 1 Among the wounded was the Marquis de MacMahon, unole of 
 Marshal MacMahon, who was in command of the Lauzun Hussars. 
 Maire's Eistoire de I'affaire de Nancy, p. 159. 
 
394 Death of Loustallot. [chap. 
 
 de Camp and Du Roi were cashiered. Special interest was 
 excited by the conduct of the national guards of Metz and 
 Toul, who had shared in the street battle of Nancy, and many 
 of whom had fallen, and still more by the heroic deed of 
 young Desilles. A grand funeral fete in honour of the slain 
 national guards was held on the Champ de Mars by the 
 National Guard of Paris on September 20 ; and after the death 
 of Desilles from his wounds on October 17, his gallant act 
 was perpetuated in poetry, painting, and sculpture, and, most 
 characteristically, in two pieces for the stage, ie Nouveau 
 d'Assas, presented at the Theatre Italien in October, and Le 
 Tombeau de Desilles, at the Theatre de la Nation, in November, 
 1790.^ But the enthusiasm with which the news of Bouille's 
 vigorous action was received by the court, the greater part of 
 the Assembly, and the bourgeois, was not shared by the 
 Jacobin Club and their leaders, who had long perceived the 
 advantage afforded to their cause by the mutinous condition 
 of the soldiery, and who now began to fear that the troops 
 would be coerced into acting against the people. Marat in 
 particular was very violent, and declared in the Am/i du, 
 Peuple that the soldiers of the regiment of Chateau-Vieux 
 were martyrs, and that the eight hundred deputies, who had 
 supported the vote of thanks to BouilM, ought to be hanged 
 on eight hundred gallows-trees, and Mirabeau upon one higher 
 than the rest. Loustallot, the young editor of the Revolutions 
 de Paris, believed that the violent suppression of the Revolu- 
 tion was at hand, and that the king would be able to restore 
 the ancient despotism by means of the army. The shock was 
 so great to his enthusiastic nature that he died almost of a 
 broken heart on September 20, the very day on which the 
 grand funeral fete in honour of the national guards killed at 
 Nancy took place on the Champ de Mars. 
 
 Loustallot need not have feared. The soldiers were far 
 too much imbued with the principles of the Revolution to be 
 reduced to obedience, and were exasperated rather than terri- 
 fied by Bouille's vigorous conduct ; and the chief result of the 
 * Poisson's VArmie et la Oarde Nationale. vol. i. p. 262. 
 
XIII.] Slight Effect of Bouillis Action. 395 
 
 action at Nancy was to impress upon the minds of the troops 
 the great fact that the national guards would never object 
 to fight them, and accordingly they fraternized more and 
 more with the populace, who hated the bourgeois and feared 
 their military organization. The actual results of Bouill^'s 
 victory were very slight ; the Assembly forbade the formation 
 of clubs in the regiments, but refused to allow Bouill^'s French 
 prisoners to be prosecuted ; the Jacobins commenced a steady 
 and eventually successful agitation for the release of the forty- 
 one Swiss soldiers who had been sent to the galleys ; Danton 
 presented a petition from the forty-eight sections of Paris, and 
 himself thundered at the bar of the Assembly against the 
 War Minister, De la Tour-du-Pin, who at once resigned ; the 
 populace began to associate the name of Bouille, as they 
 formerly had that of Broglie, with the idea of cruelty and 
 tyranny, and the court, especially the queen, began to look to 
 him as her sole hope of safety. It was only in Nancy itself 
 and its neighbourhood that BouilM's action was followed by 
 any symptoms of a reaction in favour of royalty. At Nancy 
 the local National Guard was temporarily suppressed, and the 
 tricolour superseded by the white cockade ; and at Belfort the 
 soldiers and officers of the latest raised foreign regiment, 
 the Royal Liegeois, and of the Lauzun hussars paraded the 
 streets with cries of " Vive le Roi ! au diable la nation." Dis- 
 organization increased instead of diminishing in the army 
 itself after the afiair of Nancy, and all military discipline, 
 except within the actual region commanded by Bouill6, was at 
 an end. Not only had more than 30,000 men, but more than 
 that proportion of officers, left their duty. Many officers had 
 already emigrated, and were either assembling round the 
 Comte d'Artois or the Prince de Conde, or amusing themselves 
 in London or at Spa. Even if they did not emigrate, ambitious 
 officers selected this opportunity as a favourable one to get 
 furlough, in order to promote their political aims, like Lieu- 
 tenant Napoleon Bonaparte, who, after getting leave of absence 
 for three months, spent more than a year in Corsica, intriguing 
 and plotting for the independence of his native island ; and plea- 
 
39^ The Royal Navy. [chap. 
 
 sure-loving officers calmly left their regiments witliout leave, 
 in order to enjoy the gaieties of Paris. The officers -who re- 
 mained with their regiments had, however, a most ungrateful 
 task. If as a body they were attached to the monarchy, they 
 generally managed, as at Lille, Lyons, and Perpignan, to insult 
 and offend their men, and grew more and more out of sym- 
 pathy with them, and if one or two among them approved of 
 the new principles, they were persecuted by their brother- 
 officers. This was the case with young Louis Davout, sub-lieu- 
 tenant in the Royal Champagne cavalry, who was imprisoned 
 with great severity by his colonel, the Marquis de Fourn^s, at 
 Hcsdin, for being a day late, owing to his conveyance breaking 
 down on his return from Paris, after taking a petition to the 
 military committee there from the soldiers of his regiment.^ 
 But with all this absence of discipline and existence of dis- 
 order and insubordination in the regular army, great advan- 
 tages were being obtained by the military efficiency of the 
 national guards. Not only in Paris, but in every provincial 
 town, retired officers and officers on leave were chosen to com- 
 mand and organize the new battalions, and retired soldiers 
 gladly took up their arms again and served as privates or 
 sergeant-instructors. It was from them that the national 
 guards learnt the rudiments of discipline, and the rapidity 
 with which whole battalions of volunteers, in the terrible 
 struggle for existence, became real soldiers is easily accounted 
 for when the number of old soldiers, and the still greater 
 number of national guards, trained between 1789 and 1792 
 by old soldiers, is kept in mind. 
 
 The French royal navy ^ had distinguished itself far more 
 than the French army during the eighteenth century, and had 
 a greater reputation at the commencement of the revolution 
 in 1789. It had, during the American War of Independence, 
 proved itself more than a match for the English navy. The 
 Comte d'Orvilliers had fought at least a drawn battle with 
 
 > lung's Sulois-Cranci, vol. i. p. 176. 
 
 2 Bistoire maritime de la France, by L^on Gu^rin, new edit., vol v 
 Paris : 18(j3. ' ' 
 
XIII.] The French Navy in the Eighteenth Century. 397 
 
 Admiral Keppel ; the Comte de Grasse had safely covered the 
 passage and disembarkation of Rochambeau's corps d'arm^a 
 in America, and co-operated with the Comte de Guichen in 
 Bouille's conquests in the West Indies ; the Bailli de Suffren 
 had fought a series of drawn but desperate battles with 
 Rear- Admiral Sir Edward Hughes off the coast of India ; 
 Laperouse ^ had ravaged the English settlements in Hudson's 
 Bay; and these glories were enough to make the French 
 people proud of their navy, despite of the utter defeat 
 inflicted on it by Admiral Rodney on April 12, 1782, off the 
 island of St. Eustatia. Louis XVI. had always been par- 
 ticularly fond of the naval service, and had shown the most 
 marked favour to naval oflicers. He was also passionately 
 fond of geography, and took the keenest interest in explora- 
 tion — so much so that he issued orders, during the War of 
 American Independence, that if any of his captains came across 
 Captain Cook they were not to treat his vessels as belligerent. 
 This encouragement and hearty interest produced not only 
 great admirals such as the Comte d'Orvilliers, the Comte de 
 Guichen, the Comte d'Estaing, and the Bailli de Suffren ; and 
 brave captains like Lamothe Picquet and Latouche-Trdville, 
 Kersaint, Kergariou-Loemaria, and De Couedic, but learned 
 hydrographers in Borda and Fleurieu, and famous navigators 
 and surveyors in Bougainville and Laperouse, D'Entrecasteaux, 
 Rosily, and Bruix. This taste of the king's led him to 
 spend large sums upon his ports, including nearly twenty 
 million livres on Le Havre, and far more upon the new harbour 
 of Cherbourg, which had been commenced by his orders, and 
 which he visited in great state in June, 1786. He was well 
 supported by his Ministers of the Marine, De Sartine, the 
 Mardchal de Castries, and the Comte de la, Luzerne, who were 
 aU men of ability, and in 1789 he might well have boasted 
 of his fleet, consisting of 81 ships of the line, carrying from 
 64 to 118 guns, 69 frigates of from 28 to 44 guns, and 
 141 smaller ships of war, making a total of 291 ships ; 
 
 1 So spelt by M. Gu&in, who states it as tlie navigator's own spelling 
 though he is generally called " Lapeyrouse." 
 
398 The Scheme of the Mardchal de Castries, [chap. 
 
 while England herself, the great naval power, only possessed 
 135 ships of the line, 102 frigates, and 133 smaller ships, 
 making a total of 370. With regard to the naval service, 
 however, matters were no better than in the army, and even 
 a succession of able ministers could not reverse the fatal prac- 
 tice, which had been followed in the reign of Louis XV., 
 of making merit give way to birth. The number of officers 
 was out of all proportion to the number of sailors, there 
 being no less than 14,142 officers to 90,878 sailors ; and 
 these officers were selected from boys who had served a 
 certain period on board ship as novices, and in time of war 
 from officers in the merchant navy, who seldom if ever 
 attained to the rank of captain, while the captaincies' and 
 all higher ranks were filled up from the royal corps of the 
 Gardes de la Marine, which consisted entirely of members of 
 noble and wealthy families, who were quickly promoted. The 
 sailors were recruited, either by lot or the press-gang, out of 
 the inhabitants of the sea coast, under an old regulation of 
 the Marquis de Colbert-Seignelay issued in 1679. Indeed, 
 the whole navy was governed by the regulations of this son 
 of the great Colbert for more than one hundred years, until 
 in 1784 the Marechal de Castries determined to issue a new 
 naval code and a scheme of reorganization. By this scheme it 
 was decreed that the officers of the French navy should be 
 divided into nine squadrons, and should consist of some 60 
 generals, of 100 captains, 100 majors de vaisseau (a rank 
 corresponding to the English commanders, R.N.), 680 lieu- 
 tenants, and 840 sub-lieutenants. Under the same scheme the 
 ranks of enseignes de vaisseau and of lieutenants de frigate 
 were abolished, as well as the Gardes de la Marine, and 
 all young noblemen who wished to enter the navy had to 
 pass through one of two royal naval colleges, which were 
 established at Alais and Vannes. At the same time, it must 
 be admitted that, as in the case of the army, all the chief 
 naval captains, and all the admirals, who distinguished them- 
 selves under the Republic and Napoleon, had been officers in the 
 navy of the ancien regime, before the ministry of Castries, 
 
XIII.] Great Sailors in the Old Royal Navy. 399 
 
 but it is also noteworthy that many of these officers, though 
 by no means the majority, had only entered the royal navy 
 after serving in the merchant service, and had received their 
 commissions in spite of their birth. Thus, in 1789, Trogoff, 
 St. F^lix, Rosily, PMville le Peley, and Bouvet were all 
 captains in the royal navy, though the two latter had been 
 originallj'^ captains of merchantmen ; Truguet was a major de 
 vaisseau ; Bruix, Decr&, Brueys, Villeneuve, Villaret-Joyeuse, 
 Allemand, Lacrosse, Latouehe - Trdville, Missiessy, Nielly 
 Linois, Emeriau, and Dupetit-Thouars, were all lieutenants, 
 Bompard and Renaudin were sub-lieutenants ; Ganteaume 
 had returned to the East India Company's service after serving 
 in the American war; and Willaumez alone of all the chief 
 captains had never held a commission, and was in 1789 on board 
 a merchantman. This long list of names bears witness to the 
 excellence of the sailors of the old French monarchy, their 
 great deeds in the American war prove their efficiency, and 
 it must now be shown how the slumbering discontent which 
 was felt by the men against their officers for not feeding 
 and paying them well and regularly, by the officers against 
 the civil service of the navy, and by the workmen in the 
 dockyards, gradually rose to its height, and how the Assembly 
 failed to do any good, and pulled the old navy to pieces 
 without creating a new one, in order to see by what steps 
 that French navy which had made so good a stand against 
 Keppel and Rodney became so weak as to be thoroughly 
 beaten by Howe and Nelson. 
 
 The riots at Toulon and Brest, though a year elapsed 
 between them, and though one was essentially a riot of 
 dockyard men and the other of sailors, may be noticed 
 together, because they exactly show the different attitude of 
 the rioters towards the executive government, and also that, 
 if words bad become more violent, men had not yet become 
 accustomed to murder, and were more inclined to spare human 
 life, when they had the power of a universally recognized 
 Assembly to appeal to, than before. Toulon was one of the 
 two most important naval cities in France; it was the head- 
 
400 Riots at Toulon. [chap 
 
 quarters of the Mediterranean fleet, as Brest was of the 
 Atlantic fleet, but contained a much larger dockyard and 
 arsenal, for ever since the destruction of the old arsenal of 
 the galleys at Marseilles, on the recommendation of Malouet, 
 in 1786, Toulon arsenal was the only one on the south-east 
 coast of France. It was, besides, purely the town of the 
 dockyard and arsenal, for it possessed but little facility for 
 commerce and shipping, which all went to the free port of 
 Marseilles. The Toulonese were noted even in Provence for 
 their riotous disposition, and as early as March, 1789, during 
 the elections to the States-General, they had pillaged their 
 town-hall and the bishop's palace, and nearly murdered the 
 bishop, Mgr. de Castellane-L^on. With their whole souls 
 the Toulonese had followed the progress of events in Paris, 
 and after the news of July 14 they all wore the tricolour 
 cockade, elected a municipality, and formed a National Guard. 
 Both Comte d'Albert de Rions, a most distinguished naval 
 officer, who had commanded the Pluton in the battle of 
 April 12, 1782, and the squadron at Cherbourg on the 
 occasion of the royal visit there, and who was in 1789 
 the director of the port of Toulon and commandant of the 
 arsenal there, and the Comte de Bethisy, commanding the 
 Regiment de Dauphin^, which formed the garrison, incurred 
 the greatest suspicion and dislike among the people for 
 refusing to wear the tricolour cockade, though they at first 
 permitted the workmen and soldiers to do as they pleased. 
 However, on November 27, 1789, Comte d'Albert de Rions 
 thought proper to forbid any workmen ^ to wear the tricolour 
 cockade or enter the local National Guard under pain of 
 instant dismissal, and on November SO he summarily dis- 
 missed two foremen, Causse and Gavinet, for disobeying him. 
 The result was a riot, and on the next day he closed the 
 arsenal, and when he himself left it he found himself in 
 the nddst of a raging mob, from which he was with difliculty 
 
 1 Gudrin, Histoire maritime de la France, vol. v. pp. 221-232 ; and 
 Guerres maritimes dela France : Port de Toulon depuis ses origines Jusgu'a 
 nos jours, by V. Brun, vol. ii. pp. 141-154. Paris : 1861. 
 
XIII. J Mutiny at Brest. 401 
 
 extricated by some naval officers. The mob then collected 
 round his house, and at lafst, to save his life, he consented, 
 at the request of the municipality, to go to prison for a time, 
 where at least he would be safe. The news of this riot created 
 much excitement among the deputies of the right in the 
 Assembly, and Malouet spoke so energetically and persistently 
 on the subject that D'Andr^ was sent as special commis- 
 sioner to Toulon. On his recommendation the Assembly 
 decided, on January 16, 1790, that there was no necessity to 
 prosecute anybody, and M. de Glandeves was appointed director 
 of the port. 
 
 This riot at Toulon was, it will have been perceived, purely 
 political, and only important from the naval point of view as 
 illustrating the uncompromising firmness of the commandant, 
 the devotion of his officers to him,and the disposition of the work- 
 men of the chief dockyard and arsenal on the Mediterranean. 
 The riots at Brest in September and October, 1790, were purely 
 professional, and therefore far more important.^ Great dis- 
 content had been caused in that port by the issue of a new 
 penal code for the navy, sanctioned by the Assembly, on 
 August 22, 1790, which, while it abolished flogging, confirmed 
 various other punishments, which the sailors disliked much 
 more. This discontent was brought to a head by the arrival of 
 the Leopard from San Domingo on September 14, with certain 
 factious individuals on board. The sailors of the Leopard had 
 played an important political part in the colony, and had 
 become, from the attention they had received there and the 
 welcome they met with from the popular society of Brest, 
 extremely arrogant and insubordinate. The mutiny on board 
 the fieet commenced with an insult given to Major Huon de 
 Kermadec on his ship the Pairiote, commanded by the great 
 navigator D'Entrecasteaux, by a drunken sailor of the Leopard. 
 The Comte d' Albert de Rions, who had been most injudiciously 
 transferred to the command of the squadron at Brest, ordered 
 
 1 Gudrin's Eistvire maritime de la France, vol. v. pp. 269-274 ; Histoire 
 de la ville et du port de Brest, by Prosper Jean Levot, vol. iii. chap. iv. 
 pp. 229-249. Brest : 18C6. 
 
 VOL. I. 2d 
 
402 Mutiny at Brest. [chap. 
 
 the sailor to leave the ship ; on which the crew of the Patriate 
 mutinied, and forced both D'Albert de Rions and their captain, 
 D'Entrecasteaux, to go on shore. The mutiny quickly spread 
 to the crews of the Entreprenant, Tourville, Apollon, Majes- 
 tueux, and La Ferme, and drunken sailors ashore, workmen at 
 the arsenal, and the rabble insulted not only D'Albert de Rions, 
 but Comte d'Hector, lieutenant-general of the arsenal, and 
 Bernard de Marigny, major-general of the port. The members 
 of the popular club affiliated to the Jacobins gladly fomented 
 these disorders, and threw the complaints of the sailors against 
 the new code and against their officers into the form of 
 petitions to the Assembly; while the municipality of Brest 
 also interfered, and forbade De Marigny to send the brig La 
 Ferme out of port until the complaints of the sailors had been 
 inquired into. The Assembly then, on the report of M. de 
 Ourt, member of the colonial committee, decreed that the 
 mutineers should be punished, that the crew of the Leopard 
 should be discharged, and that two commissioners should be 
 sent to Brest to restore order. The efforts of the commis- 
 sioners were vain ; the sailors became more and more menacing 
 in their demands, and were powerfully supported by the 
 popular club. Comte d' Albert de Rions resigned, and was 
 succeeded by the Commodore de Souillac ; but the mutiny and 
 disorder still continued. At last the Baron de Menou brought 
 up an absurd report, on behalf of the combined diplomatic, 
 colonial, military, and naval committees, that the disturbances 
 at Brest were entirely caused by the policy of the Comte de 
 la Luzerne, Minister of Marine and the Colonies, and by the 
 fact that the navy had not adopted the tricolour Hag. Such a 
 report was, as Mirabeau wrote to La Marck, absurd ; but the 
 vote against the minister was only lost by thirty-seven votes, 
 and on October 24 the Comte de la Luzerne was succeeded by 
 the Comte de Claret de Fleuiieu, a learned hydrographer but 
 weak statesman. As to the adoption of the tricolour, it had 
 only been deferred in the navy for fear of uj^setting the whole 
 system of signals, and because the colours red, white, and blue 
 were used in different combinations, as in the English service, 
 
XIII.] Disorganization of the Brest Fleet. 403 
 
 to designate the rank of the flag officers on board. However, 
 it was decreed by the Assembly on October 24<, that a national 
 flag with the tricolour in the corner should be adopted in 
 the navy, and that for the future the sailors at night and 
 morning, instead of shouting " Vive le Roi," should shout 
 " Vivent la nation, la loi, et le Roi ! " Such paerile decrees were 
 not likely to have much eff'ect in putting down mutiny, and 
 on October 27 the Assembly had to submit, and both abrogated 
 the clauses in the new penal code to which the sailors objected, 
 and passed a vote of thanks to the popular club of Brest for 
 its conduct. It can hardly be wondered at that, after these 
 decrees, the fleet at Brest remained in a state of chronic dis- 
 order, for no officer dared to interfere with it, or act as Bouille 
 had done at Nancy. Souillac, and Bougainville his successor, 
 resigned one after another, and the sailors were left to do pretty 
 much as they liked. The Assembly ordered its naval committee 
 to prepare a plan of a new naval constitution, and then calmly 
 left things alone. Such neglect and want of support naturally 
 incensed those naval officers who loved their service ; if they 
 did not emigrate, they left their ships without leave, and 
 when Vice-Admiral Thevenard, the successor of Fleurieu, had 
 a call of officers made on July 1, 1791, it was found that 
 more than three-quarters of them were absent. Thus the 
 ancient royal navy of France, which had won such glory in 
 the American War of Independence, gradually dissolved like 
 the monarchical army, and when war broke out once more 
 with England, it was no wonder that the navy of France was 
 found to be no longer able to rival the English, as it had done. 
 The new naval organization had not time to be put into force 
 any more than the new military organization, and if it had 
 been it would have been found to have abounded in as many 
 defects and as many unpractical recommendations ; and the 
 new national fleet, according to the naval constitution, would 
 no doubt have been quite as unable to make any stand against 
 Howe and Nelson as the republican fleet which Jean Bon 
 Saint- Andr^ hastUy patched up out of the remnants of the old 
 royal navy. 
 
404 The Naval Cojnimiiee. [chap. 
 
 It was not until after the riot at Brest that the Assembly 
 seriously began to think of naval affairs, though it had 
 established a naval and colonial committee when it constituted 
 itself in June, 1789, and had separated the two branches and 
 instituted two separate committees in March, 1790. There 
 were not many naval officers among the deputies, not indeed 
 more than ten, if such grandees as the Duke of Orleans, without 
 any experience, are excluded, namely, the lieutenant-general 
 of the fleet, the Marquis de Vaudreuil, who had been com- 
 plimented for his gallantry by the court of inquiry held after 
 the defeat of De Grasse on April 12, 1782 ; Commodore Lapoype- 
 Vertrieux; Captains Latouche-Trdville, then known as Le Vas- 
 sor de la Touche, who came of a famous naval family, and had 
 had a great part in drawing up the naval regulations of 1786, 
 and who was now chancellor to the Duke of Orleans, and 
 deputy for the noble&se of Montargis, De Rochegude, and La 
 Galissonifere ; Majors Nompfere de Champagny, deputy for the 
 noblesse of the E'orez, and de Villeblanche ; and Lieutenants De 
 Perrigny, De Galbert, and La Coudraye.-*^ Besides these officers, 
 Malouet claimed to be an authority on naval matters from his 
 long tenure of the office of intendant of the marine at Toulon, 
 but the old feud between the naval and civil officers of the 
 service prevented him from exercising any real influence upon 
 them. Of the naval officers, only two showed any marked 
 ability in the Assembly : Champagny, who was afterwards to 
 become Due de Ciidore, and one of Napoleon's ministers, and 
 who was the most assiduous worker in the naval committee, 
 though prevented from making a figure in the Assembly by his 
 weak voice ; and La Coudraye, who was an officer of great 
 experience, ability, and eloquence, and who, with a little more 
 courage and genius, might have played the part which Dubois- 
 Crane^ did in the reorganization of the army, with regard to 
 the navy. But the committee had the power of calling in 
 officers to consult with them, one of whom, Gui Pierre de 
 Coetnempren, Comte de Kersaint, the son of the captain De 
 Kersaint who had been killed on board the Theseus in Hawke's 
 1 Gueriii's Histoire maritime de la France, vol. v. p. 275. 
 
XIII.] The New Naval Constitution, 405 
 
 battle ■with Conflans in Quiberon Bay, and who had distin- 
 guished himself in the last war by his capture of Demerara, 
 Essequibo, and Berbice, wrote much on naval matters, and 
 exercised a great influence over the committee. In the early 
 days of the session of the Assembly, long before the troubles 
 at Brest began, Kersaint had advocated the complete abolition 
 of the system of specially educating officers for the royal navy, 
 and argued that officers should be taken when wanted from the 
 merchant service, and he had written a pamphlet, " What is 
 the royal navy ? " to which question he answered, " An army," 
 and Malouet, "An administration." Meanwhile Champagny had 
 been quietly working out the new naval penal code, which was 
 promulgated in August, 1790, and had been the primary cause 
 of the disturbances at Brest. These disturbances drew general 
 attention to the state of the navy, and on December 29, 1790, 
 the " Conseil de la Marine " was suppressed, and the separation 
 of the departments of the marine and of the colonies was pro- 
 posed, with the approval of the minister Fleurieu, who neither 
 understood nor liked the administration of the colonies, but 
 rejected after a speech of Moreau de Saint Mdry, deputy for 
 Martinique, who argued that the very existence of the colonies 
 and their union with France depended upon the state of the 
 navy, and that the two departments ought, therefore, to be in 
 the same hands. In April, 1791, the Marquis de Sillery, the 
 friend of Orleans, who, since the abolition of titles, was known 
 as M. Brulart de Sillery, brought up the report of the naval com- 
 mittee of a plan for a new constitution of the navy. By it the 
 maritime conscription, devised by Colbert de Seignelay and 
 confirmed by De Castries, was to be maintained, and all 
 merchant seamen, fishermen, and others connected with the 
 sea, were to remain liable to be pressed into the royal navy it 
 they were wanted. As to officers, it was proposed that the 
 naval colleges should be abolished, and that the inferior officers 
 in the royal service should be selected from the merchant 
 service ; but that, when once an officer had accepted the rank, 
 of lieutenant, he should be regarded as having definitelj'- 
 entered the service, and should be eligible for promotion, by 
 
4o6 Debate on the Navy. Lchap. 
 
 a mixed system of seniority and selection, to the grades of 
 captain and then of admiral. By this scheme the committee 
 believed they had proposed a fair compromise between the 
 extreme views held by diiferent naval authorities, and that 
 they had flattered the new ideas of equality by making it 
 possible for any cabin-boy on board a merchant ship to become 
 a French admiral. The debates on the scheme were very 
 spirited. Ricard and Louis de Monneron, deputy for Pondi- 
 cherry, who represented the ideas of Kersaint, declared that 
 there should be no royal navy at all, only royal ships of war, 
 which could be manned when necessary by merchant officers 
 and seamen, and they pointed to the instances of the famous 
 captains of the reign of Louis XIV., Jean Bart and Duguay- 
 Trouin, as a proof that the merchant service would readily 
 respond to the call. Lieutenant de Galbert and Lieutenant 
 de la Coudraye defended the system of a royal navy, manned 
 by seamen and commanded by officers bred expressly for the 
 purpose of fighting at sea. " You demand too much ! " cried 
 La Coudraye, in an eloquent and convincing speech. " Do you 
 think that officers of merchant ships, who do not need such 
 knowledge, will take the trouble to master the principles of 
 commanding fleets and directing naval battles in order that 
 they may be efficient in case of war ? " He then went on to point 
 out that the merchant service had altered in character since 
 the days of Louis XIV. ; that in his time every merchant ship 
 was an armed vessel, and indeed a corsair, which might have 
 to fight pirates and corsairs at any moment, and that, therefore, 
 both captains and men were all trained to war, and there was no 
 difficidty in finding Jean Barts and Duguay-Trouins, but that 
 in the latter half of the eighteenth century the condition of the 
 sea was different ; that merchant ships were simply ships laden 
 with merchandise and quite unarmed, and that, therefore, the 
 officers and men could not be suddenly expected to become 
 eificient for naval warfare, which was, moreover, far more 
 complicated than it used to be. The Assembly, however, could 
 not or would not appreciate La Coudraye's arguments, and 
 accepted the principle of the scheme proposed by the naval 
 
XIII.] Laperouse. 407 
 
 committee. On April 29 it voted the continuance of the 
 maritime conscription, and that officers should be selected from 
 the merchant service by examination. The rank of enseigne 
 de vaisseau was made indefinitely large, and all who were not 
 actually employed in the service were permitted to command 
 merchant ships, but without receiving any pay from the 
 government. Any ensign who chose to pass the further 
 examination, and received the commission of lieutenant, was, 
 however, not allowed to command merchantmen, and had to 
 confine himself to the royal navy. An establishment was 
 then voted of three admirals, nine vice-admirals, eighteen rear- 
 admirals, one hundred and eighty captains, eight hundred 
 lieutenants, two hundred paid ensigns, fifty masters, and sixty 
 master-gunners, and the old post of Admiral of France, then 
 held by the Due de Penthifevre, with its costly and useless 
 establishment, was abolished. The Assembly was then satisfied 
 that it had efiectually disposed of the naval question, in spite 
 of the want of officers and the riotous insubordination of the 
 sailors. 
 
 Before, however, concluding this account of the naval policy 
 of the Assembly, it must be recognized that it did not show 
 itself wanting in respect for the greatest navigator France has 
 ever produced, Laperouse de Galaup. He had sailed from 
 Brest, on a voyage of exploration in the South Seas under special 
 instructions drawn up by the king himself on August 1, 1785, 
 with two ships, the Boussole and the Astrolabe, and had sent 
 home the journal of his discoveries from difierent places. On 
 February 7, 1788, he wrote his last letter to his friend Fleurieu 
 from Botany Bay, and had never been heard of since. In 
 December, 1790, Milet de Mureau, the future Minister for War, 
 who had succeeded Commodore Lapoype-Vertrieux as deputy 
 for the noblesse of Toulon in October, 1789, proposed that the 
 journals of Laperouse should be printed at the expense of the 
 State ; and in 1791 a special expedition of two ships was voted, 
 and placed under the command of Rear- Admiral d'Entrecas- 
 teaux, and ordered to go in search of the missing explorer. 
 
 It will be seen that both in the army and the navy the 
 
4o8 Mirabeau again shows his Wisdom. |^chap. xiil. 
 
 spirit of disaffection to the king was manifesting itself in 1790, 
 in spite of the ardently expressed attachment of the bulk of 
 the officers of both services, and that the executive had been 
 so weakened that it was unable to deal with the difficulties 
 which had arisen. The Assembly had not improved matters 
 by their new military and naval constitutions ; and, by not sup- 
 porting the officers, for fear they would use their power for the 
 restoration of the royal authority, and not punishing mutineers, 
 the deputies had utterly prevented any chance of the restoration 
 of order. The old army and navy of the ancien regime were 
 practically destroyed, and the new services, though decreed, were 
 not created. With regard to both army and navy, and in refer- 
 ence to the mutinies at Nancy and Brest, Mirabeau had again 
 shown how much greater a statesman he was than the majority 
 of the Assembly. He alone recognized the fact that if the 
 regular army and the regular navy, whether as royal or national 
 services, were to be maintained at all, soldiers and sailors must 
 be governed by a different code of laws, in order to keep up 
 discipline, from ordinary citizens. Since this truth was not 
 recognized, the French army and the French navy had both 
 become disorganized, and would continue to remain in a state 
 of disorganization until a great need for their services should 
 arise, when all theories about the equality of man would dis- 
 appear before the necessities of creating a disciplined army 
 and navy, and when the men of the old monarchical services 
 would show that it was not because they were bad soldiers or 
 bad sailors that they had become insubordinate, and that their 
 valour remained if their discipline was temporarily disturbed. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE DEATH Or MIKABEAU. 
 
 Mirabeau declares himself the advocate of the restoration of order, but 
 not of the old order — His second great scheme — Duquesnoy's report 
 of the topography of the Assembly — The oa^h of the clergy — Mira- 
 beau's advice about the woman Lamotte — Chances of foreign inter- 
 ference — The diplomatic committee — The affairs of Avignon and the 
 princes of the empire in Alsace — Mirabeau President of the Assembly 
 and Director of the department of the Seine — The 1789, Monarchic, 
 and Jacobin Clubs — The question of emigration — Departure of 
 Mesdames of France — La Marck's visit to BouilM — Affair of Vin- 
 cennes, and of the chevaliers du poignard — Debate on the regency — 
 Mirabeau's illness — Mirabeau's Death — Mirabeau as a statesman, as 
 an orator, and as a man. 
 
 By the winter of 1790 Mirabeau became convinced that the 
 court would never adopt his great plan for an appeal to the 
 provinces, or trust him in any way,^ and the delight which 
 he had felt on first receiving the power of being of use to the 
 queen by the secret communications through La Marck had 
 been greatly diminished by the persistent manner in which 
 the queen refused to take advice, and by his discovery of her 
 correspondence with Bergasse. His plan for the formation of 
 a Jacobin ministry, which should overthrow Lafayette and 
 learn moderation by incurring responsibility, had also failed, 
 and the new ministers who had succeeded Neeker were all 
 nominees of Lafayette himself, or as complete nonentities as 
 their predecessors; Yet he did not despair of being able to 
 save the monarchy from its perilous position, and worked out 
 1 Bertrand de Molleville's Memoires, 
 
410 Mirabeaiis Second Great Plan. [chap. 
 
 yet another scheme by which the court might regain its 
 authority. A proof of bis exact position is to be found in a 
 letter to La Marck, dated October 22, 1790.1 " What then ! 
 these stupid rascals, intoxicated with a chance success, tell 
 you that they hope to carry out a counter-revolution, and 
 believe that I would not thunder against them. In truth, my 
 friend, I have no wish to surrender my honour to any one, or 
 my head to the court. If I was a mere politician, I should 
 say, ' I ought to make these people fear me.' If I was their 
 servant, I should say, ' These people ought to fear me.' But I 
 am a good citizen, who loves glory, honour, and liberty, before 
 everything, and most certainly these reactionary gentlemen 
 will find me always ready to crush them with the thunder of 
 my voice. Yesterday I had it in my power to have them aU 
 massacred, and if they continue in this line they would force me 
 to wish for this issue, were it not for my desire to save the few 
 honest men among them. In a word, I am the advocate for 
 the restoration of order, but not for the restoration of the 
 old order." The new plan had taken a long time to develop, 
 but was at last worked out and presented to the court in a 
 very lengthy communication, dated December 23, 1790.^ 
 
 The key-note of this plan rested on Mirabeau's absolute 
 confidence in Montmorin, who was to have entire charge of 
 the whole affair, and Mirabeau even goes so far as to prescribe 
 the manner in which he is to spend each day. In fact, he 
 recognized that Montmorin, from his well-known weakness 
 of character, would become but a mere shadow of himself and 
 report to him. The plan consisted of four distinct parts, all 
 conducted by different people, who were to report weekly to 
 Montmorin, and thus to himself The two most important 
 sections referred to his old idea of restoring the reputation of 
 the monarchy in the provinces. There was to be established, 
 firstly, a bureau of correspondence, which was to send agents 
 paid by the king into all the provinces, with pi-inted instruc- 
 
 1 Correspondmice entre Mirabeau et La Marck, vol. ii. p. 29. 
 
 2 Cvrrcsjioiidatux, vol. ii. pp. 125-177, numbered "47th Note for the 
 Coxirt,." 
 
XIV.] Mirabeaus Second Great Plan. 411 
 
 tions what to do. They were everywhere to impress upon 
 the people of the provinces that the Assembly was neglecting 
 their true interests, was encouraging disorder, and hurrying 
 France to utter destruction. They were also to declare that 
 the king was longing to restore order, and only desired their 
 assistance ; and, further, that the first thing the departments 
 should do was to send up universal petitions requesting that 
 the present Assembly should immediately dissolve itself. 
 Mirabeau told La Marck that he had reason to believe that 
 at least two-thirds of the departments would be ready to send 
 up such petitions, and that the agents were to examine the local 
 governments of the different departments, and report to 
 Montmorin both the personal opinions and the characteristics 
 of the local leaders, and the views with which they were 
 regarded by the bulk of the populace. The agents were 
 then to become intimate with the leaders, and report to the 
 minister on whom he could depend in each department. They 
 were to mingle with aU classes, the country noblesse, the 
 clergy, the bourgeois, the ouvriers, and the peasants, and were 
 in every department to examine the influence of these different 
 classes ; and they were also to send to him a short biography 
 and a sketch of the character of every influential man, de- 
 scribing his influence, his hopes, and his needs. After these 
 •■eports Mirabeau believed that the minister would possess a 
 thorough knowledge of the condition of opinion in the 
 departments. Secondly, there was to be established a publishing 
 committee, under the superintendence of the Comte de Clermont- 
 Tonnerre, which was to buy up as many authors as possible, 
 and to pay them to write books and pamphlets in favour of 
 the restoration of order and of the power of the king. These 
 works were to be circulated throughout the provinces, and 
 carefully arranged to suit the disposition of different classes. 
 Thirdly, a system was to be established by which the leaders 
 of the Assembly should be won over and prepared to support 
 the motion for the dissolution of the Assembly itself Once 
 dissolved, the king could influence the elections to the second 
 A.ssembly by means of his agents in the departments, and by 
 
412 Deputies to be won over, [chap. 
 
 the -works issued by the publishing committee. The task of 
 inducing the^present Assembly to consent to its own dis- 
 solution was extremely difficult, and it would therefore be 
 necessary to take several of the leading politicians into the 
 confidence of the court. He selected eleven influential 
 deputies as best fitted for this purpose, chosen from different 
 sections — from the right, the right centre, and even the left 
 centre.^ No group of party leaders were to be employed by 
 the minister, in order that each individual might think himself 
 the sole confidant of the minister's plans. The agent-in-ehief 
 of this prominent part of the scheme was to be Duquesnoy, 
 whose ability for intrigue Mirabeau perceived, and who had 
 shown himself ready to combine such a party as was contem- 
 plated. Duquesnoy was to have unlimited powers, and to 
 report on the state of the Assembly every Friday to Montmorin 
 and Mirabeau together. The other members to be taken into 
 confidence were, for the right and right centre, the Marquis 
 de Bonnay, the Abbe de Montesquiou, Gazales the great orator, 
 the Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, and D' Andre, who were not 
 to hear any mention of Mirabeau's own name, or those of the 
 other coadjutors. The members of the left who were to be 
 similarly trusted were, of course, Talleyrand, whose power of 
 intrigue was too formidable to allow him to be omitted; 
 Emmery, the infiuential member of the military committee ; 
 and Le Chapelier and Thouret, as important members of the 
 constitutional committee. But Le Chapelier and Thouret had 
 some scruples, and therefore were not to be allowed to know 
 that Mirabeau was in the scheme. The last individual to be 
 won over was Barnave, the young deputy for Dauphine, who 
 was afraid he was going too far, and was getting dissatisfied 
 with the position of mere spokesman for Duport and the 
 Lameths. He had just the enthusiastic nature which would 
 induce him to assist the court ; but he was not to be taken 
 into full confidence, and above all not to know that he would 
 be acting under Mirabeau's inspiration. Duquesnoy was 
 further to carefully examine the Assembly from week to week, 
 1 Corres2]0'ndaiMe, vol. ii, p. 156. 
 
