"No country ever influenced Europe as France did between 1789 and 1815. Impelled by two dreams – the dream of a war against kings on behalf of the people, and the dream of the foundation of an empire of the Cæsarian or Carolingian type – the French armies overran the Continent, and trampled under foot, as they went, much rank vegetation which has never arisen again." So an authoritative historian has written, and his words are entirely true. Indeed, they are not sufficiently strong. There is not a single civilized man on the earth to-day whose life, thought, and destinies have not been profoundly influenced by what happened in or near France during those five and twenty years of action, wrath, and fire.
It is a matter of extreme difficulty, in a sketch of the entire story of France, to describe with any sufficient detail the events of those tumultuous years which covered the "French Revolution." An adequate record would consider the happenings, not by years, but by months and even by days: it would describe and analyze numberless personalities; it would try to disentangle extraordinarily complex forces; it would deal alike with Paris, the French provinces, and the foreign foes of the nation. Even then it would seem very inadequate. Under the circumstances it is best to confine ourselves to a very bare and jejune enumeration of the most important facts, in order to tie the story of the Old Monarchy to that of France in the nineteenth century. He who desires a vivid and truly informing narrative will, of course, turn to the many excellent special studies.
In 1789 practically the entire French nation, barring a few selfish pensioners, mole-eyed noblemen, and worldly ecclesiastics, was convinced that the state of the country was bad, and it was ready for radical measures and remedies. The earlier steps of reform were taken with the high consent of nearly all the intelligent men of the nation. As, however, difficulties thickened, as it became increasingly hard to translate the political theories of Rousseau into efficient practice, as the immediate effect of the first reforms was to produce confusion, poverty, and misery almost everywhere, the situation soon changed for the worse. Faction rose against faction, with a radical element always calling for more drastic remedies for the public ills. Foreign war and the threat of Germanic invasion were soon added to domestic discords, although the mere threat of foreign danger was to lead to an intensified patriotism. This led to still more pronounced radicalism, until the Government passed to an increasingly narrow circle of fanatics, who were ready to take the life of any man that stood in the way of that dictatorship which was "to secure the people's happiness." Then, at last, the cord snapped. The fanatics were overthrown by a return of courage to the saner part of the French nation. The foreign foe was repelled, and in 1795 France found herself, bruised, rent, bleeding, but with her mediæval king and her mediæval institutions gone, and a whole new set of institutions political and social. These did not, indeed, give her the "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" her patriots had demanded until after nigh a century more of weary struggles and delays, but these new institutions were after all infinitely better calculated to promote prosperity and happiness than was the rotten Old Régime.
This in a few words was what was to happen in France. The whole tumultuous process involved was the famous Revolution.
The first part of 1789 was spent in France in the novel excitement of what Americans would call a great political campaign. "Nominations" and "elections," as we understand them, were almost unknown in the country which claimed the primacy of Europe. There were very few precedents unless one delved into the musty records of 1614. The government having ordered the elections for the States General grievously failed to arrange very many details needful for the smooth working of the electoral process. The voting had to be by an indirect method, the ordinary voters choosing a smaller number of "electors" and these in turn naming the actual deputies to go to Versailles, a complicated system that could have been avoided. The nobles, clergy, and Third Estate in each district met separately, chose their own deputies and also prepared their own special cahiers (bill of complaints to lay before the King). It is a testimony to the solid, practical qualities of the average Frenchman that on the whole this unfamiliar process passed off quietly and successfully. When the lists were made up there were in all 1214 members: noblesse, 285; clergy, 308; Third Estate, 621. The nobles contained many ultra-conservatives, but also a fair sprinkling of open-minded, liberal men like Lafayette. The clergy were sharply divided between the great reactionary ecclesiastics, and a very strong element (205) of country curés, men in close touch with their parishes and very unwilling to take the law from their wealthy superiors. In the Third Estate two thirds were various classes of lawyers – of the non-privileged classes the men who had done the most reading and had enjoyed the most leisure. There were only a very few downright peasants, who hardly as yet understood what all the talking and voting was about. The States General, in short, was a most solid and eminently respectable body.
Louis XVI and Necker allowed this large company to assemble at Versailles on May 5, 1789, for a magnificent procession and opening session in a great hall of the palace. To the utter astonishment of many, it soon became clear that neither King nor minister had a definite programme for the States General, either as to how it was to organize or what next it was to do. The speeches of Louis XVI and of Necker dwelt on benevolent get eralities or treated the deficit as being the one thing important. The States General (it seemed) had been convened primarily to help the King escape bankruptcy by some changes in the taxation system – hardly for anything more. There was profound disappointment.
Greater disappointment and confusion followed. Was the voting to be "by order" or "by head." If "by order," then each of the three estates must meet separately in its own chamber, and legislation to be valid must be agreed to by all three, and the majority of any one chamber, say of the nobles, could block a measure on which the great bulk of the other two orders had set its heart. If "by head," then all the three classes would sit together. The Third Estate would have a clear majority and could also count on help from the country curés. All the liberal element obviously wanted this second solution; but the King and Necker, curiously enough, had not arranged beyond cavil how this cardinal point was to be settled. The nobles at once began to organize by themselves. The clergy hesitated; the Third Estate, however, flatly refused to organize for business, declaring it was a "mere collection of citizens" until the others joined them in one body. Thus was created a most awkward deadlock.
Presently, however, some of the curés began to come over to the Third Estate, whose members at last plucked up courage to declare themselves to be the true "representatives of the nation," and to announce that they would go ahead without waiting for the others, being legally (so they called themselves) "The National Assembly of France."
The reactionary nobles were now in distress. They won the King's ear, and got him to agree to put pressure on the States General to organize in three bodies. On the 20th of June the Third Estate members discovered that their hall was closed; and they were told that there was to be a "royal session" very soon. In wrath they adjourned to a public "tennis court" on a back street in Versailles and there, led on by Bailly, their presi- dent, they took a solemn and fateful oath – "They would not disperse until they had given a constitution to France!" In this exalted mood they went to the royal session on the 23d, Louis XVI had mustered up courage to read the deputies a round lecture. They must meet, he said, as three separate houses, and not meddle with questions of the feudal dues and tithes. "If you abandon me," was his warning, "alone I will work out the welfare of my people!"
