Read Ebook: History of the Girondists Volume I Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution by Lamartine Alphonse De Ryde H T Henry T Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 594 lines and 188770 words, and 12 pages

The left side lost at one blow its leader and controller; in Mirabeau the national man had ceased to exist, and only the men of party remained, and they were Barnave and the two Lameths. These men humbled, rebuked, before the ascendency of Mirabeau, had attempted, long before his death, to balance the sovereignty of his genius by the exaggeration of their doctrines and harangues. Mirabeau was but the apostle--they would fain have been the faction-leaders of the time. Jealous of his influence, they would have crushed his talents beneath the superiority of their popularity. Mediocrity thinks to equal genius by outraging reason. A diminution of thirty or forty votes had taken place in the left side. This was the work of Barnave and the Lameths. The club of the friends of the constitution become the Jacobin Club, responded to them from without. The popular agitation excited by them was restrained by Mirabeau, who rallied against them the left, the centre, and the intelligent members of the right side. They conspired, they caballed, they fomented divisions in opinion all the more that they had not control in the Assembly.

Mirabeau was dead, and now the field was open to them. The Lameths--courtiers, educated by the kindness of the royal family, overwhelmed by the favours and pensions of the king, had the conspicuous defection of Mirabeau without having the excuse of his wrongs against the monarchy: this defection was one of their titles to popular favour. Clever men, they carried with them into the national cause the conduct of Courts in which they had been brought up: still their love of the Revolution was disinterested and sincere. Their eminent talents did not equal their ambition. Crushed by Mirabeau, they stirred up against him all those whom the shadow of that great man eclipsed in common with themselves. They sought for a rival to oppose to him, and found only men who envied him. Barnave presented himself, and they surrounded him, applauded him, intoxicated him with his self-importance. They persuaded him for a moment that phrases were politics, and that a rhetorician was a statesman.

Barnave had the misfortune to be the great man of a mediocre party, and the hero of an envious faction: he deserved a better destiny, which he subsequently acquired.

Still deeper in the shade, and behind the chief of the National Assembly, a man almost unknown began to move, agitated by uneasy thoughts which seemed to forbid him to be silent and unmoved; he spoke on all occasions, and attacked all speakers indifferently, including Mirabeau himself. Driven from the tribune, he ascended it next day: overwhelmed with sarcasm, coughed down, disowned by all parties, lost amongst the eminent champions who fixed public attention, he was incessantly beaten, but never dispirited. It might have been said, that an inward and prophetic genius revealed to him the vanity of all talent, and the omnipotence of a firm will and unwearied patience, and that an inward voice said to him, "These men who despise thee are thine: all the changes of this Revolution which now will not deign to look upon thee, will eventually terminate in thee, for thou hast placed thyself in the way like the inevitable excess, in which all impulse ends."

This man was Robespierre.

There are abysses that we dare not sound, and characters we desire not to fathom, for fear of finding in them too great darkness, too much horror; but history, which has the unflinching eye of time, must not be chilled by these terrors, she must understand whilst she undertakes to recount. Maximilien Robespierre was born at Arras, of a poor family, honest and respectable; his father, who died in Germany, was of English origin. This may explain the shade of Puritanism in his character. The bishop of Arras had defrayed the cost of his education. Young Maximilien had distinguished himself on leaving college by a studious life, and austere manners. Literature and the bar shared his time. The philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau had made a profound impression on his understanding; the philosophy, falling upon an active imagination, had not remained a dead letter; it had become in him a leading principle, a faith, a fanaticism. In the strong mind of a sectarian, all conviction becomes a thing apart. Robespierre was the Luther of politics: and in obscurity he brooded over the confused thoughts of a renovation of the social world, and the religious world, as a dream which unavailingly beset his youth, when the Revolution came to offer him what destiny always offers to those who watch her progress, opportunity. He seized on it. He was named deputy of the third estate in the States General. Alone perhaps among all these men who opened at Versailles the first scene of this vast drama, he foresaw the termination; like the soul, whose seat in the human frame philosophers have not discovered, the thought of an entire people sometimes concentrates itself in the individual, the least known in the great mass. We should not despise any, for the finger of Destiny marks in the soul and not upon the brow. Robespierre had nothing: neither birth, nor genius nor exterior which should point him out to men's notice. There was nothing conspicuous about him; his limited talent had only shone at the bar or in provincial academies; a few verbal harangues filled with a tame and almost rustic philosophy, some bits of cold and affected poetry, had vainly displayed his name in the insignificance of the literary productions of the day: he was more than unknown, he was mediocre and contemned. His features presented nothing which could attract attention, when gazing round in a large assembly: there was no sign in visible characters of this power which was all within; he was the last word of the Revolution, but no one could read him.