XIV.] Mirabeaus Second Great Plan. 413 
 
 and report to Montmorin the names of any other deputies who 
 might be won over to the cause of order, and consent not only 
 to the dissolution of the Assembly, but to use their influence 
 in the elections to a new Assembly which must follow. The 
 last and most expensive part of the scheme referred to Paris. 
 Paris had always had an immense attraction for Mirabeau, 
 and he once said to Frochot, " Paris is the sphinx of the 
 Revolution, but I will drag her secret from her." ^ Talon and 
 S^monville, who had formerly organized an efiicient police 
 system for Lafayette, and had kept him acquainted with the 
 varying opinions of the city, were to be entrusted with the 
 duty of watching Paris and reporting upon it. They were to 
 establish a powerful police organization, which should watch 
 every man, and report not only upon the state of feeling in 
 the clubs, but on every subject discussed in the most insignifi- 
 cant caf6. They were also to pay special attention to the 
 members of the National Guard and to the journalists. The 
 National Guard was to be led, as far as possible, to distrust 
 Lafayette, and the journalists were to be bought without 
 compunction. Talon and S^monville were to have two 
 interviews with Montmorin on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and 
 Montmorin was at once to report to Mirabeau. 
 
 Such was Mirabeau's last great scheme ; and as it was 
 deep-laid and complete in every detail, it was perfectly possible 
 that it might have been carried out, had only the court decided 
 to trust its contriver wholly. But the queen would do nothing 
 of the kind. She was ready to establish all the committees 
 which Mirabeau suggested, but, as wiU be seen, she would take 
 no decided step. The committees were accordingly formed 
 and the reports sent in ; had they survived they would have 
 been the best indication of the condition of France at the 
 beginning of 1791. AU of the reports of Duquesnoy would 
 have been particularly interesting, but unfortunately only 
 one is extant, ^vrhich deserves some further attention.^ That 
 report is dated February 9, and begins by examining what 
 
 1 Passy's Frocliot, p. 72. 
 
 * Cwrespondance, vol. ii. p. 221. 
 
414 ^'^^ Topography of the Assembly. [chap. 
 
 Duquesnoy calls the topography of the Assembly. Unfor- 
 tunately, in this report he analyzes the topography only of 
 a very small portion of the Assembly, and the rest was pro- 
 bably reported on former and subsequent days. He begins 
 by describing the position of D'Andrd, who, he says, " has great 
 talent, and that sort of merit necessary for the new party ; 
 for, like us, he hates the Jacobins, and, like us, he wishes to ruin 
 them and restore a better order of affairs. It is impossible, 
 and would be dangerous, to confide to him the whole of the 
 great plan ; but much could be entrusted to him, and, above all, 
 little matters of daily detail. He is no stranger to ambition, 
 and has great credit on the lower benches, and he rarely fails 
 in any motion made before eleven o'clock. Success brings 
 success, and the part of the Assembly in which he sits has the 
 greatest confidence in him. I might here remark that it is of 
 great importance to have men well distributed in the Assembly. 
 D'Andr^ sits close to the tribune, and is always surrounded by 
 the deputies for Paris. M. Desmeuniers sits a little further 
 off, and shares much the same degree of favour. Then comes 
 a group without a leader, but not friendly to the Jacobins. 
 Towards the Palais-Royal begins the enthusiasm of the As- 
 sembly, and there exaggerated views reign ; but the particu- 
 lar benches near the gallery where my friends sit are quiet 
 enough. Then come the members of the Club of 1789, who are 
 without energy or extended views, but of whom the majority 
 are honest and wish to do good. They have perhaps no less 
 ambition than the Jacobins, but their ambition is of a milder 
 cast, if one may say so, and is less active and less perverse. 
 They cannot be counted upon for action, but are full of pru- 
 dence and good will. Next to the members of the 1789 Club 
 comes a party in the Assembly almost without a leader, but 
 in which sits M. Merlin, who is a thorough Jacobin, though 
 not sold to the Jacobins. After him comes M. Beaumetz, who, 
 without being a power, can help a power, because he has the 
 reputation of being an honest man." Further on, Duquesnoy 
 declares that the new party rather neglects men of personal 
 influence, such as D' Andre, of whom he has just spoken 
 
XIV. J The Oath of the Clergy. 415 
 
 Emmery, Le Chapelier, above all Thouret and Beaumefcz, who 
 all have very great talents. The substance of this report of 
 Duquesnoy shows in what manner Mirabeau hoped to obtain 
 an ascendancy over the Assembly, and what class of men he 
 hoped to attract into the new party of order. 
 
 It was Mirabeau's great aim to make the Assembly lose its 
 prestige, and this it was which made him support the un- 
 practical motion, that all the clergy should be obliged to take 
 the oath to the constitution or else be prosecuted ; "^ but his 
 conduct in the debate, which ended on November 29, was 
 much blamed by the court, and raised anew the old feeling of 
 distrust felt towards him by both the king and queen. It 
 will be remembered that the imposition of this oath was the 
 necessary complement of the civil constitution of the clergy, 
 and was only carried after an animated debate. The king 
 did not give his consent to the measure until December 26, 
 and then only after much pressure. The effect of the imposi- 
 tion of the oath was, as Mirabeau had expected, the outbreak 
 of what was practically civil war in France between the con- 
 stitutional and the unconstitutional clergy, or, in other words, 
 between the priests insermentes and assermentes, and had he 
 lived he might have drawn very great advantages for the 
 cause of order from it ; but, owing to his death, the king 
 gained no advantage from this mistake of the Assembly. 
 
 The new year opened disastrously enough for the king and 
 queen. It was well known that the woman Lamotte, who 
 had played so great a part in the scandal of the diamond 
 necklace,^ was again in Paris, and it was believed that, under 
 the influence of Orleans, she would appeal to the Assembly, and 
 would make the queen still more unpopular by creating fresh 
 belief in her immorality. But it seems that Orleans was not 
 the real supporter of Lamotte, but rather Lafayette ; for though 
 the commandant of the National Guard of Paris knew well 
 where the woman, who had been condemned by the law courts 
 
 1 See chap. x. p. 302. 
 
 2 See Le Proces du Collier, by Emile de Campardon, Paris, 1877 ; and 
 Carlyle's The Story of the Diamond Necklace. 
 
41 6 Chances of Foreign Help. [chap. 
 
 of France, was, instead of immediately arresting her, he asked 
 for the direct authorization of the king, in order to make her 
 arrest appear an act of private vengeance. In order to destroy 
 any bad effect she might exercise over public opinion, Mira- 
 beau recommended 1 that communications should be opened 
 with Fr^teau de Saint Just, a leading deputy of the left, who 
 had been particularly active in the famous trial before the 
 Parlement of Paris, and who for a consideration might under- 
 take to destroy her cause in the Assembly, or else, with D'Ailly, 
 the doyen of the Assembly, who was respected for his white 
 hairs and his taciturnity, and who with a little management 
 might be induced to attack a woman of such infamous 
 character. 
 
 Yet the king, and above all the queen, had no idea of trust- 
 ing Mirabeau, and the success of the motion for demanding 
 the oath from the clergy had made the king turn more and 
 more towards the expedient of foreign assistance. With 
 regard to war, Louis XVI. held diametrically opposite opinions 
 to Mirabeau. The king regarded civil war as the greatest of 
 evils, but foreign war as a means by which he might regain a 
 portion of his authority and ensure his own personal safety, 
 and liberty to hunt in peace. Mirabeau, on the contrary, knew 
 that while a foreign war would establish in the minds of 
 Frenchmen the idea that the king and queen were in league 
 with the Germans against their own people, and would 
 alienate all patriotic men from them, in case of a civil war a 
 great portion of the nation would declare itself on the side of 
 the monarchical system. The king had hitherto discouraged 
 aU communications with the emigres, and particularly with 
 the Comte d'Artois, who was breathing fire and murder at 
 Turin. He now endeavoured to discover what was the dis- 
 position of foreign courts towards himself The queen had a 
 personal reason for not desiring to trust herself to the 6migr6s, 
 for the Comte d'Artois had taken into his confidence Calonne, 
 the former prime minister, who spoke of nothing but restoring 
 the ancient order of things, which even the queen knew to be 
 "■ Correspondance, vol. ii. p. 63. 
 
XIV.] Mirabeau and Foreign Affairs. 417 
 
 impossible, and was seriously compromising the position of 
 the royal family at Paris by his unpatriotic declarations. 
 With the Prince de Cond6, at Brunswick, she also refused to 
 hold any communication, for she knew that no strength was 
 to be found in the petty states of Western Germany. It was 
 rather to her brother Leopold that she turned, and through 
 the Baron de Breteuil, the three days' premier of July, 1789, 
 she attempted to find out what reliance could be placed on 
 Austrian help. It was in vain for Mirabeau to point out 
 that no assistance could be expected from foreign powers. 
 England looked with favour on the progress of affairs in 
 France, and Pitt desired nothing better than peace with 
 France in order to keep his hands free for dealing with 
 Russian aggrandizement. The Emperor Leopold was busily 
 engaged in quieting the discontent which had been aroused 
 by the reforms of his brother Joseph, and had at that moment 
 too much on his hands, with the pacification of Belgium and 
 Hungary, to attempt to interfere with affairs in France. The 
 Spaniards could do nothing, even if they wished; and the 
 King of Prussia was too occupied with his own love affairs to 
 do more than watch the progress of the Revolution with some 
 uneasiness, and a hope that the weakness of France might 
 turn to the advantage of Prussia. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that Mirabeau was still practically 
 minister for foreign affairs through his influence over Mont- 
 morin. That influence had greatly increased since the previous 
 September, and throughout the months of December, January, 
 and February, Mirabeau communicated more with Montmorin 
 even than with La Marck. He did not care for the Foreign 
 Minister, and rather despised him, but he gave him credit for 
 sincerity and attachment to the king's person. Mirabeau's 
 management of foreign affairs was the more anxious and harass- 
 ing, as he was now occasionally opposed in the diplomatic com- 
 mittee itself by Fr^teau, who seems to have become particularly 
 active during these months.^ Nevertheless, from his extended 
 knowledge of international law, he was regarded as an authority 
 1 Correspondance, vol. ii. p. 59. 
 VOL. I. 2 E 
 
41 8 The Question of Avignon. [chap. 
 
 on foreign affairs, and his attention was particularly directed 
 to the two great opportunities for a pretext for war with 
 France afforded by the affairs of Avignon and of the princes of 
 the Empire in Alsace and Lorraine. The Assembly had, to all 
 intents and purposes, declared that Avignon belonged to France, 
 because its inhabitants spoke the same language, and the people 
 of the principality were of the same race. Such a declaration 
 was a direct infringement of all international law, for the 
 French people could not deny that Avignon had belonged to the 
 popes for very many centuries ; but the mere declaration might 
 have been passed over had not a terrible local revolution broken 
 out at Avignon itself, which made it necessary that some 
 decision should be come to by the Assembly. It was therefore 
 moved, on November 16, 1790, by Potion de Villeneuve, that 
 Avignon really belonged to France, and that France was only 
 resuming her rights in taking possession of it. Potion en- 
 deavoured to prove this by a long historical disquisition which, 
 it need hardly be said, had no historical value. Mirabea.u 
 recognized the necessity for some interference with the affairs 
 of Avignon,* and moved, on November 20, that French troops 
 should be marched into the principality to restore order, but 
 that no claim to the possession of Avignon should be inserted 
 in the decree. His motion was carried, and thus Avignon 
 nominally remained the territory of the pope for ten months 
 more. In this affkir Mirabeau managed to save appearances, 
 and to keep the Constituent Assembly from openly declaring its 
 disregard for international law and treaty obligations. The 
 matter of the German princes in Alsace was far more difficult, 
 because the interests involved were so numerous and so various ; 
 but Mirabeau managed to prevent a pretext being given for an 
 appeal to the empire. He knew that Leopold was too much 
 engaged in his own affairs to make actual war on France at the 
 present time ; but he feared that the Diet of the empire might 
 take up the case, and that the emperor would be obliged to 
 declare war as Emperor of Germany, however much he disliked 
 it as an independent sovereign. The only way to prevent such a 
 * Correspondance, vol. ii. p. 86. 
 
XIV.] Mirabeau, President of the Assembly. 4x9 
 
 course of events was to allow no actual breach of treaties to be 
 committed, and to delay the question as long as possible, until 
 either the king regained his power and could act of his own 
 will or until by lapse of time the matter should lose its im- 
 portance. Mirabeau also did not fail to observe that the uncer- 
 tainty caused by this affair of the German princes might be 
 used as yet another incentive to thinking men to support a 
 restoration of the royal authority. 
 
 But though incessantly occupied in the combination of his 
 great plan and in his communications with Montmorin and 
 Duquesnoy, Talon and La Marck, Mirabeau had yet sufficient 
 energy, though his health was fast failing, to attend daily the two 
 sessions of the Assembly and to speak on nearly every subject. 
 He had, ever since the National Assembly had constituted 
 itself, earnestly wished to be for one fortnight its president and 
 spokesman, and it was with the deepest chagrin that he saw 
 fortnight after fortnight pass without his election. For a long 
 time the presidency was conferred alternately on deputies of 
 the right and left by an agreement between their leaders, 
 and both sides had agreed to reject Mirabeau. He had seen 
 without much envy such men as Target and Thouret, Talley- 
 rand and Treilhard, occupy the chair of the Assembly ; but he 
 felt hurt when he saw men whom he knew to be his inferiors, 
 and who but seldom raised their voices in the Assembly, such 
 as the Baron de Jess6 and Bureaux de Pusy, who had no claims 
 beyond their faithful adherence to Lafayette, preferred before 
 him. There are numerous allusions in his correspondence^ 
 with La Marck, during the latter months of 1790, to his hopes 
 of obtaining the presidency. But it was only on January 30 
 that he was actually elected, chiefly by the votes of the party 
 he had been forming through Duquesnoy 's agency, and partly 
 through the votes of the deputies of the right, who had been 
 indirectly asked to vote for him. He was immensely proud of 
 his position, and proved himself an excellent president. He 
 
 1 Cmrespondance, vol. ii. pp. 13, 195, 213 ; and Passy's FrocTiot, pp. 
 51-54. Mirabeau was suffering from ophthalmia during liis presidency, 
 and Frochot helped him in every possible way. 
 
420 Mirabeau and Local Govei^nment. [chap. 
 
 answered deputations with dignity and without passion, and 
 presided with commendable impartiality over the Assembly. 
 But the result of his presidency only proves what a mistake 
 the Assembly had made in not electing a permanent presi- 
 dent and permanent secretaries, instead of changing them 
 every fortnight and thus often losing the services of the best 
 men. 
 
 Besides attending regularly at the Assembly, the great 
 statesman took a lively interest in watching the progress of 
 the new system of local government which the Assembly had 
 established under the new constitution. He perceived clearly 
 enough, from the example of England, that it was a very good 
 training for a statesman to have had some experience of local 
 government before he was called upon to discuss national affairs, 
 and, like many other leading deputies in the Assembly who 
 desired the success of the new local institutions, he offered him- 
 self as a candidate for the new offices created by the constitution. 
 He had been in December, 1790, elected an administrator of the 
 department of the Seine, which was by far the most important 
 department in France owing to the fact that it contained Paris ; 
 and, to his delight, he was on January 4 elected one of the eight 
 directors of the department who really governed, and who had 
 oidy to report to the administrators at their monthly meetings. 
 The directory of the department had the complete charge of 
 the police of Paris, and was intended to check the growing 
 strength and the radical principles of the municipality or 
 commune of Paris. Mirabeau then offered himself for the 
 office of procureur-general-syndic of the department, the most 
 important post in the local government. Lafayette used all his 
 influence to oppose Mirabeau, whose rivalry he feared; and 
 his nominee, Pastoret, was elected. Mirabeau was not even 
 elected a substitute, though it is very doubtful whether he 
 would have accepted the inferior office which was filled by 
 Danton and Garnier. At the first meeting of the administrators 
 lie was proposed for the- presidency, a post which conferred 
 little actual power, but which was one of great dignity ; but 
 here again Lafayette interfered, and the Due de la Rochefou- 
 
XIV.] Mirabeau Commandant in the National Guard. 42 1 
 
 cauld was elected, by twenty-three votes to Mirabeau's eight.' 
 In spite of these checks Mirabeau was constant in his attendance, 
 and did good service on many occasions during the month of 
 January. Mirabeau also had the gratification of being elected 
 commandant of the battalion^ of national guards of his distiict, 
 of which he had been a member ever since 1789. For this post, 
 too, he was opposed by Lafayette, who spent much money to 
 secure the election of his own candidate ; and it is one of the 
 many signs of Lafayette's decreasing influence with the National 
 Guard that Mirabeaa was elected in spite of all his efforts. 
 Mirabeau did not care for this proof of his fellow-citizens' favour 
 in itself, but thought only of its advantages in enabling him 
 better to serve the court. He wrote to the court in his forty- 
 ninth Note, " I have learned ^ that the commandants have often 
 the advantage of accompanying M. le Dauphin in his walks ; 
 for, after learning the duties of my new position, I wished also 
 to learn its honours. Would not this occasion be very favour- 
 able for making appointments to meet, and giving those in- 
 structions which cannot be given in any other way, and which 
 will now become so necessary ? " Mirabeau was also very 
 interested in the extraordinary power that the clubs of Paris 
 were obtaining. These unique institutions had greatly de- 
 veloped during the year 1790, and the Jacobins were now an 
 important force in public affairs. The growth and origin of 
 the Jacobin Club, and how thoroughly it had come under 
 the domination of Duport and the Lameths, has been noticed, 
 and the various attempts to weaken the power of the Jacobins 
 by the establishment of other clubs deserves some attention. 
 
 The most-important of these attempts was * the establish- 
 ment of the " Club of 1789," in the May of 1790. This club 
 was joined by all the chief deputies of the left centre, in contra- 
 distinction to the deputies of the extreme left, who ruled the 
 
 ^ Tableaux de la Eivolution frangaise, pubUe's sur les papiers inddits dii 
 dSpartement et de la police secrete de Paris, by A. ScliTuidt, vol. i. pp. 2-5. 
 Leipzig: 1867. 
 
 2 Correspoiidance, vol. ii. p. 199. ^ Jlid., p. 200. 
 
 * Pa;isy's Frochot, pp. 48-CO. 
 
42 2 Clubs. [chap. 
 
 Jacobins. It was supported out of the royal exchequer, and 
 was joined by Bailly, Lafayette, Mirabeau, Talleyrand, Si^yfes, 
 Le Chapelier, and Pastoret, who, however, had not the energy 
 to make it a really dangerous opponent of the Jacobins. Its 
 first president, in the May of 1790, was Bailly, elected in order 
 to recall his famous presidency of the Assembly, and the 
 adherence of the new club to the principles then expressed 
 by him. In June the Due de la Rochefoucauld was president, 
 and in July Mirabeau himself ; but the club, as a factor of 
 political importance, rapidly degenerated, and was only 
 maintained as a very comfortable place of meeting. It rapidly 
 declined into an ordinary social club or cercle, where the chief 
 deputies of the left centre met to enjoy themselves together. 
 Whatever political power it might have had was destroyed by 
 Mirabeau's becoming president of the Jacobins in December, 
 1790. He became a candidate for this office, after he had 
 drawn up his plan of selecting a ministry from the Jacobin 
 leaders, and it was one of his pet schemes that the Jacobins 
 should be recalled to a sense of the necessity of order by 
 becoming infused with the principles of the more moderate 
 deputies in the Assembly. Side by side with the " Club of 
 1789 " had existed, though without much real power, the 
 " Club des Impartiaux " ^ and the " Club Monarchique." The 
 " Club des Impartiaux " had arisen out of what had been 
 called the moderate central committee, which had been 
 established on July 14, 1789. . Its leaders were then Mounier, 
 Lally-ToUendal, and Bergasse. After their resignation, in 
 October, 1789, the club feU under the leadership of Malouet, 
 Mgr. de la Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, and the Comte de 
 Virieu. It had some importance in the October and November 
 of 1789, and it was then declared that it could influence four 
 hundred votes, though it is very doubtful whether it could 
 really influence more than fifty. The " Club des Impartiaux " 
 had, in the course of 1790, become the " Club Monarchique," 
 and the chief meeting-place of the right centre, but its 
 political importance had entirely disappeared. Clermont- 
 1 See chap. vii. p. 208 ; and Malouet's Mlmoires, voL ii. pp. 28-60. 
 
XIV.] The Increase of Emigration. 423 
 
 Tonnerre was the chief interpreter of its views in the 
 Assembly, but as he always failed it is not necessary to 
 examine them minutely. The cause of its failure and 
 ultimate closing is, however, very curious. The club con- 
 tained many very wealthy members, and during the famine 
 which reigned in Paris in the winter of 1790, it was decided 
 to raise a fund by which bread should be bought and dis- 
 tributed to the people. The Jacobins, and still more the 
 deputies of the extreme left in the Assembly, became very 
 jealous of the amount of popularity which the " Club 
 Monarchique " thus obtained, and spread the report that 
 the bread which was given away was poisoned. It need 
 hardly be said that there was no foundation whatever for this 
 report, but it caused serious riots in the neighbourhood of the 
 club premises, which were definitely closed in the March of 
 1791. On the other hand, the Jacobins had not been idle in 
 extending their power. Clubs were established in every 
 important town and affiliated to them,^ and by maintaining 
 a voluminous correspondence the mother club in Paris 
 educated the provinces up to its ideas. 
 
 In the month of Februarj", 1791, arose for the first time the 
 important question, which confirmed the French people in 
 the cause of the Revolution, and brought about the outbreak 
 of foreign war. This was the treatment of the ^migr^s. 
 Besides the two great emigrations which had followed the 
 days of July 14 and October 5 and 6, a large number of 
 the courtiers and the nobility had left the country during 
 the year 1790.^ This emigration deserves to be called the 
 "joyeuse Emigration," for the emigres all left France in very 
 high spirits, and assembled at Turin and London, Brussels 
 and Spa, where they danced and discussed how soon the Revo- 
 lution would be over, and how quickly they would all return. 
 
 ' See, for instance, for the club at Lorient and its affiliation, Glvhs et 
 Cluhistes du Morbihan, by Philippe MuUer, in the Revue de la Bevolution 
 for April, 1885. 
 
 ' Histoire ghierale des dmigrii pendant la Involution, by H. Fomeron 
 Paris : 1884. 
 
424 Arrest of Mesdames of France. [chap. 
 
 This joyous emigration of 1790 is a curious instance of the 
 blindness of the nobility and courtiers, who looked upon their 
 absence from France as a pleasant tour, which would soon 
 be terminated by the king's victory over the Assembly. Each 
 riot in Paris sent more of the nobility on tour, and the pillage 
 of the Hotel de Castries, for instance, was followed by the 
 emioration of more than eleven hundred individuals, and 
 soon after no less than seventy-five berlines, or travelling 
 carriages, were leaving Paris every day.^ It was doubtful 
 whether any measures could be taken to put an end to this 
 emigration, for undoubtedly people had a perfect right to 
 distrust the course of the Revolution if they liked, and also 
 had a perfect right to leave France. However, Le Chapelier, on 
 February 28, brought up a proposal from the constitutional 
 committee, that a committee of three should be appointed 
 by the king, without whose leave no one should be allowed to 
 leave France. The question had arisen because Mesdames 
 Adelaide and Victorine, the aunts of the king, had attempted 
 to leave France. They had left Paris on February 19, and 
 it was reported to the Assembly that they had been stopped, 
 first at Moret, near Fontainebleau, and finally by the muni- 
 cipality of Arnay-le-Duc.^ Even Barnave admitted that 
 these ladies ought to be allowed to go to Rome if they wished ; 
 but he hinted that some one else was wishing to leave France 
 who certainly ought not to be allowed to go, and this remark 
 was pointed at Monsieur, the Comte de Provence. The 
 Assembly, therefore, passed a decree, ordering the municipality 
 to allow the princesses to continue their journey ; and the 
 populace surrounded the palace of the Luxembourg, where 
 Monsieur lived, and forced him to go to the Tuileries, where 
 they thought he would be in greater safety, and where he was 
 a very unwelcome guest. The proposal of Le Chapelier, which 
 he himself acknowledged was contrary to all principles of 
 justice and liberty, was warmly opposed by Mirabeau and 
 Robespiei-re. Mirabeau declared that he would never obey 
 
 1 Forneron, vol. i. p. 213. 
 
 2 Correspondance, vol. ii. p. 230 ; Barthflemy's Mesdames de France. 
 
XIV.] La Marck's Visit to BouilU. 425 
 
 such a law, and Robespierre argued that it would be contrary 
 to the principles of liberty to pass any such measure, though 
 it would in his opinion be advisable to pass a decree showing 
 the intending emigres the danger of such a proceeding to 
 the country. The proposal was not carried, and the question 
 was referred once more to the various committees. 
 
 Notwithstanding his new scheme of December 23, Mirabeau 
 had not forgotten his old idea of the king's leaving Paris and 
 appealing to the provinces, and on hearing that La Marck was 
 about to escort his sister, the Princesse de Stahremberg, to the 
 frontier, he pointed out that he might advantageously take 
 a letter from the king to Bouille, who still commanded the 
 troops on the eastern frontier with his head-quarters at 
 Metz, and make himself acquainted with Bouill6's disposition 
 to help in a plan of escape. La Marck reached Metz on 
 February 10, and at once sought an interview with BouilM. 
 BouiUe was at first very unwilling to open himself to La 
 Marck, but, on reading the king's secret recommendation of 
 the comte, he declared that he had never really trusted La- 
 fayette, and would do all in his power to assist his Majesty 
 if he left Paris.^ La Marck, on his return, acquainted both the 
 court and Mirabeau with the disposition of Bouille, and it will 
 be seen what advantage the king took of Bouille's loyal 
 declarations. Mirabeau was also pleased with the result, but 
 could not see what advantage could be taken of Bouille's offer 
 at once, for he hoped that his plan of December 23 would 
 obviate the necessity of an immediate resort to flight and 
 force. He was particularly pleased with Bouille's recom- 
 mendation that the king should not try to escape from Paris 
 secretly, but should leave it openly, escorted if necessary by 
 his Swiss Guards. 
 
 The minds of the populace of Paris had long been exercised 
 by the existence of the fortress of Vincennes, and they had 
 more than once declared that it must be utterly destroyed like 
 the Bastille. The fortress was still used as a state prison, and 
 a rumour got abroad that the friends of the people were to be 
 1 Correspondcmce, vol. i. pp. 167-172. 
 
426 The Attack on Vincennes. [_chap. 
 
 imprisoned in it. The left of the Assembly had proposed by the 
 mouth of Barnave that the fortress should be demolished, and 
 the prisoners sent to Orleans, where it was already arranged 
 that the high court for the trial of prisoners for high treason 
 was to sit ; but matters advanced quickly, and on February 28, 
 the very daj' on which Barnave spoke, the populace marched out 
 to Vincennes. Lafayette followed with a body of national 
 guards, but his influence would not have been able to disperse 
 the mob had not Santerre, the brewer of the Faubourg St. 
 Antoine and the adored idol of the populace, begged them 
 to desist, and pledged his word,^ which had far more weight 
 than Lafayette's, that no friends of the people were imprisoned 
 there. When the populace started for Vincennes, a report 
 was spread in Paris that it was going to attack the Tuileries, 
 and more than three hundred gentlemen who were living in 
 Paris immediately made their way to the palace, and prepared 
 to defend the king's life. For many months past gentlemen from 
 the pi'ovinces, and especially from La Vendee, had come to 
 Paris with the express purpose of defending the royal person, 
 though they had as yet no opportunity of showing their valour 
 and devotion. It is a curious fact that Marie Antoinette 
 and her immediate suite declared that they recognized few faces 
 among them ; for the court noblesse had emigrated, and had 
 left the duties of loyalty to the poorer gentlemen and the rich 
 bourgeois who had remained in France throughout the pro- 
 gress of the Revolution. The king at once declared that he had 
 no need of their assistance, and ordered them to give up their 
 arms. These arms were principally daggers, from which arose 
 the report that there were in Paris many thousands of " cheva- 
 liers du poignard," who were going to assassinate the leading 
 revolutionists. When Lafayette returned to Paris he took 
 possession of the weapons, which the king had ordered to be 
 surrendered, and distributed them to his own national guards, 
 an act not likely to encourage the confidence of the royal 
 family in himself But a far more serious blow was threatened 
 1 Carro's Vie, de Santerre, pp. 70-74, and in B.M.— F. 834 (2), 835 (11> 
 and 837 (5). 
 
XIV.] Mirabeaus Illness. 427 
 
 to the royal cause by a motion of the Abb6 Si^yfes, on March 
 22. The abb6 still believed in the idea of weakening and 
 minimizing the royal power, and moved that in case of the 
 death of the king the regent should be elected by the Assembly. 
 This abandonment of the hereditary principle disgusted Mira- 
 beau, who resisted the motion with all his might, and supported 
 the old French custom that the nearest relative of the king 
 should necessarily be regent during his minority, Mirabeau 
 wrote to La Marck ^ that " nothing else was really intended 
 than the utter destruction of the hereditary principle, that is, of 
 the monarchy," and he concluded with a declaration in precisely 
 the same words that Marat so frequently used in his journal, 
 " frivolous and thrice frivolous nation ! " Yet Mirabeau 
 managed to carry the question, not because the Assembly did 
 not approve of the motion of Si^yfes, but because there was 
 much jealousy felt against the abb6 himself 
 
 During the whole debate on the regency Mirabeau's health 
 was declining, but he did not allow himself any relaxation, 
 and determined to use his utmost endeavours on the question 
 of the rights of property in mines which was now being 
 debated. The question was whether mines belonged of right 
 to the state, or were the property of the owner of the soil. It 
 was a very important question for La Marck, who through his 
 wife was the owner of many mines near Valenciennes, and 
 Mirabeau declared that he would win the battle for him. On 
 March 27 ^ he reached La Marck's house in a prostrate condition, 
 and, in spite of aU his friend's entreaties to remain, insisted on 
 going to the meeting of the Assembly to support his cause. He 
 then took two glasses of Tokay, and, collecting all his strength, 
 spoke with such eloquence and effect upon the subject that his 
 motion was nearly unanimously carried. But it must not be 
 believed that he sacrificed his principles to his friendship, for 
 he said,* "If I do not join in the debate to defend true 
 principles, without doubt there will be no more mines in 
 France, and you as well wiU lose a principal part of your 
 
 1 CmresponSmux., vol. ii. p. 252. * TMd., p. 246. 
 
 3 lUd., p. 245. 
 
428 Mirabeaus Illness. [chap. 
 
 fortune." At three o'clock he returned from the Assembly, 
 and threw himself on a sofa with the words, " Your cause is 
 won, but I have got my death-blow." It must never be 
 forgotten that, during all his efforts in 1790, Mirabeaus health 
 was very bad indeed. He mentions a severe attack of jaundice 
 in October, 1790, and he felt that the illness which was now 
 growing on him would be fatal. On March 28 the famous 
 Cabanis, who was also an intimate friend of Mirabeau, declared 
 that he was almost without hope, because during the previous 
 night his patient's pulse had nearly ceased to beat, although 
 the voice was still strong. Mirabeau was slightly better on 
 the following day, though he knew well that he would never 
 recover. Cabanis gave him the best medical assistance, and 
 after his death published an interesting pamphlet^ on his last 
 days. The first sign of a belief in his approaching dissolution, 
 which many people exhibited, was a desire that Mirabeau's 
 papers should be taken care of, and both Duquesnoy and 
 Montmorin in particular were very desirous that the public 
 should not be able to get any glimpse of the communications 
 which had been going on with the court. Mirabeau understood 
 this as well as they did, and, summoning La Marck, asked him 
 to go through his papers with Pellenc. They did so, and after 
 burning a large number took the rest to a place of safety in 
 the charge of La Marck, and they have since been arranged 
 and published. 
 
 Mirabeau knew perfectly well that he was dying, but he did 
 not grieve for his own dissolution, but for the ruin which his 
 death would bring upon the royal cause, and in striking, words 
 he said on the last day of his life, " I carry with me the ruin of 
 the monarchy. After my death factions will dispute about 
 its fragments." On the last day of his life, however, April 1, 
 his thoughts were rather of his own condition than of the 
 great political plans he was leaving unaccomplished. As he 
 looked upon the sun, he declared, with a feeling which is older 
 
 1 ies derniers jours et la niort de Mirabeau, by Cabanis. Paris: 
 1791 ; reprinted in La Eevolution frangaise for April, May, and June, 
 
 1S82. 
 