The nobles and the bulk of the clergy filed out of the hall after the King. The Third Estate remained stolidly sitting. A pompous court official appeared – Brézé, master of ceremonies. "Messieurs" – he spoke sharply – "you have heard the King's orders." Then up rose a deputy, who had already marked himself as a leader, Mirabeau. "Yes, Monsieur, we have heard what the King has said," rang his voice, in words that were to reëcho through applauding France, "but do you tell those who sent you that we are here by the will of the people, and that we will not leave our places except at the point of the bayonet!" Brézé shuffled out. The Third Estate held its ground. It would not disperse. It voted its members "inviolable" – not subject to arrest. It undertook to do business for the whole kingdom.
What was Louis XVI to do? Disperse the members by the soldiery? Perhaps the latter would have obeyed orders, but what of the uneasy, expectant nation? Where was the chance of new taxes to stave off bankruptcy? The King was too humane to enjoy drawing the sword against his own people. At the end of four days he capitulated. He asked the upper orders to join the Third Estate as one body. The clergy and most of the nobles promptly did so. The National Assembly was complete. The Third Estate had, of course, the majority. The whole body at once proceeded to organize into committees, to draft the legislation which was to redeem France.
The King had yielded, but not the Queen and the court. To Marie Antoinette and her giddy, money-grasping associates the whole action of the disobedient canaille had been outrageous. Quick action was needful or the realm was lost. Pressure was brought to bear on Louis. Marshal de Broglie began mustering troops, and strange regiments of reliable foreign mercenaries swung into Versailles. On July 11 a royal decree suddenly ordered Necker (still counted a champion of reform) to be banished instantly from France. As for the Assembly, that was now to be scattered, or subdued by the soldiery whom Mirabeau had defied. Then it was that, almost like a bolt from the clear sky, Paris sprang to arms. The Parisian mob supplied the fighting force which saved the Assembly, overawed the King, and continued the Revolution.
The great city had been in wild excitement for several days. All sorts of rumors were flying across the ten odd miles from Versailles. The gardens of the huge building known as the "Palais-Royal" had been the center for thousands of buzzing, gesticulating young men and of sorely anxious elders. On the 12th July came the tidings that Necker had been dismissed, the clear sign of reaction to autocracy. A young journalist, Camille Desmoulins, leaped upon a table, a pistol in each hand. "Citizens" (a new title in France!), so he called to the heaving throng, "there is no time to lose! The dismissal of Necker rings a St. Bartholomew bell for patriots! To arms!"
Paris shook herself. All the disorderly forces in a great, wicked, luxurious, turbulent city, but withal a city full of men devoted to the new ideas of liberty and human brotherhood, blazed up together. The feeble police were brushed aside. The "French Guards" (a kind of militia garrison) fraternized with the rioters. Arsenals were broken open and supplied weapons. The "electors" set up an extemporized city government, and began to enroll a "National Guard." After a day of utter confusion came a kind of orderly action. On the 14th of July the armed multitude cast itself on the King's castle, the old prison for prisoners "at the royal pleasure," the Bastile. Its dungeons were no longer full, but it was the emblem of autocratic power. De Launay, the governor, had cannon and strong walls and could have held out, but his small garrison was terrified at the thousands raging before their gates. He parleyed, surrendered, and then was shamefully massacred by the mob, while his captors were haling him to the City Hall.
Messengers in hot haste carried the news to Versailles. The Duke of Liancourt broke the tidings to Louis XVI. "This is a revolt!" cried the King. "No, Sire," answered the sagacious duke, "it is a revolution." The whole plot of the court party tumbled like a house of cards. To conquer raging Paris was a very different thing from dispersing the unarmed deputies. Necker was recalled. The position of the Assembly was left stronger than ever.
Despite provincial barriers and many other lines of division, France was in one particular an extremely centralized country. Paris dominated alike the political and the intellectual life of the remainder of the nation. Organized public effort of every kind seemed almost impossible away from the great city. The ignorance and political apathy of many rural districts was extreme. On July 4, 1789, an intelligent English traveler had found himself in the thriving town of Château-Thierry. He could not discover a single newspaper (then abundant in Paris) to inform himself about the great public events. "What stupidity, poverty, and lack of circulation!" he records. "This people hardly deserve to be free; and should there be the least attempt with vigor to keep them otherwise it can hardly fail of succeeding." But now the news of the storming of the King's grim castle spread out to all the little villages and farms. Instantly there was a muttering, then fierce action among the peasantry. No more hated "feudal dues," extortionate taxes, tyrannous corvées. If "rights of the people" meant anything, they surely meant that! Soon in many districts the evening skies were red with the burning châteaux of the helpless noblesse. Elsewhere with less violence the peasants simply burned the record books for the feudal dues, thinking so to abolish them.
There was disorder everywhere and the threat of things worse. The army was not to be trusted. After the 14th of July the King had capitulated. He had visited Paris and had been met at the gate by the Mayor just elected by the new city government. "Henry IV," spoke the upstart functionary to Majesty, "reconquered his capital. Now the capital has reconquered its King!" Everywhere shone the new standard and the cockade of the revolution – the famous tricouleur destined to fly on a hundred stricken fields in the battle for liberty. "National Guards," a kind of patriot militia, were springing into being everywhere to defend what men now gladly called "the Revolution."