Robespierre's figure was small, his limbs feeble and angular, his step irresolute, his attitudes affected, his gestures destitute of harmony or grace; his voice, rather shrill, aimed at oratorical inflexions, but only produced fatigue and monotony; his forehead was good, but small and extremely projecting above the temples, as if the mass and embarrassed movement of his thoughts had enlarged it by their efforts; his eyes, much covered by their lids and very sharp at the extremities, were deeply buried in the cavities of their orbits; they gave out a soft blue hue, but it was vague and unfixed, like a steel reflector on which a light glances; his nose straight and small was very wide at the nostrils, which were high and too expanded; his mouth was large, his lips thin and disagreeably contracted at each corner; his chin small and pointed, his complexion yellow and livid, like that of an invalid or a man worn out by vigils and meditations. The habitual expression of this visage was that of superficial serenity on a serious mind, and a smile wavering betwixt sarcasm and condescension. There was softness, but of a sinister character. The prevailing characteristic of this countenance was the prodigious and continual tension of brow, eyes, mouth, and all the facial muscles; in regarding him it was perceptible that the whole of his features, like the labour of his mind, converged incessantly on a single point with such power that there was no waste of will in his temperament, and he appeared to foresee all he desired to accomplish, as though he had already the reality before his eyes. Such then was the man destined to absorb in himself all those men, and make them his victims after he had used them as his instruments. He was of no party, but of all parties which in their turn served his ideal of the Revolution. In this his power consisted, for parties paused but he never did. He placed this ideal as an end to reach in every revolutionary movement, and advanced towards it with those who sought to attain it; then, this goal reached, he placed it still further off, and again marched forward with other men, continually advancing without ever deviating, ever pausing, ever retreating. The Revolution, decimated in its progress, must one day or other inevitably arrive at a last stage, and he desired it should end in himself. He was the entire incorporation of the Revolution,--principles, thoughts, passions, impulses. Thus incorporating himself wholly with it, he compelled it one day to incorporate itself in him--that day was a distant one.

Robespierre, who had often struggled against Mirabeau with Duport, the Lameths, and Barnave, began to separate himself from them as soon as they appeared to predominate in the Assembly. He formed, with P?tion and some others of small note, a small band of opposition, radically democratic, who encouraged the Jacobins without, and menaced Barnave and the Lameths whenever they ventured to pause. P?tion and Robespierre in the Assembly, Brissot and Danton at the Jacobin Club, formed the nucleus of the new party which was destined to accelerate the movement and speedily to convert it into convulsions and catastrophes.

P?tion was a popular Lafayette: popularity was his aim, and he acquired it earlier than Robespierre. A barrister without talent but upright, he had imbibed no more of philosophy than the Social Contract; young, good looking and a patriot, he was destined to become one of those complaisant idols of whom the people make what they please except a man; his credit in the streets and amongst the Jacobins gave him a certain amount of authority in the Assembly, where he was listened to as the significant echo of the will out of doors. Robespierre affected to respect him.

The constitution was completed, the regal power was but a mere name, the king was but the executive of the orders of the national representation, his ministers only responsible hostages in the hands of the Assembly. The vices of this constitution were evident before it was entirely finished. Voted in the rage of parties, it was not a constitution, it was a vengeance of the people against the monarchy, the throne only existing as the substitute of a unique power which was every where instituted, but which no one yet dared to name. The people, parties, trembled lest on removing the throne they should behold an abyss in which the nation would be engulphed: it was thus tacitly agreed to respect its forms, though they daily despoiled and insulted the unfortunate monarch whom they kept chained to it.

Things were at that point where they have no possible termination except in a catastrophe. The army, without discipline, added but another element to the popular ferment: forsaken by its officers, who emigrated in masses, the subalterns seized upon democracy and propagated it in their ranks. Affiliated in every garrison with the Jacobin Club, they received from it their orders, and made of their troops soldiers of anarchy, accomplices of faction. The people to whom they had cast as a prey the feudal rights of the nobility and the tithes of the clergy, feared to have wrested from it what it held with disquietude, and saw in every direction plots which it anticipated by crimes. The sudden burst of liberty, for which it was not prepared, agitated without strengthening it: it evinced all the vices of enfranchised men without having got the virtues of the free man. The whole of France was but one vast sedition: anarchy swayed the state, and in order that it might be, as it were, self-governed, it had created its government in as many clubs as there were large municipalities in the kingdom. The dominant club was that of the Jacobins: this club was the centralisation of anarchy. So soon as a powerful and high passioned will moves a nation, their common impulse brings men together; individuality ceases, and the legal or illegal association organises the public prejudice. Popular societies thus have birth. At the first menaces of the court against the States General, certain Breton deputies had a meeting at Versailles, and formed a society to detect the plots of the court and assure the triumphs of liberty: its founders were Si?y?s, Chapelier, Barnave, and Lameth. After the 5th and 6th of October, the Breton Club, transported to Paris in the train of the National Assembly, had there assumed the more forcible name of "Society of the Friends of the Constitution." It held its sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins Saint Honor?, not far from the Man?ge, where the National Assembly sat. The deputies, who had founded it at the beginning for themselves, now opened their doors to journalists, revolutionary writers, and finally to all citizens. The presentation by two of its members, and an open scrutiny as to the moral character of the person proposed, were the sole conditions of admission: the public was admitted to the sittings by inspectors, who examined the admission card. A set of rules, an office, a president, a corresponding committee, secretaries, an order of the day, a tribune, and orators, gave to these meetings all the forms of deliberative assemblies: they were assemblies of the people only without elections and responsibility; feeling alone gave them authority: instead of framing laws they formed opinion.