XIV.] The Death of Mirabeau. 429 
 
 than any Kving religion, " If that is not God, it is at least His 
 cousin." He looked upon his approaching death witli perfect 
 calmness and even liveliness, and when La Marck, who was 
 fond of expressing his admiration of what he called beautiful 
 deaths, came to see him, he remarked, " Well, my dear con- 
 noisseur in the art of dying, are you contented with me ? " ^ 
 He then set to work with perfect resignation to draw up his 
 will. He told La Marck that he did not know what fortune 
 he left behind him, for his family were all engaged in law- 
 suits with him, but he said that he hoped some one would 
 pay certain legacies which he wished to bequeath. La Marck 
 at once said that he would take their payment on himself, 
 and was named, with Frochot, one of his executors. In these 
 last days his bedside was surrounded by the friends whom he 
 had made during the last two years. Not only was La Marck 
 by his side, but Frochot, who had been his chief lieutenant in 
 the Assembly ever since October, 1780, never left him. Pellenc 
 and, above all, Cabanis were with him night and day ; but not 
 even the care of one of the greatest chemists and physicians 
 who ever lived could prolong 'the span of that suifering life, 
 and at half-past eight on the morning of April 2, on a lovely 
 spring day, after a terrible night of agony, during which he 
 wrote, when he could not speak, upon a slate, " Sleep — I 
 only wish to sleep," he died in La Marck's arms, and his 
 death was indeed as the death of Achilles. Far more extraordi- 
 nary than the devotion of his personal friends was the intense 
 adoration which the lowest class of the people of Paris felt for 
 him while he lay upon his death-bed. The populace no longer 
 remembered " la grande trahison du Comte de Mirabeau ; " 
 they thought only of his great services. At each end of the 
 street in which he lay dying they posted their sentries. No 
 carriage was allowed to pass the door to disturb his la-st 
 slumbers, and every one who was allowed to pass down the 
 street was obliged to doff his hat as he passed the house of the 
 great tribune. The sentiment of the populace was right ; for 
 however much he may have striven for the establishment of 
 * Correspondance, vol. i. p. 182. 
 
430 Mirabeau as a Statesman. [chap. 
 
 the royal authority, it was only because through the existenca 
 of royalty alone he believed order could be maintained, and 
 he knew that for a people to be happy and prosperous there 
 must be order in every department of the state. With him, 
 indeed, died the cause of the monarchy of the Bourbons, and 
 something more than that — the only hope of a peaceful solution 
 of the dangers and difficulties which were threatening France. 
 The character of Mirabeau appears in his actions far more 
 than in his written speeches and articles. Though certain 
 passages in his letters, speeches, and notes for the court are 
 full of keenness of observation, which reveal the wonderful 
 insight of the man, his acts testify best to his political s,igacity. 
 He was essentially a practical statesman, and that is the 
 reason why his character is so little appreciated by French- 
 men. Believers in the ancien regime cannot pardon the man 
 who struck such heavy blows at it, in the June and July of 
 1789 ; believers in the constitution of 1791 cannot see any 
 merit in the orator who mocked at the constitution and 
 laughed at its framers ; and republicans who know of his 
 communications with the court regard him as a traitor to the 
 cause of the Revolution. It is ever a French habit to judge 
 statesmen by their sentiments and not by their acts. The 
 practical statesman never has any attraction for the enthusi- 
 astic mind. Had Mirabeau lived in the nineteeeth centuiy he 
 would have been called, like Gambetta, an opportunist, and have 
 been attacked accordingly by men whose political ideas are 
 based on theories, and who cannot understand that there are 
 very few theories, if any, which can ever be completely realized. 
 He was a practical statesman both by education and by 
 nature. He had learnt by experience that nothing in politics, 
 or in anything else, can ever be absolutely perfect, and that 
 the secret of true statesmanship is to make such compromises 
 between conflicting ideas and conflicting principles as will best 
 secure the cause of good government. Government exists for the 
 good of the whole people, and not for the purpose of realizing 
 any particular ideals. Theories and ideals were alike hateful to 
 him, as obscuring the true reason for the existence of govern- 
 
XIV.] Mirabeau as an Orator. 431 
 
 ment at all. To his mind the one aim of government was to 
 maintain order. The only element of strength which he could 
 perceive in France at that time was the royal power, and hi 
 therefore desired to restore it ; but the royal power could have 
 no strength unless it rested on the will of the people, and he 
 may therefore be termed an adherent of democratic monarchy. 
 This paradox would have seemed no paradox to him, for in 
 paradoxes often lies the secret of good government. To 
 examine minutely his views as a statesman and politician here 
 would be but to rewrite the whole history of the first years 
 of the Eevolution, but it is necessary to make a few remarks 
 on his character as an orator and a man. 
 
 The secret of the marvellous influence of his oratory rested 
 on the enthusiasm of his nature. Whatever he touched he 
 made his own, for he threw his ardent spirit into it. Much 
 has been already said of the writers and thinkers who 
 assisted him, and appear to have really done much of his 
 work for him, but a remark which he made on Pellenc in 
 a letter to La Marck indicates the originality of his views 
 on every subject, whoever may have worked out the details 
 for him. On March 19, 1791, he wrote, "The illustrious 
 Pellenc, whose advice I have had the stupid weakness to 
 accept for the first time without examining it, makes me 
 loudly cry, ' Mea culpa,' and I declare that it shall never occur 
 again."* The labour of other men was therefore really 
 transformed by him into his own work, and his speeches can 
 be read with the knowledge that they were written by various 
 comparatively unknown writers, and yet be felt to be the 
 real productions of Mirabeau. As a man of letters he was 
 similarly always making use of other men's labour, but 
 always so infused it with his own individuality as to make 
 it really his own. As an orator he stands in quite a different 
 category to the great teachers of the reign of Louis XIV., 
 and to the speakers in the Convention. He had neither the , 
 exquisite style and polished smoothness of Bossuet and 
 Flechier, nor the extraordinary bursts of eloquence which 
 1 Corresjpondatice, vol. ii. p. 24.6. 
 
432 Mirabeau as a Man. [chap. 
 
 distinguish the finest speeches of Vergniaud. His oratory 
 resembles rather that of Danton in France, and Charles James 
 Fox in England. His eloquence arose from his glowing 
 powers of description, and the earnestness with which he 
 advocated his cause. He seemed to throw his whole heart 
 into every subject, however trivial, on which he had formed 
 an opinion ; and as he quickly formed an opinion on every 
 subject, he made an admirable debater. He was, indeed, the 
 only real debater in the whole Constituent Assembly, and 
 
 ■ in his facility far more resembled the great English parlia- 
 mentary speakers than the more studied orators of the pulpit 
 and the bar. 
 
 As a man, Mirabeau was always giving evidence of the 
 same enthusiastic nature which made him an orator. He 
 felt very keenly, and at the same time possessed a marvellous 
 insight into men and things. His power of prognosticating 
 the future seems to be perfectly wonderful, but it was really 
 based upon the results of his wide experience and his know- 
 ledge of human nature. His faults arose from this same 
 impetuosity of temperament. With the most turbulent 
 passions, he never did anything small or mean ; and though 
 he sinned often, and, as he himself said, broke every com- 
 mandment in the Decalogue, he was nevertheless a good as 
 well as a great man. The best proof of greatness in a man 
 is the number of enthusiastic admirers and disciples he has, 
 and the best proof of real goodness the number of his 
 devoled friends ; and no man ever had more admirers and 
 more friends than Honor^ Gabriel Riqueti. His admirers 
 were ready to sacrifice not only time, labour, and money, but 
 far more, their fame and glory, like Reybaz, and were ready 
 to literally spend their lives in his service, while the fiiends 
 M'ho loved him never deserted him, and were so absorbed 
 in their friendship for him that they had room for no other 
 
 ■intimates except those who also Idved Mirabeau. His 
 domestic relations were not happy. His father was jealous 
 of his powers, and preferred his younger brother, Mirabeau- 
 Tonneau, to him ; while his wife also hated him while he was 
 
XIV. j Mirabeaiis Character. 433 
 
 alive, though she worshipped him after his death. He had 
 all the qualities which might have made him a good and 
 devoted son and husband. The tenderness with which he 
 treated Madame de Nehra, who was merely a temporary com- 
 panion, shows the capacity for love which he possessed, and 
 could have bestowed, had he met with a woman worthy and 
 wUling to be his helpmate through life. It can never be too 
 strongly asserted that Mirabeau was no Alcibiades, proud of 
 his immoralities and his sins, but a man who repented 
 bitterly when he perceived how greatly his evil deeds had- 
 injured his chance of doing France good service. The great 
 moral to be derived from the life of the great statesman and 
 orator is that immorality of life will affect success in politics 
 as in everything else — a truth which no career ever illustrated 
 better than that of H,onor6 Gabriel Eiqueti, Comte de 
 Mirabeau. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 F 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE FLIGHT TO VAEEHTSTES, AND THE DISSOIiUTlOH' 
 OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. 
 
 Effect of Mirabeau's death at the court and in the Assembly — Growing 
 importance of Robespierre — History of the idea that the Icing should 
 leave Paris — The insult to the king on April i8 — The plan of escape 
 — Preparations for escape — Bouille's military preparations — The king 
 leaves Paris on June 21, is stopped at Varennes, and returns to Paris — 
 The state of Paris and the Assembly during the king's absence — The 
 successful escape of Monsieur — Effect of the king's flight on the As- 
 sembly, Lafayette, and the people of Paris — The club of he Cordeliers 
 draw up a petition for the king's dethronement — Tlie massacre oh the 
 Champ de Mars on July 17 — Effects of the massacre — Revision of the 
 Constitution — Le Chapelier's motion against the clubs — Close of the 
 Constituent Assembly — The great work done by the Constituent 
 Assembly in spite of their mistakes. 
 
 The death of Mirabeau destroyed the last chance of the 
 establishment of a new constitutional monarchy in France 
 under the Bourbons, but to contemporaries the event seemed 
 rather the removal of an extremely ambitious intriguer. No 
 one of his intimate friends really understood how great a work 
 Mirabeau had undertaken, and how ably he had carried it on, 
 stiU less that no one existed in France who could adequately 
 succeed him. Louis XVI. alone seems to have had some con- 
 ception of the real greatness of the statesman whom he had 
 lost, for he said to the queen, who, from the very terms of his 
 rejoinder, had been rejoicing over the death of the great man, 
 whom she could not forgive even in his grave, " Do not rejoice 
 over the death of Mirabeau ; we have suffered a greater loss 
 
CHAP. XV.] The Queens intrigues with Bouilld. 435 
 
 than you imagine." ^ The court, and especially the queen, were 
 not, indeed, sorry to be freed from the earnest solicitations of 
 one whom they both distrusted and feared, and when he was 
 gone they turned themselves to counsels which pleased them 
 better. There was sufficient similarity between the advice 
 offered by some of the queen's most trusted friends and that 
 of Mirabeau to make her think that she would be doing a 
 very statesmanlike thing in deciding to leave Paris and to 
 summon a new Assembly ; but without Mirabeau such a de- 
 parture from Paris could only bring the entire nation into arms 
 against the king, for without some guarantee that the king 
 would be faithful to the constitution, and would not call in 
 the assistance of the Austrians, not a Frenchman, except the 
 minority of the noblesse, would be found to support him, and 
 as Mirabeau truly said, " A body of noblesse is not an army 
 which can fight." ^ Nevertheless, with the duplicity which is so 
 often found in the wilful, Marie Antoinette continued to carry 
 out her plan through two distinct channels of communication. 
 As early as October, 1790, she had, by means of Mgr. dAgoult, 
 Bishop of Pamiers, consulted BouiU^ on the expediency of the 
 king's going to Metz,^ and had again in February, 1791, sent 
 La Marck with a message to the general without divulging to 
 him what had been done before, and she now continued side 
 by side her negotiations through La Marck and the bishop with 
 Bouilld But the death of Mirabeau had deprived La Marck 
 of the one supporter whose advice could have been of value 
 to the court, and he found his own power of doing good 
 greatly curtailed. He at first took Pellenc, Mirabeau's former 
 secretary, to his own house ; but Pellenc was quite unable to 
 bear on his shoulders the mantle of Mirabeau.* La Marck also 
 consulted Cabanis, the great chemist, who had attended 
 
 * MSmoires de la Duchesse de Towrzel, edited by the Duo des Cars, vol. i. 
 p. 247. Paris : 1883. 
 
 ^ Correspondance, vol. i. p. 258. 
 
 ' Louis XVI., le Marcpns de BowilU et Vwrermes, by the Abbe Gabriel, 
 p. 15. Verdun : 1874. 
 
 * Correspot}dance. vol. i p. 183 ; and voL iL pp. 300-316. 
 
43 6 Effect of Mirabeaus Death. [chap. 
 
 Mirabeau in his last illness, and he too -wrote a few notes fox 
 the court ; but however great he may have been in his labora- 
 tory, he did not shine as a statesman, and his only expedient 
 seems to have been that the king should summon all the chief 
 speakers in the Assembly to the court, and ask them frankly 
 to help him.^ Even more than La Marck was the Comte de 
 Montmorin injured by the death of Mirabeau. It was vain 
 for him to attempt to hold the threads of the great plan by 
 himself, and vain for him to have interviews with Talon and 
 Semonville and Duquesnoy, for he felt that none of these men 
 were serving him as they had served Mirabeau, and that they 
 were aU plotting how they could all best get out of the affair. 
 Meanwhile the queen continued her communications with 
 Bouill^, and still hoped for the escape of the king and herself 
 from Paris ; but there was in her heart no wish for that con- 
 stitutional rule which Mirabeau had longed for, and only a 
 desire to be revenged on the whole of the Assembly which had 
 brought down upon her so many insults. 
 
 In the Assembly the death of Mirabeau had left a gap 
 which could never be filled, but, on the other hand, parties were 
 becoming more and more marked. The closing of the Club 
 Monarchique had, indeed, deprived the deputies of the right 
 of their meeting-place ; but they were now far better organized 
 than they had been in 1789, and although they knew what had 
 been done could not be undone, they yet hoped that eventually 
 the majority of the Assembly would assist them in establishing 
 the king's power more firmly. There were, indeed, a few 
 members of the extreme right, such as Mirabeau-Tonneau, 
 who had no such statesmanlike conceptions in their minds ; 
 but the bulk of the party, which still numbered nearly three 
 hundred deputies, and which was led on the one side by 
 Cazal^s and Foucauld, and pn the other by Montlosier and 
 Malouet, really did not desire to overthrow the whole of the 
 constitation, but rather to strengthen the royal prerogative. 
 Meanwhile, on the left of the Assembly the difference between 
 the chief groups had become accentuated. The great party, 
 ' Correspmidance, vol. ii. pp. 268-276. 
 
KV.] Effect of Mirabeatis Death. 437 
 
 which may be called the left centre, and which had really- 
 made the new constitution, was still wrapped up in its ideas 
 of the good which could be done for France, and was still 
 ready to vote for any measure which promised logical con- 
 sistency, and was still unable to perceive the need of adminis- 
 trative efficiency. It is impossible to attribute leaders to this 
 large party any more than to say that it had many chiefs, as 
 in 1789. It abounded in little groups and cliques, all sitting 
 round and admiring their own particular favourite, but none 
 of them, such as the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourfc or 
 D'Andrd, Target, Le Chapelier, or Duquesnoy, were practical 
 statesmen. The party which had been led, ever since 1789, by 
 the triumvirate of Barnave, Duport, and the Lameths, was still 
 the best organized of all. It had not yet perceived that the 
 Assembly had gone too far on the road to anarchy, and its 
 leaders were still afraid of the return of despotism. The 
 power of the triumvirate mainly rested throughout the year 
 1790 in their complete command of the Jacobin Club and its 
 auxiliary societies, and by the aid of the Jacobins they had 
 been able to make Lafayette extremely unpopular aU over 
 France, if not with his own Parisian national guards. The 
 death of Mirabeau had but little effect on these different 
 parties. The thinking deputies of the right felt, indeed, that 
 they had lost a powerful, though secret colleague ; the deputies 
 of the centre, who had so often been under the sway of his 
 eloquence, knew that his equal was not to be found in the 
 Assembly ; and the triumvirate recognized that after Mirabeau's 
 death, they could hardly define why, a more powerful adversary 
 even than he would arise against them. And it was so. The 
 " thirty voices " of February 28,^' who had been silenced by 
 Mirabeau on many an occasion, and defeated, owing to his 
 eloquence, on many a division, was the party which gained 
 most by his death. Though few in number, the members of 
 the extreme left had been winning the affections not only of the 
 Jacobin Club, but of the people of Paris, away from the trium- 
 virate, and hardly was Mirabeau dead, ere the leaders of the 
 1 Correspondance, vol. i. p. 165. 
 
438 Increased Power of Robespierre. [chap. 
 
 extreme left became the chief speakers and the most influential 
 deputies in the Assembly. Robespierre had frequently spoken, 
 and gained great popularity and reputation in the Jacobin Club 
 during the year 1790, but it was not until after the death of 
 Mirabeau that he made his mark as an independent revo- 
 lutionary leader. Many of the most important motions which 
 were now carried in the Assembly were moved by Robespierre, 
 and he and his friends were, when the Assembly was dissolved, 
 the most popular speakers and thinkers in France. It was 
 against Robespierre that Duport now had to contend, and 
 there was more than one controversy between the two. By 
 the side of Robespierre appeared many other deputies, whose 
 popularity and influence were only inferior to his own, notably. 
 Potion, deputy for Chartres ; Buzot, deputy for Evreux ; 
 Roederer, deputy for Metz ; Rewbell, deputy for Colmar ; Prieur, 
 deputy for Chalons-sur-Marne ; Dubois-Cranc4 deputy for 
 Vitry ; Larevelliere Lepaux, deputy for Anjou ; Vadier, deputy 
 for the Foix; Barcre, deputy for the Bigorre ; and Merlin, deputy 
 for Douai. These were the men who profited by Mirabeau's 
 death, and these were the leaders of France who were to 
 succeed him. It was Robespierre who moved, on April 7, 1791, 
 that for four years after the dissolution of the Constituent 
 Assembly none of its members could become ministers ; it was 
 Robespierre who tried to destroy, on April 29, the power 
 of Lafayette by allowing all classes of citizens to enter the 
 National Guard ; and he it was also who, on May 9, eloquently 
 defended the right of the people to petition, and finally, on 
 May 10, carried the motion that no member of the Constituent 
 Assembly could be elected to the forthcoming Legislative 
 Assembly. He met his reward, and received proofs of his popu- 
 larity in Paris by being elected, on June 9, public prosecutor to 
 the new criminal tribunal of the Seine. Duport, who had been 
 elected president of this new tribunal, at once resigned, and 
 Petion was elected in his place. But in the Jacobin Club, still 
 more than in the Assembly, did the power of Robespierre 
 increase. Night after night the triumvirate found the majority 
 of this popular club leaving them, and that it was falling 
 
XV.] The Idea that the King should leave Paris. 439 
 
 under the sway of the deputies of the extreme left. Such 
 was the condition of the Assembly, such was the advance made 
 by the extreme left, when the king at last, after much hesi- 
 tation, resolved to leave Paris, and to throw himself, contrary 
 to Mirabeau's advice, upon the assistance of the army. 
 
 The idea of appealing from Paris to the provinces has been 
 noticed as early as July 14, 1789, and the king had afterwards 
 remarked that that would have been the right time for joining 
 his loyal subjects in the provinces before Paris had got pos- 
 session of his person, and while the Revolution was yet in its 
 infancy; and he said, further, that had it not been for the 
 advice of Necker, and stiU more of his brother. Monsieur, the 
 Comte de Provence, he would then have gone to Fontainebleau. 
 On the night of October 5 it has been noticed that the king's 
 carriage was brought out, and that he was only prevented 
 from leaving Versailles by some national guards of that city 
 insisting on the horses being unharnessed.^ Mirabeau had 
 urged flight ever since he had been permitted to advise the 
 court, but had always failed, partly because the king would 
 not believe the people of Paris were so badly disposed towards 
 him as was stated, partly from his fear of bringing on a 
 civil war, and partly from his inborn indecision and inability 
 to come to a determination. That the famous flight, which 
 is known as the flight to Varennes, was not undertaken in 
 accordance with Mirabeau's plans, is best proved by its being 
 kept a secret from La Marck, whose importance had indeed 
 entirely disappeared, and who was distrusted by the queen, in 
 spite of his connection with the Comte de Mercy- Argenteau, 
 because o£ his past intimacy with Mirabeau. But the attempt 
 would probably never have taken place at all had it not been 
 for the riot of April 18, which forced the king to come to an 
 immediate decision, and illustrates the condition of Paris, and 
 especially the decreasing power of Lafayette at this time. 
 The flight could hardly have been successful in any case, even 
 without the curious train of events which brought about its 
 failure, because the mass of the people were in 1791 pro- 
 1 See chap. vii. p. 224. 
 
440 The Riot of April i8. [chap, 
 
 foundly distrustful of the king, and still more of the queen, 
 while the army was much too disloyal to afford any counter- 
 poise to the disaffection of the people. The flight, if partially 
 successful, must have ended in a retreat to German soil, and 
 the events of 1814 and 1815, when foreign armies imposed a 
 Bourbon king upon France, might have been anticipated 
 twenty-three years before. 
 
 On April 18, 1791, the Monday in Passion Week, the king 
 had wished to leave Paris for the Easter fortnight and go to 
 Saint-Cloud, as he had done in the previous summer, in order 
 to hear his Easter mass there, and ordered his carriages to 
 be got ready. He had no idea that opposition would be made 
 to his departure, and indeed he had been assured that La- 
 fayette would permit it; but, to his surprise and disgust, when 
 he and his family had got into the royal carriages, not only 
 the populace of Paris assembled in the gardens of the Tuileries, 
 but the national guards themselves, who were on duty, 
 absolutely refused to allow the carriages to start. The chief 
 reason of this change in the minds of the people, and of 
 the national guards between the summer of 1790 and the 
 spring of 1791, is to be found in the king's adherence to the 
 cause of the clergy who had refused to take the oath. His 
 conscience would not permit him to listen to the ministrations 
 of a priest who had taken the oath, for he regarded them all 
 as schismatics, and this refusal had been interpreted by popular 
 opinion into a belief that he would not obey the other chief 
 points of the constitution. The popular mind, which was 
 entirely estranged from the Eoman Catholic Church, could not 
 understand the king's conscientious scruples as a man, and 
 had throughout the spring of 1791 become more and more 
 exasperated against him. Eumours had also got abroad of 
 Mirabeau'-s scheme that the king should escape from Paris, 
 and this may the more have induced the people not to allow 
 him to go even as far as Saint-Cloud. Whatever the reasons 
 were, a large mob surrounded the royal carriages. In vain 
 did Bailly come down to the Tuileries and beg "the people to 
 allow the king to proceed. In vain did Lafayette appeal to 
 
XV.] The Riot of April 18. 
 
 441 
 
 his " children," as he called the national guards, and threaten 
 to resign his commission if his wishes were not obeyed. In 
 vain did the directory of the department of the Seine send 
 deputations to the Assembly and deputations to the people. 
 They still refused to permit the king to start. The mob even 
 pressed so closely on the royal carriages, that Francois Joseph 
 Lefebvre, then first sergeant of the garde sold^e, as the old 
 Gardes Franpaises were termed, and who became afterwards 
 a marshal of France and Duke of Dantzic, was badly hurt in 
 keeping the mob back. For more than twelve hours the king 
 and his family remained in their carriages, alternately com- 
 manding and imploring Lafayette to make a way for them. 
 But the general's power seemed to have gone, and the unfortu- 
 nate king had to return once more to his palace-prison, where 
 he determined that he would no longer submit to the restraint 
 which was imposed on him, and that, if he were not allowed 
 to leave Paris openly, he would escape secretly. On April 19 
 he came down to the Assembly and complained of the con- 
 duct of the mob. The Assembly passed resolutions, but did 
 nothing more. Lafayette withdrew his resignation, and the 
 directory of the department of the Seine, which had met to 
 receive the report of the directory, suggested that the sections 
 of Paris ^ should be assembled, and should each be separately 
 consulted as to whether the king should be allowed to go to 
 Saint-Cloud, or whether he should be thanked' for remaining 
 in Paris. This appeal to the sections did not help the king's 
 cause, for Danton,who was the recognized leader of the section 
 of the Thd^tre Franpais, carried a motion that it was not a subject 
 for the sections to deliberate upon, and six sections followed 
 the lead thus given them. Too much importance cannot be 
 attributed to the events of April 18. The king had hitherto 
 been practically a piisoner, but had been respected in his im- 
 prisonment, until he now had conclusive proof how little real 
 respect his position inspired. 
 
 The individuals chiefly concerned in concocting the plan 
 for the king's escape from Paris were the Baron de Breteuil, 
 * Schmidt, Tableaux de la BevoluUon frangaise, vol. i. p. 17. 
 
442 Count Fersen. [chap. 
 
 Count Jean Axel de Fersen, and the Marquis de Bouilld^ That 
 old intriguer, the Baron de Breteuil, had emigrated after the 
 capture of the Bastille, and was now residing at Brussels, from 
 which place he secretly communicated with the king and 
 queen, and was trusted by them to undo the bad effects of 
 the intrigues of Calonne, who was living with the Comte 
 d'Artois, at the various courts of Germany. He strongly 
 recommended a flight, and from his residence at Brussels wa§ 
 able, as will be seen, to give much assistance to Bouille's plan. 
 Count Jean Axel de Fersen was a handsome Swede,^ who, after 
 serving in America, had become colonel of the Royal Su^dois 
 regiment in 1784. He had before that lived a great deal 
 in Paris, and had become a favourite with the queen. 
 The voice of scandal had often associated their names, but 
 Count Fersen was, throughout the period of the American 
 war, engaged to a Miss Lyel, who afterwards married the 
 fourth Earl Delawarr, and was subsequently enamoured of 
 a certain Mrs. Sullivan, who had great vogue both in Paris 
 and London at this period. Nevertheless, though almost 
 certainly not in love with the queen himself, he was deeply 
 interested in her falling fortunes, and showed a chivalrous 
 
 * The best authorities on the flight to Vareimes are Mhnoires du 
 Marquis de BowilU, with a valuable appendix in Berville and Barriere's 
 Bibliotheque des Memoi/res, 1829 ; Histoire de Vimnement de Varennes, by 
 the Comte de Seze, Paris, 1843; Relation fidUe sur la fuite du Eoi 
 Louis XVI. h Varennes, by E. Bimbenet, 1884 ; Essai sur la vie du 
 Marquis de Bouille, by his grandson Ti4n4 de Bouill^, Paris, 1853 ; La 
 VeriU sv/r la fuite et I'arresiation de Louis XVI. a Varermes, by E. A. 
 Ancelon, Paris, 1866 ; the account in the Mimoires de la Duchesse de 
 Tourzel, published by the Due des Cars, Paris, 1883, vol. i. chap. xii. pp* 
 301-350 ; Louis XVI. , le Marquis de BouilU et Varennes, by the Abb^ 
 Gabriel, Yerdun, 1874 ; Le Gomte de Fersen et la Cowr de France, by the 
 Baron R. M. de Klinckowstrom, 1878 ; and the Secret History of the 
 King of France, and his escape from Paris in June, 1791, by Quentin 
 Craufurd, published in the Bland Bwrges Papers, edited by James Button, 
 pp. 364-373, London, 1885. 
 
 ^ See Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France, extraits das papiers du 
 Graiid Marechal du Sii&de, Jean Axel de Fersen, p^Miis par son petit-neveu 
 le Baron B. M. de Klinclwwsbrom. 2 vols. Paris : 1877. 
 
XV.] Preparations for Flight. 443 
 
 attachment for her, which Marie Antoinette herself returned.* 
 He had been, during the year 1789 and the beginning of 1790, 
 quartered at Valenciennes, and had there seen how impossible 
 it was to trust in the French soldiers ; but in July, 1791, he had 
 come to Paris, and afterwards took various journeys to Brussels, 
 where he had many discussions with Breteuil. He it was 
 who planned the manner of the king's escape from his capital. 
 In December, 1790, a Russian friend of his and Mrs. Sullivan's, 
 the Baroness Korff, had ordered a large new berline, or 
 travelling carriage, holding six persons, to be bxiilt for her in 
 Paris, and this carriage was now destined for the royal family. 
 As it was impossible to complete the scheme without a more 
 thorough understanding with the Marquis de Bouille, the 
 general sent his eldest son, Comte Louis de BouilM, to Paris, 
 where he lived with young friends of his own age, who were 
 violent revolutionists,^ and at the same time communicated with 
 the court. He had brought with him instructions from his 
 father to advise the king as to his plans. The three cities 
 suggested as cities of refuge were Besan5on, Valenciennes, and 
 Montm6dy; but in Besangon there existed a strong revolu- 
 tionary element which might imperil the success of the plan, 
 and Valenciennes was within the command of Rochambeau and 
 not that of Bouill6. Montm^dy was therefore agreed upon. 
 To Montmedy there were two principal routes, one by 
 Rheims, the shortest and most direct, the other by Chalons, 
 Sainte Menehould, and Clermont-en-Argonne. The two routes 
 met at Sedan, which was within easy distance of Montmedy. 
 Bouill6 pressed for the route via Rheims ; but the king would 
 not go that way, because he believed that his face would be 
 recognized from his having been crowned there, and it is 
 probable that, in the humiliation of a flight, he did not care to 
 
 1 On the other side see, however, the rumour in Lord Holland's 
 SmiAienirs, that Count Tersenwas in the queen's bedchamber on the night 
 of October 5, 1789 ; and the note of Mr. Craufurd in his account, that 
 Fersen " is generally supposed to be the father of the present dauphin," 
 
 n the Bland Burges Papers, p. 364. 
 
 2 Abb^ Gabriel, p. 25. 
 
444 Preparations for Flight. [chap. 
 
 pass through the city which had seen him in all the glory of 
 his old dignity. The Chalons route was longer and more 
 dangerous, because the regular post-road led through Verdun, 
 which BouilM describes in one word as a " detestable " city ^ 
 from its revolutionary tendencies. It was therefore decided 
 that from Clermont-en-Argonne the royal party should proceed 
 along a by-road vi^ Varennes to S^dan ; and it is a strange fact 
 that, from the commencement of the negotiations, Bouille seems 
 to have had a presentiment that Varennes would ruin the pro- 
 ject. Further, Bouille begged the king not to travel in one great 
 new conspicuous carriage, which would by its very appearance 
 excite curiosity and discussion on the roads, and which would 
 be slow, but rather to split up his party, and to escape with his 
 daughter and sister, and allow the queen to go separately with 
 the dauphin. All his arguments were in vain ; the king declared 
 that he would be saved with all his family or not at aU. 
 
 The plan rapidly progressed to completion. The Baroness 
 Korff obtained, through the Russian minister, M de Simolin, a 
 passport ^ for herself and suite, which was intended for the use 
 of the king and the royal family. The carriage was found to 
 be ready, and it was only necessary to decide who should 
 accompany the fugitives. Princess Elizabeth insisted on 
 going as a matter of course, the Marquise de Tourzel also 
 insisted on her right as governess of the children to accompany 
 them,^ and the queen begged for two maids. Three Gardes 
 du Corps were also taken into confidence, and entrusted 
 with the important duty of arranging the changes of horses 
 at the different stages. But the project was known to too 
 many people not to get noised abroad. Count Fersen told 
 it to Mrs. Sullivan, who returned to England and discussed 
 it with the Prince of Wales, an intimate friend of hers.* 
 
 1 Abb^ Gabriel, p. 18. 
 
 2 D'Hfeecques' Souvenirs d'un page de la eowr de Lmvis XVI., p. 352. 
 
 3 This was the common belief at the time, as reported by Count Louis 
 de Bouille and the Gomte d'H^zecqiies, but the accusation is positively- 
 denied by Madame de Tourzel in a note to her Memuires, vol. i. p. 302, 
 1886. * Abbg Gabriel, p. 92. 
 
XV.] BouilWs Preparations. 445 
 
 Through the Baroness Korff it became known to some other 
 Eussians, and the great preparation of travelling-dresses which 
 the queen had insisted upon ordering before she would leave 
 Paris made it obvious to the ladies about the court that some- 
 thing was about to happen. One of these ladies was attached 
 to M. Gouvion, aide-de-camp to Lafayette, who informed his 
 chief that a flight was being arranged in the Tuileries. 
 Many other contrivances were necessary; for the national 
 guards not only kept watch in the exterior of the palace, but 
 also within, at the doors of the sleeping-rooms of the royal 
 family, and to enable them to unite in secrecy private doors 
 had to be made between the different apartments. 
 
 BouiUe s task was more difficult than that of Fersen, for the 
 new Minister for War, Duportail, had cut down his command 
 to the province of Lorraine and the three bishopries, and had 
 ordered away some of his most trusted regiments. Bouille 
 found it, further, very difficult to decide what troops he could 
 rely upon, and determined to make use both of French and 
 foreign soldiers. His best regiments were the cavahy, and he 
 calculated that he could concentrate in the neighbourhood of 
 Montmedy some six thousand infantry and three thousand 
 cavalry. As a pretext for such concentration, he begged 
 Breteuil to ask the emperor to make a movement of Austrian 
 troops towards the Flemish frontier ; and he himself spread the 
 report with such assiduity that he was publicly thanked by 
 the Minister for War for his able arrangements, and for getting 
 in hand a sufficient number of troops upon the frontier to resist 
 the Austrians if necessary. So far Bouill^'s difficulties had 
 not been great ; but even to make these changes he needed 
 money, and the king advanced him a million livres. A far 
 more difficult undertaking was to fulfil the king's desire that 
 posts of cavalry should be established in readiness to escort 
 him in all the towns between Sainte Menehould and Montmedy. 
 Bouille in vain argued that the cavalry would cause great 
 suspicion ; but the king insisted, and the general accordingly 
 took several cavalry officers, notably the Due de Choiseul- 
 Stainville, colonel of the Royal Dragoons, and Comte Charles 
 
44^ The Departure from Paris. [chap. 
 
 de Damas, colonel of the Monsieur Dragoons, into his confi- 
 dence. He also spread a report that an important convoy of 
 treasure was coming down from Paris, which needed strong 
 escorts. As Bouille had foreseen, these cavalry detachments, 
 which were posted in seven towns and villages on the road, 
 created much discussion ; and still more did the arrival of the 
 Due de Choiseul's horses and carriages at Varennes, for it had 
 been decided that, since there was no post-house at Varennes, 
 the duke should have some horses there which should serve 
 as a relay for the royal carriages. 
 
 At midnight, on June 20, the king and royal family managed, 
 with much difficulty, to leave the Tuileries unobserved. La- 
 fayette, who had some suspicion of what was going on, followed 
 by Bailly,"^ passed close by the royal children, after being 
 present at the coucher of the king, and it might have been 
 suggested that he knew what was in contemplation, and hoped 
 that if the king escaped, and he had the credit of bringing him 
 back to Paris, he might, as after October 5 and 6, obtain fresh 
 influence. If he did know he did not interfere, and Count 
 Fersen drove the royal family safely in a hack cab to the 
 barrier, which they passed in safety, and they then got into 
 the new great travelling carriage which had just been built. 
 The Count escorted them in his own carriage as far as Bondy, 
 where he took a respectful farewell, and then afterwards 
 travelled without any difiiculty to Brussels. His last words 
 were to beg that he might remain with them; and had he 
 done so, there can be but little doubt that his assistance would 
 have secured the escape of the king and queen. On the even- 
 ing of June 20, after a last interview with the king, the Due 
 de Choiseul went forward to Pont de Somme-Vesle, with 
 Leonard, the queen's hair-dresser, who was entrusted with a 
 casket of her jewels. He reached Pont de Somme-Vesle in 
 safety. There he found that a great danger had arisen from 
 the presence of the hussars in that village, for the peasants 
 were impressed with the idea that the soldiers had come 
 to punish them, and they, therefore, had assembled in large 
 1 Madame de Tourzel'a Mimoir^s, vol. i. p. 306. 
 
XV.] The Flight. 
 