The Assembly for some time strove to continue its elaborate debates on the "Rights of Man" and the fundamentals of enlightened government, but on the 4th of August a committee made a more practical report on the disordered state of France: rioting and arson everywhere, murders by mobs ("lynchings" Americans would call them) very frequent, tax-collecting suspended – anarchy threatening. Instantly a liberal-minded nobleman, the Vicomte de Noailles, declared it was needful to go to the root of the trouble. Let them abolish all feudal rights! Soon in a spirit of self-sacrificing enthusiasm nearly all the old mediæval abuses and exactions were declared ended. The clergy surrendered some of their most cherished fiscal privileges. There was a frenzy of generous self-abnegation. Louis XVI, absent and ignorant of the debate, was voted the "Restorer of French Liberty!" A vast mass of venerable iniquities seemed swept from the law books. There had never been a like night in French history.
Admirable it was to vote this; infinitely less easy to rebuild on the old shattered foundations and to translate fine words into performance. The difficulty was increased by the promise given that all the losers of the old feudal dues should receive compensation. Whence were to come the funds – with Necker already at his wits' end to fend off bankruptcy, now that the taxes had almost dried up? The 4th of August, 1789, is a noble date in history, but it was to be not the end, but the beginning of strife and confusion unutterable.
The Revolution had now caught its full stride. The power had barely slipped into the hands of the bourgeois elements, the solid intelligence of the nation which was anxious for sane and enduring reforms and was equally anxious to fend off anarchy. But the lower classes were already almost unmanageable. If the court and noblesse failed to give the Revolution an honest support, the bourgeois might not control the situation and every chance would be given the extremists. The King was perhaps honestly willing to accept the new order. Not so the Queen and the vapid princes and princesses who buzzed around her. The whole situation to them was monstrous and unbearable. To preserve their escaping privileges they were willing to throw dice for the peace and safety of France. The old intrigues of July were resumed in September. Again more troops (this time they hoped reliable) were moved up to Versailles. On the night of October 1 there was a great banquet to the newly arrived officers. There was much wine and much loose talking. The Queen was there in her sparkling beauty to draw out the loyal
shouts of the officers. The health of the royal family was drunk amid the waving and flashing of swords, while the orchestra crashed out the royalist song, "Oh, Richard! Oh, my King, all the world abandons thee . . . but not I." Then it is said that the tricolor cockade was spitefully trampled under foot, while white cockades, the color of Bourbon royalty, were distributed; and lovely ladies mingled with the officers to confirm their loyalty and pin on the white ribbons.
It was a foolish demonstration, worthy of the intelligence of the Old Régime. The men whom the court party needed to make sure of were not the officers, but the rank and file of their regiments. The tale of these doings, of course, spread to Paris with due exaggerations. Again the capital boiled. The new liberty had not brought cheap bread. Very many were hungry. On October 4 a riotous demonstration took place before the City Hall. Coarse, strong-armed market-women and, it would seem, men masquerading in dresses, led the demonstration. The new National Guard confronted them, but could hardly be relied upon to take stern action. "You'll not fire on women!" rang the cry. Then, probably to divert them from a riot in Paris, some one began pounding a drum, and shouted, "To Versailles!" Off the whole throng swept, headed by the women yelling for "bread." Lafayette, commander of the National Guard, uncertain of his men and in sore perplexity as to the whole affair, followed them with most of his force.
The King at Versailles was parleying with a delegation of the Assembly over accepting the newly drafted "Rights of Man" when the motley host swept up from Paris. At first the gates of the château were closed, and when Lafayette arrived the danger seemed over. But as the next day broke the watch relaxed. Some of the mob (the worse for liquor) forced their way into the residence, and killed several of the royal bodyguard while they were defending the chambers of the Queen. Lafayette at length rallied enough reliable men to stop the rioting, but the whole temper of the multitude (including the National Guard) was such that there could be no assurance of safety until the King consented to depart with all his family for Paris. Thither he went, escorted by Lafayette, but also by the wild throng of viragoes, tossing their arms around the royal coach and howling in glee, "We have got the baker and the baker's wife and the baker's little boy! – Now we shall have bread." (October 5.)
The King was lodged in the old palace of the Tuileries. The Assembly (probably not sorry to see the court thus humiliated) made haste to follow to Paris and resumed its debates in a great riding-school near the palace. Once more the Revolution had been saved from a Royalist reaction. But it had been saved at a price. The court had been constrained by no orderly process of law, but by sheer mob violence. King and Assembly alike were now in Paris, the city of a thousand passions. They were always subject, in case they resisted the gusts of popular opinion, to physical coercion by unkempt rioters. Henceforth, more and more, the extremists of the Paris faubourgs came to take the will of their own narrow circles for the will of entire France; to assume to speak for the entire nation, and, if resisted, in the name of the nation to justify every deed of blood.
These sinister elements, however, were not at first predominant. There was abundant good-will and patriotism in the Assembly, and it now at length devoted itself to the great task of reorganizing France. For two years there was relative calm, and it could even be argued plausibly that the Revolution had been accomplished with, all things considered, a commendably small amount of bloodshed. There is still great difference of opinion as to the excellence of the new institutions which the Assembly now gave to France. On the whole it may be said that considering the absolute lack of political experience hitherto permitted to Frenchmen, the blunders were by no means greater than might be expected. Many of the enactments of 1789-91 remain the law of France to this day, and many of the others probably did not deserve to perish. Nevertheless the melancholy spectacle remained of a great constitutional edifice being laboriously erected, next proclaimed as being substantially perpetual – and then vanishing in smoke and blood within a year after it had been changed from proposals to practice.
It is better to state the principal enactments of the Assembly in these years than to hint at the reasons for each particular change. There was still in France no serious movement to establish a republic. The men who drafted the Constitution of 1791 were, however, profoundly under the influence of the dogmas of Rousseau and Montesquieu. They wished to vest all the power in the people, yet they did not abolish hereditary kingship. They wished an efficient executive, but they feared still more lest the executive should encroach upon the popular rights. They were also in great dread lest the King should somehow ruin the new liberties by corrupting or cozening the national legislature. The result was a constitution which, despite much that was excellent, failed to function properly the minute it was put in practice and thereby exposed to inevitable criticism and opposition.