Mirabeau himself, accused by Lameth on the subject of the law of emigration, came a few days before his death to listen face to face to the invectives of his denouncer, and had not disdained to justify himself. The clubs were the exterior strength, where the factious of the assembly gave the support of their names in order to intimidate the national representation. The national representation had only the laws; the club had the people, sedition, and even the army.

This expression of public opinion, thus organised into a permanent association at every point in the empire, gave an electric shock which nothing could resist. A motion made in Paris was echoed from club to club to the extremest provinces. The same spark lighted at once the same passion in millions of souls. All the societies corresponded with one another and with the mother society. The impulse was communicated and the response was felt every day. It was the government of factions enfolding in their nets the government of the law; but the law was mute and invisible, whilst faction was erect and eloquent. Let us imagine one of these sittings, at which the citizens, already agitated by the stormy air of the period, took their places at the close of day in one of those naves recently devoted to another worship. Some candles, brought by the affiliated, scarcely lighted up the gloomy place; naked walls, wooden benches, a tribune instead of an altar. Around this tribune some favoured orators pressed in order to speak. A crowd of citizens of all classes, of all costumes, rich, poor, soldiers, workpeople; women, to create excitement, enthusiasm, tenderness, tears whenever they enter; children, whom they raise in their arms as if to make them inspire, with their earliest breath, the feelings of an irritated people: a gloomy silence interrupted by shouts, applause, or hisses, just as the speaker is loved or hated: then inflammatory discourses shaking to the very centre by phrases of magical effect, the passions of this mob new to all the effects of eloquence. The enthusiasm real in some, feigned in others; stirring propositions, patriotic gifts, civic crowns, busts of leading republicans paraded round, symbols of superstition, and aristocracy burnt, songs loudly vociferated by demagogues in chorus at the opening of each sitting. What people, even in a time of tranquillity, could have resisted the pulsations of this fever, whose throbbings were daily renewed from the end of 1790 in every city in the kingdom? It was the rule of fanaticism preceding the reign of terror.

Thus was the Jacobin Club organised.

The club of the Cordeliers, which is sometimes confounded with that of the Jacobins, even surpassed it in turbulence and demagogism. Marat and Danton ruled there.

What remained to the king thus pressed between an assembly, which had usurped all the executive functions, and those factious clubs, which usurped to themselves all the rights of representation? Placed without adequate strength between two rival powers, he was only there to receive the blows of each in the struggle, and to be cast as a daily sacrifice to popularity by the National Assembly; one power alone still maintained the shadow of the throne and exterior order, the national guard of Paris. But the national guard, which as a neutral force, whose only law was in public opinion, and was wavering itself between factions and the monarchy, might very well maintain safety in a public place, was unable to serve as a strong and independent support to political power. It was itself of the people; every serious intervention against the will of the people, appeared to it as sacrilege. It was a body of municipal police; it could never again be the army of the throne or the constitution; it was born of itself on the day after the 14th of July on the steps of the H?tel de Ville, and it received no orders but from the municipality. The municipality had assigned M. de La Fayette as its head--nor could it have chosen better: an honest people, directed by its instinct, could not have selected a man who would represent it more faithfully.

Paled their ineffectual fires

The federation of 1790 was the apogee of M. de La Fayette: on that day he surpassed both king and assembly. The nation armed and reflective was there in person, and he commanded it; he could have done every thing and attempted nothing: the misfortune of that man was in his situation. A man of transition, his life passed between two ideas; if he had had but one he could have been master of the destinies of his country. The monarchy or the republic were alike in his hand; he had but to open it wide, he only half opened it, and it was only a semi-liberty that issued from it. In inspiring his country with a desire for a republic, he defended a constitution and a throne. His principles and his conduct were in opposition; he was honest, and yet seemed to betray; whilst he struggled with regret from duty to the monarchy, his heart was in the republic. Protector of the throne, he was at the same time its bugbear. One life can only be devoted to one cause. Monarchy and republicanism had the same esteem, the same wrongs in his mind, and he served for and against both. He died without having seen either of them triumphant, but he died virtuous and popular. He had, beside his private virtues, a public virtue, which will ever be a pardon to his faults, and immortality to his name; he had before all, more than all, and after all, the feeling, constancy, and moderation of the Revolution.

Such was the man and such the army on which reposed the executive power, the safety of Paris, the constitutional throne, and the life of the king.

The court was venal, selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's person the sources of its vanities,--profitable exactions. The clergy, with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state, its life was apart from the life of the nation, its ecclesiastical establishment seemed to be wholly independent of the monarchical establishment. It had only rallied round the monarchy, on the day it had beheld its own fortune compromised; and then it had appealed to the faith of the people, in order to preserve its wealth; but the people now only saw in the monks mendicants, and in the bishops extortioners. The nobility, effeminate by lengthened peace, emigrated in masses, abandoning their king to his besetting perils, and fully trusting in the prompt and decisive intervention of foreign powers. The third estate, jealous and envious, fiercely demanded their place and their rights amongst the privileged castes; its justice appeared hatred. The Assembly comprised in its bosom all these weaknesses, all this egotism, all these vices. Mirabeau was venal, Barnave jealous, Robespierre fanatic, the Jacobin Club blood-thirsty, the National Guard selfish, La Fayette a waverer, the government a nullity. No one desired the Revolution but for his own purpose, and according to his own scheme; and it must have been wrecked on these shoals a hundred times, if there were not in human crises something even stronger than the men who appear to guide them--the will of the event itself.