 447 
 
 numbers and were threatening the troops. The progress 
 of the royal carriage was so slow that Choiseul believed it 
 was never coming, and at four o'clock on the afternoon of 
 the 21st he sent off Leonard with one of his own servants 
 to tell the officers stationed in the different towns that the 
 treasure was not coming that day. Leonard, who was not 
 possessed of a large portion of courage or brains, inspired 
 each of the officers at the different posts with a belief that all 
 was over, and further drew great attention by his passage ; for 
 he was a well-known character, and the passage of the royal 
 hairdresser with one of Choiseul's servants seamed to be a 
 proof to all the gossips in the different towns that something 
 was on foot. At each town his arrival created much excite- 
 ment. At Sainte Meuehould, Captain d'Andoins of the Royal 
 Dragoons, who bad been much harassed by the populace, gave 
 orders for his men to unsaddle ; at Clermont-en-Argonne, the 
 Comte de Damas of the Monsieur Dragoons did the same 
 thing; while at Varennes, where a mere boy of eighteen, 
 Lieutenant Rohrig, was in command, who knew nothing about 
 the affair, the soldiers were dismissed and went to bed. At 
 half-past five in the afternoon Choiseul ordered his men to 
 saddle, and led them from Pont de Somme-Vesle at a gallop 
 over the fields, thus exciting the natural disgust of the farmers 
 and peasants by riding down their crops, and at the same time 
 leaving the other posts without certain knowledge as to whether 
 the king, was coming or not. The royal carriage had gone 
 extremely slowly, and had broken down in spite of its being 
 quite new, and it did not reach Chylous till five in the after- 
 noon. Here horses were changed without difficulty, though it 
 has been asserted that the king was recognized by many 
 individuals who took no notice of him. When they left 
 Chalons, the royal fugitives believed they were at last safe, 
 but on arriving at Pont de Somme-Vesle they found no escort 
 awaiting them. Nevertheless they moved on as quickly as the 
 cumbrous carriage would go, and reached Sainte Menehould at 
 eight o'clock, after a journey of twenty hours. They had been 
 preceded by M. de Valory, one of the Gardes du Corps, who 
 
448 The Flight. [chap. 
 
 acted as courier, by only a few minutes. Captain d'Andoins had 
 no time to command his men to saddle and get into order. On the 
 king's arrival at the post-house of Sainte Menehould, therefore, 
 he found the dragoons loitering about, and Captain d'Andoins 
 was afraid of attracting attention by speaking to the fugitives. 
 But a still greater danger was met with at Sainte Menehould. 
 The postmaster there, Jean Baptiste Drouet, was an ex-dragoon, 
 and scented that something was in the air. He was paid by M. de 
 Valory for the new post-horses with a newly struck fifty-franc 
 assignat, and when the king, in his impatience, looked out of 
 the carriage window, the postmaster at once recognized his re- 
 semblance to the portrait engraved upon the assignat. In the 
 presence of the dragoons, who might have charged the people, 
 Drouet kept silence, but as soon as the carriage had left the 
 town, he spread the rumour that it contained the king, who 
 was escaping, and with one companion, Guillaume, also an ex- 
 dragoon, at once mounted his horse and galloped along to raise 
 the alarm throughout the country-side. The national guards and 
 populace kept the dragoons at Sainte Menehould from saddling, 
 and by offers of food and drink enticed the tired men from 
 their duty. Nevertheless, as if to show what a single man of 
 courage and resolution could do, the chief quartermaster of the 
 Royal Dragoons, named Lagache, alone charged the confused 
 mass of national guards and people, by himself fired his 
 pistol when he was opposed upon the bridge, and galloped 
 safely through in pursuit of the king. The action of this 
 brave soldier proves how much could have been done by 
 D'Andoins' thirty dragoons at Sainte Menehoidd, or Choiseul's 
 forty hussars at Pont de Somme-Vesle. The later life of La- 
 gache was in keeping with this brave action ; he served through- 
 out the wars of Napoleon under the name of " General Henrj'-," 
 and was created in 1812 a baron of the empire for his military 
 services.^ Meanwhile the royal carriage moved slowly on, and 
 reached Clermont-en-Argonne at half-past nine. At Clermont 
 the Comte de Damas had dismounted his 180 dragoons some 
 hours before, and was startled when the first news of the kind's 
 arrival was the presence of Valory, who again only preceded 
 1 A.bM Gabriel, p. 179. 
 
XV.] The King reaches Varennes. 
 
 449 
 
 the king by a few mimitea. It was, of course, as impossible for 
 Damas to saddle in a moment as it was for D'Andoins ; but the 
 king again managed to get his horses safely changed, and to 
 start away at once. Unfortunately, when the new horses were 
 put to the carriage, the postboy shouted, " A Varennes ! " and 
 thus showed Drouet, who was just behind, that the royal family 
 were not going through Verdun, at which place he was hoping 
 to stop them. So far, despite innumerable mistakes and mis- 
 adventures, the royal family had got safely within reach of 
 Bouilld and his army, and the great carriage rolled eumbrously 
 along the by-road to Varennes. There were only sixty hussars 
 stationed there, who, as has been said, were under the command 
 of a boy-lieutenant; but the Marquis de Bouill6,in his uneasiness, 
 had sent his second son, the Chevalier de BouilM, and the Comte 
 de Kaigecou.-t to the little town to see that all went well 
 there. These young officers were thoroughly disgusted at the 
 arrival of Leonard, and absolutely refused to let him have any 
 of Choiseul's horses ; but he managed to get some in the town, 
 and pursued his craven flight across the frontier. At Varennes 
 a very serious mistake had been made by the Baron de Goguelat, 
 an officer of engineers, who had been employed by the king 
 and Bouilld to survey the route. Choiseul's horses had been 
 stabled in a little inn called the Bras d'Or, on the outskirts of 
 the town, where a change of horses might have been effected 
 without much notice, but Goguelat had ordered them to be 
 taken to the Hotel du Grand Monarque, which stood on one 
 side of the little " place " of Varennes. The Chevalier de BouilM 
 had been directed by his father to order the horses to be taken 
 back as fast as possible, but he found there was so much 
 curiosity in Varennes as to the use of these horses, that he was 
 afraid to order their removal for fear of creating fresh com- 
 motion. The hour for the king's arrival was now greatly 
 exceeded, and the young officers here, as elsewhere, at last 
 allowed the soldiers to dismiss. However, with as little 
 warning here as at the other towns, the royal carriage arrived 
 at Varennes at 11 p.m., preceded by Valory, having spent 
 twenty-three hours on the road. When the carriage did 
 VOL. I. 2 o 
 
450 The King is stopped at Varennes. [chap. 
 
 arrive, the Chevalier de Bouille and the Comte. de Raigeeourt 
 had already left Varennes for the head-quarters of the general, 
 who had advanced from Montmedy as far as S6dan, accom- 
 panied by the whole Royal-Allemand regiment under the 
 command of Colonel Mandell. 
 
 Rumours that the carriage contained the King had already 
 reached Varennes, for Drouet had galloped into the little town 
 just before the arrival of the royal family. When, therefore, 
 the faithful Gardes du Corps attempted to harness fresh horses, 
 they were resisted by the people, who collected in large 
 numbers and declared that the king should go no further. 
 On the news of this excitement in the little " place," M. Sauce, a 
 small grocer in the town, who was the procureur of the commune, 
 came down in his official scarf and asked the king what was 
 the matter. On his arrival, there were cries of " C'est le Roi !" 
 The procureur insisted that the royal fugitives should alight 
 from their carriage and enter his house, while he consulted 
 with the rest of the municipal officers as to what their duty 
 was in this case. The king indignantly asked why he was 
 thus stopped, and demanded horses to go on to Montmedy; 
 and when they were refused, consented to leave his carriage 
 and rest at the house of the triumphant grocer and procureur. 
 Meanwhile the rumour that the king was at Varennes spread 
 through all the surrounding district, for Drouet had summoned 
 the national guards of all the villages along the road. These 
 national guards by dawn reached the number of three thou- 
 sand, who all placed themselves under the command of 
 Colonel de Signemont, a lieutenant-colonel in the royal army, 
 and a knight of St. Louis, who held the office of commandant 
 of the National Guard of Varennes. The national guards 
 raised a barricade across the river Aire, in order to block 
 the road to Sedan and to prevent any attempt of Bouille's 
 to rescue the king by force. The only hope now left to the 
 royal family was the expectation that Bouille would speedily 
 come to their help ; but they quite understood that if Bouill^ 
 attacked the town from without, they themselves would also be 
 attacked. The Due de Choiseul, with the Comte de Damaa 
 
XV.] The King at Varennes. 451 
 
 aud five other officers, who found themselves with the king, 
 as well as the Gardes du Corps, made preparations to defend 
 the house. The hours of the night passed very slowly ; no 
 news of Bouill^ was heard ; but at last, at five o'clock in the 
 morning of June 22, Captain d'Eslon, who had been in 
 command of the detachment of hussars stationed at Dun, 
 appeared by himself at the house of the procureur. He entered 
 alone, for it was impossible for his handful of hussars to 
 charge the barricade which M. de Sign^mont had erected. 
 In the morning also, at a debate of the municipal body, it was 
 decided that M. Mangin, a surgeon of the town, should gallop 
 post-haste to Paris with a letter from the municipal authori- 
 ties, asking the National Assembly what they should do. 
 When the king was informed of this result of the delibera- 
 tions of the municipal body he knew that all was lost, and 
 when, about an hour after the departure of Mangin, two 
 horsemen arrived from Paris, he felt that they must bring bad 
 news. They were M. Bayon, chief of a battalion of the 
 National Guard of Paris, who had been sent by the munici- 
 pality along the Montmedy road directly the news of the 
 king's departure had become public, and M. Romoeuf, an 
 aide-de-camp of Lafayette's, who had been sent by the 
 Assembly for the same purpose. They were followed by 
 Palloy, who had fulfilled the contract for pulling down the 
 Bastille, and made himself a name by sending models of it 
 to all the departments. Bayon at once forced his way into 
 the king's presence, and Romoeuf was called upon to read 
 the decree which he had brought from the Assembly. This 
 decree was to the effect that the king had been carried off 
 by traitors, and called upon every municipality and every 
 National Guard to do their best to bring him back to Paris. 
 But even yet the king would not give up hope. He begged 
 for a few hours' rest. " Give me at least," he asked, " till seven 
 o'clock." The queen was not so occupied with thoughts of her 
 own misfortune, and her first question was, "Do you know 
 if M. de Fersen is safe ? " The king managed to linger yet 
 another hour at Varennes by sleeping or pretending to sleep 
 
452 BouilU. [chap. 
 
 but at half-past seven he felt that hope was at an end, and the 
 royal carriage started on its return journey to Paris. BouilM 
 had received the news, .brought to him by his son, the 
 Chevalier, and De Raigecourt, near Stenay, . and at once 
 attempted to get his troops in hand. Colonel Mandell was 
 ordered to saddle. The Nassau and Castella infantry regi- 
 ments were ordered up, as well as two squadrons of the 
 Chasseurs de Champagne. But there was a delay in saddling, 
 a delay in marching, and the general only reached the town 
 of Varennes at half-past nine on the morning of June 22, 
 where he was met by Captain d'Eslon with the news that 
 the king was already on his way back to Clermont-en- 
 Argonne, and had left Varennes two hours before. In an 
 excited manner Bouill6 implored his generals, his oiEcers, and 
 his men to follow him and save the king. The attempt was 
 desperate ; he felt that if it failed, all was lost. He then 
 galloped towards the frontier, when his officers doubted the 
 practicability of pursuing the king, and at six o'clock that 
 evening he bade farewell to his dragoons and hussars at 
 Stenay, and at eleven he reached Orval, a large convent on 
 the other side of the Belgian frontier, with Generals Klinglin 
 and D'Hofflize, and some twenty other officers. There he 
 passed the night of June 22, and when the morning of the 
 23rd broke, he remembered that it was the day of the Fete 
 Dieu, on which day, if the flight of the king had been suc- 
 cessful, he was to have been invested in the cathedral of 
 Montmedy with the baton of a marshal of France, surrounded 
 by officers and soldiers, flushed with success, and hearing himself 
 called on all sides the saviour of France. The after-life of the 
 general was much saddened by this failure ; he could never 
 obtain any real command in the army of the Emigres, and had 
 to serve as a volunteer. In England he was offered the chief 
 governorship of San Domingo, but would not return to the 
 scene of his previous exploits as a servant of his former foes, 
 and he died in the year 1800 in London, leaving his name 
 for ever associated with the failure of Varennes, and held up 
 to the execration of all French Republicans in a well-knowa 
 verse of their national anthem. 
 
XV. j The Return from Varennes, 453 
 
 Even up to the last moment, when the horses' heads were 
 turned towards Paris, the king had hoped that he might yet 
 be saved by BouilM, and get to Montmddy. But at last he 
 recognized that hope was gone. Escorted by three thousand 
 national guards, under the command of M. de Sign^mont and 
 the leadership of the now famous postmaster, Drouet, he 
 reached Clermont-en-Argonne at ten in the morning, and Sainte 
 Menehould at half-past one. There Drouet had not been idle, 
 and he collected together, chiefly from Verdun, fifteen thousand 
 men, who occupied themselves in hissing the royal family, and 
 could hardly be kept from murdering the Gardes du Corps, and 
 who did murder the Comte de Dampierre for trying to force 
 his way through the crowd in order to pay his respects to the 
 king. Chalons was reached at eleven o'clock at night, and 
 there the king was received with much respectful sympathy. 
 The girls of the city presented him with fresh flowers, and M. 
 Roze, the procureur, who was an ardent Royalist, again offered 
 to save the king ; but he could only save him alone, and Louis 
 would not desert his family.^ On June 23, the F^te Dieu, 
 the king heard mass at Chalons, and might, as well as Bouill6, 
 have thought of the difiference of the actual scene to what 
 they had both hoped for. He then left for Epernay, and near 
 Dormans the royal carriage was joined by Potion, Barnave, and 
 Latour-Maubourg, three deputies who had been sent to bring 
 the king back to Paris, and Mathieu Dumas, one of the staff- 
 officers of the Parisian National Guard, who had been sent to 
 take command of the various detachments of national guards 
 Of the last stage of the journey back to Paris there is a 
 minute and detailed account extant, written by Potion, which 
 however gives a more interesting insight into the character of 
 the deputy than into the nature of the joTirney. He thought 
 that the Princess Elizabeth cast looks of love upon him, and 
 proudly plumes himself on his virtue in repulsing her ; ^ for 
 
 1 Abb^ Gabriel, p. 314. 
 
 2 See his account of this journey, printed in MSmoires inidits de PSiion 
 et Memoires de Buzot et de Barharoux, edited by C. A. Dauban, pp. 189- 
 204. Paris : 1866. 
 
454 1^^ King re-enters Paris. [chap. 
 
 the man was at once too vain and too mean to perceive the 
 dramatic side of the great misfortune which had happened to 
 this unfortunate family. Barnave felt the sadness of the con- 
 trast between past greatness and present humiliation, and 
 though it is not likely that the queen won him over to her 
 side during the journey, there can be no doubt that his young 
 and enthusiastic imagination was greatly impressed by the 
 sad spectacle before him. On the night of June 23 the royal 
 family slept at Dormans, and on the 24th at Meaux,^ and they 
 left the latter city at six in the morning for the last stage of 
 their return journey. Every preparation had been made in 
 Paris that the king should be received without disturbance. 
 Instead of entering by the direct road, the city walls were 
 skirted until the Champs Elysees were reached, and the car- 
 riage then passed slowly up the Champs Elysees and the 
 gardens of the Tuileries to the palace. On every wall in 
 Paris was affixed a proclamation, to the effect that " whoever 
 applauds the king shall be flogged, and whoever insults him 
 shall be hung;" but there is no record that any one either 
 applauded or insulted him. He was received in gloomy silence, 
 and felt from that moment he was severed for ever from the 
 hearts of his people. 
 
 The consequences of the disastrous flight from Paris, which 
 was checked at Varennes, were exactly what Mirabeau had 
 prophesied from the first. He had always told the king that 
 he must not fly towards the frontier, or else he woidd be sus- 
 pected of an alliance with foreigners against his own country ; 
 that he must not depend upon the nobility, who were " an 
 army which could not fight;" and that the only means by 
 which he could rouse the provinces in his favour was by 
 freely promising that the advantages which had been procured 
 in the early days of the Constituent Assembly by the abolition 
 of the relics of feudalism should be guaranteed to them. 
 But the king, or rather the queen, had neglected all these 
 necessary precautions. They did fiy towards the frontier, and 
 
 1 Le, Passage de Louis XVI. a Meaiix au retov/r de Varennes le 24 Juin, 
 J.791, by Victor Modeste. Meaux : 1865. 
 
XV. J State of Paris on June 21. 455 
 
 were suspected of an alliance with foreigners; they did find 
 how weak a support the nobility of France, as represented by 
 the officers of Bouill6's army, was ; and, instead of guaranteeing 
 to France the advantages which had been won, the king left 
 behind him a paper drawn up on that fatal evenino- of 
 June 20, when he had determined on flight, formally declaring 
 that all the decrees of the Constituent Assembly to which he 
 had given his consent were null and void, because that consent 
 had been given under pressure and when he was not per- 
 sonally free. The news of his departure, together with this 
 ill-advised paper, was brought down to the Assembly on its 
 meeting at nine o'clock, as usual, on the morning of June 21, 
 and Alexandre de Beauhamais, who was at that time president, 
 read it to the Assembly. Immediately, as at the time of the 
 taking of the Bastille and of October 0, the Assembly declared 
 itself " en permanence." Measures were promptly taken. A 
 proclamation, the one which Romoeuf read to the king at 
 Varennes, was issued, ordering the municipality of any town 
 into which the king might come to stop his Majesty until 
 further orders, and to imprison those who had carried him off. 
 Thus at this early stage appears the first sign of the affected 
 belief of the Assembly that the king had been carried off", and 
 did not leave Paris of his own free will. But the Assembly 
 did not, in 1791, have to act alone, as it had done in 1789. It 
 had relieved itself of its extraordinary powers by creating the 
 new local authorities, aiid it now summoned the council-general 
 of the department of the Seine to remain also " en permanence " 
 in the next hall to itself, in order that it might advise with 
 the Assembly on the measures deemed necessary to secure 
 the safety of Paris. The municipality of Paris had at once 
 reported the king's flight to the directory of the department, 
 and the council-general of the department was summoned by 
 the directors.* Three shots were fired to announce to the city 
 that something of paramount importance had occurred. The 
 sections requested leave to sit " en permanence," which was 
 
 1 Schmidt's Tableaux de la Revolution frani;aise, vol. i. pp. 26-58, where 
 theproces verbal of the permanent session of the council-general is printed. 
 
456 State of Paris on J tine 21. [chap. 
 
 granted. The municipality was ordered to seal up the Tuileries 
 and examine the servants, and to do the same at the palace of 
 the Luxembourg, from which Monsieur had likewise escaped. 
 The gates of Paris were to be closed, and no one was to be per- 
 mitted to go out or come in ; letters were not to be distributed ; 
 patrols were to be increased in all the streets, and strangers 
 were to be examined. Then came the invitation of the 
 National Assembly, and the council-general of the department 
 immediately complied with the request. The members marched 
 solemnly through the streets. But of all the respectable gen- 
 tlemen among them, one man, Danton, was the only member 
 of the council-general who attracted the attention of the 
 people in the streets. Attended by a volunteer guard of four 
 armed men, he shouted to the people that there were traitors 
 in Paris; that the people must not be afraid to demand an 
 inquiry; that the king might go, and indeed that the people 
 had best beware of him and of the Austrian Committee, which 
 met at the Tuileries. This bold conduct of Danton, and the 
 appeal which he had made to the passions of the people, 
 disgusted the respectable gentlemen who were his colleagues, 
 and they drew Danton into great peril during the following 
 months. The city remained perfectly quiet, but the populace 
 greatly troubled both the municipality and the authorities of 
 the department by demanding arms. Some were served out, 
 notably one thousand muskets and five hundred sabres to the 
 market-porters. The actors of the Theatre Franpais, or the 
 Thdatre de la Nation, asked leave to reopen for the usual per- 
 formance, and were told that they had never been ordered to 
 close. A placard, condemning the king, which had been posted 
 on all the walls by the radical club of the Cordeliers, was con- 
 demned as seditious and libellous. At last the surgeon Mangin, 
 who had been sent off from Varennes, reached Paris, after fifteen 
 hours' hard riding, with information that the king was stopped 
 in his little town. At this news universal joy was expressed, 
 and it was immediately sent round to all the sections by the 
 president of the Assembly. The young medical students of 
 the section Theatre Fran9ais, which then stood on the site of 
 
XV.] Paris on the Kings Return. 457 
 
 the present Th^^tre d'Oddon, and in the Quartier Latin, asked 
 leave to go to Varennes and bring the king safely back. This 
 offer was refused, but ordered to be put upon record as an 
 instance of the students' patriotism; and the section des 
 Thermes de Julien, also on the west side of the river, asked 
 leave to examine all suspected houses — a fact which is of 
 importance when the examination of August, 1792, comes 
 under notice. But at this period leave to search was refused. 
 The next morning the authorities of the department were 
 besieged by country people, who had brought in provisions on 
 the previous day, and who now begged to be allowed to leave 
 the city and go about their business ; which was granted, as 
 the crisis was now believed to be over. The Assembly at the 
 same time sent off Barnave, Potion, and Latour-Maubourg to 
 escort the king to Paris, and Lafayette and Colonel d'Affry 
 of the Swiss Guards were ordered to arrange for the peaceable 
 entrance of the king. On June 24 the Cordeliers published a 
 placard openly declaring their horror of the king, and demanding 
 the convocation of the primary assemblies, and it was finally 
 an'anged that the king should enter Paris by the circuitous 
 route of the Champs Ellys^es. On the 25th, as has been said, 
 the unfortunate monarch did re-enter his capital. But he 
 found that all the papers which had been left behind at the 
 Tuileries had been carried off and put under seal in the 
 Archives, that they might be examined in order to find out 
 who had been employed in carrying off the king. On the 
 26th, Bailly, mayor of Paris, reported that he had discovered 
 that a plot had existed in all the prisons, and that the prisoners 
 were to have broken out on the 21st as soon as the king had 
 departed ; and this is also notable, as showing the firm belief 
 of the populace that the departure of the king was a deep- 
 laid plot, which had been communicated to all the Royalists. 
 On the 27th the permanent sessions both of the Assembly and 
 of the council-general of the department of the Seine broke 
 up. It is especially interesting to notice the conduct of Paris 
 at this juncture, for it was the turning-point of the progress of 
 the Revolution. After it the word " republic " was first heard 
 
458 Escape of Monsieur. [chap. 
 
 in the streets of Paris, and if the king's dignity had gone on 
 April 18, any chance of his regaining his authority was lost 
 by his unfortunate attempt of June 21. 
 
 The successful escape of Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, 
 and of his wife, who left Paris on the same night as the king, 
 and safely reached the frontier, proves how much could be done 
 by faithful servants, and how easily, if the king and queen had 
 consented to travel separately, and had not insisted upon the 
 useless parade of soldiers on their route, their journey, might have 
 been accomplished. Monsieur had bravely insisted on remain- 
 ing at Paris to share his brother's dangers, until Louis himself 
 informed him of his projected escape, and had allowed his 
 mistress, Madame de Balbi, to go without him ; but when he 
 was told that the king himself was going to leave Paris, he 
 decided to follow his example. He wisely left the arrangement 
 of his escape to the Comte d'Avaray, his chamberlain,^ and 
 merely acted with the obedience of a child. He went to bed 
 at his usual hour, but when his first valet de chambre, who 
 slept in his room, left it for a few minutes, he managed to slip 
 into the adjoining room, where d'Avaray awaited him, so 
 adroitly that when the valet returned he had no idea that the 
 bed-curtains had been moved, and went to sleep as usual.^ 
 Meanwhile, d'Avaray, who spoke English perfectly, and pretended 
 to be an English lord on his way from Paris, taking with him a 
 faithful English groom named Sayers, had dressed Monsieur as 
 his other servant, and got him safely out of the palace. AU 
 had been skilfully arranged ; but just when the prince had got 
 outside the palace of the Luxembourg, " I remembered," he 
 says, " my cane and second snuff-box, and wished to return for 
 them." But d'Avaray stopped him, and with an exclamation 
 of " Peste centre les princes ! " thrust him into the carriage. The 
 
 1 Louia XVIII. himself wrote an account of his escape, which was 
 published in Paris in 1823, under the title of Belation d'wn voyage a 
 Bi-uxelles et a Goblentz, wliich is quoted in Forneron's Ilistoire gSnerah des 
 emigres, vol. i. pp. 234-237. 
 
 2 Souvenirs d'lm sexagenaire, by A. V. Arnault the dramatist, and then 
 a gentleman in the household of Monsieur, vol. L p. 252, Paris : 1833. 
 
xv.J Attitude of the Assembly. 459 
 
 journey was perfectly safe, and enlivened only by such interrup- 
 tions as the breaking of a wheel, and the discovery that, as 
 bread had been omitted from the store of provisions, they had 
 to eat the pie-crust with their p^te. They beguiled the way 
 with songs from comic operas, and reached Brussels on Jime 22, 
 where they heard of the king's being stopped at Varennes ; and 
 where Bouill^ handed Monsieur seven hundred thousand francs, 
 the balance of one million which had been given to him to 
 arrange for the escape of the king. The journey of the Comtesse 
 de Provence was equally safe, and was entirely managed by one 
 of her favourites, Madame de Gourbillon, wife of the postmaster 
 at LUle. The excitement at Paris was so great at the flight of 
 the king and queen that little attention was paid to the escape 
 of Monsieur and Madame, though it afterwards gave rise to 
 important political complications, and the chief feeling inspired 
 by the account of its success is the proof afforded that the 
 king and queen might have safely reached Montmedy had the 
 aifair been properly managed, though their arrival there would 
 have been but of doubtful advantage to the king himself, and 
 would have certainly driven France to civil war. 
 
 On the king's return to Paris, the first question for the 
 deputies to decide was the manner in which to treat his flight. 
 Should they venture to depose or try the king for leaving 
 his own capital, or should they adopt the English maxim, 
 that the king could do no wrong, and prosecute the men who 
 had acted under his express orders ? The latter was the course 
 adopted, and it is an important fact in the history of the Con- 
 stituent Assembly that it was at this juncture that the trium- 
 virate, consisting of Duport, Barnave, and the Lameths, began 
 to throw in their weight on the side of order, and determined 
 to strengthen the executive. Three deputies of the Assembly 
 were elected to examine the papers seized at the Tuileries, and 
 their very names show with what intention they were elected, 
 and what kind of report they would draw up. These com- 
 missioners were Adrien Duport, who had for a long time been 
 regarded as the chief adviser of the Duke of Orleans ; Tronchet, 
 the famous jurist, who had had a very great share in drawing 
 
460 Attitude of the Triumvirate and Bourgeois, [chap. 
 
 up the new Constitution, and who now perceived that its provi- 
 sions had made the position of the king quite unbearable ; and 
 D' Andre, deputy for Aix, who was mentioned in the memorable 
 report of Duquesnoy as one of the most statesmanlike members 
 of the Assembly. After the nomination of these commissioners 
 appears the first sign of a reaction in opinion among the deputies 
 of the left, who had hitherto been known as the leaders of the 
 Jacobins. It has been noticed that the triumvirate had been 
 becoming less powerful and less popular ever since the death 
 of Mirabeau, and that Robespierre and Potion had succeeded 
 the Lameths as the heroes of the people of Paris; and it is 
 most probable that the change in their opinions was due not 
 only to the conviction that they had themselves gone too far, 
 but also to a feeling of pique at losing the ascendancy they 
 had so long enjoyed. Their defection from the party of the 
 advanced revolutionists had a more important effect ' than 
 merely influencing the aspect in which the king's flight was 
 regarded ; it gave the party of order a real majority in the 
 Assembly, and, with the majority of the Assembly on his side, 
 Lafayette determined that he would make an attempt to check 
 the advanced party in Paris. The immediate effect of the 
 king's flight was to prove to the general that he could not be 
 at one and the same time the hero of the populace and the idol 
 of the National Guard ; for the populace and the bourgeois, who 
 formed the National Guard, had now developed distinctly 
 different tendencies. The bourgeois had got all they could 
 possibly expect to get. By the new Constitution all power 
 was thrown into their hands, and they were now as a class 
 beginning to be afraid, with a fear wh eh the next few years 
 thoroughly justifled, that if some return towards good govern- 
 ment were not made soon, their property would begin to suffer. 
 This opposition between the bourgeois, who thought of their 
 property, and the populace, whose leaders dreamt of a far more 
 complete and thorough revolution, has been noticed as tacitly 
 existing in 1789, and it was dwelt upon by LoustaUot and 
 Camille Desmoulins in their journals when discussing the 
 decrees of the " trois journ^es de travail " and the " marc 
 
XV.] Danton and the Cordeliers. 461 
 
 d'argent ; " but it was not until this time that Lafayette per- 
 ceived how wide the schism really .was, and determined to 
 throw all his weight on the side of the bourgeois. The lesult 
 of this determination appeared on July 17, when open war 
 practically broke out between the populace of Paris and the 
 bourgeois, as represented by the National Guard. 
 
 The opposition between the party which still desired to 
 maintain the king at the head of the administrative edifice 
 and the extreme revolutionists appeared even more markedly 
 ia the clubs than in the National Assembly. The majority of 
 the Assembly showed their new policy in a decree that Choi- 
 seul, Damas, Goguelat, and all those concerned in the king's 
 flight should be arrested and sent for trial before the high 
 court for cases of high treason at Orleans, after a long speech 
 in opposition from Robespierre, who boldly declared that it 
 was unjust to attack the accomplices and not the chief criminals. 
 The club of the Cordeliers expressed the same opinion; but 
 Danton, who was all-powerful there, was not so much actuated 
 by a desire to be just, as by the thought that the opportunity 
 had at last come of establishing a new and strong government 
 in the place of one patched up out of the theories of unpractical 
 idealists and the remains of the old monarchy. It was from, 
 this period that Danton must be recognized as the true successor 
 of Mirabeau, though many of his political ideas were entirely 
 different. Danton was now the one great man who perceived 
 the necessity for a strong government to re-establish order, and 
 thus ensure the end of strife and the happiness of France ; and 
 he saw, quite as clearly as Mirabeau himself, that no strong 
 government could be expected from the Constituent Assembly. 
 However, he differed entirely from Mirabeau in one most 
 material point. Instead of bolstering up and strengthening 
 the monarchy, he wished entirely to wipe it out, and to 
 establish a strong and efficient government by utterly destroy- 
 ing the chance of any compromise with the old order of things, 
 which could only be done by founding a republic. The club 
 of the Cordeliers readily agreed to the motion of Danton that 
 the king should be dethroned, and regarded as having abdicated. 
 
462 The Petition of July 1 7. [chap, 
 
 and that he should be tried like any other criminal. A petition 
 demanding the king's dethronement and trial was therefore 
 drawn up and laid for signature upon the altar of the nation, 
 "which had been erected on the Champ de Mars on the occasion 
 of the federation of July 14, 1790. This brought matters to a 
 crisis. Lafayette had hoped to profit by the flight to Varennes 
 as he had profited by the events of October .5 and 6, and had 
 expected that the bourgeois would once more turn to him and 
 throw aU power into his hands, in order that their property 
 might be secured by the agency of the National Guard. 
 He knew well that the dethronement of the king would 
 inevitably result either in the establishment of a powerful 
 republic, which would soon dismiss him from power and ofiice, 
 or else in the election of a new king in the person of the Duke 
 of Orleans, who would allow no mayor of the palace near the 
 throne, and he therefore intended to suppress the movement 
 instituted by the Cordeliers against the king. Bailly, the un- 
 fortunate mayor of Paris, was now, as ever, strongly desirous 
 of maintaining order in the city, and was completely subservient 
 to Lafayette, and he at once issued a proclamation that no crowd 
 would be allowed to assemble on the Champ de Mars, and that 
 if one collected it would be immediately dispersed by force. 
 
 Nevertheless, the people of Paris did not for one moment 
 believe that Bailly would dare to interfere, or that Lafayette 
 and his national guards would dare to fire on them. Men, 
 women, and children, therefore, flocked to the Champ de Mars 
 on the morning of July 17, as they had flocked to the feast 
 of the federation in the previous year, joyfully, and in the 
 expectation of enjoying the humours of a Parisian crowd, and 
 possibly of seeing something amusing. For some time the 
 work of signing the petition went on quietly, until the mob 
 discovered a barber and a retired soldier hidden under the 
 altar of the nation, with some wine and provisions, inspecting 
 the " well-made legs of the citizenesses." ^ The cry arose that 
 
 1 Qrand rScit de ce qui s'est passe hier au Champ de Mars et des assassi- 
 nats qui s'y sont commis avec le nombre des morts et des blesses. In British 
 Museum.— F. 833 (24). 
 
XV.] The Massacre of July 1 7. 463 
 
 they had gunpowder, and were secreted there in order to 
 blow up the altar, and in a moment they were torn to pieces. 
 The mob then became greatly excited, and declared there was 
 a great plot against their lives, and several messengers, sent 
 both by Bailly and Lafayette to direct them to dispei'se, were 
 hooted and stoned. Bailly at this news ordered the red flag 
 to be hoisted at the Hotel de Ville and waved in the streets, in 
 accordance with the terms of the martial law which had been 
 decreed on October 16, 1789, after the murder of the baker 
 Frangois ; and Lafayette ordered the battalions of the National 
 Guard on which he could best rely to assemble under arms 
 and support the mayor. These battalions then advanced, with 
 the mayor in their midst, to the Champ de Mars, where Bailly 
 read over three times the proclamation ordained by the martial 
 law, bidding the people disperse to their homes. The pro- 
 clamation; it was afterwards asserted, was read in so low a 
 voice that nobody could hear it, and it may well be believed 
 that the hapless astronomer and man of science did not raise 
 his voice enough at this critical juncture. The reading of the 
 proclamation was received with loud laughter by the mob, 
 ajid Lafayette ordered his men to fire. The national guards 
 then fired a volley into the air, but, on being pelted with 
 stones, they reloaded, and at the second discharge more than 
 twenty sightseers— for they were little more — including several 
 women, fell killed or wounded. More than were killed by the 
 actual discharge of the muskets of the national guards were 
 injured or crushed to death in the hurry with which the people 
 attempted to get out of range, and, as more than three hundred 
 persons were either killed or injured on that day, there was 
 some excuse for the revolutionary journalists to write of it as 
 the massacre of the Champ de Mars. Whether or not Bailly 
 and Lafayette were too hasty, or whether their action was 
 inevitable and due to an honest endeavour to maintain order, 
 must always be disputed ; but there can be no doubt that the 
 effect of their proceedings on July 17 was disastrous, for it 
 finally separated the bourgeois and the populace of Paris, and 
 no quarter could be afterwards expected by the bourgeois 
 
464 Results of the Massacre. [chap. 
 
 when the populace became supreme. Bailly also had special 
 reason to lament the part which he had played, when, two 
 years afterwards, on his condemnation by the revolutionary 
 tribunal, the people demanded that the author of the massacre 
 should be executed on the spot where he had read the procla- 
 mation ; when, one cold rainy day, he was kept shivering for 
 hours on the Champ de Mars while the guillotine was being 
 erected there, and when he was at last put to death on the 
 very spot where he had exhibited his authority, amid the 
 hisses and groans of men who had lost their brothers and 
 perhaps their wives on July 17, 1791. The scene of bustle 
 and gaiety had on that day been turned into mourning, and 
 those who had caused the change were to suffer bitterly for 
 their conduct. 
 