If liberal intentions could make a great nation prosper, the Assembly could easily have put France upon the highroad to happiness. All the old restraints on commerce and industry were swept away. The Huguenots and Jews were given complete toleration. Primogeniture and such other rights of inheritance as tended to perpetuate an aristocratic society were abolished. All titles of nobility were also abolished, and priests were reduced to the mere status of public functionaries. The death penalties for many crimes were removed. All Frenchmen were declared equal in legal privileges, in liability to taxation according to their ability, and in their rights to public employments. The old provinces had been serious promoters of isolation and particularism and local pettiness. They were now done away. In their place France was divided into eighty-three "depart- ments," about equal in size, and named after their rivers, mountains, etc. The departments were subdivided into "districts," these into "cantons," and these in turn into still smaller "communes," the primary units of the country, 44,828 in all. France thus became a highly articulated nation organized upon a uniform plan, with everything radiating from the nerve centers of government at Paris.
The inefficient old law courts were likewise abolished. A supreme Court of Cassation for the entire country was set up, with a system of local courts tapering down to the justices of the peace in the cantons. The magistrates were to be elected by their fellow citizens for ten years, and the great safeguard of jury trials was instituted for the more serious criminal cases. The Assembly also voted that a uniform civil code of laws should be compiled – a great task only to be executed by Napoleon. The ancient abuses in taxation were cancelled in their turn. The provincial customs barriers perished with the old provinces. The other taxes were simplified and put on a reasonably scientific basis. Schemes were set on foot for a general system of education. In short, the Assembly was entitled to high credit for much eminently successful or promising legislation along social, economic, or administrative lines, and a great fraction of what it accomplished in these directions was destined to endure – and to endure because it was worthy.
Probably the members took the highest pride (and very rightly) in their solemn pronunciament, "The Declaration of the Rights of Man," the seventeen articles of which became the veritable Credo of the Revolution. Although couched in terms instantly reminiscent of Rousseau and Montesquieu, few genuine Americans will quarrel with its main principles. "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights," ran Article I. "Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good." It was in devising the political machinery which was to insure the smooth working of all these desirable laws or theories that the Assembly made its most serious blunders. Truth to tell the situation would have been immensely improved could the legislators have had to deal with a different type of king. Louis XVI did not frankly reject the Revolution and trust himself to the risks of a civil war, nor did he with dignity abdicate. He never, however, clearly and unfeignedly accepted the New Order which took away from him all rights to make laws and merely left him the honor of being the chief functionary in the State. He made concession after concession, but never in a manner that convinced his contemporaries that he was glad to pass from the giddy honors of autocracy to the safer life of a hereditary president. He was simply a well-meaning, much-bewildered man driven from point to point by an overwhelming situation. Worst of all, he never gained the courage to silence his wife in her openly reactionary counsels. He gained the ill-will of many powerful leaders he should have conciliated, and he could not conceal his disgust at many innovations he was powerless to prevent. From his great nobles and even from his own brothers he gained little enough of support and sage promptings. They were openly angry at his unwillingness to resist with force the popular demands. The best chance for Louis would have been to have taken the lead openly in championing the New Order, to have constituted himself a real "Citizen-King," champion and "tribune" of the people. All elements would then probably have rallied to him and his personal position would have been secure. But no such boldness was possible for the dull, kindhearted individual who had inherited the titles of Louis XIV.
However, in any case the Assembly prepared a constitution for France whereof the working would have been hard, even for a very able King-President. There was to be only one cham- ber in the Legislature, partly out of real detestation of a House of Lords, and partly it would seem because of a deliberate desire not to seem to imitate England. This united body was to be elected for a term of two years by the votes of all citizens aged twenty-five who paid a direct local tax equal to three days' work. The King could not dissolve it or coerce it in any way. As first proposed, the King was not to be allowed to have any effective veto. On the other hand, he was supposed to choose the ministers to execute all the laws and to be responsible for the smooth working of the government. It was directly forbidden the King to take his ministers from among the members of the new "Legislative Assembly." Even under the circumstances, it is amazing that the majority of the constitutionmakers did not see how such an arrangement was adapted to promote endless discord between executive and legislature, with no way out of the difficulty save a new revolution. Mirabeau did, indeed, understand matters clearly and uttered his warnings, but the radicals were already counting him "too moderate." They marched onward to disaster.
But the heaviest handicap for the New Order came by the gratuitous act of the Assembly in picking a quarrel with the Church. The deficit had not been met. Necker was more desperate than ever in seeking funds. Without counting all the inevitable cost, in 1790 the Assembly ordered the "nationalizing" (that is, the practical confiscation) of the ample Church lands. The clergy were, indeed, promised remuneration for the incomes they thus lost, but the immediate effect was to enable the Assembly to embark on the issuance of assignats (paper money secured by the expected sale of the Church lands), at first in moderate amounts, but then more and more until France was involved in all the perplexities and sorrows of an extremely depreciated paper currency. This act, of course, made every churchman anxious. It was speedily followed by something worse. The "Civil Constitution of the Clergy" was enacted. All priests were obliged to take oath to obey it. The Assembly undertook to reorganize the French Church as if it had been directly authorized to do so by the Pope. Instead of one hundred and thirty-five bishops there were to be only eighty-three (one for each department), and these and the parish curés were to be chosen by the same electors that chose the secular officials. The number of convents was reduced; the taking of monastic vows made difficult. No attempt was made to define points in theology, but the whole effect of the law was to make the "Catholicism in France different from that in Rome, at least in respect to discipline, canonical institutions, and spiritual jurisdiction."
