[1] The oath taken by the deputies of the third estate in the tennis-court of Versailles, in 1789.
The wave of anarchy constantly rose higher, but the optimists, sheltering themselves, like Pétion, in a beatific calm, obstinately closed their eyes and would not see it. Abroad and at home there was such a series of shocks and agitations, of struggles and emotions, perils and troubles; things hurried on so fast, and the scenes of the drama were so varied and so violent, that what happened to-day was forgotten by the morrow. The noise of the fête of the Swiss of Chateauvieux had hardly ceased when the shouts of the multitude were heard saluting Louis XVI., who had just declared war on Austria.
In reality, the King did not desire war, but the bellicose current had become irresistible. The court of Vienna had shown itself intractable. It forbade the princes who owned possessions in Lorraine and Alsace to receive the indemnities offered by France in exchange for their feudal rights, and threatened to have the Diet of Ratisbonne annul any private treaties they might conclude concerning them. The electors of Trèves, Cologne, and Mayence undisguisedly favored the levying of troops by the emigrantprinces, and even paid subsidies toward their support. They refused to recognize the official ambassadors of Louis XVI., while recognizing the plenipotentiaries of these princes. There was talk of holding a Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle for the purpose of intimidating the National Assembly. The successor of the Emperor Leopold, Francis II., who, before his election to the Empire, had assumed the title of King of Hungary and Bohemia, displayed extremely martial sentiments. Austria, which had sent forty thousand men to the Low Countries and twenty thousand to the Rhine, had just signed a treaty of alliance with Prussia, "to put an end to the troubles in France." Dumouriez urgently demanded the court of Vienna to explain itself. It finally sent the French Ambassador, Marquis de Noailles, a dry, curt, and formal note, naming the only conditions on which peace could be preserved. These were: the re-establishment of the French monarchy on the bases of the royal declaration of June 23, 1789, and, consequently, the restoration of the nobility and clergy as orders; the restitution of Church property; the return of Alsace to the German princes, with all their sovereign and feudal rights; and, finally, the surrender of Avignon and the county of Venaisson to the Holy See.
"In truth," says Dumouriez in his Memoirs, "if the Viennese minister had slept through the entire thirty-three months that had elapsed since the royal séance, and had dictated this note on awakingwithout knowledge of what had happened, he could not have proposed conditions more incongruous with the progress of the Revolution.... The new social compact was founded on the abolition of the orders and the equality of all citizens. The financial system, which alone could prevent bankruptcy, was founded on the creation of assignats. The assignats were hypothecated on the property of the clergy, now become the property of the nation, and the greater part of which had been already sold. The nation, therefore, could not accept these conditions except by violating its Constitution, destroying property, ruining its purchasers, annulling its assignats, and declaring bankruptcy. Could so humiliating an obedience be expected from a great nation, proud of having conquered its liberty? and that for the sake of placing itself once more under the yoke of nobles who, having abandoned their King himself, now threatened to re-enter their country with sword and flame and every scourge of vengeance?"
The entire National Assembly reasoned in the same way as Dumouriez. A cry for war arose on all sides. The Girondins saw in it the indispensable consecration of the Revolution. The Feuillants hoped that besides proving creditable to the government, it would accomplish the additional end of drawing away from Paris and other great cities a multitude of turbulent men who, for lack of anything else to do, were disturbing public order. Certain reactionists, stifling the sentiment of patriotism in their hearts,were equally anxious for war, in the secret hope that it would prove disastrous for the French army, and result in the re-establishment of the old régime. On the other hand, there were good citizens, inclined to optimism and judging others by themselves, who thought that when confronted with an enemy, all intestine dissensions would vanish as by enchantment, and that the new Constitution, hallowed by victory and glory, would ensure the country a most brilliant destiny. Ministers were unanimous, and enthusiasm universal. Even if he had so desired, Louis XVI. could no longer resist it. On April 20, 1792, he went to the Assembly. The hall was filled with a crowd which comprehended the importance and solemnity of the act about to be accomplished.
According to Dumouriez, the King was very majestic: "I come," he said, "in accordance with the terms of the Constitution, formally to propose war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia." He afterwards paid the greatest attention to the report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and seemed, by the motions of his head and hands, to approve it in every respect. He returned to the Tuileries amidst general acclamations. War was unanimously decided on, and Dumouriez went to the diplomatic committee in order to draw up the declaration. At ten in the evening the decree was brought in and carried to the King, who sanctioned it at once.