 The massacre of the Champ de Mars was the direct result 
 of the flight to Varennes, and it was believed bj' the partisans 
 of the new Constitution that it would for ever repress the 
 extreme revolutionists, and would re-establish the power of 
 the executive. But matters had gone too far. The Assembly 
 had so weakened the monarchy that there was no strength left 
 in it, and nothing could ever restore the power of the executive 
 under a monarch whose helplessness had been demonstrated 
 by his ignominious return from Varennes. For the moment 
 there was an appearance of vigour. Lafayette was congratu- 
 lated by the Assembly. The directory of the department of 
 the Seine made preparations to prosecute Danton. Danton 
 himself perceived that his time had not yet come, and left 
 Paris for Arcis-sur-Aube. Camille Desmoulins discontinued 
 his journal, and Marat decided to escape to England. For a 
 moment it was believed that a strong government would be 
 established ; but it was vain to expect any real effective measure 
 from the unpractical theorists who had for two years formed 
 the majoiity of the Constituent Assembly. The only useful 
 result of the vigour displayed on July 17 appeared in the 
 revision of the Constitution, which took place in the month of 
 August, for the conduct of the Assembly with regard to the 
 actual massacre of the Champ de Mars was deplorably weak 
 
XV.] Revision of the Constitution, 465 
 
 Salle, a doctor at Nancy and deputy for that bailliage, who was 
 now a leader of the moderate left and afterwards a conspicuous 
 member of the Girondin party, proposed that the authors of 
 the petition drawn up for signature on the Champ de Mars 
 should be arrested and sent before the high court of Orleans, 
 with the accomplices in the flight to Varennes. His motion 
 gave rise to a lively debate. Robespierre opposed it strongly, 
 and declared that if the Assembly kept taking individual cases 
 from the cognizance of the ordinary tribunals and laws, it 
 would thereby destroy the authority and prestige of those new 
 tribunals and laws. Lanjuinais, the celebrated Breton pro- 
 fessor of law, was of the same opinion, and pointed out that 
 exceptional laws, devised for special occasions, always had the 
 effect of depreciating the influence of law in general ; and after 
 his speech the motion of Salle was defeated. 
 
 On August 5 Thouret brought up a report of the consti- 
 tutional committee that the Constitution was complete, and it 
 was decided that it should be read over to the Assembly, and 
 revised where necessary. In the present temper of the majority 
 it is hardly necessary to say that the alterations which were 
 made were not of a revolutionary character. Most of the altera- 
 tions were made in mere details, but in discussing them Bar- 
 nave and the Lameths especially showed a desire to strengthen 
 the executive. Only one important subject was discussed at 
 great length. It had been decreed, on the motion of Sieyfes, 
 in January, 1790, that there should be complete liberty of the 
 press, with the restriction only that every book or journal 
 should contain the names of the printer, publisher, and editor, 
 in order that any aggrieved individual might know against 
 whom he could bring an action for libel. This arrangement 
 was declared to be perfect by Robespierre; but the majority, 
 and Barnave in particular, thought that there ought to be 
 some more efficient control over the press. In vain did Robes- 
 pierre point out that, under the regulations of the decree of 
 Sidyfes, any one who was libelled had his remedy at law; 
 Barnave insisted that the punishment of an author, printer, or 
 publisher in damages, or even in imprisonment, could never 
 VOL. I. ^ H 
 
466 The King accepts the Constitution. [chap. 
 
 suiEciently compensate a man who had been grossly libelled. 
 Both Eobespierre and Barnave were right. No adequate com- 
 pensation can be made to an individual for a ruined reputation, 
 and no compensation to a country for the existence of a censor- 
 ship over its press. The work of revision was soon over, and 
 on August 30 the Assembly decreed that, although by the 
 terms of the Constitution a convention might be summoned to 
 alter it, no change was to be made for thirty years. The 
 foresight of the Assembly was once more at fault, and the 
 deputies lived to see that no amount of decrees could prevent 
 the people of France from altering an ineffioient and unwork- 
 able Constitution. On September 3 the Constitution was 
 declared to be complete, and a deputation of sixty members 
 was elected to present it to the king. He received the depu- 
 tation with courtesy, and promised to come down to the 
 Assembly and swear fidelity to the new Constitution in the 
 presence of all the deputies. The Assembly, overjoyed at his 
 ready acquiescence, immediately decreed, on the motion of 
 Lafayette, that the accomplices in the flight to Varennes should 
 be amnestied, and, on the following day, on the motion of 
 Beaumetz, that all prisoners for political oflfences committed 
 during the last two years should be released and amnestied, 
 because they were years of revolution, and that the law against 
 the dmigrds should be repealed. The king, delighted at the 
 effect of his ready acceptance of the Constitution, came down 
 to the Assembly on September 4, and swore solemnly to be 
 faithful to the Constitution, and that he accepted it wholly 
 and entirely. Loud were the shouts of " Vive le Koi ! " both 
 within and without the Assembly ; the city was illuminated ; 
 the theatres were opened free; there was dancing in the 
 Champs Elysdes and the Place de la Bastille ; and, amid salvos 
 of artillery and blowing of trumpets, France was solemnly 
 declared to have entered upon a new era, and the Eevolution 
 was declared to be over now that the Constitution was com- 
 pleted and accepted by the king. But on the very day on 
 which these rejoicings took place, the Constituent Assembly, 
 which had been prevented for so long by Mirabeau from 
 
XV.] The Asse7nbly and the Jacobin Club. 467 
 
 neglecting to respect the rules of international law, showed its 
 contempt for treaties and international obligations by decreeing 
 the annexation of Avignon to France without makiDg any 
 compensation to its lawful sovereign, the pope, or making any 
 overture to obtain his consent. It was from without that the 
 progress of the Revolution was now being threatened, and had 
 the Constitution of 1791 been ever so good, foreign sovereio-ns 
 must have interfered sooner or later with a country which 
 , refused to recognize its obligations to other nations. In the 
 very same month of August, while the Constitution was being 
 revised, the Emperor Leopold and King Frederick William of 
 Prussia met at Pilnitz, in Saxony, and solemnly agreed, after 
 discussing the state of France, to act iu harmony if it should 
 become necessary for foreign powers to interfere with the 
 course of events in that country. 
 
 While deputies were being elected to the Legislative 
 Assembly, in happy ignorance that it would be the only 
 Assembly chosen according to the complicated rules laid down 
 by the Constitution, the Constituent Assembly sat for another 
 fortnight, and during that fortnight a very important decree 
 was passed, which showed clearly enough that the majority 
 of the deputies understood from what quarter at home danger 
 was threatening their beloved masterpiece. On September 29 
 Le Chapelier moved that, the affiliation of popular societies 
 and clubs should be forbidden, and that, if they exercised any 
 influence on elections or interfered with public affairs, they 
 should be suppressed.^ This motion was, of course, aimed at 
 the Jacobins, and was strenuously opposed by Robespierre, 
 Potion, Prieur, and the other deputies, who were now the heroes 
 of that great club ; but it was carried by a large majority. Le 
 Chapelier two years later had good reason to repent his success, 
 for it identified him and all the deputies of the left, who had 
 changed their opinions and become more moderate since the 
 king's flight, with the deputies of the right, and all alike were 
 held up to execration as enemies of the Jacobins and of the 
 people. That Le Chapelier felt this is shown by his answer to 
 * Eistoire Pa/rlementavre, vol. xi. pp. 453, 454. 
 
468 Dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, [chap. 
 
 Duval d'Espr^mesnil, who had been consistently and violently 
 opposed to the Constitution and its makers, when they were 
 both being carried to the guillotine upon the same cart, 
 " Which of us is the people hooting ? " asked D'Esprdmesnil. 
 " Both of us," answered the Breton deputy, tersely. And he 
 was right. The populace of Paris and of all France only two 
 j^ears later hated and hooted the chief authors of the Constitu- 
 tion and the leading deputies of the Constituent Assembly, 
 whom they had once worshipped, with as much bitterness as 
 they did the Royalist deputies who had opposed them. 
 
 On September 30, the day after Le Chapelier's decree was 
 carried, the Constituent Assembly met for its last session. 
 Thouret, who presided, received the congratulations of the 
 municipality of Paris, headed by Bailly; of the directory of 
 the department of the Seine, headed by the Due de la Roche- 
 foucauld; and finally of the king himself He then made 
 a final speech, thanking the king for his promised loyalty 
 to the Constitution, and extolling the liberties just won for 
 France, and at four o'clock he declared that the Assembly had 
 concluded its mission and was dissolved. Without, on the 
 terrace of the Feuillants, an immense crowd had assembled. 
 For whom did they wait? Maury and the Royalists were 
 laughed at ; Malouet was hissed ; Duport, Barnave, and the 
 Lameths were received with curses; and, with one accord 
 and great enthusiasm, all the people crowned Robespierre and 
 Potion with laurel as the heroes of the Constituent Assembly. 
 Strange indeed had been the fluctuation of popular applause 
 during the two years' session of the Constituent Assembly. 
 Idols had been cast down and new idols had been set up; 
 but there must have been some deputies of the Assembly 
 itself, and some, even many, of that cheering, enthusiastic 
 crowd, who remembered the one great man, who will ever 
 remain the true hero as weU as the greatest statesman and 
 greatest orator of the Constituent Assembly— the great 
 Mirabeau. 
 
 The nature of the new Constitution, which had been 
 completed after so much labour, and which was now regarded 
 
XV.] The Work done by the Assembly. 469 
 
 with such high hopes, has sufficiently appeared during the 
 history of the Constituent Assembly. The want of practical ex- 
 perience and the sad lack of statesmanship of the vast majority 
 of the deputies has again and again been insisted upon, as 
 well as their honest endeavours to do justice and to regenerate 
 Fi-ance, their mother country, which all the deputies, whether 
 of the right, left, or centre, passionately loved. While the 
 results of the labours of the Assembly may be condemned, 
 and the faults and mistakes of the men who sat there may 
 be clearly visible to modern eyes, yet all due credit must be 
 given them for good intentions and a real longing to do what 
 seemed to them right and just. Much that they did has 
 never been undone. France can never again become a con- 
 glomeration of provinces, each with its own dialect and its 
 own laws ; and it was the Constituent Assembly which began 
 the great work of making the inhabitants of France French- 
 men, and not Proven9als or Picards, which first gave to 
 all France one common system of laws, and one just 
 repartition of taxes, and, above all, which guaranteed to every 
 Frenchman of every class, as long as he did not break the 
 laws, the priceless boon of personal freedom. It is natural, 
 at the close of the history of such a famous Assembly, to look 
 at the good it did rather than at the mistakes it made. Great 
 good was done, and, amid much condemnation, there is yet 
 room for much praise. Though to most eyes the aspect of the 
 Convention, which upheld France in arms against Europe, 
 and dauntlessly faced famine and want and discontent at 
 home as well as hatred abroad, eclipses that of the Constituent 
 Assembly in glory, yet some honour should be paid to the 
 members of that Assembly, without which no Convention 
 could ever have been called— the Assembly which had faced 
 the court in all its seeming power at Versailles. It is true 
 that the deputies had so weakened the executive power as to 
 render it useless for purposes of government ; true that they 
 were possessed by a mania for election ; true that they failed to 
 recognize the power of religion as represented by the Church 
 of Rome, and that they had no respect for international law ; 
 
470 The Work of the Assembly. [chap. xv. 
 
 yet it must be remembered that men are not born statesmen, 
 and Englishmen, who know that the English constitution has 
 slowly grown from a series of precedents, should not be hasty 
 in condemning the earnest efforts of inexperienced politicians, 
 who strove their best for two years to draw up a constitution 
 which should ensure to Frenchmen the priceless boons of 
 political liberty and personal freedom which Ejjglishmen had 
 then enjoyed for a century. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE PROVHTCES AITD a?HE COLOlflES rtT 1790 AND 1791. 
 
 The condition of the provinces in 1790 — Riots at Senlis and in Corsica — 
 Gr^goire's report on the new "guerre aux chiteaux" — Federations 
 of National Guards — Mounier's failure to raise Dauphind — Inevitable 
 failure of an appeal to the provinces — Organization of the National 
 Guards — Riots at Lyons and Marseilles — Effect of the Assembly's 
 ecclesiastical policy — Religious riots at Nimes and Montauban — 
 Peace at La Rochelle — First federation of Jalfes — Religious riots at 
 XJzhs — Second federation at Jal&s — The new local authorities — 
 Local disputes as to the new division into departments — Prosperity 
 at the close of 1790 — Peasant-rising in the Quercy — Riots at Douai 
 and Aix — Disturbances at Avignon and in the county of the Venaissin 
 — The affiliated Jacobin Clubs in the provinces — The French colonies 
 — The Revolution in the colony of San Domingo, in the island 
 of Martinique, in Guadeloupe, Saint-Lucia, Tobago, and French 
 Guiana, in the Isle de France (the Mauritius), in the Isle de Bourbon 
 (Reunion), and in the French settlements inlndia — General effect of the 
 policy of the Constituent Assembly on the provinces and the colonies. 
 
 MiEABEATT had depended for the success of all his great schemes 
 on the supposition that the provinces would support the 
 cause of order and of the monarchy against Paris ; hut Louis 
 XVI. had never given the conception of the great statesman 
 a fair trial, for in escaping towards Varennes he had appealed 
 rather to the army than to the departments. Nevertheless, it 
 is instructive here to examine how far Mirabeau's scheme would 
 have prospered if it had been fairly tried. Undoubtedly there 
 was a period towards the close of 1789 when the provinces 
 were very discontented at the manner in which Paris absorbed 
 a large portion of the national revenue for its own use and the 
 
472 The Provinces in 1790. [chap. 
 
 provincial deputies, -when Anson kept reading out, in his report 
 on the finances in December, 1789, item after item of expenses 
 for the capital, cried out in disgust, " Encore Paris ! " ^ but the 
 history of the year 1790 shows a considerable change in the 
 feeling of the provinces, and Mirabeau himself recognized, in 
 his last great plan of December, 1790, that it was necessary to 
 make a great efibrt to educate the minds of the inhabitants of 
 the departments before they could be appealed to with con- 
 fidence to support the king at a general election. So far, 
 indeed, had his distrust gone, that instead of recommending 
 the king to throw himself at once into the provinces with his 
 Swiss Guard, he felt the necessity of acquiescing, in February, 
 1791, in La Marck's mission to Bouilld, and perceived at that 
 time that the appeal to the provinces could not be safely carried 
 out unless the king was surrounded by a powerful army. What, 
 then, was the cause of this change in opinion ? It may be 
 asserted, firstly, that one great reason why the provinces were 
 not so likely to assist the king against the Assembly at the 
 beginning of 1791 as at the beginning of 1790, was that the 
 harvest of 1790 had been particularly good. With their usual 
 want of logic, the people, as a whole, attributed their fine 
 harvest and the comparative cheapness of food to the labours of 
 the Constituent Assembly, and were therefore more inclined to 
 support the Assembly than the king. But other more logical 
 and more deep-rooted causes were also at work. The sale of the 
 Church lands had greatly benefited both the peasants and small 
 farmers by enabling them to purchase land, and their great 
 desire, at the end of 1790, was that their new purchases might 
 be secured to them. The issue of assignats had also given to 
 the towns and the town populations an appearance of fictitious 
 prosperity, which, had peace continued and a strong govern- 
 ment been established, might have been converted into real 
 jirosperity. An appearance of wealth always accompanies the 
 first introduction of a paper currency and the commencement 
 of a rage for speculation, and was perceptible in Scotland at 
 the beginning of the Darien scheme, in England at the time 
 1 Histoire Parlemeataire, vol. iii. p. 408. 
 
XVI.] The Autumn of 1789. 473 
 
 of the South Sea Bubble, and still more in France when Law- 
 first undertook to manage the finances of France and proposed 
 his Mississippi schemes. With this appearance of wealth there 
 co-existed in 1790 a great appearance of order and internal 
 tranquillity, for the establishment of the new local authorities 
 in the towns and departments had delighted the bourgeoisie, 
 and made them very anxious to show that their new powers 
 should at once be exercised for the preservation of order. But 
 before these causes had time to operate, that is, in the first 
 months of 1790, disorder reigned once more in France as 
 entirely as it had reigned in the summer months of 1789, before 
 the irregiilar establishment of self-elected municipalities and of 
 National Guards had produced an interval of order. 
 
 The interval of peace in the autumn of 1789 is the more 
 extraordinary when the violence of the outbreaks which it 
 preceded and succeeded is considered. The " war against the 
 chateaux " commenced in July, 1789, ceased for a time, and com- 
 parative tranquillity existed both in towns and rural districts 
 for the next six months. The towns felt secure with their 
 new National Guards, and were not again seared, as they 
 had been in the previous July and August, by rumours of 
 brigands, while by the practice of federation various towns had 
 combined together to unite their forces when necessary, and 
 thus recognized that union was strength. The vigorous action 
 of the National Guards, and of the new, though not yet legally 
 authorized, municipalities had dispersed most of the bands of 
 peasants, and stopped for a time the burning of chateaux. 
 Both towns and country districts were occupied in combining 
 with one another to make some preparation for the famine 
 which the bad harvest of 1789 was sure to produce. In 
 October, 1789, the ministers had said, in a memoir for the 
 Assembly, " Roussillon refuses to help Languedoc, Upper Lan- 
 guedoc the rest of the province, and Burgundy the Lyonnais, 
 while Daiiphin^ isolates itself, and Normandy keeps the corn 
 specially bought for Paris ; " ^ but the ministers spoke falsely, 
 and without a correct knowledge of provincial feeling, for in 
 ^ Hutoire ParUmentaire, vol. iii. p. 240. 
 
474 
 
 Disturbance at Senlis. [chap. 
 
 December, 1789, the mumeipality of Dijon issued an interesting 
 circular to the other cities of Burgundy,* asking their assist- 
 ance in feeding the starving ouvriers of Lyons, while the great 
 Flemish frontier towns discussed the impending famine at 
 LiUe, and K de Brival declared at Tulle that the only thing 
 wanted to pacify France was the establishment of National 
 Guards and national granaries.^ This better state of things 
 appeared all over France, and the only important disturbances 
 at the end of 1789 were those at Toulon, at Senlis, and in the 
 little island of Corsica. The disturbance at Toulon was rather 
 naval than civil, and was essentially the dispute of the work- 
 men of the dockyard with Comte d' Albert de Rions,^ rather 
 than a political insurrection or even a bread riot ; and the 
 disturbance at Senlis was still more significant of the com- 
 parative peace which existed in the towns, for it was the result 
 of an act of personal revenge. There one Billon, a watchmaker, 
 actuated by revenge, fii'st shot M. Delorme, a knight of St. 
 Louis and aide-major of the local National Guard, from his 
 window as the National Guard was marching to the cathedral 
 to have its banner blessed, and when the police, the national 
 guards, and the populace broke into the murderer's house, he 
 set fire to two barrels of gunpowder and blew himself up, 
 together with fourteen national guards, three members of the 
 mar6chaussee, and seven other citizens of Senlis.* In the island 
 of Corsica the troubles were purely the result of local causes. 
 Two parties had arisen in the island when the excitement 
 caused by the capture of the Bastille spread to Corsica, namely, 
 the Paolists, who hoped for the return of Paoli, and longed for 
 the establishment of the absolute independence of the island, 
 and who included all the Masserias, Pozzos di Borgo, Peraldis, 
 
 1 Histoire Parlementaire, vol. iv. p. 5. 
 
 2 Seilhao's La Sivolution dans le Bas-Limousin, p. 103. 
 8 Yol. i. chap. xiii. p. 400. 
 
 * See two pamphlets, Pr6cis hisiorique de Vattentat de Billon, horloger, 
 arrM a Senlis le 13 Decembre, 1789, in B.M. — -F. 833. (13.), and Eelaiion 
 de I'hurrible dvinement arrive a Senlis, B.M. — P. 838. (15.), which gives a 
 ridiculously false account of the affair, evidently the first which reached 
 Paris, 
 
XVI.] Riots in Corsica. 475 
 
 Bonapartes, Ramolinis, and all the more famous families of 
 the native aristocracy ; and the young Corsican party, of which 
 Ghristophe Salicetti, then sitting in the National Assembly at 
 Paris as deputy for the tiers 6tat of Corsica, was the head, and 
 which, while it desired local independence, yet saw the advan- 
 tages of being united to so great a country as France. Both 
 parties were, in 1789, equally desirous of obtaining the complete 
 overthrow of the military government then existing in the 
 island. The chief men of all parties united at Ajaccio, and de- 
 manded the election of a representative central committee and 
 the establishment of a National Guard. The Minister for War, 
 however, under whose control the government of the island 
 was, refused, by the advice of M. Buttafuoco, deputy for the 
 noblesse of Corsica, to listen to these demands, and M. Gaffori, 
 father-in-law of Buttafuoco, marched into Ajaccio with troops, 
 established a state of siege, closed the popular club, and dis- 
 missed the civic guard which was being raised, and took away 
 their arms. The leading men of Ajaccio then met secretly 
 on the night of October 31, 1789, in the Church of St. Francis, 
 where Lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte, who was on leave, 
 read them a protest, which he had drawn up, couched in 
 very strong language and attacking Gaffori, Buttafuoco, and 
 the Minister for War, and it was unanimously agreed to and 
 signed by all present.^ This protest against military govern- 
 ment was followed by two insurrections. Bartolommeo Arena, 
 at the head of some mountaineers, seized on He Rousse, a post 
 occupied by but few French soldiers, and established an inde- 
 pendent commune there. At Bastia there was a, more serious 
 revolt ; the populace rose under Achille Murati, and, after two 
 days' hard fighting, stormed the arsenal and established a 
 National Guard. The Minister for War prepared to subdue 
 the island again by military force, and ordered regiments to 
 concentrate at Marseilles. But Salicetti cleverly prevented 
 further bloodshed. He saw that the National Assembly and 
 1 The best account of these troubles in Corsica is contained in Bona- 
 parte et son temps, 1769-1799, by Th. lung, colonel d'artillerie, vol. i. pp. 
 213-237. Paris : 1880. 
 
476 The New " Guerre aux Chateaux^ [chap, 
 
 not the ministry really governed France, and he therefore 
 introduced the Corsicans, who had come up both from Bastia and 
 Ajaccio to explain the discontent of the islanders, to Mirabeau 
 and Volney, as two leading deputies in the Assembly, and left his 
 country's cause with confidence in their hands. They deserved 
 his confidence, for on November 30 Corsica was declared, on 
 the motion of Volney, to be a province of France, with the 
 same liberties and franchises as the other provinces, and not a 
 dependency ruled from the War Oifice ; while, on the motion of 
 Mirabeau, a law of amnesty was passed, allowing PaoH, then 
 an exile in London, and his friends to return to Corsica. 
 These decrees ended for a time the disturbances in Corsica, 
 and peace was restored there for a few months. 
 
 This peaceful condition of France, broken only by such 
 purely local and isolated disturbances, was not, however, long 
 maintained, and in the early months of 1790 the news came to 
 the Assembly that the " guerre aux chateaux " had broken out 
 in certain districts of France where it had not formerly existed. 
 It was the Abb6 Gregoire who, on February 9, 1790, as re- 
 porter of the corresponding committee of the Assembly, 
 reported that riots had broken out in the provinces of Quercy, 
 P^rigord, the Bas- Limousin, and Rouergue, and in parts of 
 Lower Brittany ,i and that the peasants had followed the 
 example set by Burgundy the year before, and were burning the 
 lords' chateaux. Gregoire further reported that these riots 
 and burnings were caused " (1) by ignorance of the French lan- 
 guage, for the peasants understood the decrees of the Assembly, 
 when read to them, to be orders for arrest ; (2) by fear that 
 the decrees of August 4 would not be carried out ; (3) by false 
 interpretations of those decrees; (4) by erroneous ideas im- 
 planted in the minds of the peasants by those who preferred 
 slavery and anarchy to order and liberty; and (5) by the 
 circulation of false and forged decrees, purporting to restore 
 the old feudal customs." ^ He then went on to argue that the 
 
 1 IHs'oire..ParUmentaire, vol. iv. p. 316. 
 
 '^ See Gr^goire's report in the Ristoire Parlementaire, vol. iv. pp 
 3ir, 318. 
 
XVI.] The New " Guerre aux Chdteatix." 477 
 
 only way to induce the peasants to be quiet was to teach them 
 what the decrees of August 4 really meant, because the feudal 
 regime still flourished in spite of them in certain provinces. 
 He instanced, as proofs of the success of such explanations, the 
 tranquillity produced by the publication of a circular declaring 
 the enfranchisement of the peasants which had been issued at 
 Brives, and by the measures taken by a committee formed by 
 the Bishop of Sarlat for the instruction of his flock. The 
 news shortly after arrived that the volunteers of the Quercy 
 had everywhere defeated the rioters of that province.^ The 
 report of Gregoire had much the same effect upon the Assembly 
 as the report of Salomon had had in the previous August. 
 The deputies at once dropped the work of constitution-making, 
 and began to discuss what measures ought to be taken. It is 
 a notable fact that in 1790, as in 1789, it was again rather the 
 chateaux than their lords which were hated and attacked. 
 Charles de Lameth and the Due d'Aiguillon, both of whom 
 were among the chief leaders of the left, declared that their 
 chateaux in the Agenais had been burnt with the rest.^ This 
 of itself would seem to prove that the peasanfc-riots of 1790 
 were identical in character with those of 1789, and that the 
 peasants in the disturbed provinces were rather trying to 
 destroy all proofs of their former servitude than to wreak 
 vengeance on the persons of their lords. Owing to the prompt 
 measures both of the Assembly and the new municipalities, 
 this second " guerre aux chateaux " was not of long duration. 
 The municipalities everywhere determined to act by them- 
 selves with their own National Guards, and refused the assist- 
 ance of the royal troops ; and the municipality of Nantes, for 
 instance, would not admit the authority of the Comte d'Hervilly, 
 who had been sent by the king to form a flying camp for the 
 suppression of the peasants in the neighbourhood, — an example 
 which was followed by the other cities of Brittany.^ The 
 cruel defeat of the peasants in the neighbourhood of Dole, in 
 Franche Comte, deserves particular notice.* A certain Comtesse 
 
 ^ On February 18. Eistmre Farkmentaire, vol. iv. p. 343. 
 
 « Ibid., p. 344. * Ibid., p. 397. '' Ibid., vol. v. p. 397. 
 
478 Federations of National Gttards. [chap. 
 
 de Brun had summoned troops and national guards from that 
 city to punish her peasants for breaches of the game laws, and 
 these soldiers and bourgeois, failing to recognize the fact 
 that the peasants needed rather instruction than suppression, 
 stormed their village, killing many and taking a hundred 
 prisoners. It was by such cruel and ill-advised measures that 
 the feeling of hostility between the peasants in the country 
 and the bourgeois in the towns was fostered, and the conduct 
 of the troops in this case explains of itself why so many 
 hundreds of peasants assembled at the little village of 
 Pont de Somme-Vesle on the arrival of the hussars there on 
 June 21, 1791,^ for it was believed that the soldiers who Were 
 intended to escort the king to Montmedy had come to punish 
 them. 
 
 It was by means of the national guards that the second 
 series of peasant-revolts in the provinces were suppressed, and 
 they everywhere acted in perfect harmony with the local 
 municipalities. But the bourgeois of the provinces went 
 further, and knew that it was necessary, not only for each 
 municipality to act in concert with the national guards of its 
 own town, but for aU municipalities and all local national 
 guards to be united. One or two instances of this close union 
 have been noticed, such as the federation of the towns of 
 Franche Comte, and the circular sent round the cities of 
 Burgundy to combine together for the relief of Lyons ; and the 
 idea of federation developed still further during the year 1790 
 among the national guards of different districts, but among 
 the national guards, that is, the bourgeois, alone. One of the 
 earliest and most important of these feasts of federation, as 
 they were called, which cemented the union of the bourgeois 
 of a district or province, took place on November 29, 1789, on 
 the banks of the Rhone. Some twelve hundred national 
 guards assembled there, and swore to be true to each other 
 and to support the new Constitution, whenever it should be 
 finished, and then concluded what was, to all intents and 
 
 1 Abbd Gabriel's Lmis XVI., le Marguia de BoiiilU et Varennea, 
 p. 122 ; chap. sv. p. 446. 
 
xvi.] Federations of National Guards. ' 479 
 
 purposes, an offensive and defensive alliance.^ The importance 
 of this organization of the bourgeois in the provinces cannot 
 be overrated, for the national guards did more than swear 
 oaths. Great f^tes always took place at these federations, and 
 the national guards of the different towns became personal 
 friends. They continued at intervals throughout the first months 
 of 1790, and culminated in the great feast of federation at Paris 
 on the anniversary of the capture of the BastiUe. They were 
 particularly numerous and enthusiastic in the eastern provinces 
 of France. At Mont^limart the representatives of 27,600 
 soldier-citizens assembled on December 31, 1789 ; ^ at Valence 
 9000 men assembled on June 3, 1790;^ at Nancy, on April 19, 
 more than 5000, representing every national guard in the five 
 departments of the Meurthe, Meuse, Moselle, Haute Marne, 
 and Vosges ; * and at Lille more than 10,000 on June 6, repre- 
 senting the departments of the Nord, the Somme, and the 
 Pas de Calais.® These federations appeared to indicate the 
 unity of action among different groups of towns and different 
 provinces, and it is possible that even Mirabeau was misled 
 by them into believing that these different towns might be 
 induced to unite against Paris and the Constituent Assembly. 
 But in reality, as the failure of Mounier proved, there existed 
 among the provincial bourgeois no feeling of discontent with 
 Paris at all, and the federations of the national guards were 
 only signs of the need which the bourgeois felt of harmony 
 amongst themselves, if they were to undertake the suppression 
 of the peasants in the rural districts, and in case that the 
 ouvriers in the towns themselves should attempt to become a 
 political power and threaten their property. 
 
 From this point of view the failure of Mounier's idea of 
 summoning the provincial Estates of Dauphin^ to protest 
 against the action of the National Assembly is particularly 
 important, as it proves the entire absence of that provincial 
 spirit on which Mirabeau relied. Immediately after the events 
 
 * Histoire Parlementaire, vol. iv. p. 3. * Ibid., p. 4. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 393. * Cayon's Eistoire de Nancy, p. 314 
 
 ' Histoire de Lille et de la Mcmdre Wallonne, by Victor Derodo, vol. iii. 
 pp. 39-44. Lille : 1848, 
 
480 Mounter s Failure in Dauphin^. [chap. 
 
 of October 5 and 6, in disgust at the rejection of his plan of a 
 constitution after the English fashion by the Assembly, Mounier 
 had resigned his seat, and travelled down to Dauphin^ with 
 the Prince d'Hennin and Lally-ToUendal. On his arrival at 
 Grenoble, the Intermediary Commission, as it was called, which 
 had been sitting for the purpose of watching the progress of 
 affairs in the Assembly, at his request STimmoned the Estates 
 of Dauphine to meet on November 2. This action on the part of 
 Mounier might have (fiiused a serious difficulty to the Assembly, 
 for it was a direct attempt to infringe its power and damage 
 its prestige, and was an appeal to the provincial spirit of inde- 
 pendence. But it entirely failed. The bourgeois of the towns, 
 on whom Mounier chiefly depended, declared their devotion to 
 the Assembly ; and in the important cities of Grenoble, Die, 
 and St. Vallier, great meetings were held, in which the citizens 
 •signed a protest against the proceedings of Mounier, and a 
 declaration of their adherence to aU the decrees of the National 
 Assembly.^ The rapid promulgation of the new departmental 
 organization, and the consequent splitting up of Dauphin^ into 
 the departments of the Isfere and the Drome, destroyed 
 Mounier's last hope. The unfortunate statesman attempted to 
 live on at Grenoble, but the citizens no longer honoured and 
 respected him. They sympathized with the more advanced 
 measures of the Assembly, and elected Barnave, the champion 
 of the advanced party, to be their first mayor ; and at last, in 
 May, 1790, after he had been several times hissed and insulted 
 in the streets, Mounier, the man who had really decided the 
 character of the tiers etat in the Constituent Assembly, and 
 who had been the recognized leader of the Commons of France 
 during the electoral period, retired from his native country 
 in disgust, and, after taking refuge in Geneva for a time, 
 eventually became tutor to the eldest son of the second Lord 
 Hawke. 
 
 The failure of Mounier's attempt proved that the federa- 
 tions of national guards did not indicate any desire of the 
 bourgeois of the provinces to combine together against Paris 
 * Ristuire Parlementaire, vol. iii. p. 279. 
 
XVI. J opposition of the Ouvriers to the Bourgeois. 481 
 
 or the National Assembly in the early months of 1790. The 
 idea of appealing to the provinces, which had been the prin- 
 cipal feature of all Mirabeau's plans, which was the favourite 
 project of the Feuillants in the Legislative Assembly, and 
 which was the last desperate card played by the Girondins, 
 was thus from the first doomed to failure ; and the reason was 
 that the towns had only really combined against the peasants 
 and the ouvriers, and that, therefore, if the bourgeois of the 
 towns supported any opinion or took up arms for any party, 
 the opponents of that opinion or that party would have no 
 diflBculty in conquering them by calling to their assistance 
 the more numerous classes of the rural populations and of the 
 proletariat in the towns. 
 
 The hatred which the peasants felt against the bouro-eois 
 national guards, after the cruel suppression of the peasant 
 revolts, was at least equalled by the bitter feeling of the 
 ouvriers in the towns towards them. This marked opposition 
 between the bourgeois and the populace is naturally to be 
 observed chiefly in the large cities, and especially in the 
 greatest manufacturing and the greatest commercial cities of 
 France, in Lyons and in Marseilles, because in the smaller 
 towns the ouvrier class did not feel itself strong enough to 
 make an effort, while the bourgeois were not sufficiently 
 numerous, rich, and powerful to venture on acts of insolence 
 to the populace. The National Guards, also, of the various 
 smaller towns which had ancient charters were based upon the 
 old milices of the respective towns, which included many of 
 the working classes in their ranks. It had also been the policy 
 of the officers of noble birth, who had in nearly every town 
 been elected commandants of the local National Guard,^ to 
 form, in addition to the ordinary bourgeois volunteers, a strong 
 paid force, for the young bourgeois preferred playing at 
 
 1 Vice-Admiral d'Estaing, commandant of the National Guard of 
 Versailles, the Comte de Hamelin at Senlis, M. des Echerolles at Moulins, 
 Lieut.-Col. de Signemont at Varennes, Baron Charles de Weitersheim at 
 Strasbourg, the Comte de Valence at Le Mans, the Marquis de Chambonas 
 at Sens, and the Due de Duras at Bordeaux. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 I 
 
482 Events at Lyons. j_chap, 
 
 soldiers to the more serious work of patrolling the streets at 
 night and such ordinary police duties, and it was found very 
 convenient to have a paid guard, such as Lafayette had 
 formed in Paris out of the Gardes Fran9aises, for police "work. 
 The idea of playing at soldiers, combined with the love of 
 fine uniforms, caused the enrolment of many special corps in 
 the different towns, which consisted only of the very richest 
 bourgeois, such as the chasseurs of Limoges, the dragoons of 
 Toulouse, the light horse of Strasbourg, and the marine 
 battalion of Bordeaux.^ Further, bodies of volunteers, 
 similar to the " conquerors of the Bastille " in Paris, had been 
 formed in nearly every town, who had no uniform and no 
 legal status, but who were soldierly and well trained, and 
 consisting, as they did nearly everywhere, of young men filled 
 with military ardour, formed exceedingly important corps, 
 from which the battalions of volunteers, which did good 
 service on the frontier in 1793, were chiefly recruited. 
 
 Events at Lyons in the February of 1790 showed this 
 opposition of the populace to the bourgeois,^ and also to some 
 degree foreshadowed the events which were to desolate the 
 entire south. Mention has been made of the wealthy ^oung 
 bourgeois who had formed themselves into a guard, and who 
 had headed the columns which left Lyons to destroy the un- 
 fortunate peasants who were burning chateaux in Dauphin^.* 
 These young muscadins had learnt their drill from the German 
 sergeants of the Regiment de La Marck which was quartered 
 at Lyons, and were thus in much better military condition 
 than the volunteer forces of other cities. Consisting as they 
 did''of wealthy young men, they attached themselves exclu- 
 sively to M. Imbert-Colomes, the premier echevin, or first 
 magistrate, of the city of Lyons. He, being a vain man, prided 
 himself on his guard of honour, as he called the muscadins, 
 
 1 Histoire compUte de Bordeaux, by the Abb^ Patrice John O'Reilly, 
 pt. ii. vol. i. p. 45. Bordeaux : 1863. 
 
 2 Balleydier's Histoire politique et militai/re du peuple de Lyon pendant 
 la Revolution, vol. i. pp. 14-16 ; MorLa's Histoire de Lyon depuia la 
 Mvolution de 1789, vol. i. pp. 92-111. 
 