The result of this unhappy law was soon evident. The Assembly surely had enough secular problems to settle without embroiling itself with the Catholic Church. Hitherto most of the curès and some of the worthier bishops had sided with the New Order. Now nearly all who were not worldly time-servers obeyed the Pope when he forbade the taking of the required oath (1791). They quitted their bishoprics and parishes, ejected by the less worthy remainder who, as "sworn" or "constitutional priests," usurped rectories and churches. The ejected clinics became instantly a dangerous dissenting element, venerated by the pious laity and a standing source of great danger to the whole work of the Revolution. Above all, the King (a very pious Catholic) was outraged and angered almost beyond reconciliation. The "Civil Constitution of the Clergy" was the greatest single blunder of the Constituent Assembly.
In April, 1791, Mirabeau died, the sanest leader of the Revolution, and one who, in 1790, had vainly tried to hold back the extremists and come to a fair understanding with the King. With him passed the only prominent man who understood just whither France was drifting. Louis XVI was now desperate. He had consented to the new Church laws only because he considered himself coerced and unable to resist. His brother, the Count of Artois, and many "emigrant" nobles had already fled abroad and were stirring up the rulers of Austria, Prussia, Spain, and Savoy to intervene in behalf of a brother monarch whose subjects were teaching to all the peoples of Europe daily lessons in disloyalty. Louis and Marie Antoinette were alike in a mood to call in foreign armies to prop up the throne of the once arrogant Bourbons. What a throne maintained by such humiliating means would have been worth, neither King nor Queen seemed in a mood to answer.
On June 21, 1791, Louis XVI and the Queen escaped from Paris, Marie Antoinette disguised as a Russian lady and her husband as her valet. They were headed toward Lorraine where there was supposed to be a loyal general and army, and whence in any case they could easily flee over the border. The whole flight was one series of blunders. The royal party delayed matters by insisting on traveling with considerable state in a lumbering coach with much impedimenta including the Queen's bathtub. Had they been willing to fly post-haste, they could doubtless have got away safely. As it was the alarm was given. At Varennes the party was halted and arrested, held prisoner ignominiously over a grocery shop, and then driven back with every humiliation to Paris. The flight had failed. The true sentiments of the King had been revealed. He stood branded before all the world as being out of sympathy with his people. The capital received him back with "reproachful silence" as ominous as open threatenings, while the Assembly suspended him from office.
The situation was such that nothing but abdication or downright deposition ought to have awaited Louis XVI. But the Assembly was very loath to turn the power over to his brother, the reactionary Comte de Provence, himself an "emigrant" who would logically have become regent for the very young Dauphin. It was still far from willing to proclaim a republic. Intelligent men realized that Louis's position deserved sympathy as well as blame. The King on his part, in a very chastened mood, showed himself willing to ratify the new Constitution. At last a solemn truce was arranged. On September 14, 1791, Louis XVI wrote to the Assembly: "I accept the Constitution. I engage to maintain it at home, to defend it from all attacks from abroad, and to cause its execution by all the means it places at my disposal." Under these circumstances the King was reinstated in power. On the 29th of September, he closed the Assembly amid congratulations, expressions of good-will and applause, after a friendly speech "worthy of Henry IV," as a voice cried across the hall. It was an enthusiasm which events were not to justify.
"The Revolution," announced Robespierre, of whom the world was to hear more hereafter – "the Revolution is finished!" These words were spoken September 29, 1791. The next day amid great rejoicings the Constituent Assembly broke up. Its members had redeemed the Oath of the Tennis Court. They had given a constitution to France. Some of their work was admirable, some was very faulty. Much of it was to crumble instantly. Intentions had been of the very best, but the subsequent history has justified the verdict of a sane and clearminded Frenchman: "The Constituent Assembly would have done better to have suppressed royalty outright, and to have made a republican constitution. Unfortunately, despite its defiance of Louis XVI, it was profoundly monarchical in many of its tendencies. The men of 1791 thought they were creating a monarchical constitution. They actually made one that was neither monarchical nor republican. It was not even a parliamentary constitution."
The "Constituent" Assembly dissolved. Its creation and child, the "Legislative" Assembly, which was to enact the ordinary working legislation of France, met immediately. The earlier body had committed one crowning blunder. Despite much of error and mediocrity, the "Constituent" had come to contain many men well experienced now in public affairs. These members should have undertaken to govern the country, but on the unhappy proposal of Robespierre the "Constituent" had passed a self-denying ordinance. None of its members were to be eligible to the new "Legislative." The latter body, when it convened, therefore, October 1, 1791, was made up entirely of untried men who knew little of the legal instrument they were expected to work. This blunder was equivalent to a lost battle for French liberty.
In October, 1791, however, what the men of 1789 had fought for appeared to have been won. The grievances of the Old Régime were vanished. A constitution that seemed to satisfy the national demand had been granted. The average Frenchman, tired of the unfamiliar excitement and confusion of politics, desired nothing better than to return to his civil occupations. Despite the flight to Varennes, the great majority of the people still desired to keep Louis XVI, and they certainly did not desire the bloody adventure of a great foreign war; but the foreign war came in April; the King was a helpless prisoner in August; and France was formally proclaimed a republic in September. Seldom had there been such a rush of capital events.
The Legislative Assembly met immediately after its parent, the Constituent, disbanded. It was a lumbering, over-large body of 745 members – very inexperienced, as has just been stated. In the election many moderate, substantial citizens, who might have taken a leading part, had become weary of the scramble of politics, and stood back to let inferior men be chosen. It is also charged that the radicals in many districts resorted to various forms of coercion to get extremist members elected. In any case the "Legislative," along with not a few honest patriots, contained many small-caliber adventurers who were quite willing to urge "change" merely for the sake of selfadvertising.
Soon well-defined parties showed themselves. There was the respectable party of "Constitutionalists," friends of the New Order, but who desired to go no farther. They might have held their own had they been heartily supported by the old court element. The Royalists were impotent to defend themselves, but they were quite able to dream of a reaction, and to undermine the influence of any party that stood for the hated compromise of 1791. A considerable body of deputies had come to Paris frankly without a fixed programme; they were amiable opportunists willing to let things drift. But there was a still more formidable body of radicals, who (thanks to the very numbness and genteel inertia of their opponents) were soon able to dominate the "Legislative." These radicals fell roughly into the groups of the "Girondists" and of the "Mountain."