The Revolution in all its comprehensive bearings was not understood at that period by any one except, perchance, Robespierre and the thorough going democrats. The King viewed it only as a vast reform, the Duc d'Orleans as a great faction, Mirabeau but in its political point of view, La Fayette only in its constitutional aspect, the Jacobins as a vengeance, the mob as the abasing of the higher orders, the nation as a display of patriotism. None ventured as yet to contemplate its ultimate consummation.

All was thus blind, except the Revolution itself. The virtue of the Revolution was in the idea which forced these men on to accomplish it, and not in those who actually accomplished it; all its instruments were vitiated, corrupt, or personal; but the idea was pure, incorruptible, divine. The vices, passions, selfishness of men were inevitably doomed to produce in the coming crises those shocks, those violences, those perversities, and those crimes which are to human passions what consequences are to principles.

If each of the parties or men, mixed up from the first day with these great events had taken their virtue, instead of their impulses as the rule of their actions, all these disasters which eventually crushed them, would have been saved to them and to their country. If the king had been firm and sagacious, if the clergy had been free from a longing for things temporal, and if the aristocracy had been good; if the people had been moderate, if Mirabeau had been honest, if La Fayette had been decided, if Robespierre had been humane, the Revolution would have progressed, majestic and calm as a heavenly thought, through France, and thence through Europe; it would have been installed like a philosophy in facts, in laws, and in creeds. But it was otherwise decreed. The holiest most just and virtuous thought, when it passes through the medium of imperfect humanity, comes out in rags and in blood. Those very persons who conceived it, no longer recognise, disavow it. Yet it is not permitted, even to crime, to degrade the truth, that survives all, even its victims. The blood which sullies men does not stain its idea; and despite the selfishness which debases it, the infamies which trammel it, the crimes which pollute it, the blood-stained Revolution purifies itself, feels its own worth, triumphs, and will triumph.

The National Assembly, wearied with two years of existence, relaxed in its legislative movement: from the moment when it had nothing more to destroy, it really was at a loss what to do. The Jacobins took umbrage at it, its popularity was disappearing, the press inveighed against it, the clubs insulted it; the worn-out tool by which the people had acquired conquest, it felt the people were about to snap it asunder if it did not dissolve of its own accord. Its sittings were inanimate, and it was completing the constitution as a task inflicted on it, but at which it was discouraged before completion. It had no belief in the duration of that which it proclaimed imperishable. The lofty voices which had shaken France so long were now no more, or were silent from indifference. Maury, Cazal?s, Clermont Tonnerre seemed careless of continuing a conflict in which honour was saved, and in which victory was henceforth impossible. From time to time, indeed, some burst of passion between parties interrupted the usual monotony of these theoretical discussions. Such was the struggle of the 10th of June between Cazal?s and Robespierre with respect to the disbanding the officers of the army. "What is it," exclaimed Robespierre, "that the committees propose to us? to trust to the oaths, to the honour of officers, to defend a constitution which they detest! of what honour do they talk to us? What is that honour more than virtue and love of country? I take credit to myself for not believing in such honour."

Cazal?s himself arose indignantly. "I could not listen tamely to such calumniating language," he exclaimed. At these words violent murmurs arose on the left, and cries burst forth from the ranks of the revolution: "What," said the royalist orator, "is it not enough to have restrained my indignation on hearing two thousand citizens thus accused, who in all moments of peril have presented an example of most heroic patience! I have listened to the previous speaker, because I am, and I assert it, a partisan of the most unlimited declaration of opinions; but it is beyond human endurance for me to conceal the contempt I feel for such diatribes. If you adopt the disbanding proposed you will no longer have an army, our frontiers will be delivered up to foreign invasion, and the interior to excesses and the pillage of an infuriated soldiery." These energetic words were the funeral oration of the old army, the project of the committee was adopted.

The discussion on the abolition of the punishment of death presented to Adrien Duport an opportunity to pronounce in favour of the abolition one of those orations which survive time, and which protest, in the name of reason and philosophy, against the blindness and atrocity of criminal legislation. He demonstrated with the most profound logic that society, by reserving to itself the right of homicide, justifies it to a certain extent in the murderer, and that the means most efficacious for preventing murder and making it infamous was to evince its own horror of the crime. Robespierre, who subsequently was fated to allow of unlimited immolation, demanded that society should be disarmed of the power of putting to death. If the prejudices of jurists had not prevailed over the wholesome doctrines of moral philosophy, who can say how much blood might not have been spared in France.