 2 See vol. i. chapter vi. pp. 172 and 182. 
 
XVI.] Riots at Lyons. 483 
 
 and gave them every advantage in his power ; not only did 
 he feast them and give them entertainments, but he also gave 
 them the duty of guarding the arsenal and powder magazine, 
 which had formerly been under the charge of the regular 
 troops. The populace murmured much at this, and declared 
 that the muscadins could not form by themselves the whole 
 National Guard of Lyons. So high did this feeling rise, that 
 one day, when the muscadins were relieving guard at the 
 arsenal, the people attacked them and drove them away, and 
 afterwards went and smashed M. Imbert's windows. The 
 muscadins and the whole bourgeois class were indignant at 
 this riot, and a distinct breach was observable between the 
 ouvriers and the bourgeois of Lyons. The muscadins even 
 pretended to think themselves superior to the national guards 
 of other cities, and absolutely refused to go to the great federation 
 at Valence. In all this is perceptible the first sign of that 
 separation between Lyons and both the neighbouring cities 
 and the adjoining rural districts, which caused both the 
 peasants of the Lyonnais and the national guards of the 
 neighbouring towns to march cheerfully in 1793, at the bidding 
 of Couthon, to assist in destroying the proud city which had 
 scorned them, and in shooting down its bourgeois by hundreds 
 in the streets. 
 
 Still more violent was the collision which took place in 
 1790, between the bourgeois National Guard, which had been 
 formed by the Comte de Caraman at Marseilles in July, 1789, 
 and the populace of the great Mediterranean port.^ This 
 Garde Bourgeoise — for the MarseiUais would not call it the Garde 
 Nationale — was hated by the people alike for its devotion 
 to its founder, the Comte de Caraman, governor-general of 
 Provence, and for the close union which it formed with the 
 unreformed and antiquated corporation of the city. This 
 feeling of opposition to the old corporation and to the Bourgeois 
 Guard showed itself in a popular riot as early as August 20, 
 1789, in which a corporal of the Guard, named Garcin, was 
 1 WUtoire de Marseille, by A. Fabre, Paris, 1829 ; Bistoire de Mar- 
 teUk, by A. Boudin, Paris and Marseille, 1852. 
 
484 Riots at Marseilles. [chap, 
 
 killed.' The magistrates then requested the Comte d« 
 
 Caraman to introduce more troops into the city. He willingly 
 
 complied, and three of the leading revolutionary spirits ir 
 
 M?irseilles — Rebecqui, Pascal, and Granet — were imprisonec 
 
 in the Chateau d'If. This blow did not crush the spirits ol 
 
 the popular party, and perpetual quarrels took place betweer 
 
 the people and the soldiery, in one of which Charles Jear 
 
 Bernadotte, the future king of Sweden, who was thei 
 
 serjeant-major in the Regiment Royal Marine, distinguished 
 
 himself, according to one account, by holding the procureui 
 
 of the Commune on his shoulders while that official harangued 
 
 the mob and implored them not to murder the Marquis 
 
 d'Ambert, colonel of the regiment,^ and according to anothei 
 
 by saving the colonel's life himself.^ So high had the spirit 
 
 of disorder risen, that the king sent D'Andre, the able deputj 
 
 for Aix in the National Assembly, as royal commissioner tc 
 
 reorganize the government of the city. He established a new 
 
 municipality after the fashion of the municipalities which had 
 
 arisen all over the country, and in January, 1790, Etiennc 
 
 Martin, surnamed the Just, was elected mayor of Marseilles 
 
 DAndre also ordered the immediate dissolution of th( 
 
 Bourgeois Guard and the formation of a really populai 
 
 National Guard ; but his order was not obeyed, and thi 
 
 Bourgeois Guard still remained under arms and formed i 
 
 small organized body in opposition to the new Nationa 
 
 Guard. The city was only kept in subjection by fear of thi 
 
 Comte de Caraman's soldiers ; but Mirabeau, who did no 
 
 forget the honour which Marseilles had paid him in the tim^ 
 
 of the elections, at last procured the withdrawal of the troops 
 
 At 4 a.m. on the morning of April 30, 1790, the soldier 
 
 marched out, and in the afternoon the people collected togethe 
 
 and impetuously stormed the Fort Notre Dame de la Gardf 
 
 1 Boudin's Histoire de Marseille, p. 485. 
 
 2 Gu^rin's Histoire maritime de la France, vol. v. p. 232. 
 
 3 MSmoires pour servir a V histoire de Charles XIV. Jean, Boi de Suidei 
 de Norvige, \>j Ooup(^ de Saint-Donat and B. Roquefort, vol. i. p. 12i 
 Paris : 1820 ; and Histoire de Bernadotte, by B. Sarrans, vol. i. p. 4. Paris 
 1845. 
 
XVI.] ^ Riots at Marseilles. 485 
 
 the Citadel of St. Nicolas, and the Fort St. Jean, the three 
 strongholds bywhich the city was commanded. The storming 
 of these forts, on April 30, corresponds in the history of 
 Marseilles with the taking of the Bastille at Paris on July 14, 
 and was also unfortunately stained with bloodshed. The 
 rumour spread among the people that the major of Fort 
 St. Jean, M. de Beausset, had intended to blow up the fort 
 after its surrender and when it was filled with the populace, 
 and as the Parisians had murdered De Launay, so did the 
 Marseillais on this occasion tear De Beausset in pieces.^ This 
 movement greatly resembled the capture of the Bastille, and 
 just as the conquerors of the Bastille formed a volunteer 
 battalion at Paris, so did the conquerors of the Marseilles 
 forts form themselves into a strong battalion in addition 
 to the National Guard. The new National Guard, reinforced 
 by these volunteers, and recruited from the poor, and not 
 the wealthy bourgeoisie, became extremely powerful, and by the 
 month of July, 1790, when a great feast of federation was held, 
 numbered more than twenty thousand men with cavalry and 
 artillery ; and their political tendency appears in their election 
 as secretary-general of Charles Jean Marie Barbaroux, who 
 was also editor of the chief Radical journal of Marseilles, the 
 Ohservateur Marseillais. The National Assembly could not 
 hear of the murder of M. de Beausset without taking some 
 measures to punish the murderers, and sent the Due de Crillon, 
 a general officer and one of their deputies, to the city. He, 
 however, did nothing, and for a few months the new National 
 Guard worked in perfect harmony with the new municipality, 
 and the popularity of the commandant Lieutard, and the 
 secretary Barbaroux, was at its height. Lieutard was, how- 
 ever, at heart a violent Royalist, and on August 17, 1790, after 
 a violent riot, he was driven from the city. The history of 
 his intrigues to form a Royalist party, and to concentrate the 
 power of the wealthy bourgeois, is the most important feature 
 of the winter of 1790 ; but in the spring of 1791 the revolu- 
 tionary party believed themselves sufficiently strong to arrest 
 * Boudin's Histoire de Marseille, p. 489. 
 
486 Capture of the Citadel of Montpellier. [chap 
 
 their old commandant. He was tried for Ifese-nation, but th( 
 judges connived at his escape from prison, disguised as ? 
 peasant, and he afterwards became a lieutenant in the Roya 
 Body Guard at Paris. By the summer of 1791 the city was 
 entirely in the power o£ the revolutionary party and was 
 perfectly tranquil; but this peaceful condition was due nol 
 only to the harmonious action of the new municipality anc 
 National Guard, but also to the improvement in commerce whict 
 had followed the first issues of assignats. The capture of the 
 forts round Marseilles had the same efi'ect on the neighbouring 
 cities of Provence and Languedoc as the capture of the Bastille 
 had in the neighbourhood of Paris. To mention but a single 
 instance, thirty young citizens of Montpellier made the Regi- 
 ment de Bresse, at 2 a.m. on May 2, to all appearances without 
 opposition, surrender the citadel of that famous city to them,' 
 and from that time forward it was guarded not by soldiers 
 but by national guards. 
 
 The keen interest with which the population of the pro- 
 vinces had followed the progress of every debate in the 
 National Assembly had been intensified during the debates 
 on the civil constitution of the clergy, and the legislation 
 of the Assembly with regard to religion brought about in 
 many cities the first symptoms of a religious war. Of all 
 civil wars, Frenchmen who had any knowledge of the history 
 of their country ought to have known well that those caused 
 by religious ditferences are the most bitter, and the fear of 
 provoking a war of religion ought to have made the Assembly 
 particularly careful and prudent in its clerical legislation. 
 But the Assembly was not prudent, and hurried on its 
 measures with extreme rapidity. Religious riots broke out 
 during the session of the Constituent Assembly at two dis- 
 tinctly different periods, the first series on the abolition of the 
 religious orders and the assumption of Church property in 
 May, 1790, and the second on the imposition of the oath to 
 the new Constitution upon the clergy in January, 1791. The 
 
 1 Mo?itpeUier pendant la Bivolution, by J. Duval-Jouve vol i 
 p. 115. ' 
 
XYi.] Religious feeling. 487 
 
 first riots were not universal or very serious. In most of the 
 cities of France and in all the country districts, the news that 
 the property of the Church was to be seized and sold fiUed 
 the minds of bourgeois, farmers, and peasants alike with joy. 
 They rejoiced at the prospect of the large amount of land and 
 other property which would come into the market, and even 
 good Catholics could not find it in their hearts to blame the 
 Assembly. But in certain cities in which Protestants still 
 dwelt, and the remembrance of past feuds had not entirely 
 died out, a sort of religious war broke out on the arrival of 
 these decrees. It was in vain that the king in 1786 and the 
 Constituent Assembly afterwards had granted the Protestants 
 full civil rights. The Roman Catholics could not bear the idea 
 that heretics should possess any political power, and feared 
 retaliation for persecution in the past. It was, therefore, to 
 be expected that the cities in which the most fervent Catholics 
 existed would be those which contained a large proportion of 
 Protestants, and that these would be the cities in which the sale 
 of Church property would be opposed, and in which yet 
 more open civil war would break out at the news of the oath 
 imposed upon the clergy. 
 
 The ancient Roman city of Nimes was undoubtedly the 
 head-quarters of Protestant France. All the wealthy bourgeois 
 manufacturers openly professed the faith of the Huguenots, and 
 with the more sturdiness from the memory of that long war of 
 the Cevenhes, in which so many of their ancestors had braved 
 and conquered the soldiers of Louis XIV. under the command 
 of Jean Cavalier. Though no longer deprived of civil rights 
 since the edict of 1786, these wealthy bourgeois yet lay under 
 the disability of being able to fill no municipal office however 
 humble, and had naturally welcomed the summons of the States- 
 General. Their influence at the period of the elections had been 
 so great, in spite of the numerical majority of the Catholics in 
 the city, that not only was Rabaut de Saint-Etienne, the Pro- 
 testant champion, and son of old Paul Rabaut, the preacher of 
 the Cevennes, elected at the head of the eight deputies for the 
 tiers etat of the s6n6chaussee of Nimes, but Henri Voulland, 
 
488 Religious Riots at Nimes. [chap. 
 
 tlie future member of the Committee of General Security, and 
 three other Protestants were elected as well. At Nimes every 
 measure passed by the National Assembly which tended to 
 produce more perfect political equality was received with 
 delight by the Protestants, who quickly formed a new munici- 
 pality and a National Guard, and gained great influence over 
 the soldiers of the Regiment de Guienne, which garrisoned 
 the citadel. The Catholics, who formed the majority of the 
 inhabitants of the city, but were all poor and belonging to the 
 lowest class of citizens, were quickly worked upon by their 
 priests, and by certain fanatical gentlemen who belonged to the 
 families, which had always filled the municipal offices of the 
 city, to resent the assumption of power by the Protestants. The 
 sale of the Church property was used as a pretext to further 
 excite them, and they walked about the city wearing large 
 white cockades. The soldiers of the Regiment de Guienne 
 became exasperated at this, and on May 2, when the Catholics 
 had been particularly turbulent, a violent riot broke out in the 
 streets, which ended in the soldiers being confined to their 
 barracks. This riot gave a pretext to certain Catholic gentle- 
 men, notably MM. Froment, De Folacher, and Descombi^s, to 
 form the Catholics of the city and the poor but fanatical 
 country people of the neighbourhood, who went by the name 
 of cebets, or onion-eaters, into certain companies of the Cross, 
 who wore red poufs as white cockades were forbidden by the 
 Assembly, and whose very existence was certain to produce 
 civil war. The occasion was not long coming. June 13, 1790, 
 was the day fixed for the election of the administrators of the 
 district, and the city was crowded in expectation of a fight. 
 It began by the Catholics refusing to allow the National 
 Dragoons, who entirely consisted of wealthy Protestants, to 
 mount guard at the bishop's palace. At the first discharge 
 seven men were killed. The fight continued all that day, but 
 on the next the Protestants received reinforcements from the 
 neighbouring Protestant villages, and completely gained the 
 upper hand. The convents of the Capucins and the Jacobins 
 were sacked as well as M. Froment's house, and during these 
 
XVI.] The Bagarre de Ntmes. 489 
 
 two days, the events of which are known as the " Bagarre de 
 Nimes," more than three hundred Catholics lost their lives at 
 the hands rather of the wild Protestant peasants of the moun- 
 tains than of the bourgeois national guards of the city.^ Order 
 was at last restored by the arrival of strong detachments of 
 national guards from the neighbouring cities ; but the flame of 
 religious war had been set alight at Nimes as previously at Mon- 
 tauban, and in the sequel was to desolate the south of France. 
 
 Earlier in point of date, but not less markedly religious in 
 character, were the disturbances at Montauban, which directly 
 followed the decree of the National Assembly ordering the sale 
 of Church property. In that city the Protestants did not form 
 more than one-sixth of the population, but they were a wealthy 
 and cultivated minority, monopolizing the manufacturing and 
 commercial interests of the city. As at Nimes, they welcomed 
 the decrees of the Assembly, and when a National Guard was 
 formed, it was filled with Protestants, who in particular entirely 
 filled the corps of National Dragoons. They also formed a 
 popular club, in which Jean Bon Saint- Andr6, the Protestant 
 pastor and future member of the great Committee of Public 
 Safety, was the chief orator. At Montauban, as at Nimes, there 
 were plenty of Catholics in the National Guard, and even in 
 the popular club ; but these were all Catholic bourgeois, who 
 were ready to live at peace with their Protestant neighbours, 
 and were of too peaceful a nature to be fanatics. As at Nimes, 
 it was only the very lowest class of Catholics who were 
 fanatics, and who were ready to rush to arms at the summons 
 of their priests, and the fanatical gentlemen who came of the 
 families which had hitherto absorbed municipal office, or lived 
 in the neighbourhood. These Catholic gentlemen formed an 
 opposition club to the popular society, under the title of the 
 " Club des Noirs," of which the guiding spirit was the young 
 Due de la Force, colonel of the Regiment de Languedoc 
 
 1 Histoire de Ntmes, by P. L. Baragnon, vol. iv. pp. 500-530, Nimes, 
 1869 ; Memoires of Froment, Paris, 1796 ; Histoire des Cmspirations 
 rm/aliates du Midi sons la Revolution (1790-1793), by Ernest Daudet, 
 chap. i. Paris, 1881. 
 
490 Religious Riots at Montauban. [chap. 
 
 quartered in the city, and one of the greatest lords of the 
 province. This club at once perceived the necessity of 
 arming and organizing their poor but devoted co-religionists 
 to counterbalance the power of the National Guard. They 
 found a pretext in the peasant risings in the neighbourhood of 
 Montauban, and the Catholics marched out, under the command 
 of M. Chaunac and the Abbe de Montd^sir, and, according to their 
 own account, won several victories and quieted the country, 
 though the Protestants asserted that their success consisted in 
 arresting ten drunkards. On their return Chaunac's Catholic 
 legion claimed to be recognized as an organized force, similar 
 to the companies of the Cross at Nimes. The National Guard 
 protested, and the matter was postponed until the election of 
 the new municipality. For this election both parties made 
 great preparations ; but the Catholics, under the direction of 
 their priests, and especially of the Abbes Mulot and Verdier, 
 were completely successful, and not only the mayor, Cieurac, 
 and the procureur of the Commune, Disses, but all the members 
 of the municipality but one were Catholics. This municipality 
 at once began, under the impulse of the Club des Noirs, to 
 persecute the National Guard in every possible manner. It 
 not only recognized the existence of the Catholic volunteers of 
 Chaunac, and, when the National Assembly at Paris condemned 
 them, formed them into independent companies of the National 
 Guard, but it forbade the original national guards to hold a feast 
 of federation with the soldiers of the Regiment de Languedoc for 
 fear of too great an intimacy growing up between them, and 
 finally demanded and obtained the keys of the arsenal in which 
 the arms of the National Guard were stored. Under these 
 persecutions the commandant of the National Guards, M. de 
 Preissac, resigned, and a moderate Catholic, the Baron de Puy- 
 Montbrun, a relation of Lafayette and the Noailles, was elected 
 in his place. Nevertheless the opposition of the municipality 
 to the Protestants continued to exist, and after the ardour of 
 the Catholics had been excited by the Easter celebrations, the 
 municipality gave notice that on May 10 it would proceed to 
 carry out the decrees of the Assembly, and would take an 
 
XVI. J Religious Riots at Montauban. 491 
 
 inventory in the convent of Cordeliers. This notice was 
 unaccompanied by any attempt to control the rising of the 
 Catholics which was inevitable, and after a morning spent in 
 prayer and listening to fervid sermons, the Catholic mob 
 refused to admit the municipal officers to the Church, and 
 rushed out to wreak vengeance on the Protestants. The Baron 
 de Puy-Montbrun was murdered in the streets, and the unarmed 
 Protestant national guards, and especially the national dragoons, 
 who had assembled in front of the Hotel de Ville, were violently 
 attacked. No attempt was made to save them, and indeed 
 Disses, the procureur, forbade the marechaussee to move to 
 their help ; and at last, when they had lost five killed and fifty- 
 five wounded, they surrendered to the mob. The prisoners 
 were treated with the greatest ignominy ; they were stripped to 
 their shirts and dragged, bound two and two, to the cathedral, 
 where they were insulted and degraded, and Virere then thrown 
 into the prisons of the Chateau Royal. At the news of this 
 riot, and the indignities inflicted on the Protestants, the popular 
 club, and especially the young men, of the great city of Bor- 
 deaux, in which indeed there were but few Protestants, but 
 very many devoted adherents to the cause of order and th-e 
 decrees of the Assembly, were greatly excited, and at the 
 summons of Jean Bon Saint-Andr4 the Protestant pastor,^ 
 the club decided it would open a register for the reception of 
 the names of those who would march to the help of the dis- 
 tressed patriots at Montauban. The register was soon filled, and 
 on May 17 an advanced guard of fifteen thousand men advanced 
 towards Montauban.^ The near approach of the Bordelais, and 
 the arrival in the city of Mathieu Dumas, the special commis- 
 sioner sent by the Assembly, frightened the Catholics, and the 
 Protestant prisoners were released and order restored.^ The 
 
 1 Jean Bon St. Andre, sa vie et ses ierits, by Michel Nicolas, p. 19 
 note. Paris, 1848. 
 
 2 For the march of the Bordelais, see O'Reilly's Sistovre de Bordeaux, 
 vol. i. pt. ii. pp. 50-52. 
 
 3 For the measures taken by Duraas, see Soximnirs du Lieutenant- 
 General Ornnte Mathieu Bumas, 1770- 1830, vol. i. pp. 471-475. 
 
492 The Assembly and the Religious Riots, [chap. 
 
 National Assembly was particularly exasperated at this result 
 of its ecclesiastical legislation, and determined at once to 
 check the outbreak of religious riots. The municipality had 
 obviously connived with the Due de la Force and the 
 Catholics in oppressing the more revolutionary Protestants, and 
 La Force was therefore suspended from his rank in the army 
 by a decree of the Assembly, and the administrators of the 
 department of the Lot were ordered to appoint a fresh munici- 
 pality. Further, the Regiment de Languedoc was ordered, in 
 spite of its mutinous protest, to be moved to Perpignan, and 
 two other regiments. Royal Pologne and De la Touraine, were 
 directed to take its place at Montauban. For a time there was 
 quiet in the city, but in September the Assembly heard that 
 the Protestants Were again being insulted by the Catholic mob 
 in the streets, and that the Minister for War had not sent the 
 two regiments to Montauban, but only detachments of them ; 
 and this neglect of the Assembly's orders was one of the 
 principal reasons for the condemnation and dismissal from 
 office of M. de la Tour-du-Pin.^ 
 
 In bright contrast to these violent religious riots at Mon- 
 tauban and at Nimes appears the history, during the early 
 years of the Revolution, of the old Huguenot stronghold of 
 La Rochelle, and before touching on the attempt made by the 
 Catholics of the south to oppose the further progress of revo- 
 
 1 Among many pamphlets on the riots at Montauban, the following, 
 contained in the British Museum, are the most valuable : Mlatvon de 
 I'horribh aventure de Montauban et les causes qui I'ont preparS, signed 
 " Les citoyens patriotes de la Ville de Montauban," pp. 50, F. 837. (6.), and 
 giving the Protestant view ; Bapportfait a I'AssembUe Nationals dans la 
 seance du 22 Juillet dernier au nom du Comite dgs Rapports sur les troubles 
 survenus dam la mile de Montauban, par Pierre Jacques Vieillard, ddpuU du 
 departement de la Manche, 72 pp., F. 834. (3.) ; Proces-^erbal de la 
 Municipaliti de Montauban, envoy e a I'AssembUe Natimiale, 10 Mai, 1790, 
 32 pp., F. 835. (16.) ; Mani/este dela MunicipalitSdeMontauJjan,2ip-p.,F. 
 835. (5.) ; Exposk, sommaire de ce qui s' est passe a 3Jontauban Ze 10 de Mai 
 et des causes qui y ont donne lieu, d'aprh des piices justificatiiu, 16 pp., F. 
 835. (21.); Adresse de la Municipality de Montauban d, I'AssembUe 
 Rationale, 16 pp., F. 838. (8.), on the part of the municipality ; and Ricit 
 des troubles survenus a Mmdauban lelO Mai, 1790, F. 833. (17.) 
 
XVI.J Peace at La Rochelle. 493 
 
 lutionary ideas, it is curious to observe the state of affairs in 
 the Protestant capital of the west. At La Rochelle the 
 Catholics were in siich a minority that they never attempted 
 to interfere with their fellow-citizens, and did not try to 
 hinder the execution of the Assembly's decrees. Every stao-e 
 in the great struggle at Paris was followed with warm interest, 
 as the alteration of the title of the Place Barentin to the Place 
 Necker clearly shows. A National Guard was formed as in 
 other cities, and held feasts of federation with the garrison, con- 
 sisting of the Regiment de la Sarre; but the first real victory of 
 the Protestants over old prejudices was the discontinuance, for 
 the first time since the capture of the city by Cardinal Richelieu, 
 of the solemn religious procession which had hitherto been 
 held in honour of that capture on November 1. This victory 
 of sentiment was followed by a more material victory, in the 
 election of two Protestants to the consulship, or chief magis- 
 tracy of the city, for the first time since the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes. The suppression of the Roman Catholic see 
 and seminary was a further source of delight to the people of 
 La Rochelle, on whom they had long been a burden, and the 
 sale of the property of the Church in that city not only caused 
 no riot, but gave general satisfaction.^ 
 
 It has been said that it was in the cities, such as Nimes 
 and Montauban, which contained a proportion both of Protes- 
 tants and Catholics, that the most terrible religious riots broke 
 out ; and the same fact is true of districts. The Protestants 
 at Nimes had called in the fierce Protestant peasantry of the 
 Cevennes, the descendants of the Camisards, to their help, and 
 it had been these wild fanatical peasants who had perpetrated 
 the massacres which stained the " Bagarre de Nimes ; '' and as a 
 counterpoise the Catholic gentlemen of the Ardfeche summoned 
 the equally fanatical Catholic peasants of the Vivarais to 
 the famous camp and federation of Jalfes. This movement is 
 
 ^ Joii/rnal de Jean Perry, a bourgeois of La Rochelle, in the shape of 
 notes on a copy of Arc^r^'s Bidoire de la Rochelle, published in vol. viii. 
 of the Archives historiques de VAunis el Saintonge, issued by the Soci^td 
 Academique of Saintes in 1880, pp. 31(3-319. 
 
494 The First Federation of J ales. [chap, 
 
 particularly important, for it clearly indicates the power and 
 position of the Catholics of South-eastern France, and was the 
 first of an interesting series of movements and revolts in the 
 same district. The first federation of Jales was distinctly 
 due to the "Bagarre de Nimes." After that terrible event 
 the Catholic companies of the Cross had been disarmed, the 
 municipality had been reorganized, the prisons had been filled 
 with Catholics, and a camp of Protestant national guards 
 from the villages of the Cevennes had been formed at Boucoiran, 
 on the banks of the Garden. To oppose this vigour on the 
 part of the Protestants, certain Catholic gentlemen and priests 
 of the Vivarais, of whom the chief were Louis Bastide de 
 Malbos, mayor of Berrlas, Claude Allier, prior of Chambonas, 
 and the Abb6 de la Bastide de la Molette, determined to hold a 
 great federation of Catholic national guards, to protest against 
 the imprisonment of the Catholics of Nimes and to show their 
 power, and summoned a preliminary assembly of deputies from 
 the various communes which they could depend upon to meet 
 at the Chateau of Bannes, the seat of the Comte du Roare, on 
 August 1, 1790.^^ At that meeting the deputies of nearly one 
 hundred communes were present, who fixed the federation for 
 August 18, on the plain of Jalfes, within the commune of 
 Berrias, and elected the Comte du Roure general of the camp, 
 and M. de la Bastide, a knight of St. Louis and an ex-captain 
 in the Regiment de Penthievre, commandant-general. Accord- 
 ingly, on August 18, a body of between thirty and forty 
 thousand Catholic national guards, representing one hundred 
 and eighty parishes in the departments of the Ardeche, the 
 
 1 The most interesting aceount of the various Catholic movements 
 connected with the federation of Jalfes is Ernest Daudet's Histoire des 
 conspi/rations royalistes du Midi, Paris, 1881, written from a revolutionary 
 point of view, as its title indicates ; but the most valuable historically is 
 contained in Simon Brugal's articles on the Camps de Jales, premiere 
 federation, and dexmi^me federation, published in the lieirne de la Bevolur- 
 tion, November and December, 1884, and May, June, and July, 1885, 
 treating the movements from a royalist point of view. But see also the 
 Guerres du Vivarais, by Anddol Vincent, and the Camp de Jalis, by 
 Marius Talon, 
 
XVI. J The First Federation of Jales. 495 
 
 Gard, the Lozbre, and the Haute Loire, assembled on the plain 
 of Jalfes and heard mass, and then sat down to rest and eat, 
 while their chiefs assembled at the Chateau of Jalfes, the head- 
 quarters of the valuable commandery of Jalfes, belonging to the 
 order of Malta, which had been held by the famous Bailli de 
 Sufiren. This meeting of leaders was most stormy. The more 
 ardent spirits proposed an immediate attack, first on the camp 
 of Boucoiran, and then on the city of Nimes, the release of the 
 Catholic prisoners, and the overthrow of the Protestants ; but, 
 after a sharp debate, the more moderate proposals of Bastide de 
 Malbos were adopted, that petitions should be forwarded de- 
 manding the release of the Catholic prisoners at Nimes, permis- 
 sion for the Catholics there to arm, the removal of the E^siment 
 de Guienne, and the payment of compensation for damage done 
 to churches and private property during the troubles at Nimes. 
 The news of this decision of their leaders disgusted the 
 national guards, who had at the verj'- least expected to march 
 on Nimes, and it was only through the personal influence of 
 Bastide de Malbos that the great gathering was induced to 
 dissolve at five o'clock in the afternoon. The news of the 
 federation of Jal^s caused great excitement aU over France. 
 Sabin Tournal, the editor of the Courrier d' Avignon, a journal 
 with a large circulation in the south, used all his imagination 
 in attacking it, and described the Abb6 de la Bastide de la 
 Molette as riding up and down the ranks urging the national 
 guards to advance on Nimes. The National Assembly ordered 
 its Comite de Kecherches to examine the matter, and on the 
 report of the- Marquis de Sillery, who, since the abolition of 
 titles, had become M. Brulart, decreed on September 7, 1790, 
 that the deliberations of Jales were unlawful, that the 
 Catholic Federative Committee was unconstitutional, and 
 dissolved, and that the magistrates should take proceedings 
 against the authors of the federation. Nevertheless, the 
 Catholic Committee of Federation continued to meet in 
 secret, and no legal proceedings were taken, and the Catholics 
 of the Vivarais felt the satisfaction of possessing a strong 
 organization which could at any time combine them against 
 
496 The Catholic Committee of Federation, [chap. 
 
 the Protestants, as was done in the second federation of Jales 
 after the disturbances at TJzes. Finally, this first federation of 
 Jales was essentially a religious movement, and not political ; 
 the political element came in later. The Vivarais in many 
 respects resembled La Vendue. It was a province not 
 possessed by a few great lords, but, like La Vendue, owned 
 by a number of poor country gentlemen, who lived like 
 peasants on their small properties, and, to quote the words of 
 its last historian, "played bowls with the village youths on 
 Sundays on the village green." ^ The clergy were, like the 
 clergy of La Vendue, extremely poor, and all the more beloved 
 by their parishioners. The neighbourhood of Nimes and of 
 the Protestants of the Cevennes kept this poor peasantry and 
 poor nobility as fanatical as the vicinity of La Rochelle kept 
 those of La Vendee ; and with such material at his disposal it 
 was no wonder that Bastide de Malbos could assemble over 
 thirty thousand national guards on the plain of Jales, and 
 when once the machinery was in existence, it was no wonder 
 that the Assembly's civil constitution of the clergy turned 
 these ardent Catholics into equally ardent Royalists from sheer 
 opposition to the Assembly's ecclesiastical policy. 
 
 The Catholic Committee of Federation, of which the 
 leaders were &till Bastide de Malbos, mayor of Berrias, Claude 
 Allier, prior of Chambonas, and the Abbe de la Bastide de la 
 Molette, canon of Uzfes, remained in close communication, and 
 only hoped for a pretext to again exhibit the strength of the 
 Catholics of the Vivarais as the policy of the Assembly became 
 more marked, and especially at the news of the imposition of 
 the oath upon the clergy. These leaders had not been idle, 
 and at this news they assembled, on February 13, 1791, to the 
 number of forty, at the Chateau de Malbos, to discuss matters,^ 
 and to arrange for a new federation and the striking of a 
 decisive blow. They had been greatly encouraged and con- 
 firmed in their political and royalist ideas by a message, 
 
 1 Simon Brugal, in the iJetnte de, la BemlvMon for December, 1884, 
 p. 486. 
 
 2 Ernest Daudet'a Qmapirations royalistes du Midi, p. 53. 
 
XVI.] State of Affairs at Uses. 497 
 
 whicli had reached them from Paris in the previous October, 
 in spite of the arrest of the bearers, Charles de Polignac and 
 the Marquis de Castelnau, at Joyeuse, that "their Majesties 
 thanked the Federes of the Vivarais for their zeal, and warned 
 them that events would soon occur when perhaps their assist- 
 anbe would be needed." ^ Such a message greatly increased 
 the watchful vigour of Louis Bastide de Malbos, the chief 
 of the Catholic leaders, and he determined to make use of the 
 feeling roused by the oath imposed on the clergy for political as 
 well as religious purposes. The pretext he wanted was afforded 
 on the very day of his dinner at Malbos by the outbreak of a riot 
 at Uzfes. Uzfes is a little town about twenty miles north of 
 Nimes, and contained, in 1789, a population of about six thou- 
 sand, of whom one third were Protestants. The revolution had 
 been at first welcomed there as everywhere else, and a popular 
 club had been formed, which included the Protestants and the 
 moderate Catholic bourgeoisie, and a National Guard enrolled 
 under the command of a Catholic, M. Voulland, a knight of 
 St. Louis. The quietude was, however, disturbed by the 
 intrigues of the Abb6 de la Bastide de la Molette, canon of 
 the cathedral of Uzfes, who founded a monarchical club at the 
 bishop's palace, where the Atni du Roi was read and plans of 
 ' counter-revolution discussed. The two clubs for many months 
 remained in silent opposition, and while the one invoked the 
 aid of the Catholic committee of Jalfes, the other sent mes- 
 sages to the Protestant villages, which had come to the help 
 of. the Protestants of Nimes, to be ready to help them. The 
 authorities also were in opposition to each other, for while 
 the municipality of the city of Uzfes was Catholic and re- 
 actionary, the directory of the district was distinctly in favour 
 of the Revolution. The latter had gained an important success 
 in obtaining the removal of the Regiment de Bresse,^ which 
 was under the influence of the municipality, and the substitu- 
 tion of a squadron of the patriotic Dragoons of Lorraine in its 
 
 1 Simon Brugal, Les Camps de Jalis, in Bevue de la HevoluUon, May, 
 1885, vol. V. p. 412, 
 
 ^ Ernest Daudet, Les Conspirations royalistes du Midi, p. 52. 
 VOL. I. 2 K 
 
498 Religious Riots at Uses. [chap. 
 
 stead. The decrees for the sale of the property of the Cliurch 
 had been executed without disturbance, but the decree for the 
 imposition of the oath, and still more the news o£ the suppres- 
 sion of the bishopric of Uzfes, the diocese of which, as well as 
 that of Alais, was merged, according to the ecclesiastical system 
 of the Assembly, into the one diocese of the department of the 
 Gard, with its seat at Nimes, roused the spirit of fanaticism. 
 A pretext was given for its display by a tavern brawl on 
 February 13, 1791, after which a soldier, named Bouifard, 
 paraded the streets, crying " A bas la nation ! au diable la 
 nation ! " ^ This of itself was enough to cause a riot, and the 
 company of the National Guard which happened to be on 
 duty, and which was composed almost entirely of Catholics, 
 fired on the Protestants, while the Catholic mob attacked in 
 the streets M. VouUand, commandant of the National Guard, 
 and M. Meyniel, president of the popular club, although they 
 were both Catholics. The directory of the district then ordered 
 the National Guard and the soldiers under arms; but the 
 Catholic national guards formed and encamped round the 
 Bishop's palace, and the Catholic mob refused to let the dra- 
 goons get at their horses. At 7 p.m. the Catholics rang the 
 tocsin, while the directory sent off messages for help to the 
 directory of the department and to the Protestant villages. * 
 During the night both parties remained under arms, but on 
 the 14th the Protestant villagers arrived, and began to burn 
 and pillage, and the Catholics retired in a body to the neigh- 
 bouring village of Valabrix, where they minrdered a Protestant 
 farmer, named Pellier. On the same day, however, 280 soldiers 
 arrived, and on the 16th the Mar^chal-de-Camp d'Albignae, 
 who commanded in the department of the Gard, made his 
 appearance with 300 national guards of Nimes and 50 more 
 soldiers, and he speedily restored order in the little town. 
 
 This riot at Uzfes gave Bastide de Malbos the excuse he 
 wanted. The Catholic exiles from Uz^ arrived at Berrias 
 
 1 Bicit des evenements arrives a Uzis le 13 et 14 Femier, 1791, et jowrs 
 suivans jusqu'au 22, in B.M.— F. 833. (16.), which is more trustworthy 
 than the account in Daudet, founded on the Memoires of Dampmartin. 
 