The "Mountaineers" were the true ultra-radicals, whose leaders were presently to dominate France. The Girondists, who took their name from the Department of the Gironde whence came their most prominent leaders, were hot-blooded, clever, generous-hearted young lawyers, full of Plutarch and Rousseau, very ready to imagine that what was good for Athens was necessarily good for France, and frankly anxious to substitute a moderate republic for even the denatured Monarchy left in power. Some of their members – for example, Vergniaud, Brissot, etc. – were persons of remarkable eloquence and equally lofty ideals, but one of their chief guiding spirits could not sit in the "Legislative"; she was Madame Roland, "a bright ambitious woman, with a touch of genius, a taste for clubs, and a great fondness for attending to her elderly husband's business."
These nimble-witted persons were not, however, the extreme men of action. Already we meet the influence of the famous "Jacobin" Club, which had begun in Paris in 1789 as a legitimate debating society with many very conservative members, but which, by 1791, had become the center for all the radicalism of the capital, with a very great influence upon the unwashed masses of the great city. From the pulpit of the Jacobin Club endless daring theories could be ventilated that would be suppressed in the Assembly or the "Legislative," and under the stimulus of this irresponsible theorizing, it was easy for one proposition to lead, with stern fanatical logic, onwards to another. The Jacobin Club, therefore, in time became the center for the propaganda of the extreme Rousseau doctrines, with the genuine propagandist's corollary, that since the doctrines were true, all means were lawful in giving them effect. Three men of historic fame were the soul of this Jacobin agitation – Marat, Danton, Robespierre.
Marat was a physician and scientific man of some attainments. In 1789 he began an agitation of the utmost virulence, not merely against the King, but against all the more moderate Liberals like Lafayette. He constituted himself the champion of the lowest classes – the "proletariat," to use a recent recent phrase, as opposed to the bourgeoisie. His paper, "The Friend of the People," became the oracle and the inspiration of all the lewd, loose spirits in Paris. He excelled in coarse invective, and seemed to delight in appealing to the most sinister passions. Against all constituted authority he had the animosity of a tiger. It would not be fair to call him an anarchist. He seems to have had his dreams of an orderly elysium – but only after the ruthless destruction of nearly everything which men had hitherto honored or called lawful.
Danton was a far less repellent figure. He was a young Paris advocate of remarkable eloquence and no slight practical ability. He had at first welcomed the Revolution of 1789, but its changes had not been radical enough to please him. Soon the Jacobin
Club was accustomed to ring with the great voice of this tall, brawny man, of harsh and daring countenance, and beetling black brows, as he thundered against "the aristocrats." Danton exercised extraordinary power over what may be called the more respectable elements in the Paris mob, even as Marat was the darling of the basest. Danton wished to establish a republic and he was ready for very drastic means to gain his ends, but as events were to prove he was no friend either of needless bloodletting or of anarchy. He was by all odds the worthiest leader of the Jacobins.
Robespierre was another advocate, not however from Paris but Artois. He had served in the "Constituent," and then, when that body disbanded, he shared with Danton the honors of chief orator at the Jacobin Club. He was a "precise, austere, intense, mediocre little man whose life had been passed in poverty and study." No other leader of the Revolution ever accepted the teachings of Rousseau more implicitly than he. Probably with perfect sincerity he claimed and boasted himself to be "virtuous and incorruptible." The multitude believed him, and he gained all the prestige and following that always comes to a leader widely accepted as being unselfish and good. Robespierre was, indeed, more a man of talk than of action. Very likely from the first he was being thrust forward by others who arranged the deeds and needed a mouthpiece. He was destined, however, to become the most notable single figure in all the fiery second stage of the Revolution.
The Girondists, in short, were amiable theorists willing to see the King overthrown and a republic established, but they were incapable of fierce action and willing to let matters somewhat drift. The Jacobins were equally theorists, but they were not so amiable. They were ready and willing for action, and did not intend to let matters drift. No prophet was needed to tell with which faction lay the future.
With such members it did not take the Legislative Assembly long to pass first to pin-pricks and then to drawn daggers with the King. The deputies abolished the use of the terms "Sire" and "Your Majesty" in addressing royalty. There were other small matters of friction, but the first real issue came when the "Legislative" undertook to consider the foreign dangers now confronting the nation. Ever since 1789, now singly, now in scores, the great nobles of France had been packing their jewels and fleeing the realm. Both of Louis's brothers by this time were across the frontier; and at Trèves and Mayence in Germany a small army of these highborn "emigrants" had been collecting. The noble exiles were loud in their boasts and threats of bloody return and vengeance. They were using all their personal influence to get the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia to intervene in arms. In August, 1791, these two monarchs had issued the non-committal "Declaration of Pilnitz," announcing that they considered the cause of Louis XVI the cause of all the crowned heads of Europe. Nothing had followed, but how soon might not a foreign army strike? In view of the flight to Varennes how far were the French King and Queen to be trusted not to welcome an invader? To all the privileged classes of despot-ridden Europe, the Revolution was coming to be simply an outrageous thing, a menace to every man of wealth and coat-armor. If the nation that had posed as the intellectual leader of civilization could reduce its king to a position of little more than hereditary high-sheriff, could destroy all the rights of the nobility, could put a bargeman politically on a level with a Prince of the Blood, what would be the effect of the example upon the peasants of Prussia, Bohemia, Tuscany, and a dozen regions more? The undeniable excesses of some of the Revolutionists, of course, kindled hotter the flames of indignation. There was genuine sympathy for the plight of the beautiful Queen held prisoner in the Tuileries. There was anger, especially in Germany, over the abolition of feudal dues in certain parts of Alsace, the financial claims upon which had been retained by various German princes when they had relaxed their political dominion. The situation was full of menace, especially as it was well known that the discipline of the French army and navy had been utterly shaken by recent events. Matters came to a climax in the spring of 1792. The attitude of the Austrian Government had seemed so equivocal that the "Legislative" had addressed it a formal demand to state its intentions. The answer came from the young Emperor Francis II, the nephew of Marie Antoinette, who sent a flat demand for indemnity to the offended German princes (who claimed certain feudal rights in Alsace) and for a reëstablishment of the Old Régime, on the basis proposed by Louis before the fall of the Bastile. After that, indeed, there was only one answer for France to make, unless she was to confess that her domestic broils had removed her from the list of the great nations of Europe. On April 20, 1792, Louis XVI appeared before the deputies and asked for a declaration of war on Austria, and it was at once voted with only seven voices opposing; and so began a struggle that was to last, with short intervals of truce rather than of peace, three and twenty years till Waterloo.