"Citizens," said he, "watch closely around this palace: the inviolable asylum of all plots against the nation, there a perverse queen lords it over an imbecile king and rears the cubs of tyranny. Lawless priests there consecrate the arms of insurrection against the people. They prepare the Saint Bartholomew of patriots. The genius of Austria is there, hidden in the committees over which Antoinette presides; they correspond with foreigners, and by concealed means forward to them the gold and arms of France, so that the tyrants who are assembling in arms on your frontier may find you famished and disarmed. The emigrants--d'Artois and Cond?--there receive instructions of the coming vengeance of despotism. A guard of Swiss stipendiaries is not enough for the liberticide schemes of the Capets. Every night the good citizens who watch around this den see the ancient nobility entering stealthily and concealing arms beneath their clothes. Can knights of the poignard be any thing but the enrolled assassins of the people? What is La Fayette doing,--is he a dupe or an accomplice? Why does he leave free the avenues of the palace, which is only opened for vengeance or flight? Why do we leave the Revolution incomplete, and also leave in the hands of our crowned enemy, still in the midst of us, the time to overcome and destroy it? Do you not see that specie is disappearing and assignats are discredited? What means the assemblings on your frontier of emigrants and armed bodies, who are advancing to enclose you in a circle of iron? What are your ministers doing? Why is not the property of emigrants confiscated, their houses burnt, their heads set at a price? In whose hands are arms? In the hands of traitors. Who command your troops? traitors! Who hold the keys of your strong places? traitors, traitors, traitors, everywhere traitors; and in this palace of treason, the king of traitors! the inviolable traitor, the king! They tell you that he loves the constitution,--humbug! he comes to the Assembly,--humbug; the better he conceals his flight. Watch! watch! a great blow is preparing, is ready to burst; if you do not prevent it by a counter-blow more sudden, more terrible, the people and liberty are annihilated."

The atrocious threats which assailed them whenever they showed themselves at the windows of their residence, the insults of the press, the vociferations of the Jacobins, the riots and murders which multiplied in the capital and the provinces, the violent obstacles which had been opposed to their departure from St. Cloud, and then the recollections of the daggers which had even pierced the queen's bed on the evening of the 5th to the 6th of October, made their life one continued scene of alarms. They began to comprehend that the insatiate Revolution was irritated even by the concessions they had made; that the blind fury of factions which had not paused before royalty surrounded by its guards, would not hesitate before the illusory inviolability decreed by a constitution; and that their lives, those of their children, and those of the royal family which remained, had no longer any assurance of safety but in flight.

Flight was therefore resolved upon, and was frequently discussed before the time when the king decided upon it. Mirabeau himself, bought by the court, had proposed it in his mysterious interviews with the queen. One of his plans presented to the king was, to escape from Paris, take refuge in the midst of a camp, or in a frontier town, and there treat with the baffled Assembly. Mirabeau remaining in Paris, and again possessing himself of the public mind, would lead matters, as he declared, to accommodation, and a voluntary restoration of the royal authority. Mirabeau had carried these hopes away with him into the tomb. The king himself, in his secret correspondence, testified his repugnance to intrusting his fate into the hands of the ringleader of the factions. Another cause of uneasiness troubled the king's mind, and gave the queen great anxiety; they were not ignorant that it was a question without, either at Coblentz or in the councils of Leopold and the King of Prussia, to declare the throne of France virtually vacant by default of the king's liberty, and to nominate as regent one of the emigrant princes, in order that he might call around him with a show of legality all his loyal subjects, and give to foreign troops an incontestible right of intervention. A throne even in fragments will not admit of participation.

An uneasy jealousy still prevailed in the midst of so many other alarms even in this palace, where sedition had already effected so many breaches. "M. le Comte d'Artois will then become a hero," said the queen ironically, who at one time was excessively fond of this young prince, but now hated him. The king, on his part, feared that moral forfeiture with which he was menaced, under pretence of delivering the monarchy. He knew not which to fear the most, his friends or his enemies. Flight only, to the centre of a faithful army, could remove him from both these perils; but flight was also a peril. If he succeeded, civil war might spring up, and the king had a horror of blood spilled in his defence; if it did not succeed, it would be imputed to him as a crime, and then who could say where the national fury would stop? Forfeiture, captivity, death, might be the consequence of the slightest accident, or least indiscretion. He was about to suspend by a slender thread his throne, his liberty, his life, and the lives a thousand times more dear to him--those of his wife, his two children, and his sister.

His tormenting reflections were long and terrible, lasting for eight months, during which time he had no confidants but the queen, Madame Elizabeth, a few faithful servants within the palace, and the Marquis de Bouill? without.

The Marquis de Bouill?, cousin of M. de La Fayette, was of a character totally different to that of the hero of Paris. Severe and stern soldier, attached to the monarchy by principle, to the king by an almost religious devotion, his respect for his sovereign's orders had alone prevented him from emigrating; he was one of the few general officers popular amongst the soldiers who had remained faithful to their duty amidst the storms and tempests of the last two years, and who, without openly declaring for or against these innovations, had yet striven to preserve that force which outlives, and not unfrequently supplies, the deficiency of all others,--the force of discipline. He had served with great distinction in America, in the colonies in India, and the authority of his character and name had not as yet lost their influence over the soldiery; the heroic repression of the famous outbreak amongst the troops at Nancy in the preceding August had greatly contributed to strengthen this authority; and he alone of all the French generals had re-obtained the supreme command, and had crushed insubordination. The Assembly, alarmed in the midst of its triumphs by the seditions amongst the troops, had passed a vote of thanks to him as the saviour of his country. La Fayette, who commanded the citizens, feared only this rival who commanded regiments, he therefore watched and flattered M. de Bouill?. He constantly proposed to him a coalition of their forces, of which they would be the commanders-in-chief, and by thus acting in concert secure at once the revolution and the monarchy. M. de Bouill?, who doubted the loyalty of La Fayette, replied with a cold and sarcastic civility, that but ill concealed his suspicions. These two characters were incompatible,--the one was the representative of modern patriotism, the other of ancient honour: they could not harmonise.