XVI.J Second Federation at yalh. 499 
 
 on the 14th, full of wrath against the Protestants, and the 
 mayor, relying on them to rouse sympathy, hurried on the 
 preparations for the federation which had been fixed for that 
 day. Accordingly, when the deputations from the Catholic 
 villages assembled, they found the exiles there, and when they 
 had been excited by the recital of their woes, they agreed to 
 Bastide de Malbos' proposals to welcome and lodge the exiles ; 
 to form a cordon of national guards from Banne to Saint 
 Sauveur, and from Saint Sauveur to Chauzon, to hold the Pro- 
 testants in check, of which MM. de Sauveplanne, de Chabannes, 
 and Nadal were to be commandants ; to hold an assembly at 
 Jalfes on February 20 ; to force the Protestants to give up their 
 arms; and to form a permanent camp of Catholic national 
 guards at Saint Ambroix. If the first federation of Jalfes caused 
 excitement in the neighbourhood, the second roused all the 
 provinces of the south and nearly brought about a religious 
 war. That such a war did not break out was mainly due 
 to the energy of one man, the Mar6ehal-de-Camp d'Albignac, 
 acting in conjunction with the directory of the department of 
 the Gard. D'Albignac saw the necessity of crushing the move- 
 ment at Jalfes at once and arresting its leaders, because every 
 day added to the chances of civil war. He drew up the plan of 
 an advance upon the plain of Jalfes from three points simul- 
 taneously — from Alais, Pont-Saint-Esprit, and Nimes, with 
 three columns of soldiers and national guards — and his plan 
 was accepted in a council of war held at Nimes on February 
 22. Meanwhile, however, the measures for the formation of 
 the great camp and of the military cordon had not been pro- 
 ceeding at all to the satisfaction of the Catholic com- 
 mittee. Bastide de Malbos, the Abb6 de la Bastide de la 
 Molette, Claude AUier, and the other priests and gentlemen 
 had not taken into consideration the essentially bourgeois 
 character of the national guards. These bourgeois had no 
 objection to meet for a feast of federation, to sign petitions 
 and to enjoy a day's holiday, but they had no desire to leave 
 their little shops, farms, and businesses for any length of time, 
 and to abandon their homes for weeks to indulge, not in a war- 
 
500 Arrest and Death of Bastide de Malbos. [chap. 
 
 like pastime, but in real fighting. Their Catholic and religious 
 sentiments were strong enough to induce them to receive the 
 exiles from Uz^s kindly, but not to make them take part in 
 proceedings which might put their own lives and properties in 
 danger. This was first seen in the little town of St. Ambroix, 
 where the national guards of the town of Largentifere had con- 
 centrated on February 20 ; and on the 21st, the day before the 
 council of war held at NImes, the battalion of Largentifere, 
 under the guidance of its commandant, M. Chastenier de Burac, 
 a retired officer of the royal navy, who rightly dreaded the 
 outbreak of civil war, returned home. Their example was 
 followed everywhere, and when, on February 23, the column 
 from Alais reached St. Ambroix, they found no Royalist and 
 Catholic army to fight. The great Royalist and Catholic army, 
 of which so much had been said, had quietly dispersed. On the 
 27th D'Albignac reached Jalfes, but found no enemy there, and 
 retired, after arresting the heart and soul of the whole enter- 
 prise, Bastide de Malbos. The National Assembly was delighted 
 to hear of this speedy disappearance of what threatened to 
 have been the commencement of a civil war, and ordered the 
 authors of the second federation of Jalfes to be prosecuted. 
 All, however, escaped, except the unfortunate Louis Bastide de 
 Malbos, whose dead body was found on the rocks below the 
 citadel of Pont-Saint-Esprit, where he had been confined. 
 Whether he had fallen in an attempt to escape, or had been 
 murdered in his prison, will never be known, but his death 
 marks the close of the second federation of Jalfes.^ This easy 
 dispersion of the Catholics of Jalfes proves entirely the peaceful 
 disposition of the national guards, that is, of the bourgeois of 
 the south of France, and that the Catholics, however much 
 they might be incensed by the ecclesiastical decrees of the 
 Assembly, were not prepared to take up arms on behalf of 
 their religion; and this of itself is a further proof of the 
 
 1 Ernest Daudet's Conspirations royalistes du Midi ; Simon Brugal's 
 articles intlie Bemie de la Rdvolution, on the "deuxieme federation" of 
 Jales ; and Uidoire des Itevolutiona d'Uzis et de Nimes, by Adolphe de 
 Pontdcoulant. Paiis, 1827. 
 
XVI.] The New Local Authorities. 501 
 
 real tranquillity whicli reigned in the provinces of France in 
 1791. 
 
 It has been remarked that one very great cause for the 
 peaceful state of France in 1791 is to be found in the estab- 
 lishment of the new local authorities, which at first worked 
 ■well. All the ablest men in the country were seized by a 
 passion for taking part in public affairs, and there was there- 
 fore no difficulty in getting the best men — men really longing 
 to do all in their power to make France free, contented, and 
 happy — to hold public offices. The order in which the new 
 local institutions came into legal operation was first the estab- 
 lishment of new municipalities, then the authorities of the 
 districts and departments, and lastly the new law courts. 
 As far back as the July and August of 1789 temporary muni- 
 cipalities had sprung up everywhere, under the infiuence of 
 the "great fear," either superseding the old close corporations 
 or in the place of the royal magistrates. The task of the 
 Assembly in this direction was, therefore, not difficult ; it had 
 merely to legalize and reduce to a system the temporary 
 municipalities already in existence. The first legal and elected 
 municipalities consisted nearly everywhere of the men who 
 had done good service in 1789, and in very many instances 
 the mayors, who had been chosen by the popular voice in 
 1789, were, like M. Daniel de Kerv^gan, at Nantes for instance, 
 regularly elected in February, 1790. This legalization by the 
 decrees of the National Assembly, however, greatly increased 
 the real power of the municipalities, which they exerted suc- 
 cessfully in putting down the second series of peasant riots in 
 the February and March of 1790. The delightful and novel 
 sensation of electing their authorities gave extraordinary 
 interest to these first elections, and there was as much com- 
 petition for the post of substitute to the procureur of a small 
 country town as there was for the election of a deputy to a 
 National Assembly in after years. These new municipalities 
 invariably included the real notables of the communes, and 
 the chief fault to be found with them was their over-officious- 
 ness. The first municipal officers so longed to display their 
 
502 Election of New Judges. [chap. 
 
 newly acquired authority that they insisted on doing the most 
 illegal things, and the National Assembly had to become a sort 
 of court of appeal, to "which complaints were perpetually being 
 forwarded. Sometimes, as in the case of the arrest of the 
 king's aunts by the municipality of Arnay-le-Duc, the offi- 
 ciousness of the local authorities was hardly palatable to the 
 Assembly, while, on the other hand, the aiTests of the king at 
 Varennes, of Bonne-Savardin at Chalons-sur-Marne,'' and of 
 Charles de Polignac and the Marquis de Oastelnau at Joyeuse,^ 
 were acknowledged with thanks, and occasionally the National 
 Assembly had to waste its time in discussing the seizure of the 
 Due de Duras' plate by the municipality of Valenciennes,* and 
 the arrest of the Vicomte de Mirabeau at Castelnaudary,* for 
 stealing some of the insignia of his own regiment. Next in 
 order to the municipalities, the councils-generals, directories, 
 procureurs-syndic, and procureurs-general-syndic in the dis- 
 tricts and departments were elected all over France in April, 
 1790, and for these places and offices also the best men were 
 generally chosen by the electors. Finally, in the December of 
 1790, the judges of the new tribunals and the new justices of 
 the peace were elected, and it has already been noticed that 
 in most instances the ablest lawyers were elected for the 
 important posts, and competent lawyers for those of less im- 
 portance.^ It may safely be affirmed that this happy state of 
 
 1 Proc6s-verbal authentique de I'arrestation de M. de Bonne- Sava/rdin a 
 Ohalons-s'wr-Marne le 28 Juillet, 1790, in B.M.— F. 837. (18.) 
 
 2 Simon Brugal, Les Camp de JaUs, in Bevue de la Rivolution for May, 
 1885, vol. V. pp. 408^11. 
 
 3 Histoire Parlementaire, vol. iii. p. 283. • Ibid., vol. vi. p. 298. 
 
 5 Chapter is. p. 287. The controversy as to the competency of elected 
 judges has lately been very keen in Prance, where the advanced Radicals 
 demand the revival of the system. From their point of view, see Be 
 V organisation du powvoir judiciaire sous le regime de la souverainete nationale 
 et de la Riimhlique, by J. 0. Colfavru, Paris, 1882 ; and La Magistratii/re— 
 La justice de pays par le pays, by Victor Jeanvrot, Paris, 1883, who has 
 also contributed a valuable series of articles to the magazine La Revolution 
 Fran^aise, in the numbers from April to November, 1883, examining the 
 competency and previous career of the judges elected during the Revolu- 
 tion in certaia departments. 
 
xvi.^ Division into Departments. 503 
 
 things would not have continued ; for the best lawyers, when 
 once the period of political excitement was over, would prefer 
 their independence, and would practise at the bar rather than 
 hold a judgeship for two, or even six, years at the mercy of 
 an electoral assembly. These new judicial and administrative 
 institutions had a great effect in quieting France, and to their 
 establishment may be largely attributed the fact that the year 
 1790 closed very quietly, except in certain cities and districts, 
 where special causes for discontent existed. 
 
 The new departments and districts were not, however, 
 formed without a fresh outburst of local jealousies. Every 
 city wished to be the capital of a district at least, if not of a 
 department, and to have the advantage of being the seat of 
 the departmental or district court of law. In many depart- 
 ments the capital was selected without trouble by the com- 
 mittee of local deputies appointed by the Assembly, but 
 occasionally, where it was difficult to choose, the question was 
 referred to the electors of the department. Thus the electors 
 of the department of the Aisne were assembled at Ohauny to 
 decide between the rival cities of Laon and Soissons, and it 
 was only after a pamphlet war and an animated debate, in which 
 a young man of twenty-two, named Louis Antoine de Saint- 
 Just, first made himself conspicuous, that Laon was selected.^ 
 StUl more violent was the discussion in the departments of 
 the Haute Mame,^ and the Puy de Dome,^ where the cities 
 of Chaumont and Langres, Clermont-Ferrand and Riom, were 
 the rival candidates, and ia both cases the issue was settled in 
 the same way, Chaumont and Clermont-Ferrand becoming 
 the administrative capitals of the respective departments and 
 the seats of the departmental tribunals, while Langres and 
 
 1 Histoire de la E&volution dans le Dipartement de V Aisne, 1789, by- 
 Alfred Desmasures, pp. 105-114, Vervins, 1869 ; and Hamel's Histoire de 
 SainihJust, vol. i. pp. 78, 79. Brussels, 1879. 
 
 2 Histoire de la viUe de Chaumont, by Emile Jolibois, p. 269. Chaumont 
 and Paris, 1856. 
 
 ^ Chroniques et BMts de la Revolution dans la ci-devant Basse Awvergne. 
 Formation et Organisaiicm du Dipa/itement du Puy de Dome, by Fr-incisque 
 Mege. Paris, 1874. 
 
504 Disputes as to Local Capitals. [chap, 
 
 Riom became the ecclesiastical capitals, and the seats of the 
 departmental bishoprics. Sometimes the largest city in the de- 
 partment was selected as its capital, as in the cases of Lyons ^ 
 and Arras ^ in the departments of the Rhone et Loire and the 
 Pas de Calais, although by no means central or convenient ; 
 while in other instances, as in the departments of the Nord * 
 and the Indre,* the largest cities, Lille and Issoudun, were 
 rejected, and the comparatively small towns of Douai and 
 Chateauroux chosen, because of their central position. In the 
 department of the Charente Inf^rieure no less than four cities 
 of nearly equal size and importance disputed the honour of 
 being the capital. La Rochelle, Rochefort, Saintes and Saint 
 Jean d'Angely. The Assembly tried to solve the difficulty by 
 ordering the three last to act as capital alternately ; but this 
 scheme did not work well, and on June 20, 1790, the electors 
 of Rochefort and Saint Jean d'Angely combined together, and 
 out of jealousy for La Rochelle secui-ed the selection of Saintes 
 as capital of the department.^ Equally violent were the dis- 
 putes between smaller towns, which desired to be capitals of 
 districts. Serious riots accompanied the election of Vervins 
 over Guise in the department of the Aisne,^ and the local 
 historian of Roye quotes a contemporary account of the recep- 
 tion of the news in that town, that its rival, Montdidier, 
 had been selected as capital of the district, which "says that 
 " the citizens rushed into each other's arms, their wives shared 
 their sorrow, and shed tears, when they looked upon their 
 children." '' The new ecclesiastical division of the country 
 
 1 Balleydier's Bistoire du peuple. de Lyon pendant la Eivolution, vol i 
 p. 19. 
 
 2 Lecesne's Arras sous la Revolution, vol. i. pp. 87-89. 
 
 8 Derode's Bistoire de Lille et de la Flandre ivalloune, vol. iii. p. 28. 
 
 * Bistoire de Deals et de OhuteavA-oux, by Fauoonneau-Dufresne, vol. i. 
 pp. 495, 496. Chateauroux, 1873. 
 
 * Bistoire de la ville et du port de lioeliefort, by J. T. Viaud and E. J. 
 Fleury, vol. ii. pp. 273-276. Rochefort, 1845. 
 
 ' Deamasures' La Revolution dans le departement de I'Aisrus. p. 110, and 
 Bistoire de la mile de Ouise, by the Abb(J Peoheur, vol. ii. pp. 278-287. 
 Vervins, 1851. 
 
 ' Bistoire de la vilU de Roye, by lEmile Coet, vol. p. 434. Paris 1880. 
 
XVI.] Effect of the Sale of Church Lands. 505 
 
 ■was completed at the same time as the administrative division, 
 and the regulation that each department was to form a single 
 diocese, brought about a reduction in the number of bishops, 
 from 131 to 83, and caused much discontent in many of the 
 episcopal cities, which, like Uzfes, Castres, and Boulogne, lost 
 their bishops. The capital of the department was not neces- 
 sarily the seat of the new constitutional bishop's see, and 
 Saint Omer, to quote but one instance, was chosen as eccle- 
 siastical capital of the Pas de Calais instead of Arras. These 
 local disputes are well worth notice as evidences of the 
 strong local feeling which animated the France of 1790; 
 but the new arrangements did not succeed in permanently 
 alienating the affections of the people from the Constituent 
 Assembly, as many royalists had expected, and really 
 paved the way for that substitution of national for pro- 
 vincial patriotism, which was one of the most important 
 results of the Revolution. 
 
 A second great cause for the tranquillity of the provinces and 
 the peaceful attitude of the peasants is to be found in the sale of 
 the Church lands. The general financial and primary economical 
 results of this measure have been noticed, but it was rather the 
 social and political advantages to the peasant which did so 
 much for the maintenance of order. The same peasants who 
 had, in 1789 and the beginning of 1790, occupied themselves in 
 burning their lords' chateaux, and the pews in the parish 
 churches, had in 1791 a distinct interest in the maintenance of 
 order, as owners of their own little plots of ground, and were far 
 too busy in commencing the cultivation of their new purchases 
 to care to go about burning other people's property. By their 
 possession, further, of Church lands the peasants and farmers 
 had a distinct interest in the continuance of the Revolution, 
 and would not be likely to take any part in a movement which 
 might restore the power of the king and the monks. The 
 issue of assignats did for the ouvriers in the towns very much 
 what the sale of the Church lands did for the peasants. After 
 the issue of paper money, and before it depreciated in value, 
 every capitalist seemed to have very much more command of 
 
5o6 Insurrection in the Quercy. [chap. 
 
 capital than he had had before, and great enterprises were 
 accordingly entered into. In every town the bourgeois began 
 to build new houses, establish new manufactories, or enter into 
 new speculations ; and this employment of capital meant in- 
 creased employment of labour, and increased employment of 
 labour meant a rise in wages. Therefore, though for particular 
 and generally religious reasons riots still occurred in certain 
 towns and districts, the close of the year 1790 showed upon 
 the whole a marked increase in the tranquillity and prosperity 
 of both town and country, and as this state of things was 
 believed to be due to the measures of the Constituent Assembly, 
 the inhabitants of the provinces felt themselves bound to 
 support the Assembly and its new Constitution, and were very 
 unlikely in 1791 to risk their lives and property on behalf of 
 the king. 
 
 The only province in which the peasants rose in insur- 
 rection, and in which chateaux were burnt during the winter 
 of 1790, was the province of Quercy, where some 4500 peasants 
 assembled, under the leadership of one Joseph Linard, and 
 burnt some thirty chateaux in the month of December.^ The 
 ringleader, obviously a man of ability and no mere peasant, 
 defeated the troops sent against him, and occupied the town of 
 Gourdon. He then threw open the prison there, and wrote to 
 the directory of the department of the Lot at Cahors that he 
 had constituted himself the protector of the people against 
 the tyranny of the directors of the district of Gourdon. His 
 domination there did not last long, for after he had burnt the 
 chateau of Clarac and murdered its owner, M. Escairat, in 
 January, 1791, the authorities collected a force consisting of 
 the infantry regiments of Languedoc and NoaiUes, and the 
 cavalry regiment of Poitou, and completely suppressed the 
 insurrection.^ This solitary instance of a peasant revolt is a 
 yet further proof, if one were needed, that the nleasures of the 
 Assembly had effectually either checked the " guerre aux cha- 
 teaux " or prevented a third outbreak by ordering the sale of 
 the Church lands, 
 
 1 Histoire Parlementaire, vol. viii. p. 263. * Ibid., p. 351. 
 
xvi.J Riot at Douai. cq? 
 
 The riots in towns were also far fewer in number during 
 the winter of 1790, and the spring of 1791, than before, and 
 only one of them is of much interest owing to the eminent 
 ability of one of the victims of the fury of the populace. 
 But before describing the lamentable riot at Aix, in which 
 Pascalis lost his life, it is worth while to notice a less 
 important riot at Douai, if only to show that the readiness 
 of the mob to murder and riot was not confined to the 
 south of France. On March 15, 1791, the mob of Douai 
 attacked an unpopular shopkeeper, named NicoUon, under the 
 pretext that he broke the corn laws, and dragged him to the 
 Hotel de Ville. The mayor ordered him to be taken to prison 
 to save his life, and he was conducted there with difficulty 
 through the mob by a detachment of national guards, com- 
 manded by a painter and advocate, named Derbaix. He was 
 safely consigned to prison, when the anger of the mob, and 
 especially of the soldiers in the town, one of whom asserted 
 that he had been wounded, turned against Derbaix, who was 
 hunted through the town, and finally hung on the lamp-iron 
 in front of the guard-house. Two days afterwards, not satisfied 
 with the death of Derbaix, the rioters broke into the prison and 
 dragged out the unfortunate Nicollon, and hanged him also.^ 
 Such riots were obviously not due to political causes, and do 
 not deserve to be dwelt upon in detail ; but it is otherwise 
 with the great riot which took place at Aix, in Provence, near 
 Marseilles, on December \%, 1790. 
 
 If the organization of the new administrative authorities 
 and the sale of the Church property had tranquillized the 
 provinces, and attached the inhabitants to the Assembly in 
 preference to the king, there had also been a far more important 
 force at work, which had really converted the provincial towns 
 to the cause of the Revolution, and the party of the Radical 
 deputies at Paris, and done the very work which Mirabeau had 
 intended his provincial agency to do, and that was the system 
 of the Jacobin Club at Paris in affiliatiag provincial clubs to 
 1 Douai petidanf la Bivolution, by Louis Dechrisfc^, pp. 229, 230. Paris 
 and Douai, 1880. 
 
5o8 Riot at Aix. [chap. 
 
 itself. This idea of aiEliation had spread during the year 1790 
 to such an extent, that the Jacobin Club decided to publish a 
 journal to circulate among its branches instead of the former 
 written correspondence, and the first number of the Journal 
 des Amis de la Constitution appeared on November 30, 1790. 
 The first editor was the old favourite of the club, Choderlos de 
 Laclos, and in his second number he published a list of no 
 fewer than 121 societies in provincial towns in afiiliation with 
 the mother-club in Paris. It was through this system of 
 affiliation that the provinces were kept aware of the wishes of 
 the revolutionary leaders in Paris, and it was by its means 
 that the Terror of 1793 and 1794 was organized and maintained, 
 and that the plan of the Girondin party for raising the provinces 
 was frustrated. It must not be supposed that the royalist and 
 reactionary party in the provinces neglected to follow this 
 example, and though they had no great mother-club at Paris 
 to establish a connection with, they founded their clubs in 
 every provincial town, and affiliated themselves with each 
 other. The establishment of these royalist clubs in opposition 
 to the popular ones had given rise to riots in many towns, 
 such as Montauban, XJzes, and Perpignan,^ and was the direct 
 cause of the riot at Aix. The royalist club in that city took 
 the name of the " Amis de la Paix," and was joined by all the 
 judges of the ci-devant Parlement of Aix, and the officers of 
 the regiment quartered in the city, the Regiment de Lyonnais. 
 It was against these officers that the revolutionary mob was 
 most incensed, and on leaving their cercle on the evening of 
 December 12, 1790, a party of them were hooted, stoned, and 
 fixed at. They heard, when they reached their barracks, that 
 their major and six other officers were arrested and at the 
 Hotel de Ville. They then formed their men and prepared to 
 rescue the imprisoned officers ; but the municipality forbade 
 them to advance, and the next day the directory of the depart- 
 ment of the Bouches-du-Rhone ordered the regiment to leave the 
 
 1 Bapport des ivSnemens arrivSs a Perpignan le 5 Deckribre, fait au nom 
 du ComiU des Rapports en la seance du mardi 21 Decimbre par Mosqiiet, 
 depute de la Haute SaOiie, in B.M. — F. 839. (8.) 
 
xvi.J Avignon and the Venaissin. 509 
 
 city.^ The mob, furious at the escape of their victims, and no 
 longer restrained by the presence of the troops, seized Etienne 
 Pascalis, the great jurist, who had been elected procureur- 
 gendral- syndic of the Bouches-du-Rhone, and crying out that 
 he was an aristocrat, hung him on one of the trees in the great 
 square of Aix, and afterwards murdered two other gentlemen, 
 M M. de Guiraman and La Roquette. What Mirabeau felt when 
 he heard that the citizens of the city for which he sat as 
 deputy had hanged their greatest lawyer may be imagined, and 
 he begged the king to send him as special comoiissioner to 
 restore order. He even went so far as to get his cong6 from 
 the Assembly to go to Provence,^ but the necessity of super- 
 intending his great scheme in Paris prevented him from start- 
 ing, and the murderers of Pascalis were never punished. The 
 causes of this riot were as distinctly political as those of the 
 riot at Douai were not, and both are typical of other riots 
 which occasionally occurred, though seldom accompanied with 
 loss of life. 
 
 Before leaving the provinces of France to discuss the pro- 
 gress of the Revolution in the French colonies, it is necessary 
 to dwell for some time on the events which occurred in a 
 county and a city in France, in the near neighbourhood of 
 Nimes,- Marseilles, and Aix, which did not own the rule of the 
 King of France, namely, the Venaissin and the ancient city of 
 Avignon. The county of the Venaissin had belonged to the 
 pope ever since 1228, and it was at Avignon, which Pope 
 Clement VI. had bought in 1 348, that the popes had spent the 
 seventy years of exile ; but for many years no pope had visited 
 France, and the county and city had been ruled by cardinal 
 vice-legates and rectors, who had generally ruled extremely 
 weU. As in aU other territories belonging to the popes, there 
 was great poverty and much misery in the rural districts, but 
 that poverty and misery arose rather from ignorance of 
 economical principles than actual tyranny or over-taxation, 
 
 ^ Mimoires Jiistoriqiies des evSnemens a/rriv6s a Aix le 12 Becembre, 1790, 
 pvhlU fo/r les officiers du Regiment de Lyonnaia. B.M. — F. 837. (2.) 
 a Corret^oiidance entre Mirabecm ei La March, vol. ii. p. 179. 
 
5IO Avignon and the Venaissin in 1790. [chap. 
 
 and was balanced by the prosperity of the city of Avignon. 
 For many years the citizens of Avignon had prided themselves 
 on being the subjects of the pope, but when they heard of the 
 great events happening in Paris, and of the freedom which the 
 French people were winning for themselves, they felt their 
 French hearts rising within them, and longed to share the 
 advantages of revolutionary France, Their feelings were so 
 well known, that on the night of August 4, 1789, mention had 
 been made of the expediency of uniting Avignon to France ; 
 but the matter had gone no further, and Avignon was not 
 again mentioned in the Assembly until it was known that the 
 city was having a revolution on its own account in imitation of 
 the great French Eevolution. As early as March 28, 1789, a food 
 riot had broken out in the city, which was only suppressed by 
 the firmness of the Due de Crillon,^ and, as in the other cities 
 of France, the fear of brigands had brought about the 
 establishment of a National or Bourgeois Guard, of which 
 the vice-legate. Cardinal Casoni, was elected general, and 
 the consuls lieutenant-generals. During the latter-months of 
 1789 there were frequent riots, and the leaders of the popular, or, 
 as it called itself, the French party, Lescuyer, Peyre, Mainvielle, 
 Duprat, and Sabin Tournal, editor of the Courrier d' Avignon, 
 began to steadily pursue their purpose of obtaining a union 
 with France. Their attacks were at first directed against the 
 old local government, and on February 22, 1790, the consular 
 government, which Avignon had, like the other cities of 
 southern France, preserved ever since the Eoman period, was 
 so humiliated by a mob at the H6tel de Ville, that the consuls 
 resigned. After an interregnum a general assembly was called, 
 which drew up a scheme of municipal government on the 
 French model, and induced the vice-legate to consent to it. 
 On April 18, 1790, the new municipal government was installed 
 with great pomp, but it was not destined to last long without 
 opposition, for on April 23 a bull of the pope was issued 
 annulling the consent of the vice-legate, and the peace which 
 
 1 Histoire de. la Revolution d' Avignon et du ComU Venaissin en 1789 e< 
 armies suivantes, by Charles Soullier, p. 9. 
 
XVI.] Murders at Avignon. 511 
 
 seemed about to be established was again disturbed, while the 
 presentation of a magnificent banner by the National Guard 
 of Orange to the National Guard of Avignon seemed to show 
 from what quarter the French party at Avignon would receive 
 help. At the same time, it is a notable fact that this French 
 party did not exist in any strength in the county of the 
 Venaissin, and that on May 27, 1790, the assembly of the three 
 orders of the province assembled at Carpentras passed the 
 following resolution : " We, the freely elected deputies forming 
 the representative assembly of the county of the Venaissin, 
 declare that the unanimous desire of the people of this province 
 is to remain under the sway of the Holy See, and that in 
 making this declaration we fulfil a sacred duty. Therefore we 
 reiterate our protests of November 25 and March 12, and 
 appeal to the tribunal of nations against every decree infrino-- 
 ing on the rights of our august monarch, which rest on the 
 firm foundations of the faith of treaties, long prescription, and 
 the consent of the people of the Venaissin." ^ This declaration 
 of the assembly of the Venaissin did not at aU discourage the 
 French party at Avignon, which had been elected to the chief 
 offices in the new municipality, and which intended soon to 
 show its power. On May 27 these new rulers, who, like all 
 new rulers, were extremely sensitive to ridicule, were disgusted 
 to find that an e&gy, in the costume of a municipal officer, had 
 been hung in the Place des Saintes, and that a proclamation 
 attacking them had been posted up all over the city. They 
 at once began arresting suspected persons, and since the 
 National Guard could not be depended upon by them, the 
 worst of them, such as Peyre, introduced a body of fierce, 
 bloodthirsty peasants, into the city on the night of June 7, 
 under the command of a waggoner named Jourdan, who had 
 received the surname of Coupe-Tete, from his boasts that he 
 had cut off the head of De Launay, the governor of the Bastille. 
 These peasants created such terror among the bourgeois national 
 guards that they concentrated at the Hotel de ViUe, and a 
 sharp engagement took place on June 10, in which neither party 
 1 Soullier's Eistoire de la BSvolution d^ Avignon, vol. i. p. 53. 
 
512 The Avignon Committee. [chap. 
 
 was successful, and the peasants retired to their quarters. How- 
 ever, on June 11 they broke into the prison where the accused 
 of the affair of May 27 were confined, and led out and hanged 
 the Marquises de Rochegude and D'Aulan, the Abbe d'Ofiray, 
 and an artisan named Aubert. The news of the affair of the 
 10th had, however, reached Orange, and on the afternoon of 
 the 11th the National Guard of that city marched into Avignon, 
 and after driving out the peasants and quieting the city, took 
 away twenty-three prisoners, against whom the popular party 
 stiU vowed vengeance, to keep them safe in the prisons of 
 Orange, and departed on Jane 13. On the same day the 
 cardinal vice-legate, who had vainly implored mercy for the 
 victims of Jime 11, retired to the strong castle of Carpentras, 
 the capital of the still faithful Venaissin. His retirement was 
 rendered necessary by the action of the French party in Avig- 
 non, who caUed a general meeting of the citizens on June 12, 
 which solemnly declared Avignon united to France, and elected 
 four of the most revolutionary members of the municipality — 
 Tissot, Peyre, Duprat, and Lescuyer — deputies for the city to 
 the National Assembly. This action was warmly applauded 
 in the city, and after the performance of a solemn Te Benim. in 
 the cathedral, the mob proceeded to tear down the papal arms 
 everywhere, and to substitute those of France. Such was the 
 history of the events which Camus described to the Assembly in 
 an elaborate report of June 17, and the deputies of the extreme 
 left desired that the act of union should be at once ratified by 
 the king and the Assembly. Mirabeau, however, perceived the 
 danger of thus violating international law, and compromised 
 the matter by securing the election of an Avignon committee, 
 which consisted of Barnave, Tronchet, Charles de Lameth, 
 Bouche, Desmeuniers, and himself. This committee, under 
 Mirabeau's skilful management, took no decisive step, and on 
 August 24 Tronchet repoi-ted that it had received three 
 petitions, one from Avignon, begging for ratification of the 
 union, one from the municipality of Orange, asking what 
 was to be done with the prisoners they had taken from 
 Avignon, and one from the prisoners themselves. Mirabeau 
 
XVI.] The Siege of Carpentras. 513 
 
 prevented the Assembly from coming to any conclusion, 
 except that the prisoners were to be released from prison, 
 but confined to the city of Orange; but on November 16, 
 1790, Potion, enraged at the delay, made a long speech on 
 his own account on the position of affairs. His speech 
 abounded in false history and bad political philosophy, and 
 any eflfect which it might have had was destroyed by 
 Mirabeau's tart declaration that its conclusions were by no 
 means those of the Avignon committee. Mirabeau thus again 
 averted the danger of sanctioning the union ; but the continued 
 disturbances in Avignon obliged him to recommend that the 
 king should be requested to send two regiments to maintain 
 order in the city for the pope, without assuming any rights 
 of sovereignty. The people of Avignon, and . especially the 
 revolutionary party, were much disgusted at the delay of the 
 Assembly in acquiescing in the union; but they were still 
 more wroth at the persistent refusal of the people of the 
 Venaissin to send in a petition to the same effect, to which 
 they attributed the delay of the Assembly. Accordingly, in 
 the April of 1791, part of the National Guard of Avignon, 
 together with some of the mob, and some seventy soldiers of 
 the regiments of Penthifevre and the Soissonais, calling them- 
 selves the army of the Vaucluse, marched out under the com- 
 mand of Patrix, an ex-officer of the French army, who had 
 Jourdan Goupe-Tete, Pierre Mainvielle, and the son of a wealthy 
 innkeeper, who called himself the Marquis de Kovfere, under 
 him as lieutenants, and laid siege to Carpentras, the capital of 
 the Venaissin, on April 6. The siege did not last long, for on 
 May 6 the garrison burst out of the castle and killed many of 
 the besiegers, after which defeat the army murdered its general 
 and returned in confusion to Avignon. Mirabeau had been able 
 to prevent the Assembly from making the great mistake which 
 he had so consistently opposed ; but his successors in political 
 influence were not so prudent, and on the news of the siege of 
 Carpentras the Assembly nominated three commissoners, the 
 Abbd Mulot, M. Lescene-Desniaisons, and M.deVerninac, to go to 
 Avignon and report upon the disposition of the populace. They 
 VOL. I. 2 L 
 
514 Annexation of Avignon and the Venaissin. [chap. 
 
 were naturally influenced by the French party and reported 
 in favour of union, and recommended that French troops should 
 be at once sent to the city to put an end to the feverish excite- 
 ment which had reigned there so long, and was sure to end in 
 bloodshed. The commissioners were more than justified in 
 their recommendations by a riot on August 21, 1791, when the 
 first municipality was overthrown, as it was now too moderate 
 to please the advanced party, whose accession to power and ex- 
 treme opinions were at once shown by the selection of Jourdan 
 Coupe-T^te to be commandant of the National Guard. The 
 report was adopted by the Assembly, and on September 13, 
 not only Avignon, but the county of the Venaissin, which was 
 contented with the rule of the pope, were, on the motion of 
 Bamave, declared united to France without any mention being 
 made of compensation or apology to the lawful sovereign. This 
 decree was received with great rejoicings at Avignon on Sep- 
 tember 17, but by the unaccountable and most culpable delay 
 of De Lessart and Duportail, the Ministers for the Interior and 
 for War, the troops, which were to restore order to the city, 
 did not arrive until the beginning of November, after the 
 hearts of the deputies to the Legislative Assembly and of all 
 Frenchmen had been saddened by the terrible story of the 
 massacre of the Glacifere of Avignon.^ 
 
 At Avignon, as in every other city, town, and even village 
 in France, the progress of the local revolution had been the 
 work of the popular club. It was in these branch societies 
 or clubs " des amis de la Constitution" that the men of energy 
 of any city who, either from principle, ambition, or mere 
 desire for change, hoped for yet more startling political con- 
 vulsions, met together, and by union gained greater power 
 than any class or clique of their fellow-citizens. The leaders 
 
 1 For the troubles at Avignon, see the Bistoire de la Revolution d' Avig- 
 non et du ComU Venaissin en 1789 et annees suivantes, by Charles SouUier, 
 2 vols., Paris and Avignon, 1844-45 ; Histoi/re de la Revolution avignon- 
 aise, by J. P. Andr^, 2 vols., Avignon, 1844 ; and the innumerable 
 pamphlets published at the time, of which there are over ninety in the 
 British Museum, in volumes F. 594 to F. COl 
 
XVI.] The Power of the Clubs. 515 
 
 and rulers of these provincial clubs were never artisans, 
 ouvriers, or members of the very poorest class of society, but 
 were lawyers, bourgeois, gentlemen, or even priests and 
 ministers, like Jean Bon Saint-Andr4 the Protestant pastor 
 and president of the popular society of Montauban ; but they 
 had broken away from their class, and felt that they depended 
 upon the populace to support them and give them power. 
 It is a very curious fact that in no instance were the leaders 
 of the popular clubs ignorant and uneducated workmen ; they 
 were invariably men of education, who often deliberately 
 assumed the language and manners of the lowest class to gain 
 influence over them. Their power was already great, as 
 appears in the stories of the riots at Nlmes, Montauban, 
 Perpignan, Uzfes, Aix, and now at Avignon ; and as the more 
 moderate bourgeois began to tire of the clubs and their 
 endless motions, these more ambitious or more enthusiastic 
 members of their own class assumed the leadership in them, 
 which eventually led to the real government of the towns, when 
 once they had armed their poor partisans and were able to set 
 them in motion against the national guards. The leaders 
 of the Jacobin Club in Paris at the close of the Constituent 
 Assembly, Eobespierre and Petion, Danton and Choderlos de 
 Laclos, felt at that moment how greatly their power depended 
 on their close connection with their provincial branches ; for 
 not only did the majority of the bourgeois of Paris, as 
 represented by the national guards, hoot at the Jacobin 
 Club as they passed down the Rue Saint Honor^ on their way 
 from the slaughter of the Champ de Mars, but their old 
 orators, Duport, Bamave, and the Lameths, had seceded from 
 the club after that day, and, with the majority of the deputies 
 of the left, had founded anew club in the neighbouring convent 
 of the Feuillants. Had it not been for the new blood intro- 
 duced by the deputies to the Legislative Assembly, who camo 
 from their country towns and villages full of admiration and 
 respect for the mother-club and at once flocked to it, tho 
 Jacobin Club at Paris might have lost its pre-eminence. Ic 
 was the provinces of France which at this time restored 
 
5i6 The French West Indies. [chap. 
 
 vigour to the mother-club at Paris — a vigour which was to 
 be returned in double strength in the course of 1792. The 
 key-note of the strength and the success of the Jacobin Club 
 is to be found in its provincial branch societies, and if the 
 provincial history of 1789 is marked by the outbreak of 
 chateaux-burning and the establishment of national guards, 
 and of 1790 by federations and the election of the new 
 administrative authorities, the year 1791 is chiefly noteworthy 
 as the year in which the Jacobin Club spread its network over 
 France and attained thereby a predominant strength, which 
 made it the greatest political power, not only at its head- 
 quarters in Paris, but over the whole country. 
 