There had been two French parties in favor of the war – from very different motives. Marie Antoinette and the court party seem to have been reckoning that either the public enemy would march to Paris – in which case the Revolution would collapse – or at least a victorious war would bring such prestige to the King that his position would become more endurable. The Girondists also favored the war. They believed, and rightly, that the foreign struggle would bring about such a domestic reaction as to sweep away the Monarchy. Only the extreme Jacobins had argued for peace. A war was likely to give the King a kind of dictatorship, and the burdens would all fall upon the lowly. "Who is it that suffers in a war?" wrote Marat; "not the rich, but the poor; not the high-born officer, but the poor peasant." Already there were abundant signs of a complete schism between the King and his legislature. The "Legislative" passed a bill ordering banishment for priests who refused to take oath of allegiance to the New Order. The King had vetoed this act – as under the Constitution he had the right to do. The proposed law had certainly been harsh, possibly cruel; but popular belief made the "non-juring" priests so many agents of sedition. The Queen was accused of stopping the legislation, and loud were the curses in Paris against "the Austrian" and "Madame Veto." Louis also struggled vainly, in an effort to find ministers who would be acceptable to the dominant factions in the "Legislative" and could at the same time give France orderly and firm government. Such men were not to be found. If they were agreeable to the majority of the deputies, they could not really sustain the Constitution. If they failed to sustain the Constitution, they of course were intolerable to the King and let the land drift off into misrule. The treasury was in a worse plight than ever. Necker had long since retired hopelessly discredited. Probably there would have been an explosion in any case; but the foreign war assuredly hastened it.
Prussia had made prompt alliance with her old foe Austria. Truth to tell, though there was much cursing of the Revolution in Vienna and Berlin, and many commiserations for Marie Antoinette, there was also a keen appreciation that France, the nation which had once dominated the Continent, was in such grievous agony that a smart military blow might end the menace to her rivals forever. The French army was in an utterly deplorable state. In all 300,000 men had been reckoned for it on paper, but the bands of discipline had been loosed. Many officers had been cashiered or had fled the country. The men were sorely out of hand. Not more than 82,000 men were available as mobile field armies. Against these the Duke of Brunswick (reputed an able general of Frederick the Great) prepared to move a considerably larger force of excellent troops. Fortunately for the French, the Allies advanced very slowly, and instead of striking boldly at Paris, they were anxious to reduce the frontier fortresses, but in practically every engagement the French were worsted. In some cases they were not merely defeated, but fled in disgraceful panic. Everywhere, in the army, in the provinces, in Paris, spread the desperate cry, "We are betrayed!" The Jacobins roundly declared that the courtiers in the Tuileries were praying to see the Allies enter Paris, bringing back all the "emigrant" nobles with their schemes of vengeance, and freely it was suggested that these disloyal monarchists were not confining their treasons to wishes and prayers. This military failure destroyed the last real chance for preserving the Monarchy and the Constitution of 1791.
The story of the last days of the Monarchy need not halt us long. As the military situation grew worse, the position of Louis XVI grew increasingly impossible. His Queen, at least, was a traitress. In March, 1792, she had sent to the Austrian court a memorandum of the French plan of campaign. As the news of disaster drifted into Paris the excitement of the city increased. On June 20 there was a riotous demonstration before the palace. It ended in a mob of the most sordid elements forcing their way into the royal apartments, thrusting the red "liberty cap" upon Louis's head, and offering gross familiarities to the Queen and Dauphin. The royal couple carried themselves with courage and dignity, and so averted deeds which might have ended with a lynching. There was a momentary reaction among the better elements in favor of the King. Honorable and moderate men realized that the whole country was in danger of anarchy if its rulers could thus be insulted. Lafayette came back from the army and demanded punishment of the Jacobin agitators. But Marie Antoinette and the court nobles were apparently anxious to hasten their own way to the scaffold – they could not forgive Lafayette and his fellow Liberals for assisting in the original Revolution of 1789. His offers of assistance were haughtily waved aside. Lafayette thus was left a discredited, nigh powerless man, hated by the Jacobins and rejected by the Royalists. He returned sorrowfully to his army and let matters take their course.
The Girondists were now thundering in the "Legislative" that the King ought to abdicate. Why were the Austro-Prussians advancing? "Because," cried Brissot from the tribune, "a man – one man – the man whom the Constitution has made its chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe [has paralyzed it!] . . . You are told to fear the kings of Hungary and Prussia: I say, the chief force of these kings is at the court, and there it is that we must conquer first! . . . This is the secret of our position. This is the source of the evil, and here the remedy must be applied."
Under such promptings, on the 11th of July, the "Legislative" solemnly voted the declaration – "Citizens – the country is in danger!" and attempts were made at a levy en masse, to hold back the invader. There were also clear indications of organizing armed action in Paris, for fighting foes much nearer to the King's residence than were the foreign armies. But the deadliest stab against the Monarchy came from a nominal friend. On July 28 the Prussian army began its advance from Coblenz. In a moment of utter folly, its leader, the Duke of Brunswick, published a manifesto in the name of Austria and Prussia. He announced that he was entering France to rescue its King from captivity; that the inhabitants of towns who "dared to stand on the defensive" should be instantly punished as rebels and their houses burned; that martial punishment would be meted out to all members of the National Guard if the city of Paris did not restore to the King full liberty; and finally that if the King's palace were attacked the invading princes would make an example by "delivering Paris over to military execution and total destruction."
Such a manifesto was enough to drive every Frenchman to desperation. As was written by a historian whose parents lived through these days of wrath: "There was but one wish, one cry of resistance from one end of France to the other: and whoever had not joined in it, would have been looked on as guilty of impiety toward his country and the sacred cause of independence." From the moment that copies of this woeful declaration reached the capital the only question was – how would the Monarchy fall?
Some of the Girondists were probably still willing to trust to "moral suasion" to induce Louis to abdicate, but not so the more ardent of their faction, and not so the robust Jacobins. On July 30 there swung into Paris a swart, grimy column, five hundred and thirteen men "who knew how to die," tugging two guns. They were the "men of Marseilles," volunteers of the National Guard from the southern seaport, who had in four weeks trudged up to the capital to save the nation and end the rule of "the Austrian woman." They were singing a hymn that had really been composed in Strasbourg as the "Song of the Army of the Rhine," by Rouget de Lisle, but which now was caught up by these stark, determined men as their battlesong. Soon all Paris, then all France, was singing this "Marseillaise" – the most passionate, soul-stirring of all national anthems, the best of all fighting songs to make strong men march onward to win or to die. Before this arrival the "Legislative" had been tossing about the question of some peaceful means to end the Monarchy. Now the radicals forced the issue.
The Marseilles volunteers made the nucleus for a fighting force. Danton and his friends were indefatigable in the lower quarters of Paris. A large part of the National Guard had been won over. Pétion, Mayor of the capital, was on the insurgents' side. There were still very many respectable men who wished the King well; who preferred in fact that he should be kept in power; but very few of these worthy people were anxious to die in behalf of a very discredited Monarchy. They were paralyzed also by the rumors (not unfounded) that there was treason within the palace, and the clearer knowledge that the foreign foe might soon be marching upon Paris. Against them were the radicals, sure of their goal and without fear or scruple.
On the 10th of August the plot was sprung. The city government (commune) of Paris was in the hands of the Revolutionists. The commander of the palace, Mandat, was a loyal defender of the King, but outside of the royal Swiss body-guardsmen (some 800), he had very few troops on whom he could rely. Just as matters were coming to a climax, Mandat was first kidnapped by the insurgents, then brutally murdered. The King's weak forces were left thus without a commander. Soon after dawn a threatening crowd was before the Tuileries. For safety's sake the King and royal family took refuge in the hall of the Legislative Assembly and spent a most unhappy day in the small "reporters'" room. Then, in his absence, the Marseilles battalion forced its way into the palace court, followed by the other insurgent elements. The Swiss Guards were foreigners, without interest in French disputes, but honorably loyal to their good paymaster the King. Soon a volley rang out. The Swiss were trained infantry. They cleared the palace courtyard, and then maintained a deadly fire from the windows. A young officer was spectator of the fighting. His judgment was that if the Swiss had been properly led and allowed to keep up their resistance, they would have snuffed out the whole insurrection – at least for the instant. His judgment was worth heeding, for his name was Napoleon Bonaparte. But the sound of the firing was terrifying to Louis. He had no confidence that the Swiss could resist, and his heart was torn at the thought of shooting down his fellow countrymen. He sent orders to the guardsmen to stop firing. Some of the Swiss made a safe retreat. Some were separated from their comrades and massacred as the exultant Revolutionaries swarmed back into the palace. So fell the Bourbon monarchy. It did not even honor its end by an heroic resistance to the last cartridge.
All through the firing, the royal family and the Legislative Assembly had shivered together. Might not the unpent insurgents involve King, Queen, and deputies in one common massacre? Now, as the musketry ceased, deputations of angry, imperious men came thrusting into the great hall with demands rather than petitions. The Paris Commune required the instant deposition of the King. The deputies hesitated to take so heavy a responsibility, but Vergniaud, leader of the Girondists, mounted the tribune. "I am to propose to you," spoke he, "a very vigorous measure. I appeal to the affliction of our hearts to judge how needful it is to adopt it immediately." His motion, which was unanimously carried, was to dismiss all the royal ministers, to suspend the King in office, and to convoke a new national convention which was to give yet another constitution to France. So ended this memorable 10th of August, 1792. Louis XVI ("Louis Capet" as they were already beginning to call him) was transferred to the Luxembourg Palace, where at first he was treated with decent consideration.
Feudalism had seemed to go in 1789. Monarchy had gone in 1792. The question now was were the respectable bourgeois, the men of education, honest substance, and moderation, who had overthrown the Old Régime, to be themselves engulfed by the rising spirit of the lower classes, the sans-culottes, the "men without short breeches," who did not dress as gentlemen, whose hands were grimy and horny, whose heads were full of wild passions and equally wild dreams of happiness supplied them by Danton and Marat? Twentieth-century Americans who have witnessed the fate of Russia after the collapse of czardom, know the modern equivalent of Jacobinism – Bolshevism: the turning of all political and economic power over to the unkempt proletariat with no preliminary attempt to make the new master worthy by careful education. The sequel was to show how much more heroic before a Teutonic peril, were the followers of Danton than the followers of Lenine.
Be that as it may, the overthrow of the Monarchy was to cut the last lashings holding France to her historic past. The "Sovereign People," extolled for their natural simplicity and innocency by Rousseau, had at last come fairly into their own. Wild scenes there were in the narrow streets and in the wineshops of Paris those days in 1792; excited men and brawny women joining in headlong demonstrations.
"Dance we the Carmagnole!" ran their song. "Hurrah for the roar of the cannon!"
The cannon were to roar in France all that year, and the next, and the next. We reach the second: the more lurid stage of the Revolution.