The Marquis de Bouill? commanded the troops of Loraine, Alsace, Franche-Comt?, and Champagne, and his government extended from Switzerland to the Sambre. He had no less than ninety battalions of foot, and a hundred and four squadrons of cavalry under his orders. Out of this number the general could only rely upon twenty battalions of German troops and a few cavalry regiments; the remainder were in favour of the Revolution: and the influence of the clubs had spread amongst them the spirit of insubordination and hatred for the king; the regiments obeyed the municipalities rather than their generals.

Since the month of February, 1791, the king, who had the most entire confidence in M. de Bouill?, had written to this general that he wished him to make overtures to Mirabeau, and through the intervention of the Count de Lamarck, a foreign nobleman, the intimate and confidential friend of Mirabeau. "Although these persons are not over estimable," said the king in his letter, "and although I have paid Mirabeau very dearly, I yet think he has it in his power to serve me. Hear all he has to say, without putting yourself too much in his hands." The Count de Lamarck arrived soon after at Metz. He mentioned to M. de Bouill? the object of his mission, confessed to him that the king had recently given Mirabeau 600,000f. , and that he also allowed him 50,000f. a month. He then revealed to him the plan of his counter-revolutionary conspiracy, the first act of which was to be an address to Paris and the Departments demanding the liberty of the king. Every thing in this scheme depended upon the rhetoric of Mirabeau. Carried away by his own eloquence, the salaried orator was ignorant that words, though all-powerful to excite, are yet impotent to appease; they urge nations forward, but nothing but the bayonet can arrest them. M. de Bouill?, a veteran soldier, smiled at these chimerical projects of the citizen orator; but he did not, however, discourage him in his plans, and promised him his assistance: he wrote to the king to repay largely the desertion of Mirabeau; "A clever scoundrel," said he, "who perhaps has it in his power to repair through cupidity the mischief he has done through revenge;" and to mistrust La Fayette, "A chimerical enthusiast, intoxicated with popularity, who might become the chief of a party, but never the support of a monarchy."

The king agreed to this, and also to take with him the Marquis d'Agoult; to the rest he positively refused to accede. A few days prior to his departure he sent a million in assignats to M. de Bouill?, to furnish the rations and forage, as well as to pay the faithful troops who were destined to favour his flight. These arrangements made, the Marquis de Bouill? despatched a trusty officer of his staff, M. de Guoguelas, with instructions to make a minute and accurate survey of the road and country between Ch?lons and Montm?dy, and to deliver an exact report to the king. This officer saw the king, and brought back his orders to M. de Bouill?.

The 27th of May the king wrote that he should set out the 19th of the next month between twelve and one at night; that he should leave Paris in a hired carriage, and at Bondy, the first stage out of Paris, he should take his berlin; that one of his body guard, who was to serve as courier, would await him at Bondy; that in case the king did not arrive before two, it was because he had been arrested on his way; the courier would then proceed alone to Pont Sommeville to inform M. de Bouill? the scheme had failed, and to warn the general, and those of his officers engaged in the plot, to provide for their own safety.

After the receipt of these last orders, M. de Bouill? despatched the Duke de Choiseul to Paris, with orders to await the king's instructions, and to precede his departure by twelve hours. M. de Choiseul was to desire his servants to be at Varennes on the 18th with his own horses, which would draw the king's carriage; the spot where the horses were placed was to be clearly explained to the king, in order that they might be changed without any loss of time. On his return M. de Choiseul had instructions to take the command of the hussars posted at Pont Sommeville, to await the king, to escort him with his hussars as far as Sainte-Menehould, and to station his troopers there, with positive orders to allow no one to pass on the road from Paris to Verdun, and from Paris to Varennes, for four and twenty hours after the king's arrival. M. de Choiseul received from M. de Bouill? orders signed by the king himself, enjoining him, as well as all the other commanding officers of the detachments, to employ force, should it be necessary, to rescue his majesty if the populace attempted to lay violent hands on him. In case the carriage was stopped at Lyons, M. de Choiseul was to give instant information to the general to assemble all the detachments, and march to the king's rescue. He received six hundred louis in gold, to distribute amongst the soldiers, and thus insure their fidelity, when the king arrived and made himself known to them.

M. de Guoguelas left at the same for Paris, to reconnoitre the roads a second time, passing by Stenay, Dun, Varennes, and Sainte Menehould, and to explain clearly to the king the topography of the country; he was also to bring back the latest orders for M. de Bouill?, and to return to Montm?dy by another route. The Marquis de Bouill? left Metz himself, under pretence of visiting the fortresses under his command, and drew near Montm?dy. The 15th he was at Longwy, where he received a message from the king, informing him that they had put off their journey for four and twenty hours, in consequence of the necessity of concealing the preparations for their departure from a femme de chambre of the queen, a fanatical democrat, who was fully capable of betraying them, and whose duties only terminated on the 19th. His majesty added that the Marquis d'Agoult would not accompany him, because Madame de Tourzel, the governess of the royal children, had claimed the privileges of her post, and wished to accompany them.