 The history of the Revolution in the colonies, or rather 
 of the influence of the Revolution in France upon the French 
 colonies, presents some curious contrasts to that of the 
 Revolution in the provinces, and deserves somewhat careful 
 attention. The unpractical policy of the Constituent As- 
 sembly with regard to them has already been noticed, as 
 an instance of the absence of political knowledge which 
 characterized the deputies,^ but the history of the eflect of 
 that policy in the colonies themselves has now to be seen. 
 The colonies in the West Indies were the most wealthy 
 which France possessed, and the success of the French in the 
 War of American Independence had borne its greatest fruits 
 there, and had made France the most powerful European 
 nation in that quarter. The French West Indies were in 1789 
 ruled on a dual system by royal officers, who commanded the 
 troops, exercised the civil government and maintained order, 
 and by intendants who had complete control of the finances, 
 with the natural result that there were perpetual disputes 
 between them. There were two governors-general, one of the 
 French portion of the island of San Domingo, and the other 
 of the islands, who resided in Martinique and ruled over the 
 other islands, namely, St. Lucia, Tobago, Mariegalante, Desirade, 
 and the Saintes, with the exception only of Guadeloupe, 
 which had its own independent governor and intendant. 
 \ VoL i. chap. ix. pp. 273, 274 
 
XVI.] San Domingo. 517 
 
 There -were, further, supreme colonial councils in each island, 
 which advised the governor and formed a court of appeal. 
 The garrison of these colonies consisted of eight colonial 
 regiments of infantry, recruited in Paris by the lieutenant 
 of police in the most unjustifiable manner from the criminal 
 classes,^ five brigades of the colonial regiment of artillery, and 
 some undisciplined militia, consisting partly of half-castes, 
 partly of freed slaves, which force was supplemented when 
 necessary by sailors from the ships on the West Indian station. 
 By far the wealthiest and most important of these colonies 
 was that of San Domingo, which comprised two-thirds of that 
 fertile island, and contained a population in 1789 of 55,252 
 whites, 31,785 mulattoes or half-castes and freed slaves, and 
 405,560 negro slaves ; ^ and these slaves were in every way 
 inferior to the slaves in the English colonies of Jamaica and 
 Barbadoes, of which they were to some extent the refuse, for 
 the English merchants, who possessed the entire control 
 of the slave trade, only brought the slaves whom they could 
 not sell elsewhere to San Domingo. The white colonists were 
 divided into two distinct classes — the planters, who dwelt, 
 when they were in the colony and not revelling in the gaieties 
 of Paris, in feudal state on their plantations ; and the wealthy 
 merchants, who exported sugar and rum to their correspondents 
 at Nantes and Bordeaiix, and imported the necessaries of life, 
 and who dwelt in the two cities of Port-au-Prince and Cap 
 Fran§ais. These two parties naturally opposed each other for 
 commercial reasons, because, while the planters wished for free 
 trade, so as to get the best price for their produce and to get 
 their European necessaries as cheaply as possible, the mer- 
 chants, from their close connection with the merchants of 
 Nantes and Bordeaux, were in favour of stringent protection. 
 The opposition between these parties had appeared in the 
 elected colonial assembly, granted to the colony in 1787, when 
 the provincial assemblies were instituted, in which also the 
 
 1 See SUlery's speech, quoted in vol. i. chap. xiii. p. 379. 
 
 2 Histoire mariUme de la France, by L^on Gu^rin, edition of 1863, 
 vol. V. p. 523. 
 
5i8 San Domingo. Lchap. 
 
 action of the Comte de la Luzerne, who in that year returned to 
 France to take up the ministry of the marine, in abolishing the 
 supreme council of Cap Fran9ais and centralizing all govern- 
 ment at Port-au-Prince, was violently attacked. In 1789 
 the governor-general of San Domingo was the Marquis de 
 Chilleau, and the intendant was Barb6-Marbois, one of the wisest 
 colonial administrators France ever possessed, who was in 
 favour of modified free trade in the shape of a recipiocity 
 treaty with America, and the two officials, as was invariably 
 the case, were declared enemies. It has been mentioned that 
 in July, 1789, shortly after the National Assembly had been 
 recognized by the king, the Marquis de Gouy d'Arcy and five 
 other Seigneurs de Saint Domingue, who had been elected by 
 a group of colonists who happened to be in Paris and in the 
 habit of meeting at the Hotel de Massiac, had been admitted 
 to the Assembly as deputies for San Domingo ; and the 
 Messieurs de la Martinique had similarly chosen Moreau de 
 Saint M^ry, Arthur Dillon, the lieutenant-governor of Tobago, 
 with Galbert and Curt of Guadeloupe, as their deputies. The 
 events of the Revolution in Paris were followed with the 
 keenest interest in San Domingo, especially by the merchants, 
 who sympathized with their brother-bourgeois in the National 
 Assembly, and the tricolour was publicly worn both at Cap 
 Fran^ais and at Port-au-Prince in the October of 1789. The 
 planters were not so enthusiastic ; most of them were noble, 
 and therefore did not admire the success of the National As- 
 sembly, and as slave-owners they especially feared the action 
 of the Societe des Amis des Noirs, which openly declared its 
 purpose of securing the abolition of slavery ; but some of them 
 soon conceived the idea of forming a constituent assembly in 
 the colony which should secure colonial independence, and 
 might then pass some free-trade measures. But both parties 
 were equally determined to allow no concessions to the 
 mulattoes or the slaves ; a mulatto was promptly hanged at 
 Port-au-Prince for asking for the rights of man from the 
 colonial committee established there, and Ferraud de Baudi^res, 
 a planter and st^nechal of Petit Goave, was assassinated for 
 
XVI.] Assembly of Leogane. 519 
 
 drawing up a petition from the mulattoes demanding those 
 rights.^ In the midst of this ferment the Governor-General, 
 De Chilleau, went home to France, and was succeeded by the 
 Comte de Pejmier, a commodore in the royal navy; and on 
 October 27, Barb6-Marbois, who was the special object of the 
 planters' detestation, was sent home to save his life. Mean- 
 while an individual, named La Chevalerie, had started a 
 provincial assembly for the province of the north, and 
 a municipality at Cap Fran9ais, and had endeavoured in vain 
 to frighten Lieutenant-General de Vincent, who commanded 
 in the province, and the Baron de Courbefort, colonel of the 
 regiment of Cap, into surrendering all power to him;^ but 
 the energy of these ofBcers and the disinclination of the 
 merchants of the city to be his tools soon caused him to leave 
 the city. He then pursued his intrigues in the province of 
 the west, which contained no important city, and was there- 
 fore entirely a planters' province, and in conjunction with 
 Larcheveque-Thibault, the Marquis de Borel, and others, sum- 
 moned what they were pleased to call a general assembly 
 of the colony, which met at Leogane, near Saint- Marc, and 
 declared that San Domingo was a crown colony, that the 
 decrees of the National Assembly had no authority in it, and 
 that it would draw up a constitution which would only need 
 the king's sanction to be effective. The provincial assembly 
 at Cap regarded this rightly as a serious move on the planters' 
 part, and warmly welcomed Peynier, the new governor, who 
 marched, with the colonial regiment of Cap Fran9ais and the 
 National Guard of that city, against Leogane. The general 
 assembly there soon found it would be impossible to resist 
 Peynier, and the leaders, therefore, embarked on board the 
 mutinous ship, the Leopard, which had declared in their favour, 
 and sailed for France on August 8, 1790. Meanwhile dis- 
 turbances had broken out at Port-au-Prince, chiefly owing 
 to the violent measures of the Chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis, 
 
 1 Gu^rin's Histoire maritime de la France, vol. v. p. 249. 
 
 2 See the description of the Sdne des Masques in Gu($rin, vol. v. 
 p. 252. 
 
520 Rising of the Mulattoes. [chap. 
 
 colonel of the colonial regiment of Port-au-Prince, who was 
 an ardent Royalist, and who, on August 29, disarmed the 
 national guards of that city, arrested the whole colonial 
 committee formed there, and formed a corps of planters and 
 other Roj^alist volunteers, who were called the poTupons 
 hlancs, from the white tufts which they wore in their hats 
 in lieu of cockades. The arrival of the Leopard at Brest, 
 with the deputies of the assembly of Leogane on board, 
 again raised the question of San Domingo in the Constituent 
 Assembly, and also caused an insurrection in the fleet ; 
 but the Assembly, on the report of its colonial committee, 
 which it had elected in March, 1790, condemned these deputies, 
 passed votes of thanks to Peynier, Vincent, and Mauduit du 
 Plessis, and directed that two regiments should be sent to 
 reinforce the authorities of the colony. Long before these 
 troops, whose departure was delayed by the mutiny in the 
 Brest fleet, could start, a new danger had arisen in the colony. 
 The mulattoes, who formed an important class, and who were 
 proud of the European, blood in their veins, insisted on 
 petitioning that they should be allowed the same rights and 
 privileges as the white citizens ; and when their petition wag 
 contemptuously rejected by the provincial assembly of Cap 
 Fran§ais and by the whole white population, they burst into open 
 insuiTection, under the command of Vincent Og4 a young 
 mulatto who had been educated in Europe, and held the rank 
 of lieutenant-colonel in Germany. Oge's two hundred men 
 were easily defeated by Vincent and the Baron de Courbefort, 
 and the defeated mulattoes escaped into the Spanish portion 
 of San Domingo. Even there the leaders were not safe 
 from the vengeance of the colonists; Vincent Og6 and his 
 brother were surrendered, and broken on the wheel on 
 March 9, 1791. All these troubles were too much for the 
 Comte de Peynier, who resigned his governor-generalship in 
 November, 1790, and was succeeded by M, de Blanchelande, 
 a former lieutenant-governor of the island of Tobago. The 
 danger of the mulatto rising was hardly past, when the 
 merchants of the cities saw new peril in the discontent of the 
 
XVI.] Abolition of Slavery. 521 
 
 class known as the "mean whites." This class comprised 
 the adventurers of every description who had left France for 
 the colonies, and was largely recruited from the deserters and 
 time-expired soldiers of the colonial regiments. The mean 
 whites of Port-au-Prince were for a time kept in subjection 
 by the firm conduct of the Chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis and 
 •his royal volunteers ; but on the arrival of the regiments of 
 Normandie and Artois, which at last landed on March 2, 
 shouting "Vive la liberty.!" the soldiers of the colonial 
 regiment of Port-au-Prince felt themselves strong enough to 
 mutiny, and on March 4 Mauduit du Plessis was murdered 
 by his own grenadiers. After this murder the merchants of 
 Port-au-Prince began in terror to return to France, and the 
 once prosperous city became the prey of the mean whites.^ 
 This news from San Domingo brought on a long and animated 
 debate in the Constituent Assembly. Mirabeau was dead, 
 and there was no one left to combat the fanaticism of 
 humanity which possessed the majority of the deputies, and 
 on May 15/ 1791, the Assembly decreed, on the motion of 
 Gr^goire, that every man, whether black or white, who lived 
 on French soil was a free citizen and had all the rights of 
 citizenship, and that slavery was abolished. The frantic 
 protests of merchants, planters, and every one who had ever 
 been connected with the colonies had at last, but too late, 
 some iiifluence with the more thoughtful deputies, and on 
 September 23, just before the Constituent Assembly was 
 dissolved, an attempt was made to evade the effect of the 
 decree of May 15. On that day, on the motion of Barnave, 
 the Assembly decreed that while the mother-country reserved 
 the right to order all external relations, each colony should be 
 allowed to regulate its own interior affairs. There could be 
 no doubt that slavery would then have been re-estabhshed. 
 
 1 For these events, see ffistoire de la BSvolution d, Saint Domingue, by 
 A. M. Delmas, 2 vols, Paris, 1814 i.An Historical Survey of the French 
 Colony in the Idamd of San Domingo, by Bryan Edwards, M.P., London, 
 1797 ; and Lettre A M. B. Edwwrds e» refutation de son ouvra^e, jpar 
 Venmlt de Cha/rmUly, London, 1797. 
 
522 Martinique. [chap. 
 
 But Bamave's motion came too late. The mulattoes, who 
 could not forget the execution of Og4 had told the negroes 
 that they were all free ; and the news arrived at Havre, on 
 October 17, that the slaves in the province of the north, to 
 the number of fifty-five thousand, had burst into insurrection, 
 and were burning the plantations and murdering the planters, 
 It was further reported that Captain Affleck, of H.M.S. Triton, 
 had saved many lives, but that both French and English 
 colonists demanded that assistance should at once be sent 
 to the governor, or else the contagion of murder and rebellion 
 would spread through all the West India Islands. When it 
 became a question of life and death between whites and blacks, 
 the mulattoes, cruelly as they had been treated, did all they 
 could to help the whites and to defend the cities against the 
 slaves. By the end of September, 1791, the once flourishing 
 plantations of San Domingo were in ashes ; but the towns held 
 out, and on September 11 a regular treaty of peace was made 
 between the insurgent negroes and the mean whites and 
 mulattoes, who now ruled in Port-au-Prince, for the merchants 
 and planters were all murdered or out of the colony. The only 
 redeeming features in, the outbreak of this fatal slave war are 
 to be seen in the gallant manner in which the mulattoes held 
 by their half-brothers the whites, and in the intrepid attempts 
 of the sailors of all nations, English, French, Spanish, and 
 American, to save some of the victims of the ill-considered 
 and ridiculous policy by means of which the Constituent 
 Assembly had brought disaster and ruin upon the most 
 flourishing French colony. 
 
 Next in importance, if not in size, to the colony of San 
 Domingo was the French island of Martinique, in which the 
 governor-general of all the smaller islands, except Guadeloupe, 
 resided. In contained, in 1789, a population of between 10,000 
 and 11,000 whites, between 4000 and 6000 mulattoes and freed 
 slaves, and about 73,000 slaves;^ and there, too, as in San 
 Domingo, the governor-general, the Comte de Viom^nil, and 
 the intendant, FouUon d'Ecotier, son of the FouUon murdered 
 1 Gu&in's Histoire maritime de la France, vol. v. p. 623. 
 
XVI.] Tlie Revolution in Martinique, 523 
 
 at Paris on July 16, were at issue. On the news of the taking 
 of the Bastille, there was an outburst of joy among the white 
 inhabitants of Saint-Pierre, the capital, who at once adopted 
 the tricolour J but Viom6nil disgusted them aU by publicly 
 embracing a negro, as a proof of his belief in equality and 
 fraternity. The order of events in San Domingo was then 
 exactly followed in Martinique. A colonial assembly, which 
 claimed to be a constituent assembly, consisting almost en- 
 tirely of planters, met in the town of Fort Royal, and, after 
 an inquiry into the conduct of the governor-general, reported 
 him to the king. Meanwhile the merchants of Saint-Pierre 
 had formed an assembly and established a National Guard, 
 and as they also attacked the governor-general, Viom^nil was 
 recalled and replaced by Lieutenant-General the Vicomte de 
 Damas. When the new governor-general reached Martinique 
 he found civil war raging between the cities of Fort Royal 
 and Saint-Pierre, and that the latter had sent for help to 
 the neighbouring colonies of Guadeloupe, Saint-Lucia, and 
 Tobago. In command of the volunteers from Guadeloupe, 
 aiTived CoquiHe Dugommier, a veteran officer of the American 
 war,^ who speedily patched up a peace, and aU remained quiet 
 imtil Saint-Pierre declared itself a frefe port, when Damas, 
 with a force of soldiers, volunteers, and mulattoes, marched 
 against it. Again help came from the neighbouring islands, 
 but when Captain de Clugny, governor of Guadeloupe, re- 
 tired after making a fresh peace, Damas seized the city and 
 made the leaders prisoners. In June, 1790, the mulattoes 
 of Saint-Pierre began a riot in the streets for the rights 
 of man, but they did not go so far as Og6 in San Domingo, 
 and were very roughly handled by the soldiers, the national 
 guards, and the sailors of the French fleet, who killed 
 fourteen of them. There was then comparative peace tiU 
 September 1, 1790, when the soldiers of the colonial regi- 
 ment of Martinique, who garrisoned Fort Royal and Fort 
 1 Z>oCTime»i<s rdaiifs A la Revolution /ran(aise, extraits des (ewvres inSdits 
 de A. B. C. de Sawd-Albm, puUUs jpar son fih mni, H. de Saint-Albm, 
 p 229-231. Paxis: 1873. 
 
5 24 Guadeloupe. [chap. 
 
 Bourbon, which commanded the town of Fort Eoyal, mutinied 
 and expelled the governor-general, the colonial assembly, and 
 their officers from the town. The Vicomte de Damas then 
 established himself on an impregnable height, called the Gros 
 Morne, where he collected round him all the troops he could 
 muster, and thoroughly organized the planters, who came to 
 him as volunteers. On September 25 Dugomraier marched 
 out to attack the Gros Morne, but was utterly defeated; 
 and in February, 1791, Damas, who had received reinforce- 
 ments, laid siege to Saint-Pierre. The siege lasted three 
 months, during which Dugommier gave proof of the powers 
 of organization and of the military ability which he was to dis- 
 play in the great European wars of the French Republic. The 
 siege was only terminated and the civil war ended by the 
 arrival, in June, 1791, of two commissioners from the National 
 Assembly, who recommended that Damas should be recalled 
 and a general amnesty issued. Dugommier himself had with 
 difficulty escaped from the island, but had the satisfaction to 
 learn in France, a few months later, that Martinique had 
 elected him a deputy to the Legislative Assembly. Martinique, 
 like San Domingo, felt the evil efiect of the abolition of slavery 
 by the decree of May 15, 1791; for on October 17 a slave 
 insurrection broke out, which, if not so terribly destructive as 
 that of San Domingo, ruined much property and cost many 
 lives. 
 
 The important colony of Guadeloupe, of which Captain de 
 Clugny was governor, with its population of 13,000 to 14,000 
 whites, 3000 mulattoes, and 85,000 slaves, was saved from the 
 excesses of Martinique and San Domingo by the prudent con- 
 duct of the governor, and by the departure of the more warlike 
 planters to join the camp of Damas at the Gros Morne, and of 
 the more warlike bourgeois to join Dugommier at Saint-Pierre. 
 The absence of the colonists, however, caused a negxo revolt, 
 which was speedily suppressed, and all was quiet until the 
 bourgeois merchants of Basse Terre, the capital of Guadeloupe, 
 began to suspect De Clugny of an alliance with Damas. They 
 then drove him out, and he established himself at Point-a- 
 
XVI.] Saint Lucia and Tobago. 525 
 
 Pitre, as Damas had done at the Gros Mome ; but he did not 
 attempt to attack Basse Terre, and remained quiet until the 
 outbreak of a slave war, after the decree of May 1 5, caused all the 
 whites and mulattoes to forget their differences and combine for 
 defence. The island of Saint-Lucia, however, with its 2300 
 whites, 1000 mulattoes, and 17,000 slaves, remained, owing to 
 the prudent rule of Captain Laroque-Montels, free from dis- 
 turbances, though it too sent volunteers to Martinique to the 
 help of both Damas and Dugommier. The little island of 
 Tobago, with its 400 whites, 200 mulattoes, and 13,000 slaves, 
 ■vfas not so fortunate. This conquest of Bouilld's, which had 
 been ceded by England to France by the treaty of 1783, was 
 garrisoned by five companies of the colonial regiment of Guade- 
 loupe, and, on the election of Arthur Dillon to the National 
 Assembly, M. Jobal had been appointed lieutenant-governor. 
 There, too, a colonial committee formed itself and tried to 
 induce the soldiers to mutiny, but in vain ; and the lieu- 
 tenant-governor, catching the three leaders as they were trying 
 to escape to Martinique, deported one of them, a lawyer, 
 named Bosque, to Trinidad. At this strong measure the 
 soldiers really did mutiny, but were feasted by Jobal, and for 
 a time returned to their duty. Meanwhile the merchants of 
 the town ot Port Louis had formed a National Guard, and 
 a body of these volunteers sailed, under the command of M. 
 Saint-Leger, to aid Dugommier at Martinique. Jobal's foolish 
 manner of treating the soldiers had only increased their 
 audacity, and they at last demanded the life of one of their 
 officers. Captain Blosse. He escaped with difficulty, and the 
 mutinous soldiers continued to terrify the island, until eventually 
 they set fire to and nearly totally destroyed the flourishing 
 town of Port Louis. Then at last Jobal induced the soldiers, 
 who were mere brigands rather than the defenders of the colony, 
 to go on board ship with Saint-Leger as a hostage, and 
 return to France. On their arrival the Assembly ordered 
 them to be imprisoned, but, after long inquiry, released them, 
 awarded an indemnity of six thousand livres to Captain Blosse, 
 and recommended that Jobal should be recalled for his treat- 
 
526 Folly of the Decree of May 15. L*^hap. 
 
 ment of Bosque. Very similar was the course of events at 
 Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana.^ There, in accordance 
 with the Assembly's decree of March, a colonial assembly had 
 been elected on August 26, 1790 ; but when it showed too strong 
 a tendency to thwart and criticize him, M. Bourgon, the 
 governor, promptly arrested the seven leaders and sent them 
 home to France. In French Guiana, it may be added, there 
 was only .one unimportant insurrection of the slaves.^ The 
 slaves were few, owing to the policy of the intendant, 
 Lescallier, and so were the planters and the merchants; and 
 as the native tribes had been consistently conciliated and not 
 subdued, they exhibited no tendency to rise in insurrection. 
 So peaceful, indeed, did the state of the colony remain, that 
 when the directory wished to get rid of its adversaries, 
 and yet not to guillotine them, it could find no colony so 
 suitable as French Guiana. This account of the efi'ects of the 
 progress of the Revolution in France upon the colonies shows 
 at once how far-spreading was the enthusiasm which welcomed 
 the first movements in Paris, and the utter incompetence of 
 the Constituent Assembly to deal with colonial matters. In 
 every colony the news of the capture of the Bastille was 
 received with delight, but the attempts of the inhabitants of 
 the cities to imitate the behaviour of the French provincial 
 towns, and to institute assemblies and national guards, led 
 everywhere to disturbance. The planters, who were the 
 natural opponents of the merchants, opposed them by force of 
 arms, and though in San Domingo one governor-general took 
 the side of the citizens, those of Martinique and Guadeloupe 
 supported the planters, and open civil war among the colonists 
 was the result. It was, however, in the decree of May 15, 
 1791, that the Constituent Assembly committed its greatest act 
 of folly, by declaring all slaves free citizens of France, with 
 the natural result that the slaves rose in insurrection to obtain 
 
 1 On the state of French Guiana and the policy pursued there, consult 
 the Memoires of Malouet, who was intendant from 1776 to 1779. 
 
 2 Notice historiqiie sw la Ouyam /rancaise, by H. Temaux-Oompans, 
 p. 113. Paris : 1843. 
 
xvi.J The Revolution in the Mauritius. 527 
 
 their freedom, and that France lost her largest and most 
 prosperous colony for ever. 
 
 Passing over the French settlements on the west coast of 
 Africa, Senegal, Senegambia, and Goree, which had been restored 
 to France in 1783, and which were maintained solely for the 
 purpose of exporting negro slaves, and therefore ruined by the 
 decree of May 15, it is next necessary to mention the effect of 
 the events of the French Revolution in the French settlements 
 in India and in the colonies in the Indian Ocean, of which the 
 most valuable were the Isle de France, now known by its 
 Dutch name of the Mauritius, and the Isle de Bourbon, now 
 known as Reunion. There existed two opposite schools of 
 colonial politicians in the Indian Seas, the main aim of one 
 of which was to conquer the English East India Company 
 in India and develop the wealth of the peninsula ; while the 
 other, which regarded the Isle de France as the real centre of 
 French interests in the Eastern seas, already cast longing 
 glances at the great island of Madagascar. The overthrow of 
 the plans of Dupleix, and the successive defeats of Lally and 
 Bussy, had discredited the former school, and in 1786 Lieu- 
 tenant-General the Comte de Conway, a nobleman of Irish 
 descent, was appointed to succeed Charpenticr de Cossigny as 
 governor-general of the dominions of the new French East 
 India Company. He. was the acknowledged leader of the party 
 which coveted Madagascar, and at once recommended the 
 absolute withdrawal of all troops from India to the Mauritius, 
 and that the seat of government for all the French possessions 
 to the east of the Cape of Good Hope should be placed there. 
 His views were adopted, and in September, 1789, he was him- 
 self appointed governor-general of the Isles de France et de 
 Bourbon. He was naturally popular in the beautiful island, of 
 which the scenery has been immortalized by Bernardin de 
 Saint-Pierre in his "Paul and Virginia;" and as absolute 
 free trade existed, no differences between the merchants and 
 the planters appeared when he summoned a colonial assembly 
 to meet on April 27, 1790. But intriguing politicians soon 
 made their presence felt, who harassed the governor into 
 
528 The French Settlements in India. [chap- 
 
 resigning his office to Charpentier de Cossigny, who was now 
 lieutenant-governor of the little island of Bourbon. A far 
 greater danger than the words of a few intriguers existed in 
 the mutinous behaviour of the soldiers of the regiments of Isle 
 de France and of Pondicherry, who bitterly hated the com- 
 modore of the fleet on the station, the Comte de Maenamara, 
 and who eventually murdered him on November 4, 1790, at 
 Port Louis. This foul murder aroused the colonists, who 
 eventually took courage to arrest and deport the leaders of the 
 mutineers to the islets of Rodrigues. The result of this vigorous 
 measure was to restore absolute quiet, and under the able ad- 
 ministration of M. de Malartic, who came out as governor- 
 general in 1792, absolute tranquillity was maintained in the 
 Mauritius, while France was tormented by civil and foreign 
 wars.^ Similar good order was maintained by Colonel Thenon, 
 who succeeded De Cossigny as governor of the island of 
 Bourbon, or Reunion, where a colonial assembly met as early 
 as March 25, 1790, and where the soldiers and other radicals 
 were kept in order by a powerful club, the " Soci6t6 des Amis 
 de I'Ordre," and the only trouble he experienced was with his 
 unruly garrison of three hundred men belonging to the colonial 
 regiment of Pondicherry.^ 
 
 The French settlements in India itself comprised the five 
 towns of Pondicherry, Chandernagore, Mah6, Karikal, and 
 Yanaon, and certain " comptoirs " or factories in other cities. Of 
 the towns, Pondicherry was by far the- most important, and in 
 1789 the French inhabitants were disaffected towards the 
 government, both for deciding to withdraw the troops to the 
 Mauritius, and for establishing a new East India Company 
 in 1785, which had secured a monopoly of the trade with 
 France, and ruined the independent merchants. The news 
 of the revolution of Paris, as it was called, arrived by the 
 same ship which came to take away the last detachment 
 
 ' See Statistique de Vile Maurice suivi d'une notice historiqiie, by the 
 Baron d'Unienville. 2 vols. Paris : 1838. 
 
 2 Ristoire de Vile Bourbon depuis 1643, jusqu'au 20 Decembre, 1848, by 
 Georges Az&ia. Paris : 1862. 
 
xvi.J The Revolution at Pondicherry. 529 
 
 of European troops, and the inhabitants at once rushed to 
 arms and declared that they too would have a revolution, and 
 would not allow the troops to start. They then formed a 
 colonial assembly, which became so noisy that, in August, 
 1790, the Chevalier de Fresne, governor of Pondicherry, de- 
 ported the three chief ringleaders. This was the source o£ 
 infinite future trouble, and led to the final division of parties 
 in the settlement, which made it easy for the English to take 
 possession of the former capital of Dupleix, in April, 1793.^ At 
 Chandernagore things went even worse. The colonial assembly 
 of that little settlement refused to acknowledge the authoritj- 
 of either the colonial assemblies or the governors of Pondi- 
 cherry or the Mauritius, and speedily imprisoned its own 
 governor, Colonel de Montigny, who was, however, released and 
 kindly received by the English governor-general, the Marquis 
 Cornwallis, at Calcutta.^ 
 
 The policy of the Constituent Assembly had, therefore, 
 been as disastrous in the French colonies as it was possible 
 to be, owing to its humanitarian and unpractical projects. 
 Not only the mulatto rising under Og6 in San Domingo, but 
 the disastrous slave war which followed, can be distinctly 
 attributed to the decrees of March, 1790, and May, 1791 ; and 
 the decree of March, 1790, constituting colonial assemblies, 
 had everywhere embarrassed the executive authority in the 
 colonies. Just as the Constituent Assembly had failed to 
 understand that special laws must exist for the maintenance 
 of an army or a navy, so it did not see the need of special 
 regulations for different colonies, but wished to extend the 
 doubtful privileges of the Declaration of the Rights of Man to 
 every land where the French flag waved. Still more fatal was 
 their decree for the abolition of slavery. It was not the act 
 itself, but the unpractical manner of doing it, which did the 
 
 1 See a series of articles by H. Oastonnet-Desfosses, called La Eewhi- 
 tion et les Chibs dans I'Inde frangaise, in the Jievue de la BdvoUUon for 
 March, April, May, and August, 1883. 
 
 8 ComwaUis's despatch of November 17, 1790, in the CornwaUts Corre- 
 spondence, edited by Boss, vol. ii. pp. 54, 55. London : 1859. 
 
 VOL. I. ^ ^ 
 
53° Revolutionary Enthusiasm in France, [chap, xvi. 
 
 mischief; and witli regard to both the provinces and the 
 colonies of France, the only wonder is that the anarchy caused 
 by the Assembly's decrees did not open men's eyes to the 
 mistakes of its policy, and that all Frenchmen should have 
 indulged in a boundless delight at their new-born freedom, 
 to the forgetfulness of murder and rapine, with an intensity 
 best described in the lines of Wordsworth — 
 
 " Aaother time, 
 That was, when I was here long years ago, 
 The senselessness of joy was then sublime ! "' 
 
 1 Wordsworth's sonnet, dated Calais, August 15, 1802, ia "Sonnets 
 dedicated to Liberty.'' 
 
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APPENDIX n. 
 
 Presidents oe the Constituent Assembly, Juite 17, 1789, 
 TO September 12, 1791. 
 
 The presidents were elected by the absolute majority every fortnight, and 
 were eligible for re-election. 
 
 Elected 
 
 1. Jean Sylvain Bailly June 17, 1789 
 
 2. The Due d'Orleans (refused to take office) . . July 3 ,, 
 
 3. Mgr. Lefranc de Pompignan, Archbishop of 
 
 Vienne July 3 ,, 
 
 4. The D uc de la Eoehefoucauld-Liancoiirt • . July 20 ,, 
 
 5. Isaac Gui Een^ Le Chapelier Aug. 3 „ 
 
 6. The Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre . ... Aiig. 17 ,, 
 
 7. Mgr. de la Luzerne, Bishop of Langres . . Aug. 31 , , 
 
 8. The Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre (second time) . Sept. 14 „ 
 
 9. Jean Joseph Motinier Sept. 28 ,, 
 
 10. Emmanuel Marc Marie Fr^teau de Saint Just . Oct. 12 ,, 
 
 11. Armand Gaston Camus Oct. 28 „ 
 
 12. Jacques GuiUaume Thouret Nov. 12 ,, 
 
 13. Mgr. de Boisg^in de Cuc^, Archbishop of Aix . Nov. 23 ,, 
 
 14. Emmanuel Marc Marie Fr^teau de Saint Just 
 
 (second time) Dec. 7 „ 
 
 15. Jean Nicolas Desmeuniers Dec. 22 ,, 
 
 16. ErahQois Xavier Marc Antoine de Montesquiou- 
 
 F^zensae, Abbot of Beaulieu .... Jan. 4, 1790 
 
 17. Gui Jean Baptiste Target Jan. 18 ,, 
 
 18. Jean Xavier Bureaux de Pusy Feb. 2 „ 
 
 19. Mgr. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-P^rigord, Bishop 
 
 of Autun Feb. 16 ,, 
 
 20. Francois Xavier Marc Antoine de Montesquiou- 
 
 F^zensac, Abbot of Beaulieu (second time) . . Feb. 28 ,, 
 
 21. Jean Paul Eabaut de Saint-Etienne . , . Mar. 13 ,, 
 
 22. The Baron de Menou Mar. 28 „ 
 
 23. The Marquis de Bonnay April 12 „ 
 
 24. The Comte de Virieu ...... April 27 ,, 
 
 25. Jean Louis Gouttes, cur^ of ArgiUiera . . . April 29 „ 
 
Presidents of the Constituent Assembly. 533 
 
 Elected 
 
 26. Jacques Guillaume Thouret (second time) . . May 10, 1790 
 
 27. Bon- Albert Briois, Chevalier de Beaumetz . , May 27 „ 
 
 28. Emmanuel Joseph Si6y6s ....*.. June 8 ,, 
 
 29. Michel Ijepelletier de Salnt-Pargeau • . . June 21 „ 
 30. . The Marquis de Bonnay (second time) . . . July 5 „ 
 
 31. Jean Baptiste Treilhard July 17 „ 
 
 32. Antoine Balthazar Joseph d'Aiidr6 .... Aug. 1 „ 
 
 33. Pierre Samuel Dupont de 19'ejnours . . . Aug. 16 ,, 
 
 34. The Baron de Jess6 Aug. 30 „ 
 
 35. Jean Xavier Bureaux de Busy (second time) . . Sept. 12 „ 
 
 36. Jean Louis Claude Emmery Sept. 26 „ 
 
 37. Philippe Antoine Merlin de Douai .... Oct. 9 ,, 
 
 38. Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave . . . Oct. 25 „ 
 
 39. Charles Antoine Chasset Nov. 9 ,, 
 
 40. The Chevalier Alexandre Victor de Iiameth . . Nov. 20 ,, 
 
 41. Jerome Potion de Villeneuve .... Dec. 4 „ 
 
 42. The Marquis de Bonnay (third time) . . . Dec. 20 „ 
 
 43. Antoine Balthazar Joseph d'Andrd (second time) . Dec. 22 „ 
 
 44. Jean Louis Claude Emmery (second time) . . Jan. 4, 1791 
 
 45. Henri Gr^goire, cur^ of Embermesnil . . . Jan. 18 „ 
 
 46. The Comte de Mirabeau Jan. 31 „ 
 
 47. Adr en Duport de Prelaville Feb. 14 „ 
 
 48. The Vicomte de NoaiUes Feb. 26 „ 
 
 49. The Marquis de Montesquiou-F6zensac . . Mar. 14 „ 
 60. Frangois Denis Tronoh.et Mar. 30 „ 
 
 51. Charles Chabroud April 9 „ 
 
 52. Jean Eeiw^bell April 25 „ 
 
 53. Antoine Balthazar Joseph d'Andr^ (third time) . May 9 „ 
 
 54. Jean Xavier Bureaux de Busy (third time) . . May 25 „ 
 
 55. Jean Dauchy June 6 „ 
 
 56. The "Vicomte Alexandre de Beauhamais . . June 18 ,, 
 
 57. The Comte Charles Malo Fran9ois de Iiameth. . July 3 ,, 
 
 58. Joseph Defermon des Chapelli^res . . . July 19 „ 
 
 59. The Vioomte Alexandre de Beauhamais (second 
 
 time) July 31 „ 
 
 60. The Prince de Broglie Aug. 14 „ 
 
 61. Theodore Vernier Aug. 29 „ 
 
 62. Jacques Guillaume Thouret (third time) ... Sept. 12 „ 
 
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