Thus commenced that gigantic war which France was to wage against all Europe, and which ended,twenty-three years later, in the disaster of Waterloo. How many battles, what suffering, and what a prodigious shedding of blood! And to attain what end? Simply the point of departure; that is to say, in the political order, to constitutional monarchy, and in territory, to the boundaries of 1792. What! to have filled Europe with noise and renown; to have carried the standards of France from east to west, from north to south; to have camped victoriously in Brussels, Milan, Venice, Rome, Naples, Cairo, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow; to have enlarged the borders of valor, heroism, and self-sacrifice in order to arrive, after so many efforts, just at the spot where the strife began? Ah! how short-sighted is human wisdom, how deceitful the previsions of mortal man, how sterile the agitations of republics and monarchs! "Assuredly!" says Dumouriez, "if the Emperor and the King of Prussia could have foreseen that France was able to withstand all Europe, they would not have meddled with her domestic quarrels; they would have treated theémigrésnot with confidence, but compassion; they would have responded frankly and without trickery to the minister's negotiation; the Revolution would have been accomplished without cruelties; Europe would have remained at peace, and France would be happy." What sadness underlies all history, and what disproportion there is between man's sacrifices and their results! The Revolution was achieved. All necessary liberties had been conquered. Privilegesexisted no longer. Animated by excellent intentions, Louis XVI. would have been the best of constitutional sovereigns, had his subjects possessed wisdom. Why this long misunderstanding between him and his people? Why, on one side, the insensate attitude of theémigrés, whose task seemed to be to justify the revolutionists; and why, on the other, those savage passions which seemed trying to justify the wrathful recriminations of Coblentz? Why that untimely intervention of Austria which irritated French national sentiment and gave a political pretext to inexcusable violence, cruelty, and crime? Inextricable confusion of false situations! Multitudes asked themselves in what direction right and duty lay. A large contingent of the French nobility heartily desired the success of foreign armies. At Coblentz a gathering of twenty-two thousand gentlemen hastened to the side of the seven Bourbon princes: the Comte de Provence, the Comte d'Artois, the Duc de Berry, the Duc d'Angoulême, the Prince de Conde, the Duc de Bourbon, and the Duc d'Enghien.
As M. de Lamartine has said: "Infidelity to the country called itself fidelity to the King. Desertion called itself honor. Fealty to the throne was the religion of the French nobility. To them the sovereignty of the people seemed an insolent dogma against which it was necessary to draw the sword under penalty of sharing the crime. There was real devotion in the act by which these men, young andold, abandoned their rank in the army, and the ties of country and family, and rushed into a foreign land to defend the white flag as common soldiers.... Their country symbolized duty for the patriots; to theémigrés, duty meant the throne. One of these parties deceived itself concerning its duty, but both of them believed they were performing it."
As to the unfortunate Louis XVI., he suffered cruelly. It was like death to him to declare war against his nephew, and at certain moments he felt that this Austrian army against which his troops contended might yet be his last resource. He could not even flatter himself that the sacrifice he had made of his sympathies and family feelings would be repaid by the love and confidence of his people.
"We have no difficulty nowadays in comprehending," says M. Geffroy very justly, "what pure patriotism there was in that young army of 1792, which represented new France. But this army, formed in independence of the old regiments, was none the less, in the eyes of the Queen, a veritable army of sedition. She thought of it as composed of the victors of the Bastille, those whom Mirabeau styled the greatest scoundrels of Paris; the very rabble who came to Versailles on the 6th of October. She believed they could be crushed by the first attack at the frontier, and that France and Paris would be rid of them." The following reflection by M. Geffroy is very judicious: "Marie Antoinette committed a double error, but honest men who had not the sameoverpowering motives as she, have committed it likewise. I do not allude merely to those Frenchmen who, after April 20, remained in the ranks of the Emigration, and who, apparently, did not suppose themselves to be betraying the true interests of their country. But look at M. de Bouillé. He even accepted a command in the foreign army under Gustavus III. And yet M. de Bouillé is an honest man who knows France and loves her ardently. Observe, in his Memoirs, his involuntary pride in our success, and how he shrugs his shoulders at the bluster of the Prussian officers."
It is not yet well understood what vigor, enthusiasm, and martial ardor animated that brave national army, which, according to the foreigners, was but a band of rioters, but which was suddenly to appear on the battle-field as a people of heroes. Honor took refuge in the camps. It was there that men whom the Jacobin Club enraged, and who had no consolation for their patriotic grief but the virile emotions of combat, went to fight and die. Why did not Louis XVI. call to mind that he was the commander-in-chief of the army? Ah! had he been a soldier, had he been accustomed to wear a uniform, to command, and, above all, to speak to his troops, how quickly he would have come to the end of his difficulties! Count de Vaublanc had good reason to say: "Anything can be done with Frenchmen if one knows how to animate and impress them with vehement ardor; otherwise, nothing need be expected.... Never dida prince merit better the eternal rewards promised by religion to the true Christian; and yet his example should forever teach kings that their conduct must be totally different from his. Lacking the courage which acts, the most virtuous king cannot achieve his own safety." Why did not Louis XVI. go amongst his soldiers? Victory would have given him a sceptre and a crown. While he still retained his sword, why did he leave it in the scabbard? Why did he not remember that it might launch thunderbolts?
On the contrary, Louis XVI. hesitates, fumbles, temporizes. Count de Vaublanc says again: "This wretched time proves thoroughly that finesse is the most detestable means of conducting great affairs. Nothing but finesse was opposed to the impetuous attacks of the Jacobins. All was dissimulation; conversations, writings, measures; authority acted only by crooked ways. With a thousand means of safety, people were lost because they pushed prudence to excess, and extreme prudence always degenerates into despicable means. I was in every great crisis of the Revolution, and I have always seen the same faults produce the same misfortunes. It is the same thing in revolution as in war; no matter how prudent a general may be, he must take some risk. Otherwise it would be impossible to gain a single battle."
Ah! how true and how striking is that great saying of Bossuet: "When God wills to overthrow empires, all is feeble and irregular in their designs."Undecided and fickle, Louis XVI. does not even know whether to desire the success or the failure of the Austrian army. He has no plan, no steadiness of purpose. The secret mission he gives to Mallet du Pan is a fresh proof of the irresolution of his character and his policy. What is it he asks? To have the Powers declare that they are making war against an anti-social faction, and not the French nation; that they are undertaking the defence of legitimate governments and of peoples against anarchy; that they will treat only with the King; that they shall demand perfect liberty for him; that they convoke a congress to which theémigrésmay be admitted as complainants, and where the general scheme of claims and reclamations shall be negotiated under the auspices and the guarantee of the great courts of Europe. Hesitating between Austria and his own kingdom, the unhappy monarch attempts to continue that equivocal system, that see-saw policy in which he has succeeded so ill, and which constrains him to dissimulation, that last resource of the feeble. Sent to Germany with instructions written by Louis XVI., with his own hand, Mallet du Pan recommends the sovereigns to be cautious in advancing into France, to observe the greatest prudence in dealing with the inhabitants of the invaded provinces, and to precede their arrival by a manifesto in which they declare conciliatory and pacific intentions. It follows that official ministers of the King did not possess his confidence and were not the interpreters of his mind. Asort of occult and mysterious government existed, with a diplomacy, secret funds, and agents abroad and at home. Such a system, lacking all grandeur and sincerity, could accomplish nothing but catastrophes.
Meanwhile, the war had begun under the most painful conditions. The invasion of Belgium, arranged for the end of April, failed miserably. Near Mons, Biron's troops took to flight, threatening to fire on their officers, and crying: "We are betrayed!" At Lille, General Theobald Dillon was massacred by his own soldiers. Such news caused indescribable emotion in Paris. Popular mistrust and irritation reached their height. The different parties hurled reproaches and accusations in each other's face. The Girondins, finding the National Guard too conservative, demanded pikes for the men of the faubourgs who had no guns. Thesans-culottesenlisted. The army of assassins was organized. The only thing left to do before giving the signal for a riot was to obtain from the King a last concession,—the disbanding of his guard.
Louis XVI. had still some defenders, some heroes resolved to shed the last drop of their blood for their King. Hence it was necessary to remove them from his person. What means of doing so could be found? Calumny. Fable on fable was spread among an always credulous public, imaginary conspiracies invented, and the wretched monarch constrained to deprive himself of his last resource, in order to deliver him, weak and disarmed, into the hands of his enemies.
The Constitution provided a guard for Louis XVI. One third of it was composed of soldiers of the line, and the remainder of National Guards, chosen by the Departments themselves from among their best-formed, richest, and best-bred citizens. It was commanded by one of the greatest lords of the old régime, the Duke de Cossé-Brissac. Born in 1734, the son of a marshal of France, the Duke had been governor of Paris, grand steward of France, and colonel of the Hundred-Switzers. He had never been willing to leave the King since the beginning of the Revolution. When his regiment wasdisbanded he might have fled, and Louis XVI. begged him to do so; but the heart of a subject so faithful had been deaf to the entreaties of the unfortunate sovereign. "Sire," he had answered, "if I fly, they will say that I am guilty, and you will be considered my accomplice: my flight would be your accusation; I would rather die." And, in fact, he did die. He had a real devotion to the former mistress of Louis XV., the Countess du Barry, and this latest conquest is not the least important of the favorite's adventures. Probably Count d'Allonville exaggerates when, in his Memoirs, he extols in Madame du Barry "that decency of tone, that nobility of manners, that bearing equally removed from pride and humility, from license and from prudery, that countenance which was enough to refute all the pamphlets." Nevertheless, it is certain that the society of the Duke de Brissac inspired the former favorite with generous sentiments. After the October Days, she took the wounded body-guards into her own house, and when the Queen sent to thank her for it, she replied: "These wounded young men regret nothing except not having died for a princess so worthy of all homage as Your Majesty.... Luciennes[1] is yours, Madame; did not your benevolence give it back to me? ... The late King, by a sort of presentiment, forced me to accept a thousand precious objectsbefore sending me away from his person. I already had the honor of offering you this treasure in the time of the Notables; I offer it again, Madame, with eagerness. You have so many expenses to provide for, and so many favors to confer. Permit me, I entreat you, to render to Cæsar that which belongs to Cæsar."
An enthusiastic royalist, a gentleman of the old nobility, chivalrous and full of courtesy, bred in notions of romantic susceptibility like those ofClélieandAstrée, the Duke de Brissac, like a knight-errant of former times, represented at the court of Louis XVI. a whole past which was crumbling to decay. If the unhappy monarch had been a man of action, he would have turned to good advantage a guard commanded by such a champion. He could have made it the nucleus of resistance by grouping the Swiss regiments and the well-inclined battalions of the National Guard around it. Unfortunately, there was nothing warlike in Louis XVI. "Among the deplorable causes which ruined him," says the Count de Vaublanc in his Memoirs, "must be counted the wretched education which kept him apart from every sort of military action. I remember that in the early days of the Consulate, after a review held on the Place of the Tuileries by Bonaparte, when talking about this to M. Suard, of the French Academy, I said that Bonaparte walked as if he were always ready to defend himself sword in hand. 'Ah, well!' responded M. Suard, naïvely,'we used to think differently; we wanted the King to have nothing military about him, and never to wear a uniform.'"
To this anecdote, M. de Vaublanc adds another. "We had in 1792," he says, "a forcible proof of the despondency under which a royal soul, spoiled by a detestable education, can labor. M. de Narbonne, the Minister of War, with great difficulty induced the King to review three excellent battalions of the Paris National Guard. He was on foot, in silk breeches and white silk stockings, and wearing his hair in a black bag. After the review a notary, named Chandon, I think, left the ranks and said to the King: 'Sire, the National Guard would be greatly honored to see Your Majesty in its uniform.' 'Sire,' said M. de Narbonne, at once, 'have the goodness to promise to do so. At the head of these three battalions of heroes you could destroy the Jacobins' den.' After a minute's reflection, the King replied: 'I will inquire of my Council whether the Constitution permits me to wear the uniform of the National Guard.'" Louis XVI. allowed the last resources accorded by fortune to slip away, and elements which in other hands would have produced notable results, remained sterile in his.
The Constitutional Guard, which according to regulation should have numbered eighteen hundred men, really amounted, says Dumouriez, to six thousand fit for duty. The royalist element predominated in it. But a certain number of "falsebrethren" had found their way into the ranks, who managed by the aid of bribery to spy upon their officers, and made reports to the committee of public safety. Undoubtedly the King's guards did not approve of all that was going on. But how could devoted royalists and men accustomed to discipline be expected to approve the fête of the Swiss of Chateauvieux, for example? How could they help being indignant when, while on duty at the Tuileries, they heard the populace insult the royal family under the very windows of the palace?
When they returned to their barracks at the Military School, they expressed this indignation too forcibly, and their words, hawked about in all quarters by ill-will, were represented as the preliminary symptoms of a reactionary plot. A guard commanded by a Duke de Brissac was intolerable to the Jacobins. Their sole idea was to drive it from the Tuileries, where its presence appeared to insure order,—a thing they held in utmost horror. A 20th of June would not have been possible with a constitutional guard, and ever since May, the 20th of June had been in course of preparation. Its organizers had their plan completely laid already. An adroit rumor was started of a so-called plot, some Saint-Bartholomew or other, which they pretended was on foot against the patriots, and of which the École Militaire was the centre. The white flag, which was to be the signal for the assassins to assemble, was said to be hidden there. Pétion, the mayor of Paris,under pretext of preventing troubles, sent municipal officers to make a search. They could not lay their hands on the white flag which was the pretended object of their visit, but they did find monarchical hymns and ballads, and counter-revolutionary writings.
An unlucky incident still further increased suspicion. The famous Countess de La Motte had just published in London some new particulars concerning the affair of the necklace. In order to avert scandal, the Queen had caused Laporte, intendant of the civil list, to buy up the whole edition, and he had burned every copy of it at the manufactory of Sèvres. That very evening the committee of surveillance were in possession of the fact that Laporte had gone to Sèvres with three unknown persons, and that thirty bales of paper had been put into the fire in his presence. There was at this time a great deal of talk concerning a pretended Austrian committee, in which a complete plan of restoration by foreign aid was being elaborated. It was claimed that the papers burned at the manufactory were the archives of this committee, with which popular imagination was extremely busy. Denunciations fell in showers. Laporte and several others were summoned before the committee of surveillance. Pétion declared that the people were surrounded by conspiracies. Bazire demanded the disbanding of the King's guard, which, according to him, was made up of servants of theémigrés, and refractory priests. It was claimedthat the soldiers, to whom the Duke de Brissac had given sabres with hilts representing a cock surmounted by a royal crown, used insulting language concerning the Assembly and the nation in their barracks. They were said to rejoice in the reverses which the French troops had just sustained on the northern frontier, and it was added that they meant to march twenty leagues under a white flag to meet the Austrians. The masses, always so easily deceived, were convinced that the conspiracy was on the brink of discovery.
The National Assembly took up the question, and a stormy debate on it occupied the evening session of May 29. "What will become of the individual liberty of citizens," cried M. Daverhouté, "if the dominant party, merely by alleging suspicions, can decree the impeachment of all who displease it, and if the different parties, coming successively into power, overthrow, by means of this unchecked right of impeachment, both ministers and all functionaries by the torrent of their intrigues? In that case you would see proscriptions like those of Marius and Sylla." In fact, this was what the near future was about to show. Vergniaud responded by evoking a souvenir of the prætorian guards of Caligula and Nero. At the close of his speech the Assembly passed the following decree:—
"ARTICLE 1. The existing hired guard of the King is disbanded, and will be replaced immediately in conformity with the laws.
"ART. 2. Until the formation of the new guard, the National Guard of Paris will be on duty near the King's person, in the same manner as before the establishment of the King's guard."
A discussion ensued on the subject of Brissac's impeachment. The struggle between the two opposing parties was of unheard-of vivacity. One of the most courageous members of the right, M. Calvet, gave free vent to his indignation. "The informer," said he, "is a scoundrel who makes a thrust with a poniard and hides himself; he was unknown at Rome until the times of Sejanus and Tiberius; times, gentlemen, of which you remind me often." "To the Abbey! to the Abbey!" retorted the left, with fury. Said Guadet: "I demand that M. Calvet should be sent to the Abbey for three days, for having dared to say that the representatives of the French people remind him of the Roman Tiberius and Sejanus." The motion was adopted, and the Assembly decided that M. Calvet should pass three days in prison. M. de Jaucourt threatened to cudgel Chabot, and the ex-friar, ascending the tribune, said: "I think it was very cowardly on the part of a colonel to offer to cane a Capuchin." The Assembly, having passed an order of the day concerning this incident, decreed that "there was reason for an accusation against M. Cossé, styled Brissac, and that his papers should be sealed up at once."
The King and Queen, awakened in the middle of the night by these tidings, besought Brissac to makehis escape, and provided him with the means. The Duke refused, and instead of trying to assure his safety, sat down to write a long letter to Madame du Barry. At first Louis XVI. wished to veto this decree, as was his duty, but his ministers dissuaded him. They reminded him of the October Days, and the weak monarch, alarmed on account of his family, if not on his own, sacrificed his Constitutional Guard and also the brave servitor who commanded it. Speaking to M. d'Aubier, one of the ordinary gentlemen of the King's bedchamber, the Queen said: "I tremble lest the King's guard should think the honor of the corps compromised by their disarmament."—"Doubtless, Madame, that corps would have preferred to die at the feet of Your Majesties."—"Yes," replied the Queen, "but the few partisans who still adhere to the King in the Assembly counsel him to sanction the decree disbanding them, and to disregard their advice is to run the risk of losing them." While the Queen was yet speaking, a man approached under pretence of asking alms. "You see," said she to M. d'Aubier, "there is no place and no time when I am free from spies."
The Constitutional Guard were sent as prisoners to the École Militaire between a double file of National Guards, and forced to surrender their weapons. By a sort of fatality Louis XVI. was led to disarm himself, to spike his cannons, tear down his flags, and dismantle his fortresses. By dint of approaching too near the fatal declivity of concessions,he ended by losing even his dignity as man and King. He was paralyzed, annihilated by the Assembly, which treated him like a hostage, a conquered man, and which struck down, one after another, the last defenders of the monarchy and of public order. The fate of the Constitutional Guard might well discourage honest men who only sought to devote themselves. How was it possible to remain faithful to a chief who was false to himself, who was more like a victim than a king? Finding themselves unsupported by the Tuileries, the royalists began to look across the frontier, and many men who would have flocked around an energetic monarch, fled from a feeble king and sorrowfully went to swell the ranks of the emigration.
In spite of the advice of Dumouriez, Louis XVI. would not make use of his right to form another guard. He preferred to put himself in the hands of the National Guard, who were his jailors rather than his servants. As to the Duke de Brissac, even the formality of an interrogatory was dispensed with, and he was sent before the Superior Court of Orleans. When he bade adieu to Louis XVI., the King said to him: "You are going to prison; I should be much more afflicted if you were not leaving me there myself." What was to be the fate of the loyal and devoted servant, thus sacrificed to his master's inexcusable weakness? He left the dungeons of Orleans only to be transferred to Versailles by the Marseillais, and there, on September 9, 1792, was assaulted by afurious throng surrounding the carriages containing the prisoners. The brave old man struggled long against the assassins, but, after losing two fingers and receiving several other wounds, he was killed by a sabre-thrust which broke his jaw, and his head was set on one of the spikes of the palace gate.
[1] The magnificent mansion built for Madame du Barry by Louis XV., and restored to her after her banishment to Meaux by Marie Antoinette.
Dissatisfied with men and things, dissatisfied with others and himself, the mind and heart of Louis XVI. were the prey of moral tortures which left him no repose. He began to be ashamed of his concessions, and to repent of having accepted pusillanimous advice. Why had he not succeeded in being a king? Why had he garrisoned Paris insufficiently ever since the outbreak of the Revolution? Why had he suffered the Bastille to be taken, encouraged the emigration, and disbanded his bodyguards? Why had he not opposed the first persecutions aimed at the Church? Why had he pretended to approve acts and ideas which horrified him? Why, by resorting to deplorable equivocations which cast a shadow over his policy and his character, had he reduced his most devoted followers to doubt and despair? Such thoughts as these assailed him like so many stings of conscience. The sentiments of monarchy and of military honor awoke in him once more, and he sounded with bitterness the whole depth of the abyss into which his irresolution had plunged him. In seeing what he was, he recalled sorrowfullywhat he had been, and comprehended by cruel experience what feebleness could make of a Most Christian King and eldest son of the Church, an heir of Louis XIV. He thought of the many brave men, victims of his political errors, who on his account had suffered exile and ruin; of the faithful royalists menaced, because of him, with prison and death. He thought of the incessantly repeated crimes, the massacres of the Glacière, the impunity of the brigands of "headsman" Jourdan, of Brissac's incarceration. This is what it is, he said within himself, to have suffered religion to be persecuted and to have believed that, were the altar once overthrown, the throne might rest secure. He reproached himself bitterly for having sanctioned the civil organization of the clergy at the close of 1790, and thus drawn upon himself the censure of the Sovereign Pontiff. He wanted to be done with concessions, but he understood perfectly that it was too late now to resist, and that he was irrevocably lost in consequence of events undesired and unforeseen.
What was to be done? How could he sail against the stream? Where find a point of vantage? Ought he to take violent measures? If the unhappy King had been alone, perhaps he might have tried to do so. But he feared to endanger his wife and children by thus acting.
As if to push the wretched monarch to extremities, the National Assembly passed two decrees which struck him to the heart. According to the first ofthese, voted May 19, any ecclesiastic having refused the oath to the civil constitution of the clergy, could be transported at the simple request of twenty citizens of the canton in which he resided. According to the second, voted June 8, a camp of twenty thousand federates, recruited from every canton of the realm, were to be assembled before Paris, in order, as was said in one of the preambles, "to take every hope from the enemies of the common weal who are scheming in the interior."
They had counted too much on the King's patience. He could not resolve to sanction the two decrees, and banish the ecclesiastics whose behavior he honored. Dumouriez afflicted him still further, when, in entreating him to yield, he asked why he had sanctioned, at the close of 1790, the decree obliging the clergy to take oath to the civil constitution of the clergy. "Sire," said he, "you sanctioned the decree for the priests' oath, and it is to that your veto must be applied. If I had been one of your counsellors at the time, I would, at the risk of my life, have advised you to refuse your sanction. Now my opinion is that having, as I dare to say, committed the fault of approving this decree, which has produced enormous evils, your veto, if you apply it to the second decree, which may arrest the deluge of blood ready to flow, will burden your conscience with all the crimes to which the people are tending." Never had a sovereign's conscience been a prey to similar perplexities. Louis XVI. seemed crushed beneath an irresistiblefatality. The Tuileries, haunted night and day by the spectre of Charles I., assumed a dismal air. At this period a sort of stupor characterized the countenance, the gait, and even the silence of the future victim of January 21. He no longer spoke; one might say he no longer thought. He seemed prostrated, petrified.
A rumor got about that he had become almost imbecile through care and trouble, so much so that he did not recognize his son, but on seeing him approach, had asked: "What child is that?" It was added that while out walking he caught sight of the steeple of Saint Denis from the top of the hill, and cried out: "That is where I shall be on my birthday." He had been so calumniated, so misunderstood, so outraged, that not merely his crown but his existence had become an intolerable burden to him. His throne and his life alike disgusted him. He was no longer a King, but only the ghost of one.
Madame Campan thus describes him: "At this period the King fell into a discouragement amounting to physical prostration. For ten days together he never uttered a word, even in the bosom of his family, except when the game of backgammon, which he played with Madame Elisabeth after dinner, obliged him to pronounce some indispensable words. The Queen drew him out of this condition, so fatal at a critical time when every minute may necessitate action, by throwing herself at his feet and addressing him sometimes in words intended only to frighten him,and at others expressing her affection for him. She demanded, also, what he owed to his family, and went so far as to say that if they must perish, it ought to be with honor, and without waiting to be strangled one after another on the floor of their apartment."
While Louis XVI. assisted unmoved, not merely like Charles V. at his own obsequies, but at those of royalty, the blood of Maria Theresa was boiling in the veins of Marie Antoinette. The scenes she had witnessed sometimes extorted sobs and cries of anguish from her. Her pride revolted at seeing the royal mantle, crown, and sceptre dragged through the mire. She wanted to struggle to the last, to hope against all hope, to cling to the last chances of safety like a shipwrecked sailor to the fragments of his ship. Who could say? She might find defenders where she least expected them. It was for this reason that she wished to meet Dumouriez, as she had met Mirabeau and Barnave. Dumouriez has preserved the details of this interview in his Memoirs.
How times had changed! Secrecy was almost necessary if one sought the honor of speaking with the Queen of France. Even to salute her was to expose one's self to the suspicion of belonging to the pretended Austrian committee which was the perpetual object of popular invective. When Louis XVI. told Dumouriez that the Queen desired a private interview with him, the minister was not at all well pleased. He thought it a useless step which might be misinterpreted by all parties. However,he must needs obey. He had received an order to go down to the Queen an hour before the meeting of the Council. That it might be the sooner over, he took the precaution of going half an hour late to this perilous rendezvous. He had been presented to Marie Antoinette on the day of his nomination as minister. She had then addressed him several words, asking him to serve the King well, and he had replied with a respectful phrase. Since then he had not seen her. When he entered her room, he found the Queen alone, very much flushed, and pacing to and fro in an agitation which promised a lively interview. She approached him with an air of majestic irritation: "Sir!" she exclaimed, "you are all-powerful at this moment, but it is by the favor of the people, who soon break their idols. Your existence depends upon your conduct." Dumouriez insisted on the necessity of scrupulously respecting the Constitution, which Marie Antoinette was unwilling to do. "It will not last," she said, raising her voice; "take care of yourself!"—"Madame," replied the minister, "I am past fifty; I have encountered many perils during my life, and in entering the ministry, I thoroughly understood that responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers."—"Nothing was wanting but to calumniate me," cried the Queen, tears flowing from her eyes; "you seem to think me capable of having you assassinated." Agitated as greatly as the sovereign, "God preserve me," said Dumouriez, "from offering you sogrievous an offence! Your Majesty's character is great and noble. You have given proofs of it which I admire and which have attached me to you." Marie Antoinette grew calmer. "Believe me, Madame," went on the minister; "I have no interest in deceiving you, and I abhor anarchy and crime as much as you do.... This is not, as you seem to think, a popular and transitory movement. It is the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses. The conflagration is stirred up by great parties, and there are scoundrels and fools in all of them. I behold nothing in the Revolution but the King and the nation as a whole; all that tends to separate them leads to their mutual ruin; I am doing all I can to reunite them, and it is your part to aid me. If I am an obstacle to your designs, say so, and I will at once offer my resignation to the King, and go into a corner to bewail the fate of my country and your own." The interview ended amicably. The Queen and the minister talked over the different factions. Dumouriez spoke to Marie Antoinette of the faults and crimes of each; he tried to convince her that she was misled by those who surrounded her, and the Queen appeared to be convinced. When he was obliged to call her attention to the clock, as the hour for the Council had arrived, she dismissed him most affably.
If we may credit Madame Campan, who has also given an account of this interview, the impression Marie Antoinette received from it was scarcely agood one. "One day," says Madame Campan, "I found the Queen extremely troubled. She said she no longer knew where she stood; whether the Jacobin chiefs were making overtures to her through Dumouriez, or Dumouriez, abandoning the Jacobins, was acting on his own account; that she had given him an audience; that, when alone with her, he had fallen at her feet and said that although he had pulled the red bonnet down to his ears, yet he was not and could not be a Jacobin; that the Revolution had been allowed to fall into the hands of a rabble of disorganizers who, seeking only for pillage, were capable of everything, and could furnish the Assembly with a formidable army, ready to undermine the support of a throne already too much shaken. While speaking with extreme warmth, he had seized the Queen's hand, and, kissing it with transport, cried, 'Permit yourself to be saved!' The Queen said to me that the protestations of a traitor could not be believed, and that his entire conduct was so well known that undoubtedly the wisest thing would be not to trust him."
Meantime, the danger constantly increased. Even the gates of the Tuileries were no longer fastened. Hawkers of vile pamphlets and sanguinary satires on the Queen cried their infamous wares under the very windows of the palace; and the National Assembly, sitting close beside, and hearing them—the National Assembly, terrorized by Jacobins and pikemen—dared not even censure such baseness. On June 4,a deputy named Ribes, till then unknown, cited from the tribune the titles of the following articles in Fréron's journal,l'Orateur du Peuple: "The crowned porcupine, a constitutional animal who behaves unconstitutionally."—"Crimes of M. Capet since the Revolution."—"Decree to be passed forbidding the Queen to sleep with the King."—"The royal tigress, separated from her worthy spouse, to serve as a hostage." "Rouse up!" cried the indignant deputy. "There is still time. Join with me in proclaiming war on traitors and justice for the seditious, and the country is safe!" Ribes preached in the desert. The Assembly shrugged their shoulders and treated him as a fool.
June 11, another deputy, M. Delsaux, said from the tribune: "Last evening, at half-past seven, passing through the Tuileries, I saw an orator standing on a chair and speaking with great vehemence. Mixing with the crowd, I heard him read a libel strongly inciting to the King's assassination. This libel is called, 'The Fall of the Idol of the French,' and these sentences occur in it: 'This monster employs his power and his treasures to hinder our regeneration. A new Charles IX., he wishes to bring desolation and death to France. Go, cruel wretch; thy crimes shall have an end. Damiens was less guilty. He was punished by most horrible tortures for having desired to deliver France from a monster. And thou, whose offences are twenty-five million times greater, art left unpunished! But tremble, tyrant; there is a Scævola amongst us.'"
The Assembly listened, but took no measures. No further restraint was placed either on moral or material disorder. Anarchy showed a nameless epileptic ferocity. Never had the press been more furious or licentious. It was a torrent of mud and gall and blood. The limits of invective and insult were driven further back. "You see that I am annoyed," said the Queen to Dumouriez in Louis XVI.'s presence; "I dare not go to the window looking into the garden. Last evening, needing a breath of air, I showed myself at the window facing the courtyard. A gunner belonging to the guard apostrophized me in an insulting way, and added: 'What pleasure it would give me to have your head on the end of my bayonet!' In that frightful garden a man standing on a chair reads out horrors against us on one side, and on the other may be seen a soldier or a priest whom they are dragging through a pond, and crushing with blows and insults. Meantime, others are flying balloons or quietly strolling about. Ah! what a place! what a people!"