This delay rendered necessary counter-orders of the most fatal nature; all the arrangements as to time and place were thus thrown out. The detachments were forced to remain at places they were only to have marched through, and the relays stationed on the road might be withdrawn. However, the Marquis de Bouill? remedied all these evils as far as was in his power; sent modified orders to the commanders of the detachments, and advanced in person the 20th to Stenay, which was garrisoned by the Royal Allemand regiment, on whose fidelity he could rely. The 21st he assembled the generals under his orders, informed them that the king would pass in the course of the night by Stenay, and would be at Montm?dy the next evening; he ordered General Klinglin to prepare under the guns of the fortress a camp of twelve battalions and twenty-four squadrons; the king was to reside in a chateau behind the camp: this chateau would thus serve as head quarters, and the king's position would be at once more secure and more dignified surrounded by his army. The generals did not hesitate for an instant. M. de Bouill? left General de Hoffelizze at Stenay with the Royal Allemand regiment, with orders to saddle the horses at night fall, to mount at daybreak and to send at ten o'clock at night a detachment of fifty troopers between Stenay and Dun, to await the king and escort him to Stenay.

At night M. de Choiseul quitted Stenay with several officers on horseback, and advanced to the very gate of Dun, but he would not enter lest his presence might in any way work on the people. There he awaited, in silence and obscurity, the courier who was to precede the carriages by an hour. The destiny of the monarchy, the throne of a dynasty, the lives of the royal family, king, queen, princess, children, all weighed down his spirit and lay heavily on his heart. The night seemed interminable, yet it passed without the sound of horses' feet announcing to the group who so anxiously awaited the intelligence, that the king of France was saved or lost.

The Count de Fersen was the principal agent and confidant of this hazardous enterprise. Young, handsome, and accomplished, he had been admitted during the happy years of Marie Antoinette's life to the parties and f?tes of Trianon. It was said, that a chivalrous admiration, to which respect alone prevented his giving the name of love, had bound him to the queen. And now this admiration had been changed into the most passionate devotion to her in misfortune. The queen perceived this, and when she reflected to whom she could confide the safety of the king and her children, she thought of M. de Fersen--he instantly quitted Stockholm, saw the king and queen, and undertook to prepare for the flight the carriages, which were to meet them at Bondy. His position as a foreigner favoured his plans, and he combined them with a skill only equalled by his fidelity. Three soldiers of the body guard, MM. de Valorg, de Moustier, et de Maldan, were taken into his confidence, and the parts they were to play were fully explained to them; they were to disguise themselves as servants, mount behind the carriages, and protect the royal family at all risks. The names of three obscure gentlemen effaced that day the names of the courtiers. Should they be discovered, their fate was sealed; but in the hope of aiding the escape of their king, they courageously offered themselves as a sacrifice to the popular fury.

A little further on Camille Desmoulins relates the restless fears of the people on the fatal night. "The night," says he "on which the family of the Capets escaped, Busebi, a perruke-maker in the Rue de Bourbon, called on Hucher, a baker and Sapeur in the Bataillon of the Th?atins, to communicate his fears on what he had just learnt relative to the king's projected flight. They instantly aroused their neighbours, to the number of thirty, and went to La Fayette to inform him of the fact, and to summon him to take instant measures to prevent it. M. de La Fayette laughed, and advised them to go home. In order to avoid being stopped by the patrols, they asked for the pass-word, which he gave them. Armed with this they hastened to the Tuileries, where nothing was visible except several hackney coachman drinking round one of the small shops near the wicket gate of the Carrousel. They inspected all the courts until they came to the door of the Man?ge without perceiving anything suspicious, but at their return they were surprised to find that every hackney coach had disappeared, which made them conjecture that these coaches had been used by some of the attendants of this unworthy family."

It is too evident from the state of agitation of the public mind and the severity of the king's captivity, how difficult it must have been. However, either owing to the connivance of some of the national guards who had on that day demanded the custody of the interior posts, and who winking at this infraction of the orders,--to the skilful management of the Count de Fersen,--or that providence afforded a last ray of hope and safety to those whom she was so soon about to overwhelm with misfortunes, all the watchfulness of the guardians was in vain, and the Revolution suffered its prey for some time to escape.

Amidst the confusion of so dangerous and complicated a flight, the queen and her guide crossed the Pont Royal and entered the Rue de Bac, but instantly perceiving their error, with hasty and faltering steps they retraced their road. The king and his son, obliged to traverse the darkest and least frequented streets to arrive at the rendezvous, were delayed half an hour, which seemed to his wife and sister an age. At last they arrived, sprang into the coach, the Count de Fersen seized the reins and drove the royal family to Bondy, the first stage between Paris and Ch?lons: there they found, ready harnessed for the journey, a berlin and a small travelling carriage; the queen's women and one of the disguised body-guard got into the smaller carriage, whilst the king, the queen, and the Dauphin, Madame Royale, Madame Elizabeth, and the Marquise de Tourville took their places in the berlin; one of the body-guard sat on the box, and the other behind, the Count de Fersen kissed the hands of the king and queen, and returned to Paris, from whence he went, the same night to Brussels by another road, in order to rejoin the royal family at a later period. At the same hour Monsieur the king's brother, Count de Provence, left the Luxembourg palace, and arrived safely at Brussels.

This foreign name, the title of German Baroness, the proverbial wealth of the bankers of Frankfort, to whom the people were accustomed to attribute everything that was singular and bizarre, had been most admirably combined by the Count de Fersen, to account for anything strange or remarkable in the appearance of the royal equipages; nothing, however, excited attention, and they arrived without interruption at Montmirail, a little town between Meaux and Ch?lons: there some necessary repairs to the berlin detained them an hour; this delay, during which the king's flight might be discovered, and couriers despatched to give information to all the country, threw them into the greatest alarm.

However the carriage was soon repaired, and they once more started on their journey, ignorant that this hour's delay would ultimately cost the lives of four out of five persons who composed the royal family.

They were full of security and confidence; the success with which they had escaped from the palace, the manner in which they had left Paris, the punctuality with which the relays were furnished, the loneliness of the roads, the absence of anything like suspicion or vigilance in the towns they had passed through, the dangers they had left behind them, the security they were so fast approaching, each turn of the wheel bringing them nearer M. de Bouill? and his faithful troops; the beauty of the scene and the time, doubly beautiful to their eyes, that for two years had looked on nought save the seditious mob that daily filled the courts of the Tuileries, or the glittering bayonets of the armed populace beneath their windows,--all this seemed to them as if Providence had at last taken pity on them, that the fervent and touching prayers of the babes that slept in their arms, and of the angelic Madame Elizabeth had at last vanquished the fate that had so long pursued them.

It was under the influence of these happy feelings that they entered Ch?lons, the only large town through which they had to pass, at half-past three in the afternoon. A few idlers gathered round the carriage whilst the horses were being changed; the king somewhat imprudently put his head out of the window, and was recognised by the post-master; but this worthy man felt that his sovereign's life was in his hands, and without manifesting the least surprise, he helped to put to the horses, and ordered the postilions to drive on; he alone of this people was free from the blood of his king. The carriage passed the gates of Ch?lons, the king, the queen, and madame Elizabeth exclaimed, with one voice, "We are saved." Ch?lons once passed, the king's security no longer depended on chance, but on prudence and force. The first relay was at Pont Sommeville. It will be remembered, that in obedience to the orders of M. de Bouill?, M. de Choiseul and M. de Guoguelas, at the head of a detachment of fifty hussars, were to meet the king and follow in his rear, and besides, as soon as the king's carriage appeared, to send off an hussar to warn the troops at Sainte Menehould and at Clermont of the vicinity of the royal family. The king felt thus certain of meeting faithful and armed friends; but he found no one, M. de Choiseul, M. de Guoguelas, and the fifty hussars had left half an hour before. The populace seemed disturbed and restless; they looked suspiciously at the travellers, and whispered from time to time in a low voice with each other. However, no one ventured to oppose their departure, and the king arrived at half past seven at Sainte Menehould; at this season of the year, it was still broad daylight; and alarmed at having passed two of the relays without meeting the friends he expected, the king by a natural impulse put his head out of the window, in order to seek amidst the crowd for some friend, some officer posted there to explain to him the reason of the absence of the detachments: that action caused his ruin. The son of the post-master, Drouet, recognised the king, whom he had never seen, by his likeness to the effigy on the coins in circulation.

Nevertheless as the horses were harnessed, and the town occupied by a troop of dragoons, who could force a passage, the young man did not venture to attempt to detain the carriages at this spot.

The officer commanding the detachment of dragoons in the town, was also, under pretence of walking on the Grand Place, on the watch for the royal carriages, which he recognised instantly, by the description of them with which he was furnished. He ordered his soldiers to mount and follow the king; but the national guards of Sainte Menehould, amongst whom the rumour of the likeness between the travellers and the royal family had been rapidly circulated, surrounded the barracks, closed the stables, and opposed by force the departure of the soldiers. During this rapid and instinctive movement of the people, the post-master's son saddled his best horse, and galloped as fast as possible to Varennes, in order to arrive before the carriages, inform the municipal authorities of his suspicions, and arouse the patroles to arrest the monarch. Whilst this man, who bore the king's fate, galloped on the road to Varennes, the king himself, unconscious of danger, pursued his journey towards the same town. Drouet was certain to arrive before the king; for the road from Sainte Menehould to Varennes forms a considerable angle, and passes through Clermont, where a relay of horses was stationed; whilst the direct road, accessible only to horsemen, avoids Clermont, runs in a straight line to Varennes, and thus lessens the distance between this town and Menehould by four leagues. Drouet had thus two hours before him, and danger far outstripped safety. Yet by a strange coincidence death followed Drouet also, and threatened without his being aware of it, the life of him who in his turn threatened the life of his sovereign.

A quarter-master of the dragoons shut up in the barracks at Sainte Menehould, had alone found means to mount his horse, and escape the vigilance of the people. He had learnt from his commanding officer of Drouet's precipitate departure, and, suspecting the cause, he followed him on the road to Varennes, resolved to overtake and kill him; he kept within sight of him, but always at a distance, in order that he might not arouse his suspicions, and with the intention of overtaking and killing him at a favourable opportunity, and at a retired spot. But Drouet, who had repeatedly looked round to ascertain whether he were pursued, had conjectured his intentions; and, being a native of the country, and knowing every path, he struck into some bye roads, and at last under cover of a wood he escaped from the dragoon and pursued his way to Varennes